Category — Poetry

How To Feel Life

The basement stairwell is dark, no ghosts in the corner where I go to smell my mother

in an old black file cabinet that holds her life, lost that February day as snow wisps floated

across the highway, cold angels promising to lay a coat by midnight.

I carry her keys, on a golden chain with a large brass C, insert one at the cabinet top,

wait for the welcome pop of the lock, metal against metal, it’s open.

The top drawer — bank files, an old business ledger, a stained satin book with raised pink

flowers, Our Baby’s First Year, my sister’s history in great detail down to the final ounce

in her bottle, mine beneath, jotted afterthoughts seven years later.

The third drawer — the death drawer, funeral guest book, cemetery plot papers, two glass

cylinders, seven-day mourning candles, one for her, one for Dad, empty save for burnt wicks.

The bottom drawer — jewelry, safe from intruders, my pearls, her pearls, my gold, her gold,

bracelets, earrings, filigree pins, all hidden under the death drawer.

I savor the second drawer, slide the hinge, pull it open, there it is. Her makeup case, red leather

(Red is life, she said, tie a red ribbon on your babies’ cribs). I unsnap it, inhale her stale

sweetness, pull open lipstick, remembering the sound she’d make as she smacked ruby lips

together, mwah, mwah, and then paah! she’d open her mouth, forming a wordless O

as if surprised. In a plastic container, pressed powder, a cracked circle. She’d reach over,

pat my nose with the soft pad. Why is your nose red? she’d ask, clogging my pores to bring on

next week’s rash. Put on some lipstick, she’d tell me then, you look pale, tired, you should rest.

Eye cream, blue to match her new polyester pantsuit, pants for a lady who’d always skirted up

for her man, her love who’d slipped away on another winter night.

She’d pull out the red leather bag at lunch, shared tuna at the diner, sugared pancakes at IHOP,

Kosher corned beef at the deli, I’ll take my half home, eat it later, she’d tell me as she prepared

her face to reenter her lonely apartment when I’d leave to ply the highway home.

I close my eyes, take another whiff, snap the clasp, lay it in the drawer of scents.

Next week I’ll return to feel her around me, hear her words, nice girls don’t shave their legs, 

stay away from Palisades Park, don’t let a boy touch your body, your nose is red, your lips 

are pale, you need rest you need rest you need rest.

I pull the key from the lock, push in the oval — click — and climb the stairs toward my life,

vow to change the bulb on the wall before my next visit to the place where I go

to smell my mother.

About the poet:

Gail Fishman Gerwin’s memoir Sugar and Sand received 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist designation, and she earned four consecutive Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards honorable mentions. Her poetry appears in journals including Paterson Literary Review, U.S. 1 Worksheets, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, Caduceus, Calyx, The American Voice in Poetry, and Lips.

Custard Apple

This is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging like an emblem over many a shadowland.
It looks a bit like a green-colored grenade
Or, at times, like a heart too—
Interior filled up with the tantalizing smell of gunpowder,
And its taste—inexplicable!

The place where we used to live in childhood, there was a haunted house nearby, full of ancient trees and creepers and moss. One evening, starting up from his siesta and in the manner of a detective protagonist, my grandfather took me with him to that house. A forlorn place swaying in the breeze. From among a cluster of trees he pointed to me one. It was an ordinary tree with a few fruits hanging from it, which looked like grenades to me. It was the mewa. Custard-apple mewa. My grandfather said — These are fruits of paradise. The only heavenly fruit allowed to be exhibited on earth. Look at them closely and keep it quiet. No sooner had he said this than our bodies shuddered like fire-crackers. Engulfing me along with my thrills, my grandfather’s pox-spotted fair body and dusk-colored long beard blew in the sporadic draft.

The sun is setting on the other bank of the clear-streamed Harabati. On that horizon, a distant banana plantation begins to appear. A guerrilla boy emerges from the plants and wanders all alone as if in a fairytale—
Without his cohorts, cut off from his group forever,
Whirling about and always getting lost,
A guerrilla boy all by himself
With a custard apple in his right hand, a grenade in his left,
On the left ear a little ring, a Kalashnikov hanging from the shoulder,
Wearing a steel-colored jacket, a bullet necklace on the neck
With his heart in the middle—all kept in place with a lot of pins.

In the distant, sunset-smeared banana plantation, an outlandish guerrilla boy.
Talks nimbly—in precise terrorist terms.

There is neither other language nor idiom among the vegetation than this—
And against terror—frequent, wonderful little acts of terror…
Having accomplished each one of them, cupping his hands he drinks water
And whirling about and getting continuously lost
This guerrilla boy becomes a solitary terror artist.

And this is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging like an emblem in many a shadowy land
The sunset-polished, dismal grenade fruit
With the tantalizing smell of gunpowder inside,
And a taste—inexplicable!

The grenade, on the other hand, is a wonderful earthly fruit,
A bit tangy, but still a delicious earthly fruit,
Hanging like an emblem in many a sunny land,
Full of the addictive smell of an exotic fruit inside.
This evening the mingled smell of custard apples and grenades are driving alien forests insane.
An outlandish guerrilla boy
With a custard apple in his right hand, a grenade in his left,
And his heart in the middle. Thus balancing the fruits
He staggers across that perilous bridge on the road to heaven,
Knocks at heaven’s gate with news of a yet more exotic, symbolic, earthly fruit…
A long way behind him, the queued up pilgrims of virtue wait for their turn,
They are an alarmingly long way behind…

This is that fruit
That miracle
Hanging in many sunny lands of the earth like an emblem.

Custard Apple in Original Bengali – ‘Ataphal’

[Ataphal; Translated from original Bengali by Subrata Augustine Gomes, poet, writer, translator]

About the poet:

Masud Khan (b. 1959) is a poet, writer, and translator who emerged as an important poet in the 1980s, mostly supported by counter-cultural little magazines. Over the past two decades or more his poetry and essays have featured in magazines in Bangladesh, India, USA, UK, Belgium, Romania, Malaysia and Canada. Sajjad Sharif writes about Masud - The poetic language he uses is also multifarious – “tatsama” (Sanskrit root) words are often paired up with vernacular or colonial English, a constant slippage of nouns and adjectives shining up old-fashined sentences. In the end, language sets up like trap a network of sound.” Masud Khan’s poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies including Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond (Norton Anthology, New York/London), and Padma Meghna Jamuna: Modern Poetry from Bangladesh by Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature. Presently a resident of Toronto, Canada, Masud Khan works as an electrical engineer.

