In his wallet, Dixon kept his ticket to the concert Lynyrd Skynyrd was flying to when his plane crashed. When he was home from college he used to ride with his friends to the field where Rick Nelson’s plane crashed on the last night of 1985. They drank beer from coolers, passed joints, tried to turn the music loud enough to fill that empty field and the long silence surrounding it. Beneath whatever moon there was and stars shifting too slowly to track, they felt themselves more alive in a place where others had fallen. Graves and the stone monuments cast for the dead are one thing. The places they fell are another, small territories granted mystery because a treasured spirit vanished there. As though some danger may linger, as though blood lost there might rise from the dirt and stain one’s feet.…
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I have always lived by the laws of flesh
shrinking tighter and shorter each hour.
Now I’ve nothing to lose but cracking skin.
Yet curiosity stretches wider, too strong an itch.
In liquid imagination, I swan dive into
the pool of my widest eye, splash down
into the vast blue ocean of mind,
wash my bones back to the civilized shore,
where those awaiting my last breath
pick the marrow clean.
On their solid beachhead, my skeleton
has no heart, only a hard brotherhood,
where nothing more than hollow bones
lean against one another
and begin to crack.
– Robert S. King…
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“Western wind, when will thou blow
The small rain down can rain?
Christ! If my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again.”
– Anonymous
Beyond the lamp-lit room is a plangent rain
—rescuing trees from their near-drought dyings
and I ponder the thousands of nights
—of our separate sibilant lyings.
The western wind that now does blow
—that down this rain may rain
blows not for us – or too much so
—shuttling shuttered pain.
Through colorful rooms we pass and greet
—snug from the night’s down-pouring
twined in un-twinned dreams
—anchored in our unmoorings.
The thirsty grass and withered stalks
—exalt the liquid ambrosia
while in dry and sighing rooms
—we unmake our beds of roses.…
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There is a tremendous amount of ‘seeing -to’ that our male counterparts never
experience.
The terrifying and sacred moments of intimacy that daughters endure and
subsequently cherish; the anointment into womanhood with the blood of
our predecessors.
My cousin, James, was steadfast and sensitive, concerned and sweet, always.
“It is hard to see Nan like this”, he confided in me on the porch, turning his head from
the May sun and my eyes.
I nodded, “I know, bud.”
And I did know.
I knew the tenacity it required to even kiss my grandmother hello without weeping.
To his credit, I have seen James carry an infant’s coffin on his nineteen year old
shoulder, and that is a weight which I will never know.
He will never know the weight of caring for someone,
the ache of being the maker of meeting ends,
the reader of omens and omissions.…
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I reply it was a storybook childhood no not as in Princess Bride
just money enough for food piano lessons a dog new clothes
a yearly vacation that kind of thing and naturally there were
the few times in the middle of dinner my mother drew a knife
from the drawer in order to end herself but I don’t remember
those well maybe not at all though I do recall the shininess
and little points yes serrations I later learned and my father
with his hands out in a stop stop and and also a more than
usual problem in getting our broccoli down the three of us
wide-eyed in steakus interruptus and the dog sniffing terror
a bit less tantalizing than snippets of scrap cushioning himself
suddenly in a collective unconscious of couch our father still
pleading no please let’s just … there that’s good just smile
and pass the ketchup and it was over until the next time
going smoothly to cleanup with the floor vacuum
and its wicked wonderful sound signifying another meal
successfully ingested and popcorn on the way the machines
so comforting being in the end all under her control
one night bleeding into the next and in the morning the usual
coffee aroma the dark savior awakened from slumber in the
cupboard all night long above the you-know drawer and off
to school with us after the first cup and then on to all the rest
it was quite full that pot so I knew what she was doing as I boarded
the bus and undid my locker chatting away on a storybook day
never thinking what might happen if she jumped suddenly to grab
the phone and spilled the coffee one doesn’t in retrospect think
that far ahead or behind and truth is anything can be part of
anything like the tiny reflections and refractions dancing like
so many gemstones right there in a kitchen in storybook suburbs
where a woman who wants to die lives the same day over and again
for decades as there are rules so she swallows them like bitter beans
and gets on with fixing beds and tossing laundry and now
she lives and thrives and my father relaxed now
his hands clasped as with some cherished book
upon the chest his final chapter gasped long long ago.…
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“My father was born on this day,
Though I know not the year,
I have never committed my name to a birthday card for my father,
Nor did he elect to commit his name to me.
I have compiled a concise collection of facts:
As modest as a grocery list,
As neutral as bread or jam.
His brother’s name is Martin.
his penmanship was a tragedy.
In my possession are two photographs,
Taken from a distance and an odd angle,
But still I see the strange, striking resemblance,
and it is striking to resemble a stranger.”
– Kate Healey…
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I was there, a witness, saw the long-haired holy man
perform miracles in between ranting and raving.
Who cares if he smells like sheep, when one wave
of a scarred hand can bring a bus after I’ve been
waiting half an hour. Or a half-hissed prayer through
rotting teeth can provide a beautiful young woman
in a slinky red dress, also going the same way.
And what a phenomenon he has produced with
just the twist of a blood-shot eye, the squirreling
of a red nose… I have exact change and she does too.
So it really doesn’t matter that he speaks in a language
neither of us understand or that the Bible in his hand is
so battered, so dog-eared, that it begins with Psalms
and 1 Corinthians must do for Revelations.…
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