Her love is binary
off or on
yes or no
zero or one
but if she could rest
in the untapped mantle
between extremes
or even possibility
there is acceptance
and tranquility
like liquid tangibility
no tears or lament
just a trace of light
enough to see
a love that is
one more than one
and two more
than nothing
at all.
Loose steps lead down to the dusty porch
surrounded by the graffitied stone wall
I watch the sun rise from the lawn chair
paces from the small bungalow where we lived
sharing cinnamon rolls, spaghetti, lemonade
all of us stuffed in tight
the blue coat of paint on the house so worn
we see rough splintered wood underneath
the shutters squeak in the wind
the roof leaks and my father curses, puts
back the split shingles and reseals them
the sun high and hot over the flagstone path
the front door with the torn screen
my grandmother grows tomatoes along that walk
near the boulder left sometime after the last ice age
I imagine its ancient world when dinosaurs
and woolly mammoths roamed among the trees
now the lawn is crushed by dandelions
and giant ragweed bushes stampede across
red tailed hawks screech in wheezing oaks
as my heart sinks with the sun on the planks
and I slip into a place of buzzing voices
my brothers plead
and my mother bangs the car keys on the table
The driveway up front by the big willow
points away from the house onto the broken road
with millions of hairline cracks
like fault lines to other houses, other families.
Alison Carb Sussman’s chapbook, On the Edge, is scheduled for publication by Finishing Line Press in May, 2013. Her poetry has appeared in The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Eclipse, Slipstream, and elsewhere. She currently studies at The Writers Studio under the direction of Philip Schultz.
103 degrees, the city’s pavement cooks lovers like us sunny side up. But no one’s smiling. We sweat to forget the heat, sit down on a banged up bench at Van Cortland Park, devouring those dollar mango icies I love so much. We lazily reminisce about our foreclosed childhoods, watching a giddy girl and boy play in grass-stained overalls and clunky sneakers. They fantasize about being us, assigning each other scripted destinies through bossy fingers, yelling–You’re the man. You’re the woman. And we’ll play Love! Inspired, we clutch wet palms and pull each other to the direction of our own playhouse.
We go home. Forget past-due Con Ed bills and put that gray, old fashioned air conditioner on high– teasingly butt-bumping each other to get some one-on-one with its artificial breeze. No use, our bodies keep humming. So we improvise. If anyone’s looking for us, they can follow the trail of musty clothing we peeled off each other with great speed and ‘who-cares-right-now’ precision– the soiled socks, the pit-stained t-shirts, the dingy undies. To my closet of a bathroom, where we let cold tap water hit our bare backs, watching escaped hairs,
pollen,
soap suds,
and unfinished love poems trickle down to join the liquid chase.
The sun’s kisses are still pressing down on us, kissing dry the little droplets of satisfaction.
So we defy nature. We unzip and slip out of our sandpaper skins, throw them over my black ottomans, and play a sultry Sade track to help us catch the Holy Ghost, dancing tight and slow , whispering, Let’s play Love. A purple aura surrounds our souls and we levitate above the heavy heat. We play nude patti-cake in the lavender phenomenon; our limbs finally fuse into each other. We hope our game can continue to the moon. Before we know it, we’re flirting with the dusty ceiling, tapping our translucent toes to the last notes of the tune we left playing. The aura dims and we begin descend down,
disoriented
And zig-
zagging
back to the gas oven of a Bronx apartment. I cannot help to perspire you and
you perspire me. We don‘t give each other destined locations. You can sleep in my body and I sleep in yours.
I am currently a Drama Specialist and Literature Arts instructor for Harlem Center for Education in New York City. I graduated from Marymount Manhattan College with a B.A. in playwriting. My poetry has been published in the Marymount Manhattan Review, along with other literary magazines. My poetry has won honorable recognition in the national Random House Creative Writing Competition and my theatrical works have received numerous honors from the Young Playwrights of New York City.
A crystal shaped tear fell and shattered on the floor,
tiny pieces flying all around.
She became dizzy with pain as she inhaled the sweetness
of the ninety-nine cents cinnamon candle.
Because one footstep did not precede the other at the right moment
and her walls fell apart.
