Every sharpening restores a bright edge,
keener for the simple whittle,
honed for the splintered who need repair.
In the mirror of my pristine theater,
I polish patina of my face, redesign
with friction, whet fissures from my skin.
A brain is a many-chambered thing
and recalls each corruption. I seek
a clean heaven, breathe healing air.
I resent ruinous slashes, even when
without injury to slow me, or dull rubs
cleaving my chest. Your malicious
gashes carve me to third person, at bay
with rasping’s sparks. Tuesday grinds
our love’s thousand tides, and you seduce
me into your cave by the sea. I witness
you smear frescoes onto walls,
and accept a frieze onto my flesh.
– Sam Barbee…
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I liked her best when she was puking her guts out, more than once, in a mini dress, can’t remember the color, maybe cream, fall 1998, rural New England, by a big tree, then another, after the dance at which I’m pretty sure she didn’t dance but at which I’m absolutely sure she did a great deal of underage drinking, after which I helped a few guys prop her up, walk her back to her room in the little house for upperclassmen where I put her to bed, where she puked again, all over the spread on her twin bed, which I’m pretty sure I later inherited. I do love a hand-me-down. Vulnerability. Rigid self-appointed authority demoted, somewhat disgusting, disarmed. Then back down the gravel road in the dark, across the little causeway into co-ed Kendrick, down the stairs to the room I shared with a round-faced Ritalin addict who sold drugs out of our mini-fridge.…
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How can someone atone for a sin they cannot name?
It was Yom Kippur. The four of us donned formal wear.
Mom was anxious & had to double-check the locks, making us late.
Dad yelled, cursing the heavens. Our annual ritual—
fasting, & then rushing out to Wendy’s at 4 o’clock to break.
How can someone atone for a sin they cannot name?
Among the crowded, ticketed, gussied-up masses,
we filed into pray, to atone
for our sins. I was 11, obediently taking in
the words of teshuva:
For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones;
but for transgressions of
one human being against another,
the Day of Atonement does not atone
until they have made peace with one another.…
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My mother in each hand brandishes a pan.
Breaking for the back door
she bounds the hill, leaving lunch
to burn on the stove top.
Her desperation drives back alpacas
from the fence,
while the two brother donkeys bray
their long alarm.
The bees are all over, arguing
fiercely, fifty-thousand plaints
for a staked claim to the sky; roiling clamor
in whatever calamity
put them out, beating the breast of their hive
wildly overhead—my mother beats
in sync like a charmed pitch
meant to match…
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So begins the ancestral laying-on-of-hands. White on green,
the first snowfall comes a sad, melting martyr
to disaffected, banknote-colored leaves I hope survive.
The mason’s terracotta bricks overlay grass
and won’t retain warmth, neither will the cherry tart
left on the counter for my friend who recently moved in.
As faces flurry, melt upon each other’s cheeks,
I feel a sense of relief. The thousand-piece puzzle
is nearly complete. No one is dead.
The singing whisper of a choir, or the mindful totality
of ancients voices, or something close to Hark, the Herald Angles Sing.
My anxious breath returns my lungs with frigid air, then warms that air.
Damp snow accumulates on the white cedars’ arms,
until they drop stress, then raise themselves again.
– Elias Diakolios…
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O, what a face full of things:
With cigarette in mouth and with fear Sometimes
transparent tongues of heat
at my thighs—
Such longings: Errant. Verdant.
Yes, when the signs of summer thicken,
like bees, and I
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
Thus I: faltering forward,
endlessly. Your voice on the telephone.
I mean the bees in my body are restless again
and set out to find you.
(lines from A.D. Hope, Roberto Bolaño, S. Ben Tov, Seamus Heaney, C.D. Wright, Rudyard Kipling, May Swenson, Albert Goldbarth, Thomas Hardy, Margaret Holly, Paisley Rekdal, Yehuda Amichai)
– Leah Schwartz…
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In the year of my birth, a mammal preserved in amber
was identified by scientists for the first time.
When they spoke of its age, the scientists broadly estimated
18 million to 29 million years—referring, of course, to the age
of the fossil itself. What I’m curious about is
how long the tiny mammal lived, how much time was cut short
when it fell indelibly into the resin. There’s simply
no way to know. I know that in hindsight
its lifespan seems ludicrously insignificant.
An eon spent in amber turns the time before
preservation into something like prehistory,
like a half-life, or less.
– Leah Schwartz…
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