Meetings, Departures, Rebirths by Brent Powers

She came out of nowhere, as a blank, no, a white light coming at me: a face, snowblind eyes … That’s not right. I hear myself saying, “The moment we were in the dark, I very naturally …” Was I reading from something? That’s not my customary way, which is the way of twisting syntax, warping it to perversions of speech, killing speech itself. Well, not really. Look. I made her. See?

I woke up in the infirmary. She was there. A nurse this time. She almost smiled. I could tell it was not her habit to smile often. She wanted to be cool. It was some social constraint here.

The doctor appeared again.

“The only thing I can grant you is to put you under arrest,” he said.

Then he went away.

“He’s baiting you,” she told me.

I realize that I’ve been dreaming again. I keep passing out and dreaming. I go in and out of the dreams and think it’s my life. Well, isn’t it? Last time I looked I had no life, as they say: you don’t have a life, get a life, do something humorous or grand. At least kiss some lonely woman. I’m too old to care now. “Who lives?” I say, quoting from some film. I can do better, I suppose, but I don’t care about that, either.

Even so, she is there now. She hangs close to the ceiling. Then she explodes into splinters of rainbow light.

“It’s the medication,” the nurse tells me. “You should walk around when you can.”

“Do you go to school here?” I ask her. I suppose I’m making conversation, as they say. Who?

“No, I’m … You know. In the Temporary Service.”

“For the King?”

“Yes.” She looks sad.

That’s not true, either. The last time there was a King was 1987. After that chaos. A period of hateful chaos. It was an unsayable. Chaos, followed by the undeclared police state, also unsayable, a rule of silence. Shut up. This is beyond ordinary logic. Years of it. And the days of uproarious, undeclared war. Gangs thrilling through the streets, shooting everyone they could see, for they were half blind from the treatments. Finally I left and came here. This city, I mean, not the infirmary. How did I get to the infirmary? I was writing in my diary, falling into another voice: “Her reception fairly overwhelmed me with happiness.” What kind of guy is that? Some powdered wig fool with a walking stick. Yes, and it has a Medusa’s head on it. How would I know that? Something from the TV here. It’s stuck in my face. You swing it to you on a whatchacallit, a sort of extendable bellows, no, not that, a bar attached to another bar, only I can’t move it away, it’s stuck, and the nurse won’t shut the fucker off. Day and night I must look at these fools, they’re either speaking in the low tones of love, that’s how they think it sounds, low, sultry, stupefied, and badly written. Well then news heads yapping, scaring you to death or hoping so: then you will buy this thing here, this truck thing.

poems by Lori Williams

Bravest Thing He’s Ever Done

My uncle blew his brains out on an April
day, the smooth leather of his recliner ruined
by choices and sorrow. He left a letter,
an open door, and family who folded his
mistakes into a tiny square of paper,
no better for it, no worse.

He chose his loneliness; life with mother,
best friend Jack, polio limp holding him
back from everything important. There are
men with no legs, riding along on skateboards
in the sun. Men who can’t see their own

olive skin, hair like midnight, a red light
to stop. Men who see possibilities.
He chose his sadness, his hate. Spread it
to us all, angry at a Christmas gift
not to his taste, the wrong cake brought

at a visit. Limped to the door and locked it
on those who cared. Until we didn’t
anymore. Went on with our lives, smiling
at presents and any little piece of pie,
shared at a table. I thought of him through
the years, wondered at his loneliness, why he
chose it. It couldn’t be the limp alone.
He never lived. Never went further than Jersey.
Hoarded his money for what –
to buy a gun? To leave us wondering if we
should have pulled him onto a dance floor
at a wedding, sssshhing his fear with steps
he could do, making him eat the cheesecake

he said gave him gas — shoving it into his tight
O of a mouth, hugging him; sitting him down
to ask why he was so afraid of life, of love,
of us — only to wind up sitting in a new recliner,
a gun in his mouth, his one limp leg up on the hammock,
thinking fuck you, I am a strong man.

