Breaking & mending (digital)

&

mending Breaking & Mending is a publication of the WCC Poetry Club, a wcc poetry club anthology ~ edited by tom zimmerman

Breaking & Mending is a publication of the WCC Poetry Club,

Washtenaw Community College, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

This issue was produced on a PC using Microsoft Publisher. Fonts used include Bookman Old Style and Garamond. Design and layout by Tom Zimmerman.

Copyright Š 2015 the individual authors and artists.

The works herein have been chosen for their literary and artistic merit and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Washtenaw Community College, its Board of Trustees, its administration, or its faculty, staff, or students.

WCC POETRY CLUB Meetings are in the Writing Center, LA 355 Fridays @ 5 pm in Fall & Winter Fridays @ 1 pm in Spring/Summer All Welcome tzman@wccnet.edu http://wccpoetryclub.wordpress.com

The Huron River Review WCC’s Award-Winning Literary Magazine Seeks Poetry, Fiction, Nonfiction, Artwork, & Photography Open to submissions from September through January hrr@wccnet.edu http://thehuronriverreview.wordpress.com

2

breaking & mending A WCC Poetry Club Anthology ~ Edited by Tom Zimmerman Contents—Words Tom Zimmerman Malcolm Barrett Lylanne Musselman Olivia Oakes Erica Morris Diane M. Laboda James Smith Davon Shackleford Bryan Wilson Sheldon Ferguson Ayowole Oladeji Thomas Cudney Simon Mermelstein Tyler R. Wettig Adam Lowis

In This Book Meditations on a Dying Cat Walking Up a House in Mexico City This heart of mine is like the deaf cat upstairs Blank Sheet Weddings Stretch me Under the Radar Breaking and Mending Some Things Should Never Be Written Down Black Friday 2014 The Old Captor Chrysalis of Ash Deliverance in the Hall of Mirrors Six Haiku Creation of Art Kisses under the Moonlight There For Mr. Thomas Zimmerman, on the Occasion of Fracturing his Ankle McGonagall Muses on a Thunderstorm Gods and Things Boa Acidia Aenima Mundi

4 6 9 10 12 14 16 19 20 22 23 27 28 29 31 32 33 34 36 38 39 40 42

Contents—Images Tom Zimmerman Lylanne Musselman Tom Zimmerman

Lylanne Musselman Tom Zimmerman

Crystal Fire Libretto of a Dream (I) Let Him In Cat vs. Squirrel On the Lookout From the Closet Offerings Libretto of a Dream (IIb) Ascent/Descent Cooper’s Hawk Lady Cardinal Skyward Frankenboot: Let the Monster Walk Dayghost Iced Apple

Front cover 5 11 13 15 17 18 21 26 30 30 35 37 41 Back cover

3

tom zimmerman In This Book the words and pictures morph old codes, like stubble on the jawline, like roaches in the rubble, like crows alighting on a distant tree.

You strain your eyes’ marsupials. You see the waking mind is impotent, too drunk on facts and brute sensation, jealous monk who spies on lovers in the perfumed shade.

The dream, the dream within the dream, inlaid with rayed prismatic light of heaven’s gems and stained with blackest saps of broken stems afloat in Acheron, will be your faithful guide, occult cryptanalyst, the wraith of every memory, the flowering shield that bears each breathing corpse. May you be healed.

4

Tom Zimmerman

Libretto of a Dream (I) 5

malcolm barrett Meditations on a Dying Cat 1. It’s like this it’s like this: you wake me early in the morning.

Last night, you licked the snow on my boots And now it’s melted.

You meow like you used to, to wake me, Like when you were hungry.

Now, you won’t even eat all this Polish ham I’ve Gone out to get you.

You don’t have an appetite, So you don’t know why you’re here Or where you’re coming from, But you’re enjoying my hand on your head.

When I get up, you’re already looking back at me, running out the door, to you don’t know where.

