The World I Painted Twenty Years Ago
by Brian Glaser
The angle of the postman’s cap
looked like he’d dressed himself in dark,
the darkness, say, that’s lurching from
his mouth, where teeth should be, a smile
like charcoal, awkward on this full-
grown man, but safer for his world
where fuchsia picket fences float
above a lumpy car that trails
a cautious, chastened string of smoke
in pencil lines behind it, up
the two dimensions of a hill
toward a listing cabin with
a crescent smirk and eye-dots in
the window, magnified in each
small feature, shown the way those eyes
would see: noticed, loved, critiqued,
then naturally forgiven, since
the failing is a piece of the
extenuating circumstance,
this sharing of the blunt
but friendly, scored, veined,
imperfect anvil of the earth.
...........
You Open Your Hands
by Aliki Barnstone
You learned the intimate—
to recognize faces,
latch on to the breast,
cry out your pain,
smile into a smile
—and you held that knowledge close
in your strong reflexive grasp,
as if under your fingers,
those tender miniatures,
a secret lay at the center of your palm.
Now you unfist your hands
and reach into vast air,
pat flowers on the pillowcase,
fan your fingers across my breast,
find you can touch as well as be touched.
As when we were one,
your body still nestles in mine—
(belly skin meets belly skin, eye meets eye).
Soon your fingers will pull the world
in close to taste, to see
—for you demand I turn you outward
to encounter constellations of faces,
bright slabs of window light.
Oh, small child,
all that patterns and shines mesmerizes you,
and you open your hands!
I see how beautifully,
with shudders of excitement,
you enter the open cosmos—
and, in nearly invisible increments,
part from our close circle—
...........
Engagement
by Elise Paschen
The king is murdered and his daughter, Mis, goes mad, growing fur and killer claws, escaping into the woods.
She is tamed by Dubh Ruis, a harp player.
Marrying her, he becomes king.
—Irish legend
Don’t touch me, don’t come near. I’ll shred
your flesh from bone. Don’t even stare.
I can smell you from here. You don’t
reek like the hunters who tailed me,
all salt and sod. You smack of hay.
Show me what you’re hiding. The strings
trap a sun’s glint. Sounds like leaf-play
at night beneath a tree. Here’s where
I lay me down—inside this notch.
Play it for me and let me play.
*
What’s in your mouth? You swallow hard.
It’s coming back. A waking whiff—
out on the flagstones in the courtyard,
through the doorways, the gates.
I feel I’m coming home. It’s like
a hearth. I never get enough.
*
Nights I still rave. The beast is out.
Your arms around me pin it down.
*
Your collar’s tight. But look. My fingers
have grown shells now, not claws. Stop tying
that cloth across my skin. I need
the air, these woods. Keep here. Let’s stay
above moss, beneath leaf. Help me
shake down rowans, rub our flesh red.
You’ve stripped away the fur, and, after
months of those deer-fat baths, I’m bare.
.............
What I Looked at Today
by Doreen Gildroy
1.
Today I walk, find
countless calla lilies.
How anything grows its own perfect white
and stays that way—unafraid
of world.
It is lovely, so I look.
It doesn’t matter
what it thinks of me.
2.
This is what I’ve been given to look at.
I never chose to be here—
California gardens, riches.
There are brutal things. Like the sun.
How I have resisted this nature. Roses
most of all. (Lessons I did not want.)
But today I cut buds—common with thorns—
and place them on our dresser.
Inside, my husband says—Isn’t it amazing
how far they open up?
I watch for days.
Is this what Job did?
Coming out of his world—didn’t he
have to stare anew (for a little while)
wondering if beauty could hurt him?
.........
Dear Homeboy
by Suzanne Lummis
There’s a stealthy, sort of leopard-
like knocking at my door
tonight I half
wish were you, but the sky’s
grainy violet and no one’s out there
loitering darkly like a dent.
Know what’s going down?
Total eclipse of the moon,
Kid—it’s pretty dim
out, just
the gas station’s block
of light like the landmark
at the world’s
end: Jump off here.
If you were there you’d use it
to check out your reflection
in the hood of someone’s car.
You’d use the neighbor’s zinnias
to wipe the street life
off your feet, use
your condition as an alibi,
It couldn’t have been me, man,
I’m, like, dead!
You’d consider knocking, take on
that shrewd look you always
got to hide a mind just half
made up, one hand idly
questioning the spot
around your ribs where blood
streaked out onto the asphalt
and turned black, looked
black, in the liquor store blur
and bulb of ambulance. Look
up: a tablet dissolving in blue
mist, or mauve. I could swear
something sauntered to my door.
The moon’s half gone—I
know the feeling, sure. And you,
you’re gone more.
........
