for laws or lanes
or the deer trying to herd her young
safely to the other side.
V
You could be seduced
by 75 mph winds
whistling something dangerous in your ear
and you could reach for the wheel
like the belly of a lover who’s leaving you too soon
and you could pull her back to you
only to spin around three times
and flip over twice—
earth-sky, earth-sky.
VI
You could wake your friend
in the passenger seat
to tell him what happened.
VII
You could pull your other friend
from the screaming hole
in the broken back window
with blood
and glass in flesh
and no one to blame but yourself
for listening to your mind
when it said it’s time
you’re tired
let’s go.
S. E. Ingraham
An Unkindness of Ravens
The sound drawing them
into the rarefied space
is her undoing.
Expecting Ave Maria or
maybe Amazing Grace
to breach the gap
between her,
and the wretch laid out—
novitiate, near-perfect—
in the plainest casket available,
save for the Order’s ideogram,
carved—or is it stamped—on the lid
instead, it’s Albinoni’s Adagio
that clings to her senses,
invades her every pore;
each note a leech, a remora
eclipsing her promise to God,
to herself, to create a calmness
no matter how difficult
it proves to be.
Ah, here come the rest—
such an obsolete group,
she cannot help thinking—
habit-clad figure after
figure flutters
down the aisles looking
like crows or, faces framed
wimple-white, perhaps magpies.
No—ignore the white, she
decides—so stern looking,
ravens surely.
She tries to reel her mind
back to the matter
at hand, as the others
perch on pews.
The music ends,
the priest intones a prayer,
beseeches all to consider
the virtue of the deceased.
She feels light-headed,
wonders at the man’s
audacity then remembers:
it is her time of the month
and ponders anew
God’s cruelty.
Why continue the cycle
yet insist on celibacy?
Did it lessen the suffering
of the deceased?
She crosses herself, says
a quick sincere “Hail Mary.”
Tries to forget the choice
that led to the poor thing
landing in the box.
She cannot, however,
keep from regarding
her Savior on the cross,
finds herself begging
him silently,
“Why this Lord?”
Her child was your
child also, was it not?”
As always, the reply:
silence.
Said the Kettle of Hawks
The night you were fading, the doctor said, no,
it was your age, you would be fine by morning,
but there was something so casual in his voice—
I didn’t trust his voice, but I did still trust him.
So, I set off for a walk by the lake, solid ice right then.
As I arrived, a great number of birds—hawks—
startled from the low shore bushes, began to wheel around
in the air. I’d never seen such a thing.
Hawks don’t flock, as far as I know. They pair, but flock? No.
These were at least a dozen or more—and silent—at first.
They dove, then took the sky, then back, coming close to where
I stood—staring at me in that sideways fashion birds have.
I couldn’t move, just stood there watching them even as they began
to shriek at me, and I was sure they were addressing me.
The birds were agitated; if it had been any other time of year,
not winter, I might have thought they were protecting a nest.
Their swirling got faster and the noise louder. Then, as suddenly
as they had started, they swooped straight up and were gone.
I didn’t see where they went; they were just gone. In the aftermath,
I felt gooseflesh on my arms, and knew, I needed to go to you.
I went back home, got in my car, and drove straight to the hospital.
I realized as I drove, I was surrendering to the birds, giving over
all rational thought. I got to you in time to hold your hand,
whisper love and reassurance, be there until you stopped breathing.
Storm Angels
Out of the soup that is refinery row’s gift to the dish called sunrise,
Edmonton’s skyline wavers—a pulsing mirage.
A dressing—equal parts pollution and prairie air—bathes the Tarmac,
as flocks of silver birds grab the sky, one after the other
hoisting the citizenry and visitors alike—too many to count—
miles above the earth, ferrying them to points undisclosed.
There’s a charm to these thunderous angels,
these miracles that defy gravity and spit in God’s eye.
Like homing pigeons or peace doves, they carry messages of hope,
remind souls there’s more to life than storms.
Roadside Fallen Angel
Discovered defrocked and desperate by the side of a little-used road,
she was barely breathing and had she not been trying to spread them—
her tattered, torn wings; those appendages so battered they no longer
appeared to be what they once were, and operated not a bit—
He might not have noticed her at all, might have taken her for rags
thrown like trash to litter the road, but he saw the scrabbling,
awkward motions her scrawny wings were making, they brought him
out of his trance; made him slow down, take a closer look.
