5. CONTENTS
A.J. Huffman Five Hundred Twenty Five
Thousand Six Hundred Minutes
2
From the Authors
Carol Alexander Atrribution: Blue Lady (1957?)
Amanda Anastasi Half-Past
Untitled
Sylvia Ashby Space-Time
Barbara Bald At Season’s End
There Comes a Time
It’s About Memory
Adjustable
Mary Jo Balistreri Riffing on an Old Tune
Flying Out of Phoenix
Donna Barkman Child’s Play
Summer 2012
Forbidden Fruit
David J. Bauman Second Hand
Years Later
Recurrents
Linda Bearss The God in My Ear
6. vi
Colin Bell Over Time
James Bell A Time to Remember
A.C. Billedeaux Vintage Vinyl
Rose Mary Boehm Between Here and Midnight
Doug Bolling Late Summer
Evening Passage
Time Past
Brennan Burnside World Trade Center Study Room
Lesley Burt Eternal Lines
Brenda Butka The Prisoners Vanishes
Jeffrey Bruckwicki Chaucer
Miki Byrne o Time for History
These Were the Times
Andrew Campbell-Kearsey The Alliterative Assasin
J.R. Carson Mutually Forgotten
Daniel Clausen Again
Esteban Colon Till
13 33
Sepia Colored Past
Randall Compton Ambitions
7. vii
Envelope
Diana L. Conces Quitting Time
Apocalypse
J.L. Cooper High oon with Pink Carnation
Melodie Corrigall Scattered to the Wind
Linda M. Crate Movement of Time
Larry Crist Forever Stamps
Group Photo
Oliver Cutshaw Honey in October
Susan Dale In the Beginning
Untitled
The Color of Time
Tim Dardis Driving to Physical Therapy After
Reading Delmore Schwarty
Tatjana Debelijacki The Time of Birth
Julie A. Dickson Cuckoo Clock
Bruce Louis Dodson Solitude
The Time of My Life
Old Men
Jane Dominick Precursor
Jacqueline Doyle Memories of the Future
8. viii
Chiyuma Elliot Why I Called So Late
eil Ellman The Clock
Zach Fechter Under a Glass Desert
Sue Mayfield Geiger oir Couture
Sarah Ghoshal Garage Sale
For Chris
The Sharp Edges of Trees
Jessica Gleason Third-Life Crisis
Misshapen Adulthood
Allison Grayhurst Time Like . . .
Karen Greenbaum-Maya Silence and Slow Time
Ghazal Before Memory
Ray Greenblatt Measuring Time
Harmony Hodges The Bullpen
Lynn Hoffman Pliation, n.
The 23rd
Century
Trish Hopkinson Empty Sockets
Trash Bag Burial
Sue eufarth Howard Droughtful October
Susan M. Huebner Archived
ovember’s Last Call
9. ix
Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll Christmas Future
S.E. Ingraham Tick-Tock
Diane Jackman BBC Radio Interview
Miguel Jacq ine Year Microwave Sky
20000
Marker Horizon
Michael Lee Johnson Quiet Hours Passing
Mindful, Mindless October Date
When You Get Old
She
John Lambremont, Sr. Time After Time
David Lymanstall The Time Thief
Arlene Mandell Start . . . Stop! Print . . . Send!
Fleeting Beauty
Wild Strawberries
Jacqueline Markowski Of Pigs & Pizza
And Another One Down
Residual
Joe Massingham Just a Mother
Janet McCann Pathetique
Joan Mc erney Keepsake
10. x
Tonight
Jim Meirose In Marty Time
Karla Linn Merrifield Sixth Dimension
Jane Miller Making What We Can
Concrete Bloom
Mark J. Mitchell Timepiece
Jude eale Mexico
Emily Pittman ewberry This Too Will Pass
Signs
BZ iditch At Cape Cod
Rees ielsen The Trick
One of the Guys
ayaz daryl nielsen A Memory
Loretta Oleck Slow Time
Rooms & Ruins
Amy S. Pacini Yesterday’s Clock
Timeless Companion
Carl Palmer Mexico Time
Time
Chris Palmer Chemistry 101
Jeffrey Park Time Keeper
11. xi
Mangal Patel Time’s Up
David S. Pointer Time: Back in Stock
Stephen V. Ramey Predestination and a Potato
kerry rawlinson African oon
Wind Memory Kenya
Svidrigailov, You Have ot Wound
the Clock
Jendi Reiter Mis umeros
Polish Joke
henry 7. reneau, jr. Sins of the Father: 2442 AD
The Terminal Blues
Selective Recall
Kristin Roahrig Ghosts of a Photograph
Sy Roth The Wallflower
Salty Rivers
Silences
Tentative
Len Saculla All Your Sweet Sales Talk
Richard Schnap Severed Flights
Andrew Scott Time is Ticking
Rex Sexton Clockers
12. xii
Chris Shorne Stop, Watch
Smita Sriwastav My Weekly Meanderings…
Vignettes on Amnesic Memories…
Bekah Steimel Untitled
Kevin Strong Musical Lives
Anne Swannell Keeping Time
Marianne Szlyk Listening to No Other, Thinking of
Takoma Park
Rose of Sharon
He was a Friend of Hers
Talaia Thomas After the Before
Sarah Thursday Westwood Boulevard (Why I Can’t
Go Back)
Tim Tobin My Old Grandfather
Tamara K. Walker Stumble to Infinity
Go
Mercedes Webb-Pullman Terra Sancta
Lucid ights
Joanna M. Weston I Open the Door
The Present Past
Abigail Wyatt Little Red
Tock
13. xiii
Dana Yost Variations on Isolation
From the Editors
A.J. Huffman On the Surface
Chronomentrophile
Because Seconds
Misappropriated Chambers
The Road to Timeless Road
Looking through the Hands of Time
Watch Unplugged
April Salzano Just a Click Ago
Leftovers
My Grandparents’ Basement
George, Tell Me About the Rabbits
From Age This Periphery
Closed Doors
The Relocating of Things
Author Bios
About the Editors
16. 2
Five Hundred Twenty Five Thousand Six Hundred Minutes
That is one way to measure a year according to my favorite Broadway
song, Seasons of Love (from Rent). It goes on to give verses of
alternative ways to measure that same length of time.
For this anthology, we asked our authors to give voice to their own
verses, stanzas and paragraphs detailing how they measure time, or
even how time measures them. Never disappointing, they took us
down a rabbit hole of infinite possibilities. “In daylights, in sunsets, in
midnights, in cups of coffee . . . “ the song continues. Our authors
touched those tangibles, along with dozens of others. Some delved
deeper still, measuring time by ghosts and memories and disappearing
increments of mathematical division.
“How about love?” the song asks. Some of our authors answered with
a resounding yes, then countered: What about despair? What about
death? They opened their hearts and their wounds, allowing us as
readers to bathe in the aftermath of both.
This was one of the broadest themes we have ever posed, and yet even
with the diversity of the responses, as a whole this was the most
intimate collection we have ever put together. The ephemeral has come
to hold hands with the tangible as they both chase the paranormal right
into our heads and hearts. And we were glad to have taken the journey
with them all.
18. 4
Attribution: Blue Lady (1957?)
Their paintings are the sum of all we know
of the seven ages of man--some slides were lost,
inevitably, and then, we stayed no length of time
to mark bone growth on doorframes,
but like the seeds of the wild plum straggled,
blown off course, to fall where we would.
From the wreck off the coast, this washed ashore
scumbled on a white field, head cropped off
as if by the whimsy of a fey small child
coloring gamely from the bottom of the page
(amazed that there is no place left to go).
Its subject gazes out with aqueous eyes,
a perpetual prisoner of the wormy frame.
For years, I thought my father painted her
when really, I should have known.
This canvas has the strangest pull,
as if prestidigitation charmed the oils:
thin lady, logy prophetess, her long blues
trailing on yet another six decades,
sipped a draught of wormwood and gall
in beauty like netsuke worn from daily ecstasies,
unmade beds and passing children's squalls,
the lashings from sea-brewed storms,
streams of water seeping underneath the sills.
Father in his post-stroke days grasped crayons,
drawing mermaids on the paper mats while
Mother's lady lingered in a darkened room.
She's made the ocean-blue of nereides
undulating in the eddies of neap tides.
19. 5
When they had gone, I dreamed we met
in waters off the eastern shoals.
-- Carol Alexander
20. 6
Half Past
We are hypocrites about the past,
clinging to dead things, resurrecting
some memories like avid hoarders
while others are locked in penitentiaries.
We snap stills with our camera phones:
selected poses, stretched truth marketed
to future reminiscences – in them we laugh
and dance, our faces turned to their best angle.
When we flick through them in twenty years
we’ll have convinced ourselves
that it was our happiest time,
that we will never be that way again
and our grim acceptance of the lesser
present is justified - we believe
our own propaganda about ourselves;
so busy remaking and remodelling
the past, rereading and reinterpreting
its texts, we never completely live
in the here and now,
making our past a half past
and our present half lived.
-- Amanda Anastasi
21. 7
This poem contains clock hands
that stop and start, a struck
match over a black wick
two falcons clawing at the bars
though the cage door is open
the pluck of a tense wire
a mountain lion on a leash
a moment of white:
a fresh inhale
a cry caught at the back of a throat
the fiddling of a lock
the dropping of calculations
a searchlight turning in on itself
a Siberian husky on a beach
a finding of words where before
there was a deafening hush
a nod to the improbable
-- Amanda Anastasi
22. 8
Space-Time
Of the constellation’s span
that you dwell in my mind
I dreamt you once:
You walked a corridor
and whispered my name,
softly whispered my name.
Dangling now by a silky thread
spun from a far-away star
I wonder what time wanting is.
Whispers are young to succumb
I learn and dreams: seeds drawn from
to be withdrawn from the sun.
There is only the constellation
that waits or nibbles an inch
from the century.
Oh, but this thousand-year
has tired me – may I rest
in your chair a while, Cassiopeia
-- Sylvia Ashby
23. 9
At Season’s End
His gray hair catches waning light,
as he reaches for her younger hand,
beckons his partner to him.
In her blaze-blue blouse bought for this occasion,
she smiles, responding like a teen on a first date.
Inconspicuous as white-tailed deer,
this couple dances in the shadow of a mini-van
parked to the side of a courtyard stage.
Across the parking lot, a second senior pair
sits in lawn chairs, their coolers beside them.
With the finality of gates slammed behind an inmate,
his ‘no’ to her plea to dance shatters the humid air.
On this night war wages in Afghanistan,
wildfires gobble up western forests
and an impeding hurricane threatens the east-coast.
On this night one couple chooses to dance
to summer’s last concert;
another remains staunchly seated.
-- Barbara Bald
24. 10
There Comes a Time
I’ve decided to talk to the dead,
to chat with ghosts who encircle me
like elders at a pow-wow.
I hold deep conversations with them,
share one-liners or a few laughs.
I’m sorry you can’t sit with me
on this mossy rock, I say
to the man who once claimed by heart.
Your swimming hole is still here,
I tell the phantom dog.
Forgive me, mother, for not
taking your arm when you visited.
It does not matter that I cannot see them
or that they no longer really exist.
It only matters that, like the imaginary friend
who snuggled with me in soft flannel sheets,
they listen to my musings,
know my history
and offer a hand when
I’m tired of traveling alone.
