Zero

by George Bilgere

First it was five above, then two,
then one morning just plain zero.
There was a strange thrill in saying it.
It's zero,
I said when you got up.

I was pouring your coffee
and suddenly the whole house made sense:
the roof, the walls, the little heat registers
rattling on the floor. Even the mortgage. Zero,
you said, still in your robe.

And you walked to the window and looked out
at the blanket of snow on the garden
where last summer you planted carrots
and radishes, sweet peas and onions,
and a tiny rainforest of tomatoes
in the hot delirium of June.

Yes, I said, with a certain grim finality,
staring at the white cap of snow on the barbecue grill
I'd neglected to put in the garage for winter.
And the radio says it could go lower.

I like that robe, it's white and shimmery,
and has a habit of falling open
unless you tie it just right.

This wasn't the barbarians at the gate.
It wasn't Carthage in flames, or even
the Donner Party. But it was zero, by God,
and the robe fell open.

Wait

by C. K. Williams

Chop, hack, slash; chop, hack, slash; cleaver, boning knife, ax—

not even the clumsiest clod of a butcher could do this so crudely,

time, as do you, dismember me, render me, leave me slop in a pail,

one part of my body a hundred years old, one not even there anymore,

another still riven with idiot vigor, voracious as the youth I was

for whom everything always was going too slowly, too slowly.

It was me then who chopped, slashed, through you, across you,

relished you, gorged on you, slugged your invisible liquor down raw.

Now you're polluted; pulse, clock, calendar taint you, befoul you,

you suck at me, pull at me, barbed wire knots of memory tear me,

my heart hangs, inert, a tag-end of tissue, firing, misfiring,

trying to heave itself back to its other way with you.

But was there ever really any other way with you? When I ran

as though for my life, wasn't I fleeing from you, or for you?

Wasn't I frightened you'd fray, leave me nothing but shreds?

Aren't I still? When I snatch at one of your moments, and clutch it,

a pebble, a planet, isn't it wearing away in my hand as though I,

not you, were the ocean of acid, the corrosive in I which dissolve?

Wait, though, wait: I should tell you too how happy I am,

how I love it so much, all of it, chopping and slashing and all.

Please know I love especially you, how every morning you turn over

the languorous earth, for how would she know otherwise to do dawn,

to do dusk, when all she hears from her speech-creatures is "Wait!"?

We whose anguished wish is that our last word not be "Wait."

Bridal Shower

by George Bilgere

Perhaps, in a distant café,
four or five people are talking
with the four or five people
who are chatting on their cell phones this morning
in my favorite café.

And perhaps someone there,
someone like me, is watching them as they frown,
or smile, or shrug
at their invisible friends or lovers,
jabbing the air for emphasis.

And, like me, he misses the old days,
when talking to yourself
meant you were crazy,
back when being crazy was a big deal,
not just an acronym
or something you could take a pill for.

I liked it
when people who were talking to themselves
might actually have been talking to God
or an angel.
You respected people like that.

You didn't want to kill them,
as I want to kill the woman at the next table
with the little blue light on her ear
who has been telling the emptiness in front of her
about her daughter's bridal shower
in astonishing detail
for the past thirty minutes.

O person like me,
phoneless in your distant café,
I wish we could meet to discuss this,
and perhaps you would help me
murder this woman on her cell phone,

after which we could have a cup of coffee,
maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,
face to face.

Optimism

by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the
light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs—
all this resinous, unretractable earth.

Vestibule

By Chase Twichell

What etiquette holds us back
from more intimate speech,
especially now, at the end of the world?
Can’t we begin a conversation
here in the vestibule,
then gradually move it inside?
What holds us back
from saying things outright?
We’ve killed the earth.
Yet we speak of other things.
Our words should cauterize
all wounds to the truth.

Rite of Passage

by Sharon Olds

As the guests arrive at our son’s party

they gather in the living room—

short men, men in first grade

with smooth jaws and chins.

Hands in pockets, they stand around

jostling, jockeying for place, small fights

breaking out and calming. One says to another

How old are you? —Six. —I’m seven. —So?

They eye each other, seeing themselves

tiny in the other’s pupils. They clear their

throats a lot, a room of small bankers,

they fold their arms and frown. I could beat you

up, a seven says to a six,

the midnight cake, round and heavy as a

turret behind them on the table. My son,

freckles like specks of nutmeg on his cheeks,

chest narrow as the balsa keel of a

model boat, long hands

cool and thin as the day they guided him

out of me, speaks up as a host

for the sake of the group.

We could easily kill a two-year-old,

he says in his clear voice. The other

men agree, they clear their throats

like Generals, they relax and get down to

playing war, celebrating my son’s life.

What She Was Wearing

by Denver Butson

this is my suicide dress
she told him
I only wear it on days
when I'm afraid
I might kill myself
if I don't wear it

you've been wearing it
every day since we met
he said

and these are my arson gloves

so you don't set fire to something?
he asked

exactly

and this is my terrorism lipstick
my assault and battery eyeliner
my armed robbery boots

I'd like to undress you he said
but would that make me an accomplice?

and today she said I'm wearing
my infidelity underwear
so don't get any ideas

and she put on her nervous breakdown hat
and walked out the door