September 2017

VOL XXV, Issue 9, Number 293

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editor: Jack R. Wesdorp

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena; Oswald Le Winter;
Heather Ferguson; Patrick White

ISSN 1480-6401
Jorge Etcheverry Arcava
KJ Hannah Greenberg
Károly Fellinger
Paul Beckman
Lana Bella
Judy Katz-Levine
Joseph Farley
Gale Acuff
Carolyn Gregory
Jeff Bagato
Jorge Etcheverry Arcava

Look
Don't blame me.
You need to understand
That I have a social and cultural background
Hey, look, I got a past.
I'm not being born yesterday
(nor did I start to live when I met you)
If you'd give yourself the trouble to read
Some things that are being written in Europe
You'd understand that trend.
To be independent
Even lonely
From time to time
It makes me want to go out alone.
Smoke a couple of cigarettes
Or just for a walk
Along those half-empty streets
Especially at dawn
That Magic hour
Sometimes life itself makes me nervous
Not that I'm implying that I'm special.
Or something like that.
Anguish is not a university degree.
KJ Hannah Greenberg

The Raging One

The raging one, the lizard with the chemical

Burn on his paw, is, at last, snoring off all
Environmental emendations that would-be
Ecological crews would make to his home.

His digestive process’ nasty. Lethal microbes

Lodge in his gut, ready to dissolve the viscera
Of lesser critters, or foreigners’ data commerce,
Imported for “philanthropic” whys/wherefores.

The world over, collectors pay lots of cash

To amateurs inspired by textbook truths,
Otherwise economically dissolute persons,
Plus random louts, bandits, also sadists.

It’s a good thing that the raging one can

Make short work of imprudent humans,
Properly defend his little Komodo habitat,
Cause enough invaders to forever desist.
Spoiled Family Traditions

Domestic conventions, centered on endeavors in various corners,

Long ago, wordlessly, transformed charitably exploits, similarly
Distance learning, into chasing rabbits, gerenuks, plus hedgehogs
Around neighborhood forecourts, seminaries, buses, and taverns.

When fog chewed up our olden day ambitions, unlaxing them upon
Sampled wings, discarding carapaces, also dismembered antennae,
Fragments of metabolically hurtling alimentary canals shuddered.
Broken legs, as well as hideous assemblages got cut to banal hues.

Anyway, we tended the patterns of the sun and her sisters, stars
Tired of ripping apart the dead insects we collected. Each small
Sampling of winged rainbows impelled us to pucker more death,
Discard further mating beacons, trash other flyers’ sense organs.

Posted against young saplings, or, alternatively, standing effiagial,

Perhaps with boxes holding scarves, lilies of the valley, dope, we,
Confused from roasted raw poppies all gray-white clouds of mist,
Looked skyward. At trees' borders, flecked woodpeckers warbled.

Inexpert in the practice of social accountability, except for haruspicy,

Oodles of would-be lawyers, editors, aunts, uncles, grandparents bark
Harsh responses to identical experiences, camouflage unctuous views
After precipitation falls, when good sources of salad greens go missing.

In bringing serious intensities of approachability to early emerging roses,

In spite of boom boxes, confetti, gin, adults learn how to cease worrying
Post plaques on polychrome walls, tribute perfervid others, croon, belch.
Powerful therapies work as tutu-free ballerinas and denuded dandelions.
Spinning Solid, Linguistic, Pretty Lines

Certain of life's pleasures, plus severe gravities, served

Among lugs, including lummoxes, horrid murrains, salt,
Marginalize beasts prone to headaches.

It takes whizzing, buzzing books, cacophonies of benighted

Souls (captious in their mongering), to prevent banal dripping
From mouths, texts, and keys.

We don’t appreciate mundanities’ breathing, ambulating, sight,

Their solid, linguistic, pretty lines, their irascibly colorful spaces,
Their exogenously driven centers.

Sure, some masters raise galoots to social pedestals, urge improvident

Fools to crush all semblances of kindness, mercy, delayed social justice,
Ask succor from penurious others.

Macerating, they demand our populous function without treasure,

Lose interest in investigating wastrels’ glory, forget about means
Intended to uncover canards.

Without delay, they tout emissaries all up and down the media,
Eliminate materials superseding corporeal value, likewise
Measure resulting graciousness.

