Urthkin 2 – Part 1
URTHKIN 2 – PART 1
Edited/Published by Larry Ziman
Copyright 1979 by Larry Ziman
Library of Congress Catalog Number: 78:68653
ISBN: 0-9333456-01-8
ISSN: 0163-3295
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing: June, 1979
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The cover picture ‘The Feast’ is copyrighted 1978
by Larry Weiss, San Clemente, California
‘vanilla custard’ by Morgan Alexander first appeared
in Floating Island, Spring 1976
& BEFORE THAT’ by Michael Andrews first appeared in
Stonecloud, #7, 1978, copyright 1978 by Pacific Perceptions, Inc.
‘jane mccrowley, my’ by Cynde Gregory is reprinted
by permission of Washout Review, copyright 1978 by Washout Review
‘THE BULLET HOLES IN MY LEFT LEG’ by John Harris appears
in his book Against The Day Of The Dead , published by Momentum Press,
copyright 1977 by John Harris
‘City Skip’ by Michael Leigh is reprinted
by permission of Seven Stars Poetry
‘PRINCESS HOLLYWOOD AND THE VAGABOND’ and ‘YOU FLOAT DOWN MY EYES’
by Doren Robbins first appeared in One Mind #2, copyright 1977 by John Solt
THE WHOREHOUSE by F.N. Wright is published by the Young-Davis Press,
copyright 1977 by F.N. Wright
vanilla custard
once when i was very small i tasted vanilla custard it was
the best custard i had ever eaten and enid and her father
Myron and i went to willow grove park and he took us on
the roller coaster and i wore a yellow sunsuit with blue
ducks on it and i dribbled the custard all over myself that
was half the fun and i loved enids father and one spring
during the war he built a fence around their house all by
himself and he bought me a big vanilla custard and he killed
himself the summer i was ten i was away at camp and my parents
didn’t tell me until i got home late in august he died at the
age of thirty three and i cried for a long time and i was
angry at my parents for hiding the truth from me. i did
understsand. death is for children too.
and i still think of enid shes the first person i can
remember knowing and now i cant find her and i still look
for the vanilla custard it would really be a lie to say id
given up the notion of ever finding it in fact i look all
the time whenever i go to an amusement park or smell a certain
smell or recognize a face reminiscent of that place way back
there once upon a time in my footed pajamas where every smell
was soap and every taste was vanilla custard and i don’t tell
anyone that that’s what im looking for only i know and now
you know that i look in chocolate éclairs and rice pudding and
cup custrard and frozen custard and bavarian crème filled donuts
and boston cream pie and french vanilla ice cream and
tapioca pudding and i cant let go of it.
and i know im lying to myself i wouldn’t recognize it if i
did find it it was so long ago i cant even be sure now it
ever really happened and still i keep looking its
not even the custard anymore its just something something else
i lost when i was four.
Morgan Alexander
Venice, California
& BEFORE THAT
yesterday
old david
ran his fingers
thru his long gray beard
& died
he said
–all i ever did was survive
the day before that
he was feeding
french fries to the gulls
& said
he was feeling fine
ten years before that
he went on a 3 month
camping trip
& when he came back
he talked less
the day before he left
he buried Helen
four days before that
she said
she regretted nothing
8 years before that
he closed down
the office supplies store
& retired
40 years before that
he opened up an art gallery
they planned to make enough
to retire to someplace exotic
with beaches & palms
& eternal sun
2 months before that
he married Helen
the year before that
he was on his way
to bum around the world
he could not sleep nights
listening to the calliope
of restless stars
the day before that
he graduated
with a degree in law
he told his father
he would never practice
15 years earlier
he told his grandfather
he was going to be
a mountain climber
when he grew up
3 years before that
he said he would never
grow up
the day before that
his mother told him
the truth
about santa claus
& the easter bunny
4 years before that
his aunt Bessie
cast his horoscope
& said
he would be a success
In life
marry 3 times
become a famous painter
& die rich
in a foreign land
the day before that dr. Anderson
pulled him from the wsomb
slapped him on the ass
& he screamed
Michael Andrews
Hermosa Beach, California
Stumbling Franz
Sunday was a broken day
without rest
caged in your bed long-widowed
you called Franz for aid
without rest
as a young bride you’d giggled
remembering before marriage
you’d had a surrey horse
the family dubbed Stumbling Franz
without memory
the grooves in your mind
brought carpet paths that now
you could not find
without paths
we took you from your home
to a Rest Home a home
without rest
Beatrice Bechtol
Los Angeles, California
the headdress of our romance
the prints are barely open
to the door of your bed
geese flew from the last storm,
feathered icicles threading
old uncomfortable sounds
over slaughtered heads and tender wings;
the phone rings in hysterical laughter
stomach to mouth but no one moves
as night gapes as far as a prisoners nostrils
trying to untwine sound with smell;
freight cars pull in to freeze
in the bloody piss of hobo;
the neighborhood is on the hinges
of a bald white pawnshop
fingering its last key.
all hands are down to zero;
the razor is king
the razor is a a fit president
the razor is slave to no one but the user
it is a kit that frees the insane.
the night is into another circle
as an old lady leaves thru the pockets of rain
and braids the moon to kitchen sink
fortune has a wet excuse for falling;
the razor blues in on
the edge of mirrors & smiles
making warm death marks.
no piece of flesh is alone
since it has another bastard piece;
quick puzzles are made in seconds
from the whole slab that once walked
on the trail of rich stories;
now all beginnings are dim
all endings are tubular and in the frames of boxes,
yellow degrees on yellow designs.
this girl of twenty-nine
in the silver of too many bouquets
flirts with a dozen blue sisters of gas
counting on her fingers barely warm—
the numb foil of solvent years to come.
at forty she’ll court twelve sisters of red
opening coaches to Canterbury & reason by then
that it is not worth wondering.
her table is a knight
her dresser, loud voices on palace floors
that make drifts on her bed.
later there is the atom in pill box
closer to my form as nightwatchman
opening clams of universal spit;
the gems of many gardens touch my head
into an atlas, a journeybook,
but the crows rob me;
the flies eat from my secret passages;
the bees spy on me thru magic glasses;
the ants trip me up and send me to court
for mistreating animals;
i drop my teachers tongue
as several worms fight a new liquid;
an angel breaks up the kitchen;
the devil snores in the dictionary
& sleeps until noon
as this woman fucks a lily
& excites a herd of goats in wooly sweaters.
it is time to thatch the roof
and let the dimestore sun dial out
the terrible dreams.
