is not free
except perhaps
in the warm womb
newly hatched
into otherness
but even then
tethered
by that blood-red thread
to history.
Everything tries
to hold us
though we emerge
complete
cut adrift
most ourselves
asleep or alone
in perfect stillness
as if perched on the shore
of a pond at dusk
to find one’s self
submerged
then afloat
finally
aloft.
J. Lee Strickland
The Music of the Spheres
Her disappointment makes them strangers.
In her voice he can sense the abyss
his lame attempt at humor cannot bridge.
Conciliating words spawn newer hardness in her jaw.
Her green eyes find another place to stare.
She knows him all too well,
as he knows her.
Galileo to her Bruno he recants
while she insists on burning at the stake.
She’s all inscribed in stone to him, the tale
as clear today as when the chisel struck.
Elisions of eroding years are glossed.
Time-softened planes fail of detection.
Recalcitrant remembering recarves
each faded line, each miniscule imperfection.
Inside the stove, the fire rails
against the glass (it would be free).
Outside, frigid air beats on the walls
(it would come in).
None would touch the theme of freedom now.
The one locked in, the other out,
their wheeling flings new mud
from ancient ruts.
High Tide
I found her at the water’s edge
kneeling in a patch of gravel.
Her hair had taken on the shape of sleep
and would not let it go.
The Tigris and Euphrates of her arms
joined at her hands,
which held a pile of smooth, clean stones.
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“They’re so beautiful,” she said.
How To Know The Grasses
Mother knew the grasses.
As I crawled about she’d say to me,
“Don’t put that in your mouth,
Sweet thing.”
Saving me from certain death.
I knew the grass
against my butt
beneath a spruce
in darkness with
a girl named Fern
whose husky breath
smelled sweetly
of cheap whiskey.
Now grass seeds shed their chaff
and fill the cheeks
of tiny mice
who know the grass
that fills their nest
will be their sweet salvation
or,
them swept up by hawk or owl,
the seed in spring
will sprout a riotous clump
of sweet lush blades,
a monument to missing mice.
Practice
I’m practicing to be
a sentimental old man.
Already there is practically nothing
that will not bring me to the verge of tears.
I’m practicing with too
much drink,
not to steam with anger,
but to simmer in a maudlin stew
of foggy reminiscence.
I’m practicing to love
my old, drunk, maudlin self,
and not, hating myself,
to be a hater of everything else,
jealous of all that will still be
when I am gone.
Anna’s Plague
Tiny bugs come to drink at his eyes while he sleeps.
One or two stop to graze on the salt paths that lead
From his eye, down his cheek, to the cleft of his ear
Before making their way to the well of his tears.
His deep, blinding sorrow, to them, is a fountain,
A treasure of rich, subtle flavors and scents.
They drink after crossing broad wastelands of linen
Unmindful of anguish and tormented dreams.
Sorrow-filled dreams evanesce with the dawn
Though he still feels her hands on his chest when he wakes,
His breathing made hard by that fading dream-touch
And a vaguely sensed movement around his closed eyes.
In the dim light of day’s edge he flees to the wood
Where crepuscular songs weave a dirge-like lament.
Such a threnody strung on the darkness within
Is, without, reinforced by the dank, clinging cold.
Spider webs wave like flags in the mouldering straws,
Festooned with the moisture of night’s fading damp.
Tattered leaves, like rags, limply flap in the breeze.
One, releasing its grip, sinks to ground.
In the bark of gray trees tiny lenticels wink,
Each a vessica pisces which hints at once-sacred
Geometries prized by the ancients, now lost,
Or the bright eyes of elves in a happier tale.
In his mind swarm ineffable thoughts of the past,
Crowding the images caught by his eye.
Elves become monsters, leaves become blades
Whirling sharp on brown branches like gilt-handled swords.
His legs fold beneath him. He sinks with the leaves.
At the edge of a whispering stream he succumbs
To despair-laden dreams in a sleep of despair,
While bugs vainly search for the eyes that they love.
Erin Dorso
March in Manarola
Water presses and slips
green silk over stone,
a mother’s hand over hair,
tangling loose strings of foam, floating
away,
the broken
cat’s cradle, the rope
and the rock and the sea,
the sea,
the sky and the rock and the
red boats lined up,
waiting
On the Drive Back to Andersonville
Snowdrifts rush across Lakeview Drive.
Naked tree trunks pull white coats on their backs
heaving polar fur bit by bit
until they rear up, ancient monsters
showing their dark bellies.
Branches, bald and bone,
each limb capped with pearl talon.
Translucent snakes shine off the ends, slicing
wind as we scream by them at 65.
I shiver against the window on the way back out
to the stout, less dignified part of the city
just after New Year’s midnight.
From across the console, my husband sighs:
&
nbsp; Isn’t the snow lovely?
In the Kitchen
Chopping cabbage
the way I taught myself
from eating nabe so many times at the izakaya
around the corner.
No technique—
just hacking at squares of leaf
the best I know how.
We’re Italian
and I’ve watched my mother cut the peppers
wide and firm for cacciatore
lean strings in the salad.
Daikon is probably the same
and I julien an in-between, indecisively sized amount
of about a handful too many
and toss the extra white strips
in my clean, white bin.
My neat kitchen hides the cook
I keep shamed in the cupboard.
