October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Labor Day
Labor day already.
We went back
to Brookline from Marshfield,
where we summered.
With the ocean at the bottom
of the street, two streets over.
We walked barefoot down the asphalt
and the pebbled street, and over
the rocks above the sandy beach.
Our feet toughened, calloused,
for walking all summer long unshod.
We took excursions
to the penny candy store in Brant Rock
or the horse farm (with two or three horses
in an arid field) at ocean street’s end.
Searching out blueberries and blackberries,
to gift our mother with.
Only our shirts rolled up
to carry them.
(Better not rob the
strawberry patch in
old man Allen’s yard,
for him seeing all
he would be out with his shotgun
to chase away us munchkins.
The word was out on that.)
Stopping to rest, in our travels
on the old stone steps
in front of the house
hidden behind overgrown
brush and trees.
Or on a tree branch, hanging low
in the wooded ground
bordering the yards of
vast Victorian cottages.
Walking the sea wall from
whence it started, off the beach
or from the road.
Later we gathered sea moss
for aunt Bridie to wizard-like make
her famous carrageen pudding!
we rode bikes down hilly lanes.
Went down to the marsh
we trekked through to swim in the river,
with it’s strong currents or placidity.
We tromped through shaded woods,
and sunny back yards,
(running over vain lawns),
the grass yielding like soft moss
under our feet.
yes, time let us be
what we wanted to be.
Pirates and princes, unicorns,
Joan of arc, lions in cages,
batman and robin, riders
and runners of rickshaws,
or mermaids all the day long until
the sun was sinking towards the sea,
and our hands and feet were wrinkled deep.
Morning Home
I sit with my coffee.
It is still dark outside, quiet.
My cat is sitting on the cupboard
licking his leg.
looking up, in time.
Outside silhouettes of branches
break
the sky –
into dark gaps, like
fissures on a frozen lake.
A bird sings a few short notes.
again.
and then, again.
The cat tilts his head up.
then returns to pruning.
It takes it’s time,
the light,
to permeate the day.
I look over at the
displaced
second-hand sled
I picked up in a second-hand store,
leaning against the island,
bringing home home.
October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Sharon Siegel
Winter, you are cold
Crisp, frigid air
Hands meet pockets
Chills sent down my spine
Winter, you are cold
Puddles on the sidewalk
Ready to freeze over
I see palm trees ahead
But I feel winter
Gusts of winds
Whirling through the air
Leaves fluttering
Through the heavy breeze
Iciness in my veins
Under grey, gloomy skies
Numbness takes over
Winter, you are cold
Put me back inside
Place me by the fire
These palm trees are not inviting
Winter, you are cold
October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Dirt
My hen Kiev has it in for dirt.
She craters the backyard with soft pumice pits,
digging an acre of ashy basins;
she scatters mulch
with backward-scratching feet,
scraping bare the trunks of crotons and ginger plants;
she slurps night-crawlers from the ground
and severs roots, but not the detested
greenbriar and potato vine—
those she leaves growing from the grey hollows
like a last cackle;
she conspires with the raccoons
to broadcast compost,
spreading clumps, unintegrated, across the grass:
coffee grounds and fetid beans,
newspaper strips and onion skins,
blue lemons and pulpy litter
all resurface in places laid out for clean feet;
she polarizes debris that’s meant to meld together into rich loam
(brown-bag bits now crinkle stiffly between my flower beds,
while lonely cabbage cores dry in fence corners).
I’m thinking of buying a battalion of worms
to blend sand and trash
and return humus to my post-apocalyptic garden
but what would be the point? Kiev would just eat them.
Metal and Drab
I had my fill of metal and drab,
at a desk in a room, in a suite, in a concrete block,
with florescent lights and plastic blinds drawn
against the tropical brightness.
I trudged the concrete stairs to the second floor
each day, I heaved open a heavy door
underlined with stubs and cigarette ash,
closed my eyes and called upon torrent,
frond, and passion-fruit vine
“deliver me from this job,”
before stepping over the threshold
into the grey corridor,
into a box in the calendar.
I stacked the data in drop-down squares,
each name on a line, in a crease, in a sliding drawer;
my mind arranged its own inventory
(“gob-smacked,” “saffron,” “tiramisu”)
to crowd out the ordinal meanness.
After work, outside beside the fragrant gardenias,
I rewrote the day,
the way I keep reworking this poem
to include all that was absent and filed-away:
body, beauty, nuance, compassion,
the way sometimes in the sickening gleam
I tore the thick pith of a backyard citrus
and inhaled the bitter smell of the sun.
Crossroad
At a crossroad on a quiet day
she does a double-take through rolled-up glass,
a startled glance and slight pull-back
that only I notice;
the older man in the blue sedan
doesn’t see more than the dull crawl
of her nondescript car as it passes through the shadows
of the laurel oaks,
but I take in her black hair, pulled back and morning-tidy,
the mouth curved confusedly on her taupe face,
the dough of impending middle age
softening her forearms into ovals,
the whole effect so regular it begs a story:
Why has she looked twice at this guy?
Is it the polished olive-brown of his cheeks,
the breeziness of his t-shirt,
the careful hold of one hand on the wheel?
Does he evoke a patriarch making a toast
at a long table by a cliff by the sparkling sea,
with bowls of tomatoes and penne and ciabatta
and even the children with wine glasses half-filled?
Does the sight of him make the clinging heat
feel like a dry mediterranean afternoon
sweetened with tipsiness and garlic?
