July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
this is
further west
away from the drowning girl’s
blackened bones
away from my son’s
beautiful smile
a motel room in
a pointless town
afternoon sunlight through
half-open drapes
and a partial view of
the interstate
in the bathroom a young mother
twenty-two or -three
naked in the tub and with
her wrists cut
wide open
the postcards in
the nightstand drawer left
blank
the bible stolen or
possibly
never there at all
every poem a man might
ever hope to write
hung unspoken and
just out of reach in
the shimmering
air
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
we are safe in
this cheap motel room
we are
approaching drunk
and we are mostly silent
mostly in love
i am still
in the early stages of being
a failed writer
your sister’s miscarriage
is still
four years away
with any luck
we will find other ways
to measure these weightless
spans of time
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
pick a day
where none of the wars
involve you
describe the sky
and the taste of the wind
do the hills spin slowly around
this piece of land you
call home?
are you in love?
there is a point
where these questions intersect
a place where your shadow is
as tall
as the man you actually are
and somewhere in the back of your mind
is a list of all the runaway girls
you knew in the summer
of butchered nuns
a list of all the reasons they gave
and now it’s ten years later
and still
no one has stopped running
it happens
anger is only another needle
waiting to be worshipped
the patron saint
of raped cheerleaders
is a myth
and these are not new rumors
and no one’s pain
is unique
no one’s future
is written
and still
it’s not that hard to guess
how badly the stories
of the disappeared
will end
July 2001 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
you are not
in the kitchen
with jesus christ
and he is not
bleeding
you are not curled up on
the cold linoleum with
your husband kicking you
in the back
your children are
not dead
tell yourself this
your children are not
dead
weep bright red
tears of joy
July 2001 | back-issues, poetry
[b]smoked…cooked[/b]
thick bones and hanging skin
are pinned under six wool blankets.
white skull covered
in red wet skin
soaks in soggy pillow.
oven iron
holds oak fire
as an alto woman’s lounge smoked song
cracks through a single speaker
a cigarrette burns
and sleeps moist
in a coffee can of butts,
buried,
smoldering in the swelter,
smoking like the steam
off a pot of simmering water.
a breath weezes
and a throat gargles.
watery blue eyes
slip out from under
greasy lids,
they wiggle
then freeze
then fail to see.
[b]sensation to thought[/b]
blood lips drip open
to a dandy yellow,
a lion sun
lollipop hot
tang-sweet to tongue.
the strength of rays,
of rumbling gun blast slugs
searing through
the grey cloud,
the matter of brain,
to the reason-
heat drips away.
[b]sonnet inkling[/b]
exchange a plastic bag full of your blood
for sticky mint green paper.
exchange sticky mint green paper
for caviar like fake pearls covered in wet ink
inside one rusty chain link.
exchange sticky mint green paper for
pasture covered in dead angus,
holstein and jersey cattle.
exchange sticky mint green paper
for a silver spiral binding,
colored fluid and wood shavings,
and a lamp to tickle them.
ink black light
with linked white shavings.
© 2001 Chad Rood
([email]ch**@************ds.com[/email])
June 2001 | back-issues, poetry
by Joe Kletz
Quite some time ago I hit a pretty rough patch. For some odd reason, I was struck with an incredible amount of depression and feelings of worthlessness. My shoulders have always been large, available to all those I call friends to cry on. However, there’s also a cross on those shoulders, one I bear with the utmost disdain. It seems that when you’re the guy people come to with problems, you invariably have some yourself. However, everyone seems to think that you don’t, and thus, you have no shoulders to cry on.
So here I am, sitting in the dark on my hallway floor, crying. Not the kind of crying a man does when he slices off a finger while building a cabinet, nor the tears of a man after watching “The Dirty Dozen”. These were big, gooey sobs of helplessness. Unable to do anything. Somehow, I got and went to the bookshelf. For some strange reason I picked up my Bible. Now, I’m no Bible-thumper, and I in fact have a few friends who, over recent years, become one of those people. They preach and attempt to convert. I do believe in God (or at least the idea of God) and know a good deal of theology, both from private schooling as a child, and personal study in my later years. I opened the Bible to a random page and decided to just read it…again, I had no idea why.
I ended up in, I believe, Psalms. There, the first thing I read, was a letter to God from a man in prison. It basically was this fella crying out to the Lord about why his life is so terrible, why does he cry every night, and why is his heart so full of pain. The response was something truly original…”Be strong for I am with you always”. Yes, it’s nothing new, but I felt a connection to that guy. Why am I crying every night? Why is my heart so full of pain?
It scared the shit out of me.
I read another passage, again, at random, from the Book of Judges. This one took a little more “reading into”, but again, connection. Here, God’s people are trying to take a fort of their enemies. And they keep losing. God keeps telling them (God talked to people quite a bit back then) to try again. “Send 20,000 troops.” Failure. “Send 30,000 troops.” Failure. Eventually, they took the castle and all were happy as the will of the Lord did smote his enemies. Failure upon failure, but eventual success. Wow.
Now I was no longer crying, but questioning my faith. There were no burning bushes in my home, no crying statues, but the part of me that grew up religious said “This could be a sign.” The cynic shouted “If God’s talking to you, where’s the thunder and lightning?” The disbeliever screamed “It’s just a coincidence!” The fearful me said “Close the book and pretend it didn’t happen.” The pious Joe whispered “That IS a sign, that’s all you’re getting…USE IT.” But they were all drowned out by the Fool, who just writes about.