[ Extracted from the Kaurab, a literary webzine & reprinted with permission:

http://www.kaurab.com/english/bengali_poetry/masud.html]

Ground Bound

Everyone on the train swallows at the same time,

bonded by blocked passages.  Some passengers

read passages from books.  Was a book

originally named a book for its form?

Its particular material way of being bonded to itself?

Or is a book defined merely by the specific words,

their specific order, no matter their means of being presented?

You know why I must ask this question.

I wonder if this man’s O will bond to my B.

Hopefully not.

I desire certain molecular relationships not to get too serious.

We met today, let’s leave it at that.

Please, no odious bonds.

Don’t follow me home, my body

wishing for magic wands.

When you board it’s a risk you take, proximity,

the collision of clothing articles,

flesh coverings, flesh itself,

its natural perfumes bored to stench.

She could look it up and tell you with faux ease, but instead

she’ll admit not knowing the definition of the word particle.

How small is its unit?  In what instances is it used?

Light?  Water?  Sound?  Skin?

The last leg has a cramp and prays for relief, to bond

with a companion before bonding with Earth.

The Theatre

I’ll meet you right in front of the theatre.

It might rain later right in front of the theatre.

So I’ll look at the sky and imagine

it’s raining right now right in front of the theatre.

I like to be prepared.  I’m over it

before it ever happened right in front of the theatre.

It doesn’t seem like the people are watching

the show right in front of the theatre.

Answer your phone and entertain your older sister

for 15 minutes right in front of the theatre.

Sure, kick a pebble while you’re waiting,

but don’t spit right in front of the theatre.

How do fashionable young women wear their hair these days

while waiting to underdose right in front of the theatre?

I’ll meet you right in front of the theatre.

If you eat my face and leave a gaping hole

my public appearances will be much more

highly requested right in front of the theatre.

You can smoke a cigarette and feel

even worse right in front of the theatre.

The smoke will fall in and the smoke will fall out,

just like the ants in the sauerkraut,

(the song your grandfather sang), right in front of the theatre.

Maybe he’s assembling one of those 5,000 piece puzzles

he loves to occupy himself with right in front of the theatre.

You think you saw a man hover

above the street right in front of the theatre.

Actually, you’re not sure you really saw

him at all right in front of the theatre.

Was it your uncle looking for 1/9 of an eye

belonging to a jigsaw unicorn to ride

into some future thinning cloud right in front of the theatre?

No, you’re not high right in front of the theatre.

You’re low enough to see slow death checking itself out

in a tiny mirror right in front of the theatre.

How do fashionable young women avoid harnessing

their dissatisfaction to their faces these days while

thinking insensitive thoughts right in front of the theatre?

Wait for your mustache to grow back right in front of the theatre.

Stand in an invisible bathroom line right in front of the theatre.

Will you choose chains, or will your prop be hot steam

seeping out of the pothole right in front of the theatre?

This is all too dramatic for me, you say

right in front of the theatre.

Toil

Each generation throbs

in a particular way,

but always a capacity for

making believe.

Each has trod and tripped

on the universe.

A garment

ripped

seamlessly.

The whole is not the half of it.

Who we are

is what we remember

with intensity.

Each longing to be

its better self.

To finally be

a mere monster,

set loose

in its own home,

which from so far away

has appeared

this whole time to be

a diorama.

About the poet:

Jillian Brall received her Master’s in Creative Writing in 2009 from The New School. Alongside Gregory Crosby, she is co-creator/co-editor of the online poetry and art journal, Lyre Lyre. Poems have recently appeared in The Best American Poetry Blog, Praxilla Journal, Connotation Press, Esque, The Tower Journal, The Portable Boog Reader, Unshod Quills, and Ping Pong Magazine. She is also a musician and visual artist, focused on painting, collage, photography and video art.

The Afternoon of a Town Supervisor

These nymphs that I would perpetuate:

           so clear

           And light, that it floats in the air

           Heavy with leafy slumbers.

            Did I love a dream?

                 From The Afternoon of a Faun—Stéphane Mallarmé

  Reclined on his lawn chair in the garden,

  an improbable, pearly airship slips in

  through his hot droopy lids; it hovers

  in an emerald sky just above his front yard’s

  temperate trees, now grown swollen

  into a thick, grasping jungle where

  a seething tiger crouches, waits to wreak

  vengeance on the neighbors, while a dowager

  angel in a Dior evening gown, her hair

  blown one way, her gown the other,

  in no wind at all, plucks a harp above his four

  bedroom, three bath, Dutch Colonial home.

  Suddenly roused by the tiger roar

  of the cardiologist’s Toro rider mower

  next door, he is not puzzled  by the sudden

  absence of the airship, or saddened

  that the  trees are skinny again, with no teeth,

  and that the sky is empty and pale blue.

  He is content with his senses. A plain

  thirst now lifts him from his chair.

  He goes to the fridge, plucks

  from a bunch of cool white grapes —

                                the store-bought kind — thick-skinned,

                                that when held to the sun do not shine,

  and from which wine is never made.

God Plays a Buddhist Joke on Allen Ginsberg

Spectacular attacks! Mass casualties! Symbolic targets!

How strange the FBI speaks.

I feel that I’m trapped in an Allen Ginsberg poem.

We thought Ginsberg was dead but maybe he’s already been reincarnated

As a (latent) gay copywriter for the feds.

It could be possible.

Allen the New Jersey Buddhist would be a perfect target for God’s

Queer sense of irony.

I can see Ginzy there, in a windowless office deep in the bowels

Of the J. Edgar Hoover Building, furiously keying a laptop,

Next to the cold storage room for John Edgar’s furs,

Crinkling his nose at the strong odor of mothballs.

He churns out text furiously, page after page, terse press releases

Filled with hyperbolic language about

The War On Terrorism, Multiple National Threats,

Whether We Should Detain the Dalai Lama, and

The Hidden Menace of Japanimation.

Occasionally, the old Allen’s rebel spirit leaks through

Into the tight confines of the present life of his soul.

Osama! Oh sandwich! Oh, balls! he types, then abruptly stops.

Why did I write that, his now self-censoring brain thinks.

Should I turn myself in, put myself on report?

Then he thinks of the trim, crew-cut young special agent in pressed pants

Who periodically visits the building to drop off paper work.

