Category: Poetry

Brother My Brother

Poetry by Shann Ray and Art by James Black

 

Brother My Brother draws from the brotherhood shared by Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho ledger artist James Black and Czech American poet Shann Ray opening a doorway into the powerful love among brothers worldwide. Cherishing intimacy while refusing to look away from humanity’s capacity for violence, this book engages the genocidal weight of history alongside the thermonuclear missile crisis proliferating globally in the present day. The visual art of James Black and the poems of Shann Ray offer a sense of fearlessness accompanied by peace and well-being against the imminent threat of annihilation. To hold the beloved’s face, to speak love not hate, to see blackbirds rise from a winter field and hear the quiet breathing of horses–to give witness to the beauty of wilderness and the beauty of the human heart. Brother My Brother takes as its project the reconciliation of people and nations.

 

 

 

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 11 x 17”

 

 

… ^

only first notice

with me the Aggregat

series (German for “aggregate”)

a set of ballistic missile designs developed from

1933-1945 by a research

Program of Nazi Germany’s

Armed Forces (the Wehr-

macht) and remember even

now its greatest success was

the A4 more commonly

known as the V-2 fuel

ethanol and liquid oxygen

the 80s brought nuclear fear

but today its quite different

notice how there’s not near

as much jumping under desks

or wailing of loud sirens

or visiting bomb shelters

now everything’s different

 

 

… ^

notice too

the Kaliningrad K-5

(NATO reporting name AA-1 Alkali)

also known as RS-1U or product ShM

an early Soviet

air-to-air missile

with a speed of 800

meters per second

and beam riding

guidance that in later

years was replaced by

a beam-riding seeker

with infrared semi-active

radar homing for

missiles now given

the name heat seekers

 

 

… ^

notice too

the AIM-9 Sidewinder

(where “AIM” stands for

“Air Intercept Missile”)

a short-range air-to-air missile

which entered service with the United States

Navy in 1956 and was subsequently adopted

by the US Air Force in 1964

and since then the Sidewinder

has proved to be an enduring

international success so its latest

variants remain standard

equipment in most Western-aligned

air forces but don’t forget the Soviet

K-13 (AA-2 ‘Atoll’) a reverse-

Engineered copy of the AIM-9B

which was also widely adopted

by a number of nations such that

these newer seekers with rocket

motors can also equip attack helicopters

for greater kill force please recognize

these as among the oldest lowest cost

missiles also don’t forget the US Navy

hosted a 50th-anniversary celebration

for the Sidewinder in 2002 and Boeing

won a contract in 2010 to support

Sidewinder operations through 2055

 

 

… ^

today missiles

with names from A to Z

carry thermonuclear warheads

flying the earth wherever we ask

them to fly leaving and reentering the atmosphere

with pinpoint accuracy exoatmospheric kill vehicles

yes EKVs ride fast

so please remember

the ancient prophecy:

when you see standing

in the holy place

the abomination that

causes desolation flee

to the mountains let no

one on the rooftop go

down to take anything

from the house let no

one go back to the field

to get their cloak it will

be dreadful for pregnant

women and nursing

mothers pray that your

flight will not take place

in winter or on the day

of rest there will be great

distress unequaled from

the beginning of the world

and never to be equaled

again please note it says

if those days are not cut

short no one will survive

and wherever there is a

carcass there the vultures

will gather but be not afraid

for as lightning that comes

from the east is visible in

the west so will be the

coming of the prince of peace

 

 

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek, Detail #2

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 5.5 x 5.5”

 

 

… ^

we

declare

the Arrow or Hetz

(Hebrew: חֵץ, pronounced [ˈχet͡s])

a family of anti-ballistic missiles

designed to fulfill an Israeli requirement

for a missile defense

system that would be

more effective against

ballistic missiles than

the Patriot surface-to-air

missile jointly funded

and produced by Israel

and the United States

development of the system

began in 1986 and it has

continued since drawing

contested criticism yet still

undertaken by Israel Aerospace

Industries (IAI) and Boeing

it is overseen by the Israeli

Ministry of Defense’s Homa

(Hebrew: חומה, pronounced

[χoma] “rampart”) administration

and the U.S. Missile Defense

Agency it forms the long-range

layer of Israel’s multi-tiered missile

defense system along with David’s

Sling (at medium-to-long range)

both Iron Dome and Iron Beam

(at short ranges) and note it is warhead

directed high explosive fragmentation

flight ceiling exoatmospheric

 

 

… ^

please note

the al-Husayn

(Arabic: الحسین, romanized:

al-Husayn) “little beautiful one”

a short-range ballistic missile developed

in Ba’athist Iraq an

upgraded version of

the Scud missile the

al-Husayn was widely

used by the Iraqi Army

during the Iran–Iraq

War and the Persian

Gulf War weight nearly

15,000 pounds warhead

1,102 pounds of payload

high explosive chemical

biological and nuclear

capabilities but also note

fuselage and warhead prone

to break into fragments while

reentering the atmosphere

 

 

… ^

see

the Aspide

(the Italian name for

the asp) an Italian missile

produced by Selenia (then by Alenia

Aeronautica now a part

of Leonardo S.p.A.) it

is very similar to

the American Sparrow

an echo design is the

UK’s Skyflash the Asp

uses the same airframe

as the Sparrow but an

inverse monopulse

seeker far more accurate

and much less susceptible

to electronic countermeasures

(ECMs) than the original

conical scanning the Asp

also has original electronics

and warhead a new more

powerful engine with closed-

loop hydraulics for better

downrange maneuverability

and different control surfaces

replacing the original triangular

wings with a newly designed

common cropped delta fixed

wing maximum speed Mach 4

(4x the speed of sound) explosive

force open torque from a four tube

Asp/Sparrow launcher boxlike indifferent

 

 

