Crooked Pint Ale House / Michelle Frost
My cousin and I share a booth with a view
overlooking the greens edge of town
Golfers out there in shorts 49° at dusk
We are here from Arizona & Minnesota
A flock of geese fly over low honking
We compare our graying hair being 'here'
her face smiles just the same
Our past unwinds as a movie trailer in mind
farm kids driving tractors
riding bikes to Clear Lake climbing trees
swinging on a rope in the haymow
climbing the windmill riding horses
Flashbacks to another world
Today the world sees two senior ladies/
laughing no end to their stories/
Time is a trickster every age intertwined/ Youth shines through a reflecting pool/
Now We have become the old aunties
Frank’s American Childhood / David Hadbawnik
The resentful look that passes between the parents of Frank’s American Childhood when one is holding it and the other doing something else, free from the hell of having to keep quiet and stay still, straining under the weight. No thought of doing anything else in the evening, or having the energy to do anything else, eating in shifts and washing endless dishes and giving Frank’s American Childhood a bath, getting it ready for bed, coaxing it to sleep. All of it an hours-long process, blowing up larger and larger, suffocating every other concern they might have, relentless and all-consuming as they pass it back and forth, back and forth between them
*
The extreme disappointment of stepping onto the treadmill at the gym and clicking on the TV screen mounted over the console, then locating one of the movie channels, only to discover that it’s showing the very last scene of Frank’s American Childhood. In that scene, the main character – having fought her way out of the steno pool and into the executive suite by an endearing series of machinations, which have resulted in the exposure of her evil, female boss, as well as winning said boss’s paramour for herself – calls her best friend, still a lowly secretary in the steno pool, from her new office in a Manhattan skyscraper; the friend whirls around and screams this news to all the other girls in the steno pool, who burst into applause as the credits roll
*
Calico cat curled up outside the glass front door of Frank’s American Childhood, there to enjoy whatever of the coolness from the air conditioner seeps out through the cracks
*
There are people in the room, half-turned away from Frank’s American Childhood, and it wants to say something, touch them, stop them, but they move along so quickly to other rooms
untitled / Alexander Shalom Joseph
I wake in my wood paneled room
and walk across the hardwood
to the bathroom
where I blow my nose
with toilet paper
and then turn on the sink
I dreamt of a river
in the middle of the woods
and long to be held by it again
but as I brush my teeth
and wash my face
I feel the river in the tap water
feel the forest in the walls
in the floors in the roof
in all that holds me yet
and I realize
the woods and rivers
have never left us
we have just left them
forgotten where we came from
but where we came from
won’t forget us
oh that we could remember
oh that we could return
to all that we have cut down
and piped in
all the paradise
we refined for our pleasures
all that still keeps us alive
Keep, Dickinson / Sally Kuzma
On a day when when trees stand bare
exposure is what we share–
every tender cover has fallen away
and I search her poems for what is kept
and how, and by whom.
There’s the sexton, caretaker,
keeper of the key to the shelf
behind which life lurks,
what she keeps herself
apart from.
There’s the Sabbath which she keeps
her own way, comically, wearing only wings.
There’s her orderly housekeeping for death–
The grave my little cottage is.
There’s an oath God keeps to sparrows
Who of little love
Know how to starve
and so many secrets:
red lady on the hill– Miss Maple?--
has an annual one
and the skies, they
can’t keep theirs at all,
telling it to the hills
who tell it to the orchards
who speak it to the daffodils
we sing, it seems
to keep the dark away.
