I walk along the
beach, the sand
melting
under
my
feet.
The turquoise of the water slowly
drifts into
white foam CRASHING the silence into
nothing.
A line of seaweed close to the water’s edge is
disrupted by a seagull
stalking by.

Lizzie B.

Your hands leave footprints

It’s still wet…
Scent,
Mattress,
My hair on your pillow.
With each time your hand
Each inflation of my ego you
Each sigh that escapes your
The cement dries, we roll over
Ourselves as we realize
Back.
The cement has dried

in the cement of my memory as the
confusion sets in
We can still rewind the traces of your
The indentations on your

Ventures further in the cement
Mutter
Parted lips
Satisfied and disgusted with
We can no longer go

No turning back.

Sarah Z.

When at the end of the summer the fall leaves cascade
to the ground and are blown into winter
where torrents of snow pile up in my front yard only to be
melted
away
by
the spring

You know time is passing.

When chairs sit by a table and nobody sits on the chairs but they used to
and laughed when they did so
when a smell evokes the sensation of remembrance but no memories come or
you sit by yourself and your mind echoes what once was that no longer is

You know time is passing.

When street lamps’ lights wane in the night
as the moon spins round the earth
and the earth round the sun
in a space where the stars are just a few light-years away
and even heavenly bodies eventually crumble

You know time is passing.

Noah D.

Spectrum

The musty cabin at the top of the hill was called the library.  It had four or five shelves of books, a raw porch, and a shredded brown sofa.  When we went up there at midnight to play with the darkness, we burned outlines of each other onto the red insides of our eyelids and we made stars in our mouths with wintergreen. Here the sky is white-blue at night and the moon is a pulsing dollop of whipped cream.

She lay on the porch at midnight and she could feel
That the middle of her back didn’t touch the ground,
That it hovered and permitted the warm air to bloat beneath
It.  She held her natural curve, arching her stomach
Up to the black cavern of the porch roof.

She lay on the porch at midnight with her arms spread
At her sides and she could hear us talking about life-savers
And crackling and the transition from dark to light,
From white to depth.

She lay on the porch at midnight, looking up into the black cavern
Of the porch roof, and she saw a girl run, in red, across
Her view. She saw the outline of her body flail and spin
On the underside of the shadow.  The tiny figure
Burned itself onto the inside of her great wooden eyelid.
And then she fluttered off the edge of her eye and fell into wind.

Sarah S.

Looking for Lesbos

gazing down through words and wheeling years
shrouded centuries peeling back, layer by filmy layer
she seems to me to be equal to a goddess
strung tautly across the ages
your words, your laughter, your sex, your heart
the lady who sits across time from me
your mind, O flashing leaps of energy
wrapped in wheat lost in grape steeped in olive choked
sets my heart to tempest time
pen in hand you leap, so fleet of winged foot
from burning crest to foaming crag to rocky breeze to tumbling flame
seizes my tongue
a knit of your celestial brow marshals the thunderheads
brilliance strikes in your gaze
liquid fire gnaws my limbs
and O! to gaze on your elegiac eye
crowned in sovereign majesty
shades my mind to blades of grass
to part the clouds of age, discover the fingers of
your sunlit isle, bathe in your elusive musings
everything can be endured

Jonah L.

Africa Lost

The Yuccas were coming, everybody knew it too, the quiet stares, the rushing glances told of their sorrow. Everybody knew but wouldn’t believe. The anxiety shimmered through the air that hot steaming July. The crackling pitch of the thunderstorms just over the mountains brought them to a fever pitch. Yet nothing was said. In those days we all knew, yet we didn’t. The world lay before us, yet it lay right outside of our lowly grasps.

We all knew sorrow, hunger, despair, yet we didn’t yet know subjugation. The last emotion to be conquered. The last castle to be cracked, like sand, into a million pieces. It stood there like the town hall, all of us clustered, all of us lost. We all talked, walked, adapted as if nothing was happening around us, as if we were still free. Free to be us, free to be slaves of ourselves. We had heard of the Yuccas, their weapons, and boats of steel. The fire breathing guns of a different race. They seemed so far away, over those mountains across the arid plains, those plains filled with the numberless ones ready to be harvested as crops. They would shield us; they would protect the rightful owners when the time came. Our ancestors would shield us as they always had and always would. We were a free people. A lovely people. The people, for we and only we could be owners of our land. It should be so and will be so. We thought. Yet we didn’t believe. Our ancestors had not defended us for many years. Maybe they never had. But our faith was steady. Our rhythm was fast, racing across the steppe to warn them. They were not welcome. They would not come.

