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ConfettiLike silver and white confetti, the stars
I could have thrown into the sky,
and on my fingers the clean smell
of leftover light from comet tails
grazing my skin. They leave a taste
of wood ash on the tongue,
the dark kiss of sleep that Stefan's lips
touched sweet in Istanbul on a night
we had no need to pretend
throwing the stars.The slippery flower of sorrow won't let go
but he was sweet as a lemon and squeezed me dry
in that happy prison we came back to,
the nearest star speaking in tongues,
the heaviest stone on earth
dancing, as I do with very old light
that is late in arriving and comes so far.copyright 2004 Jeanne Lohmann
printfriendlyFrom the Diaries of Radiance and Dark
A band of water lies
along the deck.And, in the late evening sky,
a band of light.Along our skin, haven't
Orions gathered,one by one, until even
the finest hairssuddenly flair
and are all white fire?All time is lit with anthurium
lanterns and pearls.Look how our shadows swagger!
Look how the latticewe call our bones bolts
and braces this world.copyright 2004 Nancy J. Wiegel
printfriendlyThe Meat Man's Wife
It's an old game
that still gets me off--I lie
perfectly still
while he labels the pieces of my body
with a blue butcher's marker
breaking me up into my fuckable parts.He once told me
he used to work at a meat packing plant
and the only way he could stand touching the cold
cattle flesh
was to concentrate on images of naked women. Now,
he can only get turned on if he pretends
his women are dead animals.
Or so he says.The cold marker cuts my breasts
into twin racks of ribs, my back
into prime cuts, shoulder roasts. The steel cuffs
feel like barbed hooks poised
to pierce my flesh--I await
the tug of the crane arm lifting me up--suspending me
helpless, in the darkit's an old game we play
that still gets me off.copyright 2004 Holly Day
printfriendlyAfter a Poetry Reading
My wife agreed to go with me
to a reading downtown,where poets spoke of Burns,
laughing invalids, and thread.Later, in bed, I was struck awake
by tangling arms and angry hands.My accountant spouse was dreaming
we were in a van. I answered my phoneand got a job as a radio talk-show host.
Effective immediately, I started taking calls.And part of the position included smoking
small pieces of paper left on the floorboard.I lit each one with the dashboard lighter.
My wife started railing at my swerving,especially when I reached around her
with the orange-hot lighter in my hand.copyright 2004 Geoff Pope
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I keep looking down cups --the waiters
don't joke anymore, the customers yell
--I'm not sure where to dig nextas if you are still turning your head
in some doorway --waving
only tears its sides
and crumbles--I need a shovel :an envelope with seeds
as stones are baked underground :flowers
throwing their colors on the stake--I have to guess the spots.
sometimes I dig without knocking
without a yardstick, each hole
till its clay is fired :ancient jarsmeasured by remembering those thin envelopes
and their predictions :blooms
bubbling from this cup --each sugar-packet
emptied half by mistake, half in garden
half waving back--I have to guess the distance, to dig
without breathing
or turning the ring on my finger
--I have to look for cups :your eyes
trapped in the ruins, the surrounding fire.copyright 2004 Simon Perchik
printfriendlyAnemia
The rain brings a quiet morning.
Puddles forming from waterfalls pouring
from gutters filled with leaves.A soft sound muffling the birds' morning
song, the neighbor's rooster, the horse
who neighs for his breakfast.In this wet quiet comes
the awareness of you two sleeping.
The quiet of necessitated rest,your need to feed our son who
drinks from your breast incessantly.
Your resting, like the baby, simply eating and sleeping.It takes so much of you to create something
so beautiful that I do not know if
I will ever have all of you back.copyright 2004 David Howell
printfriendlyEl 11 de Septiembre en Cordoba
Since your tragic fall, los remiseros ask
me daily with cracking throats, how does
it feel now that you've been attacked?
I feel like it happened far away in a land
that is not quite mine. Castigo, que puta!
I say instead. And, are you afraid of bombs,
senorita? Yes, indeed, as I am afraid of myself
sometimes. Outside of my apartment building,
the Rio Suquia bubbles madly with mud; a
small boy is almost swallowed whole as
I watch, motionless, from my window. Yes,
of course, dying scares me, as do the dead.
I see them daily. Passing from kiosk to kiosk,
jobless cordobeses shake their heads as men
and women on the screen jump from windows.
