INSIDE Inside the sweater The shirt The skin The housing of bones The warm mystery of organs; Their syncopation with the metronome A heart beating A hundred thousand times a day; And ignored by the dead dread spot Behind the liver; Inside the brain’s wild circuitry Shooting electron arrows at the bulls-eyes Of meaning. Inside all that is, You are, Magnificent with your Transparent love and Your yellow polka dotted Bow tie. —Robert Phelps
CONCERNS: MULTIPLE AND VARIOUS Who could regulate your smoking gun and what reverberations a drunk body makes when it falls why the birds take off all at once like shrapnel and how the cops already know which house is ours —Sarah Blake
TO LOVE LIKE RAM DASS I want to love like Ram Dass, to float on the waves, bathed in healing waters; to love like dancers on LSD, to be lifted into a crow’s nest of wildflowers, searching for the heavens beyond the heavens; to love like children do, full of joy unquestioned and laughing madly. I want to be in the arms of a love that keeps giving-like milk... like pear juice... ...like air... like words... to love without fearing death, to converse with it like an old roommate, to fall asleep together, drunk on lullabies never recorded again; to love as a free man. To open the door each morning with yes on my lips. —George Cassidy Payne
THE TORTURED ARTIST SHOWS US HOW NOT TO BE SEEN Anchored against a back wall He slouches Blending in Gathering all his light around him Holding it close Longing for a cigarette Or something to do with his hands While Focusing his attention Towards a stage he is not on. For tonight Anonymity is embraced And he gets to watch Not be watched This, is living. —Anne Mikusinski
BLACK GRANITE WHITE MIRROR The Wall—Washington, DC—1982 Dear Leonard, It’s been 22 years since they took you & all our beautiful boys & girls. What generous children they might have been. Like you, Len, dead, like you. ___ Beside its gripping litany of names this wall’s been home to letters, snapshots, whiskey, dolls & bibles, telephones & purple hearts…to living vets, their outfit’s badges, caps & battle flags laid out across the lawn just down the hill from Lincoln. Those who’ve come from Omaha & Chillicothe, Chicago, Orlando, Duke or Sacramento seek their peace in its slick, dark skin.
SMALL TABLE she has already forgotten my name I am thinking drinking my coffee she tea in the Hamdi Cafe it is hope— less I am faceless I try talking of summer Paris Rome anything a little boy asks me a question in a foreign tongue I repeat it back to him again she smiles laughs and says my name —Richard Donnelly
JOYFUL NOISE Uncle Walt had his barbaric yawp Ramona Quimby, her yeep— Her joyful noise unto the Lord. I’m a yeeper, myself: A leaper, A twirler, A thrower open of short-falling arms To embrace the bracing blue. My solar soul Flickers to life, Flares breeze-blown, Floods with green, Light-cut and Luminous. Slanter of gold, Sower of plenty: How much do I love you? THIS MANY.
Their hands, their eyes, their passing shadows linked to all who’ve walked this walk before.
—Emily Vanston
After more than thirty-five years this wall’s become a door / an entrance to the other side of grief
WHY PONDER?
those who’ve gone ahead forever joined—the living & the dead as flesh to bone…as skin to stone.
How did you feel when the hurricane that wreaked country-wide destruction had your forename? I personally would bear some guilt in the aftermath.
—Roger Aplon
Wondering if you ever did adopt that highway, and if it’s as expensive as adopting a child?
The wave is tossing its glory into the sky. The clouds are glowing.
Why is it that you will only watch a film with English for the hearing-impaired subtitles? You can hear as well as or even better than bats—or make that moths, who now hold the title for the best hearing species.
—Margarita Serafimova
What ever happened to that cousin of yours who was enrolled in clown school? Is he unemployed now that the Barnum & Bailey Circus closed?
SINS OF SOLIDARITY
Remember when you overheard a child telling her parents that she could see the moon in the clear blue sky? And then her parents adamantly told her that it’s only possible to see the moon at night? They should be ashamed of themselves.
Back when we were so young what forever could be was soothingly sung in halls straining free from the bells rung across a land told what young dreams say on a winter’s past so cold this whisper... forever stay. —John Wisniewski
I know you didn’t ask, don’t worry most people don’t, but it’s been absolutely dreadful without him. I search for hidden messages in the universe & convince myself that he’s here. —Megan Coder
7/18 CHRONOGRAM POETRY 77