… ^

note

the Type 01 LMAT

(01式軽対戦車誘導弾,

01-shiki kei-tai-sensha yūdō-dan)

a Japanese man-portable fire-and-forget

Anti-Tank Missile

(ATM) development

began in 1993 at

Kawasaki Heavy

Industries and was

accepted into service

in 2001 during

development the

missile was designated

with the codename

XATM-5 later it was

known briefly as the

ATM-5 not modeled

after the deadliest anti-

tank missile known as

the Javelin the ATM-5

unit cost $250,000 the

weapon employs a

sophisticated Command

Launch Unit (CLU) that

is re-loaded for multiple

firings reliant on kinetic

energy through shaped

charge explosives using

the Munroe effect to

penetrate heavy armor

the charge collapses a

metal liner inside the

warhead into a high-

velocity shaped charge jet

capable of penetrating

armor steel to a depth of

seven or more times the

diameter of the charge

and can be delivered

without the high velocity

required by armor-piercing

devices and thus less recoil

 

 

Sister Who Saved Her Brother — Battle of Rosebud Creek, Detail #1

colored pencil and ink on ledger paper from 1895, 5.5 x 5.5”

 

James Black

Both Cheyenne and Arapaho, artist James Black is a Southern Cheyenne Sundance priest and ledger artist. A descendent of Black Kettle, the renowned Cheyenne peace chief, and two of the original Fort Marion ledger artists of the 1800s, Cohoe and Making Medicine, through his art James honors his people today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shann Ray

American Book Award winner Shann Ray teaches leadership and forgiveness studies at Gonzaga University, and poetry for Stanford and the Center for Contemplative Leadership at Princeton Theological Seminary. Czech American, he grew up near Lame Deer, Montana, on the Northern Cheyenne reservation.

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Sonnet for trigger → obsessional doubt → consequence

Erica Dawson

 

The surgeon left my ovaries intact.

And, once a month, they still release an egg

which slowly rots beside my spine, in back,

my spleen, in front, between my ribs. I beg

you, menopause, come sooner than later.

Filled with half-lives, degrading, in my hollows,

I know mother nature always caters

to men, their bodies stronger, so it follows

I should break down. But what if each egg was a spore

that could give rise to something new without

a man. Maybe just a tiny core

of a human. Some fifty guts to stomach the doubt

of whether or not my body is blameless,

if it’s awful to survive being buried in darkness.

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Miss Lorenz

Clint Margrave

 

should’ve been sipping wine in a Paris café,

but instead she drank Folgers

 

and taught passé composé

to a bunch of acne-faced inmates

 

in the asylum known as Canyon High School.

I’m not sure how she imagined her life

 

when she took that degree

in a Romance language,

 

but it had to have more romance

than kicking Carl Mulligan out

 

of class for wearing a Cramps t-shirt

that said, “Can Your Pussy Do the Dog?”

 

It had to be more French than busting

15-year-old metalheads hotboxing

 

Camels by the chain link fence

behind her classroom wall.

 

But everyone has bills to pay.

Everyone has a bouche to feed,

 

even if it’s only your own.

Miss Lorenz must be retired now.

 

I like to imagine her living

out these late years eating mussels

 

under a red awning in Montparnasse

or sampling Beaujolais Nouveau

 

at a little round table by the Seine

or maybe just taking in the view

 

from her own backyard

of all that’s in the distance.

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make a poem out of nothing

JC Talamantez

 

maybe some men just

 

    amass an immovable nature

 

your father would’ve turned sixty today

 

    —a few times at his mother’s / you could be alone with him

 

he returning—military—

from some place you didn’t understand

 

put headphones so you wouldn’t watch Halloween—he loved horror movies

 

and dark legs land-bound on the precise blanket

 

   below a window riot

   of apricot, on hill country summer

 

   paint each leaf

 

but an absent father’s jovial Spanish, is still just a man

you don’t know

 

and he was in the sky missing feathers

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Two Poems

Jess Yuan

 

BIOSPHERE

The bowl of Los Angeles dreams of stretching over itself
            a skin, a bubble
 
of conditioned air. Strung with light, the city bleeds
            and swells
 
like a mosquito bite itching up the globe, inflamed by that little siphon.
            Whining up
 
and down the highway for miles, each oil derrick nods agreement
            with the others.
 
In the city itself, they are hidden behind hollow facades
            lining the road
 
to the corporation’s glass shell. How does the glassworks installer
            resolve the seam
 
where one adjoins another? Two curves are held together
            with structural silicone.
 
A scab hardens two sides of flesh into place.
            I keep picking
 
where its texture invites a fingernail. Two thousand
            man-hours per year,
 
two million man-hours per millennium. How many man-hours
            to start over?
 
 There is no starting over.
 

CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION

after quitting, every day
I thank heaven I’ll never
 
have to see another building again
nor fear them hanging over me
 
except when I walk
through this world tied together
 
by so many other hands
and when I enter and sleep and possess
 
each adjacent item as mine
then all of it hangs over me
 
a single bulb but at least
the naked filament
 
has a hard enough time
lighting what it is
 
to reveal anything else
at least the empty stage
 
can sometimes turn away
after telling a good joke
 
with a straight face
while the breeze enters
 
as a new neighbor
and then the storm.

