November 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
we are not old
or dying
but afraid
we are the voice
of the burning girl
after she has dissolved
into nothing but
faded cloth wrapped
tight around old bones
and as the wind finds
all of the holes
in this house
we turn to each other
for warmth
we compare faces
and names
and whether or not
your sister will come live
with us when she finally
pulls herself from
the tar her life
has become
and the killer is free
the trunk of his car
empty
and waiting
and the baby asleep
upstairs
one of us will have to
be the first
to break his heart
November 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]A Soft Whisper[/b]
Leaves listless in the grayed snow
Gravel peeking from snow clouds
Brown brittle stalks steel themselves
against the October onslaught.
Something green and growing
Huddles beneath the shifting snow
Curling into itself braced
Bent and bowed but resilient.
Cold winds worry the withered ones
Who fold fallen to shelter the unseen green
Curve in against it
Like a mother protecting a child.
Layer upon layer it lusts
For fine and fragile things
Tucked against the terror
The trauma and the tremble.
Winter winnows out
The weak and wraithlike
Misses the potent possibilities
Of rage balled like a fist.
It survives the shattering
In spite of the night
That caves in on the white
Thinking it has won.
On a still and silent night
A soft whisper can be heard,
“I shall rise and roust
come Spring and soft sun.
“I shall unfurl,
new and necessary
green and growing
no matter the season’s sins.”
[b]Towers have a history[/b]
Towers have a history
Of falling down
Their ragged rumble
Epitomizes my vulnerability.
Slumped and draped
Spiked into a macabre pose
Lines across the moonlit night
Dog’s feed upon the bare bones
Of our peaceful fantasy.
The steely breath
Breathed through the streets
found it’s way here
smothered my calm interlude
froze me to the bones.
The big lie exploded
Shattered limbs and values
A twin set of carcasses
Gave truth to my mother’s fears.
A notion in a moment
That we are nothing
But shifting sands of history
No monuments can replace.
Towers have a history
Of falling down
Their ragged rumble
Epitomizes my vulnerability.
[b]The Teacher[/b]
“My girl,” she rumbled
Pushed the hide scraper
Against the meat,
Cut me to the bone.
“Get rid of extra stuff,”
she flicked at sand flies
pelting like moths to a flame.
“Holah, the army gathers,”
like men at the bar
after last call and you
send off your scent.”
“My girl,” she said, sideways,
set aside her filleting knife
after carving out the choice pieces.
“These you keep,” she smiled
patted the thin pink meat.
“Throw
the guts and gore away.”
The bucket slapped
When receiving the bounty.
“My girl,” she said, huffing,
“At the top of this hill
berries bunch in clusters,
hidden from the hunt
and hunters.” I stalked
her shadow as we climbed.
“Aiyee,” she exclaimed,
eying the bannock on the griddle.
“This is women’s work,
worrying this place for stuff.”
“They hang together, them.
No need for hanging there
Alone and aggrieved.
Go find someone to teach.”
by Carol Desjarlais
([email]ibntv [at] telusplanet [dot] ca[/email])
November 2001 | back-issues, Kelley Jean White, poetry
[b]Farmall[/b]
I am pleased to have Arthur sit
on my lawn for the Old Home Day parade.
He and Millie were good friends to my parents.
I know he and Peter feel quite alone
now that she is gone.
I know it has been a difficult year for Peter,
what with the surgery on his hips and the brief
failed marriage, but they have the church people
to help and they know everyone.
Arthur is one of the last people to have cows in town.
I love to see the tin roof on his barn reflect
the sunset off the mountain.
Jenny did a good job too.
She got two pictures of Peter driving the tractor.
One close up where he looks strong and wiry,
not at all sickly or limited, and one where
he waves, and his hand is the hand of a leader,
announcing the ripe corn and haystacks
on the flatbed truck float.
The tractor itself looks magnificent. Funny
I didn’t notice it in the parade. The flag waving
in front of the high grill, the majestic wheels.
It’s been months now since August.
I could just mail the pictures up,
but I think I’ll wait and take them by at Christmas,
bring my mother and the children.
It’s right on the way to the good Christmas tree fields.
I’d be nice to see the animals in the snow.
[b]Fish Perfume[/b]
trout new out of the water smell
power and cold and heavy moss dark
I have put two drops from the bottle
behind my ears, white shoulders, quiet
true my hands trailing the nets gravid
with dying and dulling eye stare
I want this boy to remember me in
dusklight when we row our fathers’
boat home pale before the rising moon
[b]The Sweetest Water in the World[/b]
came from a pump to a wooden trough
and a simple dipper just below the fire
tower on Belknap Mountain. It was a hike
the kids could make with dads after dinner
on a summer’s evening, a rush up the red
trail and those who needed, or cared, to go
slow could take the kinder gentler meandering
green. Everyone ran down the red. By spring
it was a rock river fed by that same sweet
well, that same snow deep locked in rock
and root and thick rich moss kept safe to cool
our child hot necks and cheeks before
the last climb, the knock on the floor
of the watcher’s keep–glass lifted still higher
than the mountain rock’s wind cleared view.
by Kelley White
([email]kelleywhitemd [at] yahoo [dot] com[/email])
November 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]Neither Here Nor There[/b]
Otis, in all his mercy, on some lost tablet,
etched for granite minds his stony commandments:
Elevator decorum demands agreement,
look forward, keep space within a space,
appendages shall never rise in gesture,
nor brush the flanks of erected riders,
and weathered souls?–the topic weather!
the irony of the getting off before got on.