2. Two hearts on Fat Tuesday Listen, My heart is a stale pancek.

Someone’s taken all the lard and flour Cooked it up with prune jelly For before the lean days.

6

Who is that person Who left it out all night, uneaten?

I’ve tried to explain to you that you’re dying.

You don’t care.

Your kidneys are small and lousy with nitrates.

I’ve tried to explain to you That your heart is like a lost rowboat.

You don’t mind.

You lay your head on my lap and purr.

3. Zazenkai It’s the rest period, but I’m thinking of you.

Oh well.

I’m trying to think of you eating green beans as a kitten, But I can only think about the time you stole my chicken bones.

When Sensho comes with blankets, It’s a miracle how warm I am.

The temple fills with the smell of basmati rice, And it will be a long time before the bell rings.

4. What’s left?

I can’t get all this cat hair Off my sweater from all the times I’ve picked you up today, No matter how much I brush it.

7

My niece is pretending to be a cat, Or at least she will until she wants to solve a mystery.

The Old Friend is out front Honking his horn.

You’re still in the corner, and I think you look pretty funny With your belly shaved.

5. Everything in our pockets I did not mean to leave my hand On your chest as your heart stopped.

I felt it Like I feel this axe in my hands.

Good God, Nanapush, We’ve inherited everything, right Down to the broken, frozen soil.

8

malcolm barrett Walking Up a House in Mexico City The pot on the stove is empty, light I have no gas. I can’t cook or Take a hot shower So the cat enters through the window, Ear bitten and squeaking.

When she leaves, her flea stays For the feast.

When I enter the upstairs office and flick The switch, the room is slowly unempty of Light, like a night with kindling beneath the firefly.

How is it that the cat Has already reached the roof ?

Doesn’t she know that this life is Like one of those dim bulbs hanging In a firehouse that stays on uninterrupted For a hundred and twelve years?

9

malcolm barrett This heart of mine is like the deaf cat upstairs 1.

This heart of mine is like the deaf cat upstairs.

She spends her days roaming the house purring, curled up in laps.

But sometimes, she wakes at 4 AM, yowling for she doesn’t know what.

That low, salty sound.

2.

When I think of the Old Friend, sometimes he’s like a boy lying down in this dark library parking lot.

At other times, he’s more like a man who’s gone too fast up the steps.

More importantly, he knows whose knee is broke.

3.

Still, what business of mine is it if I wake with salt on my lips?

What business of mine is it that golden bean fields are dusty in the dimming light?

What business of mine is it that you turn your head towards Fort Greene Park, so long as you mean it?

4.

The squirrels there wander around the circle of wonder.

There’s this one looking for his wife, whose face he can’t remember.

In the meadow, going on for hundreds of miles, his fur is heavy in dew.

5.

It gets worse.

I mean it, too.

10

See, under the earth, there is an old ball of iron.

I only know it’s around here because of the metal detector.

When my boots sink into the water table, it’s like a memory I didn’t know I still had.

Tom Zimmerman

Let Him In 11

lylanne musselman Blank Sheet As an artist I can take a blank sheet, turn it into anything – larger than life faces, some blue jay playing sax, a crazy looking cat, my imagination come to life.

As a poet I can take a blank sheet, spin it with words – that rhyme, lines of love crimes that commit phrases, my words breathing images on the page.

As a lover I can’t be a blank sheet, fresh as if I’ve never been hurt – left behind love, 12

belittled, abused, my worn heart, torn like discarded paper full of filthy smudges.

Lylanne Musselman

Cat vs. Squirrel 13

lylanne musselman Weddings I never had that wedding other women dream of: the partner of their dreams appears in reality – A wedding day filled with such joy they felt their heart could burst with rice and confetti.

A wedding where the future is looked forward to, knowing they’ve made the right choice.

A wedding filled with truth – walking down the aisle to the one truly loved.

14

More than anything, I wish I could trade in my three weddings for one that meant my heart found a home.

