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Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Rosemarie Crisafi Robert L. Harrison Michael Lee Johnson Dipita Kwa

Joseph Lewis J. Alan Nelson Ashhok Niyogi Rod Peckman Dan Provost

Thomas D. Reynolds Iolanda Scripca Tom Sheehan Joanna M.Weston Kelley Jean White

  

 

 

 

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Slaughterhouse by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal In the slaughterhouse I was the cow, A product for consumption. I was hit in the head With a hammer. My blood flowed like a fountain. In the slaughterhouse I was the star, The main course at someone's table. I tasted good, tender, And juicy.  But When I woke up I was just a man.     Fear Comes Charging by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal Fear comes charging Without remorse. Common sense gives Way to it when Wisdom does not Respond as it Should.  Within our Hearts fear intends To take control. If it could, it Would stake its claim, Becoming a New state, making Us prisoners Inside our hearts.     All I Need by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal All I need is a tree, One with abundant leaves, A trunk bigger than mammoths To keep the sun away.   At one hundred degrees, A cool breeze would be so Welcome.  I'd find a bench As well to sit and think.   It would have to be a Wednesday, summer, in The afternoon.  I wouldn't Need anymore than this.     Always Disappearing by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal She was always disappearing.  She would go out of town Without telling anyone. She was always calling the bank Telling them she did not Want government handouts. She said she was not disabled. She would tell Social Security not to send checks. She loved to take trips.  One time she Made it to Canada. But she was turned away. She didn't have a passport and came Back home disappointed. She thought a change of address Would allow her to start her life All over.   However, Voices followed her everywhere. .     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Crows by Rosemarie Crisafi Tapping, hiding loot in the gutters. Most die in the egg. Some, fight to the death, dropping from trees.   Others fill crabapples with night and a fleeting flash of wedding bands.   Sour fruit picked clean, the caucus ends. Only cores remain.   We are not even friends anymore.     Binary Goodbye by Rosemarie Crisafi When I press Send: Sequoias blink into view, fog dripping off foliage, falling a long distance to the ground; unfelt on the forest floor wind crackles in the awning where orioles live; in the underworld, giant shadows loom, dark soldiers on gold-threaded moss. I send it all to you in an equation.     Piscialletto by Rosemarie Crisafi Weeds grow in gutters. A fire engine aria duets with ice pellet shingles. I abandon the aquarium castle. I drain the places where my mother strained linguine ribbons where Daddy paid a penny for each dandelion, piscialletto (to wet the bed), he called them, popped from soil. I unearth the taproot whole. With the patina of a photograph reflected in a mirror, I turn the key.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     The New Sport by Robert L. Harrison Let us go waterboarding you and I, it could be  Supervised  by the FBI. You go first my little dove, bend your neck and        blub,              blub,                     blub.     The Watchers by Robert L. Harrison They see me coming and going, rounding corners, crossing rhe street, waiting for the light. Sometimes I wave to them, wishing them well. But my friend once gave them the finger and now I walk alone.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Twist My Words by Michael Lee Johnson I see the spring dance all over your face in green you were arrogant before you viewed my willow tree outside my balcony. Now you wave at me with green fingers and lime smiles. You twist my words, Harvard collegiate style, right where you want them to be-- lime green, willow tree, and dark skinned branches.     If I Were Young Again by Michael Lee Johnson Piecemeal summer dies; the spread of long winter blanket again.   For ten years I have lived in exile, locked in this rickety cabin, shoulders jostled up against open Alberta sky.   If I were young again I'd sing of the coolness of high mountain snow flowers, the sprinkle of night glow-blue meadows; I would dream and stretch slim fingers into the distant nowhere, yawn slowly over the endless prairie miles.   Prairie grassland is where in summer silence grows; in the evening eagles spread wings dripping like wild honey.   If I were young again I'd eat pine cones, food of birds, share meals with wild wolves, I'd have as much dessert as wanted, reach out into blue sky, lick the clouds off my fingers.   But I'm not young anymore, my thoughts tormented, are raw, overworked, sharpened with misery from torture of war and childhood.   For ten years now I have lived locked in this unstable cabin, inside the rush of summer winds, outside air beaten dim with snow.     Bipolar by Michael Lee Johnson Awake night light jungle twisted branches of thought. One character linked to the insane personality of the other. Bipolar in a universe of singles. The fear of aloneness hearing cracks in your walls; jumbling joy of jumping into the municipal pool in Hillside, Illinois at three o'clock A.M. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone. Late to work staring at your Employer, dart split eyes. Tattered with memories dancing on the tablecloth with glee slapped on the face with a teaspoon just to feel the sadness leave. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone. Seldom ever hear happiness that doesn't sound like a fire siren camping in your eardrums. Meds crank up and crank down; moods follow the meds or do meds follow the moods? Personal wars echo words in my ears. Even during silent times the night roars like street jungles. Bipolar, bewitched, and alone.     Battered behind Dark Glasses by Michael Lee Johnson An otherwise beautiful lady with eyes matted and closed is not exactly sleeping.   The trouble goes deeper, the doctor has a laser light drill penetrating her eyes that have turned thunderstorm black with smudges of red and pink.   She tells herself this will never happen again, there will be no rebirth with him.   In idle hours she self-nurses a cave of hurts. The lights are off; her eyes are bruised and burning. In the morning, still in bed she looks in a mirror; her face thickened with puff & irony-she weeps splinter sounds.   Above her head on the lamp desk the alarm clock keep ticking, across the room, around the corner, the refrigerator keeps humming. The man who had his way is dark in her, like distant echoes embedded in a memory or shadow.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Mulatako Dance by Dipita Kwa Where are the kettledrums? The talking drums of yesterday? Flutes of bamboo and wood? Rattles for our dusty feet? Xylophones of plantain stalks and sticks? The ndenges, where are they? To exorcise the memories of pain we kept From Central African Republic to Algeria The Congo, Rwanda, still remember The life-stream in which we waded back home. We wept, watching our hope strangling In that cord of thorns of our brother’s greed Pulling down the pillars, shredding thatches Letting in the pelting rain –ruining our heritage. Yet we took heart in the stomach of darkness With despair and shame choking our lungs, We grubbed for our clay bowls and hollow horns. Today must we not eat, drink, and dance Oh, gallant land of promise Even as we sit around marble tables, taking stock of our legacy Pouring down champagne from ancestral calabashes And singing the songs of the shrine with stinking breathes While the owl weeps over the relics of our mother-values? Nanny AU, build the night fire, Hit the gong, assemble the children, Steel their hearts with tales of grandmother’s hearth Whose smoke blinded her eyes as she blew Blew and blew for today’s light and heat. Or must we now flee our soothed huts again, To stand naked in that dreadful chilling rain of misery, Hiding our shrunken manhood with skinny hands And trembling with every bark of a homeless dog? Dearest Zuku Land, grease our rusty joints For the gentle breeze of unity is blowing, Whispering to the men of Darfur to unclench those fists And join in soaring through this wind of tolerance Rekindling that flame of harmony, Throwing our dark shadows around the feet of the Iroko tree With feet so broad and thick, Sweep aside the fallen leaves, Fasten your sanjas And let’s get ready for the mulatako dance. Where are the kettledrums? The talking drums of yesterday? Flutes of bamboo and wood? Rattles for our dusty feet? Xylophones of plantain stalks and sticks? The ndenges, where are they?     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Age by Joseph Lewis An old man in a blue shirt leaves the library under the rain. Cars seem like they're melting: metallic colors oozing to the ground as the rain falls on the foliage still green until the fall. I'm riding to my end in an old car just like the man in a blue shirt leaving the library under the trees, white hair wet from the rain.     Boy on a Bike by Joseph Lewis A boy on a bike rides to a stop sign and pauses wondering where he should go. The sky turns dark over the trees. Stars come out in a distant glow. Some of them died before we were born, but there's still enough left for everyone. Like a boy on a bike near a stop sign who rides down a road under the moon.     Closings by Joseph Lewis Just as spring comes and no more songs for awhile. Still the wind, the wind whips up a frenzy, spring again, more leaves, the greenery and graduations. But I'm getting old, so's the earth, many millions, all the planets amazing, everything's in a cosmic dust storm, equally sunny and morbid, the men frown on their way to work, the women jog with clean thighs, hair flying backward in the wind, the wind, another spring, this time next year.     Anthem by Joseph Lewis Welcome to the world of things: Bill's Steak and Bar-B-Que, Little Caesar Pizza and Texaco, Hondas For Sale All Year Long! My country 'tis of no interest until the wildflowers bloom near the grand thoroughfares with the clutter of lives and days gone too soon.     Objects by Joseph Lewis These open scissors with black handles seem suspended in white marble. And this cup of cold brown coffee tells a tale of missed appointments. The salad bowl is worn from radishes or plum red tomatoes with spring lettuce. They all seem to have a life of their own, as if the owner had gone on a journey, left town with no forwarding address except for a few objects on the sink.   Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page         Mud Duck Blessing by J. Alan Nelson The river moves troubled by bright wrinkles, chaos and mystery for which Heisenberg believed God has no answer. Yet the defrocked priests still maintain God calls each one of us to be a saint despite the agonies of mathematics. A mud duck drifts in the leaves that flow into tumult. The sight alarms National Geographic. Photographers and snorkelers crowd the shore. The mud duck dives and dissolves. Form back into formlessness, verse to prose to anarchy. Blessed is the random.     Nightmare of the Old Typewriter by J. Alan Nelson Left behind by the technocrats frozen with dust on the brink of junkdom truth and lies told by the same inky keys entitled to spelling and misspelling its enchantment the letters flailed the paper, strokes, streaks and stripes now forgetting, forgotten, though the words survive.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       To Ranikhet (In the Kumaon Himalayas) by Ashok Niyogi I sense weakness in knobby knees aggravated by morning light filtered through tall pine trees winking motes of dust my hooves raised in some past when we had attempted rolling down this pine needle carpeted slope or dreamed of climbing that peak divided into three parts but that was before the snow fellows laughed before the river decided to gang up on us spill over onto this uphill mountain road disguise potholes and breed colorful fish in bowls green with reflected light from a single line of forest firs up on sunset ridge     Crickets' Chorus by Ashok Niyogi that night had Mars and Seven Sisters and the snowman’s family breathing gently into darkness which we could not see I wish there were glow worms to light our path in the aftermath of a snowline that once more had burned us in just that way     I Took a Wrong Turn by Ashok Niyogi in one of those pools I’m sure a lotus blooms just as surely as the ladybird that took the ‘air’ these roads that say “where” will stop amidst two pine clad slopes end for a bridge made years ago for rattle snakes and other animals who can grow very old like the whitewashed moon in broad daylight       Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Angel Fire by Rod Peckman As I finally quit the idea of sleep in that unfinished motel room, I drove through the freezing night into morning. Angel Fire to Estancia. Socorro down Highway 60 through Magdalena into high plains.  The ice would not melt until daybreak, as fog sucked the very earth from its surety. The first to go was the sage, fragrance trailing wakes through white haze in muffled flight. I lost Pinions in a mist dusk where mere loneliness dissolves into a white blanket horizon line. Elevation attained through a deep concentration on hypnosis. Not sleep, only a pull towards sleeping, a salubrious amnesia. Close to this crumbling earth, a white ground fog pressed her body to brown grass and dry sand. A mountain pass leading to a more faded memory burning through like a midmorning sun. The day grows bright and I can't hide here in this light, as fog lets its grip and the ground soon bakes.     Morning on the Balcony with__ by Rod Peckman Hiding under the shadow of cattails, we almost didn't spot it. The blue heron, wings wide, an arrhythmia between inertia and flight. In flight your hand carves air in the space between us, and I feel this pull lift body from earth and soar. This good morning a lake steams its warmth against cool air exhaling smoke. This bare September of  stillness and love making that is futile but for shock it brings, as if we broke the glassy surface. Coffee on the balcony as dark wings flow the air. He glides below the tops of the stunted alders on the small island just offshore. I've kayaked there, fighting the blackberry vines, trampling the dry underbrush, checking each step for the nests of ducks hidden in the tan grass. Their eggs are like polished stones against the thick greasy earth (we must, at any cost, protect the children). On our cold perch, your hand glides down my neck, and eyes close dreaming an empty true space. Somewhere between steam and air. Between stolen hours. Beyond sad soiled grace, and a remonstrance that will not sink. The heron glides through white breath, vaporous against the cool air. I see you only through wisps of haze until the soft curve of your neck lifts in flight against my hand. Another morning you may visit or not, skim the surface and then fly, moving on as we know you must, bringing the birds back  as steam surely float surface.     Paper Scissors Rock by Rod Peckman Your hand is a place I put my tongue Long and slowly curving the creases lining your life. Your wrist a blank slate I claim as my salt white canvass. I kiss this moment with paint, Lacking a proper brush. Mouth along purple blue veins, I tell the contours of our fortune. Imperfectly.