#33: Two Poems by Sandra Marchetti

~This poem previously appeared in Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art (2010)

Le Parc des Suicides 

We both chased

the heron, the bridge,

a rafting concrete wave

hard and high.

My jaw dredged across

the watery flood blood—

green water and open

to receive me off

the bastion train track,

bust track—

a human’s perch,

a faction, a fraction—

to be untied,

and given to granite,

carved into a willing water.

A dressage of slipping rocks

braced for the fall.

Fleshed

against the sidewalls

of underwater

blood canyons,

our flexed stomachs carve cold

tidal eaves,

shredding skin,

making shifts of ice.

What’s young

comes lick-swift, dying

hard off the two-tiered bridge.

A loud, dark past

flinches the nuclear edges.

Water lilies and

still-motioning swings:

this is the heron’s

pick-ground.

*****

#32: "Use Your Head" by James Magruder

~This piece previously appeared in Bloom (2010)

            Tom Amelio, legs wedged into the chute of space under his bedroom desk, was trying to write his first condolence note. He was seventeen, too young to have devised a cluster of dignified, repeatable sentences with which to express sorrow.

July 14, 1978

            Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hills,

            I am so sorry

            It was shocking to hear

            He scribbled Hitler mustaches over the false starts. The sound of the pen on paper reassured him that work had begun. He flicked his old Tensor lamp on and off.  He wanted to finish a rough draft before his hands began sweating under its heat. He was working with notebook paper first, just as he did for English essays. To his left was a slim box of the special black-bordered paper that Funeral Customs the World Over had mentioned. He had had to go to three card stores in downtown Glen Ellyn to find it.

Jeff Hills had swerved off Wiesbrook Road and into a tree going ninety-five in the middle of the previous day. A group of girls from Glenbard East had parsed the shocking event at Zip’z, the make-your-own sundae franchise where Tom worked. The local paper had yet to cover the accident, but ninety-five miles an hour was their agreed-upon detail. Tom noticed too that the recollection of Jeff’s glossy, shoulder-length hair had brought them close to tears, as if death were especially senseless in the case of blond boys. The girls didn’t know that he had known Jeff too, and long before they did, back when Jeff sported a bowl cut and freckles. He offered them free soft-serve as a distraction from their grief and from his own confused feelings. Jeff Hills was the first person he knew who had died, and the box of stationery didn’t carry instructions for what to say, or how to say it.

Jeff and I were at Monroe Junior High together

You moved away in the summer of 1975

I still live on Kingston Street, where you used to live

“Used to live” was horrible. Tom set down his pen and carried his work through the dark house to the edge of the den. His parents’ faces glowed blue-yellow in the reflected light of The Streets of San Francisco.

#31: "A History of Blue" by Sarah Brown Weitzman

~This poem previously appeared in The North American Review (2003)

A HISTORY OF BLUE

                 “Everywhere I inquired I was told to look for blue”

                                            -Carl Phillips

Absolute and unambiguous as black

that first blue God might have scraped

from a rainbow in the prism of his mind 

deep and pure as midnight before

later incestuous mixing and mezzotints,

a cobalt so copious it ran like smalt

into the oceans, the Nile and the Danube. 

Quickly diluted, it was sucked up

into the glaciers to burst out again

like azurine in the Aegean, then to glow

neon in a grotto near Capri, visible still 

in scallop shells, oysters, fish and crabs

while that original cyan thinned out

across the sky to a faint wraith

of itself we see on the lips of the dead.

Yet the moon took up the color

for special occasions and double visits

as did peacocks and robin’s eggs, herons

and jays, the blue fox, cornflowers, irises,

the dark navy of the chow’s tongue.

No blue was found in the earliest cave paintings

but Babylonian friezes used turquoise bricks.

Then came the lapis lazuli and sapphire goblets

of the pharaohs who worshiped equal gods

of red fire and yellow sun, later Virgin Mary blue  

translucent in sunlight in the stained glass

in thirteenth-century churches.  From the woad

herb and mollusks netted in the Mediterranean 

huge vats of royal blue dye gave rise to forbidden

or permitted clothing.  Then Murano glass,

cheese mold, Bluebeard, architect’s prints,

Prussian blue coats, the slate blue of mountains

in the distance, distance itself, Wedgwood

bice, Persian blue, huckleberries, Gainsborough’s

boy’s beryl suit, French blue faience,  bruises,

Worth’s perfume Je Reviens, Canadian spruce, 

the metallic teal Georgian silver casts,

the tint of blue in fresh snow, the fairy

in Pinocchio, a period of Picasso’s, fountain

pen ink, first-place ribbons, husky’s eyes,

Concord grapes, shrimp’s veins, overalls,

lagoons and lakes, a hint in skim milk,

shadows in impressionists' paintings,

wash bluing, Kentucky grass, diamonds,

  

Windex, in Mondrian’s limited palette, rare

steaks, the shine on steel, tattoos, clouds

before a storm, this planet seen from space,

a Raggedy Andy doll in its frayed and faded

blue shirt and pants, the only possession 

that came with me from the orphanage

to where then he was thought too shabby

and boyish for a little girl.  While I slept,

they replaced him with fancy pink dolls

in frilly white lace and a soft black lamb

but it’s that Raggedy Andy blue

I’ve been trying to find all my life.