Yet, “fixed” goods, including: life, surfeit, and resurrection,

Can’t, to those of confused ilk, accomplish probable misery,
Fashion products we need.
Károly Fellinger
poems translated by Károly Sándor Pallai

PEBBLES SMELLING OF LEAF-MOULD

Death secretly tries out

every coffin, except for my father’s,
it doesn’t have the guts to do that, yet,
without it the dead will haunt
in the land of spirits, certainly,
he gets to God by following his shadow,
tricking him into switching places
for a negligible moment
while death, assiduously,
prepares the resurrection
with which it will have nothing to do
since it plays with the sins of others,
breaking them just like the flowerpot
with the earth and the flower
that my father had forgotten to water.
FROM AFAR

Those who feel lonely

when they are alone
have already experienced
solitude in a relationship,
in a hustling party,
in their mother’s womb
where they could have got lost
among the stars of chance
which were brought down to earth
instead of him.
TWO SURFACES

By morning,
a few stranded
shipwrecks remain
of my dream
and a survivor
on a deserted island.

It’s a wonder
if the world
flies away
with me.
REPLICA

I wandered through the cemetery with my mother,

we didn’t meet anyone,
my heart was like
a discarded aircraft,
withdrawn from circulation
which wasn’t given the chance
to crash,
at least accidentally
into the itching palm
of its creator, on the way home,
I was blinded by the December sunset,
I almost ran over a cyclist
who raked me over the coals,
he had the right, just like I have
a burial plot next to my father’s grave.
PAINKILLER

The devil is in the detail,

but this is a sort of a question of detail,
don’t make me recount all the rest,
heating is provided by solar panels
and windmills even in hell.

Hope is a worn collecting box

in the consecrated, brand new church,
where the congregation collects money
for the demolition of the walls each Sunday.
TIME HALT

John is accompanied by his selfish pain,

he would let himself go if he could,
if he could expose himself to death
to let it breath eternal life into him.
Silence says goodbye by stepping
on a mine, there’s a huge explosion,
poor John becomes deaf, he makes signs,
each of his limbs is now at the mercy of grace.
 Paul Beckman

Friendly Banking

The woman sat across the desk from one of the assistant vice presidents. I heard her say

she had come to the bank on her lunch hour to open a checking account. I was in the adjoining

cubicle getting my checkbook balanced. We could see each other but not our respective assistant

vice presidents in these mostly glass office alternatives. She had curly red hair and a whiskey

baritone voice. And, since the walls were only about six feet high we could also hear the other

party if they used normal conversational tone.

The bank had just been remodeled, renamed and re-sloganed. YOUR BANK—THE

FRIENDLY BANK. I thought that HOOVER BANK AND TRUST was less than comforting but

the brain trust that picked out YOUR BANK as the new name must have been Abbott and

Costello devotees.
Where are you going?
YOUR BANK.
Why are you going to my bank? Why don’t you go to your own bank?
I am going to my own bank.
I thought you said you were going to my bank.
Don’t be silly. I’m going to YOUR BANK.

So, in the spirit of FRIENDLY BANKING, all of the officers including the manager of

the branch sat in glass cubicles and the only thing that differentiated them was the size of their

cubbies and the height of their glass walls. The tellers were behind counters but not separated
from the customers by glass. Some sat low and there were office chairs for the customers, and

some sat on high stools and their customers had the option of doing likewise.
 “What is your maiden name?” the unseen assistant vice president asked the curly

redhead.

I stared straight away at Phoebe Hurst who, in the new “Friendly” mode, was

attempting the impossible—the balancing of my checkbook. I looked at her “Friendly Smile,”

the smile sticker that all employees had to wear. It was also the bank logo. . She wore her smiley

mouth on her left breast and even in all its cartoonish glory it looked obscene.

“It’ll be a lot easier, Mr. Mirsky, if you come in monthly and let me do this. Once it

gets to be over a year it takes quite a bit longer. Not that I mind, you understand,” she said
slapping her Friendly smile back on her lips, “but there’s no reason for you to have to sit around

for so long.”

“Your right,” I said and smiled back.

“We can put you on a regular schedule.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Would you like to schedule next month’s balancing now?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ll have to call because I don’t know what my schedule will be.”

“Well, if you make this part of your schedule you can make appointments around it,”

Phoebe Hurst smiled back.

“If life were only that easy,” I said.

“Well, it could be easier. You could start with this one thing and fill in your time all

around it,” she said.

“But what happens if an appointment comes up and I have to cancel with you?”

“Don’t,” she said with another Friendly smile but not a Friendly voice.

Phoebe took her day book, turned a few pages and said, “Wednesday the fourteenth

seems like a good day. What time would you like to come in?”