Lylanne Musselman

On the Lookout 15

olivia oakes Stretch me Stretch me I’m rolled up in my predictable provocations Rolled up in what I learned before pelvic break Stretch me so I can come closer Join you in the trenches Where you’ve told me it’s not as scary as I think Yeah, avocado pears Peaches rumpus Balls for fucking sake Can’t we throw that out of Merriam Webster Or at Merriam Webster The MRI sees straight through me I can show you those images But what do bone spurs and dessicated discs tell you beyond my age.

I stretch every morning while still in bed Thinking I can get there You’re not there I’m not there How do I reach the trenches?

Can I arrive unripened?

Will you have me?

16

Tom Zimmerman

From the Closet

17

Tom Zimmerman

Offerings 18

erica morris Under the Radar Waiting for words to pour out of your mouth As quick as a motorboat to make up for all the lost time Spent in Silence We wade in pools of water Watching the waves turn from clear to brown From all the oil boats leak The drivers demand that the motors move faster As mush from the engine turns to slime on the rocks Still we stand and wait With our toes deeper down in the muck Staring at the empty dock That the boat was never tied to

19

diane m. laboda Breaking and Mending Relearning balance has been a trip, pun intended.

Who knew you needed two of everything to achieve perfect balance? Few know the watchtowers of balance reside deep in the ears—one on each side perfectly partitioned behind the lobes, circling upon themselves, gyroscopically adjusting to our every move— until one’s gone.

Gone is gone—diseased, removed.

Learn everything again.

Walk the straight line, accommodate the wall, the counter, the curve in the table, the round of the stairs.

Bruised and battered.

Encounters, many. Hard learning, but learning nonetheless.

Teach the brain to listen with the eyes, ignore the white noise nonsense, ignore the vertigo, navigate left-blind.

Teach the legs to pick up the slack— tension on the right, release on the left, make your gate look less inebriated, more like charm school book on the head.

20

Relax and release the tight leg muscles and battered body often enough to still stand erect.

The whole process—a little like learning to walk again, this time with no compass, less flexibility and farther to fall.

Tom Zimmerman

Libretto of a Dream (IIb) 21

diane m. laboda Some Things Should Never Be Written Down Those dreams we vaguely remember are not meant to be written down, punctuated, analyzed, editorialized or relived in the glaring light of day.

They are not day dreams after all— our way of making reality more fantastic.

They are not meant to be remastered like colorizing a black-and-white movie.

Dreams are the mind’s way of shuffling our brain’s data—regrouping recombining, reimagining to resolve the tensions of our innermost conflicts.

They take us down the path not traveled and show us new scenery, new furry animals along the way, uncharted territory, unrealized wishes—a new way of becoming.

Our heart knows in the depths of night how to allow dreams the space they require, let them roam free until the heart packs up its dreams for our trip into morning.

22

james smith Black Friday 2014 Interpolated with direct quotes from online message board, November 24, 2014

15 minutes before 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving The store manager gives us the up-sale speech: If they are buying boots, you sell them socks too A kayak, they should leave with a paddle If you can’t think of anything Else sell them gift wrap I smile, think of my minimum wage, Lack of holiday pay Think of others My good and hardworking co-workers the nice managers imagine what it could be if we were doing something meaningful there must be thousands of places like this my mind, this time, our time, revolts from this idealism so I think about what I should up-sale with pepper spray But that sends me to Monday’s revolt in Ferguson I, like a car-gawker, went online Found a live feed watched the response To no indictment The message board was frantic, Black Friday shoppers Hands up, don’t shoot Pants up, don’t loot

23

We open I sell a pair of pants Recommend a belt Who’s streets, our streets Shoot back Fuck the police This is too peaceful

We are playing Christmas music We aren’t that busy But the ones who come Are all turkey, testosterone, primal Chimp out Rise of the planet of the apes The lion sleeps tonight Good God Darwinism is exciting

I work until 1 a.m.

