most recent first
Declamatory, Cathartic
This is the playwright Devoe,
an archetypal creative person,
sitting on his sunlit deck,deep in a reverie,
his life at stake, perhaps,
in which his phone seems to ring.The caller, a production person
at the theater where a Devoe play is showing,
sounds extremely agitated,saying we have an emergency,
the house is upset,
the performance cannot continue.This is a member of the audience
who has risen from his seat in a frenzy
just before the end of the first act,shouting it is my life they are telling up there,
no, no, not without me knowing
what they mean to say, to do, no, no.These are eleven persons rising in anger
and these are three in empathy with him,
humanitarian, juristic, cathartic.This is Devoe, now, startled out of his reverie
by the insistent ringing of his phone,
ruthless, declamatory, ego-ridden.copyright 2007 Oliver Rice
bio
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Shatter
When he left
I shattered
A million jagged shards
Spilled on the floor
I scooped them up
Greedily
Afraid of losing them
Before it was safe
To reassemble
When he came back
I got out the crazy glue
And feverishly attempted
To rebuild what I was
But some of the pieces
Don’t fit right
Some got lost
Some broke so small
They blew away on the wind
And I find myself terrified
That he may have liked
Those parts bestcopyright 2007 Christy Keech
bio
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Ginkgoes
It was a weird weekend weatherwise.
Stuff touched down, from funnels to hail kernels,
all along the sickle-like coast of Vladivostok,
where we were renting a room full of beds
and windows--awful little windows with
white wire security screens stapled to them,
keeping out everything but the June bugs and flies.Vladivostok et ses environs, which included
the Gulf of Love, as it was known in those days,
had suffered the severest famine in seventy years
under the untrained oversight of Lustful Leonid,
a social smoker with a few extra pounds,
a controversial appointment of the former Tsarina.
Well, at least our hostellerie was secluded.I thought of you when I explored the creek banks,
a place overgrown with crabapples and ginkgoes,
enclosed by largish iron gratings--frilly,
to say the least. From there one can spot
crumbling gargoyles that line the main building's
facade, and the arched terraces that stratify its flank.
I remembered you posing by Felisburto's "Phalanx"at Little Five Points, that fantastic statue
of creatures eating other creatures, so modern,
and we remarked we'd never seen decoupage
so daring, in concrete, and on such a scale as that.
I fumbled through my pack to find the camera,
picked it out and began snapping shot upon shot.
In that hat, Mathilde, few women could match you.In that skirt you looked like some spurned heiress
heading out into the night to prove she's still got it.
In pale lipstick you smacked of Greta Garbo
or Lily Dean, or a Mackelwayne sister. I waited
for you for seven years--I can barely believe it--and
you never came. And I retired to Russian, and the rest
(as they say) is hail blown across a hotel terrace.copyright 2007 Aaron Belz
bio
printfriendlyEfficiency Versus Thought
We looked abroad for an answer.
We zoomed in on "if the orange leaves are smitten."
We focused on orange.We looked abroad for another world,
in which "porpoises shimmer in the continental glare."
And we concluded that therewas nothing in orange and nothing in the other image.
There were no hidden meanings locked in smitten or
shimmer, and nothing unseen in the creatures.So with the help of friends we changed trajectory,
and not only that, we changed velocity.
We asked Katrina if she knew,and then Daniel Kane, and we went to the beach
and found McManus and asked him.
"...if frost hides the leaves
and the pump's concerned handle
won't lift," he saidand then trailed off. Something about Florida.
Something about the earth's weird spinning
and a bonfire's flares,the veil of sand, a monument
of ashes there.copyright 2007 Aaron Belz
bio
printfriendlyViolets, Time, and Motherhood
One night I lay musing, among violets.
Suddenly it struck me that I was asleep.
In this sleep I saw a number of shapes.
The first of these was a woman weeping.
It might have been a woman sleeping,
or maybe it was a mother praying.
Suddenly it struck me that I was awake,
and I was standing in a room full of doors,
and they were the doors of perception,
and they were not only closed but locked.
I, wakefully, tried to twist each knob.
It struck me that the violets had been
a dream, and that I was probably dead.
So I sat in a chair and hung my head,
not for sorrow, or slumber, but to pray.
And I noticed my children gathered there,
my fruit, my issue, standing together,
and the doors swung open one by one.
One night I lay awake in a music of voices.
It all came to me suddenly, and so I ran
far from the madness, and into a field.
Thorns tore my legs, I panted for air.
I slumped in exhaustion, fell asleep there.
And in my sleeping, began to dream,
and all around me were those violets.
copyright 2007 Aaron Belz
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Typo Poem
I am seriously galling asleep.The nerve: to give your mind a recess—Ghafir Akbar (a typo in an email, written from the library,
in lieu of the work he was underpaid to do)
in the middle of shelving books.
A slip of the fingers that surprising
must always be shelved where it belongs,
in this case, under ‘A’—Akbar, Ghafir: Galling asleep;
an unintentional keystroke
that combined gumption with rest.
How delightful. Sleep,
a revolutionary act.He stands still, his fingers
following dewey decimals,
his mind kicking and sighing
in its hammock, and thenbooks become birds,
they scatter, fly, circle
unsuspecting patrons,
silently flapping their many
heavy wings, spreading dust,
an enormous warm breath
no one notices. Ghafir stands,
watches the beautiful mess.
The world retreats because
he wills it to. The fingers
on his left hand keep
shelving as his right
drinks a glass
of blue
milk.copyright 2007 Allison Shoemaker
bio
printfriendlyWhy I Will Miss You
Because:for M.V.
In my guts is a tin can
and a string runs from it
out my belly button
around the corner
down the street
through a window
to a bed
where you sit
with a tin can in your guts.