If Phoebe were in sales, Mirsky thought, she would have given him a choice of two
times and had him select one, instead of leaving the question open ended and giving him his out.

But she was playing on his field now.

 “I’ll call you when I get back to my office and check my schedule,” Mirsky lied.

Phoebe knew he was lying and Mirsky knew she knew. And both knew that there was a

limit to the amount of pressure she could put on him and that she had reached it.

“That’s fine,” Phoebe said and then stopped to listen to the conversation in the next

cubicle.

“Listen, I don’t have time for a lot of questions, I just want to open a checking

account.”

“It's part of the procedure for security reasons,” the Friendly strained voice said.
“But I don’t like me mother’s family so why should your security need my maiden

name?”

“It’s not a matter of like or not like,” she said, “it’s a matter of policy.”

“Well you can take your policy and shove it in that smiley face on your collar,” the

lady said as she pushed back her chair and stood. In a loud voice she said, “You’re not the only

bank in town and if you can’t open a checking account in ten minutes I’m sure someone else

can.”

All eyes were turned towards her as the manager with the Friendliest smile of all

walked over. “Why don’t you come to my office and we can set you up with a checking account

in no time,” she said and pointed to her smile sticker.

Curly Red’s chair clanged off the glass cubicle. She followed the manager, all the time

complaining about the bank and truth in advertising.

Phoebe Hurst looked at Mirsky, pushed his balanced checkbook to him and said, “This

town ought to get down on its knees every night and thank God that I don’t come to work

packing.” She got up and brushed past Mirsky and walked out of her cubicle without a Friendly

face.

The next day Mirsky had a message from Phoebe and the following day an email—both
of which he ignored. In that afternoon’s mail a postcard.
 YOUR BANK WANTS YOUR MORTGAGE BUSINESS. CALL PHOEBE HURST

TODAY.

It was a business postcard no different from the kind other banks or mortgage

companies sent except that the smile logo was a little more Jack Nicholson smile than Friendly

Smile. Mirsky did what he always did with solicitations—he tossed it.

“Did you get my postcard?” the familiar voice asked.

“Who is this and what postcard?”

“Phoebe Hurst, Mirsky, and my mortgage postcard.”

“What about it?” Mirsky asked.

“Mirsky Real Estate hasn’t sent me any business so I assumed you hadn’t gotten my

card.”

“Well, I’ve had a long term mortgage relationship with THE CORNER BANK S & L,”

Mirsky said.

“That’s nice,” Phoebe Hurst said, “but why don’t you come in and we can discuss the

benefits of using our mortgage department?”

“I’ll pop in when I have a free moment,” Mirsky said.

“Which is better, Thursday or Friday? Phoebe Hurst asked. When Mirsky didn’t answer

quickly enough she added, “Morning or afternoon?”

“Um um,” Mirsky said while trying to extract himself from this conversation. She’s

been reading, he thought.

“Let’s call it Thursday noon and we’ll go out to lunch on me to talk about mortgages

and you can bring your checkbook along and I’ll balance that for you afterwards.”

“Phoebe,” Mirsky said, “I know that you’re . . .” and while he was speaking he

disconnected the call. He knew that people never suspect you of hanging up on them if the

disconnect happens when you are speaking. It’s a trick he learned when he first got in the
business and used to his benefit numerous times. His extension rang and he got up and walked

out the door for a lunch date with a martini.

Lana Bella

ARCTANGENT
Some other time, another hour,
will you ache where your inshore
thread the argyle of all that
unseen? In that space of hollow
where glacier might come and
feather you in ice, gentling only
when the marrow-you give flinch
to the sea, you'll have a talk
between the tree and your hands,
as if the fingers that cup the tiny
snails could shape the stays and
the buoys. Imagine this, your
sway of Crape myrtle patterned
long in the moonlight, and there
was nothing but a dawn to starve,
you will need to lullaby riddling
the night, shivering as shadows
snaked up your arctangent back.
VERTIGO

What else is winter for but

transparent hands
nudge flesh into black,
making peril of endings?
December drifts with snow
under the oaks; cobblestones
graph with metal scores,
wherefore comes the brassy
sounds of splinters,
each stirring appears a wave,
mere relic of ice lost in
its own exactness of memory.
An elsewhere pulls within,
lit in cataract slate of
the fence post—strung up to
a height that froths down
the trees' dark rows,
stroking what continuous
and seem as one,
as vertigo blinds softly on
frost-bound, stranger roads.
WRENS AND SWALLOWS