Others will be here all night I will return on Black Friday proper Abe Lincoln was a piece of shit If Snoop Dogg became president I could die happy No taxes, no police The Illuminati did this

The store manager hands A customer an AR-15 The customer racks open the assault rifle Takes a big whiff of the chamber Man, I love that smell Oh, the oil smell?

No. Freedom.

I scurry away to avoid Puke laughing If they destroy my McDonalds I’ll have to step in Airdrop KFC it’ll stop

Later, my libertarian manager says Man that guys was coo-coo.

24

Freedom. Tell that to them Arabs.

I ask if he would have sold that rifle To that guy Sure. My salary rides on sales goals.

Besides, if we wouldn’t sell it to him, One of our competitors would.

I say, maybe, we should sell it To the “Arabs” instead.

He laughs, calls me a sick fucker every 28 hours a black man is shot by a cop make the pigs pay dearly

By the end of Black Friday We sell nine AR-15s When a customer comes to my line with one I recommend the cute snowman gift wrap.

But really I wonder if I’m suppose to offer A camo ski mask If you hate feminists press 7777 I don’t mind blacks I just don’t like mexicans These social justice activists’ tears are delicious Like Trayvon this will be forgot in a year RIP Michael Brown

25

Tom Zimmerman

Ascent/Descent 26

davon shackleford The Old Captor What do you see when you look at money?

The answer is nothing Like a piece of lint or a bottle cap You mean nothing to me All you’re doing is stopping the flow of goods and services You asked me a question What do I see when I look at you, what do you see when you look at me?

27

bryan wilson Chrysalis of Ash Some say he’s the sun.

From rise to fall.

I say he’s something more…

It begins with impatience.

A discontempt for being idle.

He has much to do, see, and live for, and keeping aflame is not so simple.

For instance, the rain and snow might slow him down, but never fully stop him.

He yields when he must and continues on his way.

A task at a time for an army of one.

At the end of the day his light will fade Orange and red into black.

Dormant and waiting, Like a butterfly in an ashen chrysalis.

Dawn will scrape the black from him The sun will rise again. and Some swear HE IS that sun.

I know he’s far more…

He is you and me.

28

bryan wilson Deliverance in the Hall of Mirrors Blame redirected as you point at the glass.

Reminded, not blinded by the visions you pass.

Wavey and fat, gaunt but regardless, The sights that surround astoundingly harmless.

Though physically impotent, the mocking clones gaze.

At you, or themselves in a comical phase. [without reason the rhyme is abandoned] This wasn’t a thrill ride or a side show attraction. More of a labyrinth of self doubt. At every angle muted caricatures of you. To them, you are perfection, the undivided whole of their existence. Appearance is flimsy and easily breaks.

Beautifully flawed in the hall of mirrors.

29

Lylanne Musselman

Cooper’s Hawk

Lylanne Musselman

Lady Cardinal 30

sheldon ferguson Six Haiku The pine bends And breaks in strong autumn Breeze ~

Misty breeze blows From the south: oh how I Wish spring were here ~

Daffodils sprung Up out of spring soil; Earth is in rebirth ~

Skylarks fly Toward rising sun over High high mountains ~

On a pink Sandy beach flamingoes flock And mingle together ~

Foal eats wild oats; Cool gentle wind blows through The misty maples 31

ayowole oladeji Creation of Art Art is like a magical mist It flows through the mind heart and soul There comes a time when your thoughts Are being totally utterly erased By the visions you captured The sight of what the eye sees in the object Then your mind begins to rotate Moving as a fast as a light switch Capturing how it’s supposed to be drawn Connects with what particular object That catches the soul of the heart Slowly and steadily you feel the motion And commotion in your hands Flowing like a river ocean Swaying from side to side As they rise to the top Visions of art come to life

32

ayowole oladeji Kisses under the Moonlight As we stroll side by side By the seaside Watching the sun set Sweat dripping from our bodies Once the clock strikes midnight Darkness settles in slowly Sounds of the ocean waves crashing Above the mountain rocks There as we both stand On high ground Stars fill the sky flashing and dashing As we both draw closer to each other Our lips touching Each other’s feeling the taste of Red strawberries From our soft lips Gentle and sweet Under the full moon

33

thomas cudney There I stood at the baleful precipice while rolling chaos and blackness swelled from the depths below.

