New Poetry by Shawn McCann: “All I Can Do Is Watch” and “No Way To Fight Back”
DONE WITH MOONS / image by Amalie Flynn
All I Can Do Is Watch
It’s 0400 on a bridge crossing over the Tigris River. Qayyarah is a town along its fertile banks, 15,000 people call it home. I wonder how long it has been here, how many times conquered and rebuilt.
On the outskirts lies an oil field, it’s where I live. The wooden walls of this makeshift bunker in the sand wouldn’t stop an attack, just slow it down.
Surrounded by blackness, my mind wanders valleys of homesickness, forced to breathe toxic air, flanked by those who want to kill my invasive body, parade it through the streets.
A bright light hits the oil field, shakes the ground. Movement on the hill to the north— I call it in.
Orange flames rise in oxygen, twirl in mirthful celebration, the smoke swirling higher, my life forever changed and all I can do is watch.
No Way to Fight Back
I can smell the exhaust from
the plane that’s taking me home.
Standing in line to board the whale,
maw open wide to let us inside.
Air forming breath in the illume,
I’m done with moons in this hemisphere.
These stars, still foreign to me.
Even at the end, I know I don’t belong
in a land of sharp sand, the broken
glass bowl of democracy.
This land won’t let me leave, though.
Raining metal explodes my dreams of home;
swarming red flames engulf
the surrounding canvas. The sound
catches the light, knocks me flat
to the ground as alarms blare attack,
bullets ricochet off cold slabs.
And just like that, I’m crouched inside,
cold-cocked by the reality of
no way to fight back.
New Poetry by Kathleen Hellen: “People Boats” and “Pretending There Is A Garden In The Spring, Paradise In Time”
DREAMS SWELL LASHED / image by Amalie Flynn
people boats
dreams swell/ lashed to circumstance in Syria/ in Gambia/ launched from Libya in leaky rubber chugs to birdless deep/ chugs w/ floor of feet w/ canopy of arms like 700 starfish sweating/ surfing demons/ keeling keening groaning spinning ferment/ tossed estrange/ the black moon sinking into raucous mucus maelstroms/ cataract of violet distress/ the turbulence of orange sun/ bursting over flotsom/ boats adrift/ boats repelled/ prison haulers fatal w/o water, w/o air fatal in shrieking rescue/ panicked sea/ 10 hours tossed to grief/ where vomit waters sweep the beaches gnawed by ruptured rubber masses/ huddled under searchlights/ infant wish:: democracy
pretending there is garden in the spring, paradise in time
this silk and golden weft that weaves
its vines through field and forest
this intricate design atop a kingdom
of the dying, above the restless thread
of streets, the rot beneath:: Deep
the sleep of mouse and wren, the carcasses
of crickets. The desiccated corpses
of the moths. Beneath the flowers all
dyed dismal, dog and possum disemboweled,
little deer with tongue stuck out, the rat
beheaded, like video of hostage
New Poetry by Lawrence Bridges: “Time of War and Exile” and “Taking an Island”
THE BROKEN LAND / image by Amalie Flynn
TIME OF WAR AND EXILE
Delicate horse feathers climbing the bier, Rhesus monkeys playing sincerely with bombs, Alouette, the weightlifter, seasons the vegans’ food with the rillerah and finds Roger dozing among bananas. PUUUUUHistory is pleased by turnabouts none can explain nor defend because they’re dead. If only we’d noticed that it was primal behavior going back eons that was on display – No war, no truth, no civility – the beards grow over niceties that fast! Then we make peace to survive. No wise hand placates the broken land, nor kisses the clan that feeds it. I watch myself display courage in emptiness. With emptiness, every hour is the same, a wait for exile from the churning heart long separated from its homeland.
TAKING AN ISLAND
The stations in my head broadcasting jazz and news since VJ-Day almost have witnessed everybody escaping annihilation almost, and I’m loading material bare-chested on a beach
in the tropics, a sniper in a nearby palm playing Bach. I have nothing but the memory of home and her tattooed on my arm, the caressing lagoon at my ankles a whiff of plumeria as I carry my weight, swift bullet whizzing toward my head
New Poetry by Matthew Hummer: “Amortization”
JUST SAY IT / image by Amalie Flynn
AMORTIZATION
Carl showed me the chart years ago, when we first thought to buy a house. But we wouldn’t write a note saying she’d go back to work the same hours after birth. The under- writer, in fluorescent office by the two lane road between golf course and condo, wanted a wink- wink. “Just say it.” A lie worth a sixty thousand dollar house, brick row home with sagging window frames and tilted doors. A loan unto death. Camus, I think, pointed that out.Mort, en francais.
PUUUUUUUUUUDianoia: How you’ve led me astray. Res publica. Fasces. Words and phrases we use without knowing the root. Character in the play. “History. History!” Dag Nasty said at the end of a song:Now that it’s gone just admit it to yourself. Now that it’s gone just admit it to yourself. Drum rapid as the rumble of a gasoline engine—leaded. Army green paint. Nova; V-eight. From stop to start, shifting up from floor to top. Another typical youth…
Thirty years to pay
it off. The life of the loan, more than two dog lives. Not the lifetime guarantee of a washing machine—the expected lifetime of the appliance. Five years? Seven? Fifteen before nineteen eighty. The green fridge next to the coffee pot kept milk for decades. Vietnam to Iraq, outlasting the man smoking cigarettes on the concrete patio, feeding peanuts to squirrels and telling a child about the Battle of the Bulge, the tank driver who fell back in headless, the German soldiers who “tried to get away in the snow,” the aristocrat’s sword the post office stole from the box he sent home.
PUUUUUUUUUUThe guarantee spans the projected lifespan. Lottery ticket, Camels, Dominoes, V.A., Life insurance. Actuarial predictions with cosign charts— bodies in the morgue. Dead reckoning. Except the Black swan, clot-shot. Dead cat bounce. Bank-breaker. Mid- life degeneration. A rogue wave rises and swallows the bobbing tanker.
New Poetry by Almyr Bump: “Plowing Water”
IN BROKEN GROUND / image by Amalie Flynn
Plowing Water
We return to nightmare ground, looking over the scene
of the crime, the copper reflection of little clouds
in the torpid, tainted canal masking disquiet
and chaos created in us. Toiling in soft sand
underneath a burden that would make a mule bleat,
we bitch and moan when told to drop the rucks. Now we must
dig in, not like blind moles, but like crippled gravediggers
in broken ground started by high angle hell. Mangled
sandbags and serrated pieces of metal pulled from
dirt wounds, also a hand only missing two fingers.
Using a bayonet, we bury rancid, fetid
flesh in a hole, puking, not worried about a name.
New Poetry by J.S. Alexander: “Sabat”
AWAY HE STAYS / image by Amalie Flynn
Sabat (Loyalty)
Dead bodies stop looking like bodies
after a certain point.
The face, like a popped milar balloon
with all the air blown out the top,
the legs, oddly angled, their bottoms
looking for all the world
like tubes of children’s toothpaste
unevenly squeezed.
No, the dead here never arrive in an
orderly manner, like in the movies.
This is Afghanistan, so they show up
carried in blankets or what’s left
of clothes, bandages waving
like May flags.
But they all go out the same way.
The mullah works systematically,
washing and praying, singsong in his labors.
Next to him, a step back Mortaza watches
them prepare his brother for the next life.
Mohammad Gul was the pride
of Ismail Khel.
Young, handsome, brave. Funny.
Everyone said he was funny.
You don’t hear that much in Afghanistan,
someone being funny. As they lift what’s left
into the particle board box that looks like
an Ikea desk repurposed
hands seek to guide Mortaza out. But
he pulls away, he stays.
He watches as they wrap Gul’s head in
cotton and prop it up on
pillows of cheap foam. They spray him with Turkish
perfume from the bazaar, and then
drape the Afghan flag and the prayer rug over his
box, taping it down with rolls of
scotch tape. Mortaza sniffs back a tear, both for
his brother and the debt
he knows he’ll now have to pay. He’s not scared,
just tired, and knows
that somewhere, out in Lakan, is a man he’s never
met but will kill, as the way demands.
When we walk out, together, my boots slip,
squeaking and squishing on the sodden, dirty
tile.
New Poetry by Ben White: “Cleaning the M60 – 39 Years and January 26, 1984”
TO FLESH BONE / image by Amalie Flynn
39 Years
The death Of a soldier Was an accident, A waste – PUT_CCCCCCA shame, So the anniversary Is nothing to celebrate – PUT_CCCCCCOr forget
January 26, 1984
Back on the continent At the 1stand 51stInfantry – A battalion that doesn’t exist anymore – The Cold War was fighting a strange peace With weapons and tension Wanting to release a dimension PUT_CCCCCCOf battle prepared, PUT_CCCCCCTrained for, PUT_CCCCCCAnd ultimately expected While volunteers selected Stood ready in the West And along the borders PUT_CCCCCCAwaiting orders to mobilize When one cold January, Thursday morning Soldiers had to realize The power of 7.62 mm ammo Tumbling into the chest PUT_CCCCCCOf a brother in the band With manslaughter unplanned And wounds giving the medics An ambulance to ride in PUT_CCCCCCUntil the doctors PUT_CCCCCCAt theKrankenhaus Opened up the chest And showed them what One M60 round PUT_CCCCCCCan do To flesh, Bone, and what A few minutes ago Had been functioning, PUT_CCCCCCDistinguishable organs.