They had progressed for hundreds of years, from the first ones in their small ships with their propositions of trade, peace, coexistence. We thought little of them then, until they took us from our homes, reduced us to rats shackled in a ship, dying and death overpowering all principles. The new ones were different, intent only on destruction, raping our lands of their fruits, raping our life with their ideas. Eating away slowly, slowly until they were the cloud on the horizon, the rain on the roof, the fire in the bush. The land was given to us for our peaceful men and women to live on and respect. Their land was given to produce, produce, exploit. They didn’t love it; they only cared for it, pushing us backwards, backwards, never-ending. We were the last castles, the last captains of our race. Lost in time, doomed to the night. Condemned to the wilds forever more, our existence threatened by the process of industry. Social stratification would come our way, the arms of the beastly society, millions hungry, hundreds profiting. The wheel turning round and round repaying our kindness with despair dooming the race, the landmass like destiny obliterated. O the Bakonga sailors of the unknown, O the Fon wiped into oblivion by their hands, O the Maasai, the everlasting warriors doomed to death without glory on their terms of battle. I lament thee O lost ones. The day has come for us to go too, utterly helpless to their arms, our identity lost forever, until they leave us a broken land of broken hearts and broken people, never again to regain strength. The women cry. The men lament. This is the last coming. The last spark of our light that did light the whole land. It will vanish along with us and many more. Condemned by the ivory in the great elephants, the riches in the soil, the fruits on the trees. All gone into the hands of the snowmen. Lost forever, never-ending. One day our spirits will rise in song and that vast body will charge the invaders out of our forests, tundra, and desert back to their cities. Until that day you must grieve. Grieve not only for our plight, but for the plight of the numberless ones which they have spoiled, rotted, and used. Grieve for our rivers, forests, and mountains. For it is they who are everlasting that cannot be replaced.

Chris N.

sculpture garden

the alabaster curve
of a hipbone
outthrust contrapposto
evokes
sharp longing in me,
a memory of your taut flank
seen only once
as you stretched up
chalk in hand
to write words
long since forgotten

Katie B.

I look around me and realize that there are crumbs
left over from many breakfasts ago, still in my kitchen crevices
despite my efforts to dust them and the tree frost
and street frost and door frost and all kinds of crumbs and dust, and the frost
that links
the cold and warm. I ruin
my prospects for the day and decide instead to arrange each crumb in a line

on the counter top and consider what other things I could line
up like my crumbs
or whether it makes more sense to ruin
my architecture of long-lost muffins and to seal all crevices
and destroy them and lock them with a chain of many links
so that I can rid myself of the crumbs that so resemble frost

to ward off the dirt and scum that frost
my insides and pretend that my veins are just little lines
scratches and dents from clumsiness. When I try to link
my thoughts together it gets messy and all I find in the end are crumbs
and morsels of what I intended to say that collect in crevices
and gather round and have pow-wows and plot ways to plan my ruin.

After breakfast is finished and my muffin memoriam is turned to ruin
I focus my dilated eyes on the outdoor frost.
Outside is covered with cold crumbs, and inside, the crevices
are lined
with crumbly muffin crumbs
and the festooned tree in the living room has no link

to today and the bulbous ornaments look precarious in their link
to the long expired tree which slowly decays into post-Christmas ruin.
Everything seems to decay around now, as if mutated by the hot-and-coldness
of crumbs.
The chronic frost
is too much and follows the lines
of my house-warmed hair, freezing it in small icicles near the crevices

of my eyes and ears, the same crevices
where waxes link
to hairs and stick to sound. The lines
of the frozen sidewalks blend together in their frigid ruin
of crumbling frost:
the snow that makes me stumble and slip and wish for homely muffin crumbs.

I know that the line of time between holidays and spring is one of indecisive ruin
and that unsuspecting crevices become the link
between frost and crumbs and hot and cold.

Nora S.

“It’s cold in here,” she says to the cat,
dusting snowflakes off her hair and
watching as they flit to the floor.
Hands now ice, she clenches
and unclenches her fists to
start the flow of blood. She remembers
in her twenties how
she loved to hop outside in freezing
weather, shocking her
synapses
into a zero-degree Celsius frenzy
as wind rattled her endless locks of hair.

Now she sits sullenly by her fire
and watches orange flames ravage smooth logs.
Footsteps approaching, and
“It’s cold in here.” His brisk voice carries over
as he locks the door behind him. “You’re
home all day and you can’t even
maintain heat?” In a few
stomps, his boots are off, his hair shaken out,
jacket dripping snow onto
freshly mopped stairs. A few more
stomps, he is in his room, door
shut, no longer open for business.