When you laugh
the string is pulled taut
and vibrates in my blood.copyright 2007 Allison Shoemaker
bio
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The Way
It is a corridor like any
in an institution like any
of ours. Someone
has been here before you,
more competent and beautiful,
who was smart enough to attend
class the day directions were given;
a perfume lingers
or scuff-marks from a running shoe.
Around a vending machine,
those who must wait
glare; you try to pretend
you aren’t afraid, you’re on their side,
you don’t see them, only
the unfairness – knowing
how stiffly you pass.
Reinforced windows display
the grounds. You could run out,
steal a vehicle,
offroad across the creeks, the grass;
signs on the distant electrified fence
invite you there.
One room has monitors
and a guard, who watches
van after van of explosives file
into the loading bay.
Some doors open
on staff and clients fucking among
supplies; you watch awhile.
But the numbered rooms
are those from which a sound of crying
comes, or a shout;
including the one you seek
where you may unburden
yourself of frustration, hopes, recriminations,
and be thrown out.
They are so many and you so lost,
you signal your distress
the way one does, by smiling;
asked how you’re doing
you say, as one must, OK,
again request directions …
but the way that can be told is not the Way.copyright 2007 Frederick Pollack
bio
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Astrid
Her cabin stands on Turtle Mount
Among scrub oaks and oyster chips
On the wall in her boudoir
A black and white photo
A young girl wears a Marcella dress
She smilesHer memories as morning fog
Sometimes, it so clear
As a coin plunges into the blue seaSometimes her prince
Stands before her, but
On his journey
She buries him into the blue seaFrom her wood-burning stove
Wheat loaf and apple cake
On the window shelf
Offering to souls of voyagersA gust storm
From the Atlantic Ocean
The plank to the pier
Bickering waves
Billow on tumble-sea
Sluttish against white-wash wallStarry night
A light of an oil lamp
In her cabin
As a naked light from a tower
Its glow looks out to the black seaNinety more years
Her blue eyes
Glimpse once more
On the sullen sea--
Mooring of a vessel
Solely it startles her memoriescopyright 2007
bio
printfriendlyGarden Fence
Morning sun shines
Brings him happy smile
Couple share the happy life
“Dear, I am making
A garden fence for you”
“Oh how sweet!”
By the lilac brushLumber from Mr. Richard next door
The flower garden you love
Her face lights up with blush
Red like red rose
“What’s the matter, my dear?”Her secret from her heart
He does not know
“Oh how beautiful
Flower garden I do enjoy!”copyright 2007
bio
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Youngest Daughter
Painted gate of summer nights,
accomplice of my coming
and my going in the hot wind
of adolescence, my mouth
defiant with lipstick,
my body fluent as flames
in the world's arms,
how shall I live without you
in the mustard seed of heaven
where the entrance
to pavilions woven
from the wings of Peruvian
butterflies opens
and closes so silently
that the light sleep of my parents
beside still waters
goes undisturbed;
without the screak of alarm
in your hinge, how will they know
their youngest daughter,
buttons of her blouse undone,
is home from the dance
in the coolness of dawn.copyright 2007 Geri Rosenzweig
bio
printfriendlyA Sneaping Wind
Our thousand and one nights
are coming to an end,
the integrity of hand braided rugs
unravels in the pavilions,
knives salivate
for the lamb's throat
and the butcher,
his mind an abattoir of bones,
hurries through
the countryside.
Scheherazade,
send us that ballad
about the mad monarch
you lulled and pillowed
upon the mercy of your thigh,
your once upon a time...
curling through
the little tent of his ear
before we
become a sneaping wind
itinerant among
thistles and stones.copyright 2007 Geri Rosenzweig
bio
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Dead Basil Leaves
Death is old
And decrepit for us now
We have grown with him;
Hah!
He has waited for us while in diapers and
Ancient he was then and with skin like ash.
He has waited while we played among the dirt
In the playground earth we put our hands into
He was hiding and munching on dead basil leaves
Our first orgasm called to him and so he came as we came
And stood above us, watching silently,
Bony fingers clenching,
unclenching.
First born of our flesh, the first cry
There death was, his eyes banked fires
His hand administered the first spank.
The first hospital visit for a valve bypass
He sat in gray surgical scrubs waving to all the people he knew
But he was obviously getting tired by then and his eyes
Were embers, flickering embers.
Then went the child of our flesh forward into the world
And death sat in the captain's chair of flight whatever its number was
Munching on peanuts and avoiding turbulence.
Left alone with us, death sat on the comfiest chair
His back hurt he was thinking of retiring
His throat hurt he sucked on a lozenge
His barbed teeth were plastic.
We sit and drink the finest Scotch
Cards are always out we keep losing money to the world
We smoke Cuban cigars because what'll they do if they catch us
What'll they do to us
Our arteries are clogged
Our lungs are black
Our eyes are bright
Our laughs are quick.
In the corner death sits, waiting and watching,
Taking his pain medication,
Rubbing his eyes and trying not to fall asleep,
And we know him well, we have known him long;
And death, well, he is old,
And decrepit for us now-
Hah!
We play another hand of poker.copyright 2007 Idan Cohen
bio
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Landscape from the Body
Take breast cancer and curve your palm.
The renegade cells divide like sheep
or roadside weeds in the remote
stratum of bosom, which is also
a kind of field men lay their hands on,
women, too, before parting the rosary’s beads
in dumbfounded reverence
for what the breast is. Angelina,sixty-eight and the mother of seven,
knows how the body, the soil,
parts to ripen. She knows, too,
the friends who, all fall and winter,
sewed fleece hats to cover
her bald head as though
quilting a woman. But this morningwhen she appeared in her bathrobe
without a hat, a shock of hair
skimming her head, and she reached
for kindling to start her morning
fire and caught my look,
she smiled, dropped the wood
and sifted her hair through her hands,
shouting across the yard, “Look!”