Thoughts of home, times long-past, friends and laughter, youth and bitterness, pulled against me.

A pale strand kept me from falling past my will into utter madness and ecstasy.

A little voice whispered in my ear, as if from behind: “Don’t step over.”

I dared everything, anything, for any reason, and declared, “Why not?”

I sail amidst you as eternal instrument, archangel of beauty, unrestrained and unchallenged!

Order and law are but hues on my canvass, splayed in adroit movement and ether.

Change is my body, inconstant flow of power and weakness, issuance and recession.

Thus am I God triumphant, for no frames may bind what I am.

I am become death, bringer of life, harbinger of forever.

34

Tom Zimmerman

Skyward 35

simon mermelstein For Mr. Thomas Zimmerman, on the Occasion of Fracturing his Ankle (’pologies to Whitman) O Z-man, my Z-man, your mending week is done The Writing Center has survived; we’ve cleared Assignment 1.

The coffee hasn’t yet run out. The tutors are still perky.

While Zimmerman listens to jazz and sips on Wild Turkey.

But O Ink! Ink! Ink! O corrections all marked “stet”!

We’re slipping, O, we’re slipping! Is Zimmerman back yet?

O Z-man, my Z-man, the lines are getting longer The students wait for days, and their grammar’s getting wronger The essays all are twenty pages, typed in Comic Sans I’ve ’splained the comma twenty times and no-one understands.

But O, Bic! Bic! Bic! O, the broken, leaky pen!

Everything has gone to pot since we lost Zimmerman.

O Z-man, our Z-man, come back and do your job Come back and join the line with all your fellow grammar snobs.

We need your expertise on gerunds (and to do some minor errands) Not to mention someone’s gotta sign off on our fobs.

But O, Grounds! Grounds! Grounds! O, the empty coffee pot!

Someone’s gotta do our jobs while Zimmerman does not!

36

Tom Zimmerman

Frankenboot: Let the Monster Walk 37

tyler r. wettig McGonagall Muses on a Thunderstorm It was a dark and stormy night, the bright lightning causing a fright; It cut through the sky like a hot knife through butter, The rumble of thunder didst also make me shudder.

Rain descended like cats and dogs, Through the chimney and onto the logs; At the end of the night when the storm had passed, I took to the sky shouting, It is over, at last!

38

tyler r. wettig Gods and Things Beyond grassy plains, through Eden of old, upon the snowy qliphoth*, tender and cold– a temple, a spine– elevated, dedicated, alive.

Desecrated

by Gods and things.

Where light yet basks through crumbled pillars and Angels’ wings.

*In Jewish tradition, the qliphoth is a realm of evil.

39

adam lowis Boa Acidia The coils compress with strength unmeasured, yet known, unknowable.

No external onus of the known outside the borders of skin.

Mass of Rage.

Unknown, familiar force.

Coils upon cognition put the squeeze on mass of rage.

The paternal dimension, inane peacocking, cockish contest of cock.

No change in the same tired game.

An actor with only one role.

I can only deliver my absence in peace in a package of venom, from afar.

Lest the coils of a tired reflex yet again singe to the 3rd degree embraced against a familiar burning pillar.

I have only this grey mass shredded to its tendrils of sugar pulp.

Product of the multi-directional psychic beating compacted in the Brain-Boa Coup de Grace machine whose symptom is the blurry suicide-headache.

40

I hold it out in its current incarnation before judging eyes, and the mocker personalities persisting in memories impossible to quell.

Like a frayed and sparking decaying jellyfish.

This gore of Medusan horror to behold.

I hope it's still enough.