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Two Poems

Jose Hernandez Diaz

Ode to the Weekend

Time to break free of routine
By jumping into another routine
Watching too many sports on a plethora

Of cable channels teams I grew up

 

Watching based solely on proximity

Now I root for them for life

Organize schedule around games
What season is it check the sport on TV

 

Football means pumpkin patch

Halloween Thanksgiving

Basketball spring lilacs Easter

Baseball in the summertime

 

Besides beachside barbecues

The weekend means relatively loose
Like prose poetry aesthetics or anti-aesthetics

Spontaneous open to discovery

 

Whereas weekday grind feels more

Like Poetry with a capital “P”
Like Shakespeare’s sonnets

On meter rhyming and on point

 

Ode to the Skateboard

When I was young, I wanted to ride you
But it was hard to find the right balance

 

Settled for the smoother less hip longboard
More convenient, less falling on the pavement

 

Skating was born in southern California
Like Hollywood cinema or Burritos with French Fries

 

Inside of them when we were young

My friends all skated or played sports

 

Free and unassuming no responsibilities

Now they’ve mostly traded it in for blue-collar jobs

 

And picture-perfect families to support

The skateboard, however, remains an iconic

 

West coast symbol of freedom, irreverence,

Expression, though it can also simultaneously

 

Be found at the Olympics on mainstream commercials

Selling the timeless image of youth and vigor

 

Seems far from early gritty days of Venice Beach

Boardwalk before bohemian Venice

 

Became gentrified by millionaires, techies,

Venture capitalists, not necessarily

 

Complaining just observing evolution

Besides purity is for saints and martyrs

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Two Poems

Jane Zwart

Plots

I know: people want roads. They want room
for paths to fork and converge. A story is better
if its hero might be lost, if no one has taken
reversal off the table. But a great plot is too much
for me. I max out at raised and sunken beds.

 

A repurposed sandbox, fine: beans’ greedy ringlets,
an argyle trellis; tomatoes drooping outside
steel gyres; a frame of marigolds to put off deer.
Blind alleys under lawns, yes, and fraud roses
and knee prints, balloons in every stage of dilation.

 

The woman thinning the zucchini; the child
plowing a stripped crayon, lengthwise, over a page
his father holds square across a gently canted
stone: I cannot tell you their befores or their afters.
Those plots are beyond me. I can only write Look.

 

Used Benison

Tonight I am borrowing a septuagenarian’s life,
his lap full of husks and silk, his friend running
streetlights; they are rushing ears of sweetcorn

 

to boiling water, they are racing sugar’s corrosion
into starch. I am borrowing everything. The chrysalis
a boy set on his dresser for its shape alone. The brief

 

pet it bred. I am trying on a whole record of wonder:
the child’s, an inning into summer; the groom’s,
his paisley a distraction to the Baptists; the old

     fellow’s—

 

if this is life who could earn their keep—when he

     throws
up his hands. There is a joy that helpless. I borrow it.
I too have been loved more than makes sense.

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POEM WHEN REMINDED ABOUT GRACE

Cynthia Atkins

 

And the girls that held my hair back
at the water fountain or the toilet.
Girls prettier than me, better teeth.
And the pimpled teen that held out
an umbrella at the bus stop,
as rain pelted the city sidewalks.
I am reminded about grace—
Human beings touching, making contact.
Unctuous hugs by friends in sweaters
over coffee on a snowy day.
The wet shoes of our beings.
A warmth that lights the way.
(Because we’re all going to die.)
This morning, a hummingbird flew
so close to my shoulder, I felt
the motor of her tiny wings—
like a baby’s milky breath.
Or that stranger that bought
me coffee on a day made from hell—
The lady that just worked a nightshift,
offered me her seat on the bus, because I was
eight months pregnant. This afternoon, I ate
a sandwich made by my lover’s.
familiar hands. My tender war chest—
a penned note with a jagged hand-drawn heart.

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CONFESSIONAL

Michael Chang

 

this poem’s abt me. dead serious. loads of them are: no no zone, almanac of useless talents, fine w/o u, california one night stand, 500 horses outside at the valet, white ford bronco, awful ghosts, carnal flower, rasputin, my forever person, working stiff, sad boy public relations, garden state trick, bleu de chanel, white tennis shoes, suede kisses, internet boyfriend, simpatico, student-athlete’s college recruitment guide, leg of lamb, gin & milk, duck duck goose, still life w/ sunglasses at nite . . . it would be easier to list the poems of theirs i’m not in. they’ve been writing abt me for 12 years. i was one of their earliest students, way back when i was 19. totally fell in love w/ them & let them know it, although i was scared, before having to go home to texas & check into rehab. the whole ordeal left me spinning my wheels, afraid even to go to str8 spaces like home depot. found out a few years ago they’d written a number of love poems abt me. called me catullus, something abt my breath, described my bedroom as having the atmosphere of an operating theater. tried my best to contact them, but they wouldn’t say a word to me. performed my favorite exorcism & purchased shoes for dog. didn’t pay for my chipotle. abandoned tourists on the pier, most definitely high. still they kept writing these damn poems, claiming i’m terrified of intimacy.  no, i’m a very intimate guy, have left a lot of bodies behind.  hey, my eyes are up here.  i get it, there’s only so much waiting around u can do.  i want a family, not a fantasy.  very much falling out of love w/ them.  abt damn time.  their stock is sinking fast.

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A Year of Growth

Jonathan Fink

 

My youngest daughter does not know

that each tree ring marks a year of growth

when she selects a piece of scrap wood

 

from the sawdust and shavings

that have covered our back patio

and carries the board inside to color

 

the rings revealed by the saw blade,

my daughter filling the arching semicircles

until a rainbow appears as her sisters

 

lay other scraps across the floor to make

a path on which to leap from board to board

to furniture and back again in a game,

 

I imagine, every child in history has played,

the game requiring only the belief

that the ground is not as solid as it seems,

 

that a misstep or tip of balance will lead

to peril, whether lava or river or canyon below,

even though, while laughing, they jump again,

 

shrugging off each demise, protesting

only when I collect the boards

and insist that the world be ordered

 

over their appeals to fairness,

the mantra of childhood, to which

I and every parent I know responds,

 