He wonders why his thoughts so often turn idly to the image of this handsome youth.

He pulls his tie tighter around his neck,

Makes a mental note to see the staff psychologist next week, and

Returns to his patriotic work.

Crime and Self-Punishment

I should have known when I first thought to do the crime

That eventually I’d catch myself.

It wouldn’t be hard.

I’d leave a trail even I could follow.

Big, deep footprints,

Fingerprints found everywhere

Clear and sharp on greasy window glass,

And lots of threatening letters

Tied up in neat bundles.

When I finally cornered myself,

I’d stand there defiant,

Shouting, I don’t need a lawyer,

I’ll defend myself!

I would give myself a choice.

Would I seek a jury of my many moods,

Or that small, persistent voice of my internal magistrate?

Well, I don’t trust juries anyway.

After all, what would I do if the trial ran long and

I wanted to get home to eat but couldn’t?

I might send myself up the river,

All because of a delayed dinner.

I might tragically miscarry myself,

Lock myself away for years.

So I elected to risk the possible wrath

Of my merciless conscience.

The trial began badly:

I made a brilliant and damning

Opening prosecutorial statement.

“I will show this court,”

I said into the looking-glass,

“Why I should be made to live in dire guilt for years to come,

“Why I have not been harsh enough to behave responsibly,

“Why I am a menace to myself,

“Why I should make an example of myself…”

Against such an opening

My defense was brave but feeble.

I swore to tell the truth,

The whole truth,

Nothing but the truth,

I couldn’t lie to myself.

The end was a foregone conclusion:

Whap! the gavel fell

And I stood to receive my sentence:

Life without parole.

Lentil Soup

Lentil soup is brackish,

Turbid, brown, mysterious.

You lift your soup spoon

Out of the murk,

And ladle up what looks like

The tops of many skulls

Tossed away after trepannings.

The spinach yields the lentils

Reluctantly — it clings stubbornly

To the stainless steel,

While the brown stock is viscous

And opaque; it could conceal

Crocodiles and piranha.

The taste is earthy — your lips

Withdraw instinctively, pause,

Sample again, and like.

It feels like you’re swallowing

A swamp, frogs and all,

Yet it sits well on the stomach

And nourishes.

About the poet:

Dwyer Jones, when he isn’t writing poetry and essays, is a medical editor who lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, with his wife, the artist Loring Hughes, and their two cockatiels, Freddie and Frances.

FOR THE ROSES

I think of her watching the

last rose petals on a

day like today, say deep

August, browning like

an old rubber doll

she might have left

in an attic in Canada.

I think of her pressing

skin against glass, a sense

of summertime falling,

that sense of fall

that  that Sylvia Plath

wrote of. Or maybe some

freeze frame of what

is going, moving on.

I see her pale arms,

sea mist velvet jeans

hugging hips that

never will not be boyish.

In the wind, gone

voices move close

to her cheek bones. In

this frame she could be in

a fancy 30′s gown. Some

thing is raw, some thing

is broken. It has to be

a full moon

etching black water.

She has to know that

from what is torn

and scarred, some

thing almost too

exquisitely beautiful

is already stirring,

some thing dark

as coal becoming

diamond, insistent,

dying to be born

About the poet:

Lyn Lifshin has written more than 125 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A, and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. You can read an interview with Lyn by Emily Vogel in Ragazine.CC archives by googling “lyn lifshin interview ragazine”.

Landslides in Slow Motion

My banshee

storms better than anyone

she gets up at dawn with her legs and plush abdomens

when I wake

The BBC is a pocket of rubies

in whose knowledge I reflect

against a dozen lives

the autonomous mind of a lemur

reaching nirvana

it was the start of a natural

catastrophe

one that is still unfolding

at an excruciatingly slow pace

I feel like a tree letting go of an embankment

our love is cleaved by a small crack

our house is sliding into the next century

one limb at a time

the complete poems of John Donne

and a swarm of bees

in my pseudopodia

we were dissolving into the intelligence of a single bee

we were learning how to use machines

building a simulated city from scratch

look how the people are erecting a statue

how they move in

when we give them electricity

and blue skies

Waltzing With You

I want to open the mouth God gave to you,

beautiful mutant. Can you see me in this dusk,

asking nothing of it? I feel sentimental. Feel like

Captain Janeway watching a planet implode.

When you sit down at your desk playing

your live-feed video game, you’re really

doing a waltz. And me, at my desk, I follow

your lead and smoke a cigarette over your shoulder.

Eventually you teach me how to walk on our floor

without upsetting Dave the lawyer

in apartment 3R who had has to get up early

and go to work. You teach me how to stuff peppers

with whatever we have in the cupboards.

And when I call out in my sleep at night,

you always call back to me. You always, I think,

tell me I’m dreaming. Or I dream you tell me

I’m dreaming, and I feel a little better.

[how is it that there aren’t enough chemicals]

how is it that there aren’t enough chemicals in certain

glands sending good messages or that I have to light

a verbena candle to will a calm list of scenes in my mind

I eat a sardine on a slice of sourdough perhaps the last

of my kind to do such a thing to eat softened bones

and blue skin with a glass of wine candle-lit waiting

for you to come home and take off your pants

I am prepared (I think) to forgive myself yet it does not

enter into routine − how is it that a message can be

sent by blood by stem or by leaf? I lift my feelers

to sense your distance like a television

and what of forgiveness? it sits in the pit at the epicenter

of a peach let’s call it passion the way I ruin

and ruin like a silk blouse let’s call it sentience

or rough wings opening on the back of a cockroach

cleaning our kitchen at night and years from now

let’s call it the way I evolved the way I was put together

this mouth toppled onto my chin these breasts

thrown together over the heart let’s call it something

with a good name that a person with the right wiring

would fathom like the way your body makes me want

only that which is free and given the way I go to it

willingly one pheromone at a time without thought

About the poet: 

Bianca Stone is the author of the chapbook “Someone Else’s Wedding Vows” from Argos Books, and has been published in Best American Poetry 2011, Conduit, and American Poetry Review. She is the co-founder and editor of Monk Books. Her next book, Antigonick, a new kind of comic book, and collaboration with Anne Carson, will be out in 2012 from New Directions. She lives in Brooklyn.

See also: http://whoisthatsupposedtobe.blogspot.com/, and poetrycomics.com.