-- Barbara Bald
25. 11
It’s About Memory
It starts out in your youth like Santa’s bag of toys –
images and feelings stuffed into his sack one at a time,
ready to be pulled out in an instant,
pleasure on demand.
It may be about spaniels racing round a pond,
a canoe tipped by the current, laughter in its hull,
sounds of playing horseshoes on the lawn,
even an argument, remembered fondly,
over where to stack dishes to dry.
Cabin no longer there, mirth burned in its rafters
and dogs long gone, memories come unbidden,
see-saw back and forth – one minute a warm blanket,
another a hair shirt you’d do anything to remove.
Over time the bag’s sides bulge, joy and grief
seep through its seams and the drawstring tightens
like a noose around the neck.
A burden now, too heavy on the back,
even Santa loses his swagger.
-- Barbara Bald
26. 12
Adjustable
Time, like an expandable watchband, stretches—
no deadlines, nothing to do except
watch a lazy river drift quietly to wherever.
It offers space to appreciate
hummingbirds dive-bombing one another
at sugary feeders; flexes to welcome butterflies
tasting new-found freedoms—but
snapping back in place, time contracts,
sets boundaries, halts appreciation.
As a fast-ticking timepiece, it can set a frantic pace,
imprison the senses, dull them
to flowing rivers and chittering hummers.
Time can steal hours, days, years, even lifetimes,
stashing them into booty bags, until,
in wisdom—or luck—the wearer decides
to remove the band.
-- Barbara Bald
27. 13
Riffing on an Old Tune
Three adults and a newly minted teenager
linger over lager and lemonade
taco salads and quesadillas
The moon hangs
round and full
and we’re sure summer’s flavor is blueberry
Relaxed tonight, his words
are open windows
Paris light
champagne bubbly
whirling dervish of sound
Brio and abandon bounce
on the polished table
exploratory fire
free jazz
Tonight he takes a break
meditative half notes gone
His forward drive swings,
spins a lyrical improv
a new unmetered riff
the old licks quoted
in double-time
-- Mary Jo Balistreri
28. 14
Flying Out of Phoenix
Time is the coin of our life. The only one we have
— Carl Sandburg
Held aloft on wings of a huge aluminum bird,
we fly through time on highways unfamiliar.
Strangers to each other, we are mostly alone,
twenty-thousand feet above ground in a lake
of air and light, lily pads of white. We disappear.
Reappear over desert, mountains, and striated canyons.
I fly with bliss and dread, bundled and lost in blue fleece.
Page after page, The Lemon Tree describes clouds
shadowing both Israel and Palestine,
their clash over borders.
The vastness of no borders outside the plane’s window
penetrates the story line. It too presents conflict,
jars in a different way.
With the extreme of no boundaries, the thought of free fall
makes me tense and helpless.
I check my watch for focus, but the face has no numbers.
And it occurs to me as the minute hand circles and circles
that time is space, the numbers arbitrary as are borders.
Uncertainty is our bedrock,
a contrail of exhaust the only sign of our passing.
-- Mary Jo Balistreri
29. 15
Child’s Play
No word exists in English for children who are grown.
Do you have kids? I used to, years ago, when they were young.
Now they’re middle-aged, salt-and-peppered, easing into bald,
with delicate lines, not yet wrinkles, etching their brows.
Memories pop, to think of them as youngsters, diving
from the high board, herding gerbils and hamsters, scaling
the alley fence to scoot to Daisy’s, the bodega down the block.
I’ve lived beyond the ages of my parents when they died.
They will always be my parents; will I always be their child?
A child in memory only, playing jacks and jump rope –
Double Dutch – puppet shows, backyard trapeze tricks – slowly
aging to grey hair and crow’s feet, becoming the one who cared
for them, like the children they’d become, as my own grown kids
will need to, when my ripened life dims into a second childhood –
minus Double Dutch.
-- Donna Barkman
30. 16
Summer, 2012
Big dead ants surround
my bed, exterminator’s victims.
Under siege I pluck them from the carpet
morning noon and night for weeks.
Their fragile brittle exoskeletons –
protectors in life – now crumble
at my touch.
In a hospice bed in Texas,
my sister dwindles day by day.
Morphine and oxygen sustain
what little’s left of her. Deprived
of flesh and muscle, her bones
surface to make a human
exoskeleton, delicate and crisp,
that contains her slowing breath
and pulse.
Gutted by loss and disappointment,
June, July and August heed
their sweaty expiration dates that
spanned a friend’s death,
another’s permanent
departure, a sister gone.
September’s not exempt, not yet.
A slight invisible carapace
would be welcomed:
an exoskeleton for me to don.
-- Donna Barkman
31. 17
Forbidden Fruit
I was tempted by the apples
round and smooth
as they hung from branches,
low.
An injunction Do ot Touch
made them irresistible
luscious in their
juiciness
just as my baby nakedness
round and smooth
was luscious, irresistible
to him, my older, older-brother
Now grown, now old, I still see
his prying hands in those of others’:
last week’s plumber, the UPS man
my younger son
Strong and square
my own hands resemble his
as I gaze on fallen apples
ransacked memory in my palm
and plan these words
-- Donna Barkman
32. 18
Second Hand
Sorry, my emotions were cheap back then.
The youngest of six, I wore hand-me-downs
and thrift store clothes like I was anyone.
Simple, that's how we lived, how we did
everything. "They’re good alright," the clerk
had told her, but unlike the latest
(more expensive) name brands, these emotions
had no dimmer switch. They were either on or off.
And I've always been sentimental about Mom—
the things she gave me, so I never had the heart
to trade them in for something new, updated or
fashionable. Once, recovering from an all-night tantrum
I picked up a surge suppressor at the hardware store,
but even after all these years of filters and shades
I leave Bloomingdale's and Macy's
empty handed, the newer models still on the shelf.
I keep the old things turned off, in the corner and imagine
balance—just enough love, just enough care,
a touch of romance in low light, a soft kiss
and an honest smile at the thought of you
walking fast on fourth street
in your blue pea coat, and me able to keep
that vision with easy eyes, a simple sigh
and the possibility of sleep.
-- David J. Bauman
33. 19
Years Later
I watch now—a primal instinct.
In the yard my sons are swinging,
laughing, while at the window
I wash dishes—mindless clinks
of silver and glass. Eyes scan,
ears tune in for a cry that
isn't laughter. When we go out
I hold their hands in parking lots
and stores. I cannot help the child
I was. Someone should have been
there for him. A brother stood shaking
at the bottom of the stairs, hoping
what was done to him was not being done
to me. Sometimes hope has no feathers.
Adults were in the house, laughing,
drinking. It was cute, they said the way
we became pals. You asked me
to show you where the bathroom was.
I feared every visit after. When
for other reasons you were finally locked
in jail, they asked me cautious questions,
not careful ones, clutching faith, so
I let them believe. It doesn't hurt,
not anymore. Now I watch, I hold
hands, stay close, call often. Perhaps
in doing so I also stretch my arms
past decades to the boy, trembling
beneath blankets in the dark,
hearing a voice, a shoe on the stair,
a fluttering on the window sill.
34. 20
Now, at last, he may be safe
as my children are embraced.
-- David J. Bauman
35. 21
Recurrents
There we are by the shore again—well, me
by the shore, you out there, bobbing in the waves
once more, eyes bugged out, lips ice-blue,
arms flailing. Desperate to keep your head
above the white caps, you've somehow managed
to grasp a fallen branch. "Are you okay?"
The classic stupid question, but what am I to say?
"I'm sorry," you sputter-shout
as you spit a school of minnows from your teeth.
"I'm always drowning when we're here together."
Yet just last week we enjoyed a day here, dangling
foaming feet, skipping little stones, but now
is not the time to argue. I throw the rope,
always looped to my belt in anticipation
of times like this, but you miss it every toss.
All the while your enormous eyes convey a bevy
of emotions; fear of the current, rage at the waves
and sympathy for my own failings. My rope is too short.
In a frenzy now I fumble through my pockets, and toss
their contents to you—a marble, a feather, a rubber
chicken, hoping you'll know how to use them. "Don't worry
about me," you gurgle. And I am touched; I know
how you hate it when your moods affect me. Too late
I dive and plunge into the icy flow, as you lose
your slippery grip and begin to drift
around the bend, waving kind assurances
as your head sinks beneath the surface. You're always
36. 22
thoughtful like that. Resigned, I crawl back
up the bank, and find my favorite rock. I check my watch—
it could be hours yet, before you're washed ashore.
-- David J. Bauman
37. 23
The God in My Ear
I.
the God in my ear is male
knows the only truth
the one right way
and where the traps are
birthed in the mire
my foot slides
sticking fast
just like a woman
just like his woman
who made the mud anyway?
II.
the Spirit rides
a gentle whisper
notes sing to me
quills prick
drawing epiphanies
blood minerals
to my finger tips
visions taking form
my right hand brushes
white living fibers
composing new psalms
the God in my ear
croons “Such colors and melodies
are birthed in the mire
what a tapestry you weave
from brokenness—
I was right to let you fall.”
38. 24
III.
divine and human
enigmas paradoxes
theology debate
seen in a mirror
dimly lit
my Aunt Louise
knew His voice
smiled at my
logical assertions
and revelations
put her hand on her heart
drew out her faith
and shared a piece with me
IV.
it is so hard for a rich man
for a man who counts himself wise
to grow and hold faith
for a wounded woman
who has learned how to stand
to trust in someone stronger
than herself to lean on
V.
the Giver of all life
offers His claim
on this broken vessel
logic fades, slipping
over the dampness of
the potter’s hands
mending the fragments
left from generations of fear
reason and arrogance
39. 25
He rents my understanding
draws out my faith
invites my allegiance
and I ask “Why me?”
VI.
hours days years drift
transient moments
of need and questioning
the master mender
of broken pots
marks my soul
with proverbs
and psalms,
letters of love,
promises of a future
He calls me “beloved
precious, unique”
VII.
Time is a shadow
my fugitive soul
an aberration too weak
to hold to trust
“Time is Mine” whispers
the God in my ear
-- Linda Bearss
40. 26
Over Time
Overtired from overtime,
under-paid and over-worked,
we over-act.
Protests overdone,
Thespian tempers overheat,
our emotions overflow
and yet again, you throw me overboard.
Maybe our love is overpriced,
a game of lust overspent,
passion overdosed.
My comeuppance is overdue,
but it’s a mutual oversight
thinking I am over you.
I too often overlook
your power to overwhelm
me. We continually overreach,
over-estimating sentimental leftovers,
eroticising over-indulgence.
Expectations often overcooked,
our careers make us over-ambitious.
We’re hopeless at the overview.
Over and over again we try to say it’s over,
but pain can be overcome,
lives can be overhauled.
Love’s the overall winner -
over time.