Who says the world is fair? mostly resisting,

though sometimes not, to itemize,

while wielding a clothes-less Barbie

 

or broken toy like a judge’s gavel,

every slight from work and love

and politics both foreign and domestic

 

as the neighbor’s dog howls at the burgeoning

moon and the kids give each other that look

meaning, What’s got into dad—all we meant

 

was we were having fun? which is when

I see myself reflected in the glass

of the patio sliding doors and realize

 

how large I must seem to them,

large, though clearly not authoritative,

as the youngest starts spacing

 

the boards again behind my back,

and I lift one and point to the rings

in the grain, and say, see, this too

 

was once alive, how, though rooted,

it turned it leaves to the warmth of the sun

and drew water from the earth, its limbs

 

not unlike yours when you lift the hems

of your skirts to hop through puddles,

or wave to me from the treehouse

 

we are building together, a project begun

before the passing of their grandmother

though intersecting now with her loss

 

as grief permeates all things, and they ask

the questions one would expect

(if she looks down on them from above

 

just as they, from the tree, look down on me)

and the questions one doesn’t expect

about how the tree feels holding

 

the remains of another tree in its limbs,

transformed, though it is, to a house,

and I tell them trees aren’t capable

 

of abstract thought or have feelings

like we do, though what do I know,

thinking of Michelangelo’s Pieta,

 

and Mary, though stone, holding

her deceased son, and how the body

is itself a house of memory and love

 

and loss, as my wife and I explained

to our daughters, that the sadness they feel

is sadness, yes, but also love transformed,

 

that grief is love for the one who was lost,

just as my wife expressed on the day

before her mother died, after a month

 

of hospice at her mother’s home and the gift,

my wife said, to be there with her,

to measure and administer the morphine

 

when the great pain came, when any touch,

even a blanket, became unbearable,

to honor the effort at the end for her to stand,

 

holding to the walker, and request what would be

her final bath, and my wife, afterwards,

drawing a comb through the fineness of her hair,

 

never more beautiful, my wife saying

that night, and again the next day

even after the workers had come so quickly

 

to take her, to gather and remove

any remaining meds, count every pill

as her final breath still hung in the air,

 

and our daughters cried unceasingly

so that when, that night, we drove away,

the trees that lined the road seemed to bow

 

to the car, to lift their limbs in the breeze,

the undersides of their leaves lighter

than the backs, like the palms of hands,

 

which, I believed, if they could,

they would place on our car, on the shoulders

of my wife, or interweave their limbs

 

as a canopy above us, their petals

below, and the road would no longer

be a road but a tunnel, to where it ascended

 

I did not know, only that we were

like breath released at last from the throat,

becoming the words we were unable to say.

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Elegy Ending with a Slice of Sour-Cream-and-Raisin Pie

Joe Wilkins

 

A boy wants to break
the world in half and put it
in his pocket. All through the eulogy

 

I thumbed a cracked mussel shell
pulled the day before from the shallows
beneath the bridge,

 

the shell’s interior curves so perfect
and slick I could almost feel
the mother-of-pearl—

 

lavender and rose, cream
at the thin, crumbling edge. My collar
itched. I didn’t like the golden

 

corduroys I had to wear,
hand-me-downs from an older
cousin, and still my only pants without

 

mended knees or a patched ass.
The priest needed the cup,
so I held it up. I didn’t know the man

 

who died. He was my grandfather’s age,
which worried me, but not enough
to slow me down

 

(wasn’t my first funeral, wouldn’t
be my last). I shucked
my starched vestments faster

 

than all the other altar boys,
and so was first in line
for a chipped-beef sandwich and pie.

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UPON GOOGLING AN OLD BOYFRIEND AND FINDING HIS OBITUARY

Terry Godbey 

 

Eleven years ago 

he checked outta here, 

dead at 58, 

just as I emerged 

from a cancer chrysalis. 

 

No mention of a wife 

or children, 

and no more chances 

for me to apologize 

for stomping on his heart 

40 years ago. 

 

The absence of kids 

stings a bit 

since his mention early on 

of having little Terrys with me 

was what sent me running, 

still a little Terry myself. 

I wasn’t expecting a man 

to want to stick around. 

Even I didn’t care that much 

for my company. 

 

I don’t remember 

breaking up 

or explaining anything. 

I just stopped  

answering my phone, 

heard his motorcycle  

stirring the summer night 

outside my apartment 

where I was kissing my new man. 

We ran into each other  

at the newspaper where we worked, 

wound up at the same parties 

where his eyes followed me everywhere 

and I accepted his cocaine 

but nothing else. 

  

He moved to D.C., where I heard he crashed  

his motorcycle, struggled with a brain injury, 

but in his 20s he was a sun-burnished god, 

all muscle and quick to smile. 

Good with his hands, he had built  

his own catamaran, and we sailed 

on the Banana River 

and in the Atlantic  

amid pods of dolphins. 

 

His sister left a cryptic online remembrance: 

Unfortunately, he took the wrong path in life. 

So many questions 

and no answers. 

See, here I go again, making it all about me. 

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Two Poems

Carolene Kurien

 

A Confession

I am a bad horse.

I neigh and hoof my way into the houses

of neighborhood husbands

and commission myself for rides

to know straddle and buck.

Some say my mane is the color

of the death beyond death. Some say

it’s best to avoid direct eye contact.

I ask the hydrangea why it is so hard to forgive

people who have changed. Did you know

the more acidic their soil, the bluer

they get? I am not trying to make a metaphor,

but I am saying that most of my daydreams

involve being loved by large groups

of people. I walk into a surprise party

with a banner that reads Happy Birthday,

You Are A Good Person! Someone has baked

my favorite carrot cake. Someone has bought

more mini razors for my mustache. The people I fuck

in my fantasies have no faces. I can barely make out

their bodies. The ghost of myself whimpers

under the ghost of theirselves,

and none of us can smile. The book I am reading

says it’s not my fault. How I am.