Sean considers himself  a storyteller, critic, dabbling haiku poet and a photographer. Shooting with the Diana F+, a medium format film camera with a plastic lens. The manual focus camera has “cult” following dating back to the 60′s.

………………………………………………………………………………….

Sundialing

drifting off the map,
latitudinally lost…
sunset is your clock

………………………………………………………………………………….

The Poseur, the Poet

wanna-be bashos
will try to caption beauty
blowing zen moments

………………………………………………………………………………….

The Places You’ll Go…

journey long enough
and your life fades to a dream
dreamt by ten-year-olds

………………………………………………………………………………….

A Good Freestyle…

living life as if
she were one breath from drowning
she learned to swim well

………………………………………………………………………………….

Valued Stuff

rocks: the poor man’s gold
it all depends on the light
and your perspective

………………………………………………………………………………….

Made in the USA

he’d seen all the ads
re: the good life and he knew
he’d come out all right

………………………………………………………………………………….

In White Noise

the hush now past, gone,
not defeatist, just accepting,
he drifts through the din

………………………………………………………………………………….

Unanswered Letters to God

weighting dreams with time–
withstanding their whittling,
wondering, why me?

………………………………………………………………………………….
 

Like human beings, the Diana F+ is an unreliable machine. It will let you down half the time, blurring an image or misusing light among its more egregious flaws. But when the elements do come together the effect is magical and the resulting image can be uniquely special. I have composed haiku and senryu poems to companion my favorite images wrought from the Diana F+. Photography is a challenge to the ephemeral inevitability of life, a frozen millisecond framed in a certain tableau by a certain machine. Similarly, haiku poetry celebrates the impermanence of things, designing a poem out of the transitory nature of being. It’s been an ongoing pleasure of mine to pair these art forms together so that an altogether novel experience is rendered and perhaps, out of the chaos of modern life, some basic truth about existence may be empathetically enjoyed by strangers.

-Sean 

Sean Lotman is a native of Los Angeles. He lived in Tokyo for eight years and has recently relocated to Kyoto, Japan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in LPV Magazine and Grey Sparrow, among others.

His ongoing photo-haiku project can be viewed at http://idohaikuyou.blogspot.com/ and his photography site is http://seanlotman.com.

FAIR HARBOR

So August rolls in, the summer’s half gone.

Grit firmly embedded between my toes,

In old t-shirt and ragged cargos,

My flip flops clip-clopping on the boardwalk,

I see a vision in the dunes:

My childhood self, an elf with pail and shovel

Digging to China, about halfway there,

And I realize my life is half over.

For a moment I think it must be the heat:

Too much time in the sun, too much sand from the beach,

Too much barbecued meat, too much salt in the air.

Too much living the life. Then I think: who cares?

Because August’s still summer, even half over,

The surf is still running, the babes are still sunning,

My tan is still glowing, my biceps still showing

My life will go on forever.

About the poet:

Esta Fischer’s poetry has been published in New York Quarterly, Caper Literary Journal, PANK, The Blotter, and other journals.  

2011, THE YEAR OF THE METAL RABBIT

       for Roger Frank (1944-1972) and the Valenzuela brothers

The forty-third anniversary of the TET Offensive

and we are still burying evidence

trip-wired by an enemy we cannot see.

Is it change that breaks its frozen toes

on morning’s door sill?   I want to see

what a metal rabbit looks like, furred Humvee rattling

a Kabul street or the hare of hunger

uprooting rusty mortar casings

in a valley west of Da Nang, where my first

husband was ambushed by dragon fate, his stomach unstitched

by machine-guns, a quick bayonet stab.

Two days he dreamed between

steaming earth and death’s scabbed hands

swirling a bamboo stream he couldn’t reach

before Medevac found him.

He survived only three years, his Purple Heart

unable to airlift him out of terror

that strafed his constant fever to death.

In D.C. we meet two Viet Nam vets,

the Valenzuela brothers, Mexican Americans

about to be deported because they can’t prove

which side of the border they were born on.

One of them wears the Bronze Star

for valor on his decorated chest.

Spider-white scars from Agent Orange devour his hands.

He says he has no strength in them, cannot

hold up the flag much longer, asks the gunmetal sky,

Where is my Commander In Chief?

We leave the aging vets in dress uniform,

at attention in ice rain and begging justice

from the sparse audience on the Capitol steps

while Chinese exchange students snap souvenir photos.

What changeswill the Metal Rabbit bring

clanking in on its armored back legs—

such tough prey, invincible to hawk talon

and Kalashnikovs—

its multi-colored back

snagged on the hooks of the inhumane, ears cocked

for a compassionate mate.

COMPASSIONATE HEART

    for Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the eighteen victims of

    the January 8, 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona

Dawn’s iced bullets crack to split

night’s beautiful skull, the morning after desert wings

turned to lead and blood stained the sky

warming the Safeway parking lot, where

we shop for cheap food and where time

was blown off its feet when the congresswoman

stopped to chat with people, her style to listen

to people not distanced by emails or texts.    Desert was opening

her warm arms to the small crowd as

the shooter strode, pulled out the new handgun

and shot Gabrielle pointblank.  There is no other way

to say this.   The bullet tore its acetyline blue path

through her brain, then through more as he spun

clenching the terrible automatic trigger of his anger, gunfire

like steel hail popping on the tin roof of hate, ripping

into eighteen others who could not get away.   Among the six dead,

a federal judge stopping by after Saturday mass

to see his friend instead of hurrying home to vacuum floors

and a nine year old girl just elected to student council

who’d wanted to see how government works.    And she did,

at least, see how the opposition takes aim, crosshairs of rage

centered on their opponents vulnerable temples.

This is the USA, where the killer bees of intimidation

shatter the everyday compassion of even saints

like this congresswoman who wanted health care

for the poor, wanted an end to racism’s frigid fists, wanted

to talk to her constituents without rancor’s blades

slicing from a microphone’s indifferent bulb.

Now, Gabrielle’s chest rises

and falls to monitor beeps in the same ICU, where my sister recovered

from a massive head bleed, six weeks locked in a coma

five years ago.  I know how it goes—the shunt

pumping fluid geranium pink  from the brain

to relieve relentless pressure, the long weeks’

fight to keep swelling down, more surgeries and tubes, infected

dreams burning down dim alleys of pain and fear.