Young Girl Jumps to her Death, Details at Ten

I met her two years ago. We took to each other
like Lithium to depression. I was the pill.
Being needed that way can be a burden,
but she was as delicate as dandelion fluff
ready to float away at the first harsh gust,
and that touched me, and my shoulders
became stone. She’d call from the psych ward,
one day begging me to free her, the next chatty
and high on pills not as safe as me. I never thought
she was crazy, even when I saw her criss-crossed wrists.
We lost touch once I left the school. I called, wrote,
but this and that intruded and she was lost to me.
Maybe she found another woman to cling to, to need.
The last time I saw her she gave me a poem she wrote
called Red. About my hair. For her, I wrote My Dandelion,
about her heart. Lisa was fourteen, and according to
the news report, despondent over a boy. He must have been the gust that made my flower float away.

Friendship on the Psych Ward

Mimi didn’t have the pretty almond eyes
of Asian girls — it might have been the whirl
of pills that turned them inside out. She wore
a blanket on her head that flowed like screams.
Tried to smother Rosa once in the TV room –
her reality was dreams. I was watching Seinfeld.
She threw the blanket over her, held it tight–
an insane cocoon. Rosa wailed in Spanish
for her mama, sixty-six yet a child with artistic
wrists. The nurses came then, shot Mimi up to make her
sleep, erase her eyes, let my show air in peace. I
lost interest, but sat and sat. Talked to my mother
and God, prayed that I would heal so my make-up
wasn’t taken away every day, I could eat when I
was hungry. My wrists were criss crossed too,
but I spoke English and complained a lot. Mimi
would not smother me, because I kissed her cheek
once and she said I was her mother. Next day, the two
played patty-cake. Rosa stroked Mimi’s silky hair,
pulled the blanket over them, Chinese and Spanish
whispers filled the air. I sat and sat.

Adaptation

I.
They were no worse than cat scratches
had stopped bleeding before the first shot
of Ativan hit, but it was one of those times
that the saying it’s the thought that counts
held true hell who knew that sad meant crazy
not me I was only playing
really.

II.
Psychiatrists have no sense of fun
ask many questions which oddly enough I wanted
to answer from childhood to motherhood to loss
yes that’s the place the razor could be made hospitable
little slits instead of one big hole
 
III.
He put a name to it one I already knew of course
but when he said it I sighed maybe even smiled a little
as I joined the shuffle to the nurse’s station to line up
for what I learned are called meds in the lingo
of my fellow diseased minds they were like roaches
rushing out of every crevice to some crumbs left on a countertop
live another day giddy some drooling at the sight of
a plastic cup of water and another full of pills I only got one
and it was blue
 
IV.
Ten days to kick in today is eleven and I’m sure
I feel a change you can barely see the scars on my skin
the burn on my hand from baking a pumpkin pie
is much more prominent and as family gathers round
the table for turkey and tales of what’s new I can chat
and laugh and they’ll never know I’ve become little more
than a bug

Running Away with the Circus by Connor de Bruler

2001: a bad year, but a morally justified one. It was the year Julia’s mother took her on their first out-of-state trip during her Christmas vacation. She could tell Julia needed an out for a little while. It wasn’t the fact that she was stressed, everyone was stressed that year. Statistics had shown that child and adult obesity coupled with coronary heart disease and suicide had significantly risen that year. Unfortunately Julia was part of this statistic as her mother noticed that life on the Carolina coast had caused her daughter to contract that insidious disease of boredom. Because of her boredom, she was starting to get a little fat, which her mother originally thought to be okay since most ten-year-old girls were a little fat but the extra weight had unfortunately triggered an early puberty. She was now dealing with all the pain at the age of ten that she wasn’t supposed to encounter until late middle school or high school. Of course, her mother hadn’t exactly lived the most normal of lives, so how was she supposed to know what was natural for her daughter? This was the reason she took her on a long road trip north: she, like all intelligent girls her age, desperately wanted to feel normal. Julia Billy-Jack Wood was born in Beaufort, South Carolina to her mother Jester Eliza Wood. There hadn’t been a father to speak of, and Julia thought for the first six years of her life that a Mommy didn’t need a Daddy to conceive. When she finally wised up and asked her mother who her Daddy was, Jester just gave a little embarrassed shrug.

“The hell if I know, kiddo. Might have been one of those marines.”

Needless to say, every time they drove past the marine base Julia looked for man who might have faintly resembled her. Once she actually found a guy in a supermarket, combat boots and all, who definitely had her nose. She bluntly addressed him, asking if he had sex with her mother about nine years earlier. The marine, who only looked about nineteen, laughed and said, “I was your age nine years ago sweetheart.” Jester apologized to the off-duty marine and pulled her daughter away. She didn’t want to be the type of mother to scold often, but she did warn her daughter about the dangers of speaking to grown men.