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Indecisive by Dan Provost and what we seek… and what we find… in small cursive in large doorways that lead where? I do not know… and then what? where will we be? When the neutral zone becomes our home and the body wears out and the tears stop for a millisecond… we stare hard into                        into… what? I do not know. and the introspective people will walk with their heads down and the blind will beg for one day of sight Sight of what? I do not know. and the winners who sleep in the blades of grass and the losers who file excess baggage for a living the holy rollers the penny arcade dressers what will become of them? I do not know. I cannot say… I do not know…       A History Lesson During a Bout with Insomnia by Dan Provost At 4 AM, Lonesome Joe told me a tale about how George Patton and the beloved Ike Eisenhower used their military connections to keep General Omar Bradley out of the politics. His eyes welled while remembering the “The Soldier’s General,” gazing at the illuminated clock that stood atop City Hall. “General Bradley could have been president”, he whispered between tears that streamed down mapped skin… “We would have never gone to Korea and some of my best friends would still be alive!” Both he and I rested on a clammy, sticky bench-surrounded with the other disinherited homeless that called Worcester Commons home. Joe’s love for Bradley never vanquished. He has kept a vigil for the General for more than fifty years. “A great man…a great man”, he continued to mutter--even after I got up and watched the light of day beginning to kiss the night. Such dedication deserves some sort of reward I thought to myself, so I asked Lonesome Joe if he needed a twenty to get something to eat. “No, no son,” he said, smiling sadly. He clutched his cane and wandered away, adjusting his blue sweater around slumped shoulders. Time has passed since my conversation with Lonesome Joe, I still have difficulty sleeping and often I will wander to  the Commons-- just to sit down on another clammy bench to think, observe, or just wonder the purpose of it all. I have heard new tales from other vanquished citizens about marriages that have fallen apart, loss of jobs and  homes, deaths of brothers and mothers. But I never saw Joe again…and never again did I hear his love for one man, during one fragment of time that  probably nobody wants to remember.     Underground Movie Director by Dan Provost The famous movie director is still known to use the greatest emotional prop in the world. The Loner… The Anti-Hero… The Iconoclast Genius Dipped in Kwell for crabs and drained of tears from understanding the nature of the world. The director can envision the walk, the stare, and the blindness from the glare of the sun, But he cannot bleed the emotion of those who live real-                              Live in isolation without                              a trace of lust for commonness… He can portray the actions and move the angles of the camera to influence a judgmental audience. But he cannot wipe the raindrops off sleep-deprived eyes at 4 AM, when an innocent man, who’s only crimes are fear and hate-walks among the cities insomniacs. Simple endings are for Roger Ebert. Difficult deaths are for those whom do not share the dream.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Hermit by Thomas D. Reynolds Has a life so far From civilization Begun wasting my frame?   The glove’s fingers Appear too long now, Flapping at the ends.   And my dark coat Bulges in the middle, Shoulders inching down.   Maybe it is my diet Of boiled beans And hard tack?   Or the fever Sprung from the soil In the last thaw?   Or like fat off a bone, The removal of All excess,   Layers of pride And small talk Peeled away.   A crooked birch block Stripped of bark And with a sharp knife   On dark nights Lit only by a cold Thin tallow,   Whittled down To a smooth Hard peg.       Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       Trusting Spring by Iolanda Scripca I don't have time to watch it more —the crooked clock of ironed past— I don't believe I can feel spring Unless I grab your hand and jump   Together in the blossom maze Perhaps we bring ourselves alive In poison-free redwoods up north And secret Jacaranda wonders.   If eyes don't open—I understand You don't need them to see our Heaven But bear with me for falling seconds And hope cocoons will burst and open   I sprout again through solid pavement Against the reconstruction site And I do know I can bring spring Together with your warmth from Heaven.