What we leave behind
is not nothing.
It’s a haze around the morning sun.
It’s an unexpected change in direction of the wind.
It’s one frequency in the white noise
of those who came before,
undecipherable static in the background
of the lives of those still in the world.
It’s a shadow in the corner of the wall
in the room where our sons and daughters live.
It’s a small but persistent presence
that shapes what becomes
as surely as hope shapes the coming day.
– Ken Long… ...continue reading
when I was ten Mom would send
Mike and me to the corner laundromat
with a basket of cold wet sheets
she’d slip a few extra coins in our coat pockets
for a bottle of ice cold Coke we’d share
waiting for the loads to dry
when the timer chimed we’d
pull out the steaming hot sheets
fold crisp white corners together
our smooth chins almost touching
something I still remember with a smile
so different from the last time
I saw Mike in a hospital bed
oxygen mask tight over his nose
a white wrinkled hospital sheet
tucked under his unshaven chin
– Frank Modica
Author’s Note: The simple act of folding sheets can bring back a variety of memories, some good and others painful.… ...continue reading
A bloodied pedestrian.
An old man with a walker.
My grandfather’s dim hallway.
Walking out of the liquor store, a friend.
A friend smoking a joint.
New Year’s, 2015.
Drunk on his bed, a friend.
My father on a log.
My father hiking towards the sun.
A dog with a broken cow skull.
A small babbling brook.
A bum playing a flute.
My sister lighting a cigarette in the yard.
My brother with a full beard.
My brother posing in the rain.
A dog in front of the old market.
An old man smiling on a skateboard.
The taco truck down the street.
Photos in a box
— Memories in my heart.
– Brent Bramer… ...continue reading
The doctor put the disc
into the side of the computer
so the old man could see
the MRI of his old brain.
She gently, almost lyrically
pointed to its dark spaces,
so he could see how time
shrinks all life, even the brain.
But the old man smiled,
and said to the young doctor
[who was but half his age],
‘It’s a funny thing, Doc,
how only in old age have
I become a poet, and
a published one at that!
My brain is lessening,
shrinking, while my mind
is ever growing–
reaching into spaces
both small and vast,
ever seeking,
ever wondering,
ever rhapsodizing
the world….’
– Nolo Segundo
Author’s Note: Getting old is stranger than anyone realizes, until you are the one getting old.… ...continue reading
I fear I have become
a lip gloss girlie—
it was an impulse purchase,
that clear tube
of goo
with the cute packaging,
something totally outside
my nature
of torn jeans
and bare faces,
the Eau de tomboy
wafting from my neck,
yet the swipe
of a little doe-foot applicator
brings out my femininity—
my features,
now soft and serene
where they were once
sharp and rugged,
I thought it not possible
to claw away
my masculinity,
and find underneath
a womanly complexion,
but I fear
I have become
a girl again,
giddy and free
glossy to the touch.
– Theo Sterling… ...continue reading
The things you need
burn
watch your prayers travel in smoke & ash
some nights all raging spirits sleep
or your ikenga wrestles them
that orb diced in symmetry
one part revolts
the other misses the bullseye
you gather your prayers
in the fire’s heart
flames fanned faster, the necessary escape
velocity
one part of you sours like Blues
yet taste the other
skin can be sweet in the second
round
hear your jubilee
burn
watch prayer mediate into silent
ash.
– Victor Ogan… ...continue reading
I
My husband and I spotted the deer
lying in the woods
outside the college library.
Through a tunnel of green leaves,
she held our gaze.
Eighty years before our visit,
his mother came here to college,
a tall, shy girl burdened
by her mother’s expectations.
She found a young woman’s paradise.
Stately buildings on sloping lawns
housed lecture halls and classrooms,
dormitories and common rooms,
a dining hall with chandeliers
and murals on the walls.
There was a boathouse on the lake
and trails through the woods.
When she wasn’t studying,
she loved playing the piano
and sailing a Sunfish
on the silvery lake.
II
When Wells College was founded in 1868,
the founder’s son gave the school
a marble statue of Minerva.
It was a contemporary copy
of a Roman statue in the Vatican,
itself a replica of a Greek bronze.… ...continue reading