First Aid
The robin takes her evening bath
in the little pond,
fluttering her feathers
amidst water hyacinths
and fallen dogwood petals;
the image,
for the moment,
sutures the grief,
with a smile.
—Lyla Yastion
The Switch
Sometimes I lie
About how
Scared I am.
—Dominik Slusarczyk
Guilty as Charged
Guilty of never wondering why he was the only black child in my Catholic elementary school
Guilty of never questioning if he really was as mean as others said or just too tall and different
Guilty of not recalling now if he had friends at school or why I didn’t want to be one myself
But then I was only seven then eight then nine and too young to know something was wrong
Guilty when I was a little older for never being curious about why one side of town was white
the other side across the big boulevard was all black and that I shouldn’t ride my bike there
Guilty years later of not being surprised to hear that he had ended up jailed and then killed
not disturbed why his end seemed as predestined as was my escape from town to a better life
Guilty too many times over more than 60 years of not noticing or caring enough to question
why so many thousands like him have died for no reason beyond the reality of their blackness
Wondering after finally awakening to the history of enslavement that continues to fester here
if I had befriended him so long ago and come to understand the obstacles he faced in living
that I might have done more since then to help right a horrible wrong and feel less guilty now
—James DelViscio
Bathtub
We’re gathered, and the tears not wandered dissolve to bathwater
your mouth hanging open, I’m watching, smiling vacantly,
how long we’ve been dissolving I don’t know
what I was smoking isn’t lit anymore and hangs delicately in my draped hand
we’re blinking slowly, not afraid to miss a moment because this lasts forever
the waves between us are man made on common ground,
my foot, my legs creating the storm like god, as I reach down, down,
down to where you are, seeing it all unfold in the ever graying water
the things not being said creep in along the sides with the gray,
a gray loveliness of glances and movements hardly understood
and your pleasure adorns my eyelashes, mine adorns the tub,
this exodus of silence in a six by ten bathroom lasting weeks or months
so pure but so complex a wanting rippling between our thighs against the porcelain,
almost clinging to something rooted deep beneath the bathtub
reaching out and digging down to see what we buried under that clawfooted monstrosity,
est-ce que c’est la vraie vie?
I’m watching us get awfully sad awfully young, watching us cast things off
your head rolls against the wall, eyes shut and mouth open again,
what will I do in the summer, I’m wondering, when my lips wilt and nectarine dries out tired
will I decide your canine teeth don’t make me furious, whispering prayers on a kitchen counter
whispering amen when you turn over in your sleep and peel yourself off my back,
because honestly thank god for the open windows and the fireflies flitting in and out
soon enough you’ll hate the way I laugh and I’ll hate the way you thrust your way into things,
but now, right now, I love the way you move, the way you look right now with your head
to the wall and water snaking down your chest, I love it all
I haven’t yet found fault with you but months from now with no one to relieve us
I promise I will, and though you’re too far away in your mind to tell me, so will you
you’re so far away as your eyes come back to meet my smile, I see smoke come from your ears
trying to make sense of my feet and my attempt to smoke what is no longer lit,
the water so gray now that you’re surprised by the things I do
I’m silently grateful we’re still surprising each other,
perhaps we should move and drip ourselves into another room, where the flowers bloom
but I can’t bring myself to move in any way other than how I am now,
and you can’t bring yourself to stop me, not now, definitely not now,
our breath is united over a clawfoot tub in a quiet house,
I look about myself and try to see past the haze of content brilliance that glistens
at the bottom of the tub, and find I’m blind after you
I’ll keep myself draped here forever if it stays like this,
ce n’est pas la vraie vie.
—M. R. Silver-Altman
Not a Love Story
Some of the best love stories are the ones that did not happen.
The ones that ended before they began.
They will always be full of hope, and potential.
Giggles and mystery.
To be looked back upon with the smile of someone
who just shared the most personal inside joke.
Those love stories will not be riddled with hurt, or resentment.
They will linger on with promise in the land of what if.
Where you can visit, whenever you want.