We laughed past the body,
clothesline, fence. Laughterthat was no fool. A simple cache of heat,
she rose and flared. Months before,
I watched, almost embarrassed,
as she opened her shirt to outline
the scar sliding like a cloud across
her chest. There, the cancer
rooted and was pulled. Our laughter,so easy, quickened us, as if we had crossed
the finite border between terror
and terra, where a woman
might be made again.copyright 2007 Susan Varnot
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printfriendlyLosing Translation
The billboard at the outskirts of the village—Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico: site of the land grant
uprisings of the 1960’s
reads: Tierra o Muerte. Alfalfa blooms
in late frost against the edges of the For Sale sign
that leans in the yard, and the house, too,
as though accepting this geometry. The fields
migrate into the hills, land farmers have let
go, or tried, and failed, to take backbecause it refuses
anything but sage, its scent climbing
into the lungs. All day, the neighbor’s dog sleeps
in an abandoned pick-up, a blue blotch
against the adobe, rain, wind owning its corners.
The fence burns with rustbeside the picnic table where I bend over
a sparrow, its feathers fluttering. My limbs
linger, misunderstanding, until
I wrap its body in a sock
and carry the bird to the field, the boundary
between losses. A magpie
discovers it lying in the thistle,
picks at its feathers, calling out
a language only the wind decodes.copyright 2007 Susan Varnot
bio
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E-mail - Subj: Vacation in India
minstrels walk in single file
between water-logged paddy fields
and sing out of bored compulsion
about some benevolent breakfast god
it seems they are TV stars
from some advertising company
collaborating with an MNC
headquartered in the penthouse
of the newest City Mall & Multiplexthe ancestral village is a bloated oasis
of prurient nondescript net-equipped brown
amidst nauseating nascent oily green
uninitiated storks are out in alarming number
picking their spindly way through ‘night-soil’
to feed on the early malnutritioned worm
that has been prematurely weaned
from mother’s watery milk subsidized
by impotent national concern
for the embarrassing girl childUnlike Silicon Valley
there are no H-1 visas mutating into Green Cards
no unsolicited mortgage marketing calls
(that in India
is restricted to IT cities that nurture terrorist
doctors)
no single minded MBA-equipped pursuit
for bigger houses diet beer Marlboro Lights
Blackberry or better carsnot even grass flowers
that grow from seed
thrown in spring
by migrant Mexicans
onto half rented office lawns
copyright 2007 Ashok Niyogi
bio
printfriendlyBlue - Oil on Canvas
a molten yellow moon
throws jagged crescent light
on eyelids stretched thin blue
over infinite observed sadness
snakes writhe in total delightwith my third incandescent eye
I contemplate a blue ocean
of immortal nectar
in which is submerged
this beautiful blue worldcoiled white underbelly
of the final serpent
is a bed for the ultimate
blue god whose navel sprouts
blue lotus with a thousand petalson which I squat
four headed and beget
the will to populate
all directions of the blue windour world has risen from the deep
on the tusks of the infinite blue boar
in an eternal blue sky
time germinates in blue flame
the god into whom I was to devolveeven after
I go about collecting accumulated sin
I covet
and getpoison distilled from blue ocean
and this is my offering to his divine throat
that turns blue
what remains is nectar
to nourish blue lotus
on which his blue feet will restthis truth
is bestcopyright 2007 Ashok Niyogi
bio
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Indigo-Purple Faces In The Last Stages Of Strangulation
It has been a numb tenure for him,
Exiguously six paintings survive. Bickering
And argy-bargys with Lacy try and try.
Whitsun social whirls they wangled in England,
A B&B in St. Ives, a strand of painters
Rubbing shoulders with the delicious bosons of Devonport.A dishevelling summer, we can’t go on like this.
Patrick Procktor shadowed him through the muffling of nets,
Lit by a high seas sun.
His face was a black-hearted bruise
And the biffs of Lacy are furious
In such a lifeless tide.copyright 2007 Christopher Barnes(From the Francis Bacon poems)
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Little Jimmy Dead Eyes, on the bus
Those were just the shadows of trees; they could not
follow me. I did not look back, took what I could
and moved on. The bus seats were all occupied.
The ticket stub was a knife in my pocket; the wounds
it had caused were smothered with prodigal salt.
The faces of small-town people bound for the city
were the completion of fog, of soul, of density.
We were fleeing museum artifacts--once made sacred
inside a glass enclosure, once content in our husks.
Rain, all twenty-five years worth of it, beat down
on the asphalt, on the roof, against the glass.
It would drown the song of my small-town friends.
It would muddy the dialect of the lost.I imagined the city, and it was still intangible--
a stream of light and dust across an empty room.
I had to leave the door open, to enter that room,
to ask myself what I was supposed to say,
to find out that nothing would ever move
from now on, only that splinter of light.
For a while, the dust began to unfurl, acquired colors.
And I saw the nightly neon of the city streets, the gray
of concrete, the glare of glass towers, the gleam
of steel, the prism to disperse the glow of urban rivers.
I had my ticket stub to cross that river, get to the other side.copyright 2007 Kristine Ong Muslim
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A last diaspora
The Piercys with whom I never identified
who had little to say to me, rest
in a graveyard in rows, fathers,
mothers, sons, daughters all collected
like volumes of old zines in libraries
except for my father, as he’s tossed
to the November Atlantic swell.My mother’s family lie scattered.
I have no idea where my grandmother
Hannah was put. I vaguely remember
a stone somewhere in Cleveland.