there is energy in the rocfking chair;
we watch the old lady paint glasses
a raw red, developing the odor of hell;
in the thickets grasshoppers digest
the gardeners lies.
i part your teeth into cues
and cubes of bad water
and feature your latest prison
as a forty-ightr hour cartoon
on not living. you begin to grow in bed;
your blanket has become your digestive system;
your veins puff up the pillow;
there is screaming in your attic brain
that is twelve feet of blackness,
hooves ride across the red eye of cartoon;
all winking is hidden by bushes
planted over the old lady’s patchwork
of nettled webs.
a river begins at her feet
& opens your toes;
all of lifes traitors appear;
the cast is in intricate masks of japanese prints,
each word in a bamboo shoot.
i lower the curtain below your eyes;
pot holes sink in the enamel of our bones
as you dress up in your second head
for the animated finale;
i toss my coat into the fur of your lips
and you blend a new thread of fire.
guy r. beining
Brooklyn, New York
NON-MARRIAGE RITES IN THE GHETTOED SUBURB
Those starlings copulating in an elm
do not stay in the tree. They fall outside
before orgasm starts. The hapless sperm—
presumably—is dribbled far and wide.
The grasses down below care nothing much.
A squirrel digs among them, placidly
ignoring starlings. But the suburbs round
spawn analogues of dull lubricity
whereby a sexual beauty is reduced
to surreas of avian obscene
all acted out in cars and backyard lots
or fatly hinted on the TV screen.
For this the prophets and the soldiers died:
A snigger/snigger, an orgasm snatched
betimes—like instant coffee—on the run.
The humans and the starlings are well-matched.
John Bennet
Green Bay, Wisconsin
TV SPORT SPECTACULAR AT THE NEW OMNI-COLISEUM
The loveless boys of winter at their games
toy with hickory death while loud voyeurs
bounce bounce in spitling lust.
All rage for blood
hot on the shardy ice.
The crippled air,
squeezed tight by rubber/brick/and iron, fills
with stench that would have frightened Pavlov’s dogs
had Pavlov dreamed test-patterns so obscene.
Meanwhile, of course, the lobby cubicles
Bulge with sweaty coins and currency.
John Bennet
Green Bay, Wisconsin
black hair beaten
a face they called at
when she was young
her eyes were
always beyond the buildings and crowds
somewhere in her stride
there was a child
in 51
when she was young, 26
she had been a beat or whatever
they
were called, back then
for 10 years in New York
she rode buses
here, on a bus now
she begins to rummage her macramé carry all ‘
spotted with different yarns and strings
that hold
the original Victorian house design , its ropes
and blue stones
still seen
for what it was.
Dan Brady
San Francisco, California
the movie on 29/a farewell to arms
they were advertising war cards
on tv last night
the bigger one
double u double two
all the ordnance and enemies
hitler goering
bangalore torpedoes
b-29’s
iwo jima
“look at that flag!”
maps, charts, full color pictures
“ingenious filing system”
and I was reminded of this one card
in nam
who was always getting the clap
he was up tp fifteen penicillin shots
a real collector’s item
Jeff Branin
Woodbury, New Jersey
Vogelweh BOQ
After each game
he’d come home dead
tired and crawl into the stall
margrit would turn on the water
and take off their clothes
somehow he found the strength
to reach through the curtain
and across the toilet seat
to the knee high fridge and lift
two cold local brews. after a few
swallows he’d look in her warm
blue eyes and ask her to marry him.
she never did.
Jeff Branin
Woodbury, New Jersey
Lopez the proprietor
having blown the year’s savings
on one night of great fun
staring down the great road
from Tia Juanita to home
into the entrails of Baja,
empty unskinned abandoned
carcass
like himself leading
through windows of day dreams
the whistle of coyote laughter
even at noon leads through the
rosary at the neck
to death
& back out, he says, mumbling,
chewing his cheek, talking to
himself, someone perfectly sober
iIn the window of dreams thinking
the patient wife awake all night
will be silent
and thinking:
the cries in the straw beds might
be hens, might be the sobbing
of daughters as he arrives,
the dog with arthritic pain,
the 7-inch corn being gnawed
b y the burro, the screech of
corrugated roof expanding
in heat—
metal on metal.
Peter Brett
Ross, California
YULETIDE ON 9th ST.
manhattan is a surface
of intimate faces
at Christmas time
much too busy to notice the man
wrapped in burlap
on the corner
outside trude heller’s
if asked
he will tell how mild
the winter was in ‘65
or how bright it was
before the lights
went out that year
but mostly these days
he speaks of how warm
burtlap is
& the bouncing lights
of the liquor shop
acknowledge his presence
one of the few who knows
why rudolph’s nose is red
who santa claus really is
& why he stands
on the corner of 9th street
for hours & hours
but those who pass
an occasional quarter
never stop to hear
his ruptured wisdom
& the christmas lights
In rockefeller plaza
are much too far to warm
his freezing hands
so when his childhood
stalks him like some
long dead housecat
he dodges taxies
in the wet blue night
looking for christmas presents
that should have been there
a long long time ago
Stewart Brisby
Syracuse, New York
YEAR OF THE SNOWED-IN MOON
wolves pass silently
through dark trees
caribou move downwind
nothing is real the glass
bones of trees snap with
snow weight
the moon snowed in
has not once climbed
into the sky this year
the bewildered indians name
their children after the
moon paint their tepes &
war ponies with moon signs
the night one simple expanse
of black they cannot get used to
from this a legend grows
that a the moon has locked
herself into her black house
& becomea prisoner of grief
deer & caribou continue to
migrate to the sea where they
rush into the surf their eyes
bright with fear
the Indians fear
the loss of the moon
everything in their lives
has become off center
even the bloody sun that
climbs into the sky seems
off center & its light
has changed babies born under
a black night without a moon
in the light of stammering stars
are born idiots the last caribou
& deer drown in the sea the legend
grows
Steven Ford Brown
Birmingham, Alabama
SUNNY DAY SPECIAL
(serves one)
Ingredients:
1 human body
(your own body serves best)
1 mountain stream
with waterfall and pool
1 loud shout
1 burst of laughter
1 sunny day
Directions:
Plunge one human body
into icy cold pool.
Body must remain immersed
until lungs are ready to split.
Allow body to spring
Breaking the water’s surface
and emit one loud shout.
Collect concentric circles
as they can be used for
other dishes.
The body should then float
for a minimum of five minutes
or until saturated with the sensation
of nothing touching the skin
but water.
