Ben

by David Budbill

You can see him in the village almost anytime.
He's always on the street.
At noon he ambles down to Jerry's
in case a trucker who's stopped by for lunch
might feel like buying him a sandwich.
Don't misunderstand, Ben's not starving;
he's there each noon because he's sociable,
not because he's hungry.
He is a friend to everyone except the haughty.

There are at least half a dozen families in the village
who make sure he always has enough to eat
and there are places
where he's welcome to come in and spend the night.

Ben is a cynic in the Greek and philosophic sense,
one who gives his life to simplicity
seeking only the necessities
so he can spend his days
in the presence of his dreams.

Ben is a vision of another way,
the vessel in this place for
ancient Christian mystic, Buddhist recluse, Taoist hermit.
Chuang Tzu, The Abbot Moses, Meister Eckhart,
Khamtul Rimpoche, Thomas Merton—
all these and all the others live in Ben, because

in America only a dog
can spend his days
on the street or by the river
in quiet contemplation
and be fed.

An Auto-da-fé

I have nothing to recant, I am just
the decanter. You, the just destroyer,
have in faith become the role, recalling
for those gathered the noble fallen
with a prayer to his-grace-above-fire,
("Turn me, I'm burnt on that side")
St. Lawrence. Well done, I applaud.
And you: Well executed.

This is it. Not much else to await
when our fates touch: I've nowhere to be
but eternity, you've nothing to catch
but the thatch. Dry on dry,
we keep our wits about us ...
no one to meet but our match.

Kevin McFadden

Two Poems

What She Called the Blood Jet

The cabinet of love has only two doors,
in and out. There are four rooms.
In the first, screw top bottles and foil strips
hold brilliantly coloured answers.
The second holds something French
to do with herbs and truffle.
The third has the memory of childhood
and here, last of all, like mica, like mercury,
lies the present. It is a muscle. It is meat.

Familiar Object Seen from an Unusual Angle

Maybe it's the surface of the moon, pocky as rind, foreign,
or rain, on the beaches of childhood,
making holes in the sand, the 007 kind, splashy,

or the cross-hatched stars on your hand growing older,
or the real things, sparking still, as they cool,
it's how they twinkle, how we wonder what they are.

Maura Dooley

Song

by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Listen: there was a goat’s head hanging by ropes in a tree.

All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it

Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing

The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then

They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat’s head

Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly

The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away

Beside which the goat’s headless body lay. Some boys

Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined.

The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they

Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school

And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything.

The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks.

The head called to the body. The body to the head.

They missed each other. The missing grew large between them,

Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until

The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies

Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills.

Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder,

Sang long and low until the morning light came up over

The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped....

The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named

The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after

The night’s bush of stars, because the goat’s silky hair

Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit.

The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night

She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train’s horn

Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke

To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang

Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats.

She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily

That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming

Made it so. But one night the girl didn’t hear the train’s horn,

And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat

Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm

Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain

Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone

Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called

To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called

And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling

Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides

Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat’s body

By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles

At the goat’s torn neck. Then somebody found the head

Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take

These things away so that the girl would not see them.

They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat.

They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear

Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke....

But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have

Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they

Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job,

Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark.

What they didn’t know was that the goat’s head was already

Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn’t know

Was that the goat’s head would go on singing, just for them,

Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen,

Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would

Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees

Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There

Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song,

The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call.

Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song

Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.

Two Poems

Nonfiction

I make my pancakes from scratch,
mind you

but the decorative arts in general
leave me cold

Consequently I know
very little of the world.

That's the way they greet me—
that's the way they have always

greeted me:
a fire in the eyes

and dedication
to the experience
in the moment.

The Good-Enough Mother

rolling ball of thunder

discomfited by
change of venue

It's better to have a feeling
than a thought—

I got overheard
I got overexcited

Snow fell on the ground
making the heavens warmer.

He sneezed twice,
and lay on the ground also,

lazily sketching an angel's
wings with his wings.

Rebecca Wolff

Do You Doha?

