Living
I woke up missing your mother.
The waning moon shone through
the bathroom window, casting
streaks of light onto the slate floor.
My phone said it was going to snow
before sunrise, but it didn’t seem likely.
My body was still so tired,
but I couldn’t go back to sleep.
I look at haircut photos that I could
show to Amanda today, but won’t.
I’ll just ask her to prune away the excess.
The funeral home said my
father’s body would be cremated
in three weeks and his ashes placed
in a black plastic urn.
A modest receptacle, like
Donny in The Big Lebowski.
Today is the 29th of February, and
I thought of asking you to marry me,
but I don’t think I have the courage,
what with everything going on.
I listened to “Kyoto” on repeat driving to
and from work yesterday,
and it’s still in my head.
I think I’m okay, vertical and speaking
in complete sentences,
and then I’m not.
Then I’m not.
Listening to “Kyoto” on repeat probably
doesn’t help.
Or maybe it does.
The light’s too bright,
everything’s too loud,
and I’m hungry but have no appetite.
I stare at shadows on the ceiling,
am comforted by
the whoosh of cars on the thruway.
Your breathing is so quiet,
I’m so relieved when you move—
so thankful you’re alive
—Lori White
One Tanka
moon bridge…
the long silence as he turns
his wheels
the veteran hands
of a homeless man
—Richard L. Matta
Again
At the brink of winter light
Like the rutted pond
You bend and twist in the hollows
Of my quiet
I follow these footsteps
On any given day
And I am not surprised to find
My hands set to claim you
My tongue an argument of pleasure
Harnessing the meridians
Drawn grunt and sighs
Locked in defiance
As we raise the stakes of deliverance
We circle each other
In and out of character
Your eyes
Mischievous semaphores
Corridors
I rappel with the hunger
Of thieves in a parking lot
Blades sharp
I take you again
—Raphael Moser
Ibidem (In the Same Place)
They will bury me here,
But the grave is not yet.
Now is the hour of clean hands
And bicycle bells,
Of Tree Streets and millsong;
My reflection in the creek
Is made of these.
The rest of me is learning lonely
On a half-remembered cliffside,
Humming, alone, along.
They will bury me here,
But the hour is slow.
Morning has yet
A thousand doomed charges
To make on this valley,
And I am owed one dance at Beaconcrest
‘Fore the tarnished dawn
And the winter of my bones.
—Emily Murnane
Keeping Score
The score 983 to 735
he’s quite a bit ahead
(as you can see)
46 points for washing my car
52 for buying me flowers
minus 10 because slightly wilted
I lost 66 points when I called him fuck face
after he watched four hours of women’s
beach volleyball, focused on barely-there bikinis
and 358 when I dropped our tax return in the toilet
but wait, just in
579 points for fixing his phlegmatic computer
saving us a small fortune
I gloat and glee around the room
eternally grateful to YouTube
the god of Fixing All Things
I love this game
but the score suddenly shifts
I lose 937 points for flouncing & swaggering
I collapse on the sofa & swig straight gin
(lose 88 more points)
who cares
stupid ledger
stupid game
—Claire Scott
Your Absence Hisses Like Steam
you are as a winter’s day kissed by the
sun’s warm rays, a blank canvas lacking clouds.
for what am I to do? the days beauty
subdues. my eyes tell a tale that lies
but you my love are true, have you seen the
way sun shines through barren veins? shining shi-
ning. I see it on your face shimmering.
streaks of golden beams blossom on the road.
for although they have lost their leaves outside,
inside they are whole. I wait by a hiss-
ing steampipe like the frog who has come out
early in loving embrace of the warm
feeling of family. this day will fade
but for you it will never dissipate.
—Conall Mannion
A Poem For LJ
Exhilarating—
Weighted with summer and the effort
of trying to absorb another person.
Eyes like cinnamon,
melted toffee pooling in your irises.
Watching smoke pour from your lips,
I want an innate understanding of you,
your chemical makeup.
