Category — Poetry

Names Were Changed to Protect…
(or, The Things My Grandfathers Did to Survive)

1. John

They all called him Johnny K, anyway.
All but the many who heard

Kanciewicz

And told him to get out,
Stay out and never come back.

So he cleaved a couple of syllables
For the sake of a job

Any job

Railroad bull or driving a suicide load
Across the mountains to keep himself

And his orphaned brothers and sisters
And later his two daughters and wife

And then me

Alive.

2. Lutz

If he hadn’t been Herr Doktor,
Would he have had the nerve

To insist on a fair exchange
Of a vowel for the umlaut

The Ellis Island clerk
Was going to take anyway

When the alternative was spelled

Dachau?

Inventory

I think Matthew, the tax collector,
was Jesus’ staff statistician.
Why else would he think we’d care that
“the very hairs of our head are all numbered.”

And this makes me think of my pastor, John Fischer,
who sermonizes that I should think this inventory
comforting, but semi-heathen that I am,
find myself saddled
with a high-definition image of God as
an obsessive compulsive savant,
like the guy Dustin Hoffman portrayed in “Rainman.”

And this makes me think of Lenny,
the kid from my neighborhood,
who when we were growing up,
was most politely referred to as “retarded”.

Lenny could rattle off the age
of every person we knew in common.
If this conversation was happening now
he’d tell me, “I 52, you 50, Mike 49, Dennis 50, Stewie 50, Richard 46, etc.”
and seems hardwired to know
exactly when each of our odometers turns over
to another year.
So, although I’ve never shared
a birthday celebration with him,
he will wake up the morning of August 13
and instinctively add another tick mark
to the inventory of my mortality.

And thinking of Lenny makes me think
of what I’ve recently learned
is known as the “euphemism treadmill”,
the evolution… or de-evolution as two of my favorite Georges…
Orwell and Carlin… saw it, of language.
For example, forty years ago Lenny was mentally retarded.
He knew this, seemed accepting of it
and placed himself on the pecking order of others
in his situation.

He’d say, “You know Louis Nelson?
I a retart, but he really a retart.”
Today I’m told that Lenny and Louis are not retarded,
but at last check are referred to as
developmentally challenged… developmentally special… developmentally delayed…
or whatever else they’ve been redubbed since I typed this. 

And thinking of the euphemism treadmill
makes me think of Sherman Alexie,
who, to use the politically correct euphemism,
is a Native American novelist and poet.
I haven’t seen Lenny recently
to ask what he thinks about his change of semantic status,
but as Sherman says, “Indians call each other Indians.
Native American is a guilty white liberal thing.”

And of course, you, dear listener or reader, whichever the case may be,
may be thinking to yourself,
“he should have paid more attention
to hairs number 417, 2,392, 4,798, 303, etc.,
blah, blah, blah,
ha ha ha,
because they seem to have gone missing.”
And I reply yes,
I like to think of them as becoming,
what was referred to when I was in the retail business as shrink;
another euphemism,
this one referring to the stuff that was
stolen, broken or had otherwise disappeared
from the shelves without being paid for.

And this makes me think that I should let you,
dear listener or reader, know that I,
even in polite company,
refer to myself as bald.

And all this makes me think of the poet Bob McKenty,
because on one Saturday afternoon Lenny appeared in my back yard
and after he reliably related the ages of everyone he assumed we both knew,
he too wondered, in his case aloud,
“I 36, you 34, I have hair, why you no have hair?”
After he left I mulled this while stripping a chair
I’d eventually refinish and began
composing a poem,
well, more a rant, called “Bad Hair Day”
which was quickly published by McKenty,
our contemporary Ogden Nash,
who normally publishes nothing
that is not strictly metrical and rhymed,
but found it funny enough to immortalize anyway.

And so, for this poem of sorts,
I think I’d like to thank Lenny and Bob and Matthew and Sherman and George and George and John and Dustin
and most importantly, a perhaps obsessive and savant-like
God.

Amen

The Optometrics of Love

Thank you for being the one
who never looked
through lenses distorted
by the residue
of former boyfriends,
spouses and lovers
and saw
me. 

About the Poet:

Tony Gruenewald is the production manager of Edison Literary Review. His collection, The Secret History of New Jersey, was published by Northwind in 2009. To find out more, visit tonygruenewald.com.

After Messalina

Death, that old whore
who gladly takes on all comers
will happily accommodate you
for the small price of your soul.
She will do you up good,
make sure you have no complaints,
and send you off into the night
completely satisfied.

Though you may be relieved
to be done when finished,
and you may not have wanted to come
in the first place,
since you have no choice
it’s best you take her hand
and follow her up those wornout stairs,
under the pulsing neon sign,
just as a thousand others
have done so tonight.

For she is used to reluctance
in all its forms. You
have nothing she hasn’t seen before
and will not see again.

When you’re spent
and have pulled those soiled bills
from your pocket,
just be sure you’ve paid in full.
To ensure your proper passage
leave every last sou on her bed.
She will appreciate the payment
for a job well done
and will send you
to the place prepared,
as advertised.   

Mrs. Mathers

Mrs. Mathers died last night,
her fragile hold gave way.
I had seen her just last week.
She seemed to be okay,
but who knows at eighty-three?

She was sharp until the end,
her mind steeped in the mysteries she had read.
I saw these books arrive by mail,
they piled up in the lobby.
Some wait for her now.
They will not get her perusal.

Her penetrating eye could see through me,
she was nobody’s fool.
Once in the elevator I asked
what she was reading.
“Chandler,” she replied.
Her answer left no room
for further inquiry,
though the way she looked
at the elevator door told me
she was not intimidated by The Big Sleep,
nor anything else likely to come her way.

I will miss her cold, clear gaze
and the slight tell
that lingered on her face.
She took us all in
as something she’d seen before.
Still, I counted her as a friend.
Her daughters will now likely sell,
and a young couple with a baby
or maybe a corgi
will take her place.
This seems to be the trend.  

Rob Mustard is a former English teacher, and retired professional photographer. His photographs appear in the May-June 2010 issue of ragazine.cc (See Archives). He and his wife Deborah live in El Segundo, California.