A river of milk flows gently down the Howard Street gutter
Because it's a fine warm day in Sag Harbor
And someone upstream is washing a car.
I picture a Texan—Christian name Lamar—
Who snips off the end of a Cuban cigar
And lovingly lights up in Doha, Qatar,
Which young oilmen like him pronounce Doha, Cutter.
It's the Salt Flats of Utah in the Persian Gulf, but utter.
The emir is richer than melted butter.
Bumps and bubbles of white snot in the bone marrow look like an ice flow of hot
The way the universe was just before it expanded a lot.
You never know what disease you'll get, or you've already got.
It's your asteroid coming to get you, only for now it's smaller than a dot.
I'm an aging boy. I never grew up. I'm glued to the spot.

Adam in Eden is summertime Gloucestershire,
But riding to hounds in winter is really the glory here.
If it's strictly speaking illegal these days to chase a fox, they do not care.
If life is a matter of daring to do, they dare.
Lamar flies like the wind on the one he likes, the fiery mare.
She jumps a fence.
She doesn't care if it makes sense.
She leaps a ditch behind the pack.
Her thundering insolent brilliance will only attack.
I am thinking of your bad back and the stunning diagnosis.
I google multiple myeloma. I brace for the prognosis.
Yesterday you found out.
The sun rose today and the birds in the trees woke with a shout.
The Sag Harbor Tree Fund will plant many more memorial trees, no doubt.

I wouldn't recommend Stage III multiple myeloma.
The patient ends up screaming or in a coma.
Yes, the remissions can be quite exciting.
The question is, who is doing the accepting and who is doing the inviting.
Irrepressible plasma cells chitter-chatter away on their cell phones
While malignantly breaking your bones.
I personally would rather have non-small cell lung Ca.
Isn't that a wonderful name, itself a medical-language holiday?
Here's a pun—It took my breath away! Lung cancer? Breath away?
Outside, I can see through the window it is actually a nice day.
In the American manner, a visitor leaving the Visitors elevator says, Have a nice day!
I think of the Stradivarius fiddle I held this morning that made me want to pray.
I used to play.
That's what I'm trying to say.

Act your age!
I don't have to. I won't. You can't make me. I'm in an absolute rage.
I walk on stage.
The other ELVES are Gentry Shelton,
Raymond Sunderman, Harry Monteith, Harry Mathews, Alex Netchvolodoff,
James Hearne, Monroe Roberts III,
Paul Chandeysson, John Neiger III.
BEARS are Henry Pflager, Neil Horner, John Curtis, John Sutter, John Lewis,
Jan Bosman, Norfleet Johnston, George von Schrader.
BUNNIES: Teddy Simmons, Billy Crowell, Walter Shipley.
BLUEBIRDS: Nat Green, Joe Larimore.
ROBINS: Hord Hardin, August Busch III, Ralph Sansbury.
DANDELIONS, VIOLETS, ROSES: Little girls in various poses.
Titless teases and their diseases.

Boys and girls in Pakistan,
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan,
Are sweeter far than marzipan,
And that includes the Taliban.
Sunni and Shia fulfill God's plan.
Afghanistan, Iraq,
Children on timers go tock-tick, tick-tock.
A boy is instructed by his parents, who are not peasants.
They pray with the child and give him compliments and presents.
Their son is sweeter to them than honey.
The parents receive martyr money.
We are ten thousand miles from my childhood in St. Louis.
St. Louis didn't do this.
St. Louis never knew this.

I know it was you who vomited on the chintz, Seidel.
You will never be invited to this house again, and just as well.
My wife and myself wish you well.
It will not end well.
She will follow you to hell.
The butler has gone to answer the front doorbell.
We are gentlemen here. No one here is a Jew or a queer.
I value sincerity: I know you are sincere.
Warren Beatty told Mary Kirby he liked candor.
Mary Kirby told Warren Beatty she gave good candor.
I remember dirt roads for the horsemen and the maroon perfume of summer roses.
Little girls grown up, and little boys, in various poses,
My music shows ye have your closes,
And all must die.