#30: Four Poems by Kelle Groom

~This poem previously appeared in Opium (2007)

SHARK CAPITAL OF AMERICA

In the crab graveyard at the beach,

their bodies are wrinkled

and puffed like cereal, the winter

water cold, no lifeguards or bathers,

or even anybody human

here in the Shark Capital of America,

the sharks drawn to bait fish

living thick in the inlet, but what if

it’s really a kind of shark

Bermuda Triangle where their

triangle bodies get sucked in like boats

that disappear in the fog, white

haze, getting hungrier and hungrier

whirling there beneath the surface.

I’m afraid of what I can’t see,

but what if when Mr. Gold Teeth

drove into me on the Dixie Freeway

with his purple car, what if he hadn’t

swerved & avoided full impact, what if

I’m in a near-death cirrus cloud hovering

above a hospital bed, coma-ed out,

dreaming of the ocean, of the courage

to get in. Gold Teeth ticketed but

uninsured, so I’m racking up hospital bills,

& he’s afraid I’m pregnant because of the way

my hands rest on my stomach, G.T. keeps

asking, did you hurt the baby?

It’s embarrassing because I am a little

overweight. On his driver’s license,

it says he was born in 1983, almost a child

himself, with not one milk tooth, gold

gleaming top & bottom, & I wonder how

he speaks so clearly with all that jewelry

in his mouth—wouldn’t he have at least

a slight speech impediment? He’s so

determined to worry about the imaginary

baby, that I consider him the father—

of course, he’s a bad driver, et cetera,

but as hospital company, he’s pleasant,

committed, and he keeps offering me his

cell phone, is there anyone I’d like to call?

And while distracting at first, his gold teeth

are kind of cheerful, high wattage, a night

light to guide me back inside my body, help me

settle into skin before I burn off in the sky.

*****

#29: "Here" by Dan Rosenberg

            ~This poem originally appeared in CutBank (Summer 2009)

HERE

Here’s the word for an ant’s single leg.

I plucked it and breathed it.

I caught it beneath my gum line.

Here are some plants I grew by speaking to them.

Here are the aphids that happened when my mind wandered.

I was babbling; I’m sorry.

I said the sap would be as blood, as coveted.

The sap was as blood, the wet of it.

I set a few rules and broke them.

Some spiders can resurrect themselves.

Call it a miracle when I do that.

Call it a mitochondrion, I said.

Call it symbiosis.

Here’s how you’re my children.

Here’s how I made your lungs insufficient.

Here’s how I filled your lungs with bacteria.

I needed a place to put them.

I wanted you to have them.

I am in complete control of my dreams.

I let them be this way.

My dreams fall on cracks and grow.

There is excess to my mind and I throw it down the cracks.

Here’s a brown spot on an ovary.

Here’s the brown globe stumbling through autumn.

#28: Three Poems by John Guzlowski

MY MOTHER WAS 19

~This poem appeared in The Chattahoochee Review (2008)

Soldiers from nowhere

came to her farm

killed her sister’s baby

with their heels

shot my grandma too

One time in the neck

then for kicks in the face

lots of times

They saw my Aunt Sophie

they didn’t care

she was a virgin

dressed in a blue dress

with tiny white flowers

Raped her

so she couldn’t stand up

couldn’t lie down

couldn’t talk

They broke her teeth

when they shoved

the dress in her mouth

If they had a camera

they would’ve taken her picture

and sent it to her

That’s the kind they were

Let me tell you:

God doesn’t give

you any favors

He doesn’t say

now you’ve seen

this bad thing

but tomorrow

you’ll see this good thing

and when you see it

you’ll be smiling

That’s bullshit

*****

#27: "Klimt and Time" by Donna Lewis Cowan

~These poems originally appeared in Notre Dame Review (2010)

Klimt and Time: Three Poems

1.  Nouveau

Then it was hinged in:

a parlor-scene’s exact history,

its gold-plated frame

greater than the picture,

casting vines that circle and ravel

with the stamp of primitive eyes.

They tangle about her

as she stares out, her soul

a drowsy prattle at the pane.

She is stunned still,

a jarred specimen watching

as the forest rises about her,

as visitors pause, then accelerate

toward the masterpiece in the next gallery:

tanned Judith in her golden collar,

the woman who had her way.