New Poetry by Kat Raido: “Blood Goggles”
LICKS THE VEINS / image by Amalie Flynn
Walter Cronkite left footprints in the gravel of Saigon but he didn’t tell you their names didn’t show you the morning commute of an accountant in Hanoi
they televise bedsheets replacing blown out glass in homes of blown out people but not the Arab Renaissance Bookshop which opened its doors in 1966
fire hoses are used to extinguish human spirit courage licks the veins like flame and the only parts of war they can’t powerwash away are the bloody crevices under their own fingernails.
New Poetry by Luis Rosa Valentin: “Desperate Need of Help”
In Hokusai’s “Kanagawa Wave,” the boatmen
look like a school of masquerading fish
about to disappear into the vast trough between waves,
the scene a masque for the knowing seascape.
Underwater, Ahab,
pinned to the great white
creature, like a wave that has
disappeared into silence.
In memory’s slow dancing,
flesh now dissolved,
seafloor muck covers bones
and shark-tooth nodules.
Out of the bubbling methane,
Ahab is reborn with tripod limbs
and tiny feet, the wooden leg
now a trail of seafloor slime,
amphibious.
New Poetry by Carol Everett Adams: “Rabbit Trails”
THE TEXAS DUST / image by Amalie Flynn
RABBIT TRAILS
in the Texas dust. We’re flat in the dirt
so we can poke around down there with a long stick,
while above us bullets fly and children
hold up their honor roll certificate shields.
You say blankets are the answer,
and backpacks and better officers and armed teachers
and doors that shut like Vegas vaults to keep your money safe,
keep your money safer than my child.
I forgot what we were talking about.
New Poetry by Lisa Stice: “Our Folklore”
FIND MYSELF LOST / image by Amalie Flynn
Our Folklore
Long ago, you were molten rock, and I—
well, I spoke the language of bears.
But now that I have been out of the forest
for so long, all the words and grammar escape
me, and I often find myself lost. And you—
well, you are often mistaken for a statue
in this solid state. No more rumblings and
agitations. We are both quiet these days.
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Cactus Tuna”; “We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays”; and “Reverse Run”
FARMER OF ROCKS / image by Amalie Flynn
Cactus Tuna
A semi-sweet taste
of watered-down nectar
bleeds out from the prickly
pear nestled PUT_Aon a crown of thorns.
In the desert you once
sneered over rifle sights
at the farmers drawing PUT_Arakes over the sun-
baked ground, and now, PUT_Aas atonement
you’re a farmer of rocks
and what comes with them.
Stained fingers tear through
leathery skin. Sometimes you
forget you’re standing
alone in a cactus patch PUT_Ared trickling down.
Grace is not this –
living on what grows where
nothing had a right to grow,
seeds fine as sand PUT_Ahide between teeth.
And crows, refusing to starve,
land unafraid, pick through
the rinds, eat, take flight
scatter seeds on rocky places PUT_Aand among thorns
even on tops of walls,
and maybe it’s resilience PUT_Aor spite
something finds purchase here.
We Return from the Holy Land. God Stays.
The mystery is often in the gaze of men
and women waiting for the sky to speak.
We used to spend days in the desert
waiting until the sky whistled and then
we wished we hadn’t.
Someone’s former
home, now sharp edges of cinderblock
cut upward through our soles. We kept
walking through the desert; everything
radiated, catching us in the crossfire.
* * * * *
We spend days in the Hill country
beneath a blistering sun, a clean sky,
traces of blue that have faded,
burnt off but for the edges by noon.
‘Say something,’ we shout in our minds,
looking up as if it’s God. Eventually
the sky speaks in the language of wind,
fear fills our hearts. Still, we knew
it would be this bad, yet wanted so much
to feel something – until the moment we did.
Run in Reverse
In dreams the ball bearings and nails and flame
are sucked backwards out of the truck, along
with the screams, and the shrapnel enters
The IED, a makeshift paint can half buried in sand.
The boy’s face heals, his body slides back
into the passenger seat and after a momentary
glare at this pained country he turns and smiles
at the driver. It’s a calm hundred-degree morning
and the Baghdad street is filled with shoppers
carrying bags, laffa bread, eggplants poking
out the top, Turkish vendors serving doner kebab,
their angry looks toward the truck
have softened now and they’re joking.
***
Some days walking with my wife, I turn,
walk backwards just to say something silly.
It’s that moment that seems truest. She is
looking at what’s to come just beyond my shoulder,
no regrets about the past, and I’m trying to hold
on to what we left, moving against my will
into the future blind, the scene I’m trying
to make sense of, moving farther away.
New Poetry from Tanya Tuzeo: “My Brother, the Marine;” “My Brother’s Shoebox;” and “My Brother’s Grenade”
WAR HAS DONE / image by Amalie Flynn
my brother, the Marine
the recruiters come weeks earlier than agreed—
arrive in alloy, aluminum with authority,
military vehicle blocks our driveway
announcing to the neighborhood
they’ve come for a boy here
who will have to go—
though he sits at the top step
and cries
i follow them,
strange convoy to Staten Island’s hotel
where all the boys are corralled—
farmed for war, becoming weapons
of mass destruction
when before they picked apples
at family trips upstate
a hotel lobby—last stop before using lasers
to blow off golden domes,
silence muezzins in the crush
of ancient wage and plaster—
Hussein’s old siberian tiger left thirsty,
watches other zoo animals
being eaten by the faithful—
just like a video game
i clamp onto my brother
beg him not to go, we could run away
he didn’t have to do this—
recruiters quickly camouflage me,
am dragged outside—my brother lost
did not say goodbye
or even look at me.
my brother’s shoebox
the room across the hall is inhabited again,
home now from another tour
like sightseeing from a grand canal
where buildings are art
and storied sculptures animate street corners—
my brother returns a veteran.
i want to remember who this person is,
or at least, find out what war has done.
he leaves with friends to drink—
that is still the same,
later tonight
he might howl at our parent’s window
or jump on my bed until the sheets froth,
uncaring and rabid.
but i don’t wait for him to come home
and begin searching the room
that is his again.
it is simple to find
where people hide things—
a shoebox under his bed
that wasn’t there all these years
furrowed by sand
and almost glowing.
i open to find drugstore prints,
rolls of film casually dropped
for a high school student to develop—
silver halide crystals take the shape
of shattered skulls
goats strung and slit
a school made of clay
blasted in the kiln of munitions
“KILL ZONE” painted across its foundation—
each 4×6 emulsion a souvenir
of these mad travels,
kept to reminisce and admire.
my brother’s grenade
my brother’s room in our family vacation home
has embossed wallpaper, indigo or violet
depending on the light that filters through the mountains—
and his grenade in the closet.
i saw it looking for extra blankets,
thought it was an animal resting in eiderdown
kept by my mother in one of her tempers
but it didn’t move
and so
i picked it up.
inhumanity held beneath iron’s screaming core—
a pleasant weight,
like the egg i threw across the street
detonating onto the head of boy
who said i kissed him but i didn’t,
is it like that for my brother?—
fisted mementos of thrill?
seasoned by cedar sachets,
neatly quilted metal shimmered as i turned it
forbidden gem, his holy relic—
i placed it back in the closet and began making dinner,
said nothing.
the slender pin preserves this household
where our family gathers
unknowing a bomb is kept here—
my brother roasts a marshmallow
until it catches fire, turns black,
plunges into mouth.
New Poetry from Nidhi Agarwal: “The Goddess Incarnates;” “Cow Dust Hour;” and “Emancipation”
WEIGHT OF DUSK / image by Amalie Flynn
THE GODDESS INCARNATES
At midnight, on a seat of five skulls
I worship the slayer of illusions,
The Maharaja (King) gifted me thirty – three
Acres of rent – free earth, (1)
I have planted seeds of your devotion (Bhakti)
In the soil of my bones to perform corpse rituals.
The world calls me mother – crazy and love – mad,
Your status comes alive in my skeleton,
Oh, Mother Kali! Tell me
If the Goddess incarnates.
– Ram Prasad Sen
COW DUST HOUR
I dwell on the ferocious cremation grounds
Yearning for my Mother Kali!
She carries waxing gibbous on her forehead,
The Sun grows larger in her right pupil,
The Moon drips from the two corners of her left eye,
She burns the demons in the catacomb of her three eyes.
You cannot carry her consort in your palm,
He keeps her love and fury in the ocean of his heart.
I am restless, this longing to meet my
Mother will swallow me.
Oh, Mother! I have transposed to a ghoul
Your disciples are my friends now.
They claim,
Between the day and night –
When twilight rises to the throat of the sky,
The hours of Sun and darkness make love,
There is no period of half – light,
I will meet you at,
The time of Union.
EMANCIPATION
My eyes brim with the weight of dusk,
Emotions conflagrate in my heart
Burning the corpse without fuel.
This dawn I am returning to my house
To constellate my belongings.
The entrance is clouded by the
Scattered scars of my childhood,
Every drawer is sealed with the secrets of
My disappointments.
Today, I let go of my failures and rise
From the floor,
As soot rises from the throat.
With every effort to clean the house
My spine travels to the nucleus of my brain
Showing me the way to the bedroom.
At the bedroom’s door,
I stand startled by the view.
The Mother Goddess is coming together
With the God of Mountains,
Consuming my form and liberating me
From prison.
New Poetry from Laura King: “Orange”
MY ACIDIC PAST / image by Amalie Flynn
ORANGE
It’s June, and a few stubborn ones
still hang on the trees.
We stand on the back of the pickup to pluck one—
so easy to peel, this old girl the sun has sugared
since December’s sharp tang.