La Cina è vicina. China is near.
The butler returns to say the hearse is here. The ushers for the groom appear.
I give a toast, so brief that I sit down before anyone knows
I've given it, to no applause. God knows
It's odd to cry, with no one listening, my seagull cry.
Children wonder why one has to die.
It doesn't mean gulls are really crying when they cry in the sky.
Lamar can try to live forever. It's a poem. Why not try?
I flip a switch. The flowers wake with a shout. The trees immediately turn green.
Night dives like a submarine
As day breaks through the surface with its conning tower and power to preen.
On all sides of Sag Harbor Village is water—my little darling Doha in the desert!
Do you Doha? Do you knowa how to Doha?
La Cina è vicina. It is time to say Aloha.

Frederick Seidel

Fault

by Ron Koertge

In the airport bar, I tell my mother not to worry.
No one ever tripped and fell into the San Andreas
Fault. But as she dabs at her dry eyes, I remember
those old movies where the earth does open.

There's always one blonde entomologist, four
deceitful explorers, and a pilot who's good-looking
but not smart enough to take off his leather jacket
in the jungle.

Still, he and Dr. Cutie Bug are the only ones
who survive the spectacular quake because
they spent their time making plans to go back
to the Mid-West and live near his parents

while others wanted to steal the gold and ivory
then move to Los Angeles where they would rarely
call their mothers and almost never fly home
and when they did for only a few days at a time.

Shanked on the Red Bed
by Susan Wheeler
The perch was on the roof, and the puck was in the air. The diffident were driving, and the daunted didn't care. When I came out to search for you the lauded hit the breeze On detonated packages the bard had built to please. The century was breaking and the blame was on default, The smallest mammal redolent of what was in the vault, The screeches shrill, the ink-lines full of interbred regret— When I walked out to look for you the toad had left his net. The discourse flamed, the jurors sang, the lapdog strained its leash— When I went forth to have you found the tenured took the beach With dolloped hair and jangled nerves, without a jacking clue, While all around the clacking sound of polished woodblocks blew. When I went out to look for you the reductions had begun. A demento took a shopgirl to a raisin dance for fun, And for you, for me, for our quests ridiculous and chaste The lead sky leered in every cloud its consummate distaste. The mayors queued for mug shots while the banner rolled in wind That beat at bolted windows and bore down upon the thin, And everywhere warped deliverers got bellicose and brave, When I walked out to find you in the reconstructed rave. The envelopes were in the slots and paperweights were flung. When I came down to seek you out the torrents had begun To rip the pan from handle and horizons from their shore, To rip around your heady heart looking there for more.

Advice to Young Poets

by Martin Espada

Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head

Letters from Exile—II

by Hemant Mohapatra

http://www.eclectica.org/v13n3/mohapatra.html

how it adds up

what they don't tell you
is how it all ends. sure it was
spring:
volcanoes exploding
in the opposite hemisphere. moon
was igneous and adrift
while they cheered
your airship dreams of love
and you felt soft
and scared like a child
lowered into a well or some balloon
returning to a vast ocean.
you are in the kitchen
peeling garlic when it sneaks up
while the pots
stutter
boil
burn
and you hate it.
you hate it. you hate how it comes
from all directions
like breathless rhinos
chasing clouds you are already old
pushing this perpetual engine
of grief waiting at the window
for that letter to arrive three years
late so you
could write back "come home
my love, see how your departure
has unbalanced this air."
but it is now summer and no one writes
to you anyway
so you
just keep on waiting.

[Apologies for the lost formatting. I can't make Blogger do it. Go here for the original and effective formatting: http://www.eclectica.org/v13n3/mohapatra.html ]

[This is not a solicitous post. I really do like this one. -me]

Respite

by Jane Hirshfield

Day after quiet day passes.
I speak to no one besides the dog.
To her,
I murmur much I would not otherwise say.

We make plans
then break them on a moment's whim.
She agrees;
though sometimes bringing
to my attention a small blue ball.

Passing the fig tree
I see it is
suddenly huge with green fruit,
which may ripen or not.

Near the gate,
I stop to watch
the sugar ants climb the top bar
and cross at the latch,
as they have now in summer for years.

In this way I study my life.
It is,
I think today,
like a dusty glass vase.

A little water,
a few flowers would be good,
I think;
but do nothing. Love is far away.
Incomprehensible sunlight falls on my hand.

From Her Notes

by Nomi Stone

My last Sabbath,

I follow the girls, who sneak into

the wedding

tent, scattered with sun

flower seeds and remnants of

celebration. They

each stand up on a

table. Take a crushed beer can

as a microphone,

sing and move their

fifteen-year-old hips. I watch,

clap for them, until

a small face peers in

the door. A boy. His face white

with something. The door

slamming, his very small

fist holding it shut, having

found what was inside

wrong. Enough, I tell

him; enough! He leaves. The girls

dance again, but less

bold. Look: the boy

has come back, is looking you

hard in the eye, through

the crack of the door.

There, in his hand, a neon

plastic BB

gun. He does this for

his grandmother and for his

son.

Cantaloupe

by Lee Robinson

Friday I sniffed it
in the grocery store, turned it
in my hands, looking
for bruises
in the rough, webbed rind.
My mother's voice—the one
I carry always in my head—
pronounced it fine. Ripe,
but not too soft.

I bagged and bought it,
would have given it to you
for breakfast—this fruit
first grown in Cantalupo, not far
from Rome. I imagined you,
my sleepy emperor, coming
to the table in your towel toga,
digging into the luscious
orange flesh
with a golden spoon,

and afterwards,
reclining, your smile
satisfied,
imperial.

Now I open the trunk of my car
to find the cantaloupe
still there, flattened, sour,
having baked all weekend
in August's oven.

Grieving is useless,
my mother would say,
Just get another.

Bur why am I so certain
that no other fruit
will ever be as sweet
as that—

the one
I would have cut in half,
scooped the seeds from,
that one I would have given you
on Saturday morning?

The Damned

Kitten curious, or roaring down drinks
in Soho sumps, small hours tour buses,
satellite station green rooms, or conked

out in the bathtubs of motorway hotels,
there you were, with muckabout kisses,
sharking for the snappers, before hell

opened up for you and the weepy sores
of after-fame appeared, the haphazardry
and dwindling after three limelit years,

recognised with catcalls, wads of spit,
a nightclub fist, the scant camaraderie
melts fast, like your flat on Air Street,

the lhasa apso pups, the wraps and lines
of chang, the poster pull-outs, spray tan
smiles. It's paunch and palimony time

on Lucifer's leash. But for a madcap few
who cling, thin soup, one pillow Britain
is simmering with hatred, just for you.

Roddy Lumsden

Sober Song

by Barton Sutter

Farewell to the starlight in whiskey,
So long to the sunshine in beer.
The booze made me cocky and frisky
But worried the man in the mirror.

Good night to the moonlight in brandy,
Adieu to the warmth of the wine.
I think I can finally stand me
Without a glass or a stein.

Bye-bye to the balm in the vodka,
Ta-ta to the menthol in gin.
I'm trying to do what I ought to,
Rejecting that snake medicine.

I won't miss the blackouts and vomit,
The accidents and regret.
If I can stay off the rotgut,
There might be a chance for me yet.

So so long to God in a bottle,
To the lies of rum and vermouth.
Let me slake my thirst with water
And the sweet, transparent truth.

"Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short"

by Gaius Petronius

Doing, a filthy pleasure is, and short;

And done, we straight repent us of the sport:

Let us not then rush blindly on unto it,

Like lustful beasts, that only know to do it:

For lust will languish, and that heat decay.

But thus, thus, keeping endless holiday,

Let us together closely lie and kiss,

There is no labour, nor no shame in this;

This hath pleased, doth please, and long will please; never

Can this decay, but is beginning ever.

Husmus

Mouse, we're wintering together.
The rats chased us up from the subway,
who can blame us? They've got
their whole city mapped out down there.

If I loved you, would you be so frightened?
I could coax your brown tremble out
from beneath the furnace, let you sally free.
Think how we could sing late into the night!

You're so studious and serious.
At night just my steps on the peeling linoleum
have you running for your book.
I know the cold helps you concentrate.

But what if we, what if we tumbled down
into the lentils together tonight?

Deirdre Lockwood

Latina Worker

by Doren Robbins

Then I notice through a triple-Americano-awakening moment,
in the mall food court, a young Latina cleaning around by the chrome rail
at Sbarro Pizza. Maybe a Guatemalan, possibly Salvadoran or
Honduran—

could've been Argentinean or Columbian, Chilean, Bolivian,
Panamanian—good chance a Peruvian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Mayan,
Toltec, Sephardic, Huichol coffee plantation or U.S. Fruit Company

or tobacco company or auto industry slave labor robot or CIA-trained
death squad Guardia Nacional butchery massacre survivor.

Several tables down from mine--roughly stacking chairs on tops
of tables—cussing in Spanish, in the mall food court, she hates her job,
I hate her job.

The Copious Dark
by
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin

She used to love the darkness, how it brought
Closer the presence of flesh, the white arms and breast
Of a stranger in a railway carriage a dim glow—
Or the time when the bus drew up at a woodland corner
And a young black man jumped off, and a shade
Moved among shades to embrace him under the leaves—

Every frame of a lit window, the secrets bared—
Books packed warm on a wall—each blank shining blind,
Each folded hush of shutters without a glimmer,
Even the sucked-sweet tones of neon reflected in rain
In insomniac towns, boulevards where the odd light step
Was a man walking alone: they would all be kept,

Those promises, for people not yet in sight:
Wellsprings she still kept searching for after the night
When every wall turned yellow. Questing she roamed
After the windows she loved, and again they showed
The back rooms of bakeries, the clean engine-rooms and all
The floodlit open yards where a van idled by a wall,

A wall as long as life, as long as work.
The blighted
Shuttered doors in the wall are too many to scan—
As many as the horses in the royal stable, as the lighted
Candles in the grand procession? Who can explain
Why the wasps are asleep in the dark in their numbered holes
And the lights shine all night in the hospital corridors?

The Cab Driver Who Ripped Me Off

by Cornelius Eady

That’s right, said the cab driver,

Turning the corner to the

Round-a-bout way,

Those stupid, fuckin’ beggars,

You know the guys who

Walk up to my cab

With their hands extended

And their little cups?

You know their problem?

You know what’s wrong with them?

They ain’t got no brains.

I mean, they don’t know nothin’

’cause if they had brains

They’d think of a way

To find a job.

You know what one of ’em told me once?

He said what he did,

Begging

He said it was work.

Begging

Was work.

And I told him

Straight to his face:

That ain’t work.

You think that’s work?

Let me tell you what work is:

Work is something that you do

That’s of value

To someone else.

Now you take me.

It takes brains to do

What I do.

You know what I think?

I think they ought to send

All these beggars over

To some other country,

Any country,

It don’t matter which,

For 3, 4, years,

Let them wander around

Some other country,

See how they like that.

We ought to make a

National program

Sending them off

To wander about

Some other country

For a few years,

Let ’em beg over there,

See how far it gets them.

I mean, look at that guy

You know, who was big

In the sixties,

That drug guy,

Timothy Leary?

Yeah, he went underground,

Lived overseas.

You know what?

A few years abroad

And he was ready to

Come back

On any terms.

He didn’t care if

They arrested him.

He said

The U.S. is better

Than any country

In the world.

Send them over there

For a few years.

They’d be just like him.

This is the greatest country

In the whole world.

Timothy Leary

Was damn happy

To get back here,

And he’s doing fine.

Look at me.

I used to be like that.

I used to live underground.

I came back.

I think all those beggars got

a mental block.

I think you should do something.

I mean, you ought to like

what you do,

But you should do something.

Something of use

To the community.

All those people,

Those bums,

Those scam artists,

Those hustlers,

Those drug addicts,

Those welfare cheats,

Those sponges.

Other than that

I don’t hold nothin’

Against no one.

Hey, I picked you up.