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     The Weeder by Tom Sheehan The azalea’s been drab since the year I scissored it and carried off wild loose laces in the wheelbarrow. The single maple tree, double-trunked, porched, split- leveled by a house without basement, keeps a squirrel out of sight. Bluejays, in the high rushes of its limbs, careen all daylight while my grandfather knobs at weeds with thumbed fingers, knuckled joints. When he kneels, patella prismed with near-orange pain, unsure of rising again, the jays jangling his ears, he pretends he does not see me seeing him. His gray felt hat’s worn like a half-mast pennant, his ankle-highs elaborate of cow and a matter of tanning bark. He is unsure of weed or flower, and clears space because it is space, a neatness that, after all, will grow again no matter how he treats it. I have seen other old men, cleaning bricks, sweeping walks, carving wood into nothing, just to keep old hands moving in daylight. He posts the sun high over house, narrows it into noon, marks for boiled potato and a single shot of rye as brown as his belt. He’s faithful as time. When he looks at me, it’s never sidelong or indirect, he speaks not of weather, never asks what hour it is. He hears the lonely loon, the frog bloating, the sun hiss.     Cabot Trail Liaison by Tom Sheehan In a blue nightdress a woman leans on a Cape Bretton porch, steaming coffee cup in one hand, the other hand shading her eyes. She survives fog and heights, a buoy bell out and beyond, what night has left behind, what debris waves wash up. Passing by, we acknowledge her steep privacy, then note, not yet connected, a pale lone sunflower leaning with her.      Night Forgery by Tom Sheehan Just before dawn a shadow makes tracks in the dew-lit grass. Later, a whisper and a scent follow the forsaken imprints. Not a leaf stirs, but if I watch closely, blades of grass ease upright, a loam granule is released to airs staggering under stars, and the whisper, vague, is familiar, perhaps stripped from gists of old conversations. Years ago, at a Red Sox game, I became separated from my father. All the goblins of young creation hung over my hysteria, poked at my terror. When he found me, pawed, frayed, diminished, he said he'd never leave me again. This soft forging in the night grass is a kept word, a vow.     Remnants by Tom Sheehan My grandfather ran the city dump, burned clinkers in a little house he made of scrap. On cold nights drunks slept in that makeshift haven. They knew the welcome of his fire, the monger’s stove to wrap around, hot curbing to prop cold feet, quick difference from the frozen air, wind-swept railroad tracks, bare entry ways, darkness where howling ghosts abide or, last resort, slim cardboard wrap. The lost, lonely birds came to roost, flew in at dusk. He stoked the fire to stir up flames, dried their feathers off. Just as often he left his lunch about like tasty suet hanging in the yard. On Saturdays I brought his lunch, dense laminates of meat and bread, thick and heavy and coarse as sin, brown banana we would not eat, molasses-brown coffee in whiskey bottles wound about with paper bags. I never saw even one pint bottle finished off within his grasp, rarely saw his small hand feeling inside a paper bag. His birds did the picking, had suet choice, hens dining before the cock. When he died they came to grieve the savior of their awful nights, the drunken, besotted, brothered band who so often drained his cup, mottle-skinned, so soured of life, pale host, the warred upon and beaten, they came to cache the little man who offered what was left of God.     The Semaphore in Sunlight Flew by Tom Sheehan All the darkness came at once, hooded over us like a bird shadowing its wings above shallow water snails, river’s white meat in the lesser turbulence. Brine trudged sure as a peddler in the thick handfuls of August air, a resolute plodding from point to point, looking for a place to put down its head, to call it quits for one more night. On nights like this, me safe abed, thought to be hidden from temptation, my father slipped from the house to fish off the moving sands of Plum Island, seeking the dream fish, the gargantuan striper in from the Banks, the Bass Behemoth. I’d seen him go a hundred times and never called his name, never dreamed of entering his dream, content to hear the clanking going out of the tackle box and the music coming back, lead weights shifting noisily, the handle cranky in his hand, dark waders rubbing knees. While he was off over the hill, red tail- light faded like a cast cigarette, house silent again down through the granite base, sisters dreaming of that other torture, brother building bridges, spans, in his head, mother a soul at her honest sleep, I laid his line out across the salty steeps, drove his hook into the maelstrom of eyes and mouths agape in the netherworld, pulled the tackle taut and lively to hand, dreamed my father was me being my father, shivered in boots for him, gasped. Once I fell asleep while he was gone, then for hours listened for the tackle box to give off its signals, its telling tales clanking him home safely from the sea, and feared him into nasty depths, shark bait, waders at once too heavy for the going. I slipped down to their room. The sun froze on their lovemaking, at once icicled and starred the memorable arc, which, in morning’s madness, flew for me, flew like semaphores in the sunlight.     