It was at school mostly where Julia realized she wasn’t normal, not that she was an only child in a single parent family, there were plenty of kids like that, it was the fact that her mother wasn’t connected with the world everyone else lived in. All the other kid’s parents had friends with other members of the community whereas her mother was a bit of a recluse, working alone in the back of a butcher’s shop on nights and weekends, and tending to horses at a stable during the day time. All the other kids had a favorite television program, but Jester and Julia didn’t own a TV, and according to her young mother’s admonishing speeches they weren’t ever going to buy one. She also felt–and only her mother could see this– that she wasn’t as pretty as Jester. Her mother was slim by supermodel standards, and because she was half-Hispanic she had a beautiful lightly tanned quality to her skin. Julia asked a few times during that year if she was adopted, because as far as she could tell she was as white as could be. Another source of her daughter’s depression, along with early puberty and feeling ugly with herself, was the fact that most kids in her school were black. There were a few years were Julia ended up being the only white girl in the class. Because she was easy to spot out, she was made fun of. They called her Julia Morning Wood. They called her mother a lesbian because she didn’t have a boyfriend. They even found out that her Mother had given her the middle name Billy-Jack so they called her Billy for several weeks. Julia cursed her mother for giving her that stupid middle name, burying herself in the one queen sized bed they shared in the living room.

“I hate you! I hate you!” she told her mother, her face drenched in tears and snot. “Why did you give me a boy’s middle name?”

“Because a very good friend of mine who took me in when I was homeless had that name. Perhaps one day I’ll tell you the story, but today you’re a little too young to understand.”

“Why can’t we be normal?”

“We are normal.” she said. “As normal as anyone else.”

Julia knew this wasn’t true. On September 11 as the towers were coming down, the entire classroom was gathered around the little portable television, enveloped in a bout of hysteria. Before the day was half through, the children’s parents were picking them up early from school to spend the dismal day in American history at home, in front of another TV. By the end of the school day Julia was the only one being picked up on time.

“Why didn’t you pick me up early like all the other kids.” she asked her mother.

“I had to work Julia.”

Julia felt embarrassed with her mother. She loved her because she was the only person she truly had to rely on, but she wanted more. She wanted acceptance from the other kids. How was she going to get acceptance if her mother was called a lesbian by the other children? and sometimes worse: a Jingler. A Jingler was one of those young, tank-top, mini-skirt wearing moms, who waited for their kids in the school parking lot with their keys in their hands, jingling. It was the children’s drawn out way of telling Julia that her mother was a whore.

Misplaced Mammal by Lawrence Gladeview

down the street i walk towards the beach
the wind blowing loosely from the west
i just want to get out of the house
share a j with the gods
and rap about infinity

i post up on the bench at the pier
starting a lighter in a stiff ocean breeze
takes clandestine skill

my head bounces down the steps of the pier
and lands softly
on the sand, swimming in giggles.
the ocean sounds like a family gathering

the ghost crab is one up on the human race
is it possible, in this life, to live underground?

i want to be nocturnal

i want to elope with
the silence of the night
and not know of
the horrors of the day.

two poems by Lisa Zaran

Remonstrations

I no longer believe in love
therefore
love has to
believe in me.

I cling to my loneliness
like a shawl over
my shoulders,
I bear no witness
hold no grudge
heal no past and
wasteful argument.

If the night is gray
that is only because
the morning is long dead.
I do not mourn for it.
I stand on a thin line
between inertia
and capability.
I do not care

what manners one wears
or walks upon or brings
to city and state officials
or changes into law
or vetoes just because
of ignorance or blithe
disregard.

I do not care
because I’m thoughtless.
I do not want
because my needs have
sunk deeper and deeper
and have become smaller
and smaller over the years.
My heart plays a doomsday harp.

When I sit, I slouch on chairs
like any decent girl should.
My dreams stammer,
my hope rattles like a cough
trapped in the lung.
Perhaps tomorrow love
will find me.
Either way, there’ll be no
outburst from.

I dress love down.
Suppose I’m a radical.

Cornerstoned

It’s the end
according to the Spanish version
of the national enquirer.

A picture of His face had been transmuted into
something almost unrecognizable.
As if His final resting place was somewhere
you and I walked, over and over again
in heels.