What do we hear?  Internet threats and billboards paid for by

political campaigns turned to ice, calling for M16s

to take out the opposition, targeting this slim woman, a moderate

whose slogan is love straight from her bleeding

and compassionate heart.

About the poet: 

Pamela Uschuk is the author of five books of poems, the award-winning FINDING PEACHES IN THE DESERT, ONE LEGGED DANCER, SCATTERED RISKS, WITHOUT THE COMFORT OF STARS: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS (2007 Sampark Press, New Delhi and London), and, her latest, CRAZY LOVE (Wings Press), winner of a 2010 American Book Award.  In 2012, Wings will release her new collection, WILD IN THE PLAZA OF MEMORY. Uschuk is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Fort Lewis College, where she also directs the Southwest Writers Institute. Editor-In-Chief of the literary magazine, CUTTHROAT, A JOURNAL OF THE ARTS.  In 2011, Uschuk is the Hodges Visiting Writer at University of Tennesse, Knoxville.

Pig Roast

She likes his stories, the ones

in which she never appears —

events that happened before they met.

Some of them she’s learned

by heart, but now and then

he relates one she hasn’t heard yet.

Last night, he recalled an episode

involving two fellow students —

college days — who thought a pig roast

would make a great party

(fire pit, spit, cracklins and beer)

but couldn’t afford the cost.

They knew he had a pickup truck,

asked him to meet them late

one evening at a neighboring farm

and when he showed, he found

they’d shot a hog, too heavy to lift,

and the roast had lost some of its charm

and they needed him to help haul

350 pounds of pilfered, bloody ham

to their apartment. He shook his head.

The waste, he was thinking, some

farmer’s good sow. Poor man, poor pig.

“You guys are assholes,” he said

and drove his still-clean truck away.

“I didn’t exactly turn them in,”

his story ends, “but stopped to chat

with a local cop. Suggested there

might be something to investigate.”

Years later, she loves him for that.

Acedia

It is what looked up at you

from the eyes of the wounded doe

What the clock said to itself

when the mainspring gave way

It is the last few shudders

your father’s body finally made

when his heart wrote hopeless

on the hospital bed

and the long sigh of a black dog

and the dry skin of your beloved

who could make no more tears

It is the dead nut

It is all the days I tell you I can’t

but you are right:

It is desire

It is still desire

Remind me that it is desire

Alecto of the Playground

Fist, cry. Pushing the other
children down, fury of the play yard —
she spun and whirled, tirade
of naughty words, invective hurled
at handball rules and kick-the-can.
She stamped and shrieked,
pounded the boy who
won her marbles, tore at and bent
the chain-link fence, turned girls’
jump-rope songs into rhyming slander
until the playground monitor
called the teacher
who saw a small volcanic 7-year-old
with a smeared face and unrepentant
tears, steered her to the schoolhouse door
with the child fuming and kicking,
One more fruitless
visit to the principal’s office,
another useless
call home, seldom answered, mother
passed out face-down on the sofa,
dog sulking on its towel and
awaiting the girl of constant anger
to return and offer succor.

[Alecto, the Fury of constant anger, is also the protector of dogs
and the helpless.]

About the poet:

Ann E. Michael’s latest collection of poems is “The Capable Heart” (FootHills Publishing). She is a poet, educator, essayist and librettist, currently collaborating on an opera with composer Alla Borzova. She lives in eastern PA. Her website is www.annemichael.com.

Energy for Sale

You have so much inertia,
father said, my first thought

would be to save some – don’t
waste all of it on yourself –

then find a way to bottle it,
and finally sell it. But then

I realized, who would want it?
Only a lazy person – and he

wouldn’t be around but hiding
in his room, like you. Now, if

you had enough energy left over
to sell, that would be a different story =

people would knock on your door
to buy it wholesale. You could

charge whatever you wanted.
And I bet I couldn’t walk down

this street without someone asking,
“Where could I buy a little energy?”

“From my son,” I’d proudly answer.
“But don’t buy all of it. He needs some

in reserve to battle his old case of inertia.”

The Snake’s Neck Is for Holding

It’s easy to immobilize
a snake, father said – just

grab it by the neck
and hold on for dear life.

Just because a snake doesn’t
have a distinguishable face,

like you and me, doesn’t
mean it doesn’t have a neck.

If a glass of wine has a neck –
wouldn’t a snake have one?

Let me put it another way –
if it has a mouth, it should

contain a neck. The hard part
is differentiating one end

of the snake from the other.
Don’t grab the tail, because

The snake is flexible enough
to whip around and bite you. It

ingests from one end – eliminates
from the other. If you’re

still confused about which end
is which, then poke the snake

away with a stick. It may not have
as  dramatic a presentation for

a woman – she won’t be quite
as impressed – but it will do.

About the poet:

Hal Sirowitz has had poems published in Ragazine. He’s the author of four books of poetry, with a fifth one forthcoming from Backwaters Press in Nebraska.

…………………………………………………..

thePHOTOGRAPHYspot

Perspective of One Tree

©2011 chuckhauptphoto

Off the coast of Maine, there is a series of three small islands simply called Brothers, with only one tree among them. That tree, a spruce, never seems to get any bigger, I assume due to the weather conditions. It has been photographed and painted by artists for decades. Every year, upon returning to the coast, I scan the horizon to hopefully find that the tree survived another year.

Chuck Haupt is photo editor of Ragazine. You can visit his blog at www.chuckhaupt.com/blog.

For thePHOTOGRAPHYspot submissions, please see guidelines at ragazine.cc/submissions/

Oberly Road

A white hill rose south of Snyder Road
like a small moon, one spindly tree on top.
The single large leaf left in its crown,
a rough-legged hawk descended from
Arctic tundra to winter on ample mice
and voles in the Alpha Grasslands.

***

Among a host of Savannah Sparrows,
a Snow Bunting pecked seed in the street.
I stopped, quietly focused, then vanished
between feather and wing.

***

Blanched, brittle corn stalks pierced
the snow. Quick-stepping in and out
of their broken maze, black-masked
Horned Larks tweaked dried kernels
from rusty cobs with stout beaks.
The exaltation bustled bare pock to pock,
spooked, surfed the frigid air singing,
su-weet, sweet, sweet, su-weet.

***

I remember when nothing was protected.
Farmer’d come running from his house,
chase cars halfway down the street
cursing birders cruising his roadside fields
for hawks and owls, larks, longspurs, and buntings.

