VOTE
—p (another white dude for harris)
Connective Tissue
I’m told it’s the fascia
that makes my left shoulder
creep up my neck
like a possession
the fascia that keeps
my guts in place, hardens
if I don’t move, if my body
repeats itself
years ago, when you
pinched swirls in my back
twisted the thing
you were meant to hold
I asked an acupuncturist
to prod my knotted
flower bulbs
he couldn’t melt
the cold lace, frost on leaves
are you who I am now?
the stiff mist
under my skin, keeping me
together
—Sigrid Wendel
Wonder
small wonder that
we keep pressing on
despite the weight
of the skies
the bucking of the waves
and the shifting of the ground.
We wake with the sun
make coffee while
birds scatter words
about the weather
and which yards yield food.
While pundits feed us scraps
that we swallow with our meals.
We forget our extraordinariness
that our atoms and molecules
linger from before our existence.
That we are mathematical equations
both linear and abstract
and the truth of poets and the divine.
We will one day, perhaps
shrug the sky from our shoulders
skim the waters like a finely thrown rock
bend before we break
holding wonder in our hands.
—Marisa E. Campbell
Iridescent moon
her shoes match her makeup
—Frances Greenhut
autumn flowers
chrysanthemums
quite a mouthful
—John Kiersten
Art Sick
This time the virus takes up studio in the recesses of my core
painting itself deep into my stomach. The first stroke
came unexpected and left a memory of my last meal—
a messy, chunky Pollack—flung to the floor.
Its been days now since it let me keep anything down
and I’m afraid to eat for fear of a spur of the Moment
Movement. I instinctively guzzle water, but another Hokusai
wave makes it’s sweeping path to the porcelain bowl.
It has settled in my throat too, experimenting with psychedelia
and working up the acid to a frenzy in my gullet. A bad trip
of Peter Max scorching oranges and fiery yellows slosh
around leaving sour strokes on the walls of my throat.
I get inspired after a few days of palleteless stocks and spoonfuls
of rice and my entrails chisel an unexpected abstract. My masticated
masterpiece is revealed at the opening for all to see (and hear)
as another Manzoni makes it into the can.
—Robert P. Langdon
Emerge Gallery
for Robert Langdon
Empire’s last hurrah lost in the paint. Art
Manifestos of the past now read like gibberish.
Entire knowledge systems gone in a few brushstrokes.
Reality eating itself into abstraction to be beautiful again.
Great revolutions dead in museums. New revolutions
Evolving into sights & sounds faster than theories.
Galleries guarantee nothing but friendship.
All we can do, such weak creatures of flesh & blood:
Laugh & lament &
Laugh again & lunge after
Every last chance to be sparklers, burning &
Ready with a brush to paint ourselves a new day,
Yellow & blue & yelling a fresh mess on the canvas.
—Will Nixon
Pin Oak
The tree man came to do tree work.
You should cut down that dead pin oak, he said.
Why? I said.
It’s dead. It could fall in the first big storm, he said.
How long has it been dead? I said.
Hard to say. When did it leaf out last? he said.
I’m not sure. Two or three years ago maybe, I said.
You should get rid of it, he said.
What’s the proper period of mourning for a dead pin oak? I said.
I never heard of a proper period of mourning for a tree, he said.
Me neither, but I’m starting it. Four years for a pin oak, I said.
—J. R. Solonche
Light in Every Sense
On the drive through the mountains of Morocco,
my new friend Misha tells me the story of Sroka,
a bird drawn to gold, silver, anything that sparkles, really,
and I think this is what I’ve been trying to say about soulmates all along.
I am a scavenger, untethered, and she, the shiny spectacle
I soar toward in every life.
If the red bird represents our past,
then I, this iridescent feathered hoarder of light,
must teach the world about Misha,
about luck, futures full of good fortune.
How, in a time of lessening, she is bounty,
how, among thistle and dandelion down,
she rehomes me in a mosaic of brilliance.
When I meet her again months after
our trip to the shores of Imsouane,
she hands me a watercolor of two birds
on a telephone wire at sunset,
wings slack in a sky fevered bright.
Look, I say. Do you see it? Do you see it, too?
—Samantha Spoto
Flooded; or, I’m tired of your opinions
Another day of chatter: their
thoughts, then someone else’s.