A place we tossed our cigarette butts.

Some things can never be buried,
Some things will never change.
Night after night,
I’m still cold.

Though I spend each day hopeful
with questions, the night creeps in
to take my youth away in increments.

By morning I find myself gripping the handrail,
searching for my lost wheelchair.

Images by Christopher Woods

four poems by Jason (Juice) Hardung

Necklace

I get my paycheck
to stand in line at the bank
stand in line at the grocery store
and to get a haircut.
Lines everywhere
with each link
a sad gray face
strung together.
A fake pearl necklace
to hang
ourselves with.
 
This Guy Named Joe

I lived in an old whorehouse
built in 1888
in downtown Cheyenne
called the Netford.
Big white columns out front
an old carriage house out back.
The rooms were cheap
if I even paid at all.
I threw empty Jim Beam bottles against
the wall and slept in the closet.
Every other night
I had a nightmare of an old lady
walking down the hall.
The broken wood floor creaked
and she would evaporate through my door
and seduce me with eyes like empty coffee cups.
One winter there was an awful amount of
flies. Buzzing in the window panes
and through the halls
in the light fixtures.
Insects don’t usually live through Wyoming winters.
It wasn’t normal.
Nobody had seen Joe for weeks.
An old man that wore yellow polyester suits
and gave nickels to little kids on the street.
He lived on the third floor
by the back stairs.
The flies were crawling from under his door..
The landlord decided to check on Joe
and found him dead up there.
Decomposing on the bed
his yellow suit now green.
After they hauled him away
my friend Mike squatted there rent free
and painted the walls a bright blue
to brighten the place up.
One night I was on a date with a University of
Wyoming cheerleader and I took her up there
to drink with Jeff. I was trying to impress this
high class chick with fine whiskey and history.
She was on the back porch smoking.
We heard her scream
and ran out there.
A different guy named Joe had slipped
on the top step and fell three stories
to the concrete below.
He was out cold his legs twisted blood draining from his mouth.
The poor cheerleader watched the whole thing.
Mike took the cigarettes out of Joe’s pocket.
He won’t be needing these he said.
We called an ambulance
went back upstairs
to finish our drink.
The cheerleader was gone.
I never asked for a second date.

Woodpecker

A woodpecker bangs its head
against a metal light pole.
Foolish thing.
A little boy runs back and forth
across the wooden floor
because he learned to walk.
The caged bird sings when classical
music plays on the radio.
The grass is turning green again
and I am nursing a hangover.
My doctor told me to take a stool softener
so I stole a chair cushion from my neighbor
and sat down.
He was right.
A pregnant lady sits across from me
while I write this and I wonder
if she is excited or just plain scared.
I ask her to watch my computer while
I smoke. She must be trustworthy
if she is going to be a mother.
I don’t feel the machine guns
as much as I did last week.
Death can wait with the bill collectors
and probation officers.
The sun is out today
I think I’ll jump
into it.

Wood Pecker Part Two

It’s hard to write something new
when all you see
is the same shit
day after day.
Like the woodpecker
I told you about yesterday.
I saw him again today
on a different light pole
but still
beating his head
on metal
never getting
anywhere.

Daniel Kramb’s Out of the Desert

Got this little jewel in the mail yesterday. You can get yours here

Post-separation alone at night listening to Patti Smith sing “Dancing Barefoot” while thinking of mistakes I made while living in Hong Kong blues by Chris West

In the apartment at night. Have you ever seen it? The ethereal bobbing red and white blinking lights. Probably a plane, but still. And Venus and Jupiter move one degree closer, the prelude to an incantation that threatens to release pure white light into the night like a deluge. Meanwhile, I am on the floor listening to Patti Smith. Could it be he’s taken over me? Have you felt the pulsing spinning, seen your interior self stretching in columns incandescent with phosphene glow, and what is the profile that I see in my mind’s eye? Here I go and I don’t know why. Then I go into the sound of words that I cannot understand in a song from China . Meanwhile, halfway around the world, Amy wakes up, and what does she think when she thinks of me? The loss in my soul is so intense now, the grief, the space, the lost and empty nights in frigid neon-lit towers. My real soul emerges at last and the profile I saw earlier was the chrysalis cracking, the glow, the frission of the moment of birth. And what emerges here tonight must find its own way through the awful, pounding, hollow, warm, safe, wrap-around vