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…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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From behind a limp curtain the elderly girl detective sees through a row
of windows: a hand petting a cobra, a woman’s shadowy profile, a small
stuffed .alligator. on. a. velvet. cushion. Clues to what?. The secret of life
and death is. only the clock. Down a long linoleum corridor of tarnished
numbers,. a door. clicks shut. .Evening light,. slanted, yellow.. She keeps
her deductions private, a silence filled up with land sakes, imaginary pie
in the. cold oven. .Ghost. granny,. in. worn print.dress,. in. favorite chair.
Who is in charge.
– Martha McCollough…
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with variations on two lines by Kafka
At some point, the stars stop looking
at us. For them, life is a costume ball,
but we attend wearing nothing but our
real faces. And our debt. We have our
tea and naps. Our struggles to be kind
to the jackboots. There is infinite hope,
but not for us. The stars have plans
about opening a boutique that wouldn’t
allow them inside. They want nothing
to be left of them but their names
and stylized drawings of their eyes.
Before they got famous, they spent
their evenings looking at portraits
of the backs of their own heads.
We can barely afford cable. Every
door, every eye on the street could
belong to tomorrow for them. They
say light won’t make you happy,
but they’ve never drowned in the dark.…
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It is the worst summer on record
not because the woman up the street is dead—
I think it’s more likely that she shot herself
because July was already untenable.
When June withered and rotted on the vine
we were left with nothing but the realization
that you can’t outrun something that’s saturated the air
as heavy as humidity. There is only the slow dizzy crawl
out of the path of the sun, the endless laps I traced
around the cul-de-sac, noting 9806 only for its anthills
dead and vacant as the windows
with their dust and their cobwebs.
I hover at the cracked front door as the cops
descend like a clutter of blue-backed spiders
and wrap the street in a web of yellow tape
tying up every unfortunate delivery man;
the husband on his knees in the driveway
the only one immobilized of his own accord. …
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