April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
For My Daughter
How bad do you want to be Little Miss Fair? Tease your do out bigger, bigger than Big Nana’s hair. Only eat foods that you can drink. Better, start a blonde streak and forget to eat. It’s not me. It’s the men that care. And repeat after me, we care most of all for the men. Imagine: Your belly’s a bomb that ticks with each swallow. You’ll give birth if you eat another bite. Thin wins. Shout it to our devils: to the mustard pretzels on our sponsored flight. Shout it to the cushion crumbs, the gum on the floor. I’m no one unless I win. You can’t be ugly and poor. Your childhood’s a promise I refuse to make. You’ll thank me for throwing up your wedding cake. Even a glance at my jumbo dog’s a glut. It takes guts not to have a gut. Remember when you watched them pump mine like oil? I’m your warning, a bomb blown. But loyal.
Rehabilitation
Left alone, I ask very adult, mean questions to Rebecca, the occupational therapist, after it’s clear she thinks he’s not an improver. How long have you been doing this? I inquire after he gives up writing the A in his name, rolls over, and pretend-sleeps. The edge in my tone guts her taught smile. I sense the upperhand. It’s only the two of us beside his bed. Teach him again how to make a fist, to hold that pen, to squeeze my pinky, pound this table, punch the poise from your mouth. And do it again until he gets it. Until you make him get it. I mean, that’s your job. Isn’t it, Becky?
Heaven
Now, I picture heaven as Ed McMahon standing in a gym with an accordion folder bulging with index cards. He taps the mike, pulls out each card, and bellows: “Oswald didn’t do it. LBJ bought the bullet. The moon landing took place on the set of Bewitched. 666 is in every barcode. There’s a barcode under every baby. Tupac scats Strayhorn in Prague bars. Elvis died a decade before fat Hawaii. Every airplane you weren’t on wasn’t an airplane. I’m your announcer, Ed McMahon. And now, herrrre’s the rest of eternity, the conspiracy theories from your own head, straight from your own life. Let’s start,” he heyohs, “with sex.”
Not long ago, I pictured heaven as the Sunday School teacher projected it in slides — green field after green field, a rich man’s backyard. Throughout the show, she’d have us repeat, “God is like your eyebrows. You don’t have to see Him to know he’s there.” In the sixth grade, around the time I watched them dump the wafers in a Ziploc, I noticed her brows were plucked and pink, extinct, brown frowns drawn over raw skin. That night, I watched The Tonight Show for the first time and fought off the new fears from the sweet, infected Miss Kimberley.
by Anthony Warnke
Anthony Warnke has previous work published in The Prose Poem Project, Hoarse, and forthcoming in Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. He teaches English at Green River Community College in Auburn, WA.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Baby I’m a disposable camera. Baby you stop me dead in my tracks, burn a hole in my brain. Baby I’m your biggest fan, I’m wearing your t-shirt, can’t you read the pop-calligraphy? — can’t you recognize your own handwriting? Baby I’ve got filing cabinets full of dreams you wrote, my office is dripping with dream-juice, my hands are holding fresh dollar bills, ready to spend on you. Baby you make it all seem worthwhile, you get me out of bed in the morning, you make the coffee taste hopeful, you make me leave the house with confidence and go to the office where I fill cabinets with dreams of you. Baby take these handcuffs off of me, now put them back on. Baby your picture exposes the end of what I desire, which is the beginning of what I desire, a road paved in dreams. Baby the cacti are singing me road directions. Baby I’m confused, the world is changing — quick, tell me something I can trust for even a second because I can’t come up with anything good. Baby stop hiding in the utility closet. Baby stop looking like an angel. Baby don’t open your mouth, don’t ruin the suspense we’ve worked so hard to sustain. Baby my hair is standing on end, my nerves scrambling to catch up with you, playing possum in the moonlight. Baby the wise know their foolishness well. Baby you were cast in bronze, racing headlong toward me through a hot glass tunnel. Baby the glass is cracking, you’re humming