“Oh my word,” he breathed. “What have we here?” He got out,
went to stare at the not-quite-human creature, but no heavenly one,
not this poor thing. He squatted beside her, reached to touch her head.
She shrank from him, eyes full of fear, her wing-things trembling.
Mumbling reassurances, he wrapped his coat around her gently,
scooped her, ignored her mewling sounds of pain. He knew what to do.
He would take her to join the others; he had wings back at his place.
He told her everything would be fine; she would be put together again.
He kept his promise. When she awoke, she was fresh and luminous,
her new wings spread so wide she could scarcely believe it.
Her saviour had placed a mirror where she could see all her beauty.
It took her breath away; there was, however, the matter of her body.
Her wings and face were quite remarkable—lovelier than ever in fact.
But her body: she couldn’t see or feel it, and she couldn’t move at all.
Now that she thought—nor her head or her wings, no movement.
Then she noticed the others in the room—birds, butterflies.
The man whistled as he left; she couldn’t find the words to ask him
/>
what she knew instinctively; her wings were exquisite, but clipped.
She was an angel who would fly no more.
She suspected tears were falling down her cheeks, but she felt nothing.
Descent of a Phoenix
Below our tiny basket,
the Nile serpentines, a ribbon
of gold beneath another day birthing
as Ra, round as a pregnant-woman’s
belly, slips slowly into a perfect sky,
as if into a calm sea.
Although we are many
in the basket, we are hushed.
Made dumb no doubt
by such sacred sights:
Luxor’s Valley of the Kings,
tombs as old as time.
The only sound we hear: an occasional
roar when the pilot blasts a jet of propane
to warm the air in the massive balloon
above us. A balloon with a ruby phoenix
stenciled on both sides keeps us
aloft as we take this god’s eye trip.
Too soon we near the end of our journey.
The pilot reminds us: the landing will
likely be a bumpy one but not to worry;
he and the ground-crew know the routine.
All we need to do is hold on.
One of the last things I remember
thinking as we begin our descent:
“This is so perfect, so beautiful,
and I am in awe. If I were to die right
now, I would be utterly happy, content.”
“Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.”
—Marcus Valerius Martialius
(In memory of those who perished. Luxor, Egypt—13.02.26)
Laura Gamache
Before We Call the Bellevue Police Bomb Squad
“Oh yeah, it’s definitely live.”
—Joint Base Lewis-McChord Bomb Unit
My sister pulls a white silk wad
from the box she seemed to conjure
from behind the shabby resin bench.
Under that his Marine Corps cap.
So this is where Dad kept the war
folded flat as a #10 envelope,
USMC buckle, inlaid boxes fallen
open, apart, handwriting on envelopes
that must have been his mother’s.
These boxes must have been
his mother’s. A wine-red watch box
with a fancy women’s watch inside.
Red sun Japanese flag with bullet hole,
yellow hand grenade, very small gun.
I reach my hand towards a book spine,
flinch from a second small gun.
“Let’s put this away,” Lyn panics,
stuffs back ripped shroud or parachute,
disintegrating boxes, letters from home.
I’ll tell our brother, he’ll want the guns.
Glove
For handling dry ice; for glass cutting, sheet metal work, etc.
—from Dictionary of Discards
I try on a right-hand leather glove.
It is buttery and barely too big,
pull on the left, but can’t. I’m confused,
stare at it like a stubborn child.
The left glove has a thumb, and
three fingers, like my mother’s dad,
who chopped off his pointer
with an axe, not careful enough
steadying wood on the stump.
He waggled that knob with the skin
stitched white-knuckle tight in our faces,
cautioned us cousins with his tale,
left behind this unwearable glove.
Carpe Diem
for my sister Lyn
At my kitchen counter
with tablespoons and Sharpies,
we divided our parents’ ashes
into labelled Ziploc bags.
I couldn’t do that alone,
seeing those bits of bone.
I laid out my father’s sand dollars
beside my Japanese ash-fired bowl.
They are smaller than I imagined.
Some are broken. Have I broken them?
I want more and bigger beach tender.
I want another chance.
Our parents are gone from the big rooms
of their enclosed lives,
their bitter squabbles,
their small and large sorrows and regrets.