Tom Zimmerman

Dayghost 41

adam lowis Aenima Mundi For the friends I lost to O.T.O, the occult, pseudoscience and other superstitious nonsense.

The strangle-held fetters of fanaticism make fertile the ground where monsters of unchecked imaginings sprawl as wild vines Over the space of fiercely driven and expansive mind.

The shackled womb of the Bretheren still clutching its hold on a beast of fierce intention driven by whimsy and senseless sensation.

Compelled to leave this realm while yet living.

You saw the fear in those who speak of grace, yet still yearned for an embrace, and to be free from the straining weight of gravity, and soring without boundary into endless space.

Transcendental games to unlock hidden realms of mind, endowing unto them strange and monstrous forms while your truer eye stayed blind.

Did all the signs and symbols mirror things within one’s self ?

Or did you lend them power profaned as things with presence seen and felt.

Did you even know the difference?

Confuse hedonism with ethereal and feel the draining of the essence.

42

The seduction and the lie of sublimating the senses.

Emptiness abides when ordinary is the sensuous, when discipline swims to the depths of experience.

You met the wisdom eye, but never learned the lessons.

Did you even know the difference?

You unearthed the secrets, and ancient hidden things, all the nexus points of the interwoven strings, only to obscure them, yet again, in masks of aversion and unsightly imaginings.

Iconoclasts do not muddy a vision in the miasma of emblems of the strange.

The endless wheel of exploration And symbolic explication: Numbers, diagrams, shapes and lines, can never embody perfection of emptiness; of apprehended moment, already gone, already out of time.

Imperfectly we prophesy.

Imperfectly, we divine.

Did you not see that in creating the antithesis, you only mirror the thesis?

Was it not revealed to you, that the universe is on the side of justice, not power?

Compassion is no vice, and it will yet alight our darkest hour.

It is no prophet who dies a junky drained of wit.

It is no law, that which was written 43

in maniacal romantic fit.

It is no prophet who substitutes seduction for empathy; in whose renown is remembered infamy.

You remain admired by players in strange, deviant theatre of shock.

A barely existing cabal, lovelorn, starved for touch all assemble in your flock.

Those that touch the source Radiate excellence, even as the body gives way.

Your end was met in sallow skin and bloodied tongue, in decrepiting decay.

In allying with demons They exact your destruction as their price.

As you worship with “strange drugs� and partake of every vice.

The birthright of us all.

Change in accordance with will.

Your magical mystery tour, invoking every thrill.

Poor brother.

Effort that missed the mark of transformation.

What good is it?

Save for the forming of your fascist ideations, and the naming of hungry ghosts.

44

Break, break, break, On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!

—Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I want to wear your smile on my sleeve & break your heart like a horse or its leg.

—Kevin Young

Life's spell is so exquisite, everything conspires to break it.

If I could stir I could break a tree— I could break you.

—Emily Dickinson

—H.D.

there laid they down their darling lord on the breast of the boat, the breaker-of-rings, by the mast the mighty one

—Beowulf

. . . and from this bush in the dooryard, With delicate-color’d blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green, A sprig with its flower I break.

Not a mixed stick or not a mixed stick or glass. Not a mend stone bender, not a mend stone bender or stain. . . . even where we mean To mend her we end her

—Walt Whitman

—Gertrude Stein

—Gerard Manley Hopkins

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend And maybe I would mend what the iron has done to my brothers

—John Donne

—Mahmoud Darwish

My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings, And this to mend, alas, no Art is able, ’Cause Nature made it so irreparable.

—Anne Bradstreet

Valor lies in bed listening to the rain.

Even Death has nothing to do but mend his cloak and hood, and all their props are locked away in a warehouse, hourglasses, globes, blindfolds and shackles.

—Billy Collins

45

barrett cudney ferguson laboda lowis mermelstein morris musselman oakes oladeji shackleford smith wettig wilson zimmerman

wcc poetry club ~ washtenaw community college ~ ann arbor mi usa