in my ears like a flute. Baby thinking of you like this is a holy tradition at this point. Baby I see you across the room at the party, I can’t hear you, but from the look on your face I can tell what you’re talking about — you’re talking about finding the disease in me. Baby the world is hungry and so are we, but we’re harmless enough you and I — tadpoles in a puddle of tears. Baby you may be my baby but I feel just like a child when it comes to you, I’m trying to stay warm in the nest you built. Baby puke inside my mouth, tell me something I can strap my heart to with a horse-hide belt. Baby fire is quiet and painless and ice is a punishing screech in the wild. Baby our bodies are being destroyed and I can’t turn my eyes away from you. Baby I’m sorry for being dramatic but the world, inexplicable and cancerous, moves like an insect across the ceiling. Baby I hope I’m right on target, hope I’m reaching you clear. Baby are you tuned in? — is this making any sense? Baby our kingdom has epilepsy, we live in a sensitive fortress, we might have to smuggle ourselves out in disguise to survive. Baby my bones are wet, this isn’t like anything, we’ve never seen this before, a brand new configuration, flawlessly executed. Baby I’m catching all that I can catch, I’m even forcing it to try to save time. Baby I’m broke, do you know a place where I might find work? Baby do you have a job for me to do? — just say the word and I’ll be there with my scuba gear, ready to get disgusting. Baby why am I the butt of all your sly jokes swirling in the night air? Baby was that you on the side of a building, riding a golden wagon in the sunset? Baby you’re just over this hill, just around this corner, just through this door, I can see your shadow hinting safety from where I stand, I’ll follow the necessary logical steps. Baby we’re ruthless when we talk to each other, do we really believe it’s fun to drag this cruel contest out? Baby I have to go to the bathroom, if you don’t have an excuse to shut your eyes I’d be glad to give you one if it’ll help, because baby, I’m here to help. Baby we are commas in each other’s breaths, hitches in each other’s steps. Baby we only want to feel what we heard feels good. Baby let’s put on the rubber gloves and go on a rampage, we’ll have the town talking for weeks. Baby gossip flings off of us effortlessly: all we do is tell ourselves stories, we’re a force to be reckoned with. Baby what are we doing now? — let’s find another problem we can’t solve. Baby you remind me I’m not yet finished with the task at hand, your tent glowing on the mountainside, I can smell the smoke from the meadow below. Baby I’ll be there soon, don’t fall asleep yet, it’s cold outside, I’ll make my way up the mountain in the dark. Baby I have no way of knowing what I’ve done, I’m walking to you without a person to count on.
by Benjamin Gross
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Maria opens a blue-white box
of Phillips Instant Flood
which gathers at her toes.
She becomes a conduit
(the room is filled with Epsom Salt)
and slowly oxidizes.
Now tarnish-green
she receives a visitor.
He is a lecherous old fool
who plates her all in bronze
heating her to flesh-warm temperatures
to pass as “fine” in private.
I used to have anxiety
in public places, shrinking
into phone-booth hideouts
to open up my shirt.
by Paul Fauteux
Paul Fauteux received his MFA from George Mason University, where he was the 2011-2012 Completion Fellow. His recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Regime, Fat City Review and Sugar Mule, and for the advocacy of other fine poets on The Lit Pub. His first chapbook, “The Best Way to Drink Tea,” is out from Plan B Press. “How to Un-do Things,” a book-length manuscript, was recognized as a semi-finalist in the 11th Annual Slope Editions Book Prize.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
But tomorrow I’m going to take Durer to lunch again.
He won’t sit still. He’ll be interested in the supermarket
down the block and traffic, well traffic–it took about
an hour for him to try out all the adjustments on
the seat belt. He doesn’t like cars much, though.
The surfaces are too flat and shiny. He misses animals.
I take him to the Farmer’s Market, where the Amish
hang calendar pictures of fine horses and speak to him
in old Deutsch. He sketches a black woman at the counter.