Now it’s sweet as honey, sweet as candy,
sweet as that boy child
who wrapped himself up in his binkie,
his raw thumb firm against his upper palette,
who sat on the stairs facing the wall
because I’d snapped at him again.
Why was I upset all the time?
Though everyone forgives me, no one forgets
my acidic past; bright orange, raw rage.
New Poetry from Virginia Schnurr: “Touchstone” and “Valentine for Lewis Carroll”
VALENTINES IN ME / image by Amalie Flynn
TOUCHSTONE
My child’s fairy-tale quilt is frail:
the wizard ripped, the prince bald,
the fairy’s wing clipped.
Only the wishing well and frog prince survived
camp, college, the conception of my grandchild.
My eldest daughter wants the irreparable
repaired for her daughter, Maeve Arden,
named after a Shakespearean forest.
No longer willing to stitch painted pomp
I sketch a new quilt: a forest where the snake waits,
the dark trips, death lives behind every mushroom:
reality feelingly persuades me what I am.
My cataracts removed, I have a grander vision for Maeve’s covering.
I add the fool with his
books in running brooks, tongues in trees.
Absolute in my giving
savvy to the darker side of things
my needle pokes the sweet uses of adversity.
VALENTINE FOR LEWIS CARROLL
Purchased by an old woman
for her grandniece
I’m a blue plastic Valentine bag.
I have on me
a rabbit from Wonderland
whose creator liked
little girls without pubic hair.
I sit all year
on a doorknob
awaiting the day of hearts.
I’m singular,
not a carelessly covered box
but reusable.
My child places
her carefully labeled
valentines in me.
Unfortunately, this year
will be my finale.
My rabbit will hop off
offended by the onset
of hair.
New Poetry from Marc Tretin: “Justin Alter, Slightly Drunk, Addresses Maya, Who Is In Egypt” and “Maya Ricci Alter After Excavating A Pyramid South Of Zairo”
HOT WIRES SCALD / image by Amalie Flynn
JUSTIN ALTER, SLIGHTLY DRUNK, ADDRESSES MAYA, WHO IS IN EGYPT
Now as I am hungover and queasy
stumping about the tilting house
and sappy as my face is green,
Maya, your sculpture of Qetesh,
that goddess of sex and ecstasy,
whose torso of clear pink plastic
has a heart made of puzzle pieces
dangling from wires that run to an
automated external defibrillator
normally used to shock
a rapid cardiac rhythm
back to normal, stares at me with eyes
filled with both desire and despair.
Though feeling embarrassed
I touch the pink nub you meant
to be her clit and a soft whirr starts, then
puzzle pieces spin so fast they tear, and scatter
and the bare hot wires scald
the insides of her perfect breasts.
I pull the plug, but the smell of burnt plastic
fills our bedroom despite the open windows.
Why do you have to be gone so long?
MAYA RICCI ALTER EXCAVATING A PYRAMID SOUTH OF CAIRO
As I stooped beneath the
standing sun within the
meter-by-meter carefully
measured order of this
archeological dig and
brushed pottery shards
and papyrus crumbs through
a sieve to sift out the sand,
the heat’s strong hands
touched me like a half-
wanted lover, whose warmth
is too familiar with my
body to refuse and that’s
why when Jamaal, the site
boss said, “You look
overheated.
Cool off in my trailer.”
“Yes,” I said, knowing I
wanted to betray Justin
but not knowing why, so
after we had sex and while
I was thinking how can I
use this experience,
I saw Jamaal shave with
a straight edge then I saw
the dead-on right image for the God Set,
a cave-sized skull made of razor blades,
entered by stepping
over teeth made of sharp knives
into total darkness
except for a weak light
piercing this skull
through one of its eyes
and in that eye is a web
and tangled in its threads
are Zipporah and Justin.
Their faces, formless rags.
Their bodies sucked out hulks.
New Poetry by Michal Rubin: “I Speak Not Your Language” and “Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad of Jijlya”
MAN AND LAND / image by Amalie Flynn
I speak not your language
I, born from the womb of
my mother’s remembrances
wrapped in the cocoon
of her story
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou, amongst the trees, the earth PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAbelow littered with unpicked olives PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthe story of Hagar and Yishmael PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAis your womb
my skin a scroll,
an epic of what was
my skin like tombstones
etched with numbers
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthe remains of the broken down PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAhome in the arid field pasture PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour diary PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAcarved in the stone
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAYou laugh in pleasure PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour small act of defiance PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyour urine naturally marks your PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAterritory which PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAI have marred
I feel its warmth running down
my sweaty shirt
my tongue tied in shame
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou are telling your story
I speak not your language
and it’s 2pm
the radio announcer
reads out names of
lost relatives,
maybe they have survived
PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyours, they live in a tent PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAsomewhere PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAwithout radio announcements PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAyou guard the stones PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREAAAAAAAAAAthat have survived
Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad of Jiljilya
Haaretz newspaper reports 3am Omar Abdalmajeed As’ad is stopped by Israeli soldiers on his drive home, after spending time with friends.
the moon is smiling, oblivious to the rattled
heart thumping against the white shirt
buttoned tightly over a late-night dinner
of rice and maybe thick lamb stew
3:05am The soldiers demand that As’ad step out of his vehicle. They argue with him for 15 minutes.
Hebrew and Arabic mingle in a snake-like dance
or a sword fight with only one sword
and one victor
always
the same one wins
3:20 am The soldiers walk As’ad to an abandoned yard, where they handcuff him, lay him on the ground, gag him and blindfold him.
the rancid aroma of cumin and cinnamon, the
leftover flavor of friends, permeates the thick
gag with a terrifying intimacy of living in a dream
of dying on the cold dusty ground
3:35am Soldiers lead two more detainees to the yard. One of them notices As’ad is lying still on his stomach.
his full stomach is pressed against the small pebbles
as 78-year-old skin surrenders to the indentations
branding As’ad
declaring the kinship of man and land
as the almost full moon still is in oblivion
3:45am Two more detainees are brought to the yard. No one is handcuffed apart from As’ad.
his hands bound to each other clutch fleetingly
moments stored in his wilting veins
toddlers joyfully
squealing love making
lamb stew sweetness of pistachio-
filled baklawa
4am The soldiers free one of As’ad’s hands and leave the yard.
not bound together the hands no longer harbor
As’ad’s stored moments
they “rest” upon the spillage of his life
leaving handprints
branding the earth
the kinship of land and man
4:09am One of the detainees calls a doctor after noticing As’ad is unresponsive and his face has turned blue.
no flickering of the moonlight to mark
the moment As’ad’s blindfolded eyes dimmed
the absence of air bluing
the wrinkled face
stillness
4:10am A doctor arrives at the yard from a nearby clinic and tries to resuscitate As’ad.
the white shirt ripped dusted
with the land no longer white
and new hands part the sea
of stillness in a futile effort
to infuse life into
this body an empty vessel
zip tie on its wrist
4:20am As’ad is brought to the clinic and medics continue to treat him.
neon flares no more moonlight
frenetic world life-sustaining measures violent
clanking desperation against As’ad’s bare chest
desecrate the holy stillness
of dying at dawn
4:40am
The doctor pronounces As’ad’s death
One commander will be
rebuked
two subordinate company and platoon commanders will be
dismissed
I never thought of you
as a hopeless romantic; this was news to me.
Are you still meditating? Meditate
on this:
You can take the Mulholland Highway across
the ridges of two counties
and stay high a long time.
We parked there once in your subcompact
in love and unconfined.
From the afternoon shade of a scrub oak
I remember the ridge route home,
the silhouettes of Point Dume and your profile
in the afterglow.
Since then I have been a jack of all trades
and a master of nothing:
unremarkable, unsubstantial, undignified;
unresolved, unremembered, unconceivable;
unqualified, unpublished, unreadable.
I looked for you in the county beach campgrounds
where you went with surfers from your high school.
I looked for you in all the places I heard you were in love.
I looked for you where rumors sent me.
I looked for you in the hills of Northridge
where we walked around the fault lines.
I looked for you among the barstools
from Venice to Ventura.
I looked for you in old Beach Boys songs.
I looked for you in stacks of photographs.
I looked for you in the bottom of a glass.
I looked for you stranded after a concert.
I looked for you at the Spahn Ranch.
I looked for you in the bittersweet words in books.
I looked for you in unsold manuscripts.
I looked for you in the margins of old college notes.
I looked for you in every woman who looked at me.
I looked for you in dharma talks.
I looked for you in shrines.
I looked for you in my next life.
I don’t think my karma is right.
Forty years on the hard roads of two counties
and I am
still.
New Poetry by Rochelle Jewell Shapiro: “Each Night My Mother Dies Again”
FALLS ON NIGHT / image by Amalie Flynn
EACH NIGHT MY MOTHER DIES AGAIN
Each night the phone rings— Your mother has passed. Each night I expect to be relieved, but night falls on night.
Each night she is the mother who makes waffles,
batter bubbling from the sides of the iron, the mother
who squeezes fresh orange juice, and serves soft-boiled eggs
in enchanted egg cups. Each night I squint into her face
as she carries me over the ocean waves, her arms my raft.
Each night she refills Dr. Zucker’s prescriptions
for diet pills and valium. Each night she waters her rosebushes
with Dewar’s. Each night I see her hands shake,
her brows twitch. Each night she adds ground glass
to the chopped liver, rubbing alcohol to the chopped herring.