A commitment of trying to see the world
through someone else and hope
you get the pre-existing conclusions.
Holding onto each other while we crash
into swaying walls of subway cars,
laughing out of breath, gasping
for stale plastic air.
I am synthetically drawn to you—
The way your hands move to match your eyes.
—Carlene Doyle
River Birch
My neighbor has a river
birch in his yard. It is old
and fully grown, twenty
feet or more, but still has
the tag from the nursery
tied to the trunk. I looked
at it out of curiosity. Among
other advice, like lots of sun
and ample watering, it says to
plant two at a time. I see no
evidence of a companion tree.
He may have planted two.
One may have died, so he may
have cut it down. And maybe
the grass over grew that spot.
But I tend to believe he never
planted two to begin with. As
I say, it’s alive, but it’s such a sad
looking thing, lonely and sad,
so I’m thinking I’ll go buy a young
healthy river birch, sneak into
his yard in the dark of night, dig
a hole, and plant it next to the old
one. Then I’ll say a prayer that
it’s not too late. It’s the least I can
do for the sad lonely old river birch
in my neighbor’s yard. I hate sadness.
I hate loneliness. I hate them.
—J.R. Solonche
The X-man
He likes frayed edges,
Incompletion, dangling participles,
Strange juxtapositions…
Me, I like pure insight,
Seeing something unusual –
whole for the very first time.
Once in a while,
(unaccountably)
We’ll sync-up…
(unfortunately)
He’s got my goat.
((don’t you just love parenthesis))
—Bob Grawi
Mind Searches
In the vitality of death, the surrender
to being larger than life, every movement
reminds me of the bones, the flesh, I had forgot
when my body functioned like a fork for food.
Exchanging glances with wooden knots, I see
private scars, singular, dense, triumphant.
After reading my poems and letters,
an old friend writes, “But I still don’t know you.”
Melodramatic as she is, she is right.
Nor do I know myself, although I search
in poem after poem. When I walk
or work, the radio’s off. All those years
of music, of news, dead as the singer
and the singer’s strain, All you need is love.
Listening for the news, the music, within,
I know less of the new as I know more
of the old, and with a mind finely tuned
to the performing self (the way my body
once was) it gets more difficult to think
on what I am. Instead I find myself
by musing on old folks, the farts, fingering
their private scars as they gather before
the fires of their comforting wandering pains.
—ViVi Hlavsa
A Breeze from Heaven
My love is modest
Wearing a shapeless dress
But when a breeze passes through,
You can catch a glimpse of
Its slightest curve
—Noelle Sermeno
Life / Sack of Stories
The bottom is too hard to reach
‘faded memories’
the middle is full of foolishness,
‘refuse to remember’
the top is still malleable,
‘you can still change your mind’
The sack is open
the longer you live
the fuller it’ll be stuffed
the contents can’t be taken out
Even with your permission
—Ze’ev Willy Neumann
Harvest Time
In this season, we bear the fruit of our decisions.
When flower fades and fruit is set, there is no going back to seed.
The limbs of time are bowed with produce
Ripened by desire and fear.
When we pick what’s fallen or pluck what hasn’t
Does what looks luscious hide a core of regret?
Should we taste our fate in cautious nibbles
Or swallow whole with brave thanksgiving?
—Eileen Sikora
Was Willie Mays the last great Negro League Player?
I was born one minute past midnight, June 20, 1947.
Two days ago I became 77.
Here is my Birthday Poem.
What a massive piece of history
like an iceberg breaking off from ice flow
breaks away from now, dissolved into then.
Papa Bell and Satchel whose sliders slid
without outfielders to watch grass grow.
Goodbye Willie, goodbye Hank, goodbye
Ted and Joe,
Goodbye from then to now
wherever we now go.
—Alan Silverman
Language
Language is a clever disguise
To get us through the guarded gates.
It is a birth doula
A rabble rouser
And a keeper of the peace.
—Don Ferber
This article appears in August 2024.