Esther / Rachel Lee
The shelves stacked from floor to ceiling with canned goods
The aroma of stale food
Hot summer days turn into a forgiving moon
Folding linens from ten to noon
Learning how to swim in the motel pool
Badlands in the background of the cracked orange path
The clicking of the camera, repetitious flash
The Black Hills make for a joyous endeavor
God giving you everything He can render
Mount Rushmore isn't all that spectacular when you've been there 40 times
A cornucopia of memories decorated behind my eyes
And as cheerful as a cherub
I admittingly admire her
She'd never judge, just sit and pray
I aspire to be like her someday
Gigantic heart shared with everyone
Talent beyond her years
Mayor, entrepreneur, business owner - so many careers
She can paint, she can sew, she can fix cars
She's my milky way in the stars
Stubborn and strict
Prom Queen with a charismatic whit
Her beauty is fabulous
Her laugh is infectious
Her soul is equanimous
And as cheerful as a cherub
I admittingly admire her
She'd never judge, just sit and pray
I aspire to be like her someday
A living encyclopedia
A beautiful antique
A collector of the unique
Sharing it all with you, sharing it with me, sharing it with family
A beautiful tattoo on humanity
My heart is still beating because I was blessed with a woman that never gave up
This altruistic being
I'm blessed beyond luck
Untitled / Lincoln McElwee
We were taught patience, wait, drought. We were taught, this is how you honor your dead, to cheer their chariot on. To remember the cleaving. To dance toward the light. But we wanted to live by unlearning. Lotus eaters by choice, we searched for the medicine to forget. The siren song so sickly sweet, the wax pooling freely from our ears to hear each gospel of destruction. The drink poured over and over into cups and topsoils and sent in its way to the sky. We bent towards your body. We sought you there where we left you last. We were lost in a storm, until we realized it was just life without you there to shutter the winds and stop the sands. Those rough hands, what did they mend? The art of holding childhood hearts. Days that puddled like melting ice cream. The metal bowl of plums, an offering. The strawberries. The balsamic. The honey. To everything that has an ending, the pure tincture, the crunch of leaf, the beauty of the waves from watery eyes. The off chance to live it again.
Tuesday night at Whitewater Tavern listening to Hayes Carll live / Michelle Stoll
I'm tired because my cat died yesterday and it'd been coming for a while so the preemptive grief and the guilt over sleeping with earplugs so I couldn't hear his snoring has kicked my ass and the Xanax I've taken since then is tagging along with that exhaustion but in a healing, god-knows-i-needed-this way. And it's Tuesday but maybe leaving the apartment will do me good, maybe I can cram my sad sack heart into these tight jeans and pretend it's the old days and I've got moves and enough self destructive desire to forget about my dead cat for a while until I wake up with more than I bargained for. But thank you Jesus it ain't those days anymore and I can dance to Hayes Carll singing about a bad liver and a broken heart and know that song in my bones yessir, and remember the sweetness of suffering. It's Tuesday night at the Whitewater and there are a lot of guys in plaid and women in boots and I'm there with people I love not sure how I ended up back where I started and grateful for the lonely songs, the blues hits I wrote with my body in the meantime. Mean times, how about that? The old days of feeling like an empty can and puking up Taco Bell in a parking lot makes for good songs but I'm no Lucinda and I don't want to sleep with drummers anymore despite their remarkable rhythm. Tonight is not then and Hayes is a damn fine poet and my cat is not coming back and go ahead with your cat lady slurs. The music was good tonight and the Jameson was strong which is more than most Tuesday nights can offer a sore heart. It's Tuesday night and my lover who gets allergy shots so he can hang out in my cat lady house is dropping me off, kissing me goodnight and the Xanax will kick in soon. The still-alive cats will settle into their usual spots beside me in this king sized bed in which I sleep like a royal fucking starfish. Before I call it a night I'll look under the bed for the cat who's gone because it makes me feel better. My heart is a bloody mess but right now on this Tuesday night I'm making it. I should've said up front not to hope for something special at the end. Don't be disappointed, it's just how things turn out.
syun-gyo (春暁) / Sandra Tan
a shade in pilot’s iroshizuku (色彩雫) line of fountain pen inks
meaning, spring dawn. early
twilight in spring. the first hours
when the eye begins to adjust,
and a plum sheen washes over
the darkness, the dullest of reds.
when the hare rushes through
the reeds, and the wind makes
the gathered trees dance
in streaks of rain. world not yet
spoken of, not even the first
syllables. in the dark, one can
be many things. an unripe plum.
