Let me tell you

October 2021 | poetry

Plug Nickel and Red Cent

met on museum steps and, inside,

mysticked with blue innocent Della Robbia,

rhythmed the light-shine white

of beyond, above, bright,

orisoned warm-milk fired clay, like flesh,

god-child in supple mother embrace.

Sigh of centuries.

Out straight west, they drove

their wood-paneled station wagon,

out past the 30-hundreds, the 40-hundreds,

nearly to the 52-hundreds

on the table-top Chicago grid,

out to Leamington to meet the gray-pants boy,

sitting on front porch steps, in full view — a

white-red-striped t-shirt buzz-cut good-boy,

out from inside, away, at large,

watching ant-gang heft cornbread crumbles

except this one alone, down sidewalk square

to an insect Promised Land.

He looked up at the two men,

vaguely priestly, vaguely outlawed,

said: “I’m looking to flee captivity

for the sin I don’t recall committing.”

“We’re guilty, too,” they said, and

the three walked to afternoon church,

for Stations of the Cross,

flaming altar candles, up, reaching always up,

echoes, shuffling, Latin abracadabras,

plainsong up, incense up from censor,

from burning coal, straining up,

cloud of unknowing, cloud of Mount Sinai,

cloud of breathing and not breathing.

After Amen, the three split up

and went home by a different path.

Patrick T. Reardon

Patrick T. Reardon, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, is the author of ten books, including the poetry collections Darkness on the Face of the Deep (Kelsay) and Requiem for David (Silver Birch Press) as well as Faith Stripped to Its Essence, a literary-religious analysis of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence. His poetry has appeared in America, Rhino, Main Street Rag, The Write Launch, Meat for Tea, Under a Warm Green Linden and many others. His book Puddin: The Autobiography of a Baby, a Memoir in Prose-poems is forthcoming from Third World Press.

Delphic Blues

October 2021 | poetry

No bright fruit now seems to hang for us,

we who never really saw a garden

or tasted anything to draw us to

the spinning core inside all seeds

or dormant roots coiled in their depths.

No taut reins seem to move us now

with unbearable symmetry

vexed equilibrium, balancing

apples, oranges with flights of swifts,

all out of place, but looking artful at first.

And what of this still whispers

through our bones, multilingual, falsetto

off ancient tongues, naming things over again

under the shade of knives, belated

breath pulsed out from hearts of wind?

What use is there in speaking now

when nothing here is reconciled;

not trees or endless streams,

nor wild geese in circling flight,

with what’s beneath the frozen ground?

Roberta Senechal de la Roche

Roberta Senechal de la Roche, Professor Emerita at Washington and Lee University, is an historian, sociologist, and poet of Miꞌkmaq and French Canadian descent, born in western Maine. She now lives in the woods outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Colorado Review; Vallum; Glass: A Journal of Poetry; Yemassee, and Cold Mountain Review, among others. She has two prize-winning chapbooks: Blind Flowers (Arcadia Press) and After Eden (Heartland Review Press, 2019). A third chapbook, Winter Light, and her first book, Going Fast (2019) are published by David Robert Books.

Mothers

October 2021 | poetry

Dead twelve years, dusty in a drawer

of my heart, like the leaf insects and giant earwigs

in the basement of a natural history museum.

A tiny figurine, still wearing a tattered terrycloth robe,

still holding a glass, although the ice melted long ago.

My no-idea-how-to-love-a-child mother.

My prefer-a-drink-to-playing-with-my daughter mother.

Sometimes late at night I hear her stir, accusing

me of stealing her silver or hiding her sapphire

rings, of not visiting, not calling, not caring,

threatening to beat me with her bristled brush

or toss me out like leftover broccoli and I curl up shaking,

chills shooting my spine, reaching for my stuffed bear

with its bald spots and chewed ear.

Sometimes I hear her weeping for the husband

who wasn’t, the infant who didn’t, for the child

she once was, beaten with the belt

of her father, the fists of her mother,

for the little girl wearing wool sweaters

in summer to hide swelling bruises.

If the figure were any larger, it would break my heart.

Like five loaves and three fishes feeding

five thousand on the shores of Galilee,

like free-flowing ambrosia, the ethereal food

of the gods feasting in gold and marble palaces,

you can swallow grief forever

and still there will be plenty left

in the dry basement where memories linger.

Claire Scott

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review, Enizagam and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.