crawling past the shadows into snow.
Like a Bit of Harp and a Far Off Twinkle
I’m told it happens all the time
in Heaven after the parades pass—our hands
sucked up into prayer, our organs
opened or replaced. That’s where
the music comes from—not harps,
but all that living caked up inside us
cut out and torched each morning.
The newbies enter freshly scorched,
not knowing yet that rapture means
a careful and eternal incineration.
Even in Heaven, death is routine.
As here, where the sun dries us out.
Where we smoke too much and
lose our voices and our fathers
lose themselves
one popped cell at a time
where we wrinkle and burn
and scream and cut ourselves
out of ourselves—half wild half nothing—
and all the knives and gas and radiation
ever do is simmer against the edges
of each fresh day as we smolder.
Those Tooth-Bright Lights Ahead of Us
From something sharp in us, our eyes water.
Our mouths open, our throats quake
a few cracked sentences to keep
these flimsy cities of ours from starving.
Still, we’re no good
as singers. What held us is leaving.
What holds us
today seems much the same. Lost time,
old skins, everything slinks away
until all that’s left is a summer’s eve of fireflies—
wet nights walking
through brush, chasing wisps
to catch a bit of light in our hands
and crush it—streaking guts
beneath our eyes, like burst stars;
killing for a symbol in the night.
Sam Hersh
Las Trampas / The Traps
as if by chance
you are drawn down a whisper path to a forest cove
where a strand of vertebrae marks the entrance
to which crows anticipate trespass
and there in a hollow
lie cream-colored catkins
wild rose hips awash in miner’s lettuce
oyster mushrooms ripe with maggots
hazel buckeye black oak bay
and ways blazed
by foragers
don’t go there
even now, amanita ocreata
destroyer of what was and is
craves your kiss
don’t go
she will tempt you in twilight
to kneel on a pillow of death and duff
and reap overtures of golden chanterelles
don’t
be still
very still
still, you won’t see it coming
Meme Quarantine
Remember
that time when
I thought outside the box?
That’s a great question.
So glad you asked.
Let me help
unpack that for you.
Basically,
it’s technical, isn’t it!
Not so fast.
What he just said, not so much.
It’s like, truth be told,
trending now.
Trust me, you people.
That said, say no more. Right?
Black Bread, Rye
I nearly forgot how sour salt caramel
crust and crumb can lap the tongue
or how caraway and wild spikes
of fennel can seed a grin.
I hadn’t savored that black bread, rye
from who knows where
since butter churned, someway
south of Houston Street.
The month after mother died,
my son baked bread that obeyed gravity,
my daughter rekindled ancient grains
and my wife drew back the curtain.
Winter fell, we took note,
blindly tasted and closed in,
on a collision course with an elusive hearth,
bygone, though not forgotten.
A good story ends
with sheaves of wheat or slashes
that score the surface, living proof,
We give rise, break bread
and leave the pointed end
for someone in particular.
Do Not Disturb
Darling, please wait
until rap rusts out,
Reali-TV is wrong, gone
and Cryogenic Relaunch goes 2.0.
I can wait until euthanasia
bears your imprimatur
so don’t be a brick shy
more rest will do me good.
Before waking me,
cue that Bach cantata
you know, the one
we played, come Sunday.
Best wait and wonder where or when
the here and now became the there and then.
Going ...
after David Alpaugh’s double-title form
Just as I came up
on the inside
of a fleet-footed thought
a honeymoon of a poem
segued by
going easy, casual as a coyote
vanishing at the crossroads
scribbling something
it chanced upon
along these lines, then
... Gone
Margo Jodyne Dills
Babies and Young Lovers
Babies and young lovers
kiss in much the same way.
Open mouthed
receiving
full of love
and willing to
take in everything.
When does the face seal up
to stop the flow?
Why do we become guarded,
judgmental?
We begin life,
love
and lust
with submission,
rolling onto our backs,
exposing the soft flesh of our bellies.
Then we turn to jade,
slowly,
a process that involves
little murders
and colored lies.
