November 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
i give you a dress
a stone
a handful of broken glass
nothing that’s ever
enough
and i catch angels
with my bare hands
i pull their wings off
and leave them to bleed
and the days pass slowly
and forcibly
like poured concrete
like rust
two years now
since my father died
and i give you bones
and white light
and a dozen reasons to cry
i drive down
deserted country roads in
the last fading minutes
of the day
i put knives through
the throats
of crippled children
i wait for a sign from
any god
November 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
and if i say [i]november[/i]
maybe you picture a grey sky
hung low over darker hills
and maybe this time you’re right
and what if all i have to offer
are these carefully chosen words in
a world full of the sick and
the butchered?
there are worse things than
hearing you are no longer loved
there are reasons men give
for raping their daughters but
none of them matter
and i am tired of being damned
by the fools who want to
force god’s cancerous weight
between my ribs
i’m sorry for tyranny and for
the ignorance that leads to hatred
but i am not the cause or
the cure
this is what i
want my son to understand when
we no longer speak to
each other
it’s what i never understood
about my own father
a coward
is not necessarily a
villain
a starving dog in the right hands
is a weapon
left alone it will only die
or devour the world
November 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
we are not old
or dying
but afraid
we are the voice
of the burning girl
after she has dissolved
into nothing but
faded cloth wrapped
tight around old bones
and as the wind finds
all of the holes
in this house
we turn to each other
for warmth
we compare faces
and names
and whether or not
your sister will come live
with us when she finally
pulls herself from
the tar her life
has become
and the killer is free
the trunk of his car
empty
and waiting
and the baby asleep
upstairs
one of us will have to
be the first
to break his heart
November 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]A Soft Whisper[/b]
Leaves listless in the grayed snow
Gravel peeking from snow clouds
Brown brittle stalks steel themselves
against the October onslaught.
Something green and growing
Huddles beneath the shifting snow
Curling into itself braced
Bent and bowed but resilient.
Cold winds worry the withered ones
Who fold fallen to shelter the unseen green
Curve in against it
Like a mother protecting a child.
Layer upon layer it lusts
For fine and fragile things
Tucked against the terror
The trauma and the tremble.
Winter winnows out
The weak and wraithlike
Misses the potent possibilities
Of rage balled like a fist.
It survives the shattering
In spite of the night
That caves in on the white
Thinking it has won.
On a still and silent night
A soft whisper can be heard,
“I shall rise and roust
come Spring and soft sun.
“I shall unfurl,
new and necessary
green and growing
no matter the season’s sins.”
[b]Towers have a history[/b]
Towers have a history
Of falling down
Their ragged rumble
Epitomizes my vulnerability.
Slumped and draped
Spiked into a macabre pose
Lines across the moonlit night
Dog’s feed upon the bare bones
Of our peaceful fantasy.
The steely breath
Breathed through the streets
found it’s way here
smothered my calm interlude
froze me to the bones.
The big lie exploded
Shattered limbs and values
A twin set of carcasses
Gave truth to my mother’s fears.
A notion in a moment
That we are nothing
But shifting sands of history
No monuments can replace.
Towers have a history
Of falling down
Their ragged rumble
Epitomizes my vulnerability.
[b]The Teacher[/b]
“My girl,” she rumbled
Pushed the hide scraper
Against the meat,
Cut me to the bone.
“Get rid of extra stuff,”
she flicked at sand flies
pelting like moths to a flame.
“Holah, the army gathers,”
like men at the bar
after last call and you
send off your scent.”
“My girl,” she said, sideways,
set aside her filleting knife
after carving out the choice pieces.
“These you keep,” she smiled
patted the thin pink meat.
“Throw
the guts and gore away.”
The bucket slapped
When receiving the bounty.
“My girl,” she said, huffing,
“At the top of this hill
berries bunch in clusters,
hidden from the hunt
and hunters.” I stalked
her shadow as we climbed.
“Aiyee,” she exclaimed,
eying the bannock on the griddle.
“This is women’s work,
worrying this place for stuff.”
“They hang together, them.
No need for hanging there
Alone and aggrieved.
Go find someone to teach.”
by Carol Desjarlais
([email]ibntv [at] telusplanet [dot] ca[/email])
November 2001 | back-issues, Kelley Jean White, poetry
[b]Farmall[/b]
I am pleased to have Arthur sit
on my lawn for the Old Home Day parade.
He and Millie were good friends to my parents.
I know he and Peter feel quite alone
now that she is gone.
I know it has been a difficult year for Peter,
what with the surgery on his hips and the brief
failed marriage, but they have the church people
to help and they know everyone.
Arthur is one of the last people to have cows in town.
I love to see the tin roof on his barn reflect
the sunset off the mountain.
Jenny did a good job too.
She got two pictures of Peter driving the tractor.
One close up where he looks strong and wiry,
not at all sickly or limited, and one where
he waves, and his hand is the hand of a leader,
announcing the ripe corn and haystacks
on the flatbed truck float.
The tractor itself looks magnificent. Funny
I didn’t notice it in the parade. The flag waving
in front of the high grill, the majestic wheels.
It’s been months now since August.
I could just mail the pictures up,
but I think I’ll wait and take them by at Christmas,
bring my mother and the children.
It’s right on the way to the good Christmas tree fields.
I’d be nice to see the animals in the snow.
[b]Fish Perfume[/b]
trout new out of the water smell
power and cold and heavy moss dark
I have put two drops from the bottle
behind my ears, white shoulders, quiet
true my hands trailing the nets gravid
with dying and dulling eye stare
I want this boy to remember me in
dusklight when we row our fathers’
boat home pale before the rising moon
[b]The Sweetest Water in the World[/b]
came from a pump to a wooden trough
and a simple dipper just below the fire
tower on Belknap Mountain. It was a hike
the kids could make with dads after dinner
on a summer’s evening, a rush up the red
trail and those who needed, or cared, to go
slow could take the kinder gentler meandering
green. Everyone ran down the red. By spring
it was a rock river fed by that same sweet
well, that same snow deep locked in rock
and root and thick rich moss kept safe to cool
our child hot necks and cheeks before
the last climb, the knock on the floor
of the watcher’s keep–glass lifted still higher
than the mountain rock’s wind cleared view.
by Kelley White
([email]kelleywhitemd [at] yahoo [dot] com[/email])