Dark Room

On the other hand, I am certain
that you are no stranger to dark rooms.
You can’t be unfamiliar
with the barely visible shapes of beasts
breathing like the inertia of absent light
that turn their anatomies inside out
into other shapes of other beasts
in a constant regeneration of malformations
in the roar of silence that sounds like desert sand.
There is an indefinite space
that is the extension of the mind
in the landscape of where thoughts traverse
along the surface of illusory clouds
into impossible geographies that don’t exist on the map
and someone’s late aunt lives there
with her unacknowledged autobiographies.
Sometimes in a dark room
it is irrelevant that we are human.
There is a time that circles the periphery of time
where someone crawls into bed beside you
who isn’t even there
and makes love to you like a summer rain
in the dream of San Francisco
or a flower growing on the electric moon
blooming into the soundless decibels of starlight —
shining like unsleeping eyes in the dark
where invisibility does not have a conceptual center
and morning is an unlived century
that only knows this story by association
of everything it is not.

Egg, Cartoon, and Temple

The preliminary images that slipped from the chaos of the unconscious
before I entered a full blown dream last night
were like a cinematic tableau of disconnections.
First, you were in the kitchen having just boiled an egg for yourself,
and you were peeling it, angry about something,
so you salted it with an excess of salt
and then stuffed the entire egg into your mouth
and prepared for bed.
And then, I was an expertly drawn cartoon in 19^th century dress
wearing spectacles and carrying a parasol
when I attempted to stop a young girl, also a cartoon in 19^th century dress
from stumbling into moving traffic.
And the suspense accelerated into the question of her survival
before the image escaped the frame of my mind
into the darkness of aborted dream scenarios.
And then there were pillars in a temple
and the green light from the only window spilled onto the perfect marble
of the floor and the walls, without the hollow sound
of the clicking shoes of women amongst the echoes
of that colossal and sanctified structure,
without any repenting followers bowing to pray,
without the specific context of situation or circumstance,
like it merely existed as a structure
because of the way time begins to mourn for itself
after we are all too familiar with the genocides of its history.

Rumi’s Field

Just for tonight, let’s say that you are Magellan
and I am the earth, with all the discoverable
geographies of my body.
Say the ordered choreography of the planets
never orbited to the infrequent side of the sun
and my thighs were vast continents
interrupted by the deaf ocean between them.
Say you navigate that ocean
like a novice explorer in his unvarnished youth
before he knows too much for his own good.
What if those anthologies you are reading
with such diligence and compassion
reach out and take hold of you with their terrible claws
and you drown in Moore’s paradox
between mortality and eternity
and her footnoted phrases
as though we were prescient angels
susceptible to literary hazards of love.
Or let’s say the morality of my body
was Rumi’s field beyond right and wrong
which blurs like the sky into the sea
and I am the ghost of a mother you have imagined
weeping at the airport, and we reconcile with the
obscured texts of our pasts, and sleep like train stations
when the trains aren’t running, and forget everything
when the cold dawn chills us with its cruel light.

Smoke and Snow

Inside the mind there are roads that snake into a chimera.
Their conceptual frameworks never seek destinations
but question their own questions
like terrible children who don’t comprehend the sky.
Their philosophies have the integrity of the foundations
of structures that disassemble and then rise from their ashes
like great birds exploding into hysterical flight.
The archeological excursion into the depths of subconscious
is a perilous venture.  I dig and dig and wind up
emerging with darkness and more darkness
that folds into itself like a lover bowing
to bury his head in the clemency of my thighs
with pinholes of light piercing it like stars
in some distinct recollection of a November
when a man stood like a superimposition
of a god-like figure against the city in the twilight
smelling like smoke and snow
that filled my breath like something splitting
without disrupting the center
inside the perfect stillness of its concentric whole.

About the Poet:

Emily Vogel is the assistant poetry editor of ragazine.cc. Her biography appears on the “About Us” page.

THE GENIUS

All week I work on building the humongous contraption in my front yard. I build it out of a hundred things: the engine from a ’56 Chevy, an espresso machine, various farm equipment, a conveyor belt, two propane refrigerators, a well pump, a hot water heater with shotgun holes for ventilation, a Remington typewriter, a rusted catalytic convertor, the stained grass bag from a broken lawnmower, six wind-up alarm clocks, a fire hydrant, a vacuum cleaner, a panini press, and the internal workings of a VCR. The monstrosity looks like the Everlasting Gobstopper machine in Willy Wonka. But I think it’s beautiful. Whenever people stop to ask me what I’m doing, I tell them I’m working on my next big mistake.

About the author:
Smelcer is the author of ten books of poetry, most recently including The Binghamton Poems, selected and edited by John Updike. His poems appear in hundreds of magazines.

Dimensions of Art

In the breeze of summer’s introduction to the stage of the seasons that ripple through this earth,
I danced with my skirt bunched up in my fist, talking philosophies on life into the folds of our eyes the way artists sometimes do;
We said that night we would never sacrifice the love at the expense of having no reason to rise from beds too tempting and to safe to leave otherwise.

Observe shape.

As clearly as the sun defies night on the longest day of the year, the seemingly intricate design has a method and depth to it.
She shed tears for him that morning after, as we realized night could not shroud us in mystery for much longer;
We learn shapes of hearts don’t determine their kindness or perseverance.

Everything is illuminated when we feel alive.
Countless peace pipes shared between sisters, between lovers, we light lighters in dark spaces so they never forget day.

You wake up inches from my face so I don’t forget what a human body can feel like inside me.
The shape of your eyes intrigues me to stare,
The same way sculptors and painters do when we create art together.
Observe shape, contour;
Make sure the lighting is right,
And remember our lives are made up of lines.

An artist said that to his student once:
He wanted her to remember curves are just transformed lines creating a new dimension.

Every pen stroke, measure it.
Savor every single second of this moment before it dries.
Every single slight touch of my fingers in your clay-like skin reminds me that I cannot change your composition, but my imprint is still noted, yet transient.
Bending me like a beam of light, a new dimension created in the blankness of the time and space.
The lighting on the pattern of your infinite skin was perfect that night, only but slightly accentuating the highlights of your jaw line, and the ridge right under your eye that become the predecessor to your cheekbone.

I notice the shadows the light cast upon you
And it is then that it becomes clear to me the mystique of dark and light;
I could imagine this.

And every brush stroke…
Study the image before your paintbrush touches the canvas.
Stare.

No.

Really reach your gaze into the blankness of what you thought tomorrow was, and realize what it can become,
The untapped potential of your very existence depends of this portrait of what we think we see and what is really there.

Create space.
Hold out your pencil, out in the air to measure the distance of what is.
It is possible to recreate dimensions
When I find myself translating your body into a speaking pattern my soul understands,
Fundamentally listening to every syllable we breathe into the air when we speak in circles we’ve drawn around each other.

