October 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
I am the yolki flower, the shade of an egg.
I arrive in a burst, albumen and sack,
after first treasure of rain.
I promise you things.
Your soil is deaf to my voice,
a signal of centering force.
I am Israel’s daffodil, a trumpet the poets
have bellowed through dust.
You are the frost with your habits and hands
holding a gun to temples of peace.
I shimmy with sunlight and birth.
Yet, darkness is all I’m coming to know.
Why are you plodding on trails
of a tomb in the guise and the guess
of slicing an earth meant to be shared.
Insisting on fences and walls kilometers long.
Old battles and shrapnel are eating my leaves.
In other wars, no stones, no wires
were enough to contain a rampage of terror.
A pendulum swings, cracking the clock.
This flavor of hate shrivels my flesh.
Piranhas are grabbing whatever moves.
Our quibbles are ancient sheep
gnawing the throat of an innocent lamb.
It didn’t work for Berlin,
where the Dipper shoveled a grave
and Pleiades became a fixture
of glory removed in bullets exchanged —
where shadows grew sharp,
sticky with blood,
in palettes of crippling swastikas.
*First Published in Offcourse
October 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
there are rooms
in this house filled with
nothing but the black weight
of your past
there are windows pushed
to the point of breaking
and being in love is
being on the wrong side of
a locked door and i
find myself too often forgetting
where i’ve left the sun
i find myself
numbered among the dead
and dying species while
further down some long unused hallway
you cry for the person i’ve
made you become
and we will find each other in
the last fragile seconds
before the sky splits open
and we will stop
our hands will
explore living flesh beneath the
first low mutters of thunder and
our tongues will follow
that we believe this much in
the force of desire
should never be forgotten
October 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
we have built
this silence
ourselves
both of us clutching
talismans
in an unfamiliar country
the dogs with a language
the children smiling
but riddled with hatred
some of us pointing guns
others bleeding
and the question is god
the question is
the emptiness of the sky
on any given january
afternoon
there is room enough
beneath it
for all of us to be
wrong
************
prev published in Stickman Review
October 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
in this year
of dragged bodies
there is always a silence
where apologies
refuse to fall
where a man is
nailed to the sky’s canvas
for turning away from
the sun
is found below the
rippled ceiling of the river
with empty dreams filling his
pockets and how can you
define violence when
there is nothing
else?
how do you explain fear
to a sleeping child
and why would you
ever want to?
and somewhere
of course
there is someone who
knows the answer
September 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
one poem
in a quiet room
beneath an indifferent sky
the empty fields that define
the season of loss
these are only words
diane
and you are only a stranger i
pretend to know
it’s the lack of sound
that frightens me
the wind maybe
or a distant siren
or the kitten curled up and purring gently
on the edge of the desk
my son’s toys
without his tiny perfect hands
to move them
and it’s been four days now since
the planes stopped flying
since my fingers felt the need
to crawl across
a blank sheet of paper
and do you notice that the
clocks haven’t stopped?
do you believe
in selfless acts?
not anymore
we have moved beyond the
age of famous poets
diane
and into the era
of glorified killers
my wife wants love
and all i give her
is despair
the neighbors scream at
their children
the children run
blindly into traffic
even these small deaths are
important
when they are all we have
to call our own
September 2002 | back-issues, poetry
[b]To Greenpoint[/b]
July insects buzz the sidewalk.
It’s twenty minutes of rectangular and bleak to anywhere.
See the cracks,
the lines crisscrossing
the telephone poles, the concrete
and your hand,
this street disappears into empties —
beer cans and sky.
You’re walking through airless shadows.
Your shoes don’t make a sound.
And we have no idea where we’re going.
[b]Empty Bed[/b]
The muscles of my tongue cup him.
Broken backed chairs lean forward expectantly
and the rug curls in anticipation.
No one can close their eyes but him.
Then moonlight does what moonlight does,
but faster.
Shadows speed across his face
like a hand struggling with Braille.
I struggle for something not so solid.
Preparations, retreats —
strategies are traced on the sheets
covering his thighs.
Only when he’s sleeping can I think.
Such things can be done
with a shadow.
[b]The Anatomy of Distance[/b]
Picture an oil painting,
In the Medical Academy, by a Dutch master in 1741.
The walls are in shadow, appear to be black.
Our walls are blue.
I. The Doctors:
In the auditorium,
in our room,
spectators surround the body.
One touches it and looks at us.
He doesn’t mean to touch the body
in a way that has any kindness in it,
As your fingers attempt to sign nothing
with their grasp,
but his hands are as gentle
as the soft astonished faces of the men staring at us
as we stare at them.
II. The Body:
The body does not appear
to be sleeping but dead.
Not just the pallor but the lack of eyelashes.
The upper lip curls in ecstasy or disdain.
Although the kidneys vena cava intestines
splay into our faces,
the body
is the only one
who escapes in this picture.
The one
truly alone and hidden.
III. Us.
You and I are hidden
from each other
by the body,
the deeper we thrust
our cutting, fondling instruments
the farther we float away like unmoored boats.
Until we lie next to one another
on the same bed
in different rooms
the same color as the inside of an eyelid
or eggshell,
the same color blue.
[b]Hysterical Blindness[/b]
My life is pain.
I could be a hypochondriac.
There’s some kind of multiple choice here,
but I lost the pencil and forgot to mark the page.
I’m not quite sure — I wake up sick
in the morning, nauseated by all the light.
My feet leaving the mattress
for the floor gives me shooting pains
somewhere.
I’d have to ask my doctor,
but she stopped returning my calls last month.
She said it was getting too intense
between us,
all that blood and exchange of bodily fluids.
She had a thing for latex.
I think that shows a fear of intimacy.
We only kissed twice the whole time
we were together.
Anyway, it’s over now.
She won’t even renew my prescription
for codeine.
And I’m left with this migraine
and an unnatural swelling behind my left ear.
My skin, it tingles
sometimes, along my fingertips.
I’m sure it’s the precursor
to some sort of paralysis.
And the light, ah,
the light!
It scalds my eyes.
Makes them tear constantly.
This can’t be normal.
Tell me, this can’t be
normal.
by Christine Hamm (c)2002
([email]Bronzelizard [at] cs [dot] com[/email])
[b]Author’s Notes[/b]
Christine Hamm is the literary editor for a new magazine, Wide Angle. She has an MFA in creative writing, and will be teaching a poetry-writing workshop thorough the Women’s Studio Center this fall.
Christine has poetry published in Shampoo Poetry,
can we have our ball back, Poetry Midwest, Stirring, and recently had work selected to be in Tricia Warden’s new
on-line site.
