crossed, marked for the burning at birth. Pain? By
now we know a thing or two about pain.
Picture This
Do you like a beach? Okay, then, a beach—
in fact, your favorite beach, favorite because
you’ve never been to this beach before—each
sensation beckons you, opens you, draws
you in, welcomes you to your beach—the sand
envelops the bare contours of your feet,
sunshine pours over you, here, where the land
yields itself to the sea. A waiter greets
you, hands you a glass of exquisite wine,
the taste is an aria, it unfolds
itself in your throat, your belly, the line
between you and universe is gone, golden
light floods through you, heals you, holds
you, whispers everything’s going to be fine.
The Champ
The Champ is down, cold-cocked. Seven. Eight. Nine.
( two heads faces backlit floating in smoke
floating in warm wet gauze unending wind
choirs of voices choirs of bells one face broken
one barking numbers the other gone
the other ) The Champ stirs, shakes, slowly rises,
staggers, steadies, blinks hard twice, unfreezes,
nods all-clear. By God, the Champ fights on,
tapping the gloves as if to strike a spark,
as if to pray ( the other ) and the crowd
is delirious, a heaving sea of darkness
and fists, cigars and fedoras, now
rapt, now roaring, now howling like a raw
nerve, electric, as the two of them dance
the dance of circling beasts, now grappling, now glancing
blows, now thunder—by God, the Champ fights on,
unrelenting (the other) a quick left,
a right, darting jabs, starting to connect,
at last the Kid is on the ropes, a deft
feint from the Champ, dauntless on the blood-flecked
mat (the other), that bed of mortal conflict,
the crowd’s madness is love, uppercut,
the Kid’s head flies back, rock-a-shock, eyes shut,
nimbus of sweat and blood—the Champ fights on,
by God ( the other ) and the Kid is through.
Carted off. And now the ref does his shtick,
the big-mike announcer does his bit, too,
the crowd trades backslaps and greenbacks. The fix
is on, someone mutters gravely. ( gone
never gone ) Echoes and laughter, house lights.
Janitors appear, disappear. The night
is over—and by God, the Champ fights on.
Daniel Stewart
January
I defy you this year with a smile
less one tooth
extracted because the bone
that anchored it
dissolved. Neglect born
of neglect. A mother loves one
son but not the other. A goose will kill
its smallest, lamest mouth
for the sake of other hungers.
We endure
inversion-gummed air, The Gap
and I, ignore
side streets rutted with snow
marbled like foam on a latte.
More than halfway through
my forties I know
better, January. If the boss I’d fire
your ice; shove your single digits up your
aurora borealis. I heart you
like a clogged artery, stroke you
like a pulse-burst. You’ve struck the sky
of birds, strung the smog
with tinsel. The frost-fringed dead
limbs of the trees fool the kids
but I’m lost
as the starlings. Such garish
garnish crowns you the grandest, damnedest
widow. You suck
me dry. My hands crack
and flake. My lips need
a balm. A stranger reached
into me and wrenched
out a tooth. He numbed me
first—I felt nothing—but the cracking
was like ice fallen through.
I’ve fallen through you,
January. Your frozen fist will wreck a face.
I turn my cheek for you to kiss.
April
The white top reanimates, little stranglers
haloed with petals. I thought I killed
them all last year with poison, with my bare
hands dragging them out of the graves
they were digging in the lawn. Weeds
always return. You never
will. The neighbors started gardens but I’ve been
wary, haven’t even tilled the weedy soil. Dandelions
roar neon wounds. Wind riots
in the budding plum, the frantic
blossoms your absence. Sky an ache
of angles through awkward branches. The poppies
under fatten and stir.
Bent, I spray white top and crabgrass; crush
cheat; I resist. You insist
the sky’s schizophrenic with clouds. The sky
pales the way a face
drains. The wind’s scouring tears
eyes (a reflex) that reflect only the ordinary
light. Mid-April, and frost expected after midnight.
Corvette
As if Cancer was a giant
vampire that broke off the blackened
fang it sucked the blood
from my family with & left
it in the flesh to fester.
The white
skeleton stretched grey
skin into a yellowed
grin, waved its claw
like a magician
performing a trick.
Stripes
our Brindle/Pit mix
whined and sniffed a chrome
wheel, lifted leg to piss
but found Dad’s foot & curse
up his ass instead.
My brother
hooted & drooled, lusted
over the two-seater trap.
Never good at math, Dad:
We were four, not counting
the dog.
Splinter, I thought. Stab. Then:
Dick.
Told my brother he could pull it out
of the garage. Turned to me
O meat of him, grey-tinged pink with rotting, said:
You get to wash it.
Midnighting
I like to do it while I’m drunk.
I like to do it when I’m starved.
Slick out under a fat
moon dressed in black,
even the shoes.
Some nights call
for hooves to clatter
through quelled neighborhoods
(The sleeping flinch
while dreaming),
others stripped
naked as a wish
to be helpless, to be
holy.
Others, lonely.
Or, fashion paws
from cat hair and nail parings
to match the mask
filched from the raccoon
hunkered under
the shed—paws
ideal
for scrambling
up streetlights—now
varmint stupid
for starlight—pale
as a secret
no one burns to know,
breath molecular
chaos I marry
to wind and go.
17th
August you give me a canker
my periodontalist wants to biopsy
you send me
flailing into rush hour
you ding my fender
you unfriend me
you terrorize my mother out of language
you berate her with dialysis
you castigate her with leukemia
you accuse us with fires
you plaque the valley in smoke
you cast deformed shadows
you bully us into prayer
Are you prone to canker sores
You have a history
of smoking (sinning)
Do you suck hard candy
Do you suck anything
What about cinnamon
what about turmeric coriander why
is curry so expensive
what about lemons
what about getting darker instead of dusk
What about Egypt Iraq Iran Syria
Our lust
for quinoa
disempowers Bolivians
On the Internet
I saw a man eat another man’s heart
I saw a man immolate himself
You unveil the olinguito
then beach hundreds of dolphins
Thunder after midnight explodes
me from dream
shudders the windows
catapults the cats
casts serpents seething
through the barren plum tree
the shriveled raspberry
a respite
August
your hard hot rain
on my wet hapless face
John Glowney
Cigarettes
What was cool
was when an older boy snuck
a girlie magazine
out of Ross’ Five & Dime
inside his shirt.
No one knew girls like this
in slips and filigreed bras
with their compromised thighs
and their bared knees,
incongruous and lovely.
What was cool
was Bill the mechanic
at Schmitty’s Garage
with the cottony white
of a Lucky Strike
between two greasy black fingers
and the time someone jacked a pack
and we watched him smoke
back of the little league field
where the local bikers
popped wheelies and burned rubber
and he hacked and hacked
because he said
he liked it.
What was cool
was the chopped Harley
we swore we’d take across the country
the summer
after graduating from laying back on our beds
with our secret urges
and our evolving plans
and our mystical trances
and our detailed seduction
of the prettiest senior cheerleader
who willingly unbuttoned her blouse
gracefully as rain outside the upstairs window
and our copies of True Detective under the mattress,
the models’ eyes blocked
with a black rectangle
so they wouldn’t have to see
what we were about to do
as we lit up and lay there
revving our engines
in the glow and the ash and the smoke rings of ourselves.
Boys
A full nelson or Indian burn, jiu-jitsu
or the flying drop kick,
we smacked each other around in the parking lot
after Sunday School.
We caught the tomcats by their stringy tails
and swung them,
we peppered the granary eaves with bb shots
killing replaceable sparrows.
Slick green frogs, and mottled brown toads
that peed in our sticky hands,
we marooned in old washtubs
until they curled up like old shoes.
We pinched any girl we liked.
The slow boys, the boys who couldn’t throw,
we shoved into their lockers.
The substitute teachers, especially the one
with the lazy eye, weathered our snickers
and spitballs. We taunted
our retarded classmate until scolded,
unashamed, the wild green pulse
of our short attention spans
fizzing in the sugary glitter
of what comes next.
And when, in the delivery room,
our first-born arrives,
howling, a boy,
we sit there and blubber
like big old crybabies.
Paradise of Wounds
I’d have done anything in those days.
Cut off my ear. Smashed
my red convertible
through the mayor’s front window.
Played strip-poker with the nuns
under the table. I had no quarrel
with the universal laws of nature
or other local customs
but I ostentatiously rejected
the Pythagorean Theorem
and flouted gravity
by floating over the bright raft
of the tennis courts at night.
I’ve crawled under the bed sheets
of their hourly-rate motels
like an amorous cockroach,
I’ve waited at their bus stops
to taste the sublimities of cocaine,
the narcotic joys
they kept in coat pockets,
I’ve been jonesing
for their hammer and nail
sex, I’ve hung out with them
in our jail cell, our belts
around our necks.
I’ve shared the clear cold vision
of the damned,
who have seen the fruits
of their pleasures
and delights sour,
whose heads are the stinging jellyfish mothers
of a thousand motives.
At The Museum of Don’t Come Back
Memory’s a stranger in a diner
eating the blue plate special,
rubbing one hairy ear with a spoon.
Don’t look back the way a train
leaves the station and the countryside
shrinks, the tiny red barns
glowing in warm yellow light. I’ve
been riding with the crop-duster,
out-dated county map in hand,
wheel and dive, wind bucking the struts,
following my instincts into the cross-hatch
of fence-rows,
the drift of forgetfulness under telephone lines
poisonous beyond the fields’ lush edges.
Each time it’s like visiting a museum,
the early years taming this mid-west
glacial till. Scythes. Old threshing machines.
Frost on all the exhibits. Some kind
of raw rust on the plough-blades.
What I have laid aside extends for miles.
Sunday Morning
And the gray in the sky today is nothing
that a fresh coat of paint
and some flowers wouldn’t fix. Violets, fuchsia
arranged in the cloud-beds,
some wanton tulips,
and the wind blowsy in the trees
cluttering the air with the smell of fresh mown grass
and gasoline
and sparrows
like the change in your trousers
scattered on a bare patch of sidewalk.
And the sun, roused like a king
who demands all attention, then sleeps
like a baby as the party carries on.
No politics, just a silence
so clear you thought
you could sing it, or somebody could,
some gorgeous voice in the scuffed static,
the needle stuck in the groove.
Hannah Call
ahan
The Ptarmigan Suite
1.
When I first flew south
I was brown with white wings
And I lived above the timberline.
In winter, white with black tails,
I frequented the tundra,
Quiet farms, yards, and barren hills
And loved willow scrub the best.
If you’d sat down in a sheltered valley
I might have called to you
As I did in those days,
A deep and raucous holler
Had I pebbles in my voice box:
Go-out! Go-out!
Go-back!
Go-back!
2.
The first time I pore over A Field Guide to the Birds
I obsess over the ptarmigan, willow and rock. Why,
Here’s a sort of grouse shaped like a horn of plenty,
Unremarkable; once I was described as a plain Jane;
Stout, brown, pigeon-like, but lacking what it takes to live in density
And it makes the sound of a soul leading a body toward fire.
3.
Chimney Swift
Whippoorwill
Some birds look like sails when they fly
Or sound like harps when they sing
And the myth I’ve heard is that the Devil
Is where the birds sing through the night,
In winter white, off a quiet hill
Eclipsed by the willow scrub.
I’ve heard a big, big ghost
Is who shelters the sheltered valleys.
Truthfully, I’m not for superstition
But if you could change colors,
Could leave when it snowed, could
Fly off the moment you were scared,
There would be a name in the ether
For you.
4.
Despite the ways each bird in Heaven is superior to me
Only I step this far back when needing to look.
As for now, we’ve all gone: shot, caged, or eaten.
We sit around trying to arrive collectively at something real,
Something about what it meant to live as birds.
One bird says This is what the wind felt like,
One says This is what it felt like for the wind to blow,
One even says Here’s a sensation similar to the wind.