They expect a reaction from me, a descendent
of those buried under the holy, corporate rubble;
I hail as a messenger from the north, the
Big Fist in the Sky, I should pronounce. Light
should then emanate from my body's perimeter.
Be not scared of me; be not blinded by me. Instead,
I nudge my coins over the counter in exchange
for a cigarette. I say I'm Canadian. Survival is
something I've been forced to perfect. You've made
it a game almost, donning me and all your children
as objects of the world's mad obsession. But, to
be truthful, I don't expect their pity; I don't
expect their pity despite your fall. Because
every time they learn that it was you who created
me in the image of red-white-and-blue You,
they shudder, and I hate you for that.copyright 2004 Jada Ach
Editor's note: Because of the limitation of the word file manager, this version lacks diacritical marks and a punctuation mark, which are present in the printfriendly version.Letter to Ranek about Buddhist Poets
Dear Jason: I probably own most of Gary Snyder's
books. His ability to shake off the transcendent
and enter into the imminent, into the now, scares me.
I like the safer ground of reflections and dreams.Read "The Red Hills" by Pao Chao, or "Flowers
and Moonlight on the Spring River" by Yang-ti.
They know. Language is liquid stuff. It is like
the transitions of water. It can be an ocean readyto drown us in its waves or mists lifting from
the sunbaked sand that want to saturate our hair
with their thin perfumes. I've seen blocks of ice
so rich with the merchandise of mantras, not evenmonks sitting cross-legged in their yellow robes
could refrain from chiseling them into poems. Rain?
Read what Li Po writes about it in "Clearing at Dawn."
What waits in that poem nudges Nirvana.I like best the poems written by Po Chu-i when he
was a scholar at the Han Lin Academy. His poem
titled "Rain" speaks of "Misty birds lost in yellow
air" and the week "night turned into a riverbed."I find more art than ego in these poems, more playful
jargon than dialectic for the id. Believe me when
I tell you that there is no harm in cherishing one's talents.
Lin Yu's "The Peddler of Spells" shows the way.copyright 2004 Fredrick Zydek
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Li Yu: Looking Towards Jiang-nan (1)
(Memories of the South Country)So many regrets
Last night in my dream, my soul
wandered up the Imperial Gardens of old
Where chariots drifted like flowing waters
horses dragons bold
And the Spring breeze was brushing moonlit flowersLi Yu (837-978)
translation copyright 2004 Betty W. Lee
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Li Yu: Written on the Wall of My Mountain Cottage after an Illness The mountain cottage just built, my illness takes a better turn
I am in a leisurely mood, clothed in coarse cotton, holding a cane
A gentle warmth issues forth from the open stove
Music echoes from water trickling in the drainNow I whitewash these walls with water from the brooks
In my last hours to my ancestors I seek the Way
Who would toil and sweat in this dusty life
To compete with fishes and dragons, shallow vanities of the dayLi Yu (837-978)
translation copyright 2004 Betty W. Lee
printfriendlyWinter 14
No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn. --Hal Borland
Headless birds on the sagging phone line
Bunched like billiard beads
All pushed to his side--Jesus! He's keeping score.Spectators we wipe our frosted panes.
The Old Man's trying to run the table.
What a hustler!
Comes in like he'll take a turn;
Then plays like the break of doomsday.Snap! Electricity down--far right corner.
Click! Phones out--east side.
Pop! Pop! Pop!--roads out--a wicked combination.
Then, kapowie!! Near right courner water blows sky high!Now one green striper left.
Dark clouds whirl around his cue
While he lines up the shot....one ball left--
been here,
been here before.
Unlit cigarette quivering on his lip.
Walleye wandering.
Forehead squeezing, squeezing
until one droplet of sweat
Like a lost sperm
dances down
Into his eye just
At the stroke of...Collision sends the other hard to the hole
But gamely it clops right back out
Back out onto the green field of play.He closes his eyes. Exhales, deeply.
Then one of the waiting three shouts,
"Sit down old man."copyright 2004 Bruce Nelson
printfriendlyImprovisation in a High School Drama Class for Troubled Teens
You are dogs waiting to see the vet
I tell the two girls best known
for their skimpy skirts and combat boots
and for the many days they take the bus to the beach
to hustle military guys.The girls squat on chairs
their hands drooping under their chins
to represent paws.Are you scared? The first dog asks
and the other growls
then lunges as if to nip.
I'm always scared here, she continues.
They hurt me.The brown vet isn't so bad
the second dog says at last.
Gave me dried liver after a shot.
The brown vet, the first dog says,
hurt me when I was just a puppy.
The other draws back her lips
reaches around to chew at fleas
on her flank.Well, is your master nice? the first dog asks
and the other shakes her floppy ears.
He tells me to do things and when I'm slow
he yells.
I had a nicer one before
but he gave me away.
She scratches her neck.My master gives commands,
the first dog says,
and if I don't understand
he slaps me on the snout with a slipper.
Her wet, black nose twitches.
Oh, they just called my name, she says.
Throws back her head
and begins to howl.copyright 2004 Rafaella Del Bourgo
printfriendly33 Degrees
a stranger
phoned
to discuss
why his poems
weren't in print
I asked how
many mags
he'd tried per poem"at least 6"
he said
as if 6 meant
he'd sufferedimmensely
"try 30"
I said
I hung up
climbed
the stairs & sat
at my desk
the phone rang
I walked down
it washim
30
he said
would be
"inappropriate"
given the qualityof his
"art"--whichhe added
was better
than anything
he'd read of mine"then try
60" I saidthis time he
hung up first
I re-climbed
the stairs
sat & failed
to writeabsorbed only
by howpainstakingly
the sun
works
to melt
snowcopyright 2004 Mark Wisniewski
printfriendlyHomeplace
Fine mist almost a cloud, fills my eyes as I stare at
broken attic windows, a door sagging off its hinges
and car bodies lying like colored stones in the yardof the small house where I was born, a distant star
with consequences. The current owner moved out from
Omaha, painted it red and printed "Dumshit Ranch"over the front door, making people in a small town
laugh. It's his house now, but I can't laugh or let it go,
anymore than I can let go the place on "Blue River"bluffs, where Bill Williamson died when his road
grader slid over the edge on winter ice, a place I never
pass without thinking of him, and how he took meseriously when I was a boy. Fear rises as I stare
at this pizzled place where earth and air once mixed,
and exploded into something still living behind theseclapboard walls, what I cannot dismiss by common
sense. Gnawing at my satisfied life, it holds me to
the inexplicable in four square rooms with a green stepladder climbing to attic bedrooms, where my brother
terrified me with fantastic tales of murder on dark
summer nights. When the owner came out, wediscovered a mutual friend, a girl I worshipped silently
in high school. He offered to paint over the name.
I told him to leave it, a warning to those who wouldfudge an elaborate past. We talked of the house,
surprises and failures of long lives, and how once
when I was twelve, Norrie Ferguson stood nakedon the balcony next door for one shining moment,
a star so bright I knew it would never let go my eye.copyright 2004 Larsen Bowker
printfriendlyBut My Legs Remember That Road
After Huntington's Disease settled in
like an uninvited guest, my mother started
her walks. Back and forth, down the gravel road
from our house to the cattle gap, from the gap
to my Aunt's house, from my Aunt's, back.
It wasn't so much that she was trying to outpace the disease;
she was trying to remember the way home,
grinding each step into the gravel,
working it into her legs until they could remember for her.I was young when this all started.
I knew only that her father died with his fist print
still buried in the metal of a car door,
so deep and perfect you could see the outline
of his wedding ring,
though he could not recall his wife's name.She wrote, as well. Every evening, after dinner,
she copied one line after another on college ruled paper:
her name, her birth-date, her children's names, her husband's;
things she could remember. We kept
these pages in her old hope chest
with her wedding gown, her photos.But my legs also learned that road, tagging
behind her like a stray calf, and the dust
that tasted like unsweetened chocolate,
the jerk of her stops and starts, the chorea
of her path, crisscrossing the gravel like a dance floor.copyright 2004 C. L. Bledsoe
printfriendlyFalling Apart
Creates two true centers about
which circle now twin lives
like the pull of double stars,our memories dividing, shared
mitochondria not subsetting,
an abacus pulling itself apartas it slips through the count.
You can leave by different doors
if that helps. Even furniturewe buy in backroad second hand
stores soon splits in dry winter
heat, buckles from the rude useof the guise of veneer left
fallow in the barn loft where
it has been allowed to loaf sincesomeone died a decade ago,
when her imprint slept on
in trace and scent of talcum,pins and buttons slipping
into cracks between drawers.
And the worst thing you can doto the neck of a guitar is play
the delta blues, stretch strings
into the cave of the palm, spiderthe fret board to the bottom.
I warp the reeds of a harmonica,
late nights on the porch, tunessilted in fifteen dollar scales,
into the slow wail, breaking out
notes into ninety others, intosighs, gestures, signals, myth,
the death entropies of the animal,
even my heartbeat as it jazzes,a center of muscle and blood only,
tapping a backbeat for the dance
of what can be held together.
copyright 2004 Naton Leslie
printfriendlyForeign Land
There's a certain way we enter these homes
of relatives, with our eyes closed wounds. It's the way
our bodies fall waiting to fly, and we can not speak with our
own tongues. I am lying in this bed, this space where my
dad slept as a boy. He might have fixed his eyes on the 3 inch
Mother of Mary statue, the night light, or the rosemary beads
like milkweed seeds floating through the curtains. Now my
Grandma lies beside me, mouth open, eyes dreaming of velvet or
her wedding day. Maybe she's humming to her son, her voice like
Jesus brought forth singing hymns in perfect time. She is remembering rock-a-
bye-baby in the treetop and the wind is dust in her dream. The men
are sleeping in separate rooms, away from other flesh, the sun. The men are
waiting for the spread of pork and sauerkraut, pickles, potatoes, and red wine.
And they will sit with their hands tied in circles, motionless and static. This,
where time is stone and I have a mouth of snow that spills out
and covers my body. I become a stranger, a no name. And when I
wake my Grandma will unfold like white roses, liquid
and beautiful as a dove falling with the snow.copyright 2004 Kiley Cogis
printfriendlyElmer Caldwell Finds Himself in an Awkward Situation: a Shack
Above Gold Creek, Colorado Territory, 1870Two days of my snares yielding nothing
but a few feathers and a handful of fur,
and without a word, the squaw handed me
the papoose and was out hunting in the snow.Lige--what I call him, for my brother,
dead at Chancellorsville--stared up at me,
and maybe feeling my arms tremble
in hunger and fear, for once let out a yell
lusty as Rebs storming Little Round Top,
his face dark as a keg of black powder.I bounced him, sang every song I knew;
finally he slept, with my finger
like a milkless teat in his hungry mouth.
I paced, cursed my luck: blizzard-trapped
with a squaw and her papoose, waking agin.This time, he knew better than to bawl
out his hunger: like he could remember
his mama's people sitting grim in winter,
no good yammering they were starving.
The oilskin windows were dimming
when she returned with a brace of hares.Whilst I'd waited, I was tempted to leave:
better odds at escaping Sprockett's vengeance
if I wasn't shackled to them. But I stayed,
don't ask me why, 'cept Lige was too heavy
for me to set him down and run for it.Blowing up the fire, the squaw I've decided
to call Mary smiled up at me, not knowing
I'd already betrayed a woman in Gold Creek:
left Lydia with one way out, which she took.copyright 2004 Robert Cooperman
printfriendlyEditorial in the Gold Creek Optimist, Concerning the Shooting Death
of Willie Pilgrim by Sheriff Dennehy, Colorado Territory, 1870"It is unfortunate when one so young--
no one certain of the boy's age,
for his years a captive of savage Utes--
is scythed like unripe barley,
especially sorrowful
when that brief life ends violently."Some may criticize our Sheriff,
for the boy was unarmed
except with a Bible, that, in noon glare,
Big Ed mistook for a drawn pistol
the boy repeatedly refused to drop."Irony piles on tragedy in this case,
since Sheriff Dennehy saved the lad
when our expedition against marauding
savages discovered one white child
among the brutes who had slaughtered
a family working its gold claim."Would we so value our Sheriff
were he less vigilant against
the forces of confusion,
which, sadly, that boy represented,
in his maniacle cacklings and spasms,
his string of shouted epithets
not even a whoremaster dared emulate:
less a child than Satan's marionette."His adoptive parents--
Reverend and Mrs. White--
should consider this: the one practical
alternative to his early demise
would have been encoffinment in an asylum,
no place for him in civilized society."copyright 2004 Robert Cooperman
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