These days I feel my heart pulsing in my ear reminding me to listen to each passion I was born with inside
And I find the sketches of conversation created on rooftops as the sun and moon were juxtaposed in perfect balance;
The same way one side of a scale gazes at the other.
It’s all about the details, he told me one night as we walked to the train station aware of the design we exist in,
And I came home one night, held her face in my hands to study the colors of her eyes.
They are green, they are blue; they are the ocean
Spokes of colors like wheels of vision that caress her pupils;
I missed them.

I’ve refused to see the rainbows hidden in your sky, tucked away in your smiles
Until you told me to look at you that afternoon
And it was then I saw
That with eyes wide open the fleeting realities crossing my line of vision are not as 3 dimensional as once perceived.

About the poet

Carmen Mojica, 24, was born and raised in Bronx, New York, and  lives presently in Albany.  She is a poet, writer, workshop facilitator, model, and student doula. She published her first literary work, a poetry chapbook titled “I Loved You Once,” in 2009. In October 2009, she then went on to self-publish ‘Hija De Mi Madre’ (My Mother’s Daughter),   a combination of memoirs, poems and research material that explains the effects of race on identity from an academic standpoint.

Ekphrasis

The following poems in French and English are based on the photographic collages of Wieslawa Contoski: “Chagrin” (“Grief”) (#162), and “Interieur: Embrassant la gloire” (“Interior: Embracing the Glory”)  (#175 & #176).

Chagrin (#162)

Et encore une fois je tombe
Dans le sombre
Terre lourde ou

Il ne semble etre aucuns
Cotes , aucunes regles.  Mon
Corps est parti, rien que

Mes mains ne flottent loin
A la strate grise
Au-dessous des copeaux

D’ecorce comme les ombres
Autour des intrigues coulants
D’une histoire impossible

Ou tu me dis
Que tu m’aimes, tu partagerais
Avec moi quoi qu’il soit

Que tu avais, n’importe
Combien de peu – et toute
La nuit je t’aime

Sans cesse dans un cercle
Eloigne, grave des
Nuages comme un

Oiseau perdu, songeant
Des cieux qui ont ete
Rassembles, ou

Chaque voeu plein
De plumes s’en vole
Pour le blue.

Grief (#162)

And once more I fall
Down into the dark
Heavy ground where

There seem to be no
Sides, no rules.  My
Body is gone, only

My hands float far
Off in a gray layer
Below the chips

Of bark like the shadows
Around sinking plots of
An impossible story in

Which you tell me
You love me, you’d share
With me whatever

You had, no matter
How little – and all
Night I love you

Back in a remote
Circle etched out of
Clouds like a

Lost bird dreaming
Of the pieced-
Together sky where

Each feathery wish
Flies into the blue.

Wailing Wall #175

Interieur: Embrassant la gloire (#175)

Je me tiens debout a la fenetre
Qui ne reste point
Tranquille.  Les rideaux

Voltigent, sautant et
Palpitant, respirant
Paniquard.  La vitre

Comme photos dechirees,
En train de fragmenter le ciel
Dans cadres a pas

Variables, me rendant
Pensive, en pensant – Non,
Ce n’est pas vrai.  Pourtant je sais

Que c’est vrai.  Mon coeur
As deja ete enterre
Dans la peur

Legere que tu es
Puissant au-dela de
La mesure.  Dans la peur

Foncee qu’on peut
Jurer de se venger, mais quand
Ca arrive, ce n’est pas

Satisfaisant.  Alors
Des lumieres plus profondes
Clignotent.  Je ferme

Les rideaux, pourtant la dentelle
Fait nouveaux motifs
De lumiere dedans comme si

On ne peut jamais echapper
A meme le dernier ombre
D’un doute que tu etais envoye

Par Dieu pour me sauver.

Interior: Embracing the Glory (#175 & #176)

I stand at the window
Which won’t stay
In place.  The curtains

Flutter, all twitches and
Panting, panicky
Breath.  The glass

Like torn pictures,
Fragmenting the sky
Into variable freeze-

Frames making me want
To think – No, that’s not
True.  Yet I know

It’s true.  My heart
Has already been
Buried in the light

Fear that you are
Powerful beyond
Measure.  In the dark

Fear that one may
Vow revenge, but when
It comes, it’s anything

But satisfying.  So
Deeper lights go
On and off.  I close

The curtains, yet the lace
Makes new patterns
Of light inside as if

There’s no escaping
Even the last shadow
Of doubt you were sent

By God to save me.

Laura Merleau was born and grew up in the Kansas City area. She received a doctoral degree in American Literature from the University of Kansas in 2000.  Her poetry is scheduled to appear in “Rougarou” and “Poppyseed Kolache”.  Her novella, “Little Fugue”, was published by Woodley Memorial Press in 1992.

______________________

HOW DOES IT FEEL?

How does a god feel when
trees and bushes turn green
without asking for his blessing?

How does a tree feel
when its leaves start turning pale?

How do the pale leaves feel when
the tree starts letting go of them?

How does a breeze feel
when a lull stops it in its tracks?

How does a star feel when
being slowly snuffed out by dawn?

How does a window feel when night comes
and it has nothing to show outside?

How does a door feel when
there’s no one to keep out?

How does a car feel with the hood up
standing idle by the road?

How does a page feel left blank?

How does a bird feel high in the sky
on suddenly forgetting how to fly?

How does a fish feel
about the world above the surface?

How does a pen feel when words
walk off the page and fly unaided
over a puddle of eyes and ears?

How does a feeling feel
in a paralyzed breast
running out of sighs?

MY WINTER IN DEBRECZEN

(Egy telem Debreczenben)  By Sándor Petőfi,

translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar

Hey, you town of Debreczen,
how often you taunt my mind
with the suffering you gave to me!..
And yet you remain
a beloved and kind
guest in my memory.

A papist I am surely not,
yet I fasted there a lot.
Good thing the gods made mortal teeth
out of bone by wise design. No doubt,
had my teeth been made of steel,
they would’ve surely rusted out.

In the middle of a raw
winter of snow and sleet
my stove ran out of straw
and I slept without a whiff of heat.
Putting on my worn-out set
of rags I could easily recite
with the gypsy caught in a net:
“Must be real cold outside!”

The only help to me
was my poetry!
But how to record my riff
with fingers frozen stiff?
At last I hit upon the very thing,
kept my fingers twisted tight
around my always burning pipe,
till the welcome breeze of spring.