Before serving allow the body to emit
at least one burst of laughter
to drift within the air
through the sunlight and froth
of the waterfall.
Douglas Campbell
Tallahassee, Florida
GRANDFATHER
Story running through my childhood,
trapped by a cattle-guard,
gun in hand aimed
at the man who will kill you,
you are transformed
from ordinary forebear
whose name and face lingers
in unopened albums
into a legend of summer evenings
told by father to daugheter
in a flat land
bearing no resemblance
to your cottonwood mountains.
This single violent act
has made you memorable.
Nothing else is verified—
though it is said
you were always a wanderer,
children buried
in the places you left,
Texas, Oklahoma, New
Mexico Territory.
Your wife would only tell
her children
you were innocent when you died.
And they hung the man who shot you
so we may infer
your respectability, a victim of
terrible circumstance, but why
running like that, gun in hand,
grandfather, when they got you?
It doesn’t matter.
We don’t judge you
or know you or
really care.
But we remember you
and tell you
on childhood’s porches
until you have become
our Western Epic.
Joan Colby
Streamwood, Illinois
The Whisker Of Hercules
No woman’s hand ever pried
at that belt buckle
with its ambered scorpion; it was always
overshadowed by his belly;
and further above,
by a chin of whiskers. You might ask
where all cowboys go
when they run out of time or luck,
the trails that end
at the crimson lips of plateaus,
and you would know just to look at him
that he is one place neither
heaven nor hell
could anticipate this far west.
But the ancient moons of sweat tucked
in his armpits tell us
it is early June.
And it could be hell or Kingman, Az.
snce in a month the rodeo
will appear like the retread
of an old flatbed diesel parked
beneath the silanthus tree,
flaked rubber given way
to broken soil, but always turning
with memory of the earth. And in his pale
starry eyes you and I are always young
or seem to be. But those cowhide hands,
that bellowed cheek
with a drop of chew on the verge
of flight , and his breath
of Redman and rust-iron were always old.
His boots set down small crescents
to eventually fill
with water or dust or time,
and you bet your life he thinks of us.
But not nearly the way we want, or imagine.
The world is one big corral
through which a dusty-devil drags
its restless pillar of debris.
and against it he leans in his labors
like a displace myth
out of proportioin to the turmoil
around him. Truth is
none of us were ever young,
and this is the weight
he shoulders as a roan horse might,
suddenly frozen at the vista’s edge
with nowhere but down to go,
and the cowpoke in the saddle
just crazy enough to ride on.
Paul H. Cook
Salt Lake City, Utah
Late To Work
Uncle Bugs and Daffy
have hidden away my shoes.
They’ve been at it
daily for years,
though I’ve just begun.
The grown-up in the mirror
is fogged in, out of contact,
urgent messages fading
like geese drifting off
in a sky
blown full of polka dots.
So, whose hand is it that
pours the third cup of tea?
Whose feet hesitate
at the threshold?
Whose tie dangles
in its approximate noose?
Let the rest of the world
throw itself into gear—
I have this childhood
confessional to make
concerning wabbits.
So never mind the Boss
who sits behind his desk
smiling like it was duck-
hunting season.
Who cares if his name
is Elmer.
So what if he waits like death
in the reeds at dawn.
Paul H. Cook
Salt Lake City, Utah
FULL SPEED AHEAD
I saw myself (and you too, buddy)
in a dream of the future
with fewer teeth, shorter hair,
smaller muscles ,like lighter
weight hot rods of humans.
And we were not older men.
Looking around— nobody was.
It was better than Star Trek,
better than Star Wars because
we were there, whipping out
poems for trillions of readers.
You see, poetry will be
In vogue again— your book on
school desks, my chapbook on
the charts. We’ll be more famous
than KISS is to the cavemen;
of the Seventies. There’ll be
groupies packed around all
pneumatic tubes in case we should
pop oiut, kisd growing weightless,
orbiting our heads to catch
our attention— “Me!” “Me!”
“Over here, poets!” And like
Spaceships we’ll reach for
them endlessly, grin broadly
at each other across the
mania, perky as Malcom McDowells
facing al little of the old
in-out. We were, umm… we’ll be
Great when we grow up, pal.
Dennis Cooper
Los Angeles, California
MY GRANDMOTHER GROWS
I remember my grandmother
in her elegant fifties,
leaning above my toy bed, bent only
at the waist like Snow White.
Her best stories slipped a carousel
into my room. I rode all day
then fell asleep, to the rain
of her small feet in the hall.
For years I dressed her,
wrote letters increasingly
short and typed, and grew up.
Now she’s alone, so I’ve opened my doors.
Mornings she flails from sleep
like a drowning girl:
some prince should lean there
complying like a daydream.
Days she sits over cold coffee
or lies in the dark
or climbs the floors
stooped as if in a cave.
At nigbt I lead her into my room.
She tows the merry-go-round,
but now it is Xerox gray
and I drop right through it.
Dennis Cooper
Los Angeles, California
IT’S GETTING LATE EARLIER
where is this again
party for a poet who makes how much
and translates a little Chinese on the side
in one hour she reads two good poems
the rest should have been sent back
to the chef until they were cooked
now she’s sitting with her legs crossed
manuscripts on her lap
her right foot twists like a cobra
she smiles at everyone but me
i guess she reads her mail
when she leaves she shakes my hand
she digs her fingernails into my palm
she knows I’m tired of dynamite poets
hurricane poets bad poets and beautiful poets
who show a lot of leg and a lot of promise
with only tiny misprints of success to keep them honest
Franz Douskey
New Haven, Connecticut
AFTER BLAKE, AN ALL-NIGHT STAND
Tremendous eqauations disrupt the dreams
of famous mathematicians
and distract then among the grackles.
Likewise the sun condemns astronomers to stare
into craters that blaze in vacant lots.
Pity the scientists who learn too fast and fizz out
like shook bottles of soda pop.
Pity more the poet who feels
the faithful gather in bookstores,
then invisibly lift him high and laughing , then dissolve.
There’s no law against this witchcraft,
no one to stopper its drain on faith.
The physicists believe each other, so would I.
But look at this face that’s pasted on my window.
No matter who reads this, it’s him, or her, it hasn’t any sex,
though it bleeds where it should cry.
I’d say it was left by a god, but I’m no Blake,
No one knocks such metaphysical sense
into my skull these rainy nights….
Harvard’s “dark Satanic” science labs are busier than I’d like,
their trust is in low-discount textbooks.
