From Volume 36: A poem by Rimas Uzgiris

We

by Rimas Uzgiris

were swept downstream

in a flood that began with small

buds of water blossoming

into wreaths of rain

that thrust us into a movie

that went faster as we approached the end

and you could scarcely keep up

or enjoy the scenery

passing the sand bar

it all seemed so arranged

driftwood skeletons draped

with souls like shredded sheets

and mewing gulls of memory poked

a sagging sky

then the sea

opened its mouth

O peace that passeth understanding

the part of us that is made of water

will be taken up into clouds.

From Volume 35: A poem by William Jolliff

William Jolliff

 

Explanations for the Night

 

 

Her doctor, she says, claims he can't do a thing

for her other troubles until she starts to sleep.

Anybody who goes a day or two without it

is likely to forget things, lose things, maybe

even find things that aren't really there.

From Volume 35: A poem by Becky Kennedy

Becky Kennedy

 

Golfing

 

 

It's Sunday morning and sun the color

of honey spills on the kitchen counter;

it’s ten or eleven o’clock and they

fill our kitchen, our son and his new wife

and their friends and the laughing, the way that

people laugh when laughing is like breathing,

laughing about beer and golf and bad luck

and graduate school, laughing at jobs they’ve

had or never had, the two wives rolling

eyes, laughing, planning Sunday. His new wife

humming as if she were baking or were

planning something really nice like golfing

while you test your clubs in the living room

where I sort my photos. In the night you

From Volume 35: A poem by B.J. Ward

B.J. Ward

 

Daily Grind

 

 

A man awakes every morning

and instead of reading the newspaper

reads Act V of Othello.

He sips his coffee and is content

that this is the news he needs

as his wife looks on helplessly.

The first week she thought it a phase,

his reading this and glaring at her throughout,

the first month an obsession,

the first year a quirkiness in his character,

and now it’s just normal behavior,

this mood setting in over the sliced bananas,

so she tries to make herself beautiful

to appease his drastic taste.

From Volume 35: A poem by Tom Howard

Tom Howard

Rules for Telling a Ghost Story

 

You must have a flashlight,

and you should have a storm.
Place the flashlight under your chin,
but say nothing at first,
while they squirm a little on the couch
and start to giggle.

 

Giggling is not allowed (not yet),

so you wait.

Then you speak—

quietly, slowly, in a normal voice,

except that you have this flashlight

pointing up at you like a madman

(it’s the contrast that you want).

From Volume 35: A poem by Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia

Shoshana Razel Gordon Guedalia

 

A Hike

Two Israeli soldiers were killed during a hike through the Judean Mountains south of Hebron this morning, while on vacation.

“Hikers,” then.

Say: “hikers,” then. No uniforms. Civilian clothes—jeans in fact—standard M-16s slung over their shoulders, resting on their backs, for protection—a concession to safe hiking protocol.

Say: Two Israeli hikers were killed during a hike through the Judean Mountains south of Hebron this morning—one aged twenty, the other, nineteen. They were shot by sniper fire from the window of a car, speeding down the stretch of road—

From Volume 35: A poem by Jackie Anne Morrill

Jackie Anne Morrill

 

Cantaloupe as a cure-all, or how I know my mother

 

 

When the bones settle

these metals we are made of

finally loosen

 

I long to untie

the velvet bag

of river stones

residing in her back

From Volume 35: A poem by Kevin Pilkington

Kevin Pilkington


Flu Shot

I try not to look at the woman

walking towards me but her skirt

is no bigger than a bandage and

her heels are so high she might need

an oxygen tank rather than the suitcase

on wheels she pulls behind her.

I just hope the two assholes she

is walking next to aren’t with her.

The guy on her right is in a suit

and wears a toupee that looks

like a black squirrel fell off a tree,

from Volume 34: A poem by Jennifer Freed

Jennifer Freed

 

Lessons

 

 

If you were that woman, sitting

every Friday in the public library, one week working

through the who and how and why

of simple questions whispering from your tutor’s lips,

the next week learning price and pay and sale and save

and How much does it cost?—

if you were that woman,

then you, too,

would ask for repetition of bag and back and bank,

of leave and leaf and left and live,

and you would struggle to produce the English sounds

that held the meanings you still held

inside your head: the dappled murmuring of leaves

outside your childhood home, the trees

full of sweet yellow fruit you could not name in this new life,

the lives you left so you could live,

and as you moved your lips in all the unfamiliar ways

to make the sounds your tutor made, she would nod

and you would smile, but you would never

write, for you’d not yet know how

to form or read those fast, firm letters you watched pouring from her hand,

and so you’d have no way to store what you had learned

except in memory and hope,

alongside memories of why you’d never needed written words

in your native world, where your mother had taught you all the skills

of planting and harvesting and weaving and singing that you would ever need

for living in a lush, good place,

and alongside memories

of gunfire echoing beyond the trees,

of rebels begging for or stealing food,

of soldiers from some distant city standing in your

village, barking about loyalty

and able-bodied men,

and then the memories

of jungle paths for five long nights,

of sharing food and whispered hope with others who had dared

to flee,

and the memories of the daughter and the son, both

born and grown high as your eye in the refugee camp on the border.

The English words would nestle in amidst

all this,

get lost, be found again, and you would have to try

to pull them out but leave the rest behind, try

to let the new sounds tell you 

not only the hard-edged names and places

of this brick and concrete life, 

but also how to live in it:

how to take

a city bus, how to

pay for

light, 

and you would sit again, again, again

in a mauve chair at a round table in the library, 

amidst the shelves and worlds

of words,

struggling with your who and how and why,

and you would not allow yourself

to figure how much it had cost

or how much you still had to pay.

You would just smile and thank your tutor,

and come back

next Friday.