-- Colin Bell
41. 27
A Time to Remember
as clouds draw forward in the distance
and cover clear sky
I remember that incident where
a bird flew low before the car bonnet
and you insisted I stop to look
to see if it was injured or dead
for you are concerned with such detail -
but I could see nothing on the road
so we agreed it must have flown by
and continued into town for our promised lunch
on return to the car
I happened to walk round the front
and saw a live robin stuck by its legs
there in the radiator grill from where
it looked at us with that fixed friendly expression
as if to say - what are you going to do about this -
while we discussed how to set it free
hit with the guilt of a fine lunch
we wrapped it in a soft scarf fearing to crush it
when we tried to set it free -
this cost it one leg
we could only watch as it flew away -
I tried to imagine its future life
how it would live in a strange place with one leg
the clouds have completely covered the clear sky
I see a chimney begin to smoke
among some rooftops
watch again how the world turns
and shows how quickly time passes
-- James Bell
42. 28
Vintage Vinyl
This is the conversation they never had.
He is sitting on one side of a large, brick wall. It’s cold against his
back, but he rests his head against the brick anyway. His eyes are
closed. He can almost feel her.
She is on the other side of the wall. She’s sitting cross-legged, facing it.
When she hears him breathing, she looks up. Her hair falls away from
her face and in a rush, the emotions paint her expression. She fancies
herself stone, immune to everything and impenetrable, but he knows
better. In moments like this, he knows exactly how her face looks.
He wants to reach through the stone, touch her cheek. He wants to hold
her hands because he knows that she is shaking.
She is scared. She is always scared. And he is so far away.
How it really happens is like this. She stays there, for a few minutes.
He begs her to say something. She doesn’t. She reaches up and presses
her palm against the stone. Then, lips sealed shut, imagining her heart
to be stone, she climbs unsteadily to her feet and walks away. The next
time he sees her, she is dead.
That’s how it really goes.
After, he rewrites it.
He is still sitting on the ground by the brick wall. His knees are drawn
up to his chin. He is looking at the sky and, almost too softly to be
heard, he is speaking. He is singing. It’s a song they both know, from
when they were children. She stays, on her side of the wall, and listens
to it. Her gloved hands are pressed to the brick. It hurts, especially
where the skin has died at the tips of her fingers, but she pushes as hard
as she can. She wants to leave a mark.
She says, “We should have never met.”
43. 29
He stops singing, but doesn’t move. He says, “I’m glad we did.”
Her dead fingers are just the beginning. There are other parts of
her that are dying too. There are parts of her that have been dead
since before he knew her. She is just pieces--always has been.
Pieces that are alive. Pieces that fight. Pieces that are stone. And
pieces that were buried a long time ago.
“You’re going to ask me why,” he says.
She doesn’t, because she doesn’t want to sound needy.
But he tells her, because she doesn’t say anything else. “You
changed me too.”
"Not enough." Not the way that he had changed her. She’d been
so different when they’d first met. She’d been only one piece
then. Just the dead one. The buried one. Something terrible had
happened to her--like terrible things always happen to people and
turn them into something they never were before--and she had
become nothing.
Stone, she’d said.
But he had made her more.
“How did I change you?” she asks.
He closes his eyes and breathes her in. It’s almost as if she’s
right next to him. He says, “You made me.”
She was two-sided. She had side A, before. She had side B, after.
She had the incident that defined her.
But she was the incident that defined him. She was the before
and the after. She had turned him from ordinary into
extraordinary. She had made him brave.
On the other side of the wall, she hesitates. He can hear the smile in her
voice. “You’d have been you anyway, without me.”
44. 30
“I wouldn’t have,” he says. Then, “And I wouldn’t have wanted to be.”
She understands, because of her two sides. The first side, from before,
understands that he doesn’t want to be what he is without her. The
second side, the one that is forever, understands that she was the one
that made him strong enough to do just that.
Side B says, “I’m glad you came.”
Side A says, “I have to go. It’s time.”
He listens to both sides of her--the stone and the fire--and he
understand that this is all they get. This last conversation.
“It’s time,” he agrees.
The next time he sees her, she’s dead.
He wishes he’d said goodbye.
-- A.C. Billedeaux
45. 31
Between Here and Midnight
Walking along the Pacific coast
night comes upon us abruptly.
We sit and watch the last hot ore
dipping into Prussian blue.
Flames are dying behind
a black wall of insubstantiality.
Giant footprints fill with red lava.
Overflowing.
Alluvial.
These angels have large beaks,
the wings of black swans.
Comfortable on the foam of roaring
waves, they set fire to the sea.
I close my eyes, go inward, back to a time
when I was shaped. When I promised
the old gods that I’d heed my own advice.
Promised I’d remember the dead
and watch the robin.
The smelter of all that is
tried me and spat me out.
I am not about to become
indignant.
-- Rose Mary Boehm
46. 32
Late Summer
Light ebbs, an old man in a
frail coat.
The grasses here now brittle
in their fierce ownership
of dying.
The echoes of myself crowd
in. What is the present
but a minute particle.
Three crows plunder the remains
of seed and berry.
I step into a sudden wind
as though
invisible.
Is it that world is an
invention of words
and memory.
It is colder now. The mirrors
will no longer serve
the will to
escape.
I reach out to touch
the shadows before they drift
behind the mountain.
-- Doug Bolling
47. 33
Evening Passage
The games of checkers by the hour.
Small rodents sleep and dream
of the feast of plenty.
If you watch you will see the shadow
of time slowly cross the floor and
vanish behind the far wall.
Sounds of traffic from the interstate
bulge and shrink and return
hour after hour as here in the
narrow room each moment becomes
a slow drip in the rain bucket
by the window next the
chrysanthemums.
The old men are through.
Clack clack of pieces dropping
into the cigar box below.
They have no words.
Night waits like a lengthy yawn.
Rain rises again from the west
beating against the small house.
In the pantry the stacked plates
bump against each other in
rhythm with the rain.
A form of chatter that dulls
the imagination,
speeds the path into sleep.
-- Doug Bolling
48. 34
Time Past
A remembering as of children.
How the years withdrew in a
long suddenness
and returned becoming
a present.
Voices motionless. Footsteps
ghostly, small traces in their
warp of time.
And the children here by
the sea.
A dozen of them or a
hundred.
They play. they play.
Their moments as unburdened
by thought as those of sea gulls
lofting into sunlight
from the sand dunes.
The tide comes and it
takes away.
Toy boats and tatters
of dream sail outward
to the unknown.
Things continue.
They become the places
where time was.
-- Doug Bolling
49. 35
Eternal Lines
The percussive growl from a light aircraft,
high overhead, backs the melodies
of blackbirds and finches;
jasmine is flowering on the trellis,
so that late afternoon’s bright warmth
spreads its scent across the garden;
sky is unbroken blue; and the breeze
is satin on skin; we sip wine,
apple-crisp; smile; touch hands.
Before I can think beyond perfect
that moment is words in past tense.
-- Lesley Burt
50. 36
The Prisoner Vanishes
doing time consists of no time at all.
in this snake-eyed cube of time
time rises like smoke, marking
nothing except
my heartbeat, which
should be secret, my breath
shuffling in and out, of no interest
to anyone. in my no-time doing time
dreams pile up of metronomes, of
a day unfolding its morning news again
and again, its regular ticket punched.
I have been here longer than these walls,
and slower, have become old graffiti
written on the shades
of my predecessors. I am living in the pure air
at the top of a mountain of grief,
this white box
no longer my container, with its
airtight lid. I am no longer present
to be contained, simply not here,
no more. lockdown is no triumph,
this is not a victory of the human spirit,
just another story of gone.
six feet wide six
feet under six feet up just
walking crazy on stocking feet.
talk about doing time when
time is doing me.
-- Brenda Butka
51. 37
Chaucer
I covered my ears trying to smother the sound
The anger rattled my canals at four years old
At twenty four I sat on the sticky surface of a bar room
laughing, smiling, acting like I had unclogged my ears
Married now I hear myself from the outside
Blurting words that tear and will scar
I took a class on Chaucer in college
Tthe words I remembered
and used
and my lexicon grew
and I could spread anger with acrobatics
I learned things thirty years ago that stand true today
The decay that time brings to relationships
The guilty thinks that all talk is about them
all of the minutes in the day
and I hear the voices
bouncing, tearing through my scarred canals
-- Jeffrey Bruckwicki
52. 38
o Time for History
I remember the Great Humane Cull.
When millions of the old and sick
gave themselves to forever-peace.
We revere their sacrifice,
keep them in virtual niches for our homage.
It wasn’t enough. Now a new structure exists.
Wrought from chaos by the Global Senate,
as resources died and the great tracts withered.
We became used to it. After the riots
and the underground prison building program,
we achieved order.
Learned control, how to be selfless.
Each family was allocated its stasis tube
and consciousness habitat.
We live in a cycle of here and gone.
Lives crammed into two years of life-three years of sleep.
This module holds traces of our shared occupancy.
A small child’s holo-bup-a bent credit chip.
I absorb our intended life plan.
Twenty four months of precious eye function.
My retinas re-acclimate to the bruised yellow sky.
I allow a luxurious touch of welcome-back oxygen
into the room. Outside, the air is a silent jam of vehicles.
I identify myself to the Domestic Replicator,
begin the procedure that will bring my family
back to full brain activity.
In my hand, the antique iPhone that is my only treasure,
hold glimpses of how Earth used to be.
I return it to its display hub. I have no time today,
for history.
-- Miki Byrne
53. 39
These Were the Times
That was the time of parties. A neighbor slept on my sofa;
Disheveled, too drunk to notice his broken rib.
Another day I stood up for myself. Refused to be a victim.
Broke away and made a better life.
One beautiful time my love and I sat on a hills peak
and he stroked the storm’s rain from my arm.
On a shining day I climbed down to Prussia Cove.
Seals rolled out of the sea, as the sun arced over the horizon.
Then came the time we sat by the river at Stratford Upon Avon,
fed the swans whilst actors posed behind us.
At one point, I steered my boat through a lock.
A small frog chirped on my shoulder all the way through.
Another time my old dog died. I shed hot tears. Then
swallowed her soul to keep her forever with me.
One fine day a pupil of mine won a prize for his work.
He had always been viewed as ‘unruly.’
Then was the time we made a fire on the beach,
drank hot toddies till our eyes blurred as the waves whispered in.
A dark day was when I discovered the knife of infidelity
stuck fast in my back. I bled for a very long time.
Later came a time when I was too ill to move
and knew that a cure was just fantasy.
Another bleak time I experienced loss and began
the expanding collection of holes that funerals leave in my heart.
54. 40
Now is the time that memories cushion age.
I lean back on them. Wonder what the future may bring.
-- Miki Byrne
55. 41
The Alliterative Assassin
The tabloids labelled him, ‘The Solomon Grundy Killer’. He
inflicted a sliding scale of harm in a range of locations. He
maimed Michael from Malmesbury on Monday. On Tuesday he
tortured Tony from Truro. Poor Wendy from Wensleydale was
assaulted by a welder’s torch on Wednesday. Thirsk residents
were already on stand-by on Thursday but it didn’t stop Thelma
from being throttled. Floral wreaths were left outside Frank’s
chippy in Frome on Friday. Forensic staff never released to the
public which body parts they found in the deep-fat frier.
Many people claimed they were the sole perpetrators and gave
reasons for their actions. Scotland Yard received an email at six
minutes past six every evening giving details of the latest
atrocity. After a few days, the accuracy of the information and
specific named location proved the emails to be genuine.
Sometimes the emails arrived before the crime had even been
reported. Under emergency legislation, facebook pages that
glorified ‘Solomon’s’ handiwork, were taken down. Editorials
searched for a meaning behind the apparently random acts and
locations.
Newsreaders reported with grim faces how an elephant-keeper
had been crushed to death by his favourite pachyderm. No
connection was made initially as the tragic accident occurred at
Whipsnade on the Saturday. When information emerged that the
recently deceased keeper was called Satnam and the full name of
the establishment was Whipsnade Safari Park. It came as no
surprise that the elephant had literally sat on his victim. The
daily email to Scotland Yard confirmed what was feared that this
was the sixth in a worsening list of crimes.
The more sensationalist of bloggers attributed godlike powers to
Solomon. ‘He can even control animals!’ The Sunday paper
headlines were united for once. ‘It’s a race against time before he
strikes again’. Inhabitants of Sunderland with the misfortune to
be called Sunny were under self-imposed house arrest.
56. 42
Speculation mounted over the manner of Solomon’s next outrage. Sun-
tanning salons were an obvious choice.
At 6.06 the police received a briefer email than usual.
‘Like God, I too need a day of rest. Normal business resumes
tomorrow.’
-- Andrew Campbell-Kearsey
57. 43
Mutually Forgotten
Spectre of city’s past move on
with no more than the chill of
night breezes on wet skin.
No scent of rain drenched dog
or sun drenched blonde
or any aroma betwixt and between can fill
the nose with sensory memories like
afternoon steam on asphalt
three days before the end
of summer in this
southern town.
Whimsy and nostalgia mix heavy in the sunset,
block out the shadows of history with
golden-orange solar flares
and forethought of new
memories in the making.
These are the days that never end but
hold youth’s reins and
guide the equinous flow of aging’s river
despite the power of time’s current.
These heady days, sapped of turgor,
listing toward comfort in soil,
are when time and self are
mutually
forgotten.
-- J.R. Carson
58. 44
Again
After years of fighting, pointless bickering, we materialize someplace
with no walls, no boundaries, it takes in the air effortlessly and
produces us as two people in our twenties. I sit in the cafeteria of the
university and think--all I have to do is ignore her and this whole thing
goes away. Our two trajectories will never touch. Long ago we had
stopped communicating in any meaningful way--now we’ll just
eternalize the arrangement by never communicating in the first place.
Somehow though, I begin to think of life without her. I’m not the man
of the future, of pointless fights. I want to live it all again, even as I see
the train wreck coming. We’ll do it even worse this time. We'll be more
joyous in our youth and bitter in our twilight--logic and good sense be
damned. We’ll be in love, we’ll be exasperated. We’ll rush where we
should slow down, and slow down and wait when opportunity knocks.
And in the little garden on the terrace of your favorite Italian restaurant,
we’ll make magic feel like an everyday experience again and again. All
these places and times stop, turn, twist, and there I am again with you,
where I should be: miserable, happy, but never lonely.
-- Daniel Clausen
59. 45
Till
when I was young
I was taught to punch through someone,
so
I wasn’t happy with just making contact,
so
impacts would be felt.
as an adult, I saw perfection,
a shaman spirit mending souls in minutes,
stared
slack jawed,
till I collected enough of me
to declare
I’d become better than him.
looking forward, I think in trajectories,
finished arcs,
hear
the word “till” enter my brain
and begin to plan
for whatever comes after immortality.
-- Esteban Colon
60. 46
13 33
Like a tourist, I entered
empty husk house, floor mattress, the
kinetic energy of every knife thrown, forehead through drywall
thoughts of the half grown, fending for themselves
pumped fists, unstoppable
youth shaping their lives
half starved teens, cutting white powder, counting
dollars earned with backs pressed to floors, the insides of cars
Like a tourist, I entered
listened to loud voices
arguments of thick skin pushing everyone away
too defiant to listen to anything
and as they set the night ablaze, I
raged without limit, roaring to the sky
waited, with open arms, to care for their burns
-- Esteban Colon
61. 47
Sepia Colored Past
Eternally backwards torn eyes
watch present through past,
wire frame rims holding
old mistakes
regrets
fears
regurgitated into
new faces
relationships
fears
and
fistful hairs drip blood
till
newly bald head, sees
too clearly
and hides
in sepia bliss
-- Esteban Colon
62. 48
Ambitions
When I was ten, stars played at evading
the clutch and swing of backyard oak trees
and hid in my finger span. I thought I’d
join their game, but math dunked my mind
into magnitude, and constellations
fled to the far end of my telescope.
At fifteen, I longed to dig the next Troy
but found I’d be mining through the slag
of years melted under mindless sun’s heel,
imperfectly resurrecting potsherds
into heavens of study and disuse
like all the mis-glued models on my shelves.
Twenty’s ideal saw me a nomadic
forest ranger, guarding wetlands or perched
on watch towers staring down smoke signals,
but cigarette butts and burned pines
made me want to feed bears junk-food
tourists or to bank their cameras in leaves.
Now I teach texts to forests of students.
Some eat snacks while touring cell phones,
but others bring me splintered sentences,
shards strained from sediments of their pasts.
I patch and mend until stars breeze overhead,
configuring glory in skies beyond our kin.
-- Randall Compton
63. 49
Envelope
I’m sealing an envelope
to open next year
or maybe the year after--
confirming some benefits of air
today allots us, our portion
of smoke from a chimney
that stands over oak fire,
a whiff of wheat’s gold,
transmuted to bread,
a memory of rain on the
Japanese Yews after a night
of thunder dropped on our heads.
Wait, from under the door,
a whisper will announce today’s
arrival, pressed into our hearts with
time’s invisible signet ring.
-- Randall Compton
64. 50
Quitting Time
at four-thirty a sudden wildness arrives
in state, pulled by teams of rebellious horses,
the air shedding its staleness like a man,
stranded, trudging home through the steamy streets,
rips his soggy encumbrances off at the door,
not waiting for privacy – craving freedom
the hollow self recoils from the thing within
the face becomes more empty
while what it hides
begins to smile
at last.
-- Diana L. Conces
65. 51
Apocalypse
There’s an apocalypse coming,
forty, fifty years on
and the lights are flashing,
bars coming down
I sit cross-legged on the tracks
eyes closed breath still
waiting. still. waiting.
still. waiting. still.
The train will ride over me
one day I know
My rivers will boil, my eyes weep
Blood of my heart
Long cold wars will erupt
My earth quake
Pestilential doubts, memories
false prophets or true
It will come, it will come
the rhythm, the sound
the train on the tracks
the end – the end
yours is
mine is
all.
-- Diana L. Conces
66. 52
High oon with Pink Carnations
A conundrum, long-brewing, is that nobody hated you at the
dentist’s office when you were a child. It didn’t help that your mother
tried to comfort you by saying that getting a filling was small potatoes.
Let’s say nobody was truly cruel, that even decent parents have
unlikely ways of abiding and resisting your full becoming. Now you’re
thirty-five and need to see a dentist, but you think of the first time you
were alone in the office, eight years old, daring to grow your hair long,
beginning to notice your body. Your big problem would come after the
appointment was over, when you were offered a pink carnation you
didn’t feel you earned; the kind everyone gets at the dentist - along with
a toothbrush and sugar-free candy. Just seeing the flowers across the
waiting room reminds you of decisions you need to make: whether to
take the new job in the exciting city or stay and see what happens here.
It was weird at age eight, when the x-ray machine was pointed at
your face. The technician was resplendent. She easily saw your secret
way of holding back tears. You put away your hiding tricks because she
casually mentioned she cries as easily as stepping in and out of summer
rain. She hummed in a way that made you want to hear her sing. You
were safe in her hazel eyes as she put the lead apron on your chest,
saying this was your protection. This actually helped - the certain
weight of it - and was strangely missed when lifted.
But she left. The dentist came in to numb you, declaring you
wouldn’t feel the rest. But you did.
Your mouth was full of cotton, ears murderously trapped by
pleasant music. There was an unearthly smell of false mint. Everyone
was nice. Your bravery was highly expected. You weren’t brave in the
slightest, but your feet managed to dance to the sound of the
grandfather clock speaking from the hall. The clock hypnotized you.
The dentist carelessly left a glaring light in your eyes when she left the
room. You pushed it aside and closed your eyes. Half of you lower lip
was numb, and a single drop of spit fell to the clean blue cloth around
your neck. You thought of being embarrassed, but instead you started
remembering:
67. 53
“I miss my real grandpa, our boat rides in mountain lakes. I
remember looking over the side of the boat. Grandpa said that
whatever I saw there was a snapshot I can look at anytime I
want. I saw pillars of light streaking through pure blue water. A
single drop of water fell from the wooden oar, making tiny
waves out into the lake. My hair touched the water and grandpa
smiled because he knew I found something I didn’t have to tell
about. Now I want the lead shield back. I want the x-ray person
back. I want her hazel eyes on me, and I miss grandpa so bad I
can’t stop crying in my heart. Why can’t I speak?”
No answer came, because you didn’t ask a person other
than you. Visitations are like that. When it was all over, the
receptionist reminded you to take a flower. It was high noon with
pink carnations. Memory of this next part is lost in prophesy.
Maybe you froze, feeling you didn’t deserve anything because
you cried a little. Maybe you took yours with an angry fist, or
threw it out the car window, or balanced the stem elegantly
between two fingers with a mixture of defiance and curiosity,
keeping it just the right distance while your piercing eyes
bargained with places still becoming. Maybe your exquisite eight
year old arm lifted it to a simple claimed breath. Yes, sweet
child, flowers from dentists are complicated, this one not your
favorite color, unexpected in keen fresh spice. This flower knows
nothing of what it gives from the round burgundy vase in the
room where everyone waits.
Wombs are like that. You wonder why you dream of hazel
eyes. I’m sorry you lost your grandpa when you were so young.
He’s in you, not in the clock. He’s in you all your life, radiant,
present and unfinished. He’s saying you are the best girl ever, at
the dentist. He’s saying, “take two” of the long-stemmed
carnations. And you do, offering your famous half-numb smile
all the way to the airport.
-- J.L. Cooper
68. 54
Scattered to the Wind
Still as stone
she lies beside her husband
soon to be her ex.
Fifty years earlier, at 28,
she had expected that in death
she would mirror the Egyptian statues
at the museum
one of two constant companions
side-by-side
equal and loving
to eternity.
Instead, when death calls,
she will be single,
leaving behind
a coddled cat.
Her body neither
pampered nor perfumed
but burned to ashes.
Her bones not calcified
but scattered to the wind.
-- Melodie Corrigall
69. 55
Movement of Time
i wish i could be like time
keep moving,
never look back never
examine anything but the now
fly freely as an autumn leaf
without having to pay
any heed
master of my own design
never unraveling emotions or having
to carry the satin of this flesh
or the sting of these bones
to float ethereal
like a ghost
through the universe dancing in
sunlit pools without getting
wet,
knowing both the tongue of roses and men;
i wonder if time ever tires
because i know he never sleeps,
wish i could be the master
insomniac
never burdened by anything but the flowing
movement of stepping forward.
-- Linda M. Crate
70. 56
Forever Stamps
Forever like that which we used to feel
when i was yours and you were mine
back when our love was new and true
with hearts and minds intertwined
and we would kiss endlessly, forever
Forever like these doldrums that wallow in the mist
stretching like a Slinky from end to end
Forever since last i cut my toenails, my hair, took a bath or changed
my underwear
Forever till lunch as hunger’s minutes land like Chinese water torture
and people talk, god-how-they-talk, with forever pauses
and points they never quite make
Forever like these rivalries twixt the aged and ageless
between callous hard-wrought experience and those who fly theoretical
prepared to pepper the world with answers to questions they
are scared to ask, who have always lived in one place, basking
in their all-purpose lineage, inbred, ill-read, with steadfast
certainty and insights set in quicksand and cement
These things you’ve had forever: a red comb, your Parker Brother’s
pen, that little green pipe you can’t find—but don’t worry
it will turn up, like everything eventually does, like these
dogged temptations, hounding you, scratching at the door, breaking
through glass, forever crying, screaming, thumping their chest
with angry gorilla abandon
if not forever—for a very long time
The post office person tells me it took them a long time
to figure out their forever angle—that they could
forever save money stamping forever on their stamps
and skip all those annoying annual price hikes
and now, like herpes or HIV, radioactivity, or past episodes
of Friends and Seinfeld, stamps may endure as long as Stone Henge
or the Sphinx, or minutes from the last meeting that sputter
like a dying comedian, or my grand father’s driving
or my aunt’s ploddingly delivered grace as everything turns cold
and hardens
71. 57
Expanding like a black hole, light years in the distance, barreling through
sucking back eternity through a straw, sucking up our present into the past
back to whenever it was, as it was written. . .
before parchment or Parker Brother’s, before Nefertiti
or the New York Yankees, back when a nickel spent like a dollar
and daguerreotypes cut with their stolen images, spurting
like geysers, towering with mushroom ambition, reaching like the Phoenix
flailing her wings, hitching a ride atop the four winds with dandelion determination
bowing down before an exploding sky, forever and again, as long as it takes, on-
ward into extra innings, overtime, sudden death, in a game no one can win, with-
out end until that letter finally arrives and i hear from you, hear you, see you
in my head, when again i will recall what i have forgotten
regarding this thing destined to transcend us
as the last scribe screams from the rafters, repeating everything
that’s been said and is eaten by fire, by the all expanding
sun, vanishing at a million degrees centigrade
disappearing amidst the swirling debris
settling, and bearing down
forever
and so on. . .
and on
Forever like this poem, this poetry reading
You shifting in your chair, wanting to check your messages
waiting for your waiter, your check, your ship, your train to come in
your red-letter arrival, gandy-dancing while doing cartwheels
waiting for the wind to rise, your stocks to stabilize, for the weekend to save you
the sermon to end, for death to relieve you and still save the game
as you battle the clock, search for your keys, your phone, your purse
en route to something you’ve already missed
Forever since it began when you wished it would end, back when we were in
love swearing we would always feel the same exact way, forever since
before
we ended only to begin again in someone else’s arms, re-born
whenever it was, since last i heard from you
or it rained or the sun last appeared
72. 58
stalking us like a killer, killing whatever we left
failing to murder it ourselves
-- Larry Crist
73. 59
Group Photo
Ten of us in my best friend’s back yard
Kent’s X wife’s old place
She’s not in the picture—she likely took it
There are several children, including my daughter, Nicky
3 or 4, wearing a pale blue dress, her hair
in a matching beret; sharp contrast to the others, her age
with Cheetos rings and chocolate circles round their mouths
Near the foreground, with his face half hidden by a
squatting hippie girl, who i don’t remember, is my pal Ted
in his signature straw cowboy hat, overalls, ciggie in hand
Beside him, with a baby on her lap, that i know was not
hers, is Jane—our drama teacher
Bill has a strapped on guitar, red
Kent is leaning in, with one meaty arm, holding a beam
like Atlas, ciggie in mouth, a cup of something, alcoholic
I’m on the ground, without shirt, mustache with Sinatra style fedora
with my arm draped around Nicky
We are captured in an otherwise forgettable moment
forgetting even as the camera is clicked
This moment i find 30 years later in a pile of pics
while attending Kent’s memorial service
the last time i would see Ted, who would die a year later
My daughter has 3 kids of her own
Our drama teacher has long since retired and relocated
Bill, surprised us all by making lots of money
and no one, in that he never did learn to play guitar
I’m uncertain as to whatever happened to that hat
except i’ve replaced it
with another just like it
the newness of which
75. 61
Honey in October
The husk of the dead bee
dances with the wind,
left and right it rolls
down the walk,
following a certain shard of light,
the confetti of Summer
haunts the day
until some sudden gust
sets it aflight
into my neighbor’s yard.
The lawn is still full of dead summer,
my rake must gather the red and gold leaves scattered everywhere,
I wipe the sweat from my face,
it is a day for collecting and recollecting.
The season of basket and broom,
the shadows are growing longer,
the angles stark, we prepare for the unwelcome dark,
Winter is crouching in every corner.
But a scattering of roses still crimsons on the trellis,
blooming in the crisp and clear,
the air is suddenly filled
with common sense, seasons have their reasons,
It is good to put Summer’s easy ways into the closet,
and converse with the bare branches
of life just for a while.
-- Oliver Cutshaw
76. 62
In the Beginning
In the beginning before there was day
There was a shadowed moon
Barring herself
Behind the dreams
Through which we all pass
One over the other
Carrying our little deaths with us
Ghosts never awoken
Traveling the nights
Paralyzed to eternity
Nights where winds breathe
A long black low
Until archangels with swords
Slice time to a faint light
That calls to riptide oceans
And they bubble with new life
Pulse and throb
To part to a spit of land
Rising in between
-- Susan Dale
77. 63
Hard days; the hard clay of living
And the gnawing teeth of time
Grinding steadily at our days
Heavy nets of time across our shoulders
Thrown into the river of time
To catch currents of time
On their journey through time
Into time eternal
-- Susan Dale
78. 64
The Color of Time
Our dreams with tendrils,
coiling around
to climb the tree of life
And swim with a bruised moon
and a cup of stars poured into the sky
Fragile the spring petals
falling from flowers
blooming under the light that left us
stumbling blindly through our days
Spring traipsing off with minute winds
To summer with fat fingers and firm feet
and full crowns of treetops
Syllables of light galloping across the skies
in three quarter time
to the glory of fecundity
suffocating the meadows
A bonfire sun and barefoot dances
Gliding down river and hours
Our sampans too wide
Our dreams too deep
for the narrow canals we sailed
The noose of our fears
strangling us
The monopoly others had on luck
A lady they courted with lusty songs
and syrupy endearments
Lady luck on the balconies
we sat beneath
wearing masks to shield our faces
from desires that shackled us
79. 65
from the fingers of time
squeezing, tightening
A solemn command brought autumn
with gold veins and cream clouds
To winter waiting in the sacristy
We stepped up to an altar of chalky skies
and the silence of frozen years,
And frozen tears of snow
Waves of winds, stone cold silence
Filaments of white lights
Leather straps binding us to our pasts
Powerful jaws of our determinations
clamping down
Skeletons of the dead
searching for old lovers with hollow cheeks
carrying dreams they’d outgrown
Caught we were in whispery webs
We beat with moth wings
trying to find the light,
beating ourselves to shreds
Our dreams burnt scarlet by sunsets of delirious colors
The velocities of our time
Captured in cloud waves
and measured by the star spun seconds
Of time into tomorrow
-- Susan Dale
80. 66
Driving To Physical Therapy After Reading Delmore Schwartz
If time is the fire in which we burn
then each day is a slow match of salt-
peter, cord, and ember. What
measures an eternity of ash?
My clock is atomic,
more precise than Swiss,
accurate enough to incinerate cities; geo-
synchronous satellites
tell me exactly when I am.
“Better one hour early than one minute late,”
said Batman to Boy Wonder. I prefer punctual.
-- Tim Dardis
81. 67
The Time of Birth
I will conquer the fear of flying
I will jump with the parachute of kiss
While walking I’ll dance to the drum rhythm
Dream in the clothes of the penguin
Thumb through the book
Goodbye my sixteen years
with premises in the mind
that I will carry them
in my fifties
real and modest
and at least once a day
I will laugh out loud
Really enjoy
In intimately woven world
When the moon passes its seventh round
And Jupiter falls on Mars
Our world will be the leader
And love will be the path for the stars
That would be the time when
Aquarius is born
To my grandchildren, grand-grandchildren
I will tell stories about times
When people were people.
-- Tatjana Debelijacki
82. 68
Cuckoo Clock
Awake again, I looked up at the ceiling.
What had I heard?
My mother’s cuckoo clock,
Chirping out every hour, the
Relentless wooden carved bird, tiny
Yet noisily announcing passing time.
A single chirp on the half hour,
Enough to bring me back to consciousness.
When twelve cuckoos had come and gone
And the chirps became fewer,
I found myself drifting back to sleep;
But on many sleepless nights
I crept from my bed, silently down the stairs
To strangle that cuckoo – don’t worry
I only stopped the clock and when those
Mornings came, I looked sheepishly
At my toast while my mother remarked
That the cuckoo clock had stopped once again.
-- Julie A. Dickson
83. 69
Solitude
After counting the hours
Of being alone
He found himself
Bankrupt
Making desperate payments
His heart could not cover.
-- Bruce Louis Dodson
84. 70
The Time of My Life
Hot summer afternoon
It’s ninety-seven in the shade
And more inside my gear
White paper dust mask
Padded rubber on my ears
To stop some of the noise
A pair of safety glasses
Dark blue coveralls on top my clothing
Heavy leather gloves
Thick socks and steel toed boots.
Holding this powerful electric drill
Eight pounds of heavy metal
Spinning wire-brush wheel
A blur of blue and gray
Against the rust that has accumulated
On eight tons of angle iron
My job.
Eight hours inside a cloud of dark red dust
Fire storm of sparks
Steel bristles flying off
Go through my fabric armor
Into sweating skin
Dust makes it hard to breath
My glasses fogged by body heat
I watch the slow shop clock
Selling the time of my life
Eight-fifty an hour.
-- Bruce Louis Dodson
85. 71
Old Men
Old Men
Know youth
Far better than the young
Regret the loss of strength
And daring fearless
Knowing what might possibly befall
Beyond recall.
Loss of naivety
And craving for excitement
Wartime gun smoke, blood, and tears
Replaced
With sense of needless loss
In places far from home
Much eulogized in words more glorious than this.
-- Bruce Louis Dodson
86. 72
Precursor
Early light haloes blooming sage.
Wind ruffles water, gentian blue,
and golden grasses undulate.
Low silhouettes reveal two loons,
mid-lake migrants to this scene
in spring and fall, their size mammoth
next to goldeneyes. The sky fills
with lenticular clouds, pale grey.
Today I resonate with fall.
Its poignant beauty presages.
The lake, frozen and still,
waterfowl gone. Grey sky spits snow.
Earth’s losses like our loves wrung real
and sharpened by impending end.
-- Jane Dominick
87. 73
Memories of the Future
Are hard to explain, and may come across as some science
fiction conceit, a plot revolving around a man who can recall the
future in the same vivid detail that we remember the past. You
know what I mean. It was probably on TV, a pilot and a short-
lived series. The man rescues victims of disasters about to occur,
evacuates buildings about to collapse, saves the baby before the
apartment is engulfed in flames. And then one day he is horrified
by an indelible memory of his own death and realizes there's
nothing he can do to change the future. That's the premonition
we've all had late at night, not sure if we're sleeping or dreaming
or looking back at the past from some unimaginable afterlife. But
no, it's the future, already encoded in our genes and written in the
constellations. Too late to change.