That I was just a kid, apparently. But now I am old;

my teeth will fall out soon. And my empty

mouth will no longer have someone else to blame.

 

 

Saudade

I am eating a jam sandwich the taste of rain.

I am finding it difficult to harness myself

into the concept of forgiveness. Rosmarie Waldrop

wrote Your skin was delicate, like a retracted confession.

The dent in your back I placed wishing coins upon

thin and deepening. Your empty, welling face.

Under a microscope, various teardrops have various

physiognomies. Onion tears reach outward like rhizomes,

ever-wet and blooming. Tears of ending and beginning

are Rorschach tests filled with your features: a boat-shaped

birthmark, a whisper of nose. Under the streetlight I pick

a painting and live it. I walk the cliff at Pourville.

I disassemble into yellow kiss. Above my head floats

an assembly of arms. I am uneasy with what I’ll become.

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GIOVANNI

Edmund White 

 

What’s left of an ex in my memory? 

He was kind and courtly (as he should have been 

Since he was a Sicilian aristocrat), 

When he wasn’t being horrid if I stepped 

Out of line, then frozen with fury and  

Unforgiving. He taught me one good pasta 

Recipe, Pasta alla Norma, with fried eggplant. He 

Bought me a CD player when mine broke, several  

Cashmere blankets, and he restored a leather 

Club chair that was in tatters. He was a doctor, could play 

The harpsichord, cook a few dishes, entertain 

In his battleship-sized loft, lie and cheat convincingly,  

Make the sort of love a heterosexual Mediterranean  

Male might make, selfish and athletic—and which I liked  

Because it never dwindled away even after we broke up. 

We both cried a lot. He had a black ceramic vase with an 

African face and a crown, until I explained that 

Was unacceptable in politically correct New York. 

Then it was banished, as was I when I told his new  

Lover that Giovanni and I were still having sex. I saw a good shrink 

And got over him. I’ll never have another lover— 

Too much of a bother. Once in a while I wish we could 

Speak on the phone, to find out whether his father’s  

Parkinson’s is progressing, whether his little brother  

Got married, and did he ever discover a cure for that  

Kind of breast cancer. And does he still hate me?  

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A MOMENT OF TENDERNESS

Vincent Antonio Rendoni

 

I witnessed something beautiful, friends

One day,

on my father’s monthly visit
to give his father
some money

Abuelo,

who kicked him out at sixteen
who didn’t believe in touch or mercy

caught his son limping

& put away the contempt fathers have for sons
& suspended the law of machismo reached for the rusted Texaco box
with the antiseptic, tweezers & gauze
slapped his knee
& called to his son’s feet,
& began working his way
through the skin & blood
of a used car salesman’s ingrown toenail

& never thought, not even once

as he cut through the keratin
cleaning & washing the lowest part
of working folk
that this is something
a man has to think about.

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Boundary Waters

Donald Platt

 

Accessible primarily by canoe, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, in northeast Minnesota . . . extends 150 miles along the U.S.-Canada border, covering approximately 1,098,000 acres . . .
— Explore Minnesota

 

I want to go

to the Boundary Waters, canoe its one thousand lakes,

hundreds of miles

 

of rivers. So many places I’ve never been. I’d like to see sunset

reflected in Tuscarora

Lake, when it’s so still you cannot tell the difference

 

between sky on fire

and water on fire. Rosanne and I could paddle together

in our red canoe

 

to the very middle of the lake. Her hair would outshine sunset.

One loon would call

to another loon with its otherworldly wail from across

 

wide water.

That’s all I want to hear. But Rosanne, who has been to the Boundary

Waters and back,

 

tells me gently, firmly, matter-of-factly—in the voice

I love more

than any other woman’s voice—that no, I will never go as far

 

as Tuscarora

Lake. My body with its nerve pain, unable to walk anymore

without its rollator,

 

would not be able to do even one long portage.

She’s right, of course.

And even if I were to canoe that cold, aquifer-fed water

 

so clear I can see

twenty feet down to the rocky bottom, always another

waterway is waiting.

 

Night calls me with its unanswerable cry. Death’s loon

cries out

to me to come, come. Canoe to him alone across

 

dark, starlit water

where the moon now rises. Keep him company upon those other

boundaryless waters.

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Weight of Water

Allison Field Bell

 

Yesterday at the kitchen sink, my lover told me again
how I can’t do it right—load the dishwasher, wash the cast iron.
No soap, no scrubbing. My hands submerged in water, scalding.

 

Today, I’d rather be a fish. Scales, gills, unblinking eyes. Curl
around the toxic tentacles of that blooming mass: the anemone.
Brilliant orange and white stripes against the rainbow of reef.

 

None of that anxiety that dwells in the stomach, hollows it out, drops
it to the knees. The way my lover yelled when I panicked—
shook and shimmied. Too much, too much.

 

Too much pressure from the weight of water above,
but not feeling the ear-popping ascent from the depths of
the sandy floor. Water crushing bones. A whole sea of it to live in.

 

I’d like to be a shark. A predator. Free in my own kingdom.
Beast so ancient, so full of its own history, so full of its
own instinct. So full. So unlike the way I am. Sitting on the edge

 

of the bed now, my lover beyond a slammed door. I wonder
what it is to escape something. Where it is I could go. Beyond
the twist of whitewater, the shallow sand shelf to the deep

 

underbelly of sea, cold dark infinite. Bliss, all that water, swimming.