And what got me through the fast,
I’d fasted much worse in the past.

Egy telem Debrecenben

Hej, Debrecen,
Ha rád emlékezem!…
Sokat szenvedtem én tebenned,
És mindamellett
Oly jól esik nekem,
Ha rád emlékezem, -

Pápista nem vagyok.
És mégis voltak böjtjeim, pedig nagyok.
Jó, hogy az embernek csontfoga van,
Ezt bölcsen rendelék az istenek,
Mert hogyha vas lett volna a fogam,
A rozsda ette volna meg.

Aztán a télnek kellő közepében
Kifogya szépen
A fűtőszalmám,
S hideg szobában alvám.
Ha fölvevém kopott gubám,
Elmondhatám,
Mint a cigány, ki a hálóból néze ki:
“Juj, be hideg van odaki’!”

S az volt derék,
Ha verselék!
Ujjam megdermedt a hidegben,
És ekkor mire vetemedtem?
Hát mit tehettem egyebet?
Égő pipám
Szorítgatám,
Míg a fagy végre engedett.

Ez ínségben csak az vigasztala,
Hogy ennél már nagyobb ínségem is vala.

NATIONAL CALL

(Nemzeti dal)  by Sándor Petőfi,

translated from the Hungarian by Paul Sohar

Rise you Magyars, heed the call!
It’s now or never, do not stall!
Shall we live enslaved or free?
Choose your chains or liberty.
On the God of Hungary
We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

Too long we have been prisoners,
The victims of an evil curse.
Our forebears lived and died unbound,
hey cannot rest in servile ground.
On the God of Hungary
We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

Only a knave is too afraid
To perish in his country’s aid
And values his wretched life above
His homeland’s honor and its love.
On the God of Hungary
We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

The sword is brighter than the chain,
The arm looks better in its flame.
Then why the shackles tied on fast?
Let us grab our swords at last!
On the God of Hungary
We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

Hungary will shine again,
Worthy of its golden name;
We shall wash it clean of dirt
Smeared on it by years’ of hurt!
On the God of Hungary
We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

In our graveyard on a hill,
On their knees our children will
Bless our tombstones and declaim
On them every holy name.
On the God of Hungar   We swear,
We swear,
No more chains for us to bear!

Nemzeti dal

Talpra magyar, hí a haza!
Itt az idő, most vagy soha!
Rabok legyünk vagy szabadok?
Ez a kérdés, válasszatok! –
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

Rabok voltunk mostanáig,
Kárhozottak ősapáink,
Kik szabadon éltek-haltak,
Szolgaföldben nem nyughatnak.
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

Sehonnai bitang ember,
Ki most, ha kell, halni nem mer,
Kinek drágább rongy élete,
Mint a haza becsülete.
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

Fényesebb a láncnál a kard,
Jobban ékesíti a kart,
És mi mégis láncot hordtunk!
Ide veled, régi kardunk!
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

A magyar név megint szép lesz,
Méltó régi nagy hiréhez;
Mit rákentek a századok,
Lemossuk a gyalázatot!
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

Hol sírjaink domborulnak,
Unokáink leborulnak,
És áldó imádság mellett
Mondják el szent neveinket.
A magyarok istenére
Esküszünk,
Esküszünk, hogy rabok tovább
Nem leszünk!

(Pest, 1848. március 13.)

(This poem, written in March 1848 and recited by the poet at public gatherings, ignited a revolution against the Hapsburg rule over Hungary. Footnote by the translator.)

Trains:  The Memorial

(for Michele & Sarrah)

I am going home on Sunday,
to what is now called “Little Portugal,”
but it will always be
Down Neck to me.
Nicknamed for the way the Passaic  curves to form
the shape of a neck:  My town,
Working class,
Industrial.
I am going home to Newark’s Penn Station, crowded with people, and their bags,
and their tired crying babies, their annoyances, excitement, impatience,
boredom, and the loud inaudible   announcements, as arrival and departure
times shuffle and spin on the boards above.

I am at your house, now.
Packing.
The tide brings sounds of
water splashing against rocks.
There is peace here,
not like the station.

I think of balancing on
train tracks, of jumping over third rails.
There is a freedom in being twelve
and walking tracks.
Even in hunting season, at my grandmother’s house
down South, with shots going off in the background,
there was no fear.
Life belonged to me.
The tracks held secrets of
places I might go,
of people strange and wonderful:
My own yellow brick road.
So many times I walked  those tracks unconcerned
about  oncoming  trains,
or third rails,
or the way that trains always seem so far away.
It’s an optical illusion, you know.
Not like playing chicken,
when Michele stayed on too long
and then froze,
just stopped and froze and stared right at the train.
It wasn’t playing chicken.
And we all screamed so loud for her to “jump,
jump now” that our throats hurt the next day.
And everything  seemed a dream, the ambulance,
the police, the questions, words
like trespassing.
At that moment my youth slipped out of me
and I was old,
twelve and old.
Tired, without vision.
Tired, without substance.
There is rhythm in trains,
in water,
in life.
I have triumphs.
I have made it to 46. That is my accomplishment.
Michele remains twelve.
Forty-six hangs sadly in my closet with my other minor
feats that are all wrong, and belong to last season.
Breathing, thinking, existing:
these belong to me.

Words pile up outside
my door:
We miss her.
It was meant to happen.
God wanted her.
That’s life.
She’s in a better place.
I wonder,
did it happen to her because
she was the last in line?
What if she were first? Leading and not following?
If she were slower, or faster?
Or lighter, or heavier?
Or she woke up earlier and didn’t
miss her appointment?
Perhaps, if she were only a bit more
clumsy?

Deborah LaVeglia lives in Cranford, NJ. She is  director of PoetsWednesday, the longest-running poetry series in New Jersey (founded by Edie Eustice in 1978). Deborah has been published in Negative Capability, Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Big Hammer, Arbella, and Edison Literary Review. She loves doing workshops in the schools, and has featured in many readings throughout NJ, NY & PA.

by Kayleigh Wanzer

Poetry and Sibling Rivalry:

The Dickman Brothers

In a society where the written word continues to struggle for adequate appreciation, it may seem that it takes a catchy gimmick to gain notoriety in the literary community.  And upon first glance, twin brothers Matthew and Michael Dickman seem to be just that — ploys for attention from otherwise average writers, their only marketability being the fact that they share similar faces. Because it seems so coincidental and too contrived. Twin brothers who both happen to be poetry geniuses, overcoming a poverty-ridden childhood in the Northwestern United States, only to be profiled by The New Yorker and simultaneously publish poetry collections? It all reads, admittedly, like a made for television movie. Yet behind the hype, high profile interviews, and book deals are two young men with extraordinary amounts of talent. This talent is executed in strikingly different ways in Michael’s collection The End of the West and Matthew’s All-American Poem.