Less
by Jason Guriel

—cooked by crooked
math—is more
than enough.
For example, the rough
patch on the roof
of the mouth we tongue—
a light fixture, chandelier
of texture—is so much
more than mere
canker. And when
fingering the clasp
on Father's snuffbox,
his fine initials
grate against our
fingerprints' grain
like an engraved last gasp.
Less, being more, makes
of the tectonic plates
of molehills
a mountain ridge
the way the stark plain
of the White Album's sleeve
raises the Beatles' embossed logo
to the level of topography—
the way tiny things
can't help being, next
to nothing, something—
the unanticipated mole
that makes a one night stand's
upturned ass, the last leaf out
on a limb, the little
going a long way.

A Pot of Tea
by Richard Kenney

Loose leaves in a metal ball
Or men in a shark cage steeping,
Ideas stain the limpid mind
Even while it’s sleeping:

Ginseng or the scent of lymph
Or consequences queasing
Into wide awareness, whence,
Like an engine seizing

Society remits a shudder
Showing it has feeling,
And the divers all have shaving cuts
And the future’s in Darjeeling—


Blind, the brain stem bumps the bars
Of the shark cage, meanwhile, feeding,
And the tea ball’s cracked, its leaves cast
To catastrophic reading:

Ideas are too dangerous.
My love adjusts an earring.
I take her in my arms again
And think of Hermann Göring,

And all liquidities in which
A stain attracts an eating,
And of my country’s changing heart,
And hell, where the blood is sleeting.

Babysitters
by Sara Peters

Your mother was as nubile as a dressmaker's dummy;
your father polished his glasses and rubbed his crop.
When the Babysitter arrived, with her turquoise belt
and raw mouth, your father had never seen
such a fine wrist, such a way with an onion!
She pinned a plastic hummingbird
behind one pink ear; she sang Fever
over hardboiled eggs.
You, at nine,
had your curls sculpted with toothpaste. You hated
your friends: their Lego sets and down jackets.
But this Babysitter. She'd start with Goldilocks, then
veer. "Papa Bear said Someone has been eating my porridge!
And Goldilocks said My life is broken, my heart is over.
Snap my neck like a broccoli stalk."
Hear the Babysitter: brisk and newsy to the milkman.
You catch words like cream, coffee, cows; phrases like
my sister in Florida, 8 pounds 10 ounces,
a head of black down! But when she thinks herself
alone, you hear back seat of the car, then
with a trench knife, in the orchard. Secrets thud
like June bugs against screens,
and all you have to do is let them in.

Depression Glass

by Ted Kooser

It seemed those rose-pink dishes

she kept for special company

were always cold, brought down

from the shelf in jingling stacks,

the plates like the panes of ice

she broke from the water bucket

winter mornings, the flaring cups

like tulips that opened too early

and got bitten by frost. They chilled

the coffee no matter how quickly

you drank, while a heavy

everyday mug would have kept

a splash hot for the better

part of a conversation. It was hard

to hold up your end of the gossip

with your coffee cold, but it was

a special occasion, just the same,

to sit at her kitchen table

and sip the bitter percolation

of the past week’s rumors from cups

it had taken a year to collect

at the grocery, with one piece free

for each five pounds of flour.

The Going

April Bernard

The cloth edge of certainty
has shredded down to this:
God and love are real,
but very far away.
If I go to Istanbul, will I return?
That is not one of the permitted questions.
When I go to Istanbul, how will I bear to return?
I could slip into the small streets
that lead away from the souk, then run east
to the high plain and the Caucasus—

It's all alone, the returning,
the going. The cloth,
a soft holland whose blocks of blue and lemon
once cheered me in a skirt,
now dries dishes. God and love
are very far away, farther even
than the mountains in the east.

The cloth edge of certainty
has shredded down to this:
God and love are real,
but very far away.
If I go to Istanbul, will I return?
That is not one of the permitted questions.
When I go to Istanbul, how will I bear to return?
I could slip into the small streets
that lead away from the souk, then run east
to the high plain and the Caucasus—

It's all alone, the returning,
the going. The cloth,
a soft holland whose blocks of blue and lemon
once cheered me in a skirt,
now dries dishes. God and love
are very far away, farther even
than the mountains in the east.

Two Poems

Novica Tadić
translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

While You Count the Stars

While you count the stars, some woman next to you
tells you that the world is full of hatred,
gasps of love and sawdust. Not long ago, she left
her husband who ditched her in the forest.

