The Young Mother
Both can’t take time off to have the car inspected, so one must answer for the other.
Only sometimes, now and then, I decide. Like this morning. For the young mother with
the newborn and the toddler ramming his car into the counter grout. Her husband’s
been harvesting for three days straight, she tells me. In the middle of the night he’d left
a note scribbled on a donut sack: Get the Ford inspected, it said. She hands me the
paper-stuffed sack. What she doesn’t say–maybe can’t say–is that she’s desperate for a
break from her babies. A quick shower. A nap. I write or between their names on the
inspection form. I ask beforehand, do my clerk duty, but she doesn’t hear.…
...continue reading
There is a profound depth to you,
your irises ebb out towards me,
from above those arrow head cheekbones,
sublime in their listlessness,
infinitely vast and achingly familiar.
Swaddling my head,
like smoke levitating against the ceiling, is your voice.
A voice like bourbon,
encompassing my ear drums.
Obliviously I gravitate towards you,
only to be disarmed and overwhelmed
by the visceral reaction I have to you,
and the fragility of our connection,
the absolute complementary juxtaposition we constantly demonstrate is aweinducing.
Formally I know nothing of you,
but I know your soul so well,
for it is a fragment of my own,
splintered from the the continuum of consciousness,
a relic from a past life that I am certain that we shared.
– Kate Healey…
...continue reading
Thought over it
as rain piled on…
the roof, the windows, everything…
considered pure refusal,
the remnants of my energy,
as rain reached out,
tormented my reverberating psyche…
there was repent the carnal alley ways
or bathe more often,
or stop lapping up snow-melt with my tongue,
or give the tanned young man in my head
the tattered family Bible,
that he might someday spray his altars
with fine jasmine or unadulterated piss –
but then I figured coldness
was my only mercy,
black clouds that swamp my head
bursting, going with the rain…
fact is, I cannot
though I have,
I must not,
though I should…
through mud, through scrubby hills,
through the door of friends
and out the door of strangers…
no more feeling that isn’t
fingers on my chin,
no looking further than the walls
of the room I’m in…
damn rain, I’m staring through the window pane,
it’s all reflection with runny eyes and nose,
surprised to meet a man of my shrunken dimension
I vow to never think of her,
to shoot first, speak less,
take money where I find it,
and soon enough the rain will stop,
sky clear, maybe even warm up a little just
enough so I need not vow again…
spend my last years
blistered on the beach
– John Grey…
...continue reading
The body cannot forget.
Shoulders slump to protect.
What’s left to regret?
Rolls of flesh beset
her bones. Armor to deflect.
The body cannot forget.
The toxins leach in sweat.
Pills leave lips spit-flecked.
What’s left to regret?
Each touch tallies against a debt.
Her skin numbs with neglect.
The body cannot forget.
Fingers stick to a cigarette,
yellow chemical and man intersect.
What’s left to regret?
To medicate hides the threat
of the memory a body can collect.
The body cannot forget
what’s left to regret
– Cara Schiff…
...continue reading
Birthdays
The challenge is not to blow out the fire. The fire should only shiver, shiver as if in need
of the flames of another fire. And the candles should never weep. They should have
wounds but never scars. And before you gather your storm, words must wake,
happiness must season voices, a group of lungs melting into a chorus of one. The
wish needn’t be wrapped in wrapping paper either. No, the wish should undress itself
until its clothed only in the flickering light. And as the darkness falls gray should rise,
fumes fragranced by the scent of your younger selves. See, the challenge is not to blow
out the fire; it is to convert that fire into smoke.
Another Lamb In Need Of Slaughtering
I imagine you walking along the edge of the shadows, using “Q-tips” to remove the
skeleton-layered truths about your ears, sticking a finger down your throat to expel
your blame-filled stomach, even warming yourself up with your own tears because
you’ve tired of fire.…
...continue reading
Our Father Who Art in Heaven,
stay there
with your retinue of
saccharine angels and saints,
orchestrating
the celestial fanfare,
while we remain below,
content to breathe
the pine-filled air,
to feel the wind caress
the napes of our necks,
to see the sun
illuminate the hills
as if every morning
were the first time,
to sense the ground
beneath our feet
and not above our heads,
sealing us off
in darkness and silence
from everything we love.
We tally up our losses
and our gains
to find that overall
it’s not half-bad
to be alive.
Amen
– Arthur Heifetz…
...continue reading
She pours through the doors of the coffee shop near the corner of Keele & Dundas like
molasses—alone.
—–Her lips are slathered in strawberry-pink ice cream; she hand-rolls a cigarette, her
hair knots in an up draft.
—–One by one, she opens a handful of sugar packets, pouring the contents on the
table; she puts a straw to her wind-cracked lips and blows out an outline of a mountain,
humming like a harmonica trapped in a hurricane. Her moist tongue then outlines the
shape of a hip bone, then the CN Tower.
—–Dragging her fingers along the linoleum finish, she recreates Van Gogh’s Starry
Night. When it’s done, she forces her hand through the white grain like a monk through a
mandala.
—–Everything is impermanent.…
...continue reading