Trees in wet wood took shape, wrens

and swallows jarred the miles and
vaulted tall tuffs of yellow weeds. Life
in concert with smoke and mirror,
seeds born into wind in sinking reach,
moved swiftly through like myelin
harrowed of its master’s thirst. Echoes
pushed up, clinging to the feathered
flights like pilgrims travel beholden and
long, where the meager properties of
a quiet life rose by way of anorexic air,
motes rended circuitously spitting up
sparks. Swooped their little piles of
hybrid shadows, the easy birds took sky
torrid down to dust, kissed the earth-
quake country with lungfuls of sawflies.
GESTATION

Elsewhere, the orphaned notes

of Bach drove into the snaked
skin of tobacco's scent, the wet
mouth blooming through noise
of insects; a startle, a rustling,
your nectar voice touched every
leaf, satin-lines reddened dark
with fallen mist. Floodlit, star-
eclipsed, you vibrated through
the soles of your stockinged feet,
eased down steep verdant of hill-
sides, scraped fingers on dusk’s
ruffled skirt. You remembered
then how you had glimpsed your
lone body amidst the hydrangea
vines weeping blue four-lobed deep,
where the swallowtail-wings lifted
at last to bless the Causeway Coast,
peppering land with striated gold,
and no weather hydraulics could
have intruded on their comet-flight,
and your bestride bend upon the
tentacled hold of mums’ rubied heads.
ON THIS SIDE OF INSIDE

On this side of inside, I can't see

the rush of water with light turned
low. Bones made of glass held in
ruches like desert carillon, supine
glide on legato lake. Downstream,
earnest lips of plant life fluted with
neon fuzz, easing over the torsos
stiff of upthrust rocks, the likeness
all out of innocuous thorns frozen
in mud. Then at once, I gave pale
breaths to water moths on the wild
of curiosity, startling the ghosting
into bristled charge of variables,
whimpered up in a gather of flakes.
BECAUSE I KNEW YOUR FACE INSIDE THE EYE OF A VINTAGE CAMERA

A path to somewhere not here,

you pooled in hollow through film
of my vintage camera, a glowing
wyrm spun and interwove, raised
up the mounds of sand, shifting,
always shifting, cast me finally
over the spines of sun. I was inert,
orchard-lit with breaths of baying
horses, where you halted letting
in discord, immune to my concert
of shoulders above ribs, spilling
of bones refused to keep. But still
I coiled shadows lie, imagining you
smooth saline held in my invisible
depth-strokes, fluttering gradations
from periphery to bitten shins, as
you broke pale into the embrace of
vines, sent buds to sheath of red.
Judy Katz-Levine
When the night is an obsidian seed and sings

The well that came into being poured visions of wild streets, where
strangers played bongos, and the wind came up and then a rain, intense
and driving. I could not stop
remembering your hands, the way they left the trumpet, and came to
select a wild violet. For this, I
was never imprisoned again, and always say the name of the one who
saved my life, with feral songs, and
syncopated silences.
For MS In Santa Fe

There are mangoes in the way your drop your keys,

and there are mesas in the way you smile.

I was questioning myself by an arroyo with a fox,

and I came to an understanding that your hands return to youth.

Also, the kid who helped us lift the packages was so gentle
as to be hurt in a fight the night before, and there was a scar on his
chin.

Who remembers the constellation of the Big Dipper in the night

with its mirror of a lake high in the mountains of Santa Fe

Cries with me though I have only crystals of salt on my table

and a future that is filled with violets and no sabers ever again.

Crescent moon in your forehead, crescent moon in your daughter's palm,

there are prayers said when we are eating tacos, they are inscribed on
black parchment.
After Midnight

If I were a prophet drunk

I would spin your smile like a star
lifting from my palm
Hawk Tanka

red-tailed hawk drops down

stop the car to see him still
limpid light surrounds his wings
hen he lifts through cedars oaks
"Ot" - a sign - we rise

*"Ot" - translates as sign in Hebrew

Now You Know

sweet potato and a dragonfly hovering

over sand, a friend who will travel to Holland
speaks, there is a candle in my room
that now extinguished will hold me to a prayer

the prophet Zachariah was called this morning

and I listened and closed my eyes

swimming 10 laps in the water cold but warm currents

and the young man a lifeguard striding across a silver dock

an antique flute given to me by dad still sounds

haunting notes, I have uncovered it from its
underground destination
below the desk I used as an adolescent

and I will put my lips to a sapphire window

the came came down and rested before me

now you know

After Reading Yannis Ritsos' "Fourth Dimension"

It is with grave gestures of my hands that I call to a startled haw,

One must smile, but I cannot bring myself to taste pine needles in the
stillness of midnight.

A certain friend is in grave trouble, that is why.

And if there were the ability to name each wave, each water-smooth
shard

On the beach, I would remember walking with a giant

who was a great mathematician and could count the fingers

Of all the children who had fallen bleeding in a city of Syria

where a charred door was opening to let in the sky

A hole in the door like a wing, a sparrow flying through

A hawk startled by an explosion trying for a shaft of sun and

An updraft, so the red handkerchiefs in my non-dream

bobbing on the ocean backwash with corks and pieces of clam shell

Can only be a sign that there was one child in particular who was wounded
when she was having the same dream as I just had, of a fishnet with a sunfish let go,
Joseph Farley
The Bastards

Who are these bastards

that rule the world?

What rocks do they

breed under?

Where do they get

their forked tongues
that spit flame?

How do they open

their tight dirty fingers,

stained with blood

and gold

long enough
to point their guns
at our heads?
no more

no meat today.
no meat any day.

enough bodies
on the strand.

let them lay there,

alone, uneaten.
Blood and Ink

The poison in my brain

Drips down through my arm,
And leaks out of my fingers
Into the pen I hold.

Transferred to the ink,

All this evil spills
From the ball point,
Pools of black,
Shaped into words

To make you ill,

And make me feel
No better either.
Dear Father

This disaster you begot

Calls out your name
In this most unholy night,
Asking why I was chosen
To bear the burden
Of your celestial heel
Upon my head.
Reincarnation Blues

This existence is wasted,

Every drop.

Pour me another glass.

I’ll tell you when to stop.

Make it tall and make it long,

And I’ll drain every drop,

And when that life too

Has been turned to slop,

I’ll drink the whole bottle,

Or maybe the whole shop.
With A Song In My Heart

There are people who hate me,

And hate me with a passion.
It seems their contempt
Has become the latest fashion.

I walk down the streets,

Suffering their stares,
Wondering at the birds
Singing away without cares.
Levitation

some days you are in the air.

no one can see the quarter inch
separating your shoes
from the sidewalk,
but you can feel the distance,
know it could be
millimeters or miles,
but you are flying all the same.
High Time for the Devil

The devil has got us by the balls.

He laughs and gives a squeeze.
Caught in this iron grip
It is hard to do as you please.
Just grit your teeth
And swallow a scream,
Take it day by day.
Let the devil have his due.
He’ll get his one day.
 Gale Acuff

Dodo

In Sunday School all we talk about is

God but then Miss Hooker says that God is
everywhere anyway. No wonder
I never see him, He's too close but still
He's far away, too--and because He's close.
She's my Sunday School teacher and I'm just
ten years old so I guess I can trust her
and she can sing and play the piano
and tell a pretty mean Bible story.
Today it was something about lilies

in a field, that's where they live anyway

unless you pick them and then they die
but don't show death for a few days, and birds
of the air, which is where birds belong but
then there's penguins and kiwis and dodos
and no bird can fly all the time, he'd drop dead.
And God has His eye on the sparrow, too,
Miss Hooker says that means He cares about
every creature, no matter how small
and I'm small for my age, I get beat up
a lot but then I always start the fights,
I've got something to prove. I'm not sure what

because I haven't won one yet, a fight

I mean, and anyway I like to pick
on the bigger boys, it makes me feel tough
and it's a good way to make friends. Sometimes
they pull me up by the hand, it's a kind
of handshake I guess, but sometimes they pick
me up, all of me, and put me on my
feet again. It's like rising from the dead
if anything is, anything short of
Jesus maybe. I don't walk around and
show people that I'm still alive and I
haven't ascended into Heaven and
I'm not sitting on the right hand of God,
not His hand, exactly, that's Bible-talk

for the right side of God. I'm left-handed

if it makes a difference. In Heaven
I guess I'll be able to use them both.
If they play baseball then I can switch-hit.
That's something I can't do down here, on earth
I mean. But I wouldn't want to be tall
up there. I like myself fine as I am
and anyway I'm still young, I might grow.
I guess if I want to see God, before
I die I mean, I have to learn to look
so that I don't see Him all at once and
can pick Him out in a single thing
even though He's in everything. That's
a neat trick. If I could do that I'd be

rich and told Miss Hooker after Sunday

School class this morning--she made me
sit down, or she asked me to, this isn't
regular school so her powers are weak
--and she warned me not to lay up treasures
on earth but in Heaven, it's my eternal
soul she's worried about so I told her
Don't worry, ma'am, if I make a bundle
I'll give it all away. She smiled. When she
smiles I think that I don't want to die but
I know I'm going to one day, who knows

when except for God, but I'm not worried.