My grandfather, where is his skull
crushed by Pinkertons, his nine
rich languages long bled to loam?All my aunts and uncles who people
my poems, whose lives became my
mythology, they’re tossed randomly
from California to Miami, die cast
on the map of states. Under my wisteria
my mother’s ashes mingle with my cats
for I brought her home on the planein my lap. Even my brother vanished
somewhere in Arizona. Great aunts
were burned to smoke. Great grandfather’s
Polish grave ransacked for paving stones.
Their only monument is my memory
stored in poems evanescent as the chip
on which my lines are etched.copyright 2007 Marge Piercy
bio
printfriendlySleep, the adversary
Sleep, how annoying you are—
one of those birds I see barely
from the corner of my eye,
spring warblers flicking through.If I long for you, you vanish,
a cat who only climbs in my lap
when I’m mending or balancing
a tray with a bowl of chili.If I seek you, you’re gone.
If I am trying to remember some
thing dangerous or awkward
to forget, you pouncefrom the shadows and drag
me under where I long to go
but not just then. How often
has my chin hit my computerkeyboard, have I pinched myself
in the car, sat in an overheated
library while you well up.
You’re a perverse loverwho always wants to do it
in an elevator, on a rickety
porch, in a backseat where
elbows become lethal weapons.You only want me when I
don’t want you.copyright 2007 Marge Piercy
bio
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shopping for a new paradigm
you are shopping for a new paradigm
in the snow, pine trees loadedwith frozen cumulus like a Japanese print
sun glinting in a thousand sticksof light-prickles into your eyes
reprise of peace in the stronggreen of needled branches enameled
against the blue brittle skyyou would like to come home with a really fresh
paradigm, one you could step intoand roam for miles, knowing it was a country
where you were expecteda hologram you are sure hangs
somewhere near, a lurewhich has declared you ready,
restless, like a turn of eventsjust waiting for the protagonist,
the one who’s meantall along to push open the red gate
that leads inwardto the journey, to a surprise
never-ending story with an up / endingCopyright 2007 Zoe Landale
bio
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Song of wire
I broke free onceafter Anthony Lawrence
went for the fencer
like a tiger snakeslashed his thigh
to the bone
taught him to sing.I have tasted
the iron tang
of bloodnow I watch
you.Hear me
crooning
to the easterlywhetting
my single
silver toothwhispering insurrection
to the strainer post.copyright 2007 Joanna Preston
bio
printfriendlyfrom Venery
v. A Stalk of Foresters
He ran
until he could no longer remember
not running.
His heart was a tocsin
filling his skull, a flood tide
drowning thought.His axe had fallen long before.
His fingers remembered
the shaft of it, curved
like the throat of a woman,
silken to his callused skin.Branches plucked at his clothes
like an anxious wife,
or slapped him away
like an angry one.
He thought he could feel
the hot breath
of hunting dogs.He stumbled
through tall reeds, tore
at his own throat for breath.
On his knees, at bay
amid his brothers, he turned,his chest hardening to lignin,
the laughter of women
in the thickets of his ears.In the darkening corner of vision
a kingfisher’s sharp blue flame.
copyright 2007 Joanna Preston
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His Biorhythms Alert
It is the face of a bearer
who has learned his own lessons,been overtaken, after years of inwardness,
by the ironies that time emits,become an honest broker
between too little and too much.Thus, for the first time
the painter Alberson,confronted, evolved enough,
finally tolerable in his mind’s eye,seizing the inclination,
elects to sit to himself.copyright 2007 Oliver Rice
bio
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Miracles of the Kingdom of Sleep I
In a daughter’s dream her dead father
lifts a putrid leg (she thinks I must
take him back to the doctor) into the pants
of a “restraint suit” she had to buy ($58.95!)
so he would pee into his diaper
(he turns for her, she buttons up
the back) like a good boy, and not unzip
in the middle of the retirement home
dining hall. His flaccid forearms--
islanded with sores--shake
when he punches his own meds
out of bubble packs, with trembling,
fierce fingers. Then he kicks
his wheelchair away like a penitent
at Lourdes. Now he’s cruising
the dining hall aisles, glad-handling
the gents, slapping their backs; talking again,
he’s soft-talking the ladies
in Alzheimer tongues. He twirls his pearly
handlebar moustache and she is sailing
on the prow of his bike. He soldiers
his shoulders back and she is riding them
into the breakers, her cheek laid
on the ebony waves of his hair,
his arm clasping her legs, the two of them
an ocean-cleaving figurehead. Now
she knows: he has hoisted
the coffin lid and muscled through six feet
of dirt. Her heart swells,
unfurls and skims.Copyright 2007 Judy Kronenfeld
bio
printfriendlyMiracles of the Kingdom of Sleep II
In a granddaughter’s dream, her grandfather
wings down on the day of his funeral
like a Chagall bridegroom, flexes
his feet like a landing crow’s,
and screeches to a flailing stop, with a little extra
hop. “Whew!” he winks, so not dead,
and signature squeezes her hands
inside his. They’re enclosed
like the innermost Russian doll.
“You baby me too much!” he says,
and commandeers her limo
for a jaunt far, far from school.At her mother’s home, the funeral meats
are growing cold, or warm--
mini-knishes, pickled herring, lox on a dot
of cream cheese on a melba round,
melt-in-your-living-mouth
brie--sinceat Temple Beth El, the rabbi’s prayer books
snooze on the empty coffin, the rabbi,
gritting his teeth, paces
in front of the bima, slapping a palm
on a thigh, and all the ancient nodders and dodderers,
the limpers and tremorers fidget
in their seats; the cousins
flown in from the East snore--
mouths agape; the great-uncle
who suddenly surfaced twiddles
his wizened thumbs.How embarrassing!
The dreaming girl
smiles inside the dream,
then laughs out loud.Copyright 2007 Judy Kronenfeld
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A Visit to a Temple
I was going to a temple to pray
Not because of any religious fervour or necessity
But due to a compulsion.