When she was eighteen, she met
a boy who thought dandelions were
the prettiest flower and skinny
girls lacked personality. The intensity
of white in her wedding dress
drew gasps from the eagerly invited audience
as she staggered down the aisle.

From her large windows
in the living room she sees
hordes of people walking past as though
crossing from stage left to
stage right. Busy throats still swallowing business lunch let out
crisp “It’s cold in here”s before marching past her windows defiantly.

And she can’t remember the last time
it snowed in October or the last time
someone heard the remnants of her voice
shakily echoing in their pleading uncertainty.

Genevieve H.

Pennsylvania

“You listen!” I yelled. “I can wear this whenever and wherever I want,” I continued quietly, pointing at my hat.
“You can’t just wear a bowler hat on a day like this,” Bill muttered. But the battle was won; I had subdued him. He walked gawkily down the sidewalk, dodging every crack. It gave his stride a jerky, demented look.
“You look retarded,” I whispered in his ear, so as to conceal my observation from anyone on the crowded sidewalks who had not already noticed. Bill spun around to face me. His back was to a long blue wall of a construction site, behind which an enormous bulldozer hung over our heads.
“This look retarded to you?” he asked me fiercely, but before I could respond, he launched into a ferocious sermon on sidewalk cracks. He was hopping along sideways now, like a crab. A few sentences in, he lost his train of thought, but kept crabbing along, searching for it. I stared up at the bulldozer, calmly wondering if it would drop gravel on us pedestrians outside the blue wall. All of a sudden I was startled by the horn of a town car and found myself standing out in the street. I quickly jumped back to the sidewalk.
I looked around for Bill. He was hunched over with his back to the corner of the blue wall, his still upper body protruding into the sea of pedestrians like a sleeping figurehead. At first I thought he was sick; he looked nauseous. But then he straightened up and looked at me.
“I’m trapped,” he said hoarsely. “I’m finished.” I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. But when I looked at his eyes and I followed their downward gaze, I saw that he was indeed trapped. His crab walking had landed him right in a spider web of cracks. His boxy shoes were balanced on their toes to avoid what in Bill’s twisted mind was a potentially fatal spinal injury to his beloved mother. I leaned against the lamppost on the corner, across the narrow sidewalk from Bill.
“You’re just going to have to figure it out yourself,” I told him. We were in no hurry. But for those pedestrians who were, we were creating a bottleneck on the corner, narrowing down their constant stream to a trickle. As soon as I became aware of the potential problem with our position, I realized that a chubby but friendly-looking woman was standing next to me. I looked at her and she smiled.
“You boys are looking for Pennsylvania, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what we’re looking for!” I screamed. The people around us seemed to fall quiet right then, and everyone had stopped. There was a gentle rustle as the breeze blew through paper shopping bags. Even Bill looked up, with a magnificent grin on his face.
“How do we get to Pennsylvania?” he asked, articulating each word slowly and precisely. I looked at him from under my hat. He knew very well that we were not going to Pennsylvania, his eyes said. He was simply amused by her odd question, just as I was.
“Lemme see here,” the woman said, pulling out a folded map from her big leather purse. The pedestrian traffic had completely stopped on the street, waiting for our conversation to resolve itself. The woman knelt down on the dirty concrete and spread out her map. It was a highway map of the whole country, the size of a large coffee table. It took up the whole sidewalk between the blue wall and the street, and its edges were leaning up on the blue wall. Bill and I started laughing simultaneously at the sheer strangeness of the situation. We both stepped out of the way of the map, as the woman brought her khaki knees onto Mexico.
“Pennsylvania…” she muttered. “Hmm.” Her fat fingers ran slowly over Arizona and she began reciting the names of little Arizona towns. She was completely clueless. Bill and I were completely hysterical now, keeled over in uncontrollable laughter.
“Could somebody help me find Pennsylvania for these boys?” she pleaded with the crowd, oblivious to our howls of laughter. Slowly laughter spread across the crowd. First the fat balding man in the Florida shirt began to laugh, and then the well-dressed hipster girls on the other side of the map. And then, slowly but surely, the whole crowd gathered around us was rolling with laughter.
“Pennsylvania?” she asked pathetically, looking up from Colorado. “Anybody know?” Bill, weary with laughter, finally stood up straight. Forgetting his fear of cracks, he walked across the map, stamping his black footprints on highways and rivers from Rhode Island to California. We crossed the street, looking back at the corner and laughing our last laughs. The crowd was still standing around the map. The woman was still kneeling on the map.
Then, suddenly, that same man with the Florida shirt walked slowly and deliberately across the map. A construction worker crossed the other way. Slowly, boots, sandals, sneakers, and shoes of all kinds were walking across, unaware of the map and unaware of the portly woman kneeling on it. She screamed as somebody stepped on her fingers, or maybe her hands. Bill grabbed my shoulder and turned me away from the corner. He looked like he was close to tears.
“Let’s go. Let’s go right now,” he said, but I couldn’t take my eyes away. The woman had backed up into the street, still on her knees.
“Stop! Stop!” she bawled, clutching at the map spread out under the thick stream of tourists. Her hands, surely bruised from boots by now, came up with tears of map, a little bit of Texas here, a little bit of Alabama there. We had to walk several blocks before we could no longer hear her wails.
Late that night, past midnight, I was wandering nearby and found myself at the corner of the blue wall. The sidewalk was empty, and the woman was long gone. But shreds of the map still clung to the cement. Under the orange glow of the streetlight I could make out some of the Midwest, and some of California was still there, but no Pennsylvania. Maybe she found it.