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MISSING THE FARM

Travis Mossotti

 

Here’s the orchard someone else will tend to.
And the crawl space beneath the porch
of the house where someone else’s barn cat
will slumber through the summer nights
dreaming of long-tailed mice in the high grass.
Over that field, the light dips and refracts
through the broken glass of the muck pond
where a catfish will take someone else’s bait
and hook—that it might meet the refined
heat of a skillet. The ghosts of a thousand
head of cattle walk through the woods at night
in someone else’s dream while the windows,
cracked slightly, let a mild breeze pass
through the empty rooms like an appraiser.
There is no death that cannot be undone
by simply turning the compost with a pitchfork
or by scattering scratch in the dirt for chickens
who sing each time they lay, but every repair
is only a gesture against the torment of slow
winds and steady rain and heavy sun. It will be
someone else who grows too old to climb
the ladder into the barn’s cool loft or the flight
of stairs that lead to and from their own bed.
It will be their hand weighing the mortgage.
It will be their face forgetting its smile. Listen,
if the well pump kicks to life at dawn, it will be
someone else drawing a bath for the last time—
joints relaxing as their form submerges, body
recovering and failing in the same held breath.

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I WANNA BE WRONG

Michael Chang

 

wanna sleep till i see u again
words u generally wanna hear
except when ur already at their haus
hey do u wanna get outta here
i like it when u talk abt cannes
so much
i like it so much
i’m a same-sex couple
a warehouse
nothing in me but a grand piano
stop staring
start tearing
if u’d changed u wouldn’t be here
did u see my present
the one i left
believing u could be deterred
i think i threw it out
as they used to say in hollywood
that movie sold popcorn
he asked to take me to the pound shop
but it was just a dollar tree
u go to the disco, panic
they want a better look at u
any acknowledgment of their infinitesimal existence
as mark twain’s old saw has it
the difference between a fire & a firefly
rain that looks like u, clean sheets
we luv to be intrusive
take an invasive procedure
make it more invasive
find it hard to leave relationships
luv being in luv w/ machines
money from a white-shoe firm
in fact a frozen-foods conglomerate
angel cakes bearing lines of credit
do not be afraid

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I Woke Up Eating Donuts in the Rain

Jarrett Moseley

 

is the note I left for myself
on the introduction page
of a poetry book
three years ago.

 

I did not wake up eating donuts in the rain
except for once
when I was a kid
and even then I was dreaming.

 

I’m always dreaming
of an elsewhere
where the reams of grass
I tucked into a wicker basket
last July have not withered
and the grease of fast food
slides off my fingers like sunlight
and a child touches a mirror, feeling
unlike a severed power line.

 

I was not that child.
When I was nine, I wrote a song
about the black tongue of death
before I even knew what it looked like.

 

I don’t know what to make of that
or if everything is a river
though I keep having the persistent feeling
that everything is supposed to be a river
even bad things
like loneliness.

 

Three years ago, I was lonely
and writing sad notes to myself
like screaming into a shower head.

 

Since then
Mason died
and Savanah moved to New York
and Gracie left New York for L.A.
and Sarah gave birth
and I decided against writing summary poems
but here I am.

 

When I say I’m always dreaming
that’s not what I mean
but that there’s a place inside me called outwards
where each thing faces away
from the next thing.

 

The couch back pushed against another couch back
which is facing away from the mirror
which is facing away from the window
which is facing away from the outside lawn
which is facing away from the world’s
violent unbuckling.

 

You can just say a lot of things
and get away with it
and even without music
or a bicycle wreck set on a loop forever
or waving one’s arms in circles from a distance

 

but once love gets involved
the whole thing turns red-tinted and jutted.

 

The last person who touched me naked,
we didn’t even have sex
we didn’t even know each other
we just slept in the same bed
with our feet barely brushing,
which is more intimate than sex
then never spoke again.

 

I could write an entire symphony
on things more intimate than sex.

 

I slap the back of a friend,
a boy holds the book at just the right angle,
we watch the car skid out on the road.

 

The news blurs into the radio,
a stone reverses back through a window,
the ground is seared with footprints.

 

Remember you are a river—
maybe that’s what the note should have said,
to move inside the banks of my body
through absolute loneliness
to write not about the leaf stuck in my hair
but rather, the wind that put it there.

 

Three years ago I was not having sex,
no one was sleeping in my bed,
my shoulder was like a stick in the mud,
and I didn’t even dream.

 

But today,
on the 12th of March,
pollen scattered like yellow DNA
across the glass porch table
that points outwards

 

into the community courtyard
where a girl mounts her pink tricycle
as her father pushes behind,
into the 70-degree warmth
swarming the dogwood trees
and the cardinals they carry,
into the peace of learning
to love the cliché
of blooming hope,

 

I open a poetry book and read
the note I had forgotten about.

 

Sometimes
you don’t want to dream.
Sometimes you don’t want to think
about death
or loneliness
or even sex.

 

You want to wake up
eating donuts in the rain,
to feel the river rise,
and to float a letter
to yourself
from one world
hoping it finds you
happily in the next.

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Dirty Moon Dog

Francine Witte

 

Tonight is the night
of the Dirty Moon,
where dust and scrub
show up thumbprint
on the lunar face.
Visible here on Earth
for only a speck,
showing itself quiet
in July or maybe
November. No one
talks about the Dirty
Moon the way no one
talks about the second
Love goes cold, maybe
one less phone call,
one less kiss, or
the way your parents
go see-through,
translucent on
their way to being
gone. But tonight,
right now, a dog
is howling it out.
He is alone
in a field, around
him the worry
of wheat, a shush,
a soft wind trying
to quiet him, his snout
full up, his mouth open
wide into the night.

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Two Poems

Rebecca Foust

Ocean Beach

I am not quite thirty again
on a beach under a three-quarter moon
slung low in the sky, stars pricking
darkness & so cold where the tide
rushes in, swirling ankles then knees
& you swooping me up in your arms
like any fantasy of rescue & I’m ravished
in John Donne’s sense of the word
& pretty much every sense
of the word, licked up & down my spine
by freezing flame, slicked wet
like a dog in the rain, every nerve
buzzing bees in a beauty bush June—
it happens every time I return
to memory’s long, low curve of cold sand,
the swallowed surge of a wave,
held breath knocked out & away
into liquefaction & release,
an icicle held in your warm, bare hand.