I was newly married
And my comely wife had resolved to produce a religious man in me.I walked a victim of her wish.
I seldom go to a temple
As a matter of fact, any religious place
Arouses a sense of artificiality in me.
A sense that nullifies the omnipresence of God.And here I was, carrying a pitcher full of water
Moving towards my destination with affected graveness.
My mind mocked at me
Does God need a particular place, an office to reside?
I acted deaf.At a turn in the street, barely did I notice
That my feet had crippled countless ants underneath them.
Poor creatures, collecting food for the rainy season
Now wriggling, themselves food for other predators.
Clouds roared, their anger was deafening.I moved forward, a picture of guilt, my face grimaced
I felt like drowning myself in the water
Meant for bathing God
These innocent lives would have been saved
Had I not succumbed to my wife’s wishes, I was penitent.I didn’t know when I was at the temple gate
Jingle of bells, sweet incense, evergreen trees, soothing ambience
Everything lightened the weight sitting on my chest.
After a ceremonious bow, I stepped inside
The weight re-clung to my heart with ever increasing forcefulness.The path up to the sanctum sanctorum was a labyrinth for me
Small insects of various species were feasting
On the food bits and sweets, scattered on the temple floor.
A myriad of them were dead, a myriad in the process of dying
Stuck in their breakfast, trampled over by the feet of devotes.I couldn’t muster courage to reach up to God, somehow I returned home,
The sun walking with me, white and ashamed.
Someone in me went on repeating that I had grown mad.
Thinking of such insignificant things as insects dying
Liable to die at any given moment. Go to a psychiatrist, he told me.I took little heed of him.
Today, I am a writer.Copyright 2007 Deepak Kapur
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Beside the Dosewallips River
It was a morning of river music,
the same river that sang all night
in and under my dreams, moving
my hands toward your body, and I
forgot everything I ever learned except
our love-times. I forgot everything
I can never tell you. The river carried me
on its back, and now it seems I am towing it,
testing the ground along the bank with my stick,
through knee-high ferns and the downed trees.
An unknown bird is romping on the rocks,
and all the while the river is rushing and going,
music that can only be towed by the heart
into the morning of one particular day, this one
that is here and shining, and forever now.Copyright 2007 Jeanne Lohmann
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Novillada at Malaga
Do you remember the novillero Gallen at Malaga?
Do you remember his second bull, the little one,
That got to him and tossed him and how Gallen ran after him
Slapping at his flank and turned him around
Punching at his head and cursing him.Do you remember the Swedes that hooted him?
They sat behind us in the sun cheering for the bull
Cheering loudest when the little bull got at Gallen again.But then he dusted himself,
And asked for the muleta.
Gallen brought the animal forward with a natural,
Then passed him closer,
Then passing him slower and more emotional still,
La Malagueta quickly silent,
Gallen controlling the bull around him
With passes each slower and still closer
And finally releasing the emotion with the pase de pecho.The bull, tongue hanging, was reduced.
Gallen walked away from him, glaring at the quieted Swedes.
Gallen turned back to him, and sighting with the estoca
Gallen advanced upon him, sweeping low with the muleta
And swording him smoothly between the shoulders to the hilt
The bull dropped.The cheering from the shade would not end and
They cut him both ears and the tail
And after they finished cheering him in the shade
Gallen came to us in the sun
And tossed the bloody bull elements among the Swedes.
The Swede behind us caught an ear and dropped it, horrified.
Do you remember the bloody ear in the sun at Malaga?copyright 2007 Peter Dahlstrand
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quiet, like smoke
lightning stabs her concrete slab now laid bare her
secrets floating through naked trees behind her once
home then swirling rubble a wooden spoon a scrap
rag of velvet curtain carnelian like the blood of her
son when missing three verminous days of salt water
soaked blueberry muffin and water moccasins
coiled in fruit baskets poisonous as the wicked
witch of the wind whipping the sea into vengeful
surge she turns and in her eyes I see reflected the
gulf, now quiet, like smokecopyright 2007 Leslie Wilson
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Zy4Bdq5
To get in, type all seven
as solemnly
as you wipe the rim of a glass
just to know the sound.
They refuse to tell
whether you are
among the chosen.
Try to name
their brambled syllables:
you will fail,
you will be silenced.
Copy all seven
and you will be smitten--
not at once,
but some evening
in mid-September
when, almost home,
you glimpse
between dark branches
a full moon
spelling your last word
random
and untranslatable.copyright 2007 Therese L. Broderick
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March
Walking in the woods, thinking about the coming war,
late snow sifting down, I startled some geese
in the nearby cornfields; they took off in squadrons, bugles
blaring; the whump, whump of their wingbeats, rotors
in the wind. I was thinking about Li Po's "Grief in Early Spring,"
and I grew colder, knowing what lies ahead, all those sons
flying off with bright fanfares, returning home in silence.Here, the Jordan Creek cuts through the marshes, rushing
over stones, over pieces of ice. And the snow keeps on falling,
softly, lightly--the coverlet a mother might settle on a cradle,
as she watches her newborn sleep to make sure he's breathing,
his small chest still moving, up, and down.copyright 2007 Barbara Crooker
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Moving the Bookstore, Part One
We were there all day.
The elephants grew restless.
The sheer volume of volumes,
we said to each other,
seeking comfort. The sheer
endlessness of the words of man.
In one carton I packed a
cumulus of Updikes. They stacked
nicely like cups.
In another Mailer rubbed
fretfully up against
Malamud. In the end
box upon box, an
omnium-gatherum, a towering mon-
ument to all we’d forgathered.
In our dreams the elephants
pulled us over the mountain.