Michael’s collection begins with “Nervous System,” an off-putting and eerie contrast of death and childhood, two reoccurring themes in The End of the West (Copper Canyon Press, 2009). Michael utilizes spacing for emphasis and shock value, blasting lines at readers like,

“Make a list
of everything that’s
ever been

on fire”

yet contrasts them with sad and hopeful lines like the standout of this opening poem, “When I think of the childhood inside me I think of sunlight dying on a windowsill.” He fills the pages with as much white space as he does text, creating a symbolic spiral, a mystical puzzle. There are references to addict parents and their equally tragic addicted children in “Seeing Whales” and “Scary Parents.” In “Seeing Whales” after speaking of watching his friend Leif shoot up “when we were twelve” Michael writes,

“Leif laid his head back on a pillow and waited for all the blood inside him
to flush down
a hole

After seeing whales what do you see?”

He draws unlikely comparisons between things. Whale sightings and twelve-year-old heroin addicts, both huge in different ways. “Seeing Whales” links the rushing of water through a whale’s blowhole to the rushing of heroin through an addict’s arm. It links the relief as opiates make their way through the bloodstream to the surprise and elation of seeing a whale. What do you see after seeing whales, what do you see after watching your friend shoot heroin? “The green sea,” Michael answers with a surprisingly fitting simplicity.  “Ian broke his mother’s nose because she burned the pancakes” Michael states blankly in “Scary Parents,” painting the portrait of a family that functions through dysfunction. “No one is singing us to sleep,” he says, not asking for pity, just for the point of saying it. Michael’s poems are consistently disarming, especially in their endings. From “Into the Earth,”

“No one I loved had died for almost two years.
Then Amy bled out
in a bathtub.”

The standout of The End of the West is arguably “We Did Not Make Ourselves,” an epic if Michael would write one, themes spanning from Advent, to self-destruction, to breast cancer, to funerals and death. It is a random collection of spaces and phrases that comes together beautifully and powerfully.

“This morning I killed a fly
and didn’t lie down
next to the body
as we’re supposed to

We’re supposed to

Soon I’m going to wake up

Dogs
Trees
Stars

There is only this world and this world

What a relief
created

over and over.”

The themes prevalent in “We Did Not Make Ourselves” are the ones common through The End of the West; the inevitability of death and the circle of life, watching those you love die and not sure if you want them to come back, absentee fathers and alcoholic grandfathers. It is a collection that, while decidedly postmodern in execution, spans genre and classification. It is poetry that concentrates on form as much as it does word choice, and does so to the reader’s great benefit.

If Michael writes alongside the ghost of E.E. Cummings, Matthew carries with him the spirit of Ginsberg and his beatnik co-conspirators.  All-American Poem (American Poetry Review Press, 2008) is indeed a collection of poetry based in the roots of Americana; Matthew is almost assuredly thinking of Whitman just as frequently as Ginsberg did. But they are also poems entrenched in modernity and the guilt that comes from leaving a predominantly lower-class neighborhood behind. Or at least, attempting to. In “For Joe Sullivan Upon Joining the South-Side White Pride” Matthew writes,

“I want to say you’re leaving
something important behind.
But I know where you come from
and can’t imagine what it might be.”

Interestingly, Matthew’s poems are simultaneously narrative and confessional. When he says “you can carry your groceries home in your public radio tote bag” in “Country Music,” he says it with an air of disgust that can only come from self-loathing. “I wanted someone to beat me,” he later plainly states in the poem. It is honest and it is relatable, two qualities that make Matthews’s poetry as successful as it is.  Unlike his brother, Matthew does not heavily rely on poetic form and spacing. He chooses instead to focus on deep, verbose descriptions of the lives of strangers and connecting back to his own. From “Something about a Black Scarf,”

“At any rate
my neighbors are having sex. I can hear them, I can
smell the coffee they made
when they thought they were still getting out of bed,
and there is something about how the woman is moaning,
how her right foot may be pressed down
against the side of his thigh that makes me think
the man squeezing her nipples has never been in debt.
Has never yelled at her because of it.”

Matthew’s poetry has a strange way of taking the reader outside of the originally planned narrative and then unexpectedly dragging them back in, just when they’ve become attached to a stranger’s sex life.  Just when they are invested in the smell of coffee and sex, the sound of moaning, Matthew reminds the reader of those who are not so lucky.

Every poem in All-American Poem is, ultimately, an epic one, reaching across geographic landscapes, from the snow of Ann Arbor to the rainy Pacific Northwest, telling the tales of misplaced youth. But it is the poem “Lents District,” fittingly enough, that best embraces and explores what Matthew is trying to say. He tells the story of his unfortunate hometown as a guilty observer, easily placing the reader within the torn up streets, within the broken homes. Comparing the daily life to a “musical some rich kid from New York wrote about credit, debt, and then threw in Kool-Aid to make it funny for everyone,” Matthew tells of “furious mothers” who “applied their lipstick that left red cuts on the ends of their Marlboro Reds,” and fathers that “quietly did whatever fathers do.” He speaks of orchestra pits made up of angry Pit bulls, kick lines of skinheads, “twirling metal pipes, stomping in unison.” Matthew creates beauty within the ugliness of impoverished America. He does not want to be away from it, he embraces the gangs, the violence and the terror for all the poetic beauty it is worth.

“Dear Lents,
Dear 82nd avenue, dear 92nd and Foster,
I am your strange son,
you saved me when I needed saving
and I remember your arms wrapped around
my bassinet like patrol cars wrapped around
the school yard
the night Jason went crazy—
waving his father’s gun above his head,
bathed in red and blue flashing lights,
all American, broken in half and beautiful.”

The America Matthew speaks of is one that is rarely spoken of, but he screams it with pride. The red and blue flashing lights, the evictions, the single mothers. What is most important about “Dear Lents” and his entire collection is that Matthew does not shy away from the ugly. He instead finds the magnificence in it and makes it accessible for all readers.