We die,
tightlipped,
underwhelmed, secrets buried;
our goodness tied up in old photos,
winners’ ribbons,
perfume tainted with age.
The Fruits of Life
My skin betrays me in its apathetic rage
While I face my future with a sense of doom
I cannot deny although I detest my age,
I’ll hold beyond arm’s length the sight of tomb;
Though witness conceited youth with heaving sighs
And those I nurtured at now withered breast,
Weary sit with elbows propped on tired thighs;
Watch while autumn sun drops in the west.
Some think and perhaps are right that I am mad
But I think suffer from a simple case of blues;
Cast away all things laced, buttoned and plaid,
Shuffle to meet you in my orthopedic shoes.
Make one thing clear, Ponce de Leon must not fail
To send me drops of elixir in the mail.
Bouts-Rimes constructed as a Shakespearean sonnet, anagrammatically using Frost’s The Silken Tent.
I Am White
I am white.
You are also whi
te.
But you have a palette of colors I do not have.
We all come from Mother Africa but you have precise genes to document your claim. Mine have been washed away over decades, centuries, travels and time.
Danish butter rolls through our veins, you and me, and you have Norwegian, making you more of a Viking than I.
Your skin is the color of honey . . . well made bread . . . fine sand, ground to softness by tides controlled by the moon.
My skin is old now but when I was younger, it was taut and inflexible. Now it gives you something to tease me with.
You were born blue. Your eyes were black like the depths of an underworld cave, and sparkling like an ancient fire. You turned pink within moments of your arrival and later began to take on the tone of an Egyptian Queen.
We are Cherokee, you a little more than I, making you braver, more stealthy and able to lean into the wind.
We are French, English and maybe a wee Irish and German. We are many hues.
In our bones, we have the ability to break chains, sail tall ships, write ghazals of love, wipe tears off the face of defeat, leap in the name of victory, count stars and follow comets.
We are connected, like a fragile feather to a mighty wing.
We are the threads of a tapestry and we are here to protect the colors.
For Mila Simone
I Saw a Friend of Yours Today
I saw a friend of yours today;
He called to me across the way.
He doesn’t know my real name
But I answered just the same.
It wasn’t ’til I walked away
That I thought of what to say.
Isn’t that the way it goes?
When caught up in surprise hellos.
I wonder: what with good intention
If he will think to mention
That he saw your old friend today
And called out across the way.
You’ll know it’s truly me he saw.
He said my name with his usual awe;
The cryptic name that you once used
So you couldn’t be accused
Of knowing what I’m really called
That was simply not allowed.
I could have said to say hello
But then I thought of long ago;
The way in which we said goodbye,
And so it was I could not lie.
Goodwill greetings I could not send
Brought to you innocently by your friend.
Let him say he called my name
And then perhaps he’ll also claim
That I am well and looked good, too
And did not say hello to you.
The Secret Life of Jasmin García Guadalupe
Halfway down the steps close to the church
behind the mercería
where she bought thread in late afternoon
after she tells papi her stockings need mending,
Jasmin García Guadalupe
spreads her skirt into a fan,
folds it across her behind
first left, then right,
this for a little cushion
keeps her tender skin
from the dusty, cracked cement.
Her lips gather the corner of one small plastic bag
filled with water, nectar, jarabe,
sucks like a baby.
Leans her cheek on warm rough wall
watches buses rumble below,
going places she will never know.
Jasmin García Guadalupe
dreams of a seat
in the window
of the big blue bus . . .
Jesus painted on the back
arms spread wide
oversized palms
with rusty centers.
Jasmin would say
if anyone asked her
that the Bus Jesus says
“Why follow me?”
eyes rolled up to heaven
oily black smoke blowing out his feet.
Lovers steal kisses in shadows;
Señora Diego leans out her window, pulls at her moustache;
niños plucking mangos over a broken fence . . .
juice runs down their chins, between fingers,
laughing, cussing, shoving, “Ánimo!”
Ignacio makes the knees of Jasmin García Guadalupe tremble;
bent weary, he comes up the stairs,
work shirt thrown over shoulder
dangling from wiry hanger
he keeps it spotless ’til he gets to the sizzling café.