-- Jacqueline Doyle
88. 74
Why I Called So Late
Once, it was stone fruit
halved on a low table.
It had been the backgammon board,
neglected, gathering dust.
It might have been a stack of coins,
could have been creosote from the railroad ties
you cut to make raised beds in the garden,
or maybe just a curry we weren’t used to—
that sluiced us into green streams (we’d lost
the enzymes to break down animal flesh).
Someone said time held us, green and dying.
Though we sang like the sea.
Someone else: it’s better to ask forgiveness
than permission. Love, forgive me—
it would have been
a wilderness of water.
I called because time’s a dish
in which fine gold chains get tangled.
-- Chiyuma Elliot
89. 75
The Clock
after the painting by Philip Guston
Time’s machine
making endless circles
spring-driven
and ratcheted wheels
endless circles
seconds at a time
in endless circles
around a compass point
circling
days and nights
seasons come and go
endless circling
like perpetual motion’s
mechanical life
endlessly
aimlessly
around a clock
going nowhere
and again.
-- eil Ellman
90. 76
Under a Glass Desert
There's a little green bottle on the wall today
It is born slow
A feeling
Rising from the blue undertow
Like a sensual slow swirling
Like a fading image of your mother
Into a grey film
A sharp wind through the wood
An old woman playing piano
A party on the desert
Wind slowly blows across
They clutch their hats and disappear
Behind the dunes as their laughs and cackles
Echo into the sky
Rising from the slowly releasing clutch
Of a trembling hand in the sea
And collapsing into a puff of rising sand
A thin man peering over the fence
Shaking in the autumn storm
A cobblestone path through the wood
With haze slithering around its ankles
A dark dying hunched city
The sand blows and rises to the sky
And the sky is angry and orange
And smells of spices
91. 77
And he glances as he walks past
Into the universal sun
-- Zach Fechter
92. 78
oir Couture
“Where were you on the night of the crime?”
With a gloved hand, I calmly insert a cigarette into my jeweled holder,
shutting my Deitsch handbag with a snap. The detective offers me a
light and I lean forward toward the Zippo’s flame and notice the 5-
barrel hinge on a chrome-plated nickel/silver case.
I cross my legs and inhale. Exhale. My Alice Caviness bracelet dangles
from my wrist, making a soft clink. My hair is coiffed with two front
victory rolls—the rest hanging down my back in a pageboy.
“I was at the opera,” I tell the detective.
“And what were you wearing?” he asks.
“A bias-cut beaded tulle evening dress with matching
Ferragamo beaded satin evening sandals,” I reply.
“Wedge or stilettos?”
“Wedge.”
“What time did you leave?”
“Around midnight.”
“And how did you get home?”
“I took a taxi.”
“Checker or Yellow?”
“Checker”
“What was the cab driver wearing?”
93. 79
“Button down shirt, pressed pants, tie, Eisenhower jacket and a
hard bill cap.”
“And who can verify the time you got back to your apartment?”
“The doorman.”
“And what was he wearing?”
“A slate gray overcoat, 100% wool, with button-down tab
detailing a dual front flap with welt pockets. Oh, and elongated
peaked lapels.”
“So, when you entered your apartment, what happened next?”
“I changed into my apricot dressing gown embellished with
trapunto stitching and studded with metal brads.”
“Then what?”
“I read for a while and went to bed around 2 a.m.”
“What were you reading?”
“Vogue.”
“The magazine?”
“Yes.”
“Who was on the cover?”
“An auburn-haired model in mauve silk tap shorts.”
“I’ll need to question the witnesses who saw you at the opera,
track down the cabbie and interview your doorman.”
“Of course. Can I go now?”
94. 80
“Yes, but don’t leave town as the investigation is still ongoing.”
I nod and reach for my coat. It’s a full-length Nevius Voorhees mink,
with burgundy satin lining.
“Let me help you with that,” he says.
I walk out the door and take the stairs instead of the elevator.
As I make my descent, I let the mink slide off my shoulders; toss my
blond wig on the steps
and ditch the purse, bracelet and gloves. I exit through the “employees
only” door and disappear into the night in my Oleg Cassini navy wool
two-piece suit with matching Henri Flatow patent leather peep-toe
pumps.
-- Sue Mayfield Geiger
95. 81
Garage Sale
Pony: Caramel tail and blue saddle, saddled with the dreams of
three grown children. Wooden. It’s yours for $7.50. A teenager
sits forlornly on a thin, green couch on the thin, green lawn,
picking her nails.
Blender: Specks and chips and lopsided and dull blades and
chocolate, just a bit, near the tip. I don’t see a cover. I think of
smoothies and rice.
Box of Books: Stephen King and Jackie Collins and Dean
Koontz and Dan Brown. Never the old, yellowed copy of
Rimbaud I dream of. Once, I found Siddhartha. Here, there is no
Buddha – only old construction manuals, terrible mysteries and
dog-eared paperbacks from 1983.
Christmas Sweater: Dirty beard of cotton balls on woven string
on knit that scratches and calls you from the other room in a
shrill and unforgiving voice. Smells like attic. A woman in a
yellow, Winnie the Pooh sweatshirt tries to sell it to me for $20.
Lawnmower: Manual. Claws like death. Metal. Clank. Like
movies no one watches anymore, relegated to film snob circles
with pumpkin and wine. I’m afraid of the way it leans.
Pipe: Corncob. Never used, or cleaned by a sparkling fairy.
Looks like snowmen and Grandpa. Smells like nothing. I deem
it a magic corncob pipe and buy it for $1, anxiously waiting for
winter.
-- Sarah Ghoshal
96. 82
For Chris
We were in Kenny’s apartment, with a snake and Neal Pert and a black light with the
lights out and his Uncle Richard, whose belly was as big as the whole wide world.
Or we were in dorm we didn’t live in, watching the Columbine footage just because we
were still awake from the night before.
Or we were peeling me off the blacktop on my mom’s street after I had been thrown
from the hood of the car.
Or we were in the basement, small quarters, fast punk rock, teenage dreams of cult
followings and permanent backstage passes.
Or we were at that restaurant where I worked, or that other restaurant where I worked,
or that other one, or the one where Chris worked, or Chi Chi’s, where our friend Jonny
would give us free fried ice cream.
Or we were in a car, windows closed, smoke fogging the view, reggae and bottled soda
on a deserted suburban court in the middle of the night.
We remember birthdays despite time difference.
We go months without seeing each other.
We slip in and out of each other’s lives like thieves.
-- Sarah Ghoshal
97. 83
The Sharp Edges of Trees
Like family gatherings and smoky trees and leftover cheese at
the bottom of the oven, like hungry, like roasting, bad but raw,
plain, nothing else at all but what you see here, there, at the
bottom after an hour of telling yourself …
… well, you know what you say when clarity is staring you in
the face and you’re trying to hide behind beach towels and
ownership of the corner.
“It’s all or nothing, you dirty monger of dreams.”
The children roll down the hill under skies on their way to
nightfall, glowing with the incandescent fire of flies that hover
above their bare feet. In their screams, we find harried memories
and wild desire, even when wishes float to the ground, underfoot,
near the sharp edge of the trees.
-- Sarah Ghoshal
98. 84
Third-Life Crisis
As it moves – fluid – and
impending
my insides rot
more each
day.
Sagging closer
to the ground – though hydrated – new
lines and darker circles
take up residence
on my once
exotic frame.
More make-up than
woman – I smile – teeth
yellowed with impending
middle- age.
And, no matter the
product or surgical
consult
these signs
can never be
erased and
I’ll never be
my younger
thinner
self in low-rise
ripped
jeans.
Hand in a bag of
chemical-filled
cookies, I eat
to fill a void
that expands as the days
100. 86
Misshapen Adulthood
They remind you when it’s time
to disband your
stuffed-animal militia.
To take your imaginary tea and
replace it with an addictive
and acidic
coffee addiction.
And though you’re childhood
was confident
sure
with clarity that now
seems
heart-breaking.
They tell you that conformity
is what pays the bills
fills your life
with meaning
and purpose,
something that you didn’t
know
was missing
until reality gave
you bruises in places
you’d never even felt before.
And the militia,
sitting in a water-damaged basement--
box,
is sad
silently waiting
with a Care-Bear stare that will
shoot life back
into your lemming
career.
101. 87
Wishing you’d walk the plank
back into
an existence
that would sustain you
in ways that the 9-5 paycheck
never could.
-- Jessica Gleason
102. 88
Time Like . . .
There is time like there is
a carpet or somebody
knocking on the door. The battle
rages in a chaotic frenzy. People
cave into fears as if that means
‘maturity’. There is no time like there is
no permanence other than God. Stimulation and bleeding gums.
Sit down, run your hand over your face. I will
run my fingers along your jaw line, your
brow line, and trace a constellation. Be my
instrument, expose the terror I cautiously keep. Call me
a hypocrite and then forgive me, avenge me for my mortality.
In heaven, the Earth is a vegetable left too long in
the fridge. In the mornings, I am lonely but want only
to be alone. Your breath howls, sometimes I can hear it
when you think you are sleeping. Those times I would rip
across any void just to clean your blood. Time is
laughing at us, because we’ve touched the flesh of freedom
and everything after that wears on our skin, groaning, growing
as instant madness.
-- Allison Grayhurst
103. 89
Silence and Slow Time
From the stairwell, steps dwindle, then flee.
You rub your eyes, blink at the buzzing lamps.
It seems you are in Paradise. Fall to your knees.
Low-ceilinged room with booths and desks; you glance
at empty tables, empty straight-backed chairs.
You rub your eyes, blink at the buzzing lamps.
The Glory of Sharks. The History of Hair.
The Book of Knots and Their Untying.
At empty tables, empty straight-backed chairs.
Time is art books, oversized, left lying
on armchairs dressed in herringbone, moss-green:
The Book of Knots and Their Untying.
The cooler, set for Kelvin 3 degrees,
holds water, coffee, tea and Coke in bottles.
Armchairs dressed in herringbone, moss-green,
stand in the library basement, mottled,
impersonal. The clerk says, Wait your turn
for water, coffee, Coke, iced tea in bottles.
Your drowsy dullness deepens with the drone.
In the stairwells, steps dwindle, then flee.
Impersonal, the clock says, Wait your turn.
It seems you are in Paradise. Fall to your knees.
-- Karen Greenbaum-Maya
104. 90
Ghazal before Memory
A song we’d danced to jarred my memory.
Our first clumsy kiss is starred in memory.
Heloïse, banished to a nunnery, did not repent.
She lived but to write of Abelard, the memory.
Hemingway lived here, where Verlaine died.
In Paris I used the camera’s card for memory.
Our linguist friend in France, abruptly dead.
We ate pistou then drank Ricard in memory.
I learned: while learning, all roads climb uphill.
Hands, knees are healed and scarred in memory.
I paced iambic, chanting o longer mourn for me . . .
Forty years on, and still I hold the Bard in memory.
When his time comes, she will howl and clutch.
How could Karen grieve less hard in memory?