Their shoes do not need them anymore.
Dad’s Carpe Diem sweatshirt remains
on its hanger on his open bathroom door.
I drove his bathrobe through the tunnel
and down the chute into the finality
of the Children’s Hospital donation bin.
No message echoes back
from the planet the dead flutter towards,
as they abandon us
to our pettiness and postcards,
the boxes neat beneath a rubble
of sticky dust and dread.
Do not ask for whom the wood curls
have been left across the work bench.
They are not mine, nor are the workings
of my brother’s thoughts, the voices
above and either side of him that lead him
into the caves of their improbable conclusions.
Blood stains the indent where skin curls
to nail on my thumb. I tear at myself
in this quiet way to not cry out,
my mother no longer complaining,
my father not walking away from me down the hall.
Outing
Within these covers, you may
find some use for your discard
far removed from its original purpose.
—from Dictionary of Discards
My brother, sister and I station ourselves
in front of the bunker slits on the faces
of the recycling dumpsters in Houghton.
Steve from the Boeing Wine Club
already took empty wine bottle cases,
but here we are with two cars-full more.
“I’m Zeus,” I say, after Dave Letterman
who flung fluorescent tubes
off a tall building in New York City.
I’m aiming for humorous, for light,
but the bottle misses and shatters.
Shards skitter across our feet.
Notre Dame
for Virginia Sullivan Gamache Quinn
We rode the RER to Saint Michel-Notre Dame—
same stop Bill surfaced from the first time he’d come,
American GI, World War II, a Catholic.
That view across the Seine to Notre Dame
was the same, walk across the bridge to Ile de la Cité,
this time with cane. After he stumbled, fell,
I held Virginia’s hand, our own grande-dame,
Bill her ten-year’s spouse, aprés-omelets
and croissant at the corner café near our apartment,
Rue St. Charles, Arrondissement Quinze, our first
full day in Paris. Aprés rose windows and candles
lit for loved ones gone, Navigo Decouverte passes
useful even for the funicular up to Sacré-Coeur.
Three mornings we boarded the Metro to Musée
D’Orsay to find it closed due to strike, Virginia
And Bill game for seat-of-pants plans. At Musée
Marmottan Monet beside the Bois de Boulogne
I led Virginia to what water lilies were there. Bill,
spent, leaned against a wall, but here he came.
Jim and I explored: Musée Cluny, Foucault’s pendulum,
Paul Klee at the Musée de la Musique. Rue de Mozart
chocolate shop compact as a sonatina. Macaron at Maison
Ladurée. Falafel pita at the Israeli deli opposite
the Palestinian deli in Le Marais, where a man
pulled me back fro
m a car careening around the corner.
Every evening, Bill and Virginia took the elevator
to the alley beside the apartment to watch la Tour Eiffel’s
9 pm display. Every decade, Virginia tells me,
“You’ll love being fifty, seventy, ninety, . . .” a feather dance
where in the end no pretense is what we display.
Some year and soon I won’t have her, but for now
she’s here, and as she stoops, more dear.
Keighan Speer
People Are Like Storms
Because when I was younger my father would
speak soft words or none at all
and leave marks on my toddler skin
before I could count one-one-thousand
between strikes of lightning.
Because when I was a little older but not much
girls who didn’t speak to me would
whisper thoughts of me into
eager ears and laughter would erupt
within school hallways and it sounded
like dark clouds and my father’s hand.
Because when I thought I was much older
I let boys with pretty eyes wreak havoc
and tear down my walls with their gale winds
before they evaporated and left me
in the rubble with what sounded like
my father’s hand and elementary laughter.
So
People are like storms.
Because they destroy us they
ravage our hearts and minds and
disappear.
People are like storms because
we watch them and dance with them
and thank the sky and the earth
for giving us thunder and darkness
and angry hands and elementary laughter and deceitful eyes.
People are like storms because
they cause damage and anger
and hate and yet
and yet
we kiss lips and raindrops
we hold hands beneath dark skies
we gaze into pretty eyes and bolts of lightning.
Because people are like storms
and we love them.
It Rained Today
It rained today.
We woke to dark skies
moons beneath our eyes.
It rained today.
We gathered in too-bright hallways and
made little attempt to remove fallen droplets.
It rained today.
Our eyes glued to boards and sheets of paper