Backbone > Poetica

Eited by Phil Levine

You Could Describe it with Metaphor

Or swaddle it in flannel, rock it to sleep
Warm it in sunlight
Watch it grow

You could turn your back on it
To test its bearings
Or dance it in air,
Tracing long lazy O’s

You could fill yourself with it
Or bury it deep in sand

You could deny it, strike it
Yell out in pain

And though it will brush past your ear,
Murmuring,
It will not settle on your lips
To form its name

—Susan J. Behrens

.

Dear Pilot (excerpt)

love me the forgotten way
like children love
like killers love
call the light back into my eyes
and put a bullet in my brain
if you ever see it go dim again
please
love me forgotten way,
the outlawed way

—Simone Felice
from Goodbye, Amelia

.

Head On

age is
only

in the eye
of the

beholder

or the bones
of the

beheld

—Sheryl L. Nelms

.

Recalling 911

I
Holden’s Nightmare
I want to say something
about
crows and whales
and September light.
The way it pulls at your heart.
Crisp clean color
giving a moments respite
before whales begin to topple.
Two of them,
side by side—over
not the normal breech position
but falling heavy to the earth.
In my nightmare is how it happened
but the crows were so agitated
for so long before
the event.
We felt it underneath
didn’t we?
And the light that day
held so much possibility
which toppled too,
never expecting it
only noticing my own
agitation.
Two whales toppled
over each other
and I woke up
and noticed the light
and this was enough to break
my heart into tiny pieces

II
The North Tower
The north side of dreaming
deals with this forbearance.
The knowing of the signs
that do not appear
on this plane.
I heard the crows all August
calling out to us,
sentries of tragedy,
possible
in the air
on that plane.
But we could not pluck
the information from the
plane above us.
Our understanding
limited,
our hearing small
and the death
and the destruction
of clumsy humanity
whispers of how
we should be
by now.

Why are there eyes—
I’s—everywhere in
Chambers Street Station?

III
The South Tower
I see actual buildings falling
falling
like whales
toppling over each other
so slow, so ungraceful,
so quiet
no breech
no playing
just the sad conclusion
to something
to listen to
information
from another
plane
that might
tell us
how to stop.

“We stand in our own shadow
and wonder why it is so dark”
Zen Koan

IV
The Viewing Platform
I remember
looking
across the WTC site at far buildings
wondering WHERE
the shadows on buildings
were coming from?????
Then I realized
they were
NOT SHADOWS
but places
WHERE the BUILDINGS
were BLOWN out.

V
Trinity Church
Walking, walking
quickly down
Church Street
needing respite and clean air.
Past the money,
cross the street
up the stairs
into the garden graveyard.
Looking
looking for the labyrinth
that isn’t there.
Into the church
(dark quiet beauty),
towards the gift shop
to inquire.
The labyrinth
was contaminated during
the blast
forcing the parish
to rip it out of the
ground
next to the oak
in the shade
I sat in a pew
opened a bible
stayed for the eucharist
never wanting to
go back outside
because the page
I turned to read:

“...and you shall be called Sought out,
A city not forsaken.”
Isaiah 62: 12

—Lori Corry

.

Big Up Wave

what’s a point
in time look like
is there anywhere
when late is always too
and enough is already

—Gerd Stern

.

Autistic Superkid

I am and have always been
The autistic superkid
I am one of the first
But not the last
And I am always trying to improve
I am an ambassador of two worlds
Half-citizen of Earth;
Half-citizen of Wallbrook
This is how I truly am
Even though it’s not how I look

—Brian Liston

.

Captions for Cartoons Not Yet Drawn: The Pole Sitter Looks Down

Caption 1: His is the compass eye.
When he turns this way the sky goes north,
pole cat pole star pole north
pole.

Caption 2: A long pole
with a hook and a
basket at its tip
to reach up food and water.
When they forget, he makes his hunger
and thirst a lesson.

Caption 3: It was his greasy pole
prompted his climb into the sky.
Now he is tempted by nothing—
except the desire to leap.
But that always passes.

Caption 4: Everywhere he looks, weather.

Caption 5: Sometimes in winter
he is the pole of the storm.

Caption 6: Here are his secrets: he sees
a limited sky, the four-cornered
curve of horizon.

Caption 7: He shits in a jar and hands
that down to the faithful.

—Celia Bland
.

Ahead of Sleep

sometimes I’m already
thinking before I remember
not to think

—Gerd Stern

You Call This Progress?

In the boxcar last night Raymond, the pea-picker from Georgia,
had to go real bad.
We were only a few miles from Peoria,
but he said he couldn’t wait,
and mumbled something about the boiled beef
he’d picked out of a garbage can back in Chicago.
When the poor guy jackknifed over his belly,
me and Curtis, the big Hoosier, grabbed him by the elbows
and took him to the edge of the car
where we yanked down his pants
and made him squat out over the blur of the tracks.
He grinned and groaned and the shit came quickly,
dribbling across one cheek before it took off with the wind.
“Twentieth Century Man,” I thought, as old Raymond sagged like potatoes.
When we pulled him back in, he wobbled over to his corner.
I asked if he was all right, but he cursed me
and told me to mind my own business,
so I sat and played my harmonica, thinking of home,
then went over to the open door and heaved it into the fields.

—Eliot Schain

.
Symphonic Flow

On the river, ice glitters like rock candy

Ambrosia in the mountains where trees are fur
in January—a cold month

I fill a pillowcase with windshield glass
then pound it with a hammer

Reach in to feel the chunks—
place one under my tongue

Then empty the sack on the living room floor
to see how a river might increase its flow

over deep tones sounding from an organ

—Mauro Salvatore Parisi

.

untitled

I took what you gave me and made a mountain
No one falls in love there
but even the squirrels get along
Snow flies
and not a leaf ever dies
or stops wanting
a tree of its own
Once, when a story ended
there was a thick back cover
to let your hand know
it could stop turning
Now we read stories
over and over
back to front
upside down, burning
The air is a food
with the smoke
that we know
If you believed in mountains
and I believed in people that fell off them
maybe we could meet
under a quiet tree
away from our hearts
and what the world holds worthy
Maybe we could hear
the falling snow

—Jeff Garrett

.
Cold Cocked

a forty-ton
Peterbilt

hit the Rhode Island Red
on the run

flattened him
like a

pressed daisy

legs poised
in mid-stride

beak open

in one
final

squawk

he
flopped

—Sheryl L. Nelms

Dallas Farmer’s Market

full of mangoes
and papaya

and the florescent
bloom of
pink

petunias

bumble bees
slip into
the

plump
purpleness

of wisteria

draped
around

Rush Hour

—Sheryl L. Nelms

.

(haiku-mohonk)

i kissed you
mountain and you bit me on
the neck i like you

—Evan O’Brien