Small Talk

—I hear there's a drought.
—I can live without that.
—Did you see Blow-Up?
—I found it quite old hat.
—What do you think
of the new morality?
—I think undergrads
should concentrate on their grades.
—You may be right.
—I could be wrong.
—What a sweet
thing to say.
—Compliments are never out of date
if they're sincere.
—About the new morality
I don't know much
but I love
the old sincerity:
Are you for real?
—I guess I'm kind of
out of date
but right from the start
I like to speak
from the heart.
At any rate
let me feel your nose:
A cold nose
means a warm heart.
My, your nose is hot.
—What's worse
I've got cold feet.
—Cold feet?
In those shoes?
What kind of foot powder
do you use?
—Dr. Scholl's.
—Well, that's the best.
Have you tried
lamb's-wool liners?
—I'm allergic
to wool.
—So that's your Achilles' heel.

James Schuyler

On Ignatz's Eyebrow

the way water is always rushing between a ferry

and its dock in that ever-present gap where

the rush is the speed of the water and the rush

is the sound of the water and the water is

bitterly cold and is foul in its bitterness and

the gap is irreducible space and time and

is the ache felt by the ferry in the cold

of its iron bones which will never clang

against the framework of the dock

in the satisfying clash of solid surfaces because

the gap is where such satisfaction helplessly

dissolves the way Ignatz now feels his anger

dissipating in that self-same gap between

the trigger and the smack between his anger

and its object the way one eyebrow

can never meet the other in a true unbroken v

no matter how doomy how dour

how darksome his invariable frown.

Monica Youn

Ignatz
Four Way Books

Cleaning up after the Dog

by Jason Tandon

Pull plastic bag from pocket
and wave it like a flag

or diploma. Make sure many people
congratulate your care
for the community.

Check bag for holes.
Double check.

Inspect stool for odd hues.
Greens, blues, blood.

Evaluate consistency.

You don't want to leave smears
on the sidewalk or grass—no prints.

Getaway must be clean.

Prepare to go in for all of it.
Hold breath.
Grab, clamp, reverse bag, twist, knot, cinch.

Smell hands.

Hold loaded bag high in the air,
assure onlookers that Everything is Okay.

If a cop should cruise by,
his crew cut bristling
in the sun,

hold that bag higher,
so he, too, can salute
your contribution.

The bomb diffused,
the world a little safer, a little cleaner,

will not offend the deep treads
of someone's shoes.

"Cleaning up after the Dog" by Jason Tandon, from Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt. © Black Lawrence Press, 2009. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

People Who Eat in Coffee Shops

by Edward Field

People who eat in coffee shops
are not worried about nutrition.
They order the toasted cheese sandwiches blithely,
followed by chocolate egg creams and plaster of paris
wedges of lemon meringue pie.
They don't have parental, dental, or medical figures hovering
full of warnings, or whip out dental floss immediately.
They can live in furnished rooms and whenever they want
go out and eat glazed donuts along with innumerable coffees,
dousing their cigarettes in sloppy saucers.

This Year's Valentine

by Philip Appleman

They could
pump frenzy into air ducts
and rage into reservoirs,
dynamite dams
and drown cities,
cry fire in theaters
as the victims are burning,
but
I will find my way through blackened streets
and kneel down at your side.

They could
jump the median, head-on,
and obliterate the future,
fit .45's to the hands of kids
and skate them off to school,
flip live butts into tinderbox forests
and hellfire half the heavens,
but
in the rubble of smoking cottages
I will hold you in my arms.

They could
send kidnappers to kindergartens
and pedophiles to playgrounds,
wrap themselves in Old Glory
and gut the Bill of Rights,
pound the door with holy screed
and put an end to reason,
but
I will cut through their curtains of cunning
and find you somewhere in the moonlight.

Whatever they do with their anthrax or chainsaws,
however they strip-search or brainwash or blackmail,
they cannot prevent me from sending you robins,
all of them singing: I'll be there.

"This Year's Valentine" by Philip Appleman. Reprinted with permission of the author. (buy now)

Trapeze

by Deborah Digges

See how the first dark takes the city in its arms
and carries it into what yesterday we called the future.

O, the dying are such acrobats.
Here you must take a boat from one day to the next,

or clutch the girders of the bridge, hand over hand.
But they are sailing like a pendulum between eternity and evening,

diving, recovering, balancing the air.
Who can tell at this hour seabirds from starlings,

wind from revolving doors or currents off the river.
Some are as children on swings pumping higher and higher.

Don't call them back, don't call them in for supper.
See, they leave scuff marks like jet trails on the sky.

"Trapeze" by Deborah Digges, from Trapeze. © Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Small Town

by Philip Booth

You know.
The light on upstairs
before four every morning. The man
asleep every night before eight.
What programs they watch. Who
traded cars, what keeps the town
moving.
The town knows. You
know. You've known for years over
drugstore coffee. Who hurts, who
loves.
Why, today, in the house
two down from the church, people
you know cannot stop weeping.

Talking to Ourselves

by Philip Schultz

A woman in my doctor's office last week
couldn't stop talking about Niagara Falls,
the difference between dog and deer ticks,
how her oldest boy, killed in Iraq, would lie
with her at night in the summer grass, singing
Puccini. Her eyes looked at me but saw only
the saffron swirls of the quivering heavens.

Yesterday, Mr. Miller, our tidy neighbor,
stopped under our lopsided maple to explain
how his wife of sixty years died last month
of Alzheimer's. I stood there, listening to
his longing reach across the darkness with
each bruised breath of his eloquent singing.

This morning my five-year-old asked himself
why he'd come into the kitchen. I understood
he was thinking out loud, personifying himself,
but the intimacy of his small voice was surprising.

When my father's vending business was failing,
he'd talk to himself while driving, his lips
silently moving, his black eyes deliquescent.
He didn't care that I was there, listening,
what he was saying was too important.

"Too important," I hear myself saying
in the kitchen, putting the dishes away,
and my wife looks up from her reading
and asks, "What's that you said?"

"Talking to Ourselves" by Philip Schultz, from Failure. © Harcourt, 2007. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)