In our dreams we made a new
bookstore wherein flowed a brook
of honey; wherein flowered
our restless heartmeat, our restless
hunger for more fiction,
more biography, more of the
high sweet refinement, our poetry.copyright 2007 Corey Mesler
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printfriendlyMoving the Bookstore, Part Two
Someone mentioned the Tower
of Babel. Someone
Borges’ library. The books mumbled
and clucked as we
swaddled them. We were reassuring.
We were gentle. Someone
mentioned Alexandria. Late in the
day birds gathered outside
our doors. The sky grew dark. Some-
one said how still it all
seemed, how hauntingly quiet, the
boxes lightly sealed.copyright 2007 Corey Mesler
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The Relationship
She’s mad at me.
I apologize, which makes her madder.
I apologize for apologizing, and for not thinking to not apologize.
Now I’m in big trouble.I apologize for my penmanship and for my gambling,
For not calling sooner or calling before I called.
She didn’t know about these things. You’ve made it
Much worse, she says.I apologize for making it worse and for not making it even worse,
Which it seemed she wanted,
For apologizing and for not apologizing sooner and more
Genuinely or apologizing before I began to apologize.If I have abated her anger, I apologize.
If I have stirred her up, I am truly sorry.
Now she looses it.
I beg. I apologize for begging and I apologize for apologizingWithout first asking permission to apologize – or at least beg
An apology before the fact and then apologizing afterwards.
I cannot control these things, I say. I cannot even try.
I apologize for not trying. I apologize for trying not to try.It’s over, she says.
I plead, I say I’m sorry for even starting anything, for any beginning
I ever initiated. I know nothing, I say.
I’m sewer gas, or worse. I’m sorry for the smell. I cower in your shadow.I want what you want; I want it to be over.
I shouldn’t have said that. I apologize. I’m sorry, I say.
She turns around. I love you, she says.
I apologize, which makes her love me even more.copyright 2007 Erich Haught
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Readying the Rag
Come to think of it, we’re not
Lost, said the dust, having returned
Home to the coffee table, crestingNow on that morning’s water rings,
Squatting on the broad banks
Of the Big Book of Rivers & StreamsAnd in the (dust)bowl of hand-
Painted apples and pears. Tribes
Of other grime loitered in the air,Unsure of where to come to rest,
Noticing the woman of the house
With her cleaning rag and spray canOf Pledge—O vision of apocalypse!
Then the phone rang, and she began
To laugh in her mad, hystericalWay, pure henchwoman, laughing
And listening, readying the rag,
Waiting for all the dust the settle.copyright 2007 Jon Ballard
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Sagebrush Sutra
During a drought, its favorite climate,
it smells bitter as an old dollar bill,
the kind soda machines won't take.
It is ubiquitously ugly, and the color
of the last place in the world.
It's why lizards mate, and antelope,
who are faster than cheetahs, never run.It's the only lover of rattlesnakes
and living death to certain kinds of rain.
It's where chalky soil finds a home
and cactus a brother. It's the holy bush
without fire, the devil's pillow when he's tired.It's the end of civilization and the beginninng
of what we can't imagine.
It is where artists find their inspiration
and how they lose it.
It was the first thing to grow outside
the Garden, and the last thing to die
before the Apocalypse.It is not heart, not mind, not Buddha
even when everything else is.
It's why cats make the same awful violin sound
when they fight or fuck,
and why dogs far away bark
at nothing on the quietest nights.It has something to do with jet engines
and a little with unmarked cars.
It is the absolute proof of E=Mc2,
the certitude in the uncertainty principle,
and concrete evidence of God's existence.
It took root in the last second before the Big Bang
and is the secret material found in Cupid's arrows,
and Thor's hammer, and the last thing,
beneath hope, in Pandora's box.It's a reedy, pungent bush,
that doesn't care a fig about us,
and yet if we ignore it, we miss
one of the gateless gates to heaven
on earth.copyright 2007 Burton Bradley
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Now You're Home
Now you’re home, but the changes
have you scared: the trees sprouted
in the sitting room, the hunters’ horns
and rolling fields of winter grain,
the still pond frozen at the edge,
axes ringing down the hall.I should apologize, I know.
I see you waiting for some word,
a reason, perhaps, the freezer is warm
and full of books, the oven a home
for muddy shoes. Don’t worry.
I can explain it all.You were away so long: an hour,
maybe more. I remember what you said:
I am leaving now. You even wore a coat.
And then the door, irrevocable,
frightful barrier beyond my command,
your footsteps on the walk, leading away,
to the emptiest silence I have ever known.See how old I’ve grown. And yet you are
the same, only better — a rare breeze
bearing woodsmoke and far-damp earth,
unaccountable violets, orange blossoms,
a veil of longing I can’t describe.I feel like the last man on earth,
revived from his curse to stay alive.copyright 2007 William Michaelian
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printfriendlyA Poet Making Scrambled Eggs
A poet making scrambled eggs
imagines chickens scratching in the yard,
warm sun upon a never-painted fence,
an old dog napping on the porch
stoically resigned to all its fleas.He feels the breeze on his arms
as he wields his axe behind the barn
with an angry rooster looking on.By the time the frying pan is warm,
a poet making scrambled eggs
has scattered grain on barren ground
and chopped a pile of good dry kindling.When he beats the eggs inside a bowl,
he hears church bells ringing — looks up,
half-expects to see his great-grandfather
sitting at the table in somber Sunday clothes.A poet making scrambled eggs
picks up a lump of cheese and sees
a meadow and a stream beyond the farm,
sad willows bending down to shield
young love’s embrace with modest hands.When he lifts his meal from the pan,
a poet making scrambled eggs
no longer knows his name or cares.Instead, he wonders at the years
that led him here, the folly and the pain,
and the food that tastes so good.copyright 2007 William Michaelian
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The Old Man and the Sea
A couple of feet from the continent's edge,
his lone spare form, cane in hand,
resolute as any of the houses
among those further down along
the bluff, leans into a wind
coming in full bore offshore.Far as we can see,
whitecaps roll so precisely, so mathematically
across the jade-green water's chop,
while from above the inland hills
a hawk drops in the sluicing wind,
some small prey's heart gathered to its own.copyright 2007 M. K. Meder
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printfriendlyUltimate Objective Reality
My faith, though growing more vague
the older I get, grows stronger,
having assembled it the way I collect
stones and rocks in the mountains,
the desert, at lakeshores, by rivers,
on Pacific beaches, incidentally,
when it pleases me, to use as paperweights,
to fill blank places in the spring garden.Now, on a Saturday, after dinner,
after turning into a corner store
to buy the Sunday paper, we see
the proprietor, not behind the counter
but at the end of it, on his knees
on a dull red prayer rug, bowing east,
rocking back on his heels. Again. Again.We wait, regard the sorry state
of the inventory, the dust, disarray,
swaths on the shelves empty of goods.
Finally, I add the expression
of the eyes in the unshaven face
to my collection: a beatific
stone it is, and, like the others,
nearly unconscious of our being here.copyright 2007 M. K. Meder
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The Seed
after Gu ChengIt is strange that death goes on,
that after I'm buried I come to live.
Lying down among flowers, I am mutilated
by the light. This is my opportunity
to greet the sun, to say hello to the forest.Looking closely, I see an oak change
into a sparrow, stare at a garden which turns
into a desert. Their voices are only appearance.
The sounds I believe are but a child's, digging
a grave for his rabbit, as the birds scatter.copyright 2007 Leonard J. Cirino
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printfriendlyI step into the world with many lives.
One is not finished, one other has not yet begun.
Sidling past the river stones and bark canoe
I hear the meter of the forest, the gnawing insects,
the heaves of cows in the meadow, the ferment
of fallen apples. In the orchard, the bugs' fervor
praises the fruit, the cowflops are profound
with mushrooms and maggots. Lifting the skirts
of cedars, a tarnished wind brings metallic odors.
It is a day to lay flowers on graves and sweep up
the clutter of old wreaths. A few red breasts surge
while I saunter to the barn and finger wormy leather,
step into the river at the earth's ledge.copyright 2007 Leonard J. Cirino
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Crows in Wheatfield
hazardous
like a desert gilled
with fire--and peppered onyx
in a lush frenzy
of saffron--a brew scythes could cull
if they writhed
like snakes--a landscape
strummed by fever,
replete with vague lyres.
all you hear
is anxiety
vaporing off the canvas--a dirge that could,
after decades,
saw off your lobe.the scene
wavers like a stung pond,
fueling a hint
of racked petals--the facade peace becomes
when inveterate paintrembles.
copyright 2007 Chris Crittenden
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Prophetess
My father calls me Deborah.
He says I see things others cannot see
in daylight. When he sits across from me
everything he is this minute pours away
faster than childhood, as if Hebrew
and a daughter dislodge the buried place.In the snuffed out kitchen he breaks down
my name's meaning. D is for Dalet, a delight,
a door, and V is for Vav, the hook, the great
connector. The best is R, that's Reth
for radiant - there is a beginning.
He's patient, his words are the sounds
of his body breaking and rebuilding
as he nudges his coffee toward me. A sip.
We are mind on mind,
back and forth repeating.My mother glares, standing by the stove, hands
twisted, each on each. One fingervein
of sunlight sweeps in, tipping the bolt
of her eyes, jealous, not a mother of female waters,
not faintly mayyim nukbin
but lit like she's aiming
for somewhere else.
But when he loops his arms around
me, presses his face in the borrowed scoop
of my neck, he smells like good warm bagels
and so I exist, and so I am presennt - heenayni.*mayyim nukbin - female waters where souls are said to originate,
heenayni - I am presentcopyright 2007 Nanette Rayman Rivera
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The Year of the Rabbit
As a child I feared the night, the best word
for all the dark things not yet named for me.
I could swallow the word whole.
It could swallow me.The night has bright teeth, sweet breath.
We count these teeth, call them stars.
Stars eat their own. Orion once had more
than a belt, had a quiver full of arrows.
The sky swallows the moon one quarter at a time,
has a weak stomach, can never keep it down.The sky will even take time in its mouth,
the whole white egg of it in the unhinged jaw.
Clocks slow like cars moving through high water,
old trucks lumbering up hills.I used to watch the rabbit hutch,
its shingles gleaming in the frostlight.
Night moved with the strength of water.
Sometimes the whole house was borne away,
sleepers on a raft of dreams, mouths moving in rabbit ways.Our bones have been human too long,
absorbed too much starlight. They grow
less heavy, less dense, ease us toward oceans,
the watery mirrors of the sky.
Some lose the ability to tell where water ends and air begins.
Rabbits count the doubled stars as something they should fear.It's not as if we've never been rabbits,
never slept in the hollows of trees, the blood sound
steady in our ears like rain. Wet eyes shining
in the dark with something of the moon in them.copyright 2007 Brent Fisk
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Intervention, Divine and Otherwise
i.
Drunk, you sway like a sea anemone,
fixed, expansive, foreign,
bright secrets swimming in the folds of your skirt.
Your eyes pool the tide's indecision,
its infinite shades between wet and dry,
as though perfection were possible at each level.
The secret of whale song is locked in your mouth;
the seabed might rock if you wept,
barnacled hulls would surely shift.
Even the first cells that slowly gathered to creep onto land
might change their mind, if you changed yours.ii.
