Category: Poetry

Winter
Curl into yourself, avoid going
outside because you hate the cold.
Spend your mornings in thrift stores
hunting for old paintings and model ships
to nest into your new apartment. Run away
to North Carolina to see the boy you’ve decided
you love. Run away to Pittsburgh,
then New York City over New Years
to see this same boy. Get an inch long splinter
in the back of your thigh sliding
across a wooden bench in Brooklyn.
In March realize it’s still there.
Stay restless. Stay sad. Grow suicide plans
inside of your suicide plants, like
ivy climbing around a trellis.

Spring
Get a job again, finally. Spend all of your
afternoons listening to the ramblings
of an autistic boy — retellings of cartoon
scripts.…

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It reminded me of the time I was at a high school dance and the pretty young woman I was secretly in love with was standing near the dance floor and I had every opportunity to walk up to her and ask her for a dance but told myself it wasn’t the right time and what would I say while flopping around to some music that was nothing but noise and finally why does the guy always have to be the one to make the first move when in the end she didn’t look that great anyway.

– Jeffrey Zable …

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Out of the blue
your gray matter
is tickled pink
with flying colors
you achieve peace
so you’re cool
as a cucumber
your thoughts
flat as a pancake
because you see
the whole enchilada
the world is slow
as molasses
like a brush stroke
over canvass
that completes a
portrait of bliss
resembling some
psychic reading or
astral projection
the third eye
channeling
the premiere of
epic stillness
written and directed
beyond time
starring what is
until you cast
the first stone
one by one
you put
two and two
together
feeling the rush
of division
pull your
whole number
into pieces.

– Dane Karnick…

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Did you feel it stop?
Just for a moment.
The earth held its ground and waited for me.
I was running late, just a few moments
and would have missed you
without the earth’s patience.
I ran faster in its pausing
and caught your eye
as the air held its breath.
Did my pounding feet
match your heart?

I was flushed from racing,
a bit out of breath.
I wonder if you thought that, you?
And so we met,
just for that moment.
Me, rosy and breathless,
you, dressed lovely in your suit and tie
standing in line waiting for
lunch
“Yes, I’d like that.  We can share.”
Tuna and tea for two.

Is that how love happens?
The earth’s master plan shuddering in earthquakes,
whispering in raindrops and pausing in moments?…

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We like to think we’re built of major, minor, and trace elements, which use DNA as the recipe to mix and combine in patterns to make blood, bones, organs, skin,and such. Wrong. We are made of words. Words are in us from birth. As we grow, words take on meanings, so they can be combined and recombined indifferent patterns. Phrases and later sentences lock together, shaping how we move through our lives, more as architecture than language. Some of our words look inward and some outward, and we need a full complement of each. If some inward words are missing, we are incomplete. If some outward words are missing, there are gaps in our connections with others and these gaps are the distances between us.…

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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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