Each night she puts a chicken straight on the lit burner
without a pot. Each 2:00 a.m., Mrs. Finch from 6G phones— Sorry to say your mother is naked in the hallway again. Each night my mother is strapped into her railed bed
at Pilgrim State, curled into a fetal position,
her hands fisted like claws.
Each night she calls to me
from her plain pine coffin, calls me
by the name she gave me, the name
she hasn’t forgotten.
New Poetry by Stephen Massimilla: “Wounded”
CAPILLARIES OF ROOTS / image by Amalie Flynn
WOUNDED —to Laura
Bleating thing without wool
Thunder without sound
Ghost of wooded peaks, of constricted arterial waters
There is a dog inside the heart, voice bursting
Interminable silence, blown-open iris
Over organs buried deeper in the earth
where capillaries of roots still bleed orange dust
Leave me be, hot tongue of fireflies, PAAAAAcracked pharynx of ice
Do not ask me to slip PAAAAAdown among green nerves of water-weed PUT_CAAAAAAAAwhere the flesh of the sky
is unmoving and fruitless
The moon still hovers in its surgeon’s coat
But do not try to satisfy the dead
who hold on with claws like desperate fevers
Leave my sutured skull of empty ivory forever
But pity me; put an end to this much hurt
PUT_CAAAAI am love, I tell you
and all the quick wings accumulating
as restlessly as the breaths
PAAAAAAthat were once inside
these wheel-crushed, wind-scattered leaves
New Poetry by Kevin Honold: “A Brief History of the Spanish Conquest”
RADIANT AS NOON / image by Amalie Flynn
A Brief History of the Spanish Conquest
Tell me again of that fabulous
kingdom where a single
ear of corn is more
than two strong young men can carry, where cotton
grows untended, in colors never dreamed of,
to be spun by gorgeous slaves
into garments that lie
cool as cornsilk against the skin and shine
radiant as noon.
*
How sordid and predictable history can be.
Within sight of the prize
but out of ammunition, they
lowered three men down the volcano’s throat
to fetch sulfur for gunpowder. PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAThis
was the vision
prefigured in the prophet’s eye:
three men curled in a basket peering
back across the centuries,
their dewy starving faces so
desperate with hope
as they dissolve in a yellow mist,
felons set adrift.
*
North by west toward the cities of gold,
the soldiers in rags walked half-bent
with hunger and dysentery, nursing
grievous wounds sustained in hit-and-run attacks
by moss-troopers talking Choctaw.
Beside the mother of rivers, the horses sickened and died
but the soldiers, being less reasonable,
proved less destructible.
At disobedient towns they dragged out
chopping blocks to punish malefactors
and departed in a shower of ash, their legacy
a heap of severed hands slowly
clutching at flies.
*
But the much-sought golden cities sank below the horizon
like the tall ships of fable. For the Spaniards,
the age of miracles ended
somewhere in southwest Arkansas. The palaces of silver
turned Outlaw Liquor Barns, Triple-X Superstores,
the stuff of vision a mustard-colored mix
of smoke, dust, emissions
from riverside refineries and coal
plants along the Mississippi where squadrons
of John Deere combines like barn-size locusts
roll in drill order over the dry land,
half-effaced by squalls of chaff.
At night the fields burn.
Stray flames browse the blackened
shoulders of the interstate,
crop the stubble beneath the billboards.
*
In the state park south of Hot Springs
I fell asleep in a chair in the heat and woke
to a titmouse perched on the toe of my boot
with that peculiar weightlessness
shared by birds and planets
and I searched without hope for my place in the book.
Buzzards killed time there, their shadows
slipping across the iron ground
like fish in a shallow pool
while Time gaped PUT_CAat the spiders that battened PUTon the flies that
swarmed the rotten
windfall apples.
*
Tenochtitlan.
At the imperial aviary, we found
a pair of every kind of bird in the world:
parrots and finches in profusion, brooding vultures,
egrets, ibis is sacramental scarlet.
Seahawks stooped and banked
through that hostile truce and we marveled
at God’s prodigality, His exuberant
inventiveness, then piled tinder
to burn the thing to the ground.
Flames sheeted over the soaring
lattice dome like the fleet
shadows of clouds. For a time,
the structure smoldered,
a hissing wickerwork steaming as it cooled.
Here and there, a bird crashed the skein of ash
like a rogue comet bursting
the flaming ramparts of the universe.
Charmed in place, we held our breath,
beside ourselves, like couriers
trapped in a snowglobe, blinded PUT_CAAAAAAAAAAin a tempest of embers,
astonished at the work of these hands,
the everyday miracle of destruction.
New Poetry from Gail Nielsen: “Something Like Nightfall”
BLACK LACE TREES / image by Amalie Flynn
SOMETHING LIKE NIGHTFALL
something, like night falls
slow, as if
nothing in the world has ever moved
but distant hope descending, still ablaze
days soften to wonder
what else leaves
silhouettes these black lace trees
fades from me
it is you from my life
steadily, quietly
as celestial movement
New Poetry by Doris Ferleger: “Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness,” “Internal Wind,” Driving Down Old Eros Highway,” and “Summer Says”
TURNING EVERYTHING AROUND / image by Amalie Flynn
Praying at the Temple of Forgiveness for Zea Joy, in memoriam
Last Monday you threw yourself,
your body, dressed in red chemise,
in front of a train.
It was your insatiable hunger
for a more tenderhearted world,
your husband said at Shiva.
Now no one will get to see
what you saw from inside
your snow globe where you lived,
shaking and shaking,
breaking into shards
of ungrieved grief, unanswered need.
I will remember
how tirelessly, with your son,
you worked to help him turn
sounds—coming through the implant
behind his ear—into speech,
speech into understanding.
Everyone will remember
how you skipped across the dance floor,
waving pastel and magenta scarves,
and prayed to angels.
O, dear Zea, your human bones
thin as the bones of a sparrow—
the way you could fold
your body to fit anywhere.
Rest now. You have succeeded.
INTERNAL WIND
When you died, our son
became my son; I watch
through your eyes
and mine how he lifts
his whole body into
a long accent à droite,
arms taut, wrists impossibly
rotated back, fingers and toes
also pointed back
to all the hours, years
of practice in turning
everything around.
~
Over the hollow
you left, our son stretches
his fingers across
frets and strings
in C minor,
Bach’s Etudes
the way you taught,
the way you closed
your eyes, nodded, satisfied—
our son will remember.
~
Remember how
he watched you deep-
breathe into yoga postures?
Now his own focused flow
heals what Western doctors call tics, quiets what Eastern doctors call
internal wind. Listen
how our son calls
to his yoga students
what he learned
at your knee: Effort brings the rain—
of grace.
~
When our son and I argue,
I feel homeless, divided,
until I remember how you
and I took turns massaging
his neck that ached from its day’s
staccato singing—
~
Sometimes I can see his tics
as flawless, meticulous,
a body expressing itself
with perfect diction.
DRIVING DOWN OLD EROS HIGHWAY
Me, in my Q50 with its hot flashes and warning beeps,
heading toward Sweet Desire, New Jersey, where my love,
soon 70, will woo me with mango, melt the mushy pulp
in my mouth—or perhaps he naps.
You, CeeCee, painting the walls pink in the tiny house in Pullman,
recently moved in with your old college flame, coming so easily
against his new ceramic hip, just the friction of it. You say
your pelvis never quite fit with anyone else, including your soon-to-be-
ex-husband of 30 years. Me, with a G-spot suddenly. A rainbow
of chaos tunneling through me when his fingers find it and flutter.
And long live the reckless tongue. The old-fashioned clit-kind
of climax. Like a young planet rising. Oh, how old and greedy I am
for that whole-body wave and chill and quiver and release.
You, purposely avoiding that whole-body wave of shiver,
as it reminds you of your ex’s dogged insistences.
For your 60th, your daughter gifted you with a mini vibrator
on a rubber ring for your index finger. Asex-thimble, you joke.
Sex over 60 seems unseemly to talk about, CeeCee,
but it seems more ungrateful to say nothing at all.
You and I speak of what our mothers couldn’t give us.
Daily I pray at the temple of Venus.
SUMMER SAYS
Pay attention to
your heat, your survival—
the tree rooted in your garden
is a sequined vernacular, a cashmere sweater.
Because nothing matters in the end
but comfort and the bending light.
Summer says, I will be the room you die in.
You will dream, neither of regret,
nor in the language you were born into.
A stranger will comb your existential threads.
You had thought, for instance, humans
were gerunds or harps bent
on playing in a diner that serves
black coffee and hard donuts.
You ask, What is the past?
What is it all for? Summer says, The wound of being
untaught. Says, hungry.
Says, the cypress is a hospice,
says, falter, falter, falter,
bloom bloom bloom—too soon
a pall will keep you company.
New Poetry by Ricardo Moran: “ABBA-1975” and “On the Street”
TAG EVERY WALL / image by Amalie Flynn
ABBA-1975
Abba’s lyrics, like water
shot from La Bufadora,
mingle with volcanic steam
from metallic pots of corn.
And the scrape on my knee
from chasing the seagulls
bleeds, but does not hurt.
On this Sunday, the ocean breeze slips
in gossip between vendor stalls
as young men in speedos walk past.
Tables of silver bracelets tap my eyes
and ABBA’s Spanish melody
carries on my tongue
before any English syllable
ever arrived. Before the summer ended
when it tore me
from the sands of Ensenada
to a desert north of the border,
to a land with tongues
unfamiliar and stiff.
And now when I fall
chasing my shadow, my ABBA
lyrics cannot permeate
foreign soil. Cannot stop the pain.
