February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
not shadow but
reflection
february rain from
tanguy’s sky until the streets
are all dull grey mirrors
if i keep my distance
i could be anyone
if i get in my car and drive
i could call it escape
could call it running away
which is sometimes an act of
cowardice and sometimes
an act of survival
and i sit in this room of
empty chairs instead
with my thoughts
and my bitter resentments
i believe in gorky at the age of 43
in rothko at the age of 66
but not in my father
not at any age and not in any
of the bars i spent my childhood in
i remember the threats
and all of the dire predictions
i remember fifteen years
spent perfecting the
art of silence
what a sad fucking
victory it’s become
February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this act of not killing
this place where
nothing is forgiven
where nails are driven through
human flesh
then pulled back out
where your god sings
a beautiful song without
meaning
think about words as
nothing more than noise
look at the men you’ve
elected to power
consider how they
would eat their own shit to
never have to give it up
how they believe in rape
and in the
necessity of poverty
the inevitability of war
the logic of children
butchered for the sake of a
better future
February 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
or the names of the children
found starving in the basement
or the name of
the person who finds them
the blood of
whoever left them there
all the pictures of hell
it could be used to paint
January 2003 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
One moment he’s pruning a wayward branch;
garden tools rest happily against
the brick like spoons in soup.
You wonder how it stayed this warm.
An ancient sun is baking leaves, raisins
in a rising dough of seasons on a schedule.
He edges grass the way he’s always
sculpted love — by doing things
in steady gestures like the rain.
A seizure, then a surgery.
Then solitaire so suddenly.
Feet aren’t there to track rich soil;
welcome mats have lost all words.
I bake two pies and take
two pieces down the street.
It’s a short walk and a long hill
up to the crown of thorns.
The first thick snow is blowing
blizzards of his death as if
some crazy heaven dropped a sack of flour
and all the meals I’m handing you
are just reminders of the cold.
I ring the bell, its tired fly
catches in the vivid freeze.
A single placemat at the bar
stares back at us as if
no cards but this exist.
Boots are empty lecture notes
reminding me that luck
is amputated by the hour.
His coat is hanging like a ghost
beside a hat that buckles
in our winded sighs.
A living room of Roman girth —
spotless but for photographs
you finger in the night’s abyss.
*First Published in Black Creek Review
January 2003 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
I whisper her name aloud —
you tug at a chair to gather your coat,
pet the dog and say goodbye
before a question
kicks you in the tender groin.
Your eyelids curtsy once and clench —
a mirror of the coffin’s hinge.
I’d like to follow roads you take,
through briars of the fruitless vines,
down sharp, dry cliffs
that crumble at the slightest wind.
Our silence is my orphanage,
but you don’t know the windows
you have blocked from light.
Hand me just a sweater’s sleeve,
some syntax, context, anything
that spells the way she made the bed
into a novel packed with lust
and happiness now cherry pits.
Her memory is snow in summer,
smelly oil on concrete floors
of some garage I sense is cold.
Nearly fifty years have passed.
Sores should own a scar or two,
but closure is impossible
without exposure to the air.
I’d like to follow roads you take,
even if this island has no sustenance
and storms direct the weather vanes.
Death might have been a melody
we rode until the song came back.
I step on leaves around her grave,
hear the crunch of missing heels,
stay the hungry hummingbird,
who cannot find the center
of a rose removed —
wings on fire for searching
through the muted spring.
*First Published in Epiphany
January 2003 | back-issues, poetry
[b]Curled and Jarred[/b]
as if something sparked a memory of
birth at two-forty-seven
on a Sunday
during a rainstorm.
Inside his narrow cot,
an itchy issued blanket –
coarse as the accented words and
foreign fingers wrapped around
his conditioned thigh.
“Vat yoo doo to me izt art,”
is exhaled as
breasts are flattened
against his back and
hair to his lips
like leaves to
moist concrete.
[b]The Biology Of Jimmy Smith[/b]
The skin of his hands is cracking
as Jimmy Smith becomes
subject to his first
in-class erection.
It is because of Mrs. Dopleworth,
the blue flower dressed
middle school teacher
preparing simple science notes
on a tall screeching blackboard.
She scrawls:
Some facts about your toads,
and the dress rises,
agitating little Jimmy in his
wiggling plastic bucket seat.
“The eardrum is located here.
It’s also known as the
tym-pan-ic mem-brane.”
Her floral short sleeve
flushes out a bit
while she syllabically points,
opening to a
black bra strap.
Watching without listening,
his feet crinkle
like foil on the
linoleum floor.
Staring at Jimmy:
“You’re allowed to touch
your toad.”
leaves her lips while
she brushes
baby powder chalk against those
midnight blue petals.
Jimmy aches to see them
wilt from her body
and collapse on the floor.
The same way he would,
if she whispered that
statement into his skinny ear.
He thinks of her lips so close
and rubs his hands together,
brushing off
tiny wistful flakes of himself
in a jarring
heart thumping moment.
[b]The Militants Have Invaded My Ceramic[/b]
and when they’re on leave
they recline
cross-legged
snorfling
dew from my greenery
[b]I Kissed Them[/b]
Laces wrapped,
looking like lips
against the
slippery
tongue
of her shoe.
by M. R. Benning (c)2003
([email]mbennin [at] bgnet [dot] bgsu [dot] edu[/email])
[b]Author’s Note:[/b]
M. R. Benning’s brain leaks perversion. It is not intentional. He is simply Freudian and it hurts. How he has taken it upon himself to manifest what you wish you could tell when you were twelve. He is almost there, creeping into everyone and tugging at their memories.
