Leda’s Ambiguities It was consensual: something I thought I wanted. …something about Trotsky and an ice pick— I thought there was more; I thought he wouldn’t die. I had made love before— but, I realized, never (been) fucked before. I was emptied,
The Movement of Peace in Blood
it wasn’t what you wanted.
I wanted to fly to Bohemia;
I’ve made repeated attempts to drive my point home: You’re looking for love
in all the wrong places. Do you understand now what an empty act it can be?
He shouldn’t have pressured you. Defenestration is nothing like flying. Bohemia was nothing like Utopia.
I trusted him.
Trust is something you earn;
We were two strangers disappointed by one another;
he was a stranger.
neither of us turned out to be what the other one expected. We were disappointments
to one another—
long enough with enough
Want me to go and break his nose?
invaded, by a stranger. I thought he was a—
Wanting has driven
There was no sensuality involved;
Do you understand now what we had and consider it a possibility that at some point, we might return to what was?
—Aviva Grossman
Street Scene Dixie, she was, woman of means met me crosstown some days we shared old fruit, and beans reading together her essays finding my moment of fame written in detox aloud she read my name [in my cardboard box] —William Windham “The Park Poet,” who spent the last half of his life homeless, passed away in October.
Let nothing happen It gives the angels churning in your hearts a gale of relief God has built you as quite the endurance runner there is peace pulsing in you —Chris Milea
wysiwyg last nite u said ttyl but didnt, and ive hrd that b4 all those times u say gtg. im scared; r these ur last wrds? l8r? l8r? y not now? its not hrd 2 c y i cnt reach u; its b/c u run rings round my brokn nglish. btw luv, im still w8tng, for u 2 brb i m just like ur wrds; b/c w/o u i m disembodied, gossamer, fractured : ( —David G. Farber
Meeting Place
Ravishing
On the mug my mother held— where birds she loved flew under the storm painted in grey, over blue spruce, green pine, and brown earth— for years she and I almost touched on its rim. Our hands almost joined on its grip. Then careless, I let it slip and shatter. With no where else to rendezvous, we’d never be together again.
Prickling over Moons of red Silence washes Come to bed
—Joe A. Oppenheimer
Roof Orgy Up on ladders, men with lights, Making reindeer fly, They are all, hot for Santa
Forget me not The blue-toned man Remembering eery The terrible ban Jiminy-crickets The jungle grows A nighttime ire So slowly close Bring me in So quicksilver smart Fell-found demon You try and start. —Elias Sorich
Without Another person has left this world. The disparity is strange, feels fictitious, like swimming— There are 56 articles attached to his name. Now —Arielle Lindstrom
—Rosalinda McGovern
12/12 ChronograM poetry 65