On the Street
Run naked through the streets
and shout, “Make love to me!”
Tag every wall in a turf war
with quotes from the palatero,
from the child who yearns for love,
from the gay son who hopes his father
will welcome him,
this time.
With your sharp and fast tongue, mesmerize
passersby as they get caught in the gunfire
of stanzas and sonnets,
popping the air.
Bellow on the street corner
of how love abandoned you,
how your life is empty,
how you aborted your dreams.
And every day it rips into you
of every opportunity you threw away.
I want that on the wall.
I want all the pain and hurt
to get out of bed, to grab that bullhorn
and run naked through the streets.
New Poetry by Michael Carson: “Politics”
BLAME OUR BRUISES / image by Amalie Flynn
Politics
Every 20 years or so boys dress up
And kill each other for fun.
It’s the way of the wrack of the world
The wind of our imagination and our love.
To blame our costumes for our beauty
Is like to blame our bruises for our blood.
The chime is what drives us, what ticks
Our tock forward to the next spree.
The foreshortened humiliation,
The immaculate imprecation,
Is neither what we fear or what we covet.
Man is. Rats are. Take what you can
While the day is rough
Move lengthwise into the past
And blame god for never enough.
New Poetry by Kevin Norwood: “Rabbits in Autumn”
THE LUSHEST GRASS / image by Amalie Flynn
RABBITS IN AUTUMN
Who will find our bones in a thousand years,
bleached and brittle under the unyielding sun,
scattered in dried grasses by feral dogs or vultures?
Who will hold such curiosities, not knowing
that we stopped here to kiss and murmur
that our love would outlast the moon and stars?
Who will hold our bones, never to imagine
that under the same sun, we once made love
on the lushest grass, under a sapphire sky?
In autumn, the fox lies in wait, hearing rustling
in the tall grass. Having eaten, the fox moves on.
There are no questions of why, or how, or when.
Smoke rises acrid in the air; the sun sets earlier
each day; the grapes shrivel on the vine. Time
is the fox; we are the rabbits. Please, hold me.
New Poetry by Betsy Martin: “About What You Have,” “Female Figure in Photos,” and “To Missoula”
GRASSES QUIVER BEFORE / image by Amalie Flynn
ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE
In my dream
Dad, age one hundred twelve,
has his first cell phone—
big and square,
with a rotary dial.
With a proud index finger
he dials my mother,
gets her voice mail.
Together we lean in,
listen
to her low, drifty voice,
its mist so warm on my ear
as it rises from deep underground.
I ask Dad for his number,
but he can’t recall it
before fading into the passage. He’s left me
messages, though,
like: When eating fish be careful
not to get a bone stuck in your throat; when walking
tuck in the tummy; think
about what you have,
not about what you don’t.
FEMALE FIGURE IN PHOTOS
fourteen-year-old mop of hair
sullen air in mod raincoat
on London sidewalk with
beaming scowling father brother
seventeen leaning
on brick wall in black-and-white flannel shirt
no cigarette yet mien
as in movies seen through a puff of smoke
college-era long hair
akimbo arms
eyes narrowed
to spot foe in tall grass
sixty odd in a museum at a window
face a little wooden
and through the panes
an autumn-leafed tree flames
TO MISSOULA
The cold air her pillow of courage, she skirts
the northern rim of the nation.
As she crosses the Dakota Badlands,
where even the hardiest grasses quiver
before earth’s uprisings and revolutions,
her eastern forest home has tilted
and is sliding over the rim!
She pulls her wings in closer
to fly fast and low
over layers of pink and gray guts
squeezed from deep under.
A tail feather tears loose,
whirls away;
she almost bursts into a plume of magma.
Night cools into dawn.
She parks the car,
steps out into a new world,
a young woman with compass and camera
and a crown of mountains.
New Poetry by Suzanne O’Connell: “Airport Luggage Carousel” and “Shipwreck”
IMAGINE GOLD DOUBLOONS / image by Amalie Flynn
Airport Luggage Carousel
A battered cardboard box holes punched in the side tied with frayed rope lid popping up plastered with masking tape, wrinkled. One lone orphan going round and round the luggage carousel, heading nowhere. Packed in chaos. Full of soiled clothes bloody Kleenex unpaid bills splinters and Dear John letters.
This is what the last year has been.
So I imagine the contents differently. I imagine gold doubloons, a child’s drawing of a rainbow, a coupon for a free fried chicken dinner. Maybe a photograph of a family, at Christmas, standing together on a hillside, everyone wearing red and green, the husband holding a puppy, and Carol, still alive.
Shipwreck
She sniffed my trenches, turned away from the skin she made, her own thick blood flowing in my waterways. Me, a vacant dwelling on the shore, wearing swaddling, drinking low-fat milk.
Oh, wire mother of the soul, entertainer of strangers. She of too many decibels, too many bright colors, passing macaroons to visitors while I carved “I love Chris” in the dining room table.
Find the fur coat, find the hairdresser, find the beach umbrella find the wine coolers find the plants in pots resigned to death.
Little fish swim by her ankles. Like me, they long for contact. Mercy, the color of the sea, never granted. In that day, at that hour, on that wretched beach, she wanted an audience but found only me.
New Poetry by Tony Marconi: “Song of the Roadway Door”
WE AND MACHINES / image by Amalie Flynn
…three hundred miles, PUT CHahead the road more visible PUT CHas the land dissolves in the pink light PUT CHARAPUT CHARAPUT CHof almost dawn
you sit beside me, PUT CHeyes fixed and restful on my face, PUT CHoffering hot coffee from a thermos PUT CHPUT CHARAPUT CHARACwhile the farm news PUT CHARAPUT CHARAPUT CHAbreaks morning music PUT CHARAPUT CHAPUT CHARAon a local station
i could be here forever, moving toward an unfamiliar place, held by speed and the vibrating engine, PUT CHARAPUT CHARAtouched by the warmth of your breath
i could be here forever, even as day turns into twilight; PUT CHARAPUT you borne lightly on sheets stiffly cleaned, PUT CHARAPUT wrapping your strength within, around mine; PUT CHPUT CHAprepared for tomorrow’s miles
we and machines; PUT CHPUT CHAonly we moving, moving; PUT CHARAPUT CHARAPUT CHAi could be here forever…
New Poetry by Sam Cherubin: “Don’t About Not,” “Mermaid Tavern,” and “Emerald Inula”
SUN HOLDING ME / image by Amalie Flynn
Don’t About Not
If I can’t or think do it like I’m doing now
a beach sun holding me
I am holding space not space itself
not looking being
gathering toward me
sun’s filaments
fluidity is all I need
Mermaid Tavern
A night-wind touching bare backs lying down and bare arms spooned across my bed, in blue light dreaming over skin, light-fingered sparks of seaweed, dendrites rippling through the room.
Scales rubbed against smooth sheets, in silver puddled water, a smell of open ocean, roseate tips of waves, our hips’ undulations, in my body’s rhythmic memory.
Emerald Inula
i.
Apples in Schiller’s desk, Balsam of Peru, rockrose, rose alba, Helichrysum Everlasting, Immortale. Why can’t this be enough?
ii.
Dried petals staining the pages. Attar of cells breathing sun. Flesh never accepting, but aching.
New Poetry from Alison Hicks: “I Took A Walk With A Friend” and “Untitled”
AWAY INTO SEA / image by Amalie Flynn
I TOOK A WALK WITH A FRIEND
Instead of starting a poem
I told her about my son’s first semester As long as he’s home & happy & in one piece, she told me
Worry squeaked out my sneakers onto wet pavement The rest dissolved with the pitcher of margaritas
Though it was wet & rainy I did not get a headache
Married for thirty-four years We selected the movie about divorce
By the time we finally got to watch it He fell asleep
The book was about a friendship that started in graduate school I skipped ahead to the parts where she snorted OxyContin
Didn’t want to think about graduate school But stayed up reading the juicy parts anyway
Personally, I blame the recliner
UNTITLED
The sea is a room without walls. It spills, falling over land. Land shears away into sea, rooms echo with spills and falling walls. Walls are powerless in the war of land and water, swells uproot trees, sweep cars, shopping carts, diamond necklaces out to sea, rooms of plastic ingots drifting down. The sea has room, gathering spoils from falling lands.
(UNTITLED is included in Hicks’ new book Knowing Is A Branching Trail, winner of the 2021 Birdy Prize and forthcoming in mid-September from Meadowlark Books.)
New Poetry from G.H. Mosson: “Warrior With Shield”
after Henry Moore
AN X STILL / image by Amalie Flynn
Blasted, broken to frag- ments, left arm won’t— both legs blown & absent, the spaces abuzz w/ anger—but I edge forward, shield up as leg-stumps toe for foothold. My mouth is an X. Still- ness. Yet I see. I’ve been left.
Moonlight empties onto my chest, rivulets down in a branching sheen & I swell w/ a hunch I’ll make it as if an old tune warms the heart, as if I too might sing again to Shelly.
I’ve been PUT CHARAsome- PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREone else PUT_CHARAonce PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREsome- body PUT_CHARAother: PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREa child. Dandelion PUT_CHARApods PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREtumble past my PUT_CHARAopen PUT_CHARACTERS_HEREpalms.
