is the title of the book my father
intends to write when he grows up.
It is a hoax, of course;
there will be no other stories
just three hundred and fifty pages
of encounters with the TSA
since 2001
and other, better men.
This is what I tell you
in a coffee shop on Wardour St.
It is one of several things I take for granted
that we already have in common.
You tell me your birthday,
Miami International Airport,
you are as much your father’s son as I am
all daughter.
– Zara Shams… ...continue reading
shadows
slant our stage
actors
await their cues
the director
weaves
sleights of hand
innuendos
deceptions
lamentations
tales of unrequited loves
wars won lost
brewed with heartbreak
touches of joy
stirred violently
entrance of kings
close
long gray lines
plowing merciless fields
end
empty stage
old folks
sitting
in
sheds
w
a
i
t
i
n
g
– Ron Torrence
… ...continue reading
I philosophize too much,
even when washing my hands,
contemplating, like Saint Francis does a skull,
the healing and cleansing properties of soap,
reducing my reflection to its bare essentials
until distilled to only the elements of soap,
potassium fatty acid salts,
and I’m back to chemical properties—
No mind-body problem there.
Should’ve been a priest
(at least the wine is free),
but I’m not, because
people I love say religion
is more lethal than heroin.
Accept nonacceptance, they say.
Except for acceptance? I ask.… ...continue reading
Shingles peel from the roof—
just corners at first, then all at once,
like sodden bandages. Nothing heals anything
…………….forever,
…………….or completely.
These storms, they take their toll,
walls of gray blooming over breakwaters—
last light leaking over top, casting yellow on the cove,
just beginning to swell.
A thick branch falls to half-frozen dirt—
new wood showing pale at the cracks—
and rolls to the water. These storms
will wear it smooth, toss it back to a beach later, made special
for a mantle in a city
or some landlocked state very far from here.… ...continue reading
The old man says a child
that loses his home only hangs
his sack of misery around his neck.
This country turns me on my legs
like bats and has bleached me
clean of all the midnight dreams.
The spring flowers here have lost
their early morning grace.
I think of redemption in a foreign
river, to immerse my body in this water
and tell my mother to witness my baptism.
The old man says wherever a snail inches
it carries its home along and sometimes
that is the only song you need to know.
– Salawu Olajide… ...continue reading
What colors paint
pandemic?
The wood pallette,
streaked with some
dried oils that
stubbornly defied
turpentine, did not
want darkness and
fear hues. Sable
brushes with a
faint odor of linseed
oil stood ready.
Protective mask,
fitted vinyl gloves
seemed out of place
near an easel used
to hold stretched
canvas. Fear, in
twenty-twenty,
would not be
recorded by my
tools. I opened
the tube of cadmium
yellow squeezing
sunlight instead
of anxiety.
– Lois Greene Stone
Note: This poem was first published in May 2020 by Scarlet Leaf Review.… ...continue reading
for Bruce
We have lived long enough in this house
to have filled it to bursting
with all we no longer need,
long enough
that the silver on the back of the bathroom mirror
has begun to flake away with age.
I don’t really mind that it’s flawed,
like so much else,
but you find a mirror to replace it
and ask my help to take the old one down.
It leaves a mirror-shaped blank
on the bathroom wall
over the sink where we taught our daughters
to wash their hands and brush their teeth.
Then you bring in the new mirror,
pristine, unaged,
and I help you hoist it,
our two faces looking grimly back at us again
as we measure to be sure it’s even
and fasten it in place. … ...continue reading