-- Karen Greenbaum-Maya
105. 91
Measuring Time
As long as our feet stay
on the ground or we are
atop an animal
whose hooves touch solidly down
we can be accurate;
but autos, trains and
especially planes warp time
as Einstein’s space was bent;
our vehicle moves making
weeds stand at attention,
an arm of fog clasps
a steeple then slips away,
our time sliding into a void.
-- Ray Greenblatt
106. 92
The Bullpen
A child, age three
got on that bull
a coarse box of sweat and musk.
Sharp frayed hair
rose from the steam
pricked and crimped
the soft pale skin.
The bull scraped the gate
with its horns made of iron
and said,
“I’ll kill you
before this is over.”
The whistle blew
with a flash
life was on.
The crowd seemed excited
the child wondered why.
The beast chortled and kicked
with a back breaking menace
and snarled,
“Remember what I said
back in the pen?”
The child held on
to hide of worn leather,
it was thin
shredding, breaking.
But the child locked eyes
with a face in the crowd.
One sincere child, age eight,
his future.
107. 93
Among fist pumping giants
the booze sloshed
the popcorn popped.
But the boy in the crowd
wore tall red galoshes.
He held up his fingers
eight tiny digits
and put one away
second by second.
The boy on the bull
in the ear of the beast
whispered, “Bring it on bull.”
Three.
Two.
One.
It’s over.
-- Harmony Hodges
108. 94
Pliation, n.
there is a word for the folds, wrinkles
and bending in time that give the things
their very thingness (though not their ‘it’).
they are called pliations, the crests
and ripples and sharp-edged, pick your teeth with ‘em
bendings in the it that was once straight
and flat as air-whipped eggs in a
medium-hot pan.
they are called pliations so that
you and i can pliate from time to time
and thus admit, in a sheepfold kind of way
to having our plans pliated
by forces entirely bending to our will.
we call on pliation for
the way we end up
as night enfolds
speaking with our parents’ voice.
in a crowd, we pliate him and her to tuck
into a pocket, to keep them small
and flat, inpliated out of sight.
ho, down at the Church of Pliatology,
we bend our knees and necks
at the sight of the Spring Azure
that skips a bit of sky across the grass
then stops, pliates and disappears.
and the latest wrinkle boys and girls
lies in how we come to fear the fold-
such pliaphobes, all pliafugal
hoping vainly for magic tucks
109. 95
to make us strai
ght and smooth.
-- Lynn Hoffman
110. 96
The 23rd Century
The 23rd Century just ordered her second martini,
not too dry, lemon peel, sprig of rosemary.
She’s older than you think, been around
since the beginning but
she’s not above a certain crude directitude.
to the waiter, who’s just a boy decade
in the early 21st, she says “Do you have any idea
how your wisdoms look from here?
What vice your virtue left us?”
She takes a sip in proof, then a swallow
before she pays his tab and leaves,
a ghost, a guest, aghast.
-- Lynn Hoffman
111. 97
Empty Sockets
I lost an eyelash today. It happens
all the time—loss
of moon shapes—curved slivers of nail clippings
and of lashes laden with parasitic mites and black mascara.
My skin, it sloughs off in microbes onto mattresses
and bath towels hung to dry above lost strands of hair
that wad and crawl away down into the drain.
The wastebasket that opens wide to cradle
snot-filled tissues and cotton swabs topped with brownish yellow.
It’s always happening—loss occurs from every orifice—
the unwanted, the wasted.
The monthly shedding of eggs, discarded yolks
that float in menstruation, and drop to their deaths.
The baby teeth that climb their way out, struggling
to cut through pink, supple gums,
to later be wiggled loose by bigger bully teeth.
The wisdoms that were yanked bloody from their constricted caves
to make way for molars and impending crookedness.
All this for not—all the chewing and grinding will turn them
to wooden nubs to rot and fall out, until my gums grow
over to cover the empty sockets.
I long for the missing—my shaved whiskers,
my hair trimmings, misplaced eyelashes, saline tears,
drools of spit, picked scabs, and filed fingernail dust.
My used-up cells drift dormant onto shelves and knick-knacks,
waiting to be wiped away.
-- Trish Hopkinson
112. 98
Trash Bag Burial
When I was young, I collected odd things to remind me of moments—snapshots
of friends, napkins with signatures and doodles, pieces of ribbon, Roland
Orzabal’s comb, dried flowers hung upside down by a pushpin, newspaper
clippings, mini bottles, candy wrappers, concert ticket stubs, restaurant
receipts—mementos that littered the shelves and wall above my Curtis Mathes
rent-to-own stereo. I spent many hours mooning the past, the moments that
seemed pivotal to existence, the items that made me. Just a blip on the timeline
later, what made me became dust collectors, muddied up the little space I had,
complicated what I’d become. I didn’t think much of it, as I shook the folded
trash bag, rushing it with air to create an opening for their burial. I pulled them
roughly, tore from beneath pins, raked from shelves, and turned my head as the
dust flew and the bag dropped heavy. I paused as I held the comb. It still smelled
foolish, like ‘80’s hair mousse.
-- Trish Hopkinson
113. 99
Droughtful October
The wind buffets dry leaves - a near death rattle, like a rain
stick - yet they cling to their branches, make shadow
sidewalk lace. One Canada Goose, left behind, forages among bone
bleached blades of grass, then swims with today's foster family
of ducks. A swatch of rainbow hovers across the dancing white
arches of the pond fountain; the sun flexes its muscle in a last
summer fling. Bee abandoned, parched marigolds along the walking
path are withered - hump backed; palsied leaves tremble with
the slightest breeze. I sense a held breath among the bone dry
needy trees and grassy slopes, a patience - conserving
every drop of sustenance, holding out for rain.
-- Sue eufarth Howard
114. 100
Archived
At ten years old
she sits in her attic bedroom where
the eaves lean in like sheltering arms.
Her thoughts float out above the rooftops
of the darkened houses below.
She’s wide awake
immortality heavy on her mind.
She reaches for her notebook
her favorite ballpoint pen.
It’s time to write a letter to the future.
When it’s done
she folds the paper
into a thousand squares
pokes it through a tiny hole
in the knotty pine paneling.
Her handprint on the cave wall
she falls into prairie dreams
of wind drift wildflowers.
-- Susan M. Huebner
115. 101
ovember’s Last Call
the full moon’s clogged with clouds tonight
warm breezes blow: it’s Saturday
the park is lounging midnight-naked
childfree and feeling frisky
across the street on wooden porches
the jack-o-lanterns grin
happy empty-headed fools
they watch the goblins float and dance
drunk beneath the streetlamps
August has dropped in for a gig
the song is Catch Me If You Can
and making an encore appearance
everything is chasing Summer
-- Susan M. Huebner
116. 102
Christmas Future
As I play Noel on my aging piano
I see my reflection in its fallboard, distorted
like an older me – I’m glad to see how we’ll be,
still playing beyond our prime,
me not deaf nor swollen-knuckled,
sitting down from time to time
to share the Nocturnes, perhaps Bach
or that Beethoven sonata,
leaping arpeggios –
no way to tell from this patina if skill
increases with the years or fails—
or if the players are content, have they spent
every counterpoint they have within –
or even whether what I envision
is indeed a future us or just
wraiths, wavy and wavering finis, no
earthly concerto,
but a trick of light slanting off a piano.
-- Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll
117. 103
Tick-Tock
We sit silent in her kitchen
Everything is white – the walls, the floor;
all the appliances, the sink, the door even,
any metal trim, all white
I wonder if she prefers white or if it’s just how it came
The clock on the wall – white of course –
ticks off seconds as loud as a drum beat
She seems unaware of time passing
But I am sure is not; it’s long past the hour
her daughter should have returned
I picture her as she fled past me,
coatless, into the frosty night
The fullness of her prepubescent tummy
under her woolly lumberjack shirt
Admonishment enough; her mother’s
scream echoing in her ears
No doubt, as they were in mine as I came up
the same walk she ran down
My shadow on the wall grows longer with every tick,
disappears as we turn the overhead on.
-- S.E. Ingraham
118. 104
BBC Radio Interview
So Mr. Jones, you want to be an egg-timer?
Has the demon of utility
pursued you through life, compelling
you to be useful in death?
No. I just want to be an egg-timer,
to let my ashes drip out the seconds,
pass the carefree time eternally
from one glass world to another.
Mr. Jones, why can’t you
be buried decently
like everyone else?
That would be a waste of time.
-- Diane Jackman
119. 105
ine Year Microwave Sky
You thought you could dive through time
as you did the seventh waves
of Cape Conran as a child
You thought the gaping black
was hollow,
except for the odd miracle
languid and creaking, bejeweled
in moons and singing.
But it’s a dusty contradicting force,
full of debris and decisions
colliding like chance love.
You didn’t realize your ballooning mind
dined on curiosity
at the periodic table,
impossibly expanding in
the belly of a finite law, stuffing
hot stars into your skull
[ as much as your pockets
could hold ]
You didn’t notice your flesh
was blushing,
even as you lay your cooling gaze
on me
121. 107
20000
twenty kilometers
out
from the town
it melts
into the thundering
herd
of tomorrow.
there are no monks
chanting here.
there is no safehouse.
there is only that
slow hum
of worry,
coming down
from the sky
like darkness,
punctuated and
inchoate,
sometimes inspired.
we are all twenty
kilometers
from something
just near enough
to sense in our heels
the tug,
122. 108
the stampede threatening
to drag us back,
but just far enough
to resonate, drifting
on slow orbit,
meditative on
whatever keeps us
fixed
upon the centre.
-- Miguel Jacq
123. 109
Marker Horizon
Sometime between mid to end of February
the night cools down, makes audible of
circadian rhythm stabilizing
and the concrete letting out
a breath.
Somewhere a map carves out something
for itself,
divides the land and lovers.
A headache occurs, heart breaking.
Spray meeting shore, a thought erodes
or is chosen to forget.
History perseveres,
commits the moment to memory
in soil
still warm and beating.
-- Miguel Jacq
124. 110
Quiet Hours Passing
You rest
in this empty hospital room.
Your repetitious words, spoken to yourself,
stumble over one another.
Everything is in holes and pieces.
The strange ear ringing sounds of silence
broken by occasional voices in the hall-
the shadows pushing the lights
around like street bullies-
the sparse furniture all changed,
each strange piece placed differently than
you would have it at home.
But you’re not at home, you’re
in this empty hospital room, resting.
Everything is in holes and pieces.
-- Michael Lee Johnson
125. 111
Mindful, Mindless, October Date
Mindful of my lover
running late, as common
as tying my shoestrings;
I'm battered as an armadillo shell;
I put my rubber band around my emotional
body, hold tight, armor my manliness,
walk like a stud
in darkness.
I am sealed with dismay.
Though everything in October, has a bright side,
a shade of orange, a hint of witches and goblins.
In the leaves between my naked feet
and toes, I pace my walk feverishly,
trying to avoid adjectives
and soured screams,
in the parking lot.
I count them
color charts, fragments, bites, anything of matter:
hickory leaves golden, sassafras greens and yellows,
maples of scarlet, shades of pink, even purple.
The landscape is turning turf brown.
Barefooted I break into tears, the year-fragmented.
I am male discolored in this relationship,
tested and declared void of my testosterone
no sexual rectification or recharging
of my batteries.
I lie limp, native within myself, my circumstance
mindful of my lover running late.