—Norina Vigeant
Spaces
Now that I am at your mercy
we reveal our empty spaces now that I’ve breathed you in
you are constant—you are constant
Within all of us is the same wanting
when I wake for the night I search for it in you
the heat of all wanting, it is waning
Now we add to the weight of all things, for
we have been borrowed,
for the heat of us, for our long lives
I writhe in your grip now
now that you fill up these spaces—until we met
I had often dreamt of negating all
Longing, all of each kind, now
the kind for which we are born broken and the earthly kind
where we add in great numbers
You move silently in me
for one another we have been borrowed
borrowed by the world for the heat of us
—Jack Quigley
Quiet Dark Places
Like the upstairs closet
On your back
looking up at your father’s neckties
The thin, old wood
Hoping to stop
Hoping to stop time
—Matthew Cronin
Ode to an Amateur Golfer
for my son Brad at age 39
A young boy clutching a passel of sticks,
cap slightly askew, clad against the autumn
chill in a blue sweater with a row of white
flags across the chest, out-of-focus yellow
maple leaves visible in the background,
a young boy, my boy, at age two about to
run away from home, but caught in the act…
When you were four, I took you to the golf
course with irons and woods, your new sticks.
You spent hours in greenside sand pots
learning how to make bunker shots that
came to rest near the cup, the ups and downs
serving you well as you rose through the ranks
to be named the region’s player of the year.
—Jim Tilley
Who Can Hear a Love Song?
The Kauai O’o stopped singing
decades ago. Its lilting, bell-like
sounds drifted like silken strands
through jungle forests, lifted air
in humid wetlands, shifted rainbowed
skies. One hopeful mating call can
still be heard on tape. The last male
chirps, whistles, sighs for thrill of
romance. The female, dead five years
now, will not reply. Still, his voice rises
through mist and rain. Bright yellow
feathers shuffle against dark brown
plumage as he shifts long legs to better
amplify his song through tangled vines.
As he tries to court her with twinkling
trills of music, does he ever question
why silence is her sole retort? Or does
he, like poets everywhere, design words,
stir, spill, spin them aloft, in prayer
that a passionate audience will appear.
—Mary K. O’Melveny
Cut Flowers
Cut
like the early morning lily
flush with fragrance and majesty
she’s distracted by the naivety of pomp and vanity.
Despite the wound she is determined to bloom
as the scar forms her colors gloom
he who cut her does not water.
She
gives to fatigue
harmed her petals sigh
once held high
her head, now
hangs
dry.
—Meghan Pribeck
There is a Stillness
There is a stillness that only comes
After the dying is done
When that brave life, well lived,
Has departed the daybed.
Her head still tilts towards a whisper
None of us can hear,
Her undefended eye, slightly open
Reveals a whorl of darkness
Where blue once flickered.
The skin pulled from hip to hip
Fingers planked and pale
Feet formidable but finished.
Playfulness rises from the custodians
Whose holy work is finally done—
Their laughter drifts from the kitchen
On the smell of reheated pizza.
The fading afternoon still comes on
Piercing the elm’s branches,
Turning undisturbed dust to gold,
Lighting beloved pictures one last time.
We huddle here together
Blessed by a quiet that reminds us
Once again why we set out to love
This confusing miracle
An unceasing invitation
We can neither keep nor lose.
—Kemp Battle
A Garden of One’s Own
After a line by Jorge Luis Borges
Let others boast of pages they’ve
written, I take pride in those I’ve read,
when the afternoon has taken
that surprising turn instead,
and my hand holds an old
deluxe copy with that boon
of a page that makes my eyes sway
like a caterpillar weaving its cocoon
and my head nod in unrestrained
delight about how Character A
has described Character B without
knowing that C has also access
to me and is revealing how fishy
A’s descriptions are. I take
my pick and submit A, B, and C
to my own dubious fancy.
My pride is that of a collector
of literary specimens cultivated
by others so that I can trim and pin
each of them to my garden
of human experience
like butterflies.
—Diego Antoni
Woodstock Times
In the Almanac, hip-to-hip with penny socials, pot-
luck dinners, tractor safety classes, knitting circles,
you’ll find workshops on how to find your spirit
animal, recycle candle wax, fly a kite, learn
tai chi, I Ching, qigong, sit in silent meditation,
cleanse your chakras with celestial channeling,
find your cause with speed activism, and yoga,
kids yoga, yoga pizza parties, reggae yoga.
The drumming circle thunders its herd of hoofs
over the Village Green: sweet, slow djembés,
fat, wet congas, the chomp and spank,
punch and thump, noise‚peaceful noise.
There is no head nor tail, only a whirling dervish
of hands, torsos of our tribe becoming one
talking drum. I go to The Lodge to stare at the clock
made from Levon’s guitars. The bartender handshakes
cannabis to a man in black and his missus and they, too,
are my tribe. But what I love is the way ideals are worn
on organic cotton sleeves, how music rings from reclaimed
woods, how poetry drips from each native honeyed tongue.
—Lissa Kiernan
This article appears in July 2023.