Your letters never give the colors of the walls,
or the texture of the dining hall trays.
I want you to help me feel the wool blanket at the foot of your bed,
the rust on the wrought-iron bars.
I want to be invited to guard your rest,
as shadows stretch across the tiles between two and four each afternoon.
Instead you write lists of what you have lost,
and what has been taken from you:
your belt and hair dryer, the bone arrowhead you found in Montana
that summer, and have kept in you wallet since.
All against the rules. Everything you held, against the rules.iii.
But you. You return to water your own plants, to feed your dead mother's three cats, to pick peppermint from the patch beside the bungalow. Your first morning, when the dog-day cicadas' shrill call reaches us through open windows and thrift-store curtains, when the crazed chorus reaches us through you, you just say, "The cicadas are back," and smile our return into sunlit sleep.copyright 2007 Danielle Lapidoth
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For Lady Lynne
New York days and nights
Lodged in the back
Of my memory bank
Like tiny splinters beneath
A hangnailMy mind stoned like
Merlin the magician stirring
A magic potion
On a starless night
Lost in a whirlwind of lust
That comes and goes
Like the tideMy words empty as a tramp's pocket
As you allow me to probe the
Lining of your soul
Making it one last time to the
Music of a thousand crickets
Rubbing their hind legs in applausecopyright 2007 A. D. Winans
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Letter to the Young Poet Who Stole My Lines
I've used up three legal tablets thumbing
through the alphabet for words civil enough
to be left on paper. How do I tell you
entire poems fray at the edges when pluckedfrom their nests and told to hold their own
among the wiggly legs of new born strangers?
Learn to move more slowly through the language.
Whole poems wait there simply for the taking.You must be like a child in a fine candy shop.
You may look all you want but you may touch nothing
unless you're willing to pay for it. You must
wade into the history of things taking everythingyou own with you. You must learn to ponder what
you discover there. Somewhere in the silence
the poems will find you. You must learn which words
best define you and braid them carefully into your artwithout tampering with the celestial machinery.
Language is illusive and expensive stuff.
You must learn to gather its atoms with one hand
and write down their names with the other.copyright 2007 Fredrick Zydek
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Autobiography
I'm a child of the moon,
Born in the arms of the Crab.
True friend of Cupid's
And a good gardener
With empty hands.
A follower of butterfies,
Lover of seas
I have many kids.
I have given birth to all flowers of the world,
With
Or
Without thorns.
There's no one
So lonely as
I am...Copyright 2007 Golshan Moslemi
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printfriendlyThat Stranger
Every day at sunset a man crosses the alley whistling. I like him. I've taught the lilacs who sit on the edge of our wall to say hi to him and I've told some of them to jump over his head and shoulders. I wish at my birthday he would whistle a birthday tune, knock on the door and hand me those dried withered lilacs. I would plant them in the garden next to the wall to bloom at the day of my death. Then after a while he might come and put them on my name whistling a funeral march....
Copyright 2007 Golshan Moslemi
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printfriendlyTell you what
One day I helped a blind man cross the street. When he was gone, I saw that his cane was left in my hand!
Copyright 2007 Golshan Moslemi
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printfriendlyHe Smiled
Today, I felt different. Absolutely different, because I had a rendezvous with Death. I was going to meet him finally. Such a long time....
So I wore my best perfume, took my umbrella and went out. Oh my God I had left something. My heart! I had left it! I went back and took it and pushed it to the bottom of my pocket.
We were going to meet under the apple tree, which was full of blossoms.
I was getting closer to it. I was seeing him now. He was wearing dark and walking around. He was in a hurry. He didn't see me at first. But then he turned his head back and saw me. Smiled. Came closer and put his head on my back. He was looking straight into my eyes. No words. He was taller than me, with a strange smell. I couldn't recognize whether he was kind or not. Anyway I liked him and I had walked such a long way to see him. We were walking along the river. No words. We sat on a wooden bench. His hand was now on my shoulder. He took a blossom out of his pocket and held it in front of my nose. I smelled it. It smelled good, even better than my perfume. I put my head on his shoulder and. . .
Now here, I don't know where, my hand is in my pocket but my heart is not in it. It's missing. Maybe....Copyright 2007 Golshan Moslemi
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printfriendly...In Fact
Fate is a silk curtain.
Religion is the window.
You look outside but you can't exactly see what's going on out there.
If you draw the curtain to one side and open the window, you will see everything clear: as clear as it should be.
Before this you felt a fool, but now you feel different: as different as it should be.
You are enjoying watching outside....
Your grandfather comes, shuts the window and closes the curtain again and goes. Without saying a word, you go to your room and again drown in your fool self.Copyright 2007 Golshan Moslemi
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A Recidivist to His Former Captor
You live in a region overgrown
with my imagination, wild
with forests that conceal the odd
wood shack or penitentiary,
perfumed and shady as your neck
last time you craned to reach my throat,
your greeting kiss an empty threat.I picture your tree-choked hamlet snug
beside the state corrections house:
a holding pen for social workers,
guards, and cooks; a captive bride
to an incarcerated spouse.
I'd go there even now, propelled
by longing's catapult across
the continent until I burst
the window pane above your bed
or, falling short, clawed underground
to tunnel through the floor, emerging
mud-blind like a mole of love.We'd learn to live as rodent and wife,
I tied to the ashen hearth, you wed
to every wayward breeze. Each time
you left me I'd get by on scent:
the sultry ghosts in your armoire,
a collar's smoldering cologne
are all I'd need to fabricate
a home in this one-prison town,
this speck on the sentimental map,
where lifers plot to clear the wall
and parolees scheme to break back in.Copyright 2007 Joshua Coben
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Table of Contents 2002-2007Return to Barnwood magazine home page.
Return to Barnwood Press home page.