Or maybe I watch too many Italian films;
maybe he’s really her next-door neighbor
who just came from the barber with his beard newly shaved
and she almost didn’t recognize him;
maybe the reason I think I sense a quick spark of desire
piercing her window and then his
and then her subtle fluster and regrouping
is because I myself have now stopped running
and stand at the crossroad, eyes fixed
on the white hair and glossy, sunny skin
as he drives away.
October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Slave Boy
We run as if an agitated earth
were breaking up behind us, and we fight
to gain our stations at the gritty trough
half-filled with corn, where each survivor’s worth
is daily measured by another’s right
to fair apportionment denied; and off
our makeshift plates of muddied, calloused hands
ensues a squealing angry vulgar rush
to suck the greasy nourishment before
there is no more, beneath the reprimands
of our possessors, who behold the crush
of vermin squirming to and fro, and roar
with ridicule at other men’s distress.
And now the furnace of the picking fields:
my sweat, like acid, so intense the heat;
the layers of my skin in merciless
assault laid bare, as one would flay the shields
of weary swordsmen crumbling in defeat.
For I am just machinery, a tool;
and I must step and lift and strip and clear,
again, again, until all hope becomes
a moment’s respite from another’s rule,
a storm-whipped seedling doomed to persevere
until its fleeting energy succumbs.
The night, at last, should be our time of peace.
Instead a tempest rises from inside
of me – my brother kneels before the fire;
and all the creatures of the darkness cease
their plaintive calls, the churlish winds subside;
to touch his breath the spirits all conspire,
as like a starry pond his amber skin
reflects a thousand beaded silver pearls
of terror; time and motion seem to pause;
a fearsome crackling – flesh explodes, the din
of horror as a scarlet vapor curls
above bewitching firelight; and the cause
of all the misery of humankind
is set aglow upon the lustful eyes
of those in witness to the spectacle;
his swelling body thrashes in a blind
contortion at the resonant reprise,
the whistlings of the lash a chronicle
of limits to endurance, or of prey
in final battle, and we both recoil
with every searing flash of brilliant white;
the wordless ritual proceeds till day
begins, and merciful the rite of toil
to shroud the distant memories of night.
The valuation: ox and mule and I
are harvesters, production’s pulse and breath;
the traders, sure as scripture of their just
and righteous task, assess and quantify,
and probe and estimate each life and death;
like seed we will be spread among the dust.
I watch my mother’s face: ’tis just as well
they hack away her arm, so great her pain;
but all her tears dissolve in scenes of mirth
and profit, as the men who buy and sell
the bucks and hands and breeders do ordain
for us a last embrace upon their earth.
Our dearest bond is cherished; as the men,
becoming restless, hurry us along.
Once more I’d like to gather a bouquet
for her, to see her smile; and once again
to drift to slumber on an angel’s song
as all my fears of darkness slip away.
Paul Buchheit’s poems have been published by the Illinois State Poetry Society, Lucid Rhythms, and the State of Nature online journal. His happiest moments are spent reading, writing, and reflecting on carefully crafted poetry. As a retired teacher, he now devotes more and more time to this blissful pursuit.
October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Zen Dead Reckoning
a languid puff of dew
floats like a cotton bale
in air as calm and blue
as a sea we could sail
without a chart or a clue
Bathysphere
I have a bathysphere in my brain sometimes.
The bolted ball, a whale’s eye, droops on a noose
into a lightless trench where what little life exists
glows like chemo and creeps on spiny, fan-dance fins.
The pressure makes my face crack and leak.
My bathysphere has a name like an Eskimo porn sequel:
soft bipolar II — and without warning or negotiation
it will pop a Polaris, missile me heavenward then explode
in pillowy air, ecstatic, a breathless aurora borealis.
Make it a double, a triple, one for everyone.
Alas, the God-shots are short-lived; unmapped, too.
After a few corkscrews, I’ll collapse under a sheet,
thrash and drift — an interminable interregnum
on a painfully placid sea — fearing the inevitable night
when the bathysphere will again submerge me.
Nick D’Annunzio Jones received an MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts from the University of California at Riverside. Recently, he has taught at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, and at Lynn University, in Boca Raton, FL. Currently, he is studying Soto Zen Buddhism and enrolled in graduate work in existentialist psychotherapy at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL., where he’s also a care-giver at the Hospice by the Sea.
October 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Driving through Deer
I was fourteen
my dad
let me drive
he gave me
a beer
and I took
a few more
from the cooler
when he
passed out
drunk
in the passenger
seat
we were
going
to Tennessee
we were
always
going to
Tennessee
back then
I drove
straight through
the Illinois night,
into the abysmal
black heart
of it all
and ecstasy
it was easy
the vehicle
like a physical
manifestation
of myself
with one
ponderous
touch
the car
veered left
one twist
of the wrist
it sailed right
straight
into the black
heart night
of the abyss
I kept drinking
beer
throwing
the empty cans
out the window
took a cigarette
from the pack
started smoking
just ahead
a small herd
of deer stood
in the middle
of the road
they all turned
toward me
simultaneously
their eyes
burning
beaming
like gods
with one
searing
question
I hit the brights
to hypnotize
them
and accelerated
the car jumped
forward we
sped forward
through the heart
of the night
black abyss
and ecstasy
luminescent
heading
straight toward
deer
passed
right
through them
their beautiful
golden hides
all illuminated
eyeballs
and eartips
fluttering
their breath
mist
and white
tails ringing
my dad
stirred you want
me to drive
now no
I want to
I’ll drive