He measures my palm against the length of my face.
He is agitated by fluorescent lighting. We stand outside
in the cold and count starlings. I give him a little rice
to throw. He decides to wait for spring before we go
out again. I understand. He’s pretty heavy to carry.
Too many pages and colorplates and indices. I didn’t
really mean to get him so wet.
by Kelley Jean White
Kelley’s writing has been widely published since 2000 in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Friends Journal, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, the Journal of the American Medical Association and in a number of chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently Toxic Environment from Boston Poet Press, Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community at Canterbury, NH, from Beech River Books, and “In Memory of the Body Donors,” Covert Press. She have received several honors, including a 2008 grant for poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Coffee House Get-Together With An Ex
We meet in a coffee house
after ten years apart.
In our conversation,
those ten years
and our two together
jostle for attention.
You’ve met someone.
You’ve settled down.
But you still love Hendrix.
And the beach remains
your Mother Earth.
Meanwhile, I’ve remarried.
No kids so no need to bore
you with their details.
We have our own home.
Your meager apartment gets a complex
so I stay away from how many rooms,
the size of our backyard.
We don’t touch upon
why it didn’t work.
We just extract moments
from when it was working,
pretend that was all of it.
And the intervening times
catch a break.
No imagining what it
would be like if we had shared them.
Despite the laughs,
an occasional tear,
those ten years remain intact.
You look older,
slightly wiser.
I’ve some gray
to give my heartbeat pause.
I’ve enjoyed this time together.
If I could turn back the clock,
it’d be the one on the wall.
Beyond The Wish List
The last year was murder.
Every night, another argument,
two heads going at it,
two hearts begging for mercy.
Weary, one of us would walk,
one drive, at a good pace
in opposite direction,
until sleep hauled us back
to be temporarily communal.
By day at least, we kept
ourselves at arm’s length.
I worked the factory
with radio at full blast,
one heavy metal
in deafening conflict with another.
You tended a second hand book store,
selling rough copies of
Dos Passos and Fitzgerald
between sipping lattes
from the coffee house next door.
Without the other around,
we could work on strengthening our cause.
I saved one photograph from the dumpster,
two of us on a beach,
me rubbing oil into your back.
Now my fingers are on the east coast,
your shoulder blades keep to the west.
But just the other day,
I saw someone who looked like you.
I thought that was your job.
And your yearly email,
I read at least three times.
I give you an 8 out of 10 for happiness.
My mark is roughly 7.
To be honest,
without lawyers and wedged apart
by flyover country,
we’re actually quite a couple.
Not that I wish us back together.
But there’s other wishes where that came from.
by John Grey
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Eleven, your age of sleeveless sparkle tops and sundown
sneakers, even the lemon of the walls in your home
couldn’t tell you which way little sister should hit
the piñata, or how much corn from the can mom would slip
on your dinner plate. Dad still combed his hair to the left,
talked Nixon and Watergate like the wood cabinets
were listening, and you were pushing the peas to the edge
of the China dish as he said, Son, couldn’t you wear
a baseball jersey instead of them dandy sparkles,
and the shaggy mutt next door sang to the rooftops
of other dogs. You tilted your head to sister playing
with the cheeks of her dress, thought about all those gummy fish
she hopes to find when she hits the belly of a hanging horse,
and how she’ll kneel down with graveled knees and scarlet
fingers to gather what she can in the small of her arms. You
dosey-doed from your plate up to the staircase, lifted
the dirt-painted horse from your sill. Mom taught you once
how to ride, but you only remember the earthquake of your legs
and the ground crumbling like an unfinished jigsaw. The posters
of baseball brilliants, the stars of other stars, were not tacked
into place by calloused hands of your own, but instead
melted into the wallpaper as models for who you could be. Just look
at them son, you could be all that they are, you could
even be more. You moved your horse around the bedpost,
made trotting sounds with your teeth and your tongue
as the greats hung like ghosts on the wall.
by Lauren Weiler