And, so too, in a dusty corner of Metro’s chamber,
locked in a file without a key,
the rules of disengagement have a proper seal,
codified and passed by council,
(forgotten but by one forgotten civil servant)
for rider’s (with riders), the commuting clan.
Have proper change, expression changeless,
avert the gaze, less it acknowledge
the trip has no sure destination,
and always be an unspectacular specter
traveling in a tram stuffed with empty ghosts.
Oh, we’ve seen them before, while awaiting the call
at the dentist office, leafing National Geographic
of an unpeopled place, those imposing, inscrutable faces,
the blank eyed and stony forms, gray seaward facing,
expressionless, looking like wayward bicuspids
incisively needing bridgework to bring there to here:
those distant looks embracing distance
in the silence of an ethereal, blank stare.
But who among us does not wait
For one to twist upon his base and
falling to the ground with a heavy thud,
blink awake the heavy lids upon its face,
unsmack his frozen, muted lips,
unstick the ears and take in sea-sound,
and roll downhill upon the ground,
laughing and squealing with delightful spree,
plunge splashing into the unknown ocean.
[b]Insurance Man[/b]
He sat in our living room,
papers cluttered across the coffee table,
the computer print-outs of future fortune,
financial security, and an implied spiritual bliss.
The self-assured manner of one who knows:
Whole life, term, annuities–it was all there.
To hide chain-smoking cigarette breath,
he sucked Hall’s mentho-lyptus,
rolled each drop cheek to cheek, while tallying figures,
puzzling over “the possible.”
Puffing through his declamations,
he rolled side to side, cheek to cheek,
upon the straining springs of our worn sofa.
It was then, as I remember;
after nodding toward “the wife,”
his face grew flushed,
a cold sweat broke about his brow,
and he clutched his pounding chest.
Falling face forward upon our financial future,
his head smacked our prospectus hard-table center,
like a piece of the rock,
and he died,
no doubt,
with a tidy little portfolio of his own.
[b]Horizon Highway[/b]
When we were young
we rumbled down the freeway,
top down, cutting a rush breeze,
radio blasting over steamy asphalt.
Sidelong, I watched you,
a hair blown Medusa
in mirrored sunglasses,
burning the horizon.
Time’s collisions and
weathering circumstance
have faded the paint,
worn the upholstery,
and, now, the rag top seldom down.
On occasion we laugh recalling
the days when we chased a hot pink sky,
and did not notice
the fleeting images
receding in the rear-view mirror.
[b]The Highland Theater Lobby at the AIDS Fund-raiser[/b]
See her, over there,
it’s Solo Sandy,
The girl with a one-eyed Siamese cat
(Half-Mongolian, I’ve been told),
smoking a cig during intermission
at a “Surprisingly Sassy” show.
Standing in the theater lobby,
black hair and gown, dark eyes,
Mediterranean complexion, she
looks alone like a kidnapped Helen,
amidst soft and feathered barbarians
each extravagantly trying to outdo
the simple, classic elegance
of this quiet beauty, this
stranger in a strange land.
She, unaware of the corpse-littered battlefield,
never notices the vanquished,
the slain victims of her bloodless victory,
nor the suitor preparing the ship.
by Michael Carano
([email]michael_carano [at] hotmail [dot] com[/email])
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
your child is dying
in some version of america
i never wanted to know
the poem slips into my blood
at five in the morning
without a sound
we were closer to
something beautiful at one point
i think
were alive in a different way
that couldn’t last
and my voice gets too loud here
my son is asleep in the next room
the kitten curled up on his pillow
and the edges of this day
have begun to drag themselves
out of the darkness
what i wanted
wasn’t to be someone else
but maybe someone
better
not a priest
but a conquistador
a phoenix
and i am tired of feeling
gravity’s pull and i am crawling
towards the year of
crucifixion
belief in nothing is still
belief
but april refuses to see this
what grows between us
becomes something more complex
than war
October 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this will be my year
blood and famine
and small crucifixions
and there is nothing i can do
to stop any of it
the shadows of birds
across
the walls of this room
the names of the dead
written on tiny scraps of paper
buried by the water’s edge
but nothing grows and
nothing grows and
nothing grows
and it’s october
and the wind cries all night
tears your face from my mind
and then it’s november
the missing girl turns
seventeen
her parents walk away
from their religion
let the flowers
fall from their hands and
gather up whatever bones
they can and i have no
words of comfort
i have prayers
but no god
that the sounds are made
at all
is the important thing
