Category: Poetry

You are always looking
for an adventure and
you find it in the wild
hearts of lovers

perhaps that is all
I should’ve been

an uncertainty

the soft white
of starlight
freckles
across my skin
you trace
like constellations
a flush of pink
rising to my cheeks
when your lips
whisper sins…

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You needed help
and because I neglected to give it

your favorite ceramic cat was never found
and the reddened sheets stayed bunched in a heap

in an oversized trash bag
near the front door.

You made the mistake of falling in love
with things and ideas

and gave none of your attention
to disconsolate matters that created

the filaments of life
or caused the vendetta in your lithe hands.

I’m enamored with the idea
that your choices are cast with inevitability

and even more so with the remnant tinge
of strawberry stain that still lingers in your hair.

I may be just one of the old men drinking coffee
in a donut shop late at night

as you tend to an array of simple needs,
observing erratic orbits of sadness

or I may be a different sort of man
staring at an unshaded framework brought low

by an involuntary lapse of moon,
watching you watching them watching you.…

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I’ve restarted many a wood stove’s flames
from sleeping embers when the firebox
remains warm. In the darkening evening,
a faint glow glimmers beneath snowy ash.
We watch it as sleep seeps into our veins.
Some stone tablets I suppose say the
Phoenix rises from ashes. But I cannot
catch those who sleep below the tinder’s
reach, or rekindle those beyond the oak’s
broken trunk that spirits signals into the sky—
all red streamers, white steam, black smoke.

– Michael Dickel

Author’s Note: My wife and I  visited the too-new grave of my mother-in-law (of blessed memory), along with family and friends. A rare snow had fallen and the air chilled our bones. I listened to Psalms read in Hebrew, recalling the love we felt for her and she for us warmed me.…

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You ask
and I say delicious
(that cell/splitting glory that
unfolds until we expire)
            angels on fire
                        come remind us
that this life
is just a prayer

we have been
rendezvousing with the dead
in the small hours
            they say death is nothing
                        but a change of clothes
and setting the stage before
the next act

we are corpsing
our way
through a comedy hour
            so as not to let on
                        that we are amused
so as not to expose ourselves
as alive

while they climb Jacob’s ladder
we drive along the coast and
make waves with
            one hand out the window
                        pushing through air with an open palm
and it is our prayer
(all this living
is just a prayer)

– Julie Henderson

Note: This piece was previously published by TheBeZine.com…

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Outside the town past the railroad
where the white mustard grows
A killdeer calls over a woman’s wails
And dusk retreats its way to night

In darkness the place is visited
by an entourage of boys black like ravens
carrying a limp grief to sew
they spend the dark hours crying
it into the ground and leave

the soil swollen marked by its barrenness
walking with the rising sun on dawning
sadness the boys make their way
back to town and through its center
to the house…

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Above the clouds is the space for restless minds,
And after each beat of their wings, you kiss me.
Pearls fall from our mouths when we breathe.

But the day you left was not yesterday –
The ice-cream-scoop hollow in the back of my throat remains,
Or so I tell myself, to exist.

In my fingertips, there is a fire.
Has it never scorched you, lying in your bare skin between my knees?
You smile, and in the corners of your mouth rests every wanton promise.

The air carries a scent of lemon;
The soap you used in my apartment sits heavy in my mind.
Wherever I walk, the grass turns to ash and drifts away.

Only in the rain, now, is there a hand against my cheek,
When ripples still lace together across the surface of the lake
And from the stars, I turn my face to the side.…

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i)
it looks, at first,
like a place we’ve been before,
that stray silence
where things unravel
and we begin,
shaky breaths and cautious
hands negotiating space,
souls spilling onto the floor,
making the carpet moist.

ii)
we move to the rhythm of
each other delicately,
careful to avoid eye-contact.
we convince ourselves
a glimpse of the unknown
would be the last thing
to save a life. go on
closing your eyes, darling,
walk into bright rooms with
the blindfold on.…

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