July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Snapshot With Suet
Say, has anyone found the old lorgnettes, those folding opera glasses?
Nice keepsake my musical sisters agree, sorting our dead Mother’s things.
Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore they yodel from Tosca.
On to the photographs, my favorite, 3 x 5 b/w, over-exposed edges on fire:
Flyway birds fill the trees, snip buds, litter ground with cuneiform. Late storm, no school. Hurry, we’re losing light, yells urgent brother Michael. I labor in webbed snowshoes, reach for boxes hung in rows above my girly feeder, a high-heeled boot laced with fat, table scraps. Suet for juncos calls Dad, leading pregnant Mom sidesaddle on our snow camel, three humps. Why not? Falling off unhurt, the little sisters, squint, point, hurl wet snowballs at hooded
Mergansers?
No, Grandma and Aunt R in capes, ambushed states our kid brother. See pointing at me, the fat teen Thunder Thighs lumbering across the frame.
I remind him that, inside Mother on the camel, he was not yet born, alive.
Big diff. The huge snow humps, chameleons he insists despite cloven hooves and cud. Who’s that? he asks about the agile boy in yarn hat, trailing seed from sack up frozen hill.
Not you I quip, suddenly too sad to dwell on Michael, his kindness and early death.
So where’s Dad?
There leaning in his deep great-coat, holding up the coffee can of suet while little sisters trip in snow pants, hand-me-downs one size too big.
Those two, now mothers both, still giggle, chorus. Fighting, we fell off the sleigh. The tracks, two thin lines, see they say lower left. Beaded caps stiff with snow, we brushed off our collars, hollered Wait!
But cold, you big kids and the parents lost interest in the game.
Of what?
What else? War, no, Peace. The sisters trump each other, interrupt. We were twin serfs, no, Serbian princesses kidnapped along the Hindi Kush, our camel caravan of sequins and silk high-jacked by hooded bandits.
Musquediento, your Highnesses! We greet in accented Flodge, our secret childhood lingo, curtsy, bow, dodge — all of us laughing now, ready to sit down and relax, napkins in lap, with tea-cakes and whiskey chasers.
Hail, hail we toast the slanted blur.
Tall Dad?
Or giant windfall? Michael’s climbing tree, the ironwood downed by storm, nailed coffee can flattened on one side for suet.
Say, when did juncos last winter here?
I bite my lip — Michael’s eighth-grade feeders, off-camera memories. Mine.
Morning Scrabble
At my brother Michael’s gravesite, others toss handfuls of earth, stones, flowers. I throw small wooden squares with letters, stuffed in my purse and pockets, pieces from his favorite childhood board game — winning words, our excuse for wagers.
Before they dump out drawers at home, let’s see what’s left to play: O B T X R U D Z E S C H I F N A T M A …W. WOMBAT, RATFINK, tags for schoolyard FOES. FAUX, FINCH, short DEFT words like ZED and UR earned quick points. Easy vocab, RUDE, RAIN, SHINE, AFTER, we learned, ate money vowels that better earned their keep in CRUDE, INTRUDE, SHINER, SHAFTED, RAFTER.
For final rounds, our house rules allowed TV, DC, RSVP, abbreviations used as words, also REV (Reverend), RIP (Rest in Peace), even B (Born). No one ever dared to score with D, not even rash Michael, too soon wed to older ex-nun ATAR with STUN gun agenda for success.
Forced ROSE, our ruddy brother skipped FRAT fun, shortcut youth to TUX and BOURSE with her, TRIM in black FACE veil beside his casket — me FAT, DAFT, BORE/BOAR larded with loss, SNIFfling in the nave, WORSE, wanting to RUN like stocking, grasp threads, hasp, catch breath, barge, take charge — my own worst FOE in durable WORSTED serge, suited dirge, first word of MATINS (old Latin office), Dirige, direct us O Lord — gloss at his morning grave, high-point words I lack for grief.
Charlotte M. Porter lives in an old citrus hamlet in north central Florida. A published poet, she was a top finalist for the Rose Metal Press flash fiction chapbook contest in 2012. Her creative nonfiction, as Wanda Legend, has been cited by New Pages.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Death for Sale
He sells death.
Night black pistols,
brassy bullets.
Rifles sardined in
a car trunk.
The house is plaid curtains,
their dust still. In back,
swing set chains rust
without small hands.
The gate squeaks.
He hides the money in the flower pots,
buckets under the sink.
Plastic-covered bricks of bills
float in every toilet tank.
He stuffs cash in his couch,
moving his arm like a thief
probing a vending machine.
Fabric chafes his skin.
He sutures the upholstery
with staples.
He sells death.
Limp rabbits, gun-pocked tree trunks.
Ruptured cans glint in sun.
He sells death.
A sandal waits
for its foot. A bent knee
points to wine red drying
on the sidewalk.
Our Sunday Morning
Your voice is better than sun through a cold window.
Your words are warm socks.
Your sentences sugared coffee.
Watching you is better than clean sheets.
Over the collar of your jacket, the hair on
the back of your neck grows like new grass.
The roots of your hair always look dirty
brown against the blond white strands.
The pockmarks on your cheeks
make your face a pink moon.
I love the holes in your tights
where the butter of your thighs shows through.
I love your clunky black glasses,
the hard candy eyes behind them.
When we’re together, it’ll be the longest Sunday morning.