New Poetry from Barbara Tramonte: “Tailored To Fit In”
I WAS GATHERED / image by Amalie Flynn
Somebody sewed me with a string On the bias I was gathered And about to pop
This has been a pattern all my life
They hemmed me in with notions Each stitch bringing me To a false whole
(I longed to slit my wrist)
I jolted with a shock of recognition To see that I had drifted to the wrong side
New Poetry from Alita Pirkopf: “Roadkill,” “Sounds of the Past,” “Spring,” and “Unhealthy”
BLOOD IN BUCKETS / image by Amalie Flynn
ROADKILL
I bring you blood in buckets, a heart that I hear, a palsied hand. It has been eight, ten years, my issue. The same as twenty years ago when your father felt about me as you do now. I felt the world shrink but I thought something, not necessarily the world, would end. I had not thought the world lay flat, as Renaissance cartographers mapped it. But now, like an automobile tire not only flapping, flattening, parts of it, or me, lie on the shoulder of my road with dead things and dirt.
SOUNDS OF THE PAST
She thought she had found soft music and warm dialect, a sunny sort of near-Italian soul,
But surfaces surprise. She found out. She found that underneath pounded a martial drumbeat vibrating still
from Vienna’s center, his childhood years under the Third Reich, a father fighting occupying Yugoslavia with others missing the village polkas, his son.
A burst of marches, explosions, still resounding. All of us hearing pounding steps and hearts.
SPRING
Shreds remain— unraveled weavings of brown grasses and mud— in branches a bird eyed for her family tree.
The rest, the nest, that we had watched through last week’s window, fell.
The dog found blue broken eggs in the grass.
Families, all of us consider seriously. Upsetting winds come to nests. It is spring and windows open views and dooryards fill with the ambiguity of lilacs.
UNHEALTHY
I loved my doctors until one played sick games, touching and taunting, and knowing of rules I didn’t know. Telling jokes I didn’t understand. Dismissing me for my naivete— stupidity.
The years passed, and he operated on me appropriately, savingly. Later he mentioned dining together or going out for coffee, but didn’t ask, and got angry for reasons I didn’t know, saying I hadn’t said I’d go.
New Poetry from Jesse Frewerd: “Symphony”
OUR TARGETED HEADS / image by Amalie Flynn
Ballistic medleys project ambition, while dancing tones find their pitch. There is unexpected buoyancy in our youth. March, advance, train, drill, prepare, disseminate. It’s the 4am ensemble, time to crescendo awake for guard duty. Report to post, front gate, alert and ready. Hours, minutes, seconds, tempo depends on the action. The symphony begins with an RPG flying over our targeted heads. Return fire. Bullets staccato the enemy location. A cappella commands over the comms. Write the counterpoint, execute. Threat neutralized, they retreated. Though my heart is playing allegro, via adrenaline. Dynamics decrescendo the scene, bringing it to normalcy. I return to my life as it is, my new normal cadence amid syncopated pop-shots, RPG’s, mortar rounds, and IED’s.
New Poetry from Hannah Jane Weber: “My Childhood Smelled Like,” “Surprise Dawn”
FROSTED WITH MOONLIGHT / image by Amalie Flynn
MY CHILDHOOD SMELLED LIKE
cabbage, salted tomatoes, and cracklings. the flume of dust I awakened when my fingers untangled the shag carpet’s red mane.
crayons I melted against the wood stove, our terrier’s feet, with that same scent of fire.
night crawlers, shad, algae, and lake, blanketing our boat after a morning of fishing.
Dad’s scrapyard, fragrant with hot tar and smoke from his brown cigarettes, acres of rust and grease, a twisting maze leading to one abandoned refrigerator after another, each filled with jars and jars of ancient rot.
fireworks and muddy gravel roads, leadplant, elderberries, horsemint.
Grandma’s lilac bushes, reeking of booze from the bar next door, their purple bunches lighting up the dark with neon liquor perfume.
SURPRISE DAWN
rows of cedars push through slats of slain brothers dense boughs gushing berries frosted with moonlight
my bike light skims twilight from creamy sidewalks a premature dawn blaring from the flashing bulb illuminating the wind’s fabric in rustling leaves
I lean far from the sweep of branches but my jacket catches the emerald froth and propels me into the flustered chatter of birds awakened and tossed about by my helmet’s pillage of their feathered hearth
New Poetry from Tyler Vaughn Hayes: “They even pipe it into the bookstore,” “His first time: flight by ropes,” “The edict,” “Rappel annuel”
WAX-LADEN DAY / image by Amalie Flynn
They even pipe it into the bookstore
It’s never quite silent, though there’s no lowing, not from God nor his glutted blind bovine. Only
the thudding of shuffling ungues on stereos hemmed, hidden in the high grass—muzak
piercing through, prodding each tagged ear. Far better this way— now they needn’t contemplate
the cacophony in BARN 8, the strain of strings tucked tight to necks, jammed trumpets jutting through guts, and
the flutes flushed fast with blood. No, much better this way. Bow, hark, try not to think.
His first time: flight by ropes (for Corbin Vaughn)
it’s fleeting the rebuff of a flutter fleecing the sway in his wee depleted eyes
exhausted the college girls of August ferry a whole life on the neck heaving TVs sleeping late they flit from mom then return
we can’t split a pendulum a heavy head tightened white like a fading grip on the tethers just out of reach
give it up already.
The edict
There is, without question, a tendency to beg for those things we have already.
For instance, I once commanded God: turn me into a poet, else I’ll pretend to be a walrus.
Brugghhllff!
Rappel Annuel
I (for one and once) intend to celebrate a soothing din the cleansing mess fresh from the wet wax-laden day. Hip hip
New Poetry from Andy Conner: “Apples,” “Untouchable,” “Remanded In Custody”
YOU MEAN NOTHING / image by Amalie Flynn
Apples ‘The landmines are just like apples’ Khmer Rouge survivor
Apples can peel your skin Like it isn’t there
But more often than not The cruellest fruit Sucks the rusty blade
And leaves threads
Dripping
Threads of skin Threads of your life Dripping Seeds onto barren ground
You mean nothing to the apples You mean nothing to the apples You mean nothing
Their anaesthetic minds Hold no sense of time No sense of pain No sense No sense of what remains
And if you Are one of the hand-picked Who escape in a step-right-on-it flash Give thanks for this windfall
Which leaves survivors Green To the core
As they crawl With the worms With the worms And the decay
Praying To scrump a handout With no hands For the crumb Which may or may not come
As they sit In their own shit Begging On their stumps For a friendly worm To turn Up And eat it
Untouchable
On my recent trip to Gujarat
I took numerous pretty photographs
of Modhera Palitana Dwarka The White Desert
and other pretty places
but
the image I can’t delete from my heart
my hard drive
is of a ragged street child at Vastrapur Lake who stepped out from the promenading crowd
raised his left index finger into the stifling late afternoon
air
and drew a rectangle to take an imaginary selfie
with me
Remanded In Custody
How can you talk Of an even split When you’re parents Of three kids
How can you ask For understanding When you won’t say What you did
How can you demand We keep calm When all you do Is shout
And scream It’s your own business When we’re what The fight’s about
How can you plead You need your freedom When you’ve built Our jail
Whose four sad walls Have heard it all Every selfish Last detail
How can you think We’re stupid ’Cos we don’t know What it means
To move on and Make a new start When we’re not yet In our teens
If you two Are so clever And know what Life’s about
Why must it Take forever To sort Your problems out
You’ve no thought For our feelings Or respect for What we think
While you resent That we need feeding When you don’t have Cash for drink
You complain We’re far too young To understand Your trials
Well in this case It’s not the children Who’re acting Like a child
You both believe That you’re the victim Of the other’s Poisoned mind
But if your eyes Can still open You might see The only crime’s
Neglect of Your own kids All three Ripped apart
By being used As silent weapons Against your Other half
How dare you Claim us as conscripts To fight Your filthy war
When the offence That we committed Was only Being born
You’d never think You’re guilty But if you’d any Common sense
You’d see the last thing Left in common Is we’ve all got No defence
New Poetry from Lauren Davis: “The Flowers You Brought Back From Italy”
FACES TUMBLING DOWNWARD / image by Amalie Flynn
Each time I open my notebook the pages stick. Because I’ve forgotten.
And onto the ground they fall: royal purple flowers fall out, emerald stemmed, blue veined, life from the coast of Italy.
You pulled them from the earth, pinched their feet with your fingertips,
you breathed into the sea
and thought of the way my hair swayed between my shoulders, while you once walked behind me near an American riverside, flowers sway in the field the same way.
You placed the poppies then into the spine of your bible you pressed it, punched the face and rubbed the back onto the ground to release water into sacred words you pressed, wanting me there and you breathed into the sea.
Yesterday, you stood in the kitchen of your new house while the songbirds in the yard called good morning, you opened your bible and pulled the flowers up by the end of their stems like tails, their faces tumbling downward
and I opened myself / my notebook and tossed the flowers into my spine / my book’s spine
and there I closed it and pressed it into the granite underneath to press wanting to stay there with you out.
You asked me: when again do you leave? Two weeks.
Now, one-thousand miles away the pages stick each time I open my notebook
and onto the ground they
fall,
and I remember how you must have looked collecting purple poppies by the sea of Italy.
Our modern lives, so set apart, both by miles and unsteadiness.
New Poetry from Scott Janssen: “Bottle Tree”
VIETNAM DID I / image by Amalie Flynn
On my first visit I asked A stock question about Whether you’d been in the military.
Marines, nineteen sixty-six, you said, A hint of menace in your eyes. I never talk about it.
On my way out the door I asked your wife about a Tree in the front yard,
Its branches capped with Blue and green and pink Bottles made of glass.
It’s a bottle tree, she said. Pointing at a cobalt blue bottle Glinting with sunlight,
She told me it had Special power to lure in Ghosts and lurking spirits.