She's got nice teeth and gums. I'd like to go
inside and slide down her tongue into her
belly and that would make me like Jonah.
Somehow I'd come back to tell about it.
Then I'd be rich. Then I'd give it away
and be rich again. I like religion.
If I liked it any more I'd be God.
People would look and look for me and not
see me. Then they wouldn't. That's how they would.
Engagement

There's no school like Sunday School because there's

God and I don't get Him anywhere else,
not regular school, Monday through Friday,
or at home or even when I'm buying
comic books. I get to see Miss Hooker,
my teacher, for about an hour and see
her again for another hour or so
at the church service, her red hair sticks out
like Planet Mars in the solar system,
and when she turns her head my way I see
her green eyes and freckles. She doesn't have
a husband and I don't think a boyfriend
so that means she's up for grabs, not that I'd

grab her, I'm a gentleman, but I mean

she's still available and there's still time
for me, I'm 10 to her 25, so
if she can hang on for a few more years
and I can, too, I'll ask her for a date,
and put enough of those together and
you have a courtship and if that lasts long
enough you get engaged and if she likes
the ring enough not to give it back or
ask you for a nicer one, she expects you
to give her a better one anyway
at the altar, then you have a marriage
and babies. And a long time after that

you both die, usually one after

the other, one at a time that is, and
since Miss Hooker's so much older that means
her time comes first and I might have to wait
again, maybe fifteen years, to see her
again, if we have working eyes when we're
dead. In Sunday School this morning
she said we get new bodies in Heaven
so I guess new eyes as well. But between
getting married and dying there's something
called life. I don't know much about it
but it includes jobs and cars and moving
and pets and kids growing up and TV
and movies and taxes. We'll fill that in
when the time comes, if it does. If not, then

I'll have to marry someone else but then

the story will be very much the same,
just with a different wife, and Miss Hooker
will have a different husband. After
Sunday School this morning I asked her why
people should bother to live at all when
they're just going to die on the far side
of birth and after all that's in-between.
It's a fair question. If I knew I was
headed for Heaven when I die then why
not just die now and even kill myself?
I considered it our first date. We were
alone for a few minutes before church.
I was all dolled up like I was taking

her to a dance. I kept my hands out of

my pockets. I didn't pick my nose or
scratch my butt. My clip-on bow tie is new.
What do you talk about on a first date
anyway? Miss Hooker said that if I
die in sin I'll have no chance for Heaven
and that if I kill myself to get there
I won't--I'll go to Hell because only
God gets to kill, unless you're a soldier
or policeman or it's self-defense. I
think that's all in the Bible somewhere. I
should've known but I'm not a good student.
Don't you want to go to Heaven, she asked.
Sure, if that's where you're going, I answered.
Then she smiled many smiles in just one smile.
I guess what I told her is I love you
and I guess that she signified it back.
I could be wrong but I think we're engaged.
If she breaks it I'll have a broken heart.
I'll have one sooner or later, I'm sure,
so I might as well have it now. It could
be a blessing. It means I'll learn something.
Spectacles

I dreamt I died and went to Heaven and

saw Miss Hooker there, she's my Sunday School
teacher, standing behind God as He searched
for my name in the Book of Life. I sin
a heap so I didn't expect me to
be listed in the Book, my name that is,
and I got nervous, God starting over
again at the beginning to make sure

He didn't miss me the next time through or

had me written down somewhere else. I was
ready to accept the worst and prepared
myself for the Lake of Everlasting
Fire, I learned to swim last summer, when God
dropped His glasses and blamed if they didn't
shatter into a million pieces, shards
is a fancier word, or a billion
more likely. Miss Hooker stepped out from be