All white sheets, laughing, and spilled coffee.
And I’ll run my fingers on each of your scars.
Your candy eyes will shine.
Your hair will stick up with sweat and pillows.
We’ll fuzz our teeth with coffee.
We’ll write our love in window steam.
We’ll live in our Sunday morning.
Cara Schiff lives in Denver, CO and works as a professional gardener. Most recently, her work has been selected for Burner Magazine and the forthcoming issues of Emerge Literary Journal and Bookends Review.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
When I crept out of
bed for work
you were so
still
I thought you had actually died.
As a garbage
truck roared by,
I wished
I could
wrap you in
my saffron
bathrobe
and carry you
every morning.
Or that I could transform
you into a cricket
to hear you
chat freely with
the dusk.
You said
you thought
you
wanted to live forever
with me,
so that we
could climb into
a spaceship and watch
society
fall apart.
But,
now
it seems
in your paling
mind I’m daily
dulled with the ghost
light of the moon.
I don’t want to be
immortal,
all I want to be
is your last rosy-fingered dawn.
by Mx. Glass
Mx. Glass recently graduated from the Creative Writing BA program at San Francisco State University. Her current project is to look at different modes of haunting in our society, such as myth, cultural norms, memory and language.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
When the old origami
melted,
the crash of pieces
formed us
hymnal-print white
down where the tilted day
first moved in the clefts
glistening over scattered moss
and aboriginal hoofs
that had escaped the ghost
but not the blood.
Dividing the fur
like a mountain silhouette
gradually erased by a darkening red atmosphere,
ripe green swords
bore our faces
under the fetal chandelier
of giant stars.
by Daniel Gillespie
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
like sunlight, like chrome
mouths always hungry, always
open and dirty hands shoveling
in shit, got to keep the
fuckers alive if you want to
keep selling them whatever it
is that’s made you rich, got
to bleed the fuckers just so much,
just so far, got to give them a
line of credit then take it away
then give it back again, those
fat little grabbing hands, those
brittle cancerous bones, got
to invent disease to invent the
cure, got to film the sexiest
girls on their hands & knees,
got to keep them in line, keep
them addicted, keep them
skinny or fat and always
hungry, mouths always open,
holes where the shit goes in
and where the shit comes out
and when you have finally
bought it all, when you have
finally bought everything
that will ever make you happy,
then there is nothing to do
but start counting backwards
to your death
butcher
In the telling,
nothing is made clear
Sunlight, yes, but the lawns
still damp from the rain, the trees
shimmering. Halos around the
heads of the youngest children.
Voice of a man, slightly bored,
uncomfortable in the heat, says into
the face of the void The killer was
not found among the dead.
Dog barks somewhere out of sight
and you notice that all of
the windows have been broken.
You notice that the buzzing of
flies is unnaturally loud.
Smell of despair is
overwhelming.
western world
and you will hate everyone who has
more than you, and you will look
down upon anyone with less
and you will be adamant
and you will be outraged
you will be frightened
of course
you will be crucified
nothing more or
less than what you deserve
the brilliance of moving targets
thin skin of heat at the end
of august
sky no longer solid
man moves through the empty spaces
of broken marriage, of
distant children, of subtle depression
pills don’t work
and so he takes more
feels the weight of sunlight
on chrome
tastes dust in his lover’s kisses
has this house that
refuses to become a home
joy
find a woman whose skin tastes of
rust and call her your own
this is the way
these are the hands
press near the shoulderblades where
wings have failed to grow and
blame society, blame the modern age,
cable tv, internet porn
kiss her breasts lightly
run your tongue down her belly
let the priests dig
their own fucking graves
hollow star
caught there on a deserted street in
a dying town, beneath the awning of an
abandoned store, rain without end and
no cars in any direction and in the
moment of prayer there is only the memory
of sunlight on chrome
there is only waiting
days spent touching the grey
flesh of christ
hours spent burning up
in the fever of addiction
all of the humor found in the pain of others,
and the child has hands until the
soldiers arrive
and then he has nothing
smile when you
tell him there are worse things
when you tell him about
your leaking gas tank about
your flooded basement or
your pregnant teenage daughter
offer him a drink
ask him why he’s crying on
such a perfect summer afternoon
John Sweet, born 1968, is married, father of two, and opposed to all that is evil. He has been living in the vast wasteland that is upstate New York for the majority of his life; is a firm believer in writing as catharsis, and in the idea that true democracy is a myth. A full length collection of his work, Human Cathedrals, is available from Ravenna Press.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
To wind that blows from better days
with the scent of mint and honeysuckle,
I thank you for this breath of fresh air
in weather long past prediction.
To sun that sets into the ocean
whose water does not dowse,
I warm my hands tonight
on the campfire you set today.
To rain that cleans and cools
the wounds and thirsts for more,
from cupped hands I drink
my limit of clear waterfall.
To all elements, all hungers,
may I learn to give what you need
and fair portion of what you want.
To the earth that bears us,
I mourn the scars of our legacy
but thank you for the home we share
atop your weathered body.
by Robert S. King
Robert S. King, a native Georgian, now lives in the mountains near Hayesville, NC. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Lullwater Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published three chapbooks (When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press 1976; Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications 1982; and The Traveller’s Tale, Whistle Press 1998). His full‐length collections are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both in 2nd editions from FutureCycle Press, 2012; and One Man’s Profit from Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013.