Now the setting sun glares at the grasslands
from tall windows to the east,
and a bulldozer perched on the western ridge
like a hawk eyes the farmlands
as if the acres themselves are plump mice.

Oberly Road 2

***

From his pickup truck, the farmer waved to me,
idling roadside with my binoculars,
as he passed by the small plot of preserved space.
I may have been just another birder
or he might have recognized my face
or the same red Corolla over the years
has become part of the winter landscape to him,
a cardinal bigger than a cow. I bet he’d laugh at that.
I bet we weep about some of the same things.

***

Sweeping snowy corn rows
like bronze blades on a shaft of wind,
the harrier’s feathered scythe
severed the last of the light.

***

It is almost too late to believe
that early in the twenty-first century
I witnessed fifty wild turkeys
flap, rustle, and clunk weary wings
against the frozen limbs
of a stand of quaking aspens along a creek.

They jockeyed for position
to safely roost a windy night in New Jersey,
their dark metronomes
keeping sleep.

***

That evening
the world was dreaming of snow
and sealed in a sheet of ice
polished with moonlight so sturdy
an old man could walk on it
like a child again.

Dreaming in Pompeii

He was dreaming of her in Pompeii,
his head, a stony egg,
nestled in her lap,
the porous pumice of her hand
at rest on the grey ash of his face.

Time cooled lava into solidified foam.

Their bones, a petrified city.
Two hearts’ ruins entombed.
The entire civilization of their love
buried for centuries
beneath the sleep of stone.
Her hand at rest on his face.

His head, nestled in her lap,
unearthed, but not awakened,
oblivious to whatever
archeologists or tourists—
not to mention poets—
might make of them
or of her hand
at rest on his face,
the way a bird settles on its egg,
waiting for him to awaken
and fly with her
far from the petrified ruins
of Pompeii.

I Didn’t Go

for Catherine

I didn’t go to Italy,
not a foot inside the big boot,
didn’t tour the pagan capital
or the home of the stone
made man,
nor the city made stone
and buried in ash, either,
or the city sinking
into the sea.

I roamed this rim
of the ocean,
stayed close
to my source.

I am a river
that would be a spring,
a droplet
of underground rain.

But my love
is a fountain
of wind.

About the poet:
John Smith lives with his family on the Delaware River in Frenchtown, NJ. His first chapbook, Even That Indigo, will be released this fall.

from Love Songs & Confessions (Love Song #2)

For the Sake of Want

“Do you ever have cravings?” she said.

“No.” I said, not thinking that craving meant desire.

I always wanted to be able to invite

a few fashionable rakes to a party.

I want to create experiences,

have parties, hire rancheros.

I won’t mention the children who were

boisterously uncontrollable; at one time

the rampageous blonde in the single

family home was “I.”

I don’t want to give you an anecdote.

I’m worried that everyday will be

like today and that I will never

have anything to say to you.

Time Management

What did I not do?

Where am I?

Where was I instead of where

I had planned to be?

There were ten places I could

have been which were slowly

passing me by.

But I am here at home

with the baby and the TV,

news in the background.

I call my mother and my mother-in-law.

I call my aunt who is tired.

These women say things like

“Make a list of ten things

you could do today

and check them off

as you do them.”

…”and then you can feel a

sense of accomplishment

as you do them, like

#1 dusting the bureau.”

Who wouldn’t rather dust a bureau

than drive 25 miles to a

room full of strangers at the

hottest part of the day.”

The trouble is that it

is good for me to be

there and it is also good

for me to be here.

Manners and Customs

Sewing is urgent somewhere

especially to someone from China.

Some mothers were or are superstitious.

Mine never was of has been (that I know of.)

But it is interesting to learn about

someone who was.

I’m more worried about the

pipes and plumbing in our house

than whether or not the moon

is shining on my loved ones.

‘Whiskey’ and ‘whiskers’

are only one letter apart,

or on a good day two.

I wonder if moonshine

has anything to do with

being kissed.

The tall man after he had drunk

some whiskey met the girl who

had to lean up to kiss him.

For her, it was very much

like a fairy tale.

She was breathless.

For him, it was less exciting.

Perhaps she had bad breath.

It was hard to decipher their ages,

though they were not so very young

“nor so very old neither…”

Words of Encouragement to Self

I think…

how could I improve my appearance today?

Maybe I should go to the salon;

maybe I should get a perm…

I’ll write.

Then at least I did something

I wanted to do as opposed

to something I didn’t want to do.

Why should one do things that don’t

make sense?

I’m tired of doing things that

don’t make sense—sometimes; on the

other hand, we don’t always

or even ever understand

everything.

That is completely rational.

I “shall” try to read these sketches

of others thoughts without

judgmental responses…I will try

to floss my teeth neatly

and come up with gentle

little phrases, quick and neat

like a clean countertop.

Everyone has a routine…”you

have to have a routine,” she says.

I mean she doesn’t buy it—that

a person could be completely routine-less.

About the poet:

Laura Close was born in and lives in Northern Virginia.   She received an MFA and MA from George Mason University and a Bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins and has been published in Jerry Jazz Musician.

©Jéanpaul Ferro

6:00 a.m. Miami, Florida

…………………………………………………………………………

Ravensbrück Clothes

Within the Greek Revival columns
of the Providence Athenaeum,
under the brick reds of the Rare Book room,
I began to hallucinate in front of the books
of wars and wars and wars;

I dream backwards to German soldiers
picking through all these brand new Ravensbrück
clothes, like ghosts perched up without bodies,
shirt, skirt, dress, these ghostly empty coats floating
through blue air,

picking up watches from piles of watches,
combing through wedding rings in pile after pile
of wedding rings,

over there a pile of bracelets,

things belonging to the Jewish blond girls
of Magdeburg, Koblenz, Hamburg;

sometimes you can still hear all those soldiers
echoes:

oh, it feels better to take the things of the most
pretty ones, feels best to kill them the slowest—

young, fresh-faced, faces minted anew like
bags of bank coins, this kind of beautiful face
that stares out into forever,

the watchmen slowly letting them burn
into this warmth for their hands, their young
cosmic bodies floating up right out into the furnace
of the wintry sun.

…………………………………………………………………………

©Jéanpaul Ferro

Island of Murano, Venice; Murano Vase

…………………………………………………………………………

The Nine Billion Names For One God

If a man understands a poem,
he shall have troubles.