As poets, Michael and Matthew could not be more different. The End of the West is based on the intangible, on the ghosts of dead friends. All-American Poem is ultimately for the disaffected 20- or 30-something, lost in a world of Pepsi products, haunted by the memories of a stolen youth, and as Matthew says in “Country Music,” “something about cigars and bourbon I no longer want to be a part of.” Even when they speak of the same friends, Matthew, too, mentions violence-prone Ian and his junkie mother from Michael’s “Scary Parents,” it isn’t comparable. While Michael finds and forms emptiness, Matthew strives to fill that emptiness with description. Their poems appeal to different parts of the brain and the senses; Michael’s striking emotional chords with simple words while Matthew bases his in reality and examples, placing the reader in concrete places with people we become certain existed, with people we begin to think we know. What is definite, however, is that both Dickman brothers, regardless of what critics say, are worthy of any and all praise coming their way. Their story seem to be a strange fluke, but it is very real, very rare, and deserves our attention.

 Biograph: The Southern Tier

Andrei Guruianu, Poetry

John Brunelli, Photography

Artist-Photographer John Brunelli and poet Andrei Guruianu recently teamed up to produce a book documenting with poems and photos the present state of being of the upstate New York area around Binghamton, known collectively as The Southern Tier. In a forward to their book, “How We Are Now,” Guruianu writes of engaging ”in artistic dialogue that benefits both artists and audience,” in other words, a collaborative effort in which one and one make three.

Many of the depictions, in both word and image, characterize changes taking place not only in the aging rust belt cities of the northeast, but also in communities around the world. Here, the new has become old. but there is also the moment of silence or longing captured that in and of itself becomes monumental.

The Last Man Standing

 I am tired of living in a dying village
counting what hasn’t been lost yet
until I am withered and I fall asleep

 … tired of looking outside the window
at dust of the past and plow of the future
kicking up choking on even more dust.

 I am tired of always opening
my two swollen eyes in an empty white room
from which I am conspicuously absent.

 … tired of my inflated non-being
standing there taking up too much space
like a reflection in a hall of carnival mirrors.

 I am tired of distorting the truth
to satisfy an-already-come-to conclusion
writhing in the strangle hold of consequence

 … tired of sweeping the trail day and night
Eternity complicit in the crumbs I find
between the guilty pages of a red carnet.

Perfect Blue Houses

This could be the poster town of uncorruptable good.
The old scent of coffee chasing a distant memory.

 This could be the river screwed into a time and place,
the lights unharvested and steady covering the rust.

 This is silence housed in layers of paint and clapboard,
falling leaves that muscle in on the turf.

 This is the formula for hiding what is empty.
Nights of many matches burning down to your fingertips.

Where I Lay My Head… 

 When I say girl I am referring to an ideal. 
It crumbles like a weakness in the face of standards.
Impossibly perfect alignments— 

flesh and stars 
steel and patent leather 
hair the color of your own perspective

When I say girl I mean the roundness of blue,
the soft angle of shoulders. 
Two arcs of light folded over the edge of darkness. 

When I say girl I wish to seal a forgotten promise,
begin telling the story whose ending is yet to be written. 
Under a requisite black sky; everything veiled and out in the open.

“How We Are Now” was published by Split Oak Press, Vestal, New York, with financial assistance from the Chenango County Council on the Arts. Copies are available for $10.00 each from the press, and from Brunelli or Guruianu. See also, www.johnbrunelli.com and www.andreiguruianu.com.

The River Ganges

When the shock of his death began to peel away
and we stopped leaning on walls to steady ourselves
the family told me to throw out the mattress.
Death is a stain you can’t wash off
it’s best to send it away before it latches onto you.
In my eyes it was a perfectly good mattress.
So it stayed.
The family lit candles and said let them burn to light the way.
I couldn’t sleep.
The roar of the flickering flame consumed me two floors up.
So I blew it out.
When the urn arrived filled with bits and pieces
there were no pictures of him.
So we propped up his driver’s license and
wrapped everything in a yard of gauzy red fabric.
That was our shrine
in the room where the walls smelled of loose tobacco
and Tiger Balm.
Each day on the way to the laundry
I’d find the lamp on in his room.
It’s the kind that turns on with the slightest
brush of a hand.
It was a comfort to know he was still there.
Then the day came for his trip to the Ganges
and the room stood dark.
I did everything wrong and still he left.

Jessica Dubey lives with her family in the Southern Tier of New York, where she writes and studies poetry. She is a graduate of Syracuse University and has written freelance for marketing and healthcare. 

The Blades of the Window Fan

The grill is an amputation of old bedspring coils
that supports the pot of beans which are young sediment
and the bed, knowing of its wholeness
commits to the memory of pink walls
the steady weight, the soft curve of elbow
before the necessity of slow dismemberment
and loss.

 I lie on a bed of cotton sheets
            damp and lined with the old maps of explorers
            trampled on by my father’s small horse,
            the one he traded for a smaller pickup truck.
The coils below squeak out rusty crow feathers
to flame the fires in the pit outside.

The blades of the window fan hypnotize my dirt brown stare,
dry away the sweat and urine of wind laced days without baths
in a bucket of well water.

Outside the window is the neighbor’s dog
that surrenders under the low mesquite branch
in a shallow hole it has dug
and lined with feathers,
black with blue and violet reflections
like the eye of a horse.

The rhythmic hum weighs down the eyelids
and kindles the fire.

The beans begin to boil.

Jose Antonio Rodriguez is winner of the 2010 Allen Ginsberg poetry award. in 2008, he headed  “Writing By Degrees”, an invitational literary program conducted by the graduate department in English at Binghamton University. His poetry has appeared in Paterson Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Connecticut Review and elsewhere.”

For the Bees to Come

We must kiss the Earth for days,
not even feeling bold enough to say
we are sorry. There must be a coughing child
on every hill, his hands wrapped
in something invaluable.
He should wave, convinced he is seen
from afar. An adult must be
next to each child, convincing.

The pregnant women should throw out
all lists of names they had, assign
their children musical notes –
call them for dinner with whistles
and violins. The children will never
answer to different names.

Most of all we need to
hang our houses from trees.
Make somebody else’s life sweet –
why do bees make honey anyway?
We must put chiffon on the necks
of tigers, fake flowers in lakes.
What more could they want?
Even teach animals to sign checks,
put banks in the forest.

After an Argument

I in and out my bike
in the stitch of lane marking,
punctuation for motion, unlike
your language where every sixth word
has birds in it. From here I can see
First Avenue for twenty-three blocks.

