Category — Poetry

Don’t worry, Spider

I keep house

Casually

      (Issa)

 a domhán alla

ná bí buartha ar bith

ní bean mhaith an tí mé.

      (Gaeilge/Irish)

araña, cálmate,

cuido la casa

cuando me da ganas

      (Español/Spanish)

Deborah Humphreys is an artist in community and social worker in Newark, N.J.  She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College in February.

Christmas Card to Greg

Do you remember Dusseldorf

the Hotel Christina

and the lobby bar

where a fat old man

in several black overcoats                                                        

pulled off his beret

to reveal a swastika

tattooed to his forehead

and he shouted at us

Schweine! Schweine!

We didn’t know what we had done

except speak English to one another

and be young and agile.  

Small white Christmas lights

hung in two lines on either side of the                            

front door, and after the bartender

subdued him 

and to get warm,

we went out the front door,

and up the side stairs                                                                

to my room

where we took off our clothes

and bathed together

then slept

side by side                                                                             

Bruder und Schwester.

Jan Wenk Cedras has been involved in theatre, dance, and music for over thrity years. Currently, she lives in Rochester with her daughter who plays concert cello.       

Lesson Plan

They asked me what the gloaming was,
Eyes like kerosene lamps
Concrete angels mossed over in the graveyard,
Last coercions of a fruit about to fall
From its branch to the frost,
A glass held to the ear, the roar
Of an ocean in its shell?

I can’t tell them how it contains
The strains of dual faith,
Benjamin’s dialectical image, the thought
That “every epoch dreams the one that follows it,”
In the words of Michelet;
The way
“Give me Liberty, or give me death”
Rings in our ears even when
Ear-witnesses couldn’t remember
What Patrick Henry said.

But patriotism is all
These children are forced to recall, so
How could I explain any other way
When their little hands were clenched
Around patterned pencils,
Lined notebooks at the ready,
Miss Brown’s framework
Stenciled firmly on their foreheads?

Kate Hogan is a recent transfer to Binghamton University from Broome Community College. She has lived many years in the Southern Tier of New York,  and is pursuing her undergraduate degree.

The Bride

You could read Ruskin all day to me about sesame clouds
and the appearance of linen on sprawling walkways.
Pouring your stiff, bright eyes into the avenue
would be one way, and staying on the phone while drawing
a pink-splattered mist covered around an eggshell
would be another. You could heat rice and recite Faust.
Batter an eyelash until the fringe resembled small turf.
There we shall play, like ponies on green banks, all day.

You could induce a train rhythm, one that set me back
a ways, having a vague peripheral hint of horticulture—
the cornice of flower water, the snail horn sandwiched
in air. You could pull the covers over the ocean in bed,
and bring me soup, deigning to peak at my hook lip,
removing the vestige of flint from my dwarfish cap.
You could sit, like a woman, dainty in a peach atrium,
a computer on her lap, beckoning with the back of her head. 

 José Raul Capablanca

It wasn’t always like this.
Speaking, but not speaking.
Once, it was different.
Time with its résumé.
I can’t say who read it.
Or why they couldn’t have.
But so it was.
Things changed.
And thinned out.
Toasts were empty.
Linen was heavy.
And the meals,
wherever meals there were,
felt false even if filling.
They were often filling.
But they were also often not.
People put themselves onwards.
Onwards became old.
One time someone would look back
and find they had not seen a thing.
So they resumed sleep.
In the purple garden,
a moon clipped the hedge
for the dumb couple
out of respect for insurance.
A chalice came from the faucet.
In the sink, there were newsmen
and newsheadlines that vanished.
No one spoke of chalk.
No one aroused dust.
Only spilled ink filled the wash.
And that was accidental procedure.
Soon men arose in graves.
The grass fell like a blanket.
Neat and orderly and set that way.
The will read: Let there be pieces of the valley
for all men, but somewhere there wasn’t.
Until there was. This followed
for a few years, and I grew tiresome,
and irksome, and shot glances
when I had nothing to shoot at
or shoot for. I suspended the routine.
I ate breakfast and dreamed of a rodeo.
I even began with matins in the morning.
And dovetailing, always a hobby,
replaced my love of tsunamis,
artworks chilled by colorists.
Oblong expressions of medicine
and cosmetics of Eastern wisdom.
There was no wisdom. There was no sun.
Only wizened streets, with exposed feet.
And the socks of the trees were left there.
And the bikes were locked with expense.
And the doors became like records
of all the people that had lived there.
Once I tried to reach you at the hotel,
but longing came, with its lascivious
stockings and one thing became another.
Columns were sure-footed. Anger was paid.
Skies were ordered. Horns were dulcified.
Smoke went back to its topical allusions.
The tropics spun out from the webbing.
A small plane rode across my sleep
and in it I left, having no time for words,
figuring the whole rest of the trip
a solo concerto. I didn’t know what that
meant but it occurred. There was rain.
It was light. It turned out to be enough. Then.

Adam Fitzgerald is a graduate student at Columbia University. He is a minor expert on Zoroastrian studies. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children, and a pet chimp named Oleander.