Ignacio’s undershirt with soaking armpits
so white the sun lives in it.
He comes to where the girl sits
whose father would like to kill him
and stops to find his breath.
“You are the delicious peach.
I think to sink my teeth into your skin.
I think to lick your seed.”
Ignacio passes,
Jasmin shivers,
church bells clang.
Nicole Anania
In Secret
My mother ran her fingers through my hair,
fever coating my cheeks, sweat beads at my hairline.
She dispensed cough drops and bandaids,
a cool hand against my forehead.
She was an open pair of arms,
a soft chest to bury my face in.
If she cried it was in secret,
in the early predawn hours,
as we slept in twin beds.
Behind the closed bathroom door,
beneath the roar of the toilet.
If she cried it was alone,
in the small moments,
between drop and pick up,
homework and dinner,
laundry and dishes.
Now my mother cries in the supermarket
between the aisles of canned soup and bathroom cleaner.
I stroke the hair she carefully arranges,
trying to hide its precipitous loss.
But still, slivers of white scalp cut through,
like thin fish in a dark river.
Her back curves, arms swinging down too heavy to lift.
I dispense cautious massages and little pills.
I help her undress,
slight movements making her shudder.
If I cry it is in secret.
If I cry, it is alone.
I watch her chest rise and fall,
wondering when we switched places.
Never admitting,
I wish we could switch back.
Meat
Your skin is usually the color of roasted leather,
rawhide left to bake in the sun.
But suddenly the light switches off,
the soft husk sapped of its warmth.
Your small, sweet gut disappears,
your stomach flat and sallow.
The weight falls away,
an insidious symptom we only notice,
once the sharp lines of your skull
jut out, like mountain ridges.
Check the gums.
The computer screen glows,
white rectangles reflected in my pupils.
Pale gums spell doom.
Blood trickling somewhere,
incessant and slow,
a leak in the basement.
You clutch your side,
violent spasms twisting
your shrivelled face.
When they find it,
a mass hunkered down inside you,
silently expanding,
I imagine cells black and toxic
multiplying,
until you are filled with a vile tar.
The hospital is filled with an assault of smells.
Soiled bed sheets and dry meatloaf
linger below antiseptic and clean air
pumped through the building,
trying to cover up the sweet decay
of fresh flowers and inert bodies.
You are a twisted line in the stiff white bed,
and you nod towards a styrofoam cup
filled with tepid water
and a floating green sponge.
You are not allowed to swallow,
so I place the wet sponge
on your eager tongue,
watch you bat it around
your dusty mouth.
I am reminded of the horses at the petting zoo,
their long gummy tongues
maneuvering sugar cubes from my hands.
Pain wracks your skeletal frame and I think,
you are only flesh and bone,
a hunk of meat rotting away.
To the Dying Man’s Daughter
When the chaplain enters the room
resist the urge to speak in tongues.
Resist the urge to ask him
where the fuck his God went.
Instead, let him place his broad palm
on your father’s clammy forehead.
Let the soft, murmured words
cradle him to sleep.
Accept that this stooped stranger
is cutting up his veins,
pouring life into the vessel,
attempting resurrection.
Take in the blinding white collar
against the blackened cloth.
Think of a moving metaphor,
and write a useless poem.
When your cautious friends call you,
do not let your pain twist
into red-hot roiling rage.
Do not swallow their support,
like rotted fruit
you are trying to keep down.
In fact,
do not answer the phone at all.
When the morphine starts to do its job
and his burdened breath begins to slow,
do not think of when he carried you
on his sturdy, mountain shoulders,
of airplane rides on sunken couches
his smile widening below.
Do not think of playing catch
when the sunset turned him golden,
of painting birdhouses in summer
of the thin hand you are holding.
Do not think of long car rides
the wind blowing back your hair,
of cigarette smoke and chewing gum
the future far and fleeting.
Do not think of falling asleep
in the crook of his arm,
of feeling safe and sure and loved
of how it’s all gone.
If you think of all those things
you will be crying too hard
and you will forget to kiss him,