The rabbit is in the pot, the broom is behind the door.

When you cross her threshold, you'll see your shadow,
her god, her many gods.
You'll be again a stupid man
who bullies and torments.

You'll be perplexed, have no idea where you are.
You'll follow the burning river, descending even lower.
Evil spirits will rise out of the palm of your hand.

A Bird Started to Sing

A bird started to sing
on a clear day
over the gallows

A branch stirred
in a small grove
next to a smoldering fire

A stream babbled
over the bodies
of the ones struck down

Wind lifted the ashes
and spread them
over other ashes

from Deaf Republic: 1

by Ilya Kaminsky

Such is the story made of stubbornness and a little air,

a story sung by those who danced before the Lord in quiet.

Who whirled and leapt. Giving voice to consonants that rise

with no protection but each other’s ears.

We are on our bellies in this silence, Lord.

Let us wash our faces in the wind and forget the strict shapes of affection.

Let the pregnant woman hold something of clay in her hand.

For the secret of patience is his wife’s patience

Let her man kneel on the roof, clearing his throat,

he who loved roofs, tonight and tonight, making love to her and her forgetting,

a man with a fast heartbeat, a woman dancing with a broom, uneven breath.

Let them borrow the light from the blind.

Let them kiss your forehead, approached from every angle.

What is silence? Something of the sky in us.

There will be evidence, there will be evidence.

Let them speak of air and its necessities. Whatever they will open, will open.

Note to self
By Bob Hicok

Here: settled. This I am doing amends
rend, wholes. Who finds that: the boat,
the oars, can say to flood: I rise above.
The best of? Don't know, but by word,
am making of bad and good some third, a world
of minded chance, of whorled suppose:
of ouch and is, deposed. Dear rest
of me: so there. The desk of me
is happy, well, is geared, turns
from fact to future, tongues the tocks
alive. Lordy lordy: I am of this
and nothing else. What the second feels
I say, what bless, what thrive, and mostly
wrong but close, closer: I hold on
and out, less for now than every next arrive.

The Great Order of the Universe

by Christian Bök

NOTES: “The Great Order of the Universe” is a response to the fiftieth anniversary of the LEGO patent. Using a conceptual strategy reminiscent of Sol LeWitt, the image enumerates every possible way of combining two LEGO bricks, each with six pegs. The caption consists of two texts: the first, a translated paragraph from a volume by Democritus; the second, a transcribed paragraph from the patent by Godtfred Kirk Christiansen. The two paragraphs are perfect anagrams of each other.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2009).

Unicorn Believers Don’t Declare Fatwas

by Nada Gordon

Oddly enough, there is a

“Unicorn Pleasure Ring” in existence.

Research reveals that Hitler lifted

the infamous swastika from a unicorn

emerging from a colorful rainbow.

Nazi to unicorn: “You’re not coming

out with me dressed in that ridiculous

outfit.” You can finally tell your daughter

that unicorns are real. One ripped the head off

a waxwork of Adolf Hitler, police said.

April 22 is a nice day. I really like it.

I mean it’s not as fantastic as that Hitler

unicorn ass but it’s pretty special to me.

CREAMING bald eagle there is a tiny Abe

Lincoln boxing a tiny Hitler. MAGIC UNICORNS

“You’re really a unicorn?” “Yes. Now

kiss my feet.” Hitler as a great man.

Hitler . . . mm yeah, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler,

Hitler, Hitler, Hitler . . . German food is so bad,

even Hitler was a vegetarian, just like a unicorn.

I was sort of doodling Hitler at my friend’s

house and we couldn’t stop watching

unicorn hardcore soft porn abortion e-cards

containing scenes in which the baby angora unicorn

and Hitler stay warm on a cold night.

This blog is dedicated to the individual

mystery of Hitler’s moustache and my book of poems

to becoming a unicorn. That unicorn is worse than Hitler.

The unicorn has always been a mythological animal:

Flossy Unicorn Puppet Show Cats That Look Like Hitler Pez Dispensers

Unicorn believers don’t declare fatwas.