Henry G.

There’s a fish trapped inside the plastic, but nobody seems to care.
He’s barely swimming anymore, seems to be resting (floating?) on the blue
artificial ocean. It’s where he was born,
where he remained on a shelf, was picked up finally and wrapped in pretty purple paper he could see through, like water,
and brought home, played with, tilted from one side to the other until he felt dizzy and was given away—except when the man came in and didn’t even glance at the pictures of his children, the fish didn’t feel so ignored,
but then he was packed up again, and this time he found his home.
A table right in the middle of a crowded room,
full of people who always had time to look at him and smile
and turn him around so his red fins showed,
but that was years, months, splashes ago
and now all he has is the water,
but he’s tired of it, longs to be on land,
to feel something solid after so long in space.

Elisabeth R.

Discovery

I devoted a morning to it.
My hands swallowed in paperwork,
I scratched the surface of one thousand historical events,
searching my resources for an afternoon in time
that would spark the interest in my fingers.
I had sworn to myself, and to others, that I would quit writing out love,
that I would switch to writing out the way a war was won,
the way the Parthenon was built.
I slaved over the notions of science,
searching for elements to grace my page,
looking for a way to artfully describe the invention of time.
With the sliding of hours and my hands going numb
I crumpled paper to the floor,
sitting amongst all my beginnings.
I scratched out the first stitches of the American flag,
the discovery of fire.
As the sun shifted in the sky
and morning turned to afternoon,
I quietly (while no one was watching)
wrote down how beautiful the girl had looked last night,
her hair on her face and her mouth slightly open
as she and her boy
invented the first kiss.

Elena S.

Taming

“and wasn’t she so full of wild
want for his he and her she?”
—Holly Anderson

I heard these words aligned
in time for mine to be tucked
away. How much description
should I give today? Those
words came about with
a stricture. She tucked
a flower into their
pockets. Or drew them
out of a flower, you can
look at it both ways.
You gave me this song
(just like there are
many ways to mean “I knew
this girl once,” there are
many ways to mean
“you gave me this song”).
I know a boy who
gave me a song,
just for me to try.
You tacked on that your
mom’s friend had written
the lyrics. I did a little
research and found it was
more than that,
she wrote a poem.
And now a man sings her
poem, differently than I
would have read a poem
with flowers tucked into
its pockets. Who knows.
Right now I’m keeping you
between a couple of my
rib bones. I keep you on
the surface, though,
where no one would ever
suspect anything. It’s a
secret I’m keeping from
everyone. I don’t do that
often. I swore off
imagining long train rides
to Coney Island with you
(I’d describe this further
but, you know). Now it is
just what happens. Now it is
just what is happening. I can
walk down streets with you
because I learned to keep
my heart out of my throat.
The streets of Brooklyn
with you are the same as
any other streets with
anyone else. We are
together and lacking
together and we
keep our mouths
shut together
and feeling
falsely thick
air together
and not
together
at all
and one
day I’ll kiss
you and that’s
all. Maybe it will
be in St. Raymond
Cemetery with Lady Day
presiding. And this is
your last poem.
I mean, the
last poem
I’ll ever
write
for you.

Kate E.

Lizzie G.

Cave of Sorrow

Shielded in my cloak of wool
Drenched in terrified cunning
Mind disappears body disappears
As my ram shepherds me to fate.
Mammoth fingers caress my little shield
Sweet and caring sounds from this oversized brute
Sympathy for this devil
Trapped and blinded in that lonesome cave of sorrows.
Now out of this cave and back to the water
Deception, success. Regret?
Yes.
Not even a sheep for his comfort
Only pain and loneliness for that poor sad giant.

Anders M.