They get trapped in there, she said. Then sunlight burns them up So they can’t haunt us anymore.
Eight months later You could no longer walk. I rolled your wheelchair
Onto the warbled porch Where we sat and talked About how rough life is.
I never told you about Vietnam, did I? You whispered. I shook my head.
As you spoke, Your eyes averted, I looked at that cobalt blue bottle
And imagined it slowly filling With blood and shrieks And grief and the sound of
Rotor blades and the smell Of burning flesh and the Taste of splattered gore
And the sensation of Adrenaline pulsing and Memories of home and
Buddies who were killed And of fear and rage and betrayal and weeping
That lodge in your throat Before you swallow It all down
Into your belly. Don’t ever tell anyone About this, you said,
Your hands trembling, Jaw shivering. I asked if there was
Anything else. You started to say something But stopped yourself.
No, you said.
New Poetry from Ben Weakley: “Checkpoint,” “There are 4 Ways to Die in an Explosion,” “Good Friday,”
PRAY FOR THE BLAST / image by Amalie Flynn
Checkpoint
The car came from nowhere, it came from everywhere –
white blur and tire squall, a four-door payload of heat and pressure and steel.
When it is over, there is just the tinkle of falling brass and a man slumped in a pool of broken glass and coolant on hot asphalt, calm as a corpse.
Doc cuts his shirt. His face is weathered by years of this. Layers of skin and yellow fat pucker from his open side.
He breathes.
In the trunk of the rusted-out sedan, where the bomb should be,
there are only two tanks, an oxygen mask, and a box filled with apricots and dates.
There are Four Ways to Die in an Explosion
First the blast rips limbs from the torso. Throws tender bodies against concrete walls. Pulverizes bones against pavement. Those closest to the bomb are never found whole.
Then the fragmentation. Little pieces of metal debris, like the one that punched an acorn-sized hole through the back of Sergeant Gardner’s skull.
Heat from the explosion starts fires. Vehicles Burn. Ammunition burns. People burn, alive. When a driver is trapped inside white-hot steel, prayers must be said silently for the smoke to take him first.
Pressure collapses lungs and bowels. The bleeding happens on the inside. It can be hours before the skin turns pale and the bulk of a person drops.
None of the anatomy is safe,
so when the time comes, pray for the blast or fragmentation. Pray for the heat that vaporizes. Pray for the kind of pressure that makes the world dark and silent before the bitter taste of iron and cold panic.
Good Friday, Udairi Range Complex, Kuwait
The first time I saw the sun rise over the desert it was 4 a.m.
Across miles of sand and rusted hulks, the throbbing of heavy guns echoed.
Over the horizon, where the beginning and the end meet and disappear, Friday arrived.
We saw the jeering crowds, the scourge and spear-tip, the crown of thorns and the crucifix, waiting.
What could we have known about atonement? What did we know, then, of judging the quick against the dead?
New Poem from Nazli Karabiyikoglu: “Hymn: A Coffin at the Gates of Topkapi”
COLD SONGS / image by Amalie Flynn
The head, decapitated, it sits on a shore, at some corner of the world. Desperation is what they feel as blood gushes out from the half-neck. Death, however, has always been there, nothing new, an enslaving event. The name of the deal was predefined – “flight”. It has been around since the Order of Assassins. Part of us see the beauty in all this, even when the tortures last till the moon starts to shine over us. Sir! There you lie, your frail length almost pours out from the bed. And here I am, by your side, barren inside, yet my mind replays a moment with you, where you feed me freshly-picked strawberries. My worst nightmare is finding a way into my life, into you, through your flesh and bones yet my heart replays a moment with you, where you dress me with freshly-picked strawberries. Sir! Many calls for prayer have been sung. And here I am, can’t look away. My devotion may be in vein, but what I’m losing now is transcendental. You missed most of it, as they held a mirror to your nose and checked if you still breathed. So beautifully you lay there. Before this fate, I was as effective as a human shield. Here I am, bitter as rock, by the frilled duvets, thinking how we must keep you alive and not sickly-yellow and quiet like this. See? I’m here by the frilled duvets, ice cold, thinking how I crave to coil up next to you. Sir!
We finally made peace with death. First our eyes watched the floors, then our fists beat our chests. Distances reached, horizons obtained, flasks of scarce water and worn sheaths. Almost everyone lost their sons to this war. Our sons. Our people. They believed in the protection of their shields and wanted to go as far as it got them, is that why we say our hymns for our sons, on and on for days? Is this our fate?
I decided I’ll surpass fate and kismet and luck or whatever. So here I am, standing before that reckless hope. I grabbed it by the chin, pushed it against a wall and I let anger take control. I asked it, and I was quite sincere about it too, “How is it that death gets in?”
The way you put your head on my head, lifeless, breathless, heavy. Your word is my law, and I stand by its chime. With largest oceans behind my back, you were my creation, and I gave you away. Your first steps, your first words, have been my challenge. And the way you put your shoulders on my legs. Sir! Greatest storms whirled inside me, and, oh, I prayed to the Almighty; to His holiness, I presented all of my organs, but they pulled out my womb, or what’s left of it, and even then, all that mattered was you, sir.
Something penetrates, once, twice, my spleen watches it happen, smells pleasant, like linden, my favorite, something to go for a child is being created, from the char of my liver, my flesh puffs, my flesh grows fat, count those things that penetrate me, arms maybe, one, two and three, stop there, stop at the second syllable of my name, I did not do this to me, I did not choose to carry this burden
Beings must produce, yet I’m barren inside. Your look is my law, and I stand by its tingle. With vastest moors behind me you were my darling, and I gave you away. Your first words, my sultan, your highness, have been my challenge. Beings must produce, yet I’m barren inside, and you’re lovely inside. That’s what you said
All this glory and all these gifts, what use do they serve, I pondered for a long time and I could not find the answer. I knit for a long time, laces and wools too, wore them in the cold maroon rooms of this palace, in the cold of my own body, cold, songs were cold, my violin was warm, only to me. They took me right away, and no surprise there, I was pretty, I stayed quiet when they split my legs, but I’m known for kicking quite hard. How funny, the way things change so much so fast, we were a thousand and now I’m just one, do the winds always bring injustice with them or does it travel in the pockets of soldiers?
Crying my lungs out, biting my tongue, fires scorching my stomach,do these all go together for me now? Or have I just comprehended death and broken apart while at it? If we can’t breathe where the dead go, tears can flood, for the duration of the earth’s age even, quail with rice or grape compost. He found his place in the history books as did I. It takes courage to stand before a dagger; I did, I stood still as a brick and I shed tears. If it wasn’t for your shadow, I’d call you my child, my life, my signature, the one that makes me get lost in those oceans. Don’t be hurt, because I’m ordinary, I think you’ll outlive me. You’ll have no idea though how we managed to get that life out of you. I bit my tongue, held back at every chance, and saved the pain along my spine. My womb dried off and shrunk, they pulled it out, but I will not give up on your scent. I yearn for your chest to rise up to the highest, for you to take one deep breath. If it wasn’t for your soul, I’d call you my child, my flesh, my bone, the one that makes a prisoner out of me. Don’t be hurt, because I’m ordinary, you’ll outlive me. I think I see the blue of your eyes again, yes. You’ll have no idea though, what getting that life out of you cost us. I bit every part of me within my reach, saved the pain deep in me. The nightingale dried off and shrunk, they pulled it out of me, but I will not give up on you. How hard it was to bring you to life! If it wasn’t for your soul, I’d call you my child.
Sign off my sentence, my tears are my sin. Tightly tie the rope around my neck and tightly tie a knot to the rope that goes nowhere.
Translator’s Note: The story, although fiction, sits in actual history, and gives us some pointers towards having an understanding of era and geography. Topkapi Palace is in modern day Turkey, and was mostly used as the emperor’s residency during the Ottoman Empire’s rule between 13th and early 20th century. The Order of Asssasins, Ḥashashiyan or Ḥashīshiyya, was a radical Nizari Isma’ili sect that assasined Muslim and Christian leaders before that time period. The ordeal of flight, as in the work towards enabling humans to fly by any means, caused controversy in the Muslim world in the past, since it is simply unnatural for humans to fly, but attempts are encountered in Ottoman history. The story, too, is likely placed in a time period where such attempts stir political balances.
New Poetry from Jacqlyn Cope: “Mission 376: Patient X,” “Prolonged Exposure Therapy,” “Doxies and Rum”
THERE’S EARTH INSIDE / image by Amalie Flynn
MISSION 376: PATIENT X
There’s dirt in his mouth now
you
know that for sure.
There’s Earth inside his bloated belly
you
know that for sure.
The worms might have eaten away his ragged skin by now
but the metal is still there.
Splayed on the satin or cotton lining
like sad coins of a wishing well.
His casket might be oak, or cherry wood
you hope it was something sleek
and aesthetically pleasing
you hope the flag was soft enough
for hands and cheeks that needed touching.
PROLONGED EXPOSURE THERAPY
Ten minutes staring at a fountain pen stabbing, scribbling paper.
A rocket hit a concrete wall I told her.
Water spots on bifocal glasses blurring iris’s, flickering like burnt out pixels on a screen.
A desk placard bolded with professional credentials hooraying the study of mental illness.
A rocket hit a concrete wall and
Tic-tacs shaking in my red purse snapping the container at its neck revealing the candied-mint nonsense delaying my esophagus to stretch in the direction of answer.