I’d like to read them but
my eyes dangle on springs to my cheeks,
exploded like eggs
from a stubborn chicken.
Topologists, chemists, radiologists, botanists—-
the single cell defines the species.
Feel where we used to comb our hair, feel how empty
these drizzling nights seem,
our bookshelves tottering in the draft….
These damp meditations form male wombs—-
both men and women have them—-
from which lies like these are torn.
William Doreski
Cambridge, Massassachusetts
WASHING ROCKS
MADISON COUNTY, N.C.
Gabrielle Johanson
five & a half &
running with thistle
& sunflowers
down
to the spring
where I sat
told me all her secrets
breathless in a
boston accent
slipping
to a country whisper
said they
were for me&
yesterdau she kicked her cat.
Hard she said
& waited,
her soft arms around my neck
warm cheeks
lips
swallowtail eyes
reaching deeper
than these mountains
into me
her small hands cupped
with more water
than you could drink.
Ever.
Nadine Estroff
Atlanta, Georgia
Appointment in Samarra: J.F.K.-Kolombangara
Island, New Georgia Archipelago ( August, 1943)-
Dallas, Texas ( November, 1963 )
The dream was always the same.
In that
awful moment—
just before impact—
as the Japanese
destroyer “Amagiri” ( Heavenly Mist )
bore down
out of the
darkness
to slice in half
the fragile motor
torpedo craft ( PT 109 )
Death smiled,
and turned away
into the
night.
Later—
as the presidential motorcade
sped thru
downtown Dallas—
Death waited,
( on a grassy knoll )
come to keep
his
appointment in Samarra.
L.S. Fallis
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Intense Dude, Heavy Brother
Your mother worked the night-shift
at the phone company. Midnights
under the ice-melting lights
I heard her singing be-bop arias,
saw her winging our doors
like Loretta Young or an ageing figure skater
in her red angora hat
with pom-poms, sleigh bells.
She answered her calls "Darla Swank, here."
and told us about her son
the musician, who sounded about 32
with six wives & a kid to support
playing stranger in the night
weddings with Tony and The Spotlights.
She couldn’t have prepared me
for you, praying for groupies
to sprout in your path like shadows,
greeting women with tender kisses
saying great ass as they turned their backs.
Pausing like a setter at point
when a pretty woman passed whispering stereo
"hey man, look pretending your bone knees
at that beauty churned to butter
hey, come here the dead worm in your pants
& lie down" in rigor mortis.
Your guileless eyebrows ready,
aimed, fired with charm, so vain
you probably thin this poem’s about you,
shorthand vocabulary, proving what
as intense dude, heavy brother you were
able to lay the most cosmic & bizarre chicks
made me want to peel off your sequined
shirt & go to work on bare skin
scraping to see if there was anything
warm, anything red, anything
with a strong taste underneath.
Last week I saw you walking
your kleptomaniac eyes
on their long leash.
You told me your new band’s name
& that it had evgerything
to do with the charisma of Christ,
pineal gland, third eye, and American Indians.
As your hand sincerely devoured mine, I remembered
the way you’d eat everyone’s food
then say "You weren’t saving that
or anything, were you?", remembered
the "artistic" poster in your room:
a single breast, fingers pulling the nipple
like someone trying to pluck a crouton
froma saucer of warm milk,
and laughter lashed from my throat
more my own
than any hate
I’d improvised with you.
Alice Fulton
New York, New York
Sestina For Janis Joplin
You called the blue’s loose black belly lover
and in Port Arthur they called you pig-face.
The way you chugged booze straight without a glass,
your brass-assed language, slingbacks with jeweled heel,
proclaimed you no kin to their muzzled blood.
no chiclet-toothed Baptist boyfriend for you.
Strung-out, street-hustling showed men wouldn’t buy you.
Once you clung to the legs of a lover,
let him drag you till your knees turned to blood,
mouth hardened to a thin scar on your face,
cracked under songs, screams, never left to heal.
Little Girl Blue, soul pressed against the glass.
That voice rasping like you guzzled fibber-glass,
stronger than the four armed men behind you.
But a pale horse lured you, docile, to heel:
warm snow flakes pillowed you like a lover.
Men feared the black holes in your body and face,
knew what they put in would return as blood.
Craving fast food ,cars, garish as fresh blood,
diners with flys and doughnuts under glass,
formica bars and a surfer’s gold face,
in nameless motels, after sign-off, you
let T.V.’s blank bright stare play lover,
lay still, convinced its cobalt rays could heal.
Your songs that sound ground under some stud’s heel,
swallowed and coughed up in a voice like blood:
translation unavailable, lover!
No prince could shoe you in unyielding glass,
stories of exploding pumpkin bored you
who flaunted tattooed breast and hungry face.
That night needing a sweet-legged sugar’s face,
a hot, sky-eyed Southern comfort to heal
the hurt of senior proms for all but you,
plain Janis Lyn, self-hatred laced your blood.
You knew they worshipped drained works, emptied glass,
legend’s last gangbang, the wildest lover.
Like clerks we face your image in the glass,
suggest lovers, as accessories, heels.
“It’s your shade, this blood dress,” we say. “It’s you.”
Alice Fulton
New York, New York
Sex With Someone Who Resembles Hemingway, Disguised
As Freud, of course
plowing through
a tunel barely
wide enough
slippery as wet
rock but soft
from all the kittens
stuffed inside
with a heart cross-tied
at the far end
like a chestnut pony.
I am so full of animals!
Tonight when he enters
I pretend I’m not at home
so he puts them on
my scent.
They have just trailed
the tunnel and emerged
onto a promontory where
they can go no further
without collapsing
the bridge. At this point
the animals rear and wail
to me, doing their best
elephant imitations.
He cries toro! and rallies
them with a red flag.
They feel me coming
long before and start to
leap like puppies:
25 housecats
a sorrel pony
and he.
Alice Fulton
New York, New York
Sheets
Hell, she spilled her fifth highball on the sheets.
Old muslin sheets worn thin as raw egg white.
Well, she’d make ghost costumes fro trick or treat;
Bandages, dustrags, from them before night.
When her husband in clay-stained clothes came home,
Smelled gin, saw stained laundry obscene in the hall,
Called her bitch, whore, hating her liquored drone,
Smashed her hidden bottle against the wall.
Then punch-drunk but avenged, swallowed his yells
Like baby crocodiles siphoned down drains.
Contritely cracked new sheets like crisp egg shells,
Broke, baptised on the bed, sheets like champagne,
Distilled rare chablis from tears that she’d cried
While she hung his damp screams outside to dry.