I hit the brakes, hoping to erase
some lines with my tires. You and I set
our opinions like flowerpots
on top of a calm sea. No escape
from the ourness of the immediate future.

Someone said we are reborn
a hundred times every second.
We get recycled into ourselves.

How to make what is already
in our mouths more delicious?

The grass crawls onto the backs of ladybugs,
as if it will get somewhere other
than guts but once
you grew irises from rice seeds.
You really did.

Margarita Delcheva is a graduate of the NYU Creative Writing Program. Her poems have been published in CutThroat, Chronogram, Ep;phany, the Meadow and others. She is Associate Faculty at the University of Phoenix and currently resides in New York. Margarita’s first book of poems is coming out this Spring in Sofia, Bulgaria.

The Holy Spirit at the Baptism of Christ

…the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on Him…

                                        Matthew 3:16

More akin
to a falling mirror of
a dove than
the dove itself–
flat as a page
with depth
and that deepness
turning itself in
many dimensions,
somehow expands finitude,
a black hole of light–
this must be where gravity goes.

And this must be
how God answers
His own prayer:
the voice of God
conforms itself to a whisper–
the whisper submits
to the wind, blown
this way, that–
what hovered over
the waters of creation
hovers again
over new waters,
a new creation.

Micah Towery has his MFA from Hunter College. He enjoys making his own yogurt and blogging on http://www.thethepoetry.com.

How the Days Go

(like a sad song or psalm)

 I was a hunter.
 My days were gazelles.

A long time ago, in the winter,
They would come down from a hill,
down from a hill to my open field.

I saw them spring in the winter,
and watched them gambol in their heat.
I came near to the ceremonies of their coupling.

In the spring they came down from a hill.
They came down from a hill with their young.

The open field is now a house and garage.
It is a house and garage, a driveway and a lawn.
I cannot shovel, push or rake any longer.

I use a Deere to mulch the leaves, fling the snow.
To cut the lawn, clear the snow, I use the Deere.

I am a tired hunter.
My days were gazelles.

Myron Ernst was co-owner with his wife Shirley of a Montessori School in Vestal, New York. Retired, he is a frequent contributor to ragazine.cc. His work has appeared in many other publications.

At Grandma Teri’s House

Grandma slowly steps down
the yellow stairs,
her left hand on the banister,
her right twitching to a silent beat.
Her fading red hair matches
the paint on her fingernails—
she is a sunset.

She takes me to the grocery store
where I watch her inspect
a cluster of grapes,
turning them over in her hands
as if they are jewels.

The four of us help her decorate
for Christmas, mounting garlands on
the figures of two white dogs which sit
on opposite sides of the fireplace.  I perch
little angels by the long vases filled with glass
rocks, by the white figurines of ballet dancers,
and by the plastic fruit on the table
I always think is real.

While my parents talk
with her, my sister and I take out
the box of checkers which rattle
with pennies since there are not enough
pieces inside.  As we play,
I hear them laughing.

My sister and I are then hustled downstairs
for bed where I walk past the shelf
of framed photographs and I stop
in front of one of my family and her—
my sister and I in our pajamas,
our hair still wet from the pool—
standing in her front yard, ready for the ride home.

Diari

(Translated by Emanuel Di Pasquale)

I
Prima  notte, seconda notte. Qui le cose hanno sempre meno bisogno della nostra presenza.

Sotto questo tetto, dentro i nostri occhi, oltre i visi ncontratti. Ognuno tiene per sé parti del ricordo.

Solo qualche volta, in qualche stanza, appaiono le cose senza di noi. Grazie alla nostra assenza.

Pare che abbiamo gli occhi chiusi, invece muoviamo lo sguardo e sembriamo lenti in quest’ azione.

L’animale attraversa il prato. Lo si vede correre, come se inseguisse qualcosa. Oppure è solo il nostro inseguire qualcosa.

Come quando erano partiti, senza chiedere indirizzi, credendo di poter vivere con le sole tracce.

Ognuno ora pensa al tono di voce, disperso tra le cose, tra le domande che sono più difficili da fare.

Perché adesso si è come chiusi, seduti alla fine di una frase, insieme ad altri suoni, non uditi.

Journals

I
First  night, second night. Here things need our presence
less and less.

Under this roof, inside our eyes, beyond the contracted faces.
Each holds on to parts of the memory.

Only sometimes, in some room, things appear without
us. Thanks to our absence.

It seems that we have our eyes closed; instead, we shift our look and seem slow doing so.

The beast crosses the field.  One sees it run, as if it were
following something. Perhaps it’s only our following something.

As when they departed, without asking for addresses, believing they could live with traces only.

Each now thinks of the tone of the voice, dispersed among the things, among the questions that are the most difficult to ask.

Because now it is like being closed, sitting at the end of a phrase, together with other sounds, unheard.

Alziamo le braccia, vogliamo qualcosa da fare, ce lo chiediamo a tratti, pronti a credere di averlo trovato.

Gli altri sono già partiti, passati. Hanno superato il confine dove è difficile  crederli  veri.

Ci sono molte ombre qui. Alcune fanno parte del luogo, altre appartengono a noi.

Rumori dalle scale. Allora si pensa agli altri, al loro salire e scendere, a cosa facciano e dove vadano.

Quando apriamo la porta è come se non fossimo mai usciti di qui. O meglio, l’ultima  volta non eravamo le stesse persone.

Cambiare i vestiti, il volto, le parole. Con brevi pause, brevi silenzi, ora siamo quelli che altri  vedranno.

We raise our arms, wanting something to do, suddenly asking
ourselves, ready to believe we’ve found it.

The others have already departed, passed by. They’ve gone beyond the border where it’s difficult to believe they’re real.

Here are many shadows. Some are part of the place, others belong to us.

Noises from the stairs. One thinks of the others then, of their going up and down, of what they might do and where they might go.

When we open the door, it’s as if we had never left
here.  Or better, the last time we were not the same people.

To change clothes, words, face. With brief pauses, brief
silences, now we are those that others will  see.

 _________________

II

E’ meglio non sapere, a volte. Lasciare le cose circolare, lasciare che ci passino accanto e solo dopo pensarle.

Per esempio, ora non sappiamo molto di più di questa stagione. Solo il fatto che muta, imprevedibile, vicino ai laghi.

Siamo estranei alla stagione, noi. Siamo fuori e solo possiamo assorbire il suo comportamento, diverso.