She finally arrives; I quickly transition myself.
-- Michael Lee Johnson
126. 112
When You Get Old
When you get old
you leave everything behind−
present tense past tense,
hangers on refusing to turn loose,
high school letter sweaters, varsity
woolen jackets, yearbooks 1965,
covers that quickly open, slam shut−
high school romances only faces
where they were then−
ice cubes frozen in time.
No more teary eyes,
striking flames,
moist match heads
igniting bedroom sheets
and teenage bedside rumors.
You leave wife, or wives
behind toss out your youthful affairs.
All single events were just encounters,
cardiac dry ice, ladies with crimson clover eyes.
No more strings tightened, broken bows,
heart dreams slit vows, melancholy violin romances.
You continue leaving reading glasses, key chain, ATM card,
senior discount cards, footnotes are your history,
artificial sweeteners, doctor appointments daily,
keep touching those piano notes, phone numbers in sequence
in tattered address books, names attached to memories
hidden behind.
Everything rhymes with plural thoughts and foggy memories.
127. 113
Youth was a bullyboy club-
the older I get the less I am battered−
trust me I got witnesses in between−
saviors of wings, fantasies,
tense has no grammatical corrector,
it always dances around the rim of red wine.
Life now fills with silver teaspoons
of empty senior moments−
blank shells of present, past tense,
and yank me back recalls.
Do you remember those 1st 25 years?
Shrinking brain space remembers
dances of sporadic nighttime boogies,
sports, senior prom, Thomas's Drive-In,
Spin-It-Record Shop, Dick Biondi,
WLS Chicago top 100.
Remember the next 25 years?
high school reunions grow dimmer−
priest of the voodoo dolls punch in numbers
of once living and now dead−
undresses all.
Rise forward from your medieval pews.
Wherever you now live,
do you remember these things−
prayer, ghosts deep in the
pockets of our former youth.
Old age waits patiently in the face
of a full moon—a new generation.
When you get old
you leave everything behind.
-- Michael Lee Johnson
129. 115
Time After Time
Brubeck made time Rubikal,
the permutations never-ending,
transitions seamless,
a custom cruise bike
rolling down a hill
to a coast around a new lake,
but parked in a familiar place
always.
Bird contracted time,
squeezed more from less
than any before or since,
and time contracted him,
the beautiful blue odonata
beating his lace wings to pieces
on the burning light bulb.
Monk turned time on its ear
and made it space,
the fox in the barnyard
that called out the tunes,
and all the animals
danced the wiggly.
Billie made time slow down
and take a longer look,
languorous reticent flirtation,
an allure of expression,
making time instantly
immortal;
and Louie,
dear Louie, sweet Louie,
131. 117
The Time Thief
In the wee hours of a late winter night,
Time is stolen by a silent thief,
Swiftly running off with an hour of sleep.
The heist takes place at two in the morning,
Not one, not three, but exactly two o’clock,
The moment when two becomes three like magic each spring.
Who can explain to me how an hour can be lost?
Perhaps Hawkins, Einstein, or Hubble
Could tell me where two- thirty or two forty- five can be
found.
The earth must laugh as we declare an hour gone,
A spinning orb with no compulsion to follow the rules
Of a species obsessed with time.
Oblivious to this crime is the bird outside my kitchen
window,
His song erupts with the dawn of each new day
Regardless of what shows on the face of my watch.
For now, I set my clock, and perhaps the alarm for two,
So that I may witness the heist of these precious minutes
And find the secret of time altered once again.
Tomorrow I will awaken to follow the cycle of the new day,
Feeling the effects of an hour lost at that magic moment,
Yearning to be the bird that follows no clock.
-- David Lymanstall
132. 118
Start . . . Stop! Print . . . Send!
Fingers poised on the keys of our sturdy Royal typewriters, we
await Mrs. Tutnauer’s command: "START!"
All around me, clacking, erratic rhythms. "Damn it!" from the
sweating girl on my left. I tune out everything except the
staccato of my fingers pounding the black keys.
"STOP!" she orders. My hands drop into my lap. We trade
papers, compute speed, deduct errors. My score: eighty-seven
words per minute, two errors.
With this skill and Pitman stenography, I enter the workforce at
sixteen, assisting law professors at NYU on my IBM Selectric,
trusted to type papers on complex legal arguments.
Fifty years later, now a retired English professor, my fingers fly
over the Logitech keyboard, the occasional typo magically
underlined in red.
Then I press PRINT . . . SEND . . . and take the dogs for a walk.
-- Arlene Mandell
133. 119
Fleeting Beauty
Awake for an hour, I glance
from the humming screen
with its drafts, spam, trash
to distant diagonal streaks –
yellow, coral, pink –
splayed above jagged edges
of the Mayacama Mountains.
Barefoot, coffee mug in hand
I pad onto the deck, watch the sky
fade to ordinary.
-- Arlene Mandell
134. 120
Wild Strawberries
The deck feels warm
under my bare feet.
I hold a sky blue bowl
of thumbnail-size berries,
dip one in sugar.
A tart sweet taste floods
my senses. I am thirty-one,
thirteen, sixty once again.
Under a filtered canopy
of sunlight and shade
I savor memory’s fruit.
-- Arlene Mandell
135. 121
Of Pigs & Pizza
I am twenty-nine and, quite literally, a single-mother: sole-supporter
and making 100% of the decisions. My son’s father is nonexistent.
9/11 hasn’t happened yet. My heart has been stepped on, picked up,
coddled, dropped, kicked, drop-kicked by my most recent boyfriend.
Our relationship was an opossum, least appealing of the rodent
family. It played dead. The final ending has occurred, I currently
believe. I know he is seeing someone. I heard them having sex. It is
the first time I’ve been butt-dialed, during coitus or otherwise.
I’m out having drinks at my favorite bar with my favorite frenemy. I
think I just coined that phrase- I am totally drunk. We sit on stools,
chatting with a pretty bartender. Behind us comes a twenty-one-ish
guy. I can’t hear what he is saying to us but from my friends’
reaction, it is sexist and stupid. Pig is hitting on all three of us
simultaneously, believing his odds are better. We are giving him the
cold shoulder. Pretty Bartender is telling him to move it along.
Conversation resumes as he interlopes on down the line. We are
talking about moving on from heartache. Pretty Bartender is telling
me that remaining friends isn’t something that happens in real life,
especially when the breakup takes so long. As she is telling me that
it only happens in romantic comedies, I hear Frienemy gasp. She is
staring behind me. I look back to see Ex with his arm around his new
girlfriend. I think I just pee’d a little. My tongue is a cottonball. I
can’t breathe and know, already, that my voice will not hold if he
comes over to talk to me. He is heading over to talk to me. I see Pig
next to me and tap him. I am shouting the first thing I think into his
ear. I wish I’d heard myself say it because I already don’t remember.
He is taking the bait, turning his back on the girl to my left. She
looks relieved. He shout-whispers something back and leans in. I see
Bartender roll her eyes. Frenemy looks confused. Ex is closing the
distance between us. He is saying hello to me and to Frenemy. He is
calling to his girlfriend to introduce us but she is taking a seat down
the bar, glaring at me while yawning at him. He is telling me that she
is bored and her name is Candy. I don’t yet know that she is a
stripper. I won’t be surprised when I learn this fact. I am repeating it
136. 122
to myself, doubting I’ll remember her name tomorrow morning. Ex is
looking at me as though I’ve just said her name aloud. I am wondering
if maybe I did. She is tall, covered in acne and has ridiculous bangs.
She is refusing to wave. Ex is just standing there. I keep drinking, my
tongue, still a cotton ball, is stuck to the roof of my mouth. He is
waiting for me to introduce Pig, who is now leaning over and onto me.
I realize Ex thinks we’re dating. I don’t know Pig’s name. I say
nothing. Frenemy breaks the silence with a witty remark about his
vintage Pizza Delivery Guy tee-shirt. She is asking him if he gets a
collared shirt for his fifteen year anniversary. He is asking why she
gotta be like that as he is putting his hand out for Pig to shake. Pig is
shaking it. They are exchanging friendly words. Probably names. I am
leaning in to hear Pig’s name. I am a few seconds too late. Bangs
appears next to Ex, yelling that she’s ready to go. She is wearing Daisy
Dukes with pleats (I will later wonder if they were custom made- pleats
with short shorts?) Miscellaneous scars are crosshatching her legs. I am
trying to say hello. She is refusing to make eye contact.
They’re gone and Frenemy is asking me what the fuck. I am telling her
I don’t know, that everything happened so fast. Pig is fucking off,
probably per my request—it is blurry even as it
is occurring. Frenemy looks at me with judgment and disgust. I feel
ashamed, realizing I used Pig to cast shadow on my insecurity.
Frenemy is ditching me (I must pay for my sins.) I somehow make it
home.
I am waking up on the hardwood floor. My dog is licking my face. My
first thought: shame. Before I am fully conscious. I already know the
look on Frienemy’s face will haunt me for twenty years, when Ex is a
distant memory, long after I’ve gotten married, had a second child,
moved away and left not only my twenties but nearly my thirties
behind me.
-- Jacqueline Markowski
137. 123
And Another One Down
Last time I ran away, I plucked adolescent
pines from sappy roots, fighting
earth and reason with the sticky
ether of yesterday. By that point seasoned,
past lives and active loss were off-ramp forks
on old mountain highways. Consequences
shrink in the mirror as images of hope
dance silently on the horizon, where I am
forever sixteen, cigarette dangling
from chapped lips as I swing axes
at choppy, obsessive phrases. The last time,
a meager half decade ago: Another One
Bites the Dust. The reflective bumps
on the highway created the simple beat
my OCD required. I can’t remember
which burst of randomness repeated
nine months later as I made our way
South. Maybe white noise as I
focused on forgiveness, occasionally
chanting Stupid Girl to the sparkling ether
on the horizon.
-- Jacqueline Markowski
138. 124
Residual
Behind me, time collapses, forgotten
chapters atrophy. A hint of knowledge resides
within each drop of experience: you will forget
this moment. It is already gone.
Motivations escape upon ignition,
spark spent, metaphor remains
along with more questions than answers.
-- Jacqueline Markowski
139. 125
Just a Moment
He stood woodenly in the hall
staring silently forward. He had
a striking face if expressionless,
though I sensed him watching me
from the corner of his eye.
The rich chestnut of his waistcoat
invited, almost pleaded for, my touch
and I longed to pass the time with him,
feel the smoothness of his body.
Reluctantly, though, I forebore.
“After all,” I thought,
“He is a grandfather and it might not
do his ticker any good.”
-- Joe Massingham
140. 126
Pathetique
he leans into the memory,
piano music from a distance source,
leaning too far into the other
vibrations of forgetting
into the minor key of diminution
a black bird alone on an old-fashioned
telephone pole with blue glass
wind blowing through the abandoned barn
ghosts in blue dresses
the smell of the farm in the past:
horse-dung and hay going sour
his chest aches
but not in the heart, somewhere behind the heart
as the notes die away
and his hands close over an empty space
-- Janet McCann
141. 127
Keepsake
There are too many
clocks and not enough
time. I will take
and save this minute
for myself.
This minute
of mercury
this swift night
as sleepless stars
glide through
the sky in
aerial ballet.
-- Joan Mc erney