Alice Fulton
New York, New York
Gifts
After years like these, you might have expected
the sharp crack of pine snapping under my feet, not
a room such as this
where the days glance in off the gritted brick and
the words again fall from each new page, as though
they had gone unwillingly
by this dim light at which I an stationed. Yet
all is not lost. The keys
do sometimes drop into place, and tonight,
with tight hands gone quite vacant, I gaze out
across the courtyard and see her
in her well-lit room, the sheet soft about
her waist and thevbasin balanced on her thighs,
As she bends slightly forward
to slowly wash her breasts
with the sweet oil that I gave her.
Roger Gaess
Washington, Connecticut
A LESSON OF NIGHT
Deep in the shadows of your room
where even the moon is a stranger,
you play your flute again
in front of the little cage.
You have heard of Haydn’s parrot,
of how in the night
when all senses were void of their office
except for the sense of sound,
a captured bird was taught a human tune.
But the tiny finch behind your bars
only listens to the breath inside your flute,
only hears your fingers fly again tonight.
Your sound is clear and full
of everytinig you want from him.
But this room, this little cage
does not give back your tune
no matter how dark it may be.
Charles Ghigna
Homewood, Alabama
YOU AND THE LADY WITH THE HAT
We try to overlook the distance
that sits between us
like a lady with a hat,
but every time we stand, she stands.
Charles Ghigna
Homewood, Alabama
UNCLE JOHN
You were the gent in the
the three piece suit and straw hat
who came unannounced from Rochester
and wouldn’t knock on our back door
or ring the bell
you sat in your car
sometimes past sunset
until we walked out and
discovered you with our amazed faces
or until a neighbor phoned us
about a strange man
wandering about our yard
you ate dinner with us those nights
and sucked your teeth through tea
as you told stories about your fajnily
and the job you almost had
later I crept into my mother’s bed
because you were arguing
with ghosts
in the room across the hall
and I couldn’t sleep
mother said you were an old man
those were your prayers
but I knew different
I knew how angry
you must have been
the first time and every time
you walked into a room
and found them staring at you:
your dead mother, dead sisters
uninvited, stupidly waiting
to be found
Margaret Griffith
Chadron, Nebraska
jane mccrowley, my
mother’s cousin’s mother’s aunt
you were a hard one to figure
they say you drifted
from room to room
your hands
two breathing angels
blessing the wash
of mud curled
like a hesitant kitten
in the corners of stained
glass windows
blessing the fierce
jaws and carved brown teeth
of the pride of lions
which crouched beneath the couch
and
the furry eyebrowed ancestors
necks craned like bald birds
your hands blessed and blessed
two breathing angels
wings demurely folded
waiting
mad
as a spring day in December
you never opened your mouth
to talk except
once right in the middle of
great grandfather’s funeral you
started to chatter like a monkey
saying
first there’s nothing, then
the vines slither and the leaves
pop out pop in and out
in the middle there’s a pumpkin
big orange thing
and then you shuddered
into silence
and one other time, my
mother’s cousin told me
she came upon you
stone asleep in
your moon-soaked room
an old woman
lost in a white shapeless gown
singing
in your sleep
like a bird
Cynde Gregory
Albany, New York
down & out in apartment 5-d
the apartment looks
like a junk yard,
crumpled rejection slips & beer cans
scattered over the floor like wrecked cars.
my poems grow anemic & pale.
sometimes late at night
they cry.
i’ve lost thirty pounds
just on submissions.
i’m so small
i can slip through a keyhole
& pick up the mail.
each day the mailman
gets thinner
& thinner
as he walks down the street
& disappears
into a crack in the sidewalk.
i pick him up
like a toothpick,
stick him between my teeth
& bite so hard
he can’t deliver
anymore rejection slips.
Jan E.M. Haas
New York, New York
RED CURRENTS
i feel numb
only the sound
of jet engines
high over Pittsburgh
i’m afraid
talking to myself
about us
into the void
at the trieste café in frisco
you & i talked about our future
the quilt we slept under
at our first apartment on strathmore road
the drive north through big sur
the fluorescent waves
san simeon
early mornings
much coffee
i walk ainlessly
and watch the sun break
between boston skyscrapers
i feel red currents swelling inside
the day ending
i remember the july morning
you wanted out
now I want only to watch you
blow-drying your shortened hair
brushing your teeth
putting make-up on
as you keep pace with your early morning ritual
i remember you
framed by an easterly faced window
adorned with plants at a place once our own
considering my irishness
i apologize
i can still hear you saying
no one ever hit my heart so hard
Philip Hackett
Boston, Massachusetts
RELINQUISHING
She let him go
like a lost wallet
containing many things –
nothing irreplaceable.
She let him go
on his fact-finding mission
for God –
askew
in his particular way,
stuck for hours at a time
staring not over or through
his glasses’ frames
nor quite at the floor,
wandering off to scrutinize
the God-discovering potential
in a dime store:
the odor he fancied
obliquely sacramental,
the toys, balloons and balls,
the plastic smell
and whiff of cosmetics
grainy in the air.
Through inhaling this
subtle tragedy spirirualized
in mercanile vapors,
he said he was drawn upward.
She let him go
like a burial at sea –
how very sad. What relief.
She’d miss him so.
She hoped he’d sink.
At first he said
his research would take shape
in a diagram.
“A Deity blueprint?” she said.
He smiled but looked concerned.
Later she found him
tinkering with math.
She let him go like fireworks,
a roman candle or shooting star,
lit him off and hoped
he’d explode.
He undertook to do sketches
in the dark.
Sometimes he would
stand on his head
or hold his breath.
He brought home holy men
arrived from overseas,
their gesticulating translators,
professors of philosophy
and priests.
The pantry and the coat closet
filled chest-high with books.
She sighed with happiness
when he drove away
to the mountain to fast.
For a while her life was
delightfully plain.
She daydreamed over coffee
and sometimes watched t.v..
When he came back
he built large cardboard structures
and odd humming machines
designed he said
to resonate to, and detect,
unseen force.
He began experiments
in talking to the dead.
Then one day he got well.
He gave away all
but a shelf full of books.
They once again made love.
His business voted him
man of the year.
With gentle humor, she’d say,
“You must have found
what you were looking for.”
And with an odd resilient look
he never lost
he never said.
Tom Hawkins
Raleigh, North Carolina
THE GREAT GANG BANG, 1939
Rubber was the first prerequisite
and usually the hardest item to find;
we needed plenty.
