by L Ellebeth Decker
You sell bad love like that arms dealer.
They say
he’s been caught; they say they’ll
extradite.
You peddle your goods here
every late night but mornings bring me damage; decay.
Through whittled walls you crouch,
and crawl,
and lie
to meet the dozen dozed tunnels you’ve dug;
you cover your tracks
with finely sewn rugs
and Marilyn posters flailing
good-
The other women call me to compare
notes on where you’ve been,
plane tickets you’ve bought,
wombs you’ve left
pocked with your pellets, fraught
with soft evidence
they’ve purchased your ware.
Yet; we buyers,
wounded, without an alliance
beckon you from warzone porches; urge dalliance.
Meditations of a Woman at Her Piano
by L Ellebeth Decker
He must have been a really wild guy:
Schubert.
Women—so many
or just the one—
the notes he played now
and again
to quiet open palms with
curves of warm flesh
after cool ivory.
The syphilis might have driven him mad
but he had his music.
He might have been composing
questions
in his nightclothes when the fever struck
him to arrange Der Döppelganger.
Döppelganger.
He might have said it,
just so—tongue tripping over p’s,
the graceful “l” leading into the guttural ending.
His own ending, mercurial:
the rising rose spots
around his chest;
a panic eye on his manuscript
as pink flesh
stabbed furiously at black keys
grasped for an octave higher, reached
for another Schubert—a döppelganger—
one to write a new movement.
by L Ellebeth Decker
We all want to be the boom-
sings the band as it marches past.
Everyone freezes at these things, but
coats peel from children like unripe bananas
anyway. The mothers just nod, wrap
scarves tighter as their eyes flash
bright in candy colors.
The queen rides on carnations—
Pepto pink. Her hand
slices little holes in the cold
air draped around her shoulders.
Soldiers tread in step
bomp, bomp, bomp.
They are heroes to the little boys
and mothers. Tears drop on the
paved road along with clitter-
Girl Scouts sit, legs crossed,
on a float filled with cookies while
the youngest pees her pants
and cries. The high school baseball players
throw candy at teen girls, who think—
wah, wah, wah—
they are too old for this.
The children dance in the streets. They exist
but they don’t know; they just dance,
and the mothers smile and move
their hips under their coats.
by L Ellebeth Decker
When one has a lump, one thinks of nothing else.
In this dream, my hand is always reaching
for another hand
drawing it to my breast
saying
feel, here it is, my own lump.
It’s always a crowded room—this dream—
a dinner party
wine or scotch in my left hand
a pink breast in my right.
The weather’s been quite lovely
here, we’ve lived on the porch all fall
and
yes, of course, would you like to feel it?
It’s not the same—this dream—
as the ones in college:
sweater undone, nipples
erect, photographers flashing everywhere.
In this dream, the faces are never clear
but the hands, warm,
and I’m giddy, when I share
with the strange man and his wife.
by Jezy Gray
Like a lover’s stench, I remember my first:
in a wood behind my parents’ house,
the metallic lakewater sheen of the virgin swallow,
a slow warmth spreading in my chest like a hand.
There were others later, sure:
in parked cars, moving cars,
in bleachers after football games,
Fall’s first chill behind my ears.
Lit by the streetlamps’ buzzing orbs,
some friends and me, red-
we sent empties clanging down unpeopled aisles,
laughing like the Possessed with pretty girls.
Still, though, I remember my first:
even now, here by a dark window,
gulping thick yawps of something slow-
a mealy taste like burned coffee moving south.
In moments like this moment
I am struck with the weight of a memory,
like a sudden gleam, like a bolt,
or a fist crashing through plaster.
A Midwestern Meadow in Early Autumn
by Tracy Haught
Wan sky curtained in indigo,
A blueprint of serenity,
Shaded with the depth
Of darkness and light.
The universe holding me and
Me holding the universe.
I’m waiting for the moon,
Savoring this spell.
As the strain dissipates
I bathe in the blur
Of Idleness,
Muzzling time with a blade of dead grass.
Eyes fluttering lethargic
Under the weight of the sun.
Flesh glowing— a cloak of warm silk,
Like the light upon me.
Embracing all,
Wanting none.
This is where I go to remember.
by Tracy Haught
I avoid the living area,
Not much living takes place there,
More like the just existing area.
I opt for the long hallways,
Lined with open doors,
A sleeping profile in an easy chair.
The living area holds them prisoner
In the cup of its hand
The frailest collapsing,
Giving in to the stronghold of sleep.
Eyes shut against the glare
Of reality.
Resting with head hung forward, or fallen back,
Like a sleepy soldier on his way back from war
Mouth open unashamedly.
Left behind by all who matter,
You try not to think how you’ve outlived them all:
Husbands, wives, friends, pets,
Thirty years some have been gone,
Your address book lie untouched.
Even your youngest relatives are in homes now.
Collapsed on the communal couch
In a living room not your own,
Only the loyal walker at your side.
And the man who always sits near the exit
Staring at nothing in particular,
Watching dust particles hovering in afternoon light.
Waiting for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,
Waiting for a potential visitor,
A change, a smile.
But saddest of all,
You are the one who always sits alone in your room,
Door shut all but a crack.
by Tracy Haught
This land of dried grass
Wasn’t always blonde and voluptuous.
Before your daddy’s daddy,
And his daddy’s daddy, there was
Color that ran free in all directions.
Before the pale man
Pieced and pawned off the plains.
Where sunset flames
On the western horizon
Like the sparks of a past pain.
Like those who were forced
To walk until they could no longer be
What God intended them to be.
