Lamps drip sour light and mercury
carrying sounds of erosion
roaming through pipes and three-story cities.
Everywhere is the lessened trickle
of Heaven through bare metal
tickling the gutters, wetting the lawn
sputtering the candles, leftovers
of lovers. I hate this word, it’s the one hiding
behind the drapes, skin wan on the covers.
The air breathed into the window
is heat-heavy, hallowed. Sieved through
lacy silk embroidered with geraniums
my mother grew, effortful. The dregs
of this are summoned every other month
to the whimper of the mourning dove;
this love. I don’t speak of anymore
for I am so sure it’s missing from
the cooling departure of faces on rain;
one more reason to shutter the windowpane.
– Zachary Dankert
Author’s Note: It’s funny: many, many months after I’d written this poem, am I really so sure that this love is missing?…
...continue reading
I.
Waste-whipped, we climb—
facing away from wind impossible
when wind gusts from every angle
eddying tiny tornadoes
a white out winter.
This isn’t winter though; it barely
was. One storm then gone but
the air keeps dry and silent
and bone joints crack. What was
once flexible has stiffened
like a starched bleached board.
II.
It had gotten better.
How is it now much worse.
III.
Back in ’02 hurt seemed precious,
longing a hobby, and loving a vice.
Now we measure time by decades
to save what little we have left.…
...continue reading
A man offers us directions in French, vowels
and consonants served on a platter
of smiles. Trains click past. Stations
are cards shuffled, threshold after threshold
offering its chance. We count the stops
to Champs-Elysees.
Mornings are commuters with strollers
and briefcases. Paris afternoons
are smoked down, crumpled cigarettes
dropped in gutters. We trudge back to Montmartre
through placards for braided hair,
a smell of coffee and piss,
young people crouching in doorways.
We buy bread and cheese at the boulangerie.
At Du Vert au Vin, wine
winks from the walls,
fish in an aquarium. I keep thinking
of that corner of the Metro,
subterranean and damp, where a Syrian family
begged from a blue tarp. The woman
behind her veil, the man lying on his side.…
...continue reading
When they opened/ the tomb of the Chinese terracotta army/ supposedly they were brightly colored/
armored in red and turquoise but only for a moment before the newly introduced oxygen ate away
the paint
The way the old men who live on the plains will talk so casually about drowning surplus kittens/
alongside, when it’s going to snow, and which barbed wire fences need mending
This is the kind of thing/ one would always seek to recapture, don’t you think?
The airlessness,
All those colors, the ghost escaping into the sky
– Nate Maxson…
...continue reading
So many lost.
Rain vanishes
As if rain never
Existed.
My dual wombs,
Empty-basined,
fill with heat.
My slashed through
Languages,
Shattered bloodlines.
Diaspora, voices
Outstretched and
Stretching
Into future tenses.
In stumbling mist,
My twin tongues
Taste our future.
My rubble-voiced blood
Consults narrow odds
That open like dancing,
Improbable oceans.
We will exist
As rivers run to seas.
Fresh and salt.
Mingled and mending.
– Karen Poppy…
...continue reading
I
March has come to the hills outside Bologna;
the snow melts slowly here beneath San Luca.
II
A mild breeze dances among the dark pine trees;
whispers resound in the Fosse Ardeatine.
III
A cold rain falls, falls cold above Bassano;
the Brenta flows on, on over white stone.
IV
Fields blush—blossoming poppies at the roadside;
each bloom a wound that history scraped open.
V
A woman hesitates beneath the portico;
a canal glimpsed from a forgotten window.
VI
In Longarone the dawn’s breath is strangled
by the past; infants dashed against the rocks.
VII
In autumn the wind whispers in the piazza,
a boy picks up the scent of chestnuts roasting.
– Eric T. Racher…
...continue reading
It becomes interesting with age,
how things end, how one ends.
I don’t remember when
my parents began reading obituaries
in the local paper, ticking off
the names and vinculations,
fixing the dead in the genealogy
of the town in which they would
essentially die and be interred.
Never a local, deaths escape me,
surprise me, months, years
after their immediate fact.
But yes, I read the obituaries
of strangers, often disappointed
by lack of specifics. The ages
are of interest. It’s as if my seating
group has been called to board
for the last flight, and we’re
gathering possessions before
going down the ramp. We’re already
past security, and the girl at the gate
will check my passport and ticket,
insist on putting my carry-on
through to its final destination.…
...continue reading