Then nails and pieces of good wood
that had to be just the right size,
about a foot long was best,
and an inch thick.
Clothespins, the old round two-pronged type,
were the easiest thing to get.
Then all we needed were girls.
We made our guns: the rubber
we got frm old tire innertubes;
cut into half inch strips
like huge rubber bands
stretched around the block of wood
they held the clothespin which was handle
and loading chamber.
The trigger was the nail,
our bullets
were an innertube’s yield of bands.
Put together in propoer fashion
you got
a GumBandGun.
You were Tom Mix or Buck Jones
riding your great white stallion
paddling your ass over a summer hill
and the girls
were the bad guys.
Haywood Jackson
Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania
TIT FOR TAT
Helen did it. I made her
teach me to dance in the
high school hallway one day.
When I was the monitor,
guarding the lavatory,
she came along, without a pass.
Well. With that position
of supreme authority,
how could I fail to
make it pay off big?
We danced a stately,
storklike dance,
and that very night
she called me to her
house on Rose Mont Hill
to help, she said,
her make white lace
doilies for her folks.
See, she never had,
and I knew how,
and her folks were
out.
Haywood, Jackson
Turtle Creek, Pennsylvania
FOOTNOTE
When I first saw her in the Heights, she tripped my
attention at once; a very footsome girl if ever I’d seen one. She
was carrying some heavy bundles and I politely asked her if
she needed a foot. As our feet brushed over the bundles I
knew we had gotten off on the right foot.
As we walked through the crowd I told her that she had
beautiful feet, and that I could tell by her long, elegant toes
that she must be a musician.l She confessed that she did play
the foot-organ. We fell into step naturally as we reached her
apartment and she asked me to come upstairs and rest my
feet.
I sat down in a leather chair that squeaked like a new
shoe. She removed her sandles and told me I could take off my
shoes if I felt like it. I did and our imtimacy grew rapidly. We
exchanged shoe sizes and she told me a bit about her life. She
had led a rather foot to mouth existence and I told her that
that was the kind of life I had always dreamed of living, but
that I had always felt like I had two left feet.
I sensed she was toeing with me but I wasn’t sure I
wanted to be footcuffed to someone I hardly knew. On the
one foot, Iwanted her, but, on the other foot, I was afraid of
the commitment that might imply.
She made the first move. I never would have forced her
foot the way she did mine for fear of rejection. But believe
me, I am a pretty footy fellow, and as our feet entangled I
felt as though I had stepped on a footgrenade. It was that
explosive a sensation. She was also ambipedrous which added
to the excitement.
Afterwards, she confessed that she had changed feet a
lot, but I said I wouldn’t hold this against her. It was then that
we both saw the footwriting on the wall and knew this was for
keeps. Perhaps it was the way she held up the footglass to
admire our feet, or the way she rested her chin on one foot as
she looked up at me, but I knew I was deeply in love.
I gave her my ankle bracelet and she gave me a toering as
beautiful as any that had ever adorned a toe, and for the first
time in our lives we both felt we finally had a toehold on
existence. We pledged to put our best foot forward and to
always footle each other with care.
Nick Johnson
Brooklyn, New York
BLACKOUT
A storm trooper blacksabbath day
turned to nightmind
crackling with laughter
ghost-shriek and eerie, death-boned
icedrums of thunder deafening the lights
a fuse-blowing wail of a rock group
computer-storm blind blackout seconds
wondering
if this cruel age oF skycscrapers
has passed away at last
into the future
of canoes.
Tom Jones
Washington, D.C
CYCLE POEM
A YOUNG MAN roars up to 115 Live Oak Lane.
A YOUNG WOMAN has been waiting a long time for this moment.
Nick is the least popoular boy in school and so cute that
most of the girls say they would do anything to ride
behind him.
AN OLDER MAN looks at Nick in his leather pants. He sees
that Suzanne adores him and follows in the Buick. Sure
enough, after some junk food Nick takes Suzanne to his
place, a garage with spare parts gleaming everywhere,
even over the bed. The man peeks through the window.
Nick makes Suzanne dance to the radio and take off
her clothes. The man is repelled for hours and barely
beats them home.
AN OLDER WOMAN listens to her husband’s report. She
is disgusted yet later in bed finds herself enormously
capable. She thinks this is just the ticket. It turns
out to be a fine night for everyone.
BUT WAIT
The young woman and the two older people live on the memory
of the evening they refer to as Nick’s NIght. When Nick does
not ask Suzanne ourt after a week or two, father buys daughter
her first revealing blouse and skintight pants. Nothing
doing. So mother also gets dolled up and hangs around with
the tough crowd after school. Still no. Finally they
mortgage the house and buy three Vincent Black Shadows.
The whole family roars over to Nick’s place who — when
he hears the punctual revving — wonders what he is in for.
Ronald Koertge
South Pasadena, California
Morning Raga
The little blond schoolgirl voluptuary in green
shades, cutoffs, halter top, filigree gold pen-
dants & jade bracelets by whose waters I sat down
awaiting the S bus, had perched her petulant
little ass on the backrest of the busbench; her
huge green platform shoes commandeered the seat
beside mine; her midriff-omphalos being no more
than a twist fom my yawning lips I could as
easily have reached over & bit into a soft chunk
of her belly as not. The assault on the sun by
the whiteness of women’s bodies. NO, in this
case the darkness. She was bronzed to a turn.
But the restraint of jacket & tie, the propspect
of oboviously ghastly consequences & the spec-
kled green vulgarity of her painted big toe
disssuaded me. Besides, it was a work-day &
far too early in the morning for festivities.
The sun was just beginning to bubble up
over Collins Avenue.
Steve Kowit
San Diego, California
Small Business Boom
A spaghetti-headed hippie in a black fedora
& his droopy-eyed Chicano sidekick
are dealing dope
across the street from Horton Plaza.
Spaghetti keeps bumping into pedestrians,
an unorthodox approach
but it gets results:
he offs three lids in ten minutes
& the brunette
in the hot-pink hot pants
& maroon sweater strutting
it down the street likewise
looks to be doing a brisk business.
Steve Kowit
San Diego, California
City Skip
Skip roll-rocks his burgeoning way
to the burly night-speaks of east L.A.
A rabid reflection in a Figueroa windowpane,
he pulls a purple bottle
from a brown paper bag.
Producing prodigious wind-sacks
of badly weakened syntax,
he does a quick jig and a taxi flag.
The he flames down to Hollywood in a yellow cab,
where he postleans, corner-smokes,
coinjingles and dirty-jokes his way
into the celluloid heart of old L.A.
