Backbone > Poetica
edited by Franci Levine Grater

It seems as though a sad and anxious pollen is infecting us; but poets continue to breathe deeply and distill something in the exhalation so the rest of us, the fortunate ones, can nod our heads, "yes." Hug the poet closest to you often; the reward will be yours. -F

After Words

farewell, Twin Towers

henceforth whatever comes home to roost

will find no perch on thee

on the bright unblemished September day you fell

voiceless invisible people were heard and seen

and others, blameless, were burned or buried alive

as the rest of us,

unaccustomed to do so,

prayed

-not merely that phones would be answered in the ashes,

or lost brigades of firemen would stagger back from Avalon

through the smoke, but that

a few clicks further into this fledgling millennium

the cancers of nationalism would miraculously vanish,

power would go homeless, and monotheism die a peaceful death

at home;

that causes requiring martyrs would go the way of mesosaurs,

and the gulf that separates rich and poor would thin to a trickle

the width of an infant's tear

-Mikhail Horowitz

A Brief Debriefing

Come with us.

We know who god is and we know who you are and who you've been.

This is your costuniform.

Take it and put it on.

The one who was dressed in it before you has been lost.

He had been shaped like you.

It should fit.

-Simone Felice

Guerra Alguien

Mammon reigns supreme but Dow has fell now
due to books being cooked. Companies downsize
to be more competitive some theorize.
Is Marxism-in-reverse a sacred cow?

With a whole lot of yelp from the TV news
poorest people were exempt from tax cut.
Poor people don't pay income taxes but
aren't sales tax and payroll tax state revenue?

Shouldn't a nation with the audacity
to nationalize its oil be bombed into
the stone age? And wouldn't a war speedily
rectify an ailing economy to?
Langston Hughes says blood rolls out
and cash rolls in
but where is the pretext for war to begin?

-Roger Whitson

In Days Like These

Catching the last verse of "Sweet Jane" on the radio
I start on a 24 oz. beer,
after already having finished a bottle of wine
leftover from last night,
and I wonder if I'm becoming an alcoholic,
or if I might already be one,
since 9-11 has left us all
with a bad case of post-traumatic stress disorder

(while a report on the six o'clock news confirms
that the more coverage of the disaster we watched,
the more likely we are to have suffered-
and I think about Betsy,
who watched nightly, and cried herself to sleep,
and Jeremy who didn't, but didn't sleep
anymore than the rest of us-
and I wonder who has the right idea).

Meanwhile, the second Bush administration
is giving us the idea
that not much of a future for America exists
(my 401-k having fallen like a building
hit by an airplane driven by an American terrorist CEO).

And so I drink,
and I smoke,
(thought I've been trying to quit),
rationalizing that it's highly likely
I won't live to see my sixtieth birthday,
and even if I do,
that it will be celebrated lonely,
with not much water surviving
to quench my unending thirst
(though the oceans are rising-salt water turning fresh-
water, water, everywhere.),
and that the cancer already forming in my lungs
might just come as a relief,
offering the possibility of a soundless sleep
so rarely witnessed in days like these.

-Christopher Carolei

Untitled

Life is jumping up and down.

as it

does from

time to

time

it turns itself inside out

and forgets what came behind

-Rachel Arnold