—Mark Strand

She enters my head like ten quarter stars, all through
my corporal body, downward, a liquid warm, soothing,
wet like ancient amber, all these sinuous roots bursting
forth from my heart, spinning ‘round, a glowing Ferris
wheel at night, joyful as fireworks, shooting up like
coastal redwoods, Hyperion, Helios, and Icarus;

something I could have never dreamt before,
but now I know it’s true.

…………………………………………………………………………

©Jéanpaul Ferro

Twilight rooftop, The Elms Mansion; Newport, Rhode Island

…………………………………………………………………………

After a Day of Skiing at Loon Mountain

Your drunken muscles are Paris after all night, tight
after twenty-six runs down Upper Rumrunner and
Seven Brothers.

Face hot, sweat in the small of your back, ears ringing
and half clogged, you wonder why you do this to yourself,

the steam from the shower feeling like little liquid bites,
the rushing water hitting your stomach all buckshot and
time-worn,

later on, the food at the Italian restaurant tastes like it
came straight out of Liguria, the look, smell, and taste of the
wine leaving you translating Akhmatova all night,

outside, each twinkling incision cut into the sky makes you
give praise to God to thank him for how lucky you are,

lying in your warm bed with the heat turned on as high
as it can go, you try to dream of cliff draped islands and
the women of sonnets who may live there,

but you’re asleep faster than you can think of the cliffs,

and in the morning hunger is stronger than any other feeling,
the thought of your days after that like the thought of twilight
right before the setting of the most beautiful, liquid sun

About the poet:

An 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jéanpaul Ferro’s work has appeared on National Public Radio, Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Emerson Review, Connecticut Review, Sierra Nevada Review, and others. He is the author of All The Good Promises (Plowman Press, 1994), Becoming X (BlazeVox Books, 2008), You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers (Thumbscrew Press, 2009), Hemispheres (Maverick Duck Press, 2009) Essendo Morti – Being Dead (Goldfish Press, 2009), nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry; and the recently released Jazz (Honest Publishing, 2011).  He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.  Website: www.jeanpaulferro.com * E-mail: jeanpaulferro@netzero.net

INTO THE NIGHT

Like the breaking of a bulb,

From our bodies is born
light that has grown already tired.

What is that spark that allows us to perceive
rejection in a down-turned eye?

The gentle foggy rubbing
of energy that gasps at the surface

each morning after playing dead for the night.

When the glass fissures
and babbles against the floor

and it grows very dark,
we say it has gone out, but something quietly lingers,
like a consciousness
orphaned by our dead bodies,

without locus of agency,
without physical purpose,
a weight no heavier than the origin of morning

Where the glass, stricken
with surprise, no longer
contained by a thin self,
joins the rest of the night
to search for a place
where it has been all along.

THINK OF HER IN GRAINS

She likes to buy the cheapest coffee.

She likes                     to breathe it in

with those who once sat at the table,

whose absences displace

more of the room

than their bodies ever could.

Perhaps they would offer you a seat.

Perhaps they would offer you a meal

of parchment,

each bite a scribble of the way

you wake up each morning

and wait for the sun

to erase you.

*

When the light gives back your eyes

and you accept them,

dry with becoming,

you’ll walk into a room.

There will be faces

just like

the ones you remember.

But they are not.

You will wonder

if your own face

has that same uncanny

resemblance to itself.

Then, you forget

why you had come all this way.

*

She haunts your skin.

This time she is dressed

in pins

and needles.

Nothing else.

She says          to hold her

or she’ll fall apart.

You think of her

in grains          sifted by the mesh

of            your  hands.

She likes to buy the cheapest coffee

so it’s not a waste when it’s all been spilled.

About the poet:

I Admire Helen Dzik

The name of our team
said it all
The Maids
Maybe that’s why
the softball committee
put a dress factory worker
and single broad
as coach.

She was the Polish stock
who didn’t comb her hair
wore polyester pants
smoked
and probably drank
good potato vodka
when we’d lose again.

No one called her
an old maid, or old.
She played tough.
When she stood
on the first base line
and said to run,
you better damn well run.

This field was her joy.
This brief respite
from sewing hems
because where
a softball flies
is not as predictable
as finding the perfect stitch.

I didn’t understand
the game
made her smoke less,
sorrow more.
No one on the bleachers
to wave to her or smile.

When the shortstop
couldn’t catch
that oh so easy line drive,
Helen screamed.

We gave the other team
so many chances to score.
The spectator might have thought
we were the farthest thing
beside maids.

I caught that ball
in the outfield
all that hard solitude
in my glove

before I even knew
what made Helen hurt
was outside the fence
as I threw toward home.

Pas De Deux

Twirl, spin
until you go
from 4 to 31
at McCann’s School of Dance
to the point
where you stand
toes turned five digits
counting to perfect

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

This from a girl
who lasted one class
whose closest trip to Julliard
is watch the 8 o clock public TV version
of Swan Lake
by the New York City Ballet.

I think it was the fascination
with those ever so black leotards
scraping my skin
choreographing my skeleton
to dance
Into and not away from flesh.

How foolish
not to learn
how to arabesque
standing at the tow bar
growing taller.

I only stayed
in Ms. McCann’s ballet
for one hour.
Maybe it was because
I couldn’t pull my hair
into a bun
like the other kindergarten prima donnas.
That trauma
of having my long hair
severed by scissors.

My preschool teacher
said my curls
caught the wind
the wrong way.

If you ask me
about modern ballet
I’ll throw you some names
Martha Graham
Alvin Ailey.

Make myself appear
as cultured as the pearls
who only throw a glare
inside the jewelry box
and forget the glow
around my neck.

I want to twirl for you
but I don’t know
the meaning
never mind the step

French doesn‘t plie along these lips
and our mouths
don’t grace the tongue’s pirhouette.
Two muscles bend
to meet the other’s motion.

You don’t surrender
as a principal ballet dancer should
lifting me toward sky
requires too much precision
and our lips don’t drift
beyond this Slovak kitchen.

Your house,
a replica of my grandmother’s.,
Gravy stains the stove
and the tablecloth
sleeps under the weight
of spoiled sour cream.
Butter erupts yellow volcanos
from its pink glass house.

Your Mom and Dad
waltz through air.
While Duke Ellington plays,
your parents are voyeurs
as you reach to kiss me
in the space in the kitchen
near the back door.

But this house
will never be a place for culture
or love of culture
even Degas
glorified prostitutes
as ballerinas.
Hookers posing as dancers
because this paid
the same as sex.