A coffee mug flew off the breakfast table
and out of the window,
onto the streets.
She closed her eyes although she could not see
where it would fall,
from where she stood.
Amongst all the chaos, she forced her arms up,
but their heaviness made her fall back.
They had red marks all over them, and she could feel ropes
cutting through her skin.
But when she looked at them,
she saw nothing.
Nothing,
as her skin dissolved into tiny particles of powdered soap
and flew up and up, nonstop,
up towards the ceiling.
Her heart pounded rhythmically, like a tambourine, against her chest,
and her breasts jiggled,
and the jiggle made her laugh.
And eventually she woke up,
yawning in the laundry room.
The milky sunlight pours down from one of the clouds,
and bathes the palm trees.
The clouds sigh in slow motion, as they watch drops of sunlight
cling to the leaves.
As they watch my curtains dance,
but no one sings.
These drops of sunlight splattered on my face,
and then became the freckles on my cheeks.
And the clouds keep sighing,
as the crayon-colored cars race through a highway
that looks more like a bridge.
As the people driving them scribble in their minds
the grocery list;
and change the radio station,
looking for someplace better.
Someplace where they can rest their faces on their hands,
wrap themselves in clouds and slide off mountaintops,
but feel no pain.
Someplace where they can swim in sunlight, smell of kiwi,
and throw faded songs away.
Someplace where they can walk with their heads,
and knit the missing pieces of their childhood together,
to never forget.
The room was two spoonfuls of shadows and one tablespoon of light.
I could see pieces of dust floating in the air, shining under dim lights.
The music, which infiltrated the room from every crack and every corner, began to sound
distant.
The pieces of dust floated and I followed their every movement. I saw their smiling faces
hanging from each piece of dust, calling out my name in disharmony.
But I snatched my name off their tongues and put it away in my pocket, so they could
never call me again.
The way they pronounced the ‘a’ and their sing-song tone of voice, tasted of relish on a
vanilla ice cream cone; like an illegal lullaby sung to a newborn.
I wondered if there were cowboys in China, and if they rode ponies instead of horses. But
the blonde lady with the bulging ice blue eyes entered the room, hammering her heels
into the ground.
But my shift was already over and I ran to the back door, tripping on a girl who hadn’t
been there a second ago. And as I fell on the floor, my cellphone slipped from my hand
and I saw it land on the ceiling, like gravity was nothing but an old man’s joke.
My heart raced and the world became a blur, and I choked on my pink tears and wished
that the room wasn’t dusty anymore.
Most mornings alight on my bones this way—
The shadows of the leaves of a tree rising
And falling like a ship on a sea, upon my windowpane
That glowed with the golden light of Saturday.
But today, the window was a silent nothing—
When I woke, the shadows had gone away
To stretch big and heavy, to trespass rooms
And hearts and dull their landscapes.
I lay on my bed, still, with a blanket to my chin—
Nursing a loneliness a dream had awakened.
Out the other window, the stone wall glistened dark
With water from the distant, distant heavens.
Sleep,
a place for magic tricks and dreams
and romance after yes stands a
chance hearing.
Sounds in Shuffled Minor, a Three-girl-Monte,
we dance to b -flat cries,
keep the us pressed together/awake,
in places bed.
The marriage of our AM bodies parallel now,
two bullets awake,
our shared spotlight softens us to
packing, hugs and snacks for daughters,
sliding a curved heart across tables,
past our eyes,
we press send.
To separate buses,
go Daughters, go
grooming for distance,
hearing no in subjects Magic,
they learn to pull missiles
out of a hat.
We hang on
to hoops and rings
still-worn,
vanished,
our open circus stilts carry
us in years,
we romance in hallway plaque.
Transcripts in places bed silent,
kept pond-safe as our Forward Daughters
march the us to
sleep.
by Jamez Chang
Jamez Chang’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in FRiGG, Prime Number, Lines + Stars, Boston Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, Marco Polo, and Yes, Poetry. After graduating from Bard College, Jamez went on to become the first Korean-American to release a hip-hop album, Z-Bonics (1998), in the United States. He lives in Englewood Cliffs, NJ with his wife and 3 daughters. Visit www.jamezchang.com