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page       April by Joanna M. Weston is poetry month when words cut earth and scatter sunlight with piercing green when sonnets stir and crack frozen rivers and haiku swell in trees to flower between leaf and leaf when poems sing on my tongue - paper is seeded and breaks into ballad     What We Used To Know by Joanna M. Weston there used to be a post office-general store in a red brick two-up two-down building on the only street     a pub at the one end     school at the other farm-workers in the houses in between the ‘60’s took the post office with cut-backs then we bought stamps and groceries three miles                     east but the pub roared most nights and the church in fields a mile west kept a few faithful decades later I grow roses in the same hamlet with commuters as neighbours - soldiers and labourers turned white collar with two cars, two TVs and children in boarding school       Birch by Joanna M. Weston birch bark curls around my wrist the smell of damp earth coils the air spring calls me to rise and hang leaves     For Emma by Joanna M. Weston eyes so dark they go out into night trap the flight of ravens and carry it back into morning awake and crying to be queen for the day small enough her years to play on new-mown grass crowned by pink hat mantled in striped shirt under an arch of joined hands she does not know she rules earth with the lift of an eyelash - that her smile raises sunflowers in winter     Return to Poetry Return to Top of  Page     Clean by Kelley Jean White Down to 87 pounds—my father, my ex-marine, battling his image in the mirror, in the mirrored door of the shower stall, and I had no choice but to battle him, me, the draft dodger pacifist, he, the decorated combat vet; I had to lift him into the shower, the two of us naked, his stubble against my beard, and you’d think I’d be the stronger but those wiry popeye tattooed arms— perhaps it was will, sheer force of will and I hadn’t the will to strike him, more than once his fists bloodied his own face, and mine, and of course to take a razor in my hand to shave him who had always been clean- shaven. I was afraid, whispering ‘it’s me dad, I’m out here,’ afraid as I’d been of his rifle and hunting knife, knife I keep now in a locked cabinet. No knives here. Nothing sharp Only glass to break.     Caged by Kelley Jean White I twist my sprung jaw to see my ripping flesh. It is painful, this splitting of self, this baring of new   underskin to needles of air and damp, this opening of fragile blood vessels to sun, the peeling of my eyes.   You take horror from my gaped mouth, its hunger for air, my fixed bone breath working, birthing   myself from within. See how I have let my long muscle unreel and still. You do not peel. Your birth is once,    one skin. I do not want to grow anymore. I will not eat. Fast. I’ll keep my safe skin. Dry rattle bone.     Cold Duck by Kelley Jean White We’d lost the keys in the apple orchard savages in blue jeans and t-shirts scrabbling through windfall and bruised fruit and oozing bee-sweet smears—   Bobby hot-wired the car got us home to four wine glasses on the table a cake with 16 candles two teenage couples and a bucket of KFC   It was ‘sparkling wine’ we drank it dry drove to the empty darkness of Liberty Hill   I was jail bait--sixteen (and eight hours) the boy was eighteen wild and gamey and from out of town   The midnight cop flashed high beams in the driver’s side window Fumbling hooks and eyes we bargained with the cop He wouldn’t tell our fathers this time   My mother waited up alone she would have beat me if she could but she was tired, crying, they’d been so worried the boy left I cried too   She was sobbing Didn’t we know the wine was just a gesture for the sweet sixteen? We were just supposed to have a couple sips?   The bottle just filled the glasses. What else were we supposed to think?   I went to sleep dreaming bees and sticky hands in two years my mother will tell me that was the night my father betrayed her that she knew but she didn’t know   My sixteenth birthday, an empty bottle and he said he’d go out and find me but he took our neighbor and began his long affair   Downfall by Kelley Jean White you knew me too well you choose as wedding gift: (pre-microwave) hot air popper spewing out an endless stream   funny how my plastic surgeon husband used it as a surrogate for fat: buttery gobs all over the living room rug our baby girl laughing with the vacuum cleaner:   his slide illustration for liposuction     Dead Cat in Chinatown by Kelley Jean White we are always stepping over something: Bok Choy browning at the edges of a puddle, okra oozed to muddy mucous, broken crates daubed with feathers, soft banana boxes, cracked crab shells;   I know he’s dead, but I hope he’s sleeping, gray and white cat stretched on his side in a yard of potato peels and fallen rain. The blacktop is cracked, we are on the sidewalk, hurrying like everyone   here, I point but slow, small for only your eyes, call just your attention there, just past the steam bubbling from the back kitchen door, the men squatting to smoke, ‘don’t let the children   see’ and you say ‘your children already know about suffering,’ yes, we pass Lucky Cat and Golden Plastic Buddha smiling with upraised hands in everywindow: you can’t cover suffering   but it is mother’s day, I don’t want to be the one who comforts, all I ask is that we walk the other sidewalk on the way home

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