 

Pasiphae

In a myth from the southern sea
a woman loved a god
in the guise of a bull, or maybe
it was the sea, or maybe
it was a bull made of waves
that came from behind
all muscle & surge
to her knees, waist, chest,
throat, mouth & eyes, then left
with the morning tide.

 

They say she near died, burned
by sorrow & salt & sun
before she thought to build
a bull of wood she could live
within. For she was also a god
who could drain all she filled
& fill all she drained
like us, who daily dwell
in a world that swallows us whole,
while we take it, holy, inside.

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Captive

Nicole Santalucia

 

for Lesley, Patty, Kathy, and Eileen

 

I woke up in a zoo feeding penguins
that looked like grandmothers I would’ve
knocked down to get a cigarette,
but I quit smoking two years ago
when I came face to face with
a skunk in my backyard. Monday
is garbage night—this I know.
There was a time when I didn’t
know I had a drug problem then
there was a time when I did. The knowing
trapped and released me. We fenced
in the backyard last spring to keep out
little critters, and now I have land sickness.
Anne gave us Jack-in-the-pulpits that have been
in the family for generations. I never thought
this scarlet, orange fruit would blossom again and
again and again—that I’d take responsibility without
taking blame. Taking has nothing to do with Mondays
and Tuesdays. I take the weekend to grow tomatoes.
I always take more and the devil’s ear listens
to my spiritual disease. So does Mr. and Mrs. Brown,
and Mrs. Jones down the street wants to put the house
in her name. If the loan doesn’t go through, she might
get drunk and I might get struck by lightning.
I thought it was just me, but it’s also the landscape.
Here at the river of denial, I refuse the weather,
and people who drank like me have been hiding
in the bushes this whole time. The people who
drank like Kathy just sent her a nice check from
a bar she invested in years ago. And my inner
Eileen says we won’t get struck drunk. She hated
zoos and every penguin in town knew it. She
also had pulmonary emphysema and was rescued
by inhaling and exhaling. She taught us not to think
about thinking and how to die without dying.
We are at war with the skunks. This inner protest
and hot head of cauliflower are part of the ritual.
I place my palm on the source of heat and prepare
to listen with my whole body. I begin with tubers
and work my way to the leafy greens then open
myself up to the rage and wild onions climbing
over the fence to choke out the tree-of-heaven.

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8 Facts about the Atlantic Horseshoe Crab

Bex Hainsworth

 

1.) They are not actually crabs, but faux-crustaceans,

aquatic scorpions; arthropods with arachnid-kin.

 

2.) Triassic reverberations, they are their own ancestors,

unchanged fossils, 230 million years in the making.

 

3.) Called Limulus Polyphemus, after the Odyssean cyclops,

but unborn embryos have nine eyes and a sense of irony.

 

4.) Liminal in existence, they live in the gaps between land

and sea: the brackish, the shallows, the world’s edges.

 

5.) Their distinctive carapace – armour, disguise, barnacled

island – is regularly moulted, left behind like pottery.

 

6.) Females are larger than males, often scarred from mating,

when suitors cling to the rafts of their bodies for months.

 

7.) Each spring, they are spades, digging nests in the same sand

where they were spawned; 64,000 eggs shine like blue pearls.

 

8.) Their blood is used in medical research. We claim catch and

release, hands slick, harvesting the sea in search of immortality.

 

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Honeymoon

James Davis May

 

We were about to die, but it seemed so funny:
the sudden storm cloud unfolding above us
as if we were a pair of cartoon characters
having a bad day. We could see the beach,
our empty chairs, and the other couples
holding drinks and each other’s hands,
while for each stroke shoreward, the sea
(the wind or the waves or both?) pushed
our rented kayak two feet seaward. You knew
my hockey-shattered shoulder weakened us
in one direction. I knew that pain
was better than drowning. Ten years later
you ask what I’d say to the couple we were
in those first years of debt, lost jobs,
and the baby we almost lost but didn’t.
I tell you I’d want to say, “Calm down, kids,
don’t worry so much.” But I take that back.
Think of the storm and how our fear made us
paddle harder and taught us to do it together.

 

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POEM WITH NO FORWARDING ADDRESS

Cynthia Atkins

 

They left without warning, no note taped

to a mirror, no trace or teaser.  No lipstick

marks, sealed an envelope.  With boarded up

windows like the soul of it gone astray—

like a dog lost from home.

At a moment’s notice—

Pizza crust left on the counter.

Dust balls on the sills. Mice eating the mattress offal.

An emptiness where there was a banter of life—

                         —music, doorbells, loud hammers.

A couple arguing in a new language,

then making up all night. The smell of eggs cooking

at dawn.  The children groggy from sleep, awaken to finish

their homework.  Pencils tapping syllables into place.

Hats hung on a hook, the fire crackling in the stove.

A drawer of mittens and gloves.

Winter snow boots waiting to make tracks.

       Why must we practice leaving and loss?—

The tender missives on the refrigerator door—

Family snapshots, quotes, buttons, magnets.

Simple objects that tell us where we live, who we are.

Home, where we take the stones out of our shoes.

 

 

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Zipper

John Paul Davis

 

We were born in the era
of having to balance
our checkbooks

 

& we’ve lived
through that to the time
of tracking transactions
with handheld computers

 

which are also telephones
we only use when we must
though I’ll confess

 

when you were overseas
I’d call your voicemail
just to hear you
say your own name

 

which is my first favorite music.
Second is your keys
dancing in the deadbolt
when you get home from work

 

& third, the sound of your laugh
on the other side of a wall.