A rocket hit a C-130 fuel tank spraying
shrapnel
Her voice dives down into the depths of her vocal cords pulling out forced tonal sympathy an octave of care.
If
you’d like, I can prescribe you Zoloft today.
The rocket hit a concrete wall the metal a rocket hit the fuel tank a concrete w a l l
DOXIES AND RUM
My Dachshund
watches me pour
my
third
rum and
Coke.
His
bowed legs sit
firmly
under
his robust
chocolate colored
chest.
Eyes
beaming
not
in judgment
but acceptance.
Captain
Morgan’s
leg
swung firmly
resting on
a barrel
he winks, opens his mouth
and
howls a whistling screech
a
rocket’s screech.
A
hand over his mouth
I quiet
him.
Pouring
the rest in the empty glass
the
ice breaks up
dissolving
into
themselves.
Spice,
sugar, caramel,
washes away the
dryness in my throat
and
salt from the sinuses stuck there.
Salt that I refuse
to expel
any
natural way.
My Doxie jumps on
my lap
smelling
distinctly of corn chips
for
no reason at all.
He rests his head
in the crevice
of my arm
sighing deeper
than
I thought he could.
New Poetry from Mbizo Chirasha: “Casava Republics,” “Sad Revolutionary Lullabies,” “Rhetorics”
SUNSETS OF POLITICAL MASTURBATION / image by Amalie Flynn
CASAVA
REPUBLICS
Juba
Child of lost sperm in sunsets of political masturbation
Culture lost in the dust of Saxon lexicon and gutter slang
Soweto
Xenophobia
Drunk and Afro-phobia sloshed.
Marikana
Cervical blister of the unfinished revolution fungi.
Harare
Corruption polonium deforming elders into political hoodlums
Congo
Lodge of secessionists and human guillotines
SAD REVOLUTIONARY LULLABIES
……..Sing songs of afghan circumcised,
Damascus masturbating bullets
Sing Belafonte Sing!
Of
revolutions that never crawled, sing!
Lumumba, see whiz kids castrating political gods
Nkurumah, see them mutilating revolutionary goddesses
Sing Kunta, Sing Kinte
I am tired of revolutions importing colonial mood,
Propaganda decayed pimps frying anthems like frikadels
Tired savages roasting constitutions in corruption oil pans
Sing songs of freedoms that never walked, Sing!
RHETORICS
Mandela, the summer sun that rose through rubbles of our winter
Gadafi and Sadamu making shadufs and pyramids
…… . another spring
Obama and Osama pulling rich political carrot in Segorong
Robin Island slept golden nightmares and charcoal dreams,
Soweto virgins cracking their under feet in the long walk to freedom
Faces carrying the burden of freedom and anthems.
New Poetry from D.A. Gray: “Mosul Reflections,” “St. Martin in the City,” “The Rearview Has Two Faces”
STOMACH OF A COUNTRY / image by Amalie Flynn
Mosul Reflections
Ten years and the place is not the same. Memory of green hills in a dry land, cratered by what fell from the sky. I don’t know whether to trust the image on the screen or the one in my mind.
One I only knew as Sayyd gave well water, sweet tea and mince meat on laffa. We were tired from the spring rains, three days in the stomach of the country, we sank into the hard wooden benches and we ate. I thought of Jonah, not wanting to travel here, and when he did, enraged at an apocalypse that never came – how he rested under a bush then watched it die. The father of the family smiled as I ate — both of us, with time, smiling.
Dost thou well to be angry?
His child in the corner never took her eyes off me. Her mother would glance over, expressionless, as if waiting for something that never happened.
Rain fell like mortars, knocking the edges from the dirt roads, craters in the middle. In a few minutes it would take us with it, descending. We’d see the fragments, some carved reliefs; we’d wondered what we’d destroyed, what we’d left the world – an image of broken rock in need of a makeshift savior.
St. Martin in the City
Hunger sometimes reaches up grabs your cloak while you’re riding. You can’t shield your eyes, or go into hiding. Every treasure you’ve carried home, is never enough. A beggar beside the road, lifts his head; loose skin and sullen, he shivers and so do you.
* * * The day before we shipped I was walking with Preacher into the Walgreens for cold medicine and we saw a man asking for change. ‘Pity it couldn’t be him,’ Preacher said, not waiting while I fished for coins.
Since returning the eyes of every refugee leap out of every face.
* * * The stuff of nightmares.
Suffering
you thought you knew.
Sometimes it happens, a hand reaches out and causes you to draw back – until you see your fear in their eyes
both surprised how easily the veil between you parts.
The Rearview Has Two Faces
Your memory has two faces. The thought occurs as you adjust your mirror in the chapel parking lot.
The eulogy’s done its job, a few tears from even the most stoic, stone-faced ground pounders, the cracks in the First Sergeant’s voice as he belts ‘Smithson,’ once, twice and again – as he waits for a response that never comes. If you believe the words- he defended the abstraction of freedom with every fiber, never showed late, said his prayers, and flossed. You remember an emails he sent. ‘When I get back, there’s a lineman job in Oklahoma. And the houses are cheap.’ Days before he did it. You remember the night on your property, shooting empties off fence posts. ‘I’m not going back,’ he said. And you knew he would. Frustrating as hell but reliable. And you’d rather have sincere doubt than cocksure and careless.
The sun from the East burns the side of your face through the driver’s side window. In the rearview you can see your left side turning red. Yeah. The night he told you, you didn’t sleep, agonized over what to do about what he hadn’t done yet. And when he showed that morning, early, two full duffel bags and a goofy grin, you chided yourself for doubting. You look one more time. Sometimes he’s there sitting in the back seat, an afterimage lingering after the flash has burned, you still trying to regain your vision.
Three Poems from Suzanne Rancourt
EXPLODE / image by Amalie Flynn
The Shoes That Bore Us
It is a dream of kind slippers that coddle bunions appeased by hands mittened as the same kind slippers holding warmth as forgiveness for all the combat boots sogged by brackish muck of wars when not hoisted in the occasional stilettos of never regrets a conundrum of cognitive dissonance stabs the dreams of where ever we had been, we escape to now over racked rails rocked goat paths and deer runs you think it’s a man’s world until it is not
a sidearm presses to a right hip as cupped palms to iliac crests walking boundaries and borders skirting domains of possibilities that astrological forecasts stagger out on slow printed pages like stammering promises spoken by the dead selling real estate, “Check Mate” no choice is a lie when the inevitable is an illusion, no freeze to suffice that fighting, although futile, is still taking a stand
Unhinged Again
a stone leaves the hand that flung it-air escapes constricted vocal cords – a vomiting wild – enraged urgency and angst
kinetic makes contact – leaves bruises the color of bludgeoned fists pounding flesh is quiet. I can’t remember if I was screaming
my face and shielding hands turned overripe plum purple sweet with sticky juice that dribbles down chins
attracts sugar bees you swat in autumn sun that smells of maple leaves red with change
this hammer drives the firing pin into a child’s memory, my memory, of cap guns explode a thousand times greater than a simple pop & puff
a chunk of lead propelled, is unhinged from the mansplaining – the antagonistic prod of condescending joust
I was stuck in a ring of double fisted doubts: leave don’t leave I didn’t know that I was a prisoner of white picket conditions
like my mother. Was she also a prisoner? A side bar of recollection a nursery rhyme my mother sang to me:
“Peter, Peter, pumpkin-eater, had a wife and couldn’t keep her He put her in a pumpkin shell, and there he kept her very well.”
I know my Mother knew when I was being beaten there – my face laying with one ear pressed to cold linoleum
the other, an upward funnel catching my Mother’s vengeful whisper “get up…get up…fight”
to be marginalized – a side note or comment, placed in the periphery, only seen when the reader desires or deems worthy of notice
only one of us walked from that house that day to be silenced – a voice, a room, a home, a door closed upon it
a mind made up, barred entrance, not worth the time to view, hear, acknowledge I’m writing this and telling you words are a privilege
voice is a human right thrown as stones – they fall from the wind
Crying Over Continents
windfarms white wake of ferries channel crossing
a nonstop jack hammer knee Morse code through time zones pounding out instructions, the next destination
I’m not letting go like I used to. I feel heavier in my gathering of nuances, intimacies – You watch someone for hours, days you learn what time they take their dog for a shit turn on the garage light – the one just right of the workbench and always with their left hand You learn to recognize the screams of a woman in an upstairs back bedroom being struck or the subtle moans of make up sex easing across the back yard from windows never locked and left half open
Or maybe, it’s the man in the downstairs apartment under yours that you watch shaving his son’s head before forcing the kid to wear a chain and crucifix bigger than the kid’s malnourished chest with ribs that break at 0200 hrs when Dad comes home drunk, no sex, and vile. The mother died mysteriously, they say, in a different town, a different country
Intimacy is being there as a ghost being fed the compromise of “I’ll never do it again”
Intimacy is being there at the end and being held in the mantle of a dying eye
Poetry from Bryan Blanchard: “Pillar of Salt” and “The Mannequin”
Pillar of Salt
Raining fire, burning steel … And now I see haunted
Images of headless Bodies bathed in bloodstained
Sand of a mannequin Head with a swollen face
And lifeless eyes looking Back at an explosion,
A disfigured Humvee Staggering down the road,
A charred and gaping door, A torso hanging out –
Sketch by Sarah Blanchard
The Mannequin
I am not a mannequin! I am a pillar of salt! I am the salt of the earth! My heart is heavy with sand.
An earlier version of “Pillar of Salt” appeared in O-Dark-Thirty, March 11, 2013.