-hind God, she was ready with her broom and

dustpan like she is at the end of class
in our portable building at church and
sometimes I help her, it's not just being
charitable because though I'm just 10
to her 25 I'm in love with her
and want to marry her someday but in
my dream where we're both dead is there still hope
or none at all? Sometimes I stack hymnbooks
and take out the trash. Now I couldn't move.
Miss Hooker swept and swept the broken bits

of glass into the dustpan and when she

finished she'd swept them all back together
into God's glasses. I whistled and said
Well, that's the damndest thing I've ever seen.
Then God said, Ain't it, though, and set them back
on His face and asked, Now where was I, just
like Father did when he was explaining
to me last night where babies come from. I
don't think he knows. I never learned but fell

asleep and woke up in this dream, which ends,

if it ever will, with God saying that
He's sending me back to earth--Now where
did his name get off to? Miss Hooker, go
back with him and keep an eye on him and
don't let him die until I've figure out
for certain how many sins he's good for.
Whew. Close. Tomorrow I'll see Miss Hooker
at Sunday School again. That means a night
of more dreaming. I hope I dream I don't.
In the Beginning

Miss Hooker says that she wants me to go

to Heaven when I die and not to Hell.
Well, I will if I can, I told her. And
she tells me that I can but I must stop
sinning first, but she also says that sin
comes naturally to folks, no thanks to
Adam and Eve and of course the serpent
in the Garden of Eden so I'll have
to be persistent, she says, which means to
keep trying, not to sin that is. She's big
on sinning, not doing it I mean, and
says that whatever else I do don't die

in sin or that spells Hell right off the bat,

no chance for forgiveness, I'll wake up dead
in Hell and the first face I'll see will be
Satan's. She says I'll wish I was dead then
but of course I already am--will be
I mean. My soul will live eternally
and that's what Satan wants the most because
it lives forever and can be tortured
all that time. That's how he gets his jollies,
she says. I respect that. She's beautiful,
red hair and green eyes and freckles. And she's
old enough to know about everything,
25 to my 10, and teaches us

for free, our church only pays our preacher

but Miss Hooker's a cosmetologist
for real. Mother swears by her and comes home
looking younger and smelling sweeter and
maybe Heaven's like that, they doll you up
but you have to pay a price. But Mother
keeps having to go back, say once a month,
but when you die you go to stay. I guess
one price buys it all. I don't want to die
but everyone has to, Miss Hooker says.
That's Adam and Eve again. And Jesus
died so that even though we will we
won't, at least our souls won't, and who really
wants to keep his body eternally?
In Heaven it would just be in the way.
Even so, I hope before I die to
touch Miss Hooker, maybe give her a kiss

or marry her and give us a baby,

however that works. For Mary it was
God, I guess. I'm no God so there must be
another way and I'll learn about it
somehow. Maybe Miss Hooker will show me
or I'll get it in school or my folks will
break down and answer what I often ask,
Just how did I get here, anyway? But
Mother says it's not where I came from but
what I'm going to do while I'm stuck here.
That's pretty wise but it's not an answer.
I ask Father, who says to ask Mother.
That's pretty sly of him, but ditto. So
after Sunday School next week I'll corner

Miss Hooker and ask her. If she plays dumb

I might ask her to marry me when I'm
grown, say 17 to her 32,
and if she says yes I'll kiss her some more.
Maybe where our baby comes from is where
I come from, and she does, too. I'll ask how
it's done and if she says for me to wait
I guess I will. It must be pretty good,
like Christmas morning, maybe, or birthdays,
or passing a hard test, or throwing strikes
when you want to and really need to, or
learning to ride a bike, that balancing
without falling, or going to Heaven.
Carolyn Gregory
CIRQUE

1.

At the well dressed refugee camp,

all the women and children line up
in rain, waiting for the toilets.

Children tag along in the downpour,

carrying soggy popcorn and wet cups.
Their good shoes have holes in the heel
and toe,
happy to be doing something different
than waiting for boats.

The women wear makeup and flip-flops,

having had brunch as they carry
bad memories of the Fourth,
turned psychotic with explosions.

2.

I have always loved the circus

because it made things sparkle,
did not matter if there were lions
or elephants.
They were secondary to magic
plied with jugglers,
acrobats on six chairs piled toward the sky.

They would swing through space

in azure robes
as the girls in hula hoop skirts wobbled by.

Clapping sparked electricity under the tents

and little kids asked their dads if it was magic
when performers jumped through hoops of fire.

3.

Between the camps and the circus,

following orders and magic,
there are many paths --
some end in golden seats,
some in the desert.
A thousand will dissolve under firebombs,
a dozen offer joy to the world
to the grandchildren of emperors.

Will we spin in our silken gowns near the winner's circle

or ascend, rags shaking over our blood and bones?
AT THE TWENTY FOUR HOUR STORE

They scratch and scratch at back tables

until their fingers bleed on paper.
No matter. It's a daily deal.