The prostitute always finds the right position
on canvas
suspended in air
stretching toward flight.

I leap somewhere
between her azure blue
and your gray muscle
down below
pulsing toward our Pas De Deux
struggling to fumble
on pointe.

For All The Girls Like Camille

I like the idea that you sculpt me into Camille Claudel
with all her honesty carved into stone.
I know that to chisel something real is not easy
and seldom without consequence.
You destroyed most of what you made.
She aborted her works of art with hammers
and all the slivers stick into my skin.
Yes, Rodin is in the Metropolitan.
What’s left of you lives in Paris.

Camille, I wish I could take you
to a diner in Moosic
where you could get a milkshake
and a smile.
You wouldn’t have to tell
the electricians or the truckers
your art was overlooked.

They’d appreciate your work ethic.
They’d appreciate the way
you made their faces,
tough but gentle.
It satisfies them
Your sculpture
of a man and a woman together
is worthy enough
of a full plate of bacon and eggs.

No one knows Camille, though.
No one knows me, either.
They remember Brittany Spears.
Those guys,
who like to wear a work belt low
would screw you more than once.

In the meantime,
Rodin keeps on making and mating.
He uses the word copulation
as if a better vocabulary takes the act
to a higher level.

Whether you date a millionaire
or a bordello owner,
we take off our clothes
throw the socks to the ground
and touch.

This getting on top of each other
is the cat coming back to the doorstep.
You want to keep feeding the animal
but you can’t let him in.

Camille thought about the guy at the Petro.
How nice it would be to get away from Paris.
To have a front porch.
A mortgage.
A construction worker holding your hand.

About the poet:

Jennifer Diskin holds a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from Wilkes University. She loves poetry, all kinds of music and the fact the trees blossomed this spring despite our hard winter.

Dominoes

“Well,” my grandmother Della says

“Well.”

Those are her two words.

One used to answer the door.

One

for no judgment.

Only one friend: the Watchtower Lady.

an African missionary in reverse,  she

ministers to poor whites,

saving Midwesterners in South Tucson

from the bloody quicksand of Mexican Catholicism.

Alice, my grandmother’s strong coffee double

mirrors Della’s dense lard silence.

Twins, they wear imitation ruby

and emerald brooches, gold hands and starbursts

to clasp shut their slippery rayon dresses

over the deep valley’s of their breasts, and

a suffocating cotton candy of Woolworth’s perfumes,

“My Sin” and “Emeraud.”

Orthopedic tie-ups

Brace their ankles

against their great bulk,

heaped up like mashed potatoes.

Language comes out

Of ( their ) soft gorilla eyes, their

eyes lace together like fingers.

Every week Alice knocks.

Della opens the screen door.

She takes the pamphlet

with the cartoon colored pictures of hell

and puts it on the oak-painted-green kitchen table.

“Well,’’ my grandmother says,

and gets out the dominoes.

White cakes with black dots.

Ice melts in their RC Cola.

The only sounds:

the refrigerator hum,

my grandmother’s asthmatic breathing, the shifting sighs

of our oak-backed chairs.

Then, some silent call prompting her,

Alice rises

solid, yet in motion, an iron bell

of reckoning rings out

our door,

opens her umbrella

against shimmering sun.

My grandmother smiles at her one friend,

Their waves good-bye

fade into our swamp-cooled darkness.

Today, two Jehovah’s Witnesses

make their pale, dark-suited way

to my home in the prickly desert.

“Too busy,”   I say,  and

shut the door on their glittery-eyed, sunstruck faces

but take, for Della’s sake,

for her Alice,

their Easter egg colored pamphlet.

I Dream You Died And You Did

This nightgown binds me into sleep, lashes me to the bed, eyes
closed, into a blindness that leaps boulder to boulder.

Sleep is a small town full of strangers, one gas station and bad directions.  Sleep is blankets under your chin, your pelvis/his butt welded like spoons.  Rest,

you are so tired.  No one has slept for so long, listening for car sounds, home
arriving.  Where is your breast, my pillow?  I can’t go on

dreaming the arrest, my husband pulling the paintings off the wall, threats to
call the police.  Sleep is where we go

to be alone together.  Sleep is peace in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda.  My
grandmother had a great big sleepiness to her my grandfather

couldn’t get enough of.  You, love, draw a picture of
our hearts barely breathing.  Please, give me your eyes,

I will take them in my arms, kiss them,          kiss and,
close them.

The Magician’s Assistant

People turn their heads like spools to watch him

Pound the thick wood thin, his neck stretched up

In a swan’s arch, as his fist comes down, down.

Each day more boards are suspended in the air. Only by

The sadness in his eyes, the top hat stuffed in his back pocket,

Can you tell he’s a magician.

I expect he’ll climb the ladder again

And again. Others tell me stories of men who fell

Helpless on their backs like turtles, or of the whirring

Saw that jumped up and sliced its master’s head

In two halves. I just sing louder.

Tonight I turn your bed down. You’ve finished another

House of cards. You hold your ruined hands out to me, too tired

To take down your own pants. I lift your legs, heavy as fallen trees,

Up and lay you out like a dead man. I get in the box where you slice me

In half, trust is my nightgown. We dream of applause.

Red Letter

Dear Mother,

You were so lovely in your red dress,

red mouth, red claw nails,

playing golf with men’s red heads.

You gave me a small putter

with a red handle.

To love you

is to drown in the Red Sea.

Your anger is

illuminated, raging Hell.

You are the fire

we were always racing to;

fire is called red

after you.

You taught me all my reds:

Red blood,

red wine,

blue-red is cold

alone at night.

Did my father

have any redness in him?

Was it hard to be red, red, red

in the family’s soft, yielding

paleness

of biscuits and potatoes?

Our lives were anemic without you.

They dressed me mainly

in navy blue.

Mama, did you know that most drivers

who have accidents

have red cars?

They’re careful,

but other people hit them.

About the poet:

Charlotte Lowe is a poet who lives in Patagonia, Arizona, near the Nogales, Mexico border. Previously she has published in American Poetry Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, among other literary reviews. She has a poem coming out in the summer issue of Hobo Camp Review. She has worked for poet in the schools programs for 15 years in both Arizona and Texas. Her happiest achievements are reading her work in Paris and Prague. Most recently she has studied at Naropa Summer Creative Writing Program.