December 31st 1999: We all stayed the night at a mid-range hotel in the town next to our own just outside of Boston. The boys and I had spent the past few days sliding around unfinished hardwood panels in our socks, and eating off our family room couch we’d crammed into the kitchen to make space for the new floors. We knew nothing of Y2K, or what was to come, nor did we care for anything but that our parents had turned our house into an empty playground. Laughing into the cold Massachusetts air, we ran to the Jeep and our mother, smiling, said “hold on” as she tried to unlock the car fast enough for her eager children and their father. So we wore sunglasses in the shape of “2000” into the night of the new year while big men turned our house back into a home.…
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My grandmother’s wringer
washer, stolid on
their porch. We told her how
washing machines now
made life easier. No,
she used the wringer washer
until the end. Decades
of water pressed out
to hang clothes in the back yard
before watching
As The World Turns
on a black-and-white set,
problems of the Hughes
and Stewart families, what
she referred to as
“My story.”
– Kenneth Pobo…
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Some say that it is possible to dry a spirit from the cold
if you bring it by a flame, urging here, with a warm mug
urging hold and stay awhile, but child, I don’t know.
When it comes to what it’s really like, we are left
bereft with feeble words, and there are limits, too,
when it comes; to what any one of these may hold,
what any constellation untold may know, at any time, no
matter how vast the reach of your intention, the spirit
in space grows cold until it coalesces restless among
others with enough mass and time to collapse into
matter hot enough to burn the birth of the last new
star, the one that looks like nothing now, and will…
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Slowly
savoring each bite,
each page,
each chapter,
each paragraph.
Chew it thoughtfully,
carefully,
let the words sink,
deeply,
treasure them,
they are priceless,
and be grateful
for such contact
with another mind –
communion
with a kindred soul;
you are enriched
and continue on.
– Duane L. Herrmann…
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Mom grows stalagmites.
They’re made of toothpaste.
Drips from her cavern each morning
landing not quite into the bowl.
The basin isn’t out of reach,
but she’s forgotten to extend.
Or to spit. Just drip.
Mom used to be the neat one.
I was the messy one.
The eggshell stalagmite
matches the eggshell counter,
her myopic eyes seldom notices
the heightening mound.
It repulses my senses.
I don’t rush its removal
knowing it’ll eventually be missed.
– Dara Kalima…
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A title:
when it comes
the poem will come too.
Where does he look?
Inside?
Outside?
All the world around?
Searching
for a title,
for a theme.
Desire is present
but no direction.
A poet in search of a title
is a sad, pathetic thing.
Does he search
through ancient tomes?
Or current fads?
Or some time in between?
dlh…
– Duane L. Herrmann…
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A diorama of function, all clockwork and organ.
……………Transparency means the light is bending.
Damn this gravity. Suspension is spirit’s legless shadow,
……………At least here in this hall. A woman, remembering
Something she cannot name, wanders as of seeking
……………Light. This is how shadow destroys itself.
Through an open window. As she falls, a silver spoon
……………Spins a web of light from her pocket. The trees
Do not understand this broken kite. This bitter copper
……………Water. Since the first time she fell, I have taken
The dead inside of me nightly. Spoken the transposed
……………Tongue of mirrors. She is not the first
Of the living to disappear. The first of my children, now
……………A blur of movement under water
Where there is no water.…
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