August 2002 | back-issues, Janet Buck, poetry
Your hair was the color of pearls,
but I didn’t think they were real.
I couldn’t admit to the ash
of your skin, its porcelain pose
on saucers of graves.
Two long days beside your bed.
A cradle I pushed but could not rock.
My eyes were grabbing renaissance.
I knew it but I acted blind.
You warned me of death and its salt —
how oceans are garnished with thirst.
You taught me how to rope and rise
a baby grand from dining rooms
of buried ships — and still I
painted ivory keys of fingernails
neon shades of busy lies
with no respect for waning light.
A wish was stepping on my hands.
Too young to abide the wrinkling fruit,
I wasn’t prepared for the rind.
“Consider a storm the polish of craft,
expect the ice to be sharp” — you said,
but I sat deaf ten miles away.
I should have been there,
when the clock of your heartbeat stopped —
darning a prayer for the size of the hole,
as lungs collapsed like old cocoons.
August 2002 | Janet Buck, poetry
Eyes wide open for the Fall —
it’s a season as well as a fact.
We can’t exchange
these tired carrots of our bones
for brand new pencils in a box.
Consider this a thank you note:
I’m grateful you refuse to skip
the parts of life that tell
our eyes a bomb was here.
All our ankles, all our knees are arguing
with Waterloos of daily chores.
I think of times when touching toes
were take-for-granted music bars.
Five days after surgery,
I roll your socks in condoms
over wet erections of your will.
Vacuum while you shower and dress,
squint in case I’m missing dirt.
Bending down to pick up soiled underwear
could snap the fragile paperclip.
Standing is a stale cracker under weight.
Cheese we were becomes a scar.
We talk apart the wars that won —
go home to rest a thicker shield
as bullets build behind our backs.
These front-row seats of death we own
would make us pale applesauce if not for
specks of cinnamon, of being there
as hours grow bruised, become the worm.
As years play tricks, as menus fade
where sweaty glasses parked their rings,
I ponder how lonely the path would be
without your footprints next to mine.
From bookends sliding down a shelf,
we learn to meter what remains
on pages with their binding loose.
So this is how agape reads —
the seed that makes the jam the jam.
August 2002 | Janet Buck, poetry
We divided your stuff
on the tail of black limos
creeping the ragged streets.
My sister took the pretty towels —
the ones that said:
“Don’t touch, I stain;
Don’t fold, I tear.
Don’t use, I bite.”
All that was left was the lump of a chair
that cradled the crumbling straw.
From here, you argued with walls,
with a god you couldn’t see
but chose to trust no differently
than ducks fly south
imbued with promises of warmth.
An afghan draped across the back
to cover holes your spine had rubbed.
From here, you flipped like a caught trout
in the moon’s gray pail.
Watched as the rainfall bled
on fuzzy portraits of glass.
Listened as the furnace chirped
its bird-like morning arias.
From here, you grabbed an apron string
as love would jet from room to room.
Lit your pipe, gushed about her homemade pies.
Marked her lips with syrup spittle,
afterglow of Sunday waffles on the porch.
This old thing Grandma called
a wart on nice, an albatross of tackiness,
a dog to shoot, a rock to lift —
but never moved and dusted
like a precious mink in closets of the very rich.
Dimes between the cushion cracks.
Songs of sweat on beaten arms.
I had to keep this monument.
All your craters, all your perils,
all your Hells had settled here.
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
ten years spent in
light blue rooms with the
vague forms of women always
walking out the door
with this image of children in
barren villages
burning the american flag and
dancing on the graves of crack babies
always hovering at the
edge of my sight
maybe the taste of a stranger’s
pale luminous skin
when the phone rings at three
in the morning and a voice
that i can’t immediately place says
[i]i left him[/i]
says
[i]i love you[/i]
and it’s always at a point
where one season is giving way
to the next
where the boyfriend
has been arrested and the
daughter is screaming and the
president says that the first bombs
have been dropped
explains how the deaths of our enemies
are all victories for freedom
and i am hungover on the morning
of the abortion
i move slowly through the lines of protesters
with my hands balled into fists
with the phone number of
an old lover tucked into my wallet
and i am thinking of
her laugh
i am drinking someone’s blood
there is no chance for
any of us to
walk away from this unscarred
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
a headache
just after midnight
as i try to remember why
i ever started writing
at all
a day spent walking
empty streets from a
forgotten part of my life
and i am tired of the past
and of my job like an
impossible weight
and i am tired
the house is old
the windows distorted
and i’m afraid of the day
my son begins to build a wall
between us
i’m afraid he will not be
able to
escape being my son
and this scorched taste
in my mouth is all i’ve kept of
the five thousand wasted days
spent trying to save the
woman who loved pain
from herself
or maybe i can finally
be honest
in this dark room
and admit that i was
worried about no one
but me
maybe i should mention
how i walked away
without hesitation when
her needs threatened
to smother the person
i was hoping to
become
maybe all of the
drowning
can still be saved
July 2002 | back-issues, Michael W. Giberson, poetry
[i]for Brent Stalker[/i]
If the dead could rise
To take your part,
And you lie
Bleeding in their stead,
The silent covenant
Between you bred
Of comradeship
Would not falter.
Do not rage your solvent heart.
Do not rue God’s bleeding altar.
