Category: Poetry

It is more than a shadow over my face.

It is my own skull rising out of my skin
in slow motion;
the years piled up in the yard like slaughtered wolves.

Sometimes I catch my death
in the corner of my left eye
and trap it behind a contact lens.

Other times it will not be contained.
Some days it insists on itself
to anyone who will pay attention.

In the last room, I want it to be you.
Bring me a sprig of pussywillow
and all you ever were, in manuscript form.

I will be the old woman
clasping the limp word-corpse of some dead poet
tight to my chest, the smoke of my last burnt offering
rising from my mouth.

The ghosts she did not know
 Tinged her days, sepia shaded longing
Sadness touching upon celebrations
 Cooling the edges, chilling
 her laughter

The ghosts she did not know
  Painted her moments, washing her walls
 Their shadowy silhouettes hanging
 Among family portraits
 Photos of before or now lined the walls, never then 

She looked into the eyes of her grandmother
Grandfather, uncle, aunts
 Days, years, months before, lightness, light
 Family she’d never meet
 Or know
 She looked at their mouths, soft
 Their hands, open
 Their bellies, full
 Her parents never spoke of what happened
 Only these three photos remained, hung
 Silent

Walking the hall she struggled to capture their voices
 Their words, alert to prick their whisperings
 She could sense their muffled background rumblings

Standing before their faces she could feel the rise
 Their anger stirring, her hatred mounting, stomach rolling
 Her family had been taken
 Ripped from all they’d known, stripped
 Down to nothing, nothing but flesh and bones
 Their bodies burned
 The dust of their debris covering everything, falling
 Still 

She moved to Papa and Mama’s portrait, young then, before
A spring dance, lace, chiffon
 Laughter filling their faces, spilling easily into gentle bodies
 Ghosts she did not know
 She smiled, a bit
 Mama’s hand gently touched Papa’s clean-shaven cheek
 Her wrist soft, clean
 Their numbers inked
 Embedded into flesh
 Stained
 Always covered now, her body shook, on guard with prickling
 Her covering would slip in moments, exposed
 Fear and shame contorting Mama’s face, always fear now
 She longed to touch their mark 

She turned to Grandmother’s portrait
She he had her Grandmother’s eyes
 Spoken, this brought stinging to Mama
 She looked deeply, her eyes
 She pressed her nose upon the glass, cold
 Dust stirred
 The barrier between then and now
 How could they share eyes
 When she’d never seen the horrors?…

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i seek shelter from the bomb
of your bloated tongue
your sneer, an angry gash
frigid words blur your lips
land like fists on mine
inkblot bruises stain my neck
i shed my dress
trembling red rose petals
limbs and skin and desperation
clinging until we are spent
i inhale the nicotine from your skin
apologies are a filtered afterthought

caught in the haze
of our better days

you peel back your spine
reveal low trees in dusky tones
i peek over your horizon
lips trail a pink sunset
an angry sliver of teeth
hovers there, bitter and
creeps between the discs
you are shocked by my
electric moonlight
as we cling beneath
sullen armchair feet
my slow hands tend your husk

we are radiance
on our better days

– Ashley Shaw…

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There is an ebbing of spirit;
The part that marvels at a sailor’s sunset
or finds solitude in the noise that crickets make.
In the coming twilight I will perform a life sustaining
walk past rolling leas and century
old farm houses. My arms and legs will
function like the involuntary beating of a heart.
I do hope that one day soon
a resolute spirit will resurface;
one that yearns fascination, like those
that come and flutter their powdered wings
seeking but a brief respite from the darkness,
one that can laugh along with a farmer’s
children at the morning bus stop,
one that can acquiesce to the
fading light of days.

– William Greenfield…

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A frail man with a shock of hair and transparent skin shuffles across a red stone courtyard in the heart of Andalusia.  Amidst a cluster of buildings, he knows he must find the Citadel, and is drawn right, right, and then left. A Nasrid archway crowned with an arabesque leads to a long, dimly lit corridor, ending at a wooden door strapped with iron.  As he lifts his fist to knock, rusted hinges chirp, and he enters an impossibly tall cylindrical room lined with shelves overflowing with parchments and books.   As he slowly scans the rows of writing,  a soft swirling sound fills the room, a deep song of distant voices that covers his skin, enters his body, spirals within, and finally fills his heart.  At that moment the light switches in a pulse-beat to a hot white.…

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Dear Mother
I am sorry for not coming to visit you,
for not sitting cross-legged in the open field
while reciting confessions to you.
I am sorry you cannot hear my thousand thanks
for the many model trains and superheroes
that drove the family debt to somewhere
between impossible and my father’s insanity.
I should have leapt from my bed and came
to your defense late at night when you
screamed at him, demanding the car keys
because you “just wanted to go for a ride”.
I now confess mother. It wasn’t the heroes
I craved. It was you I so selfishly wanted;
not to be shared with brothers or sisters;
just you and me having French toast at the
diner on Sunday morning, you and me on a
train ride to the city, your voice
singing Nature Boy only to me.…

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In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen.
-James Joyce

1.  Los Alamos, New Mexico
Theologians exploring crucibles and intersections of faith light upon the fact that Trinity, where the secret gang detonated the Gadget, was likely christened after a verse by John Donne: “batter my heart, three person’d God”. Multi-armed Vishnu is present as well: “I am become death, destroyer of worlds”.

2. Hiroshima, Japan
Archeologists exploring the ruined city discover a ruined statue of a young girl holding a ruined steel origami crane over her head near images of people burned into battered concrete buildings. Words are carved in the broken stone beneath the broken girl: “This is our cry, this is our prayer – peace”.…

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