The Way You Eat Breakfast

The cereal is too soggy to avoid squelching between your teeth
and your lids aren’t quite up yet
neither are you
and you’re melting melting
you’re dripping hot candle wax
oozing Munch screams at the walls
and so are the clocks at this hour
time has no more energy than you
watch the clocks they’re melting
into your persistent memory
where’s Dali when you need him
you break your fast
slowly
like a master artist
condenses centuries on canvas
your elbows are dried oil paint on the table
you are losing definition
your sagging Michelangelo skin
in the clutches of Judgment Day
you break your fast
beautifully
like an awakening in progress
a torturously slow eye opening
each bat of a lash
the beat of a wing
suddenly
the revelation has arrived
you are the Angels of America
unfolding like the rose
eyes blooming
heaving upward
hour after excruciating hour
Emma Thompson’s belling voice from on high
an icy gale rushing on the seraphic flap
flap of bleary-eyed wings
and now all dreams are off
everyone is awake
Emma Thompson has sounded reveille
and the no longer soft
spoon slips
from the warm tired cradling of your fingers and lip
to the unexpectedly alert crook of the cereal bowl.

Jonah L.

Meeting the Truth

And I began to struggle with the truth,
Whose gnarled hands felt cold against my palms.
He struck me deeply, I found, after thought
Because he lay on the verge of madness and desperation.
His eyes were wells of darkness and his leathery mouth
Strengthened his expression. As he spoke
A drumming noise emerged and stifled motion
For the Truth resonated over the hum.
He said that he lay embedded in the buildings
And the stark emotions of the masses.
He said that he could move enormities
In his crooked hands. He said that he fed on
Belief but breathed integrity. He said that
His revelation came often and lasted.
He claimed that he was farsighted
And that he could not sign his own name
Not for fear of accountability but
Because he didn’t see the point.
The Truth needed further proof of identity.
And then his eyes sealed up and his head rolled back,
Burrowing into his neck and shoulders.
He stepped forward and held my hand
And then he disappeared.

Allison B.

Kamilah: Perfection

Why had it been so beautiful? I didn’t want it to be. It made me not able to take it, even though I had already done the horrid part—death. I was supposed to take it back to them, them being my father, uncle, and seventeen-year-old brother. These people told me I was a man only after my first killing of a duck. Why, many boys killed ducks. My brother goes out with his friends and they take the liquor and go out for the day. Many just have fun shooting at the ducks but not killing them. I had always thought all of this normal, until it was my turn. My duck was a beautiful woman. It didn’t have as much color as the male, but it was gorgeous anyway. It didn’t look comfortable. Its neck was almost far back enough to touch the spine. I couldn’t touch her. My father was calling, “What happened? Did it eat you?” Then they laughed. They don’t, they couldn’t understand. I can’t bring her to them. They wouldn’t realize that this one is different from the others. So I got some branches and made a spot in which to put my wonderful creature. I then had to touch her. She was still warm but rapidly getting colder. I put her in the branches and realized that if a dog got smell of her she would be found out very quickly. I promised her I would be back soon. I put my sweater over her and covered that with some leaves. I made up my story to my father, that it had fallen into the lake and gotten mud on it. By accident with my stick I had sunk it. They believed me, but were upset. The stuffing of the first killed duck of each son could not go on. I had broken the tradition, the tradition that my four older brothers had all undergone. My dad just said, “Next one, next one, and maybe it will be a male.” He has always had very high hopes for me, since all my brothers have failed him. My older brother who is hunting with us is too dumb to take a place of high command on the farm. Because I was the youngest (and the last hope), and as everyone says, the most handsome, I was to be the one who would make my father happy.

We are here in England, 1990. We live in the main house on the farm. I have always lived here. My grandfather used to live in the main house and my older brothers and parents lived in what is now the guest house. That was before I was born. After my mother gave birth to my brother James (only a few years older than I), my grandfather died, nine days later.

I am nine years old. I am wearing brown overalls, my mud boots, and a green button-down shirt. That’s what I had to write today twenty times because I got in trouble with the teacher. I didn’t want to go to school. I wanted to stay home with Kamilah, which I have named my woman duck. Kamilah is a woman’s name in Egypt, meaning perfection. I once found a story about a woman who was buried in a tomb named Kamilah, who was said to be the most beautiful of all. Ever since then I have wanted to go to Egypt and study there. I have never expressed this dream to my father and shall not for a long time.

