March - Poem 15
Poem for hope / Kathleen Bednarek
All there was was a crater in the earth. A charred crater. It absorbed the acid sky reflecting it back into
little bones divided amongst themselves to count how many people there were. An enormous event
without clear record. By all accounts there were no worms anymore. No green where there was once
manifold, plurality, lushness soaked in cloud water. Butterflies of the super generation. Atomization
built dust and wind into mountains expending oxygen carried by currents to the lowlands. Agile
spines of jaguar and leopard stalking the plethora, delicate primate arms stretching the canopy, and the
brighter the color the more fantastic the poison; the mind knew which to avoid. The ocean filled with
moon jelly and whale songs. The reversal of time parallel to lunar tides. The ocean blued further before
the conflict placed weapons in the mud, put explosives in the sand, and dismantled the turtle eggs. For
we held the shells up to our ears, we retold the stories, and breathed the bones back together,
occasionally lifting the throat back to scream. There were dear angels, benefactors, gourds filled with
agate, resonant instruments, what the nothingness forgot we reflected about the rainbow. When the
rain fell and fell iridescent from the oil and disintegrated planes, cycling itself over and over until its
falling was upheld, it was supported by the nightfall and the accompanying day-rise. The little bones
filled with air started from the smallest unit of sound that vibrated from the crater, throwing itself up
and up and up like the descent that was now reversed upon it. It was a circle they wanted the center of.
They got none of it.
Your Hands / Mymona Bibi
These streets are veins,
full of the blood that flows from your hands.
Sometimes diluted, tasting like the children's squash,
sometimes of the adults’ memories clumped with clots in your hands.
That day, I wished to see you on Clayton street,
when did the sunrise get so late in your hands?
When will she stop calling me disgusting?
She's only a bully because buses in London are red, red, red, painted with your hands.
The old curtains of fury are drawn,
I was as silent as her voice coming from your hands.
You were so silent you cut open the sky and drank its vapour,
I watched each gulp and jump of your Adam’s apple and the stretch of your hands.
Tomorrow is for us to crawl out the wound of the world,
whilst soft lampposts burst into red, red, red in your hands!
If we kissed, we could take out the past from each other's tongues,
'kullu yihalif, fiqri yiterif' in the creases of your hands.*
My desire is louder than the wailing streets,
until you slip in the rain and graze your hands.
*Eritrean proverb, ‘everything passes, love remains’.
Questionnaire / Susan Hankla
It said: What Was the Last Soup You Made?
The last soup?
The last soup you made was floating white petals you tore from the funeral
spray that topped your mother's casket so that the flower parts lay on the surface of plain
tap water in the cut crystal bowl. This is the last soup you'll make, the very last soup
you'll make of me, she said accusingly in the dream.
The last soup you'll make; what is the very last soup you will ever make?
You reread the question in the magazine and notice that the questionnaire hadn't meant
what is the very last soup you will ever make in your whole life. It meant what is the last
soup that you can remember having made.
The last soup you can remember making wasn't soup, it was chili.
The last soup you were able to swallow was Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup
that your mother brought you on a day it snowed in the mountains
and school got canceled. It was the last soup your mother brought you
placed at the center of the dinner plate of saltines, the bowl of strands
of white squiggles and chicken shreds in amber broth. You had a cold.
That was the last time you had soup that you remember.
What is the last thing you remember about home? The yellow kitchen table?
The dining room with the round table where you did homework every afternoon?
Think about something else.
When you told your aunt that you weighed one-hundred and eleven pounds, she said,
"The old hag's weight." She was given to making pronouncements.
That you'd reached the old hag's weight, you were a victim of fate.
When you told her a certain matching shirt and skirt made you feel unlucky
each time you wore it, she too had a cursed garment, the brown wool sheath
which when she wore it to her job as grade-school principal, the children became
harder to manage, and circulated a rumor that she had an electric paddle.
Like a Piggly-Wiggly bag, your dull dress was really an inauspicious thing,
with little olive-green flowers, but somehow the skirt of it rode around so that its zipper
would be in the front, and the shirt tail of the matching blouse untucked,
so when you returned home from school you looked ravished by William Blakes' Tyger.
The Weight of Your Ideas / Amy Haworth
They say that one day the yellow stones will erupt
from the pressure
and that's all I can see when you describe
being buried
by the weight of your ideas.
The earth's crust can only contain your power
for so long.
It's inevitable what is within you will erupt
from the promise
and the path forward --
a beautiful spectacle.
Then, some will say, "of course she has",
while others will know it couldn't have been any other way,
but you'll still be a little surprised it happened the way it did.
The relief in making it rain
will be air to your exhumation
from the weight of your ideas.
Freedom after John William Waterhouse's painting,The Lady of Shalott / Christina McCleanhan
The day has cooled; the dew is falling.
A hard-working swallow seeks
companionship or food among
the river weeds.
The Pollyanna is stoic; her innocence is reverent.
Nature has draped itself around
her bashful grace without apology.
Onward, Onward, Onward!
quiet, quiet, quiet.
She looks, she rows, she listens, and
whispers to herself with stutters
birthed from humility-
A-a-across my p-p-pale moon youth,
White wind blows,
The ch-ch-chain slips from my grip.
Shadowed fate, I know,
I call out reed, oar, r-r-river as I go
with truce on my tongue
toward death do I flow
To Ca-ca-camelot,
charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
My want is meager, my-my-my wrists are fragile.
Cling to submission or fall to exile?
To Camelot,
ch-ch-charged by the nightingale’s prayer.
The river is wide; the current is slowing.
And now, her dreams are lifting beyond
her shoulders: she sees them mingle with
the lily pads. Below her swim fish, beyond the
bend, fog is rising.
She will…she will…she will…
exhale.
NO COMMENT/ Alexis Wolfe
The U.S. Military had no immediate comment
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
The White House and Pentagon did not immediately reply to requests for comment
The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment
The U.S. had no choice but to strike because of a recalcitrant ___
There was no immediate comment from Israel or the United States