Né vorremmo capirne di più. E’ come avere una certa distanza che ci fa ragionare di essa.

Crea argomenti, discorsi sul clima che comunque non li richiede. Siamo noi che entriamo nella discussione.

II

It’s  best not to know at times. To let things flow, to let them
pass nearby and to think of them only later.

For example, right now we don’t know much about this season.
Only the fact that it changes, unpredictable, near the lakes.

We’re strangers to the season. We’re outside and can only
absorb its different behavior.

Nor would we like to know more about it.  It’s like having a certain distance that makes us think about it.

It creates arguments, discussions on the climate which doesn’t ask for them. It’s we who enter the discussion. 

_________________

III   (Sull’idea  di attendere)

In posizione d’attesa si estendono i pensieri, vanno a creare forme del dire che poi si perdono.

In attesa che qualcosa cominci si guarda all’esterno. E’ il momento in cui un animale appare.

Nei momenti d’attesa, senza vento, ci si rifiuta di credere che altri siano già passati da qui.

Emergono ombre, nell’attendere. Come quelle che ieri sera ci circondavano, sicure di se stesse.

Si cambiano i numeri dei nostri conti, seduti in attesa. La vita li richiede, a volte molto tardi, la sera.

III  (On the idea of waiting)

In  the waiting  attitude, thoughts reach out, create ways
of saying things that then are lost.

Waiting for something to begin one looks out. That’s the
moment in which an animal appears.

In the moments of waiting, windless, one refuses to believe that others have already gone by here.

In the waiting, shadows emerge. Like those that surrounded us
last night, certain of themselves.

As we sit and wait, the numbers of our accounts change.
Life summons them, at times quite late, at night.

______________________

IV   (Dei futuri)

Si potrà dire qui eravamo noi, nella foto, sulla mappa o luogo. Si dirà qui siamo stati, ieri.

Senza un senso non sarà possibile fare prove per riuscire a dire. Per lasciare tracce sull’albero.

Non sarà possibile descrivere questo prato se qualcosa non sarà accaduto, a produrne il ricordo.

La finestra sarà chiusa, qualcosa di simile al congedo di chi parte. Sarà un’altra presenza a dettare il tempo.

La porta sarà chiusa. Non si aspetterà più la chiave per entrare. Sarà già dopo.

Questa è la strada da cui saremo passati, quando lasciata questa zona saremo noi a raccontare d’esserci  stati.

IV (On futures)

We’ll be able to say we were here, in the photo, on the map, or in the place.  We’ll say, here we were, yesterday.

Without a meaning it will not be possible to speak. To leave traces on the tree.

It will not be possible to describe this field unless something has happened, to create a memory of it.

The window will be closed, like the gesture of departure. Another presence will  dictate time.

The door will be closed. The key will no longer be needed. It will already be already.

This is the road. After leaving this
zone we’ll tell the story of our having been here.

Mario Moroni was born in Italy in 1955. He moved to the United States in 1989. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Memphis and Colby College. He currently teaches Italian at  Binghamton University.  Moroni has published seven volumes of poetry and one of poetic prose. In 1989 he was awarded the Lorenzo Montano prize for poetry.

sitting at 14^th and Broadway
staring up at steeple on Grace Church
I often wonder if Pascal smoked
contemplating spires watching smoke

rise like wagering thoughts in white
bursts of heat climbing crockets until
field of vision diminishes to
point of vanishment from earth cross

perched on pyramid sight passes
infinity streaming stratosphere
into nothingness of space and on
and on and on directly to

void of sound, color and reason
uncrossed by paths until it reaches
outer limits of understanding
and intuitively arrives

at same spark in electric thought
that is the origin of our soul

Raymond Hammond is a poet, critic and editor of the New York Quarterly magazine since assuming control after the death of William Packard in 2002.

Brooklyn-1950

The Three Families from Istanbul

 In our neighborhood lived three Sephardi families —
     The Levys, The Hattems, and The Abrevayas —
all cousins, all from Istanbul, who would take their slow
evening strolls in the spring and summertime, all together,
the men in front, shoulder to shoulder, hands clasped
behind their back, with their wives following. Passing by,
they would not to speak to us Eastern European Jews,
but would deign to nod and perhaps half-wave
in our direction as a sign that they had seen us,
and were resigned to our existence. As we sat
in the spring and summertime high on our brick porches,
I watched them pass, and listened to their strange,
distant, medieval Spanish bobbing in their wake,
and I wondered if it was true that they kept under their beds
the iron keys to the gates of their Iberian houses.

Myron Ernst was co-owner with his wife Shirley of a Montessori School in Vestal, New York. Retired, he is a frequent contributor to ragazine.cc. His work has appeared in many other publications.

FLYING BARK 

America, I will sing for you.

Land of self-proclaimed dogmatic regulators. Offenders of the standard

78 degree room temperature. When you roll down the window, you say:

“Serendipitous to think so.” And the officer chuckles. The officer gives

you a handshake. You must reciprocate by throwing an equally ferocious

milkshake, or one of greater grandeur. Depending on the crossing chickens.

If it rains on your lawn do you spray disinfected solution on the branches

of the elks? Should you wipe clean your transmission with a rag made of dust?

Who will compare you to a fine summer’s clay? The fluorescent lights remind you

of Michael Jackson. You have a fever and no one will say: “Contentious grackle.”  

WHEN BEES CRY   

 The thought entered my mind. The thought entered my mind during the middle of the night. In the middle of the night, the thought entered my mind and I cried. When I cried, the thought left my mind. It left my mind, this thought, and I have never thought this thought again. It has been twenty days since the night I thought this thought. I have not thought this thought since. Now I am worried that perhaps this is the nail that shuts the lid or the hammer that claws the nail from the lid. Maybe now I will think this thought again. Now that I’ve realized that I haven’t thought this thought in twenty days. But I do not want to think this thought. And I have not thought the thought. It is lovely, I think, not to think this thought.  

A BIRD BROKE MY WINDOW  

Yesterday morning, a crow flew into my room

and said: “Sell your lawn for Exxon.”

There was nothing else I could do.

I read out loud a few words I was reading.

The bird dropped dead.

Why did this bird have to die in my room?

d on my favorite desk.

Alina Gregorian is a graduate student in the program at the New School. She has created with Bianca Stone a poetry opera recently performed in New York city. Her prose poems have a sense of surrealism and play both comical and startling in theirs juxtapositions. This is her first publication in Ragazine.