It’s not that I don’t trust motherfuckers, I just didn’t trust him. Something I heard somewhere, sometime, about never eating at a place called Mom’s or playing poker with a dealer named Doc. But he didn’t cheat me out of money playing stud, he cheated with my girl. I don’t know any sayings about shit like that, but that’s neither here nor there. I had plans to leave her anyway. Smelled soaps of others on her soft skin. I’m not one to stand alone in the chapel, a crown of thorns on my head. Makes no sense. Besides, it’s not like I can call the Righteous Love Police. And now, she’s rides in a BMW—I think he’s a fucking dentist or doctor of letters—and I watch sunsets with a dog named Blue and a bottle of Johnny Red.…
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I distinctly told her that I didn’t want tomato on my hot
pastrami and cheese sandwich, but sure enough when
I got home and took the sandwich out of the wrapper,
I saw that on both halves there was tomato pressed against
the cheese, which made me say out loud, “Damn it. . .
I made it clear that I didn’t want tomato in my sandwich.
That I don’t like tomato in my sandwiches!”
Deciding not to take it back—mainly out of hunger—
I pulled out the tomato, which had done a fine job
permeating the cheese in both halves.
I then started eating while looking at the tomato lying there
on the paper, wondering why they even put tomato in sandwiches
or anywhere else for that matter.…
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In those first days after your death,
when I couldn’t cry,
there was nothing sadder than things you left behind.
Nothing sadder than the two tea bags of your favorite tea
that I found in a shoe box you carried from home to the office and back,
so much hope embodied in those tea bags – the anticipation
of having a moment between patients to steep a bag in a mug of hot water,
then to take a sip, and pause, and think, and take another sip.
I looked at those little paper bags of tea that your fingers touched,
and imagined you opening the pantry, selecting the tea, placing the bags delicately in the shoe
box, and tenderly carrying the box downstairs to the basement office where you saw patients on
the weekend, caring for their wounds and pains, listening to their stories,
and I felt the great distance between the promise embodied in those tiny bags of tea, and how
they were now left waiting in that sterile box,
all that promise of warmth and comfort gone.…
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Wild as myth, silent as fate
He is not king, nor knave,
Yet wild in hate,
Sances between them like smoke—
a riddle in the deck,
Keeps the enemies close and friends richer
Smiles with bare allegiance, raising the stakes
Painted in motley,
He wears chaos as if a crown,
a wildcard whispering:
Holding and beholding his own assertion
His miniature face on the marotte hails itself
Rules made in jest, it says, are threads to be cut.
Motions and stress of a fracturing surface.
Pretend solidarity and imitate love, he’s a solitary notion.…
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Feathers twisted through the air,
Tangled and caught,
In the aimless descent
Of a dying spirit.
No longer joined to muscle and bone
Or unified by movement
And the intuition of flight,
They settled to earth
In a gentle chaos.
Quills tipped with red
Wrote of the inaudible fear,
Of the death suspended in the sky.
Too distant for sympathy or horror,
Yet close enough to respect
The nimble brutality
Of a graceful and admirable kill.
– Melinda Giordano
Author’s Note: The poem was inspired by the strange beauty and grace I’ve seen of birds fighting, talons locked, spinning through the air. A deadly ballet.…
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and slowly I would rise and dress
fearing the chronic angers of that house
Robert Hayden
Well into adulthood I remember my mother
would walk with me in the pre-dawn
grade school days, bundled against cold,
and with each other, against my father.
We crept like criminals through the house
into sparsely lamplit streets where,
out of earshot, we could talk about him,
alone in bed unbothered in sleep, or
earlier up, off to his own refuge from us:
the work that kept us fed, and him, in habit.
We talked about his drinking years ago—
Betty Ford Clinics before I was born, and
gambling debt; desperate and angry, my mother
hid away from him his pistol, dumped
the crudely stashed bags of mini-bottles,
and went alone to beg the bookies
for time to work it out—we talked about
the time since (if she suspected he was
drinking, she kept it from me): how terrible
he was to be around; how sullen he’d become.…
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I. Flicker
A bulb flickers /
a tired eye closing /
and then / nothing.
The walls whisper.
And silence comes next /
not of peace / no /
but of ten people holding breath.
At the edge of a day unravelling /
darkness soaks our fatigue.
We look at each other /
a strange assembly /
struck / by misfortune or luck?
Huddled in a remote valley.
Lightning lashes the roof of the shed.
The children crawl from their beds /
not in fear /
but in intrigue /
as if the night itself
has opened its mouth to speak.…
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