Maybe one will win something

and buy a new house
or pick up a mistress with a pot full of
thousand dollar bills.

Standing in line for new tickets,

they wear patched jeans
with holes in the pockets.

One dreams of fat cigars

in his own nightclub
though his car has been towed.

The woman buying cat food

calls this a den of iniquity
on her way to Bible study.
HOME OF SALT AND MARBLE

The marble taken from the walls

have turned to salt and might explode.
The canals have seeped through
and taken over.

More skeletons in yet another closet

where famous ghosts chat
about Ms. Guggenheim's nude march
into the canal to remember
her father sinking with the Titanic.

Oh, Venice, you are topsy turvy

with white gloved waiters,
balustrades and fires!
Masked balls, lawyers and the Mafia
all riding gondolas!

An aria is sung through the burning opera

now painted by an artist
wearing his own suit of flames!

Lord Byron broods in the piazza

while Ezra Pound teaches his daughter
how to translate the Cantos.

The society of masks proffers fans

as the sunset flares over sinking palaces
and pledges to build more.
NEAR THE SPIRIT TREE (for Zinta)

1.

The world outside grows blurry with winter.

She re-stocks the piles to keep
the stove burning and her pets alive.
They hunker down.

Storm watches come and go

with heavy boughs and icicles
while the hens thrive, keeping each other
warm with ruffed downy feathers
and the memory of those who died
when a raccoon struck.

Her writer's cottage matches the elements

as she unrolls a hand-painted birthday card,
bright colors celebrating her parents and sister,
son and grandchildren.

She is not ignorant of lynchings or false elections

but continues to grow her winter plumage,
brushing her big dog when snow comes down
and the White Leghorn scratches his yellow claw
as the groggy cat returns to a nap.

2.

These are life and death matters

though they seem domestic
with wood and hens,
a birthday in the snow.

A man froze out in the woods

fifty years ago,
his arms full of frostbite and the struggle
facing a storm below zero, holes in his boots.

The sheriff did not find him till spring

when the snow melted and his gloves were found.
No one knew his name.

She knows that story like the back of her hand,

translated with veins and a few age spots.
She cherishes her family and her animal friends,
clearing out the path in winter
to make a clear road all the way home.
WITH HIS INDENTATIONS

He carved the stick with his indentations,

offering it to the child in the village of cobblestones,
made love to her mother secretly
before the war lined up men in trenches
like jacks to be tossed in the wind.

Sharp-minded in business,
his instincts were stronger still
as he followed desire by its hot flames
into his lady's heart
though her radiance dissolved
when the howitzers struck
and tunnels buried the men alive.
What was her smile, how did you
spell her name?
The men thought about cups of tea, instead.

The underground was plundered,

a teacup's Delft pattern shattered.
They wore helmets with lamps attached
to survey the buried damage
as they wondered if there was any purpose
left before them at the tunnel's end.
Jeff Bagato
The Breech Birth of Democracy

Hello Kritos boy,

your pre-christian
milk eyes
sparkling like leaves
in the dawn

I can let the train just

bring me here to your
feet and waking up—
lacing sandal thongs
to Magna Carta, heliocentric
America and League of Nations—
to the nobodies
who never drowned
in stone, just
water or blood or air
These visions have a human reference point

Leave off—

Grow strong—

What hunger do you feel—

this you indulge;
my theory is that advertising
is not felt the same as
nutrient need or the want
to hold your tender love to your loins
and heart—over time you
can tell the hungers that fade
or are meant to change with
the winds of electronic glass and lights

the alien eye looks deep

into your soul and
sees nothing

kill this eye. Reward

the one that looks
in not blind

I am dreaming of the night I died

Out of House, Out of Home

There were times when her head

narrowed in and begged to crack,
pressure spilling out like a melon
under a hammer—
like sucking a piece of the sweet
red flesh to pull down her girdle
and take the demerol in her ass

voice seeping out like a wind

over ruins

under the sun it was easier

picking bananas with the world
closing into a tunnel of frosted light

Camilla spoke English to the nurse—

a language I will never
understand, but which chases
away my life, my husband,
my sons

a language I will never

understand

the cot was thin and she lay heavy there,

the curtain on rings
pulled around her like a shroud

the cross at her neck was never

less there—
I can die
at home just as easily
as here
All selections are copyrighted by their respective authors.

Any reproduction of these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.

YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2016 by Klaus J. Gerken.

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