The only abundance was in tears—
Plenty enough for future irrigation—
But mostly they’ve been forgotten,
Overlooked in the stomping and clapping,
The humdrum of the average life,
Where one doesn’t notice that
Pallid ponds lie dry—
The river has given up finding its way—
And the dancers lie dormant—
Beneath the glaring charms of progress.
Because Today Isn’t Good Enough
by Tracy Haught
Thousands died today,
But it wasn’t here,
So we didn’t hear,
About the swollen sorrow
Surrounding the survivors.
The tear soaked flesh
The cries trapped thick
Like a tumor in their throats,
Lodged and growing,
Throbbing so they can’t forget,
Or ever be the same again.
And we don’t see that
We’re also drowning
Stuck in the muck of convenience,
Too comfortable for God,
Sucked into the scuttle and swallow of
Acquisition,
Our constant demand
For personal satisfaction
Dictating a life unworthy
In the eyes of Bentham or Mill.
While the fog of waste grows thicker
And the world burns,
We’re upgrading,
Because today isn’t good enough,
Tomorrow has cheapened its value.
The sky is screaming—
Rattling the windows—
It’s the constant tap of God
Coming down in sheets
Of indeterminable color,
A vast chill of nighttime damp.
If we were standing in the elements
He’d be tapping us on both shoulders,
Maybe then we’d get it
Instead of turning our heads away,
Turning up the volume,
Encouraging the Bludgeoning
Of our consciousness,
The covert hypnotic seduction,
The constant lulling distraction,
Mass media and malls,
Super sweet dreams made of plastic,
All on sale this weekend only.
Where we’ll be tomorrow,
While the tears outside our borders go unnoticed
In our rush to get “there”
We’ll only pause to curse the reception.
by Chris Piercy
our fathers destroyed in the long ground
into the tunnel: my mother, my heart
my mother’s heart still beats
a poetic meter
my heart cicatrized
my brain straining still too far
too far for “blank”
to fondle words foreign
and to drip paint across another canvas
by Chris Piercy
it is cold
and my feet feel like ______
this winter i resign myself
to tip tapping
across frozen ponds
to bang a gong
loosen the icicles
and learn to dance to their crash songs
to sit patiently
waiting to thaw
by Chris Piercy
The incomplete man—
celestial.
We are fire and waiting,
asymmetrical hearts all.
Warmth spun by the word
or breeze off the wing:
all things stretched for,
all things within reach.
That first flesh lick of fruit
or the first breath of Spring,
after gasping through Winter’s clenched jaws,
when the dust caked legends of love
crackle as the page is turned.
When all again seems infinite,
when all is Om.
by Chris Piercy
A goose pimple or a goose step
a cooked goose
loose ends.
Whispers turned to kissing turned
to acid reflux dinner dates
garnish my plate
if you catch my drift.
I was a beached whale
on her trash dump
with waves doing that vulgar crash
a surfboard in my ass.
Brain cells leaping all dolphin-
or whatever.
You rebel
you speedy running-
with your symbolic wings
getting feathers all over my…stuff.
Animal metaphors (mixed)
let loose
in a whore zoo poem
blah blah blah.
Back into the ocean
trash whale.
Exhale.
by Homère Selavy
You observe the endless horizon of tomorrow,
Ephemeral, chameleonic,
And while laying it on the contrary side
Of the balance
Occurs the stubborn, sand-
Of yesterday
The night accompanies you in this your point.
Babies cry at a distance, drunkards sing
Their so long cruel world.
Through the windows filter stealthy
The heap of blotchy images,
Of colors and senses of touch
So distant and so adjacent:
Unsuspected smells of
Shit and madness underneath
The starry night of nature in frenzy
And then you ask yourself, with forced humility
With postponed kinetic,
Where does it belong –
The dirt beneath your fingernails.
What symbols are written
In the scales of your skin
For once upon a time
There was a planet that,
Tired of rotating raised his sight
To other courses.
Once upon a time there was
An unknown poet who, hungry,
Raised his sight
From his book of verses.
And the distances that exhaust
In our modern times can
No longer cope with the assemblage
Of this carnival of disconcerts
That unfold abysses in intimacy.
And a transient virgin asks herself
With forced humility,
With postponed kinetic,
Where does it belong,
Where does it belong
For you were happy in the cold,
Condescending in the heat.
For you have observed the horizon,
Nebulous, pattern-
But you have been unable
To step aside from the I
For outside men die, children play,
Lovers make love.
The poor freezes
And the rich lies under the sun
Outside your cathedrals get confused
Each time that you cross
The indefinite portal of memory
To be approached by
Red lips and you don’t know
To whom they belong
To whom they belong
At the end you discuss politics with your shadow
With the tiles you play chess.
A hut hanging from its hook
Annoys you
With the much practical question of how,
With your poetry, you intend to buy bread
For, once upon a time an indefinite person,
Had the audacity to measure itself
Against the questions of where
Does it belong –
The dirt beneath your fingernails.
What symbols are hidden
In the scales of your skin.
by Debbie Smith
And how was your weekend…I ask,
my naïve voice and all too happy smile
flashing with my teacher black skirt,
wrinkle free shirt and shiny red nails.
I half listen as they stream in
ready to hear about mall antics,
parties without parents, new cell phones,
dads home for R & R.
What I hear instead stops my heart,
weakens my knees and chills my arms.
Don’t you know Miss? Didn’t you hear?
James is gone. Russian Roulette. He lost.
In calm, just-
they spill their story, the version they know.
Sentences overlap, details vary, facts are imparted,
the plot unfolds like a just-
Then one by one the voices fall silent.
The tough, callused, apathetic eyes
look up to me as they patiently wait
for the teacher to teach, to explain the unexplainable.