So worry about something more important

like getting hit in a collision between

a comet being ridden by Elvis, and Hitler

riding a Unicorn. It’s a psychedelic unicorn light show

and you know that’s groovy baby!

The Swiss Just Do Whatever

by Sharon Mesmer

The Swiss just do whatever

like masturbating their doink-doinks

deep in rural France

in the shadow of Mont Blanc.

Heavy, dependable

and prepared for whatever

the Swiss vago-simulacrum recognizes

as larder

King Hussein and President Fabio,

always just about to touch each other

on their devolved sparkle-offs

and Neil Patrick Harris appreciation pages.

Everyone knows when these bizzarre Swiss cometh

they cometh with fluffy Beatles-like

six packs of shit-covered reindeer

knock-knocking like a bummer.

Glitter is the Swiss Army knife

of the most bedazzlingly ridiculous

emotions: the part just before

the paranoid cheese-maker says,

“Whatever you do in Palm Springs,

don’t yodel”—a most unusual Swiss Miss

mixture of very early skunk and the robotic

sadness of women’s mold

heavy, greasy, dense and low, like

lethargic sea-green gardens

with a buzz overpowering, like

modern outdoor inbreeding.

You know you’re Swiss when,

when foreign visitors ask to see your

chocolate factory, you answer,

“Why don’t you and Hannibal Lecter

just kick out the jams?”

’Cause you know you got the chamber,

the chair,

and Fear Factor.

1999

By Kevin A. González

We were driving to your funeral
& our father was not crying
because he has a way
of tying ribbons around grief.
It was the year we learned
the piercing that prefaces the blood
holds the most delicate of darknesses.
Then it was the year we opened
all our faucets & waited for the sea
to bleed to death. Then it was the year
we set fire to your mitt. Then, suddenly
the year we started to believe
every thorn was just a bridge.
Then the year all we talked about
was boxing. Then the year
my stomach hurt all year, & then
the year no one spoke of you.

If there were an antonym for suicide
we could all choose when to be born.
I would have been born after that day
so I could not remember you.
So my fingers would stop pointing
at all the things that aren't there.

A Season in Hell
by Arthur Rimbaud Translated by Bertrand Mathieu
A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing. One night, I sat Beauty down on my lap.—And I found her galling.—And I roughed her up. I armed myself against justice. I ran away. O witches, O misery, O hatred, my treasure's been turned over to you! I managed to make every trace of human hope vanish from my mind. I pounced on every joy like a ferocious animal eager to strangle it. I called for executioners so that, while dying, I could bite the butts of their rifles. I called for plagues to choke me with sand, with blood. Bad luck was my god. I stretched out in the muck. I dried myself in the air of crime. And I played tricks on insanity. And Spring brought me the frightening laugh of the idiot. So, just recently, when I found myself on the brink of the final squawk! it dawned on me to look again for the key to that ancient party where I might find my appetite once more. Charity is that key.—This inspiration proves I was dreaming! "You'll always be a hyena etc. . . ," yells the devil, who'd crowned me with such pretty poppies. "Deserve death with all your appetites, your selfishness, and all the capital sins!" Ah! I've been through too much:-But, sweet Satan, I beg of you, a less blazing eye! and while waiting for the new little cowardly gestures yet to come, since you like an absence of descriptive or didactic skills in a writer, let me rip out these few ghastly pages from my notebook of the damned.

What Way

by A. F. Moritz

At the table, at the grave not knowing

whether to grieve or celebrate, they seemed

to find a way within the stalled noon clatter

and the dusk over oily swamps and elder tangle

along a locked stockade of heavy machines,

as the blue heron, looking down, flew farther on.

Nothing dissolved for them the mortal green

and black in transparent power of spacious streams

now gone from earth. The flickering they found,

terror-hope-terror, in fire of sunset clouds

remained unwavering in its progress to night

and day and night. And yet the pleasure they took

in everything did not wear out. The limestone

quarry of a poorer century, lipped in birds

and berries, treasured up, still treasures up,

old rains beneath its surface of dusty jet—

still waits behind their houses on airless nights

to be the dreams and drownings of new children.