I poke and prod at the ordered implements,
order my boyfriend around,
act the woman of the house
while crumbs build up in the dark corners
a real woman would know about
and the nabe leaks bright kimuchi
into cracks in the straw floor.
Fig Keeper
In the evening, I watch the fig garden
below my window.
The air stills.
I wait, listless,
for stretched leather skins to split open
and expose what’s been ripening
inside.
Grow a person,
I imagine,
who will speak my tongue,
sweet and pitted and
present.
Holly Lyn Walrath
Behind the Glass
Reproduction, as you put it, is a biological superlative.
Red wine seeped up to our eyeballs
and spilled out on my cheeks
and splashed onto the loud city lights.
Behind our words stood a glass wall
shored up with ego, youth, mud, and sand.
(The ocean breeze tries to tear it up with its teeth
but in summer like a stalwart old sailor
shipwrecked after his last voyage,
his head rimmed with hoarfrost,
clinging to the salt soaked rocks.)
We live in a world of unfulfilled fairytales.
You were promised I would be dainty
with a size three foot (to fit the glass slipper)
a bell dangling in my skirts,
an apron bow like a present topper
and flowers on my knees
(red and blushing violently).
I was promised you would be tall,
white honored, piney-handed (handy)
golden curled (sweat soaked tendriled)
wearing a coat with three buttons
ruffled feathers beneath,
a popinjay—with a sugar-dusted tongue
and after I tasted you we would fly
into the sun.
Yes,
promises we made
behind the glass.
Housewife
I am peeling the crisp brown suits
off of a pair of onions, reproving
for the clock is digging in
between the ribs and marinade,
it hates the night time sour.
I am broken over the boiling vinegar
and sweet-faced green cucumbers,
knobbed and vulgar, peeled away
to meet their maker.
The house—four rooms with bows tied
end to end to counterfeit the confidence of it
concealed behind draperies
that hemorrhage orange daybreak
onto end tables, side tables, console tables.
Pouring out the one beam
like hot lemon meringue filling
in the blinds, I see it as a slanted scowl,
sad thing, keeping out the
bright, keeping me in, custodian.
She Learns How to Disappear
She memorizes the little spaces she could hide in—
the white place between letters on the page,
the dashboard—a blushing radio throne,
the corner of the yard where crows suckle,
the cherry streetlight which creates the rain,
the white blue sky with its open space
where she could be a splinter in the expanse,
fold up like an origami swan,
tuck her face under her wing, blasphemed.
This one thing is clear, she knows
one more day is purgatory.
Two Young Wives
We two sat
on the swing
on the porch
in the house
by Range lake.
We talked about
the future, which
seemed to end in may.
There—in may—an end.
A bridge between our old lives,
where we were pillars
striving to be wood, strong,
to hold up.
Where we were young,
before thirty rose up
and devoured us,
showing its face
at first in secret places
blue starburst veins,
dimpled smile lines.
Cupping hot cups
of blueberry coffee
we watched yellow oak
and brown pine
and red maple
leaves falling.
They never seemed
to reach the ground,
drifting out over the lake
whose surface was pinched
as if by some invisible touch.
And you remarked,
“I see now how a seed
could be spread across the ocean.”
Aerie
Our bones hollow fingertips feather
pinions tinge with gold.
We hide in silver linings quills
line down cotton scrapbook
nests sinews mold the quiet mess
of a body of light—the light of a body.
We soar into flare—burn brighter
burn a hole with a lighter
and view us in it.
The walls built of sheaves of words
the words cleaved from books
the books penned by a sister’s hand
the hand tiny and sweet serif finite
sand poured over dead, dry ink.
We remnants of light like sunbeam
hoops petals pressed into walls
like men’s mouths who pick
up our light pop it in lick
greasy fingers brush our snow
small and precious off their
charcoal suits.
Jeff Lewis
Charles Ives, a Connecticut Yankee
Kazoo chorus
with flutes, fiddle & flageolets
piccolos, ocarinas & fifes;
or: “I heard something else—
there are many roads, you know
besides the Wabash.”
The Unanswered Question in a clear Connecticut sky,
a triple hammered to right,
Columbia the Gem of Mutual Life.
Read in two voice—
or a battle of the bands,
Giants vs. Cubs roughly
August, 1907 & in a half-spoken way
Polo Grounds played as
The Perennial Questions indistinctly as possible
of Existence,
or gradually excited,
marginalia
erasures
scratches,
all but impossible to decipher The Camp Town Races
in Central Park in the Dark.
Tone roads taken and not taken
are to represent the silence of the druids in Concord.
Read in two voices
or tap dance in black face,
Mike jaunts Watchman, tell us of the night
out to CF. What the signs of promise are:
Johnny at bat Traveler, o’er yon Mt.’s height
hits over Mike’s head See that Glory-beaming star!
oboe on the mound
ball strike ball ball Watchman, aught of joy or hope?
strike Traveler, yes: it brings the day.
the classic 3 & 2 rhythmic Promised day of Israel
situation Dost thou see its beauteous ray?
Music not evolved but mutated
in a sudden paroxysm of Fourth of July!
All Hail the Power!
All Hail the Power!
Ives, must you hog all the keys?
Why it’s just like a town meeting—
every man for himself!
Little Richie Wagner,
Pussy Debussy—a Vermont December would do you in,
Mama’s boy Mozart,
Chopin the transvestite—
Jigs gallops reels
& for every man his own symphony
& the space to compose it in
for every man his own Unanswered Questions