 

You mumble in your sleep
& do vocal warm-ups in the shower
& eat cereal in bed yes

 

this is the age of eating in bed
while watching the best television
on tiny screens, this is the era

 

of falling asleep in our clothes
with the light on holding
each other, this is the year
of staying home & mumbling

 

sweetly to each other locking
fingers & inventing novel
ways of expressing our feelings
without words for example

 

there’s the metallic
percussion when I tug
apart your zipper

 

in the doorway by the bucket
where we keep our outdoor shoes,
there’s the creak of floorboards
as I kneel, there’s the quiet rabbit
of your hand in mine.

 

Even when we’re miles apart
my body is a playlist streaming
to yours, my ankles & beard
& earlobes & forearms & belly button

 

& every hair, all of my pink
skin, I’m an afternoon of song
arranged in this specific order
for you. Dance to me, wash

 

dishes to me, sing along to me folding
laundry, read a play
with me on in the background
take me with you on your long commute,
dark of my voice in your headphones.

 

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From the Jeopardy! category SPOILER ALERTS

Julie Marie Wade

First, the light & how to describe it—part Manila envelope, part Ticonderoga pencil. Casserole golden at times, then orange as a giant brick of cheese, then brown as tater tots crammed into cargo pant pockets. Idaho may make you squint & squirm, crave some nachos, drink raw eggs from a glass. Yes, the chickens have large talons. It’s an underdog state fit for an underdog story. Note the tetherball sun & the boondoggle clouds. Note the iconic llama cameo. (There’s a small chance our cat is called Tina because of this film.) Second, the plot & how to recount it—Uncle Rico never did throw a football over them mountains, never did strike it rich selling knock-off Tupperware or breast-enhancing supplements. But Pedro shaved his head & became class president. Kip & LaFawnduh fell in love online, then boarded a Greyhound bus together. And our eponymous protagonist, unlikely hero of the Gemstone State, won a talent show dancing to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat.” Preston seems a sparse, dry place, far from the grid, nary the site of a tourist’s pilgrimage. Dust coats bicycle tires & Rollerblades, hovers above the highways like an unholy halo. It would be nice if you could pull me into town. Third, the supporting cast & how we remember them—Grandma breaks her coccyx on a dune buggy ride; Starla blushes at a Bust Must testimonial; Rex dubs himself sensei of his own dojo while clad in Hammer pants fashioned from an American flag. Critics called it a “quirky charmer,” a “one-hit wonder,” a “weird-ass fairy tale.” They’re not wrong. If you got it, odds are you drew some ligers in your notebooks, too, took some Glamour shots in your basement once upon a time. Now just imagine you’re weightless, in the middle of the ocean, surrounded by tiny seahorses. If you loved it, you’re probably more Deb than Summer Wheatley to this day. More enterprising than prize-winning perhaps, but with a certain staying power, the paradox of which is the way it helps you leave. (Even then, Deb was earning money for college with her home-woven handicrafts.) What amazes me is how we all know a Summer Wheatley, don’t we? Mine was Marissa Sheldon, was Kendra Kostrich, was Julie Winder—who still lives in my town & works at the bowling alley. The other two are unfindable on Facebook. They were cheerleaders way back when, with ESPRIT sweatshirts slipping off their slender shoulders & Keds tennis shoes forever bright-white as the day they bought them. They washed their hair with exotic products like Pantene & VO5 clarifying shampoo. Somehow they always chewed gum the teachers never confiscated, ate Funyuns & SweeTarts by the carton but never gained weight. These were the girls who had it easy or made it look easy—it’s hard to know which. They never seemed to sweat or stink or spill on their clothes, let alone bleed. Whatever they said became Gospel. Whatever they did set the newest trend. But they don’t make many movies about the goodfits, do they? Summer Wheatley isn’t a film in my Netflix queue. I wonder about her, though, like I wonder about Marissa & Kendra & Julie, who shared my name but not my story. Is Summer snickering at her boss from behind her Steno-thin cubicle walls, sending NSFW memes at work, cyberbullying on the Moms of Preston message board? Or maybe she’s flirting with customers at Big J’s Burgers, some of whom remember her when, one of whom offered to pay for Botox if she’d spend one night with him. “What do you think this is—Indecent Proposal?” But then she did it because Trisha, her still-BFF, said she should. Both of them are tired of the old joke: “Is it I-da-ho or you-da-ho?” Tired of guys who stop by for some curly fries & to reminisce about the Happy Hand Jobs Club. “I swear that’s what it was called,” Don smirks, like he’s been smirking all his life. Maybe Summer married him right after high school. Maybe they have a tribe of towheaded children by now. Or maybe they’re divorced but still fight daily over the phone. Can’t stop running into each other in their one exit ramp town. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that you can make a piñata of whomever you like. Better, perhaps—a piñata of whatever you want. Don’t ask the principal for permission. Just go outside, close your eyes & strike with all your might.

“What is Napoleon Dynamite?”

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At the Delachaise


Julia Johnson

You tell me your husband is really a leopard.
I tell you that you've had too much wine.
You insist that he has all of the qualities and attributes and characteristics
and the coloring of a leopard. And that he loves you for your beauty.
I ask why you didn't know this when you first met him
and you insist you did and I ask why you would marry a leopard.
You say that you knew no one would want to meet him but that you
had to marry him. I tell you I can't wait to meet him
and I promise I really do.
I really do want to meet him.
We share a tall cone of fries in white paper.
At the end of the night, we take off our masks and step onto the sidewalk,
and kiss each other in the air instead of touching.
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Announcing the Winner of the Editor’s Prize for Poetry

Congratulations to Caleb A.P. Parker, our 2023 winner for the Editor’s Prize in Poetry! His poem, “Palinode,” will be available to read in our Spring 2024 issue.

Caleb A.P. Parker, a writer and musician from the industrialized Gulf Coast of Texas, was raised by two Episcopal priests. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Ninth Letter, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and currently lives in New York City.

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