Someone over there retells one story
then there’s this offense by them, and
did you hear about that thing she said? Seriously,
I cannot believe it either. Appalling.
There was that time, long ago, I think,
it’s near, the memory. Perhaps I’m wrong,
but then we looked up, not down. Then we
listened, earnestly, to those right before us. We
didn’t already have an opinion. Maybe. Perhaps.
I could be misremembering. That wasn’t truth,
was it? I’m tired of your opinions,
and I haven’t even heard them yet.
Enough voices.
Too tired. There’s another.
Let me just check
real quick
—Laura Vogt
Huwara 2/26/23
“Israel’s military called the settler attack on this Palestinian town a ‘pogrom.’ Videos show soldiers did little to stop it.” —CNN
I was afraid to get my DNA tested
didn’t want to know
if my red hair
contained a quantum of Cossack blood,
the reason Jewish law
identifies the tribe
only by maternal side.
Rifles sabers torches
lead-footed boots across every threshold—
it didn’t help to run.
My grandfather as a child
watched Jewish men
get hanged from trees.
It seems we learned the lesson well.
In Huwara we become the Cossacks
four hundred settlers
kill Sameh Aqtash as he stands
in front of his sisters, in front of his daughters
we smash windows, set fire
to the houses, children locked inside,
set fire to the cars,
mutilate the sheep, the boy’s orange kitten,
leave them to die
together.
The government, the Czar, the IDF
all look on and nod.
The Torah says
kill everything but the fruit trees
and we do.
Now the streets are quiet
no one is outside
a silence
we carry in our veins
in our genes, our DNA
the reason pogrom means thunder
the way the ground crackles after lightning hits
the way the very dirt
recoils.
—Michelle Lerner
There’s an Implied “Effing” in There Somewhere …
Even if he croaks,
His crowd still rages and speaks,
Blame echoes like shouts.
Belly-aching loud,
Wrathful whispers fill the air,
Frustration won’t fade.
“They are out of touch,”
I mutter, wishing for peace,
Time to clear my mind.
Forever I seek,
Calm waters where shadows rest,
Leave their storm behind.
—ooznozz
Jessibel Joe
Thinking bout your love
and your sexy ways.
Muscle shirt with your skirt
and your hair sprayed with care
lipstick red sexy lashes a flair
With each kiss you arouse our affair
Me and Jessibel Joe
Sexy moves as we walk second Av-e-nue
To our place where we dine and sip wine
Where we dance to the `80’s disco
Me and Jessibel Joe
Thinking about your love
and your sexy ways
High heeled shoes disco glitter
sends chills up my spine
Such a deep love it feels like a crime
Love supreme made in heavenly bliss
Me and Jessibel Joe
Beaming smiles
laughter glows like the sun in the sky
And we know that we’re living our truth
Yes we’re being authentically true
Me and Jessibel Joe.
Riding high in our platforms
and bellbottom pants
Sexy thighs, sexy hips sway and prance
Eyes are caught in a trance to see
Me and Jessibel Joe
Thinking about your love
and your sexy ways.
Thinking about your love and your sexy ways.
Thinking about your love and your sexy ways.
—Kim Kalesti
Stone Heart
A heart of stone is heavy, a weight inside my chest
no blood runs to or from it, for it’s not made of flesh.
But when it comes to loving, a heart of stone is best
for stone is strong and constant, on it no doubt can etch.
Though time may pass in fevered dream
and hardships mount to lovers’ bane,
no crack can weight create, nor passing ages find a seam.
Through freezing rain and lapping tongue of flame, my stone heart will remain.
When all is withered, leaving only death and dust,
when fires burn the world to black, alone
among the piles of ash and rust,
Beneath a smoking cage of bone, you’ll still find my heart of stone.
Let others keep a soft and fragile thing
that warms at lover’s sight and beats the faster at her glance.
For me a stone heart, and though it may not sing
or leap upon the table for a jig to dance,
you will know it by its constancy:
Never worn, never tired, always there, my love for thee.
—Cooper Clarence
The Rustler
Riding the soft winds,
that Phoebe gallops astride
on my slender branch.
—ViVi Hlavsa
in heavy rain
on a playground
one grown man
smiling so widely
through the arc of a swing
—Richard L. Matta
This article appears in November 2024.