His shirt is open, sunning pimples on his chest
beneath the brash blue aura
of steeltree blue lamps.
He runs, alley-wise, with nostrils flaring,
with wind-fly ears, roaring, swearing,
seeking solace in the slap-rip noises
of the city play-seeks.
Eyes filled with Babylonian image bombs,
he’s digging all the freaks.
Flash, splash, wheeze, he jerks,
stoned again, his legs berserk,
as the neon color wizardry works
on the bewildering screen
of a Tequila sky . . .
and if you get in his way, he’ll black your eye.
Whiskey stars, like double-shot choirs,
sing to Skipper’s deeper desires,
goading him to seek and acquire
a suitable receptacle
amid the parking lot tires
for the guiltless power of his ringing chimes.
So, he buys a blue lady for a real good time.
Trollop, trollop, the seed bag sways
rocking Skipper’s turnstyle away,
in the deep dim of the hob-knob bob,
long and squeeking,
delightedly creaking
the dawn from its sleep.
It’s all observed by a peeping tom creep,
who tramples the bushes outside by the street.
The lady then leaves while Skip’s asleep.
His wallet, watch and jewelry she keeps.
He wakes up, his mind in limbo,
ripped off by the L.A. bimbo.
Michael G. Leigh
Long Beach, California
THE OLD LOT
They cleared the old lot
and found bones a cat,
a rat skeleton
and weeds with strong deep roots,
weeds with white flowers in the spring.
They found holes empty and cans,
bottles and a letter to John Germaine.
One of the workers opened it,
an unlined sheet of paper,
the words I loved you once,
and nothing more.
It was a hazard the old lot
dry a match would hit like lightning,
burn and crackle.
Now the dust shimmies in the wind.
Like on the flat plain of the desert
far off,
you see things coming
and they come.
Martin Levy
Los Angeles, California
JENNIFER
A hole where the heart should be
I’ve no life left for you litte fish you leap between my hips
Double every day your impossible demands
Pregnant at forty I’m grotesque frightened I’ll lose my job
The frame house in Venice the weedy yard
Where my son practices jump shots after school
Nights, I dig heels against the mattress
Pull blankets over my head
Crazy I slide a knintting needle from the ball of wool
Sharpen it with a file sterilize it over a stove burner
Until heat sears thru the asbestos glove
One strong push upward into tissue –
My hands are water the needle rolls unused on the bathroom rug
Scared of myself I throw up again and again
Blunder off curbs into traffic
Late July I swim to the surface in shop windows
My glass self in a sleeveless maternity dress
Arms smooth and brown
Bean vine
You climb my backbone
Fill me out in front I roof you over
Wall you in you are mine
You push tendrils up thru my eyes my mouth
I sing of you and weep
The monstrous pains begin something’s gone wrong
The young doctor can’t hear your heart beat
He shifts his stethoscope over the nave of my belly
We both sweat I bear down
You slide out on the bloody cloths
Blue-white and cold
Your breath does not come
The hospital packs my overnight bag
Sends me home after the burial I totter
Around the living room on two dry twigs
Dust table tops therapy my son
Twists sideways over the weed stubble
LIfts the ball above his head stubborn
Trying to get it right
His shot strikes the metal rim thump
Thump the side of the house
I stand in the center of the room
Eyes closed dust cloth pressed against my mouth
Boards shudder indent recoil
Bone jar fists thud into flesh my bruises leap and connect
Carol Lewis
Santa Monica, California
WAR GAMES
to my son
You draw colored lines on maps
Blue for us red for them
Books stacked in your room
Details of machine guns artillery
We watch old war movies on TV black and white
That’s an AK-50 you explain
A Sherman and Tiger duel
Walls in the village collapse
The hero wears the broad freckled face of Nebraska
Just doing hi job
Wipes out a tank with his last grenade
Black wounds open
The enemy crawls forward hair and clothes on fire
His agony existed before you were born
And will exist
Feetup on the coffee table
You handle the remote control switch
Armies fan out across valleys
Generals pose over maps parcel out countries
Waterloo Iwo Jima
You refight them all and win big
Nights the enemy advances his cannon pound your suburbs
His sappers blow your barbed wire
The cry from your room wakes me
Your strongholds crumbling
I am in another country
Too far away to help
Carol Lewis
Santa Monica, California
THE CANDIDATE
is running so fast
you can’t tell
what he’s doing
He tap dances
into your bed
jogs around
your nipoples verbs
blur he wraps
his smile around
you tight it’s
so fast you
don’t know how
your panties
got on the floor
or where he’s been
You can’t tell
where you stand
in the wind
that sucks you
breathless when
he rushes out
leaving holes walls
that don’t connect
to any ceiling
from this twister
that slams you into
stone like his twisted words
lyn lifshin
Niskayuna, New York
WINE APPLE SMOKE AND WINDCHIMES
apple smoke
must have been
pulling on the
vines i could feel my hands
stretching toeward
you like the ivy
knotted i wanted to un
button black
velvet i could hlf feel your
fingers thru already
you carried me up 3 flights
canteloup light slow
and moving a
piece of night like maple
syrup thrown on snow
colored of stained glass
you could eat
lyn lifshin
Niskayuna, New York
the bride of the hound of the baskervilles
the honeymoon was over
when she caught him
absentmindedly drying
his penis on her face towel
Gerald Locklin
Long Beach. California
jam fa jamaica
munch lime sip sky juice slurp ksikimp pine
honey bee bus from mo bay tree behine chat/flat?/scratch?
climb eel el spine bluesy mt. revery
twelth tribe gullies airwaves upon babylon
quick step wait-a-bit smell english mon
me no sen you no come cockpit country is a halt
whence lamb’s blood benevolence visions from judah
hazard apocalyptic name mane rye-chee-ous-ness
driven off plains sieve plots hand idle land idle
abeng call pall: garoo garoooo garoooooo
shrink credit crime caution daily gleaning
surfeit shoal dovecote whistling toady motto
cricket creak out of anyone people won people
runaway bay bay stout dragon’s creeping fish redeemer
tout lout flagon fume barreling rheum
grueled effigy keen exorbitant gas
impossible to purchase face cream masque
clean house! after maid! all the life
me whan go home heart down head turn a round
bout trench town six bends yard boil
hewer of wood drawer of water caster of stone
smile gem acre hope’s gardener marooned coral aisle
in heart land garvey nanny nyam bammy rule mon-a-cool
star ward herons dip poise sleek viney web
ibo eye feeshire cool tumbling spring
wheel on clipped prpophecy cane hack tough black scar line
tug push pull bump sway drift raft
capatain mento lean streaks mauve sunset:
"ahm troo mahn budt ama pooer mahn yusee
ah hav likkle skoolin ah hav to wok verry verry odddd
budt pooer mahn dai soon come so-shall-eesm bettah fa awl"
back pasture salt gut spur tree
rat trap lambs river ginger hill
oracabesso rio bueno
salvation army blares liberty
in twilight square of port antonio
Charles Lynch
Brooklyn, New York
NOVEMBER NIGHT
The fishscale snow
stacks on the shed’s
only window, the rope
whispers to the beam,
the black loft beyond
the lantern’s law;
playing on the planks,
the pup rewinds his
shadow,cocks his
heaed at the stiff
legs of the deer,
the knife standing
on the oiled stone.