It is summer, meaning no school, and I can spend all of my time with Kamilah. I have taken care of her for a week now. She now lives in my room in an old tool box that I cleared out. I have great long talks with her, and she understands me. I tell her that I love her, and I do. This is the problem: my first love is a wonderful dead duck. But, she has feelings, I know it, I know it. She is cold now and will never get warm, yet I love her still. We just sit in my room, she in my arms, and we talk and laugh. She’s so beautiful. Before her, I never really looked at a duck very close up. They are much more magnificent that way. I am in love and there is nothing I can do. She is the best girlfriend anyone could ever have. We go on dates to the lake and around the field and I talk to her. I always make sure that I tell her I love her, every so often, to be a good boyfriend. She is no “it.” She is a woman.

We have been together for a week now. She has started to smell a little so I took her into the shower with me, but it didn’t do too much good. So I borrowed some of my mum’s perfume and it’s much better now. Yesterday I took her to my favorite place, my hideout on top of a field with daisies all around. I think she really liked it. That’s when I asked her to marry me. She said yes. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life. I gave her a necklace that my mother was going to give my cousin, but my cousin never comes to visit. Kamilah understands that I can’t buy her her own perfume or a necklace that wasn’t meant for someone else. That’s what I love about her. She understands me. I told my friend Daniel about her and he made fun—said I was crazy. But I’m not, and that’s what Kamilah understands. The next day me and Kamilah went to the downtown church, and I asked the priest if he would marry us. This priest has always done what I ask and has known my family for quite a long time. He agreed to marry me and my dead woman duck after I assured him I really wanted to go ahead with it and was not joking. It was a beautiful wedding, very quiet and private. It was quicker than most weddings. I gave her the ring I bought that was hand-carved from wood. We are both very happy now and very in love.

Kamilah is not doing too well since we got married. She has been looking sicker and sicker. Her wing is about to fall off and her eyes are getting eaten away by the flies. She is stiffer than I remember. I pray for her to stay with me longer, but I think we don’t have much time. I’m not sure anymore if she loves me because ever since our wedding she has been losing her feathers and getting weaker and weaker. Her voice is getting softer. She does not speak to me anymore.

Danielle B.

Pulp

I think I may be dying.
I’ve been going to sleep earlier and earlier every night.
I think I’m lying down for a nap
then I wake up in the morning ready for a little bit more.
I don’t know how this came to be but I have some vague idea.
It came from this You I often address in poems because he’s so difficult to address in reality.
But every now and then I try, when I think he might be asleep so that
when he picks up the phone I’m armed with
“Did I wake you up? Never mind then”
and maybe he’ll think he dreamed me.
Anyway, I caught him awake one night and the conversation filtered down to something he called
“brain juice”
which I imagined like a more watery duck sauce, that same brownish
orange.
Or something I’d been forced to eat in the past and oh
I hate to give my mother so much satisfaction for eating it. Maybe
I should have had more though
But that’s not when or why I started dying.
I’ll get there soon though, just hold on.
So brain juice, as I remember it, is what makes people smell in a
certain way and
what makes us perceive and remember smells like that.
Like
after spending too much time on a plane recently,
the smell of my shirt made me think of not one but two friends
that I had forgotten I’d lost touch with.
The aforementioned You smells like some sort of fuzzy tea
plus something else (I suppose his brain juice) in
that way all attractive boys must.
I sat amongst my Indian pillows
(that smell not like jasmine but probably my own lost brain juice)
and I resisted his resistance to the idea that people have to be
sick with something in order to die.
He told me that people just run out of brain juice. I was contrary
for no reason.
Maybe because my juice was concentrated to one side.
Maybe because I want to go spread lilacs
or something like some woman I read about as a child.
I don’t even like flowers or gardening
the way I should but I want to do something like that.
But now I don’t have enough juice left to even argue.
It’s soaked out of my ears during the day.
I thought the extra wax was from hormones.
And the fatigue,
well,
everything can be explained away
My life my steps my juice my words my breaths

I am 17 years old and withering away,
but I just don’t have enough organization to die.
It will have to be amongst magazines and newspapers
to soak up the mess,
and open windows to air out the smell and then
the last of it will leak out

Those open windows won’t even show anything nice, just a white brick courtyard. Dying by the sea with a shock of white hair is only for the heroines of my favorite kids’ books.

Kate E.

Leroy Moffit’s Wife Is Working on Her Pectorals

“Leroy Moffit’s wife, Norma Jean, is working on her pectorals,” explained Rosemary, as she counted the neatly folded cloth napkins for the third time before setting them onto the long dining room table. “That’s why she can’t come to dinner tonight.”

As she placed the last napkin next to a cream-colored china plate, she shifted her gaze to her husband, Richard, who remained motionless on the other side of the table, a puzzled expression on his face.

“Working on her pectorals?” asked Richard skeptically. “Rosemary, that is ridiculous! The woman is barely five feet tall. She needs help opening the pickle jar, for goodness sake. She certainly doesn’t have any pectorals!”