James Magorian
Helena, Montana
My father is a hubcap.
My mother is a sheel.
But they don’t get around much anymore.
I remember the paisley seatcovers
in our 1960 Ford.
I used to stroke them for hours.
My father caught me one day.
I still had dust on my fingers.
I couldn’t explain.
But I knew that beneath his gabardine slacks,
he had paisley legs just like mother’s back.
I tried to explain.
He shifted his cotton-briefed hips,
and mother smiled.
That’s when I noticed her teeth fit
together like a zipper in gabardine lips.
I continued to explain.
Mother turned away and rolled into the kitchen,
and father collapsed with a clatter.
The Ford was sold to a neighbor with hives,
but I still carry the dust of those seatcovers
with me in an aspirin bottle in my purse,
and the paisley heart of my fingers
yet beats for the upholstery of my youth.
man
Santa Monica, California
TRAIN
You buy a paperback to read on the train.
A novel about broken promises and their
consequences. The hero is looking for
someone who understands the demands made
by loneliness.
A secondary characater seems strangely
familiar. You soon realize that this
character has many of your own faults and
virtues. Even more startling, this
fictitioius creation comes from your home
town.
Your uneasiness lessens as the novel’s
hero once more becomes the story’s main
focus. While having supper in the dining
car, you mull over the novel’s implications
and speculate on the outcome of the hero’s
romances.
Back in your seat, you resume reading.
Again, the character who resembles you
surfaces. The character, like yourself, is
married. Your spouses hve the same name.
The revelation is unnerving.
The character must make a business trip and
boardes a train. He buys a novel to passs the
time. The coincidence has become frightening.
After an evening meal the character returns
to his seat and resumes rfeading. You glance
at your watch. The character looks at his
watch and shortly thereafter the train has a
terrible collision. Dropping the book, you
grab for the emergency cord but already the
brakes are screeching with the crunch of metal
not far behind.
Robert Matte Jr.
Tucson, Arizona
One in a Million
I hug my step-baby, I heat his bottle.
Finland is the thin frown my mother gives me.
My father stacks vegetables on the seacoast;
he phones he’ll kill my boyfriend if I have one.
The doctors peel my girlfriends’ jeans off
like adhesive and stick hooks up inside them.
If Friday night doesn’t find them on the floor,
the mortuary arrives for them on Monday.
I can’t control myself around Tattoos, though;
they beat me into the kitchen, I pull a knife.
Once the librarian pulled my blouse off;
I wouldn’t sit for his kids now if he begged me.
This is what I do to keep my distance:
I laugh like an old detective, I collect fractures;
I also collect black lace, hair driers and hats.
If it ever rains, I set out buckets for it.
Will I chase the wind with a birdcage when I’m thirty,
or bring posies to the animal graveyard,
homesick for despair? I’ve slept so long
the prince will have to wake me with a hammer.
Mark McCloskey
Los Angeles, California
The Last Delaware is a Bellydancer
The day my aunt goes down the hole in her,
I’ll be the last Delaware on the West Coast.
I already know the ears of the dead are cave-ins.
There were no reservations where I grew up.
The grown-ups who went crazy had the truck route;
the rest of us were parked with the lights off,
bending the rules of hearsay into letdown.
Sixteen was tired when she got to me.
Still I put myself in the hands of blondes . . .
and no boy came for me to say no to.
The weak are the oldest hunters and don’t miss:
I threw myself on sex while it was grazing.
My car let no one drive it but me.
I rode it like an Indian pony at the speedway,
and though it always fell short of the best time,
hundreds of men paid to see my weekends.
My teachers’ dirty looks are asleep now.
Soon they’ll talk of Chief Belly Dance
and her massacre of the marriages at Moon Creek.
I won’t be the last anything if I can help it.
Mark McCloskey
Los Angeles, California
Dancer
She didn’t know why she recalled her mother
that day. Her mother’s four-fingered hand on the
wheel of the old Ford, steering through country
roads, complaining about the heat and talking,
non-stop. Just like she didn’t know exactly why
she asked her mother to stop and pull to the side
of the road where she got out.
"I have to dance," she said. And did in a frenzy.
"I just have to dance."
Maybe it was the boy
strumming his bike
along the sun
building up on the sand bar
that made her think
of that day
while she waded
in white cotton pants
rolled up to the knee
and listened to the sky
blueing and clams whanging
in a rusty pail
The wind whipped loose hair
and plugged her ears
with sea chants
And then she got that feeling
again. After all thsoe years
That feeling
She swiveled out of her clothes
and faded woolen bathingsuit
& danced
deeper and deeper into the water
while the blue china sky churned
up whitecaps & everything
gathered into a bloody sunset
& clams swelled in a pail
abandoned at the shore
roberta metz
New York, New York
KADDISH
On a crowded bus an old man stares,
gives up his seat and comes over to her.
"You look just like him," he says
and she wonders,
transforming this whisper of a man
into grandpa’s heroic physique,
dressing him in pin-stripes
and a woolen cap that always cast a shadow
over his one good eye.
Could it be?
No, grandpa was bigger. Much taller.
"Your grandfather was a prince, my best friend
in the world. I sometimes say a prayer for him,"
She offered him her seat, a lifesaver.
He followed her off the bus.
She ordered him a coffee, something to eat.
"Thanbks for the tonic, but favors I don’t need."
and pressed some coins in her hand.
He confessed he received messages
from his dead aunt on his mother’s side.
And kept pointing two fingers
as if to shoot her.
She walked him to the bus stop.
And helped him up.
He said, "It’s important for a man to have children."
The bus started to move.
He called out the window. "Who will pray for me?"
She didn’t know.
robert metz
New York, New York