During Richard’s ranting, Rosemary had begun to set silverware onto each of the cloth napkins, humming dreamily as she worked. Sensing that he had finished, she looked up to her husband once more.

“Well I don’t know, Richard, maybe that’s why she’s working on them. All I know is that Leroy called me this morning and told me that Norma Jean was working on her pectorals, and I’m not one to ask questions. No sir, I am no snoop.”

“Rosemary, you must be mistaken,” Richard replied. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand? Perhaps Leroy said that he was working on his own pectorals. Or maybe he didn’t say pectorals at all. Yes, maybe he said florals! Perhaps Norma Jean is working on a floral arrangement.”

Hearing this last comment, Rosemary slammed a fork down onto the table, defiance written all over her face.

“That’s just like you, Richard, doubting every word I say. I know what I heard, and I heard pectorals!”

“I do not doubt every word you say, but I find it odd that—”

“You see!” cried Rosemary, cutting him off. “There you go again. You never believe a word I say. I am not as stupid as you think I am, Richard.”

“Rosemary, I never said—”

“You don’t have to say anything!” she interrupted for a second time. “I can tell what you’re thinking, and you know what, Richard? I have had enough! For weeks I have slaved, day and night, trying to throw you a nice dinner party, and this is the thanks I get. Well, let me tell you something, Richard. I have had enough!”

Rosemary quickly turned and began to walk towards the door.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” asked Richard, coming around the table to follow her.

Rosemary opened the door, turning back around for only a moment before exiting.

“To work on my pectorals!” she exclaimed.

With that, she marched straight out the door, leaving Richard dumbfounded.

Jeanna P.

The Third Waltz

The third waltz
In evening formal,
Nose tips touching
On shut-eyed circumstances,
By pie plates stacked on
Cinnamon stains.

Clasped in spite of present nerves,
A dreamy dance
In between sleepy parlors
Looming with love
Of chocolate and vanilla swirls.

Cream puff melted
With chocolate éclair,
Flowered frills sewn
With tailored lines
In magnetized movement,
Foxtrot’s opposite attraction.

Swaying to swing
While enwrapped with each other,
Swell like the bell in the old steeple
Framed for all the faded years,
Blurred and blotchy and
Sugar grained.

Leora M.

the way you touch my thigh

you stand there, now susceptible and exposed—struggling,
wishing you could understand
or find a way to remember
what it felt like
when we both stood there
bluntly working off each other
not embarrassed
not ourselves, together
vulnerably learning to move around each other
without freedom to fully comprehend the story
that sat waiting somewhere.

I did my background check
I read the details
I knew what you wanted, needed from my not self
but
you left me alone
without the giving or taking that I needed, wanted…
just giving them myself.

you stand there, still, trying to see what it is that you wanted
when we were there together that Friday
when we were there together at all
you are unsure of yourself again
and though I feed you over and over again
you can’t seem to drop the dark picket fence
you built last week
when I said hi to you and you just smiled at the ground.

sometimes I want you to just sit down
and give me a real smile, with your eyes, you know?
but I have realized that we no longer can use that word give
because you left it behind with the words you didn’t care to learn for me.

you say you’ll try, as we sit here now,
in the narrow hallway
wet from the snow on people’s boots
that carelessly drip and soak
the ground where we rest our shaken sides.
you grab my upper leg
as you try to suck the words out of me
looking up at my forehead
searching for the reasons why you used to give a damn.

Sinead D.

Baklava

Your name cannot deny your identity
your heritage and your culture that make you
your wonderful flaky pasty pastry delectable self

A tanned man with a thick accent
grins with your smell and he watches
his customer as if he wants to do more
than give her baklava

He approaches with a platter
displaying it like a flag going into war
(or perhaps coming from war into victory?
like in the Olympics?
like it is the world’s greatest innovation that will cure all ills?)

She has white shoulders with small flakes
of freckles that litter her skin
her whiteness is radiant and illuminates
the affected dimness of the dining area
She picks at her salad and squirms
in her sandals as if she has never eaten Turkish food before
or as if she expected some sort of
Thanksgiving spread complete with mashed potatoes
but instead stumbled into a haven
of chickpeas and spices and waiter winks.

Oversea Adventurer

Shortly before the most recent St. Patrick’s Day, my good friend Nate, who had lived in New York for all the fifty-seven years since we graduated from college together, announced that he was changing careers and moving to an “island” in the Arctic Ocean. He assured me, after much protestation on my part, that such an island could not possibly exist in an inhabitable form, that his future home was no less than the largest of a group of icebergs and ice floes off the coast of Russia. He was headed there to try his luck selling Egyptian cotton towels, a commodity with “a great market up there” (according to what sources, I didn’t bother to ask). He was off his rocker, in my opinion—and in the opinion of everyone who knew the old boy. Despite his imminent eightieth birthday, Nate had devised a rigorous schedule for himself upon arrival at his new island home. He eagerly divulged to me his plans to renovate and winterize the shack, built from a pre-fabricated home kit, that a trusted source assured him was located on this iceberg isle. Abandoned many years earlier by a group of unsuccessful settlers, this humble shanty had been one of several, comprising all together a small village in the middle of the most treacherous and forbidding body of water on this planet. Of these houses, his (questionable) source confirmed, at least one or two remained, which my friend Nate could feel free to make his home. Nate’s projects would not end there, however. He intended to initially establish his office near the “local harbor,” which I am still not convinced exists, to facilitate the imported shipments of those Egyptian cotton towels. During the first few weeks or months of this enterprise, Nate would operate his towel store out of the office; he would later expand to a larger retail space. He hoped to eventually do business with the people of the neighboring islands and, if he were able to establish himself as the purveyor of fine towels, the people of the mainland.

I was familiar with Nate’s ill-advised and grossly unreasonable ideas—his “brainchildren,” to use his own words. I have been witness to many of these cockamamie schemes over the years and have observed that never once did they come to fruition in the manner predicted by my friend. I was not overly concerned, therefore, about his most recent proposed venture. I hoped that, like the equally preposterous plans that he had concocted in recent years—he became wackier as each year passed, I was starting to notice—this too would pass. Of his most outlandish post-retirement ideas (he had “retired” per se at age seventy-two, but continued to dabble in various enterprises, with varying amounts of success), there was at least one that stood out in my mind as closely tantamount to the St. Patty’s Day Proposition, as I have occasionally referred to it. About three years back, he had come to me in a state of infantile excitement over “the vacation to end all vacations.” Nate and I would fly into Dodoma, the capital of Tanzania, he began, and from there would find a bush taxi (no small feat for two aging and non-aggressive septuagenarians) to transport us to a vast tribal gathering center and regional market in the middle of the desert. Once at these desert meeting grounds, we would camp out—I’ll be damned if I know precisely what camping equipment he intended to use—until the weekly caravans of camels arrived for market day. We would then rent (or perhaps buy?) two racing camels to rapidly bear us even farther into the desert. Nate’s ambitious itinerary required us next to locate the desert office of a little-known safari agency nestled among the sand dunes, an office that professed, naturally, to be accessible only by propeller plane. My dear friend assured me that we would have no trouble finding the agency—he had, after all, procured a detailed map, which included elevation markings and notes on population density, for our venture. I never learned how good old Nate intended for us to finish up the rest of our trip (although I am sure that he had us booked for equally impossible activities for several days, if not weeks, after the start of our safari). At that point in the planning stage, I had conclusively made up my mind and had to inform Nate, much to my “regret,” that I would not be able to join him on his Tanzanian adventure. He never went, of course, and eventually stopped leafing wistfully through “Wild African Safari Adventure!” travel brochures. It did take him a significant amount of time, however, to reach that point.

With Nate’s previous ambitious yet unfulfilled fantasies in mind, I saw him off to the airport and, smiling to myself, watched him as he preemptively donned the fur hat, wool scarf and leather gloves that he believed he would need when he disembarked in Moscow and made the connection to a cross-country train for the long journey up to his new home. That image of him remained imprinted in my memory for several weeks, and luckily so, for I had no news from him and no information concerning his welfare save the remembrance of his carefully-packed, warmly-dressed self on that departure day. In early August, I received a remarkably large number of postcards in quick succession, some dating from as early as May, when Nate had flown to Russia. My only explanation for this was that there had been some error in the Russian postal offices and the postcards intended for me had subsequently sat for weeks on a mail room floor somewhere in the middle of the country until they were discovered and shipped off directly to my home. As it was, the belated arrival of these postcards enabled me to read the entire story of Nate’s first months in Russia, in roughly chronological order, within the space of a few days. When I reached the postcards with the latest news (dated in late July), I realized that I might soon be seeing my friend Nate again. He had written of the insurmountable difficulties that he was experiencing both with the business and with that quaint little shack of his. Nate did not provide me with many details, but did drop some fairly obvious hints about his plans: he promised to tell me more details in person, and ended several postcards with “See you shortly in the Big Apple!” So when my doorbell rang one sultry afternoon in early September, I was not surprised in the least to see my inimitable friend Nate at the door, beaming radiantly and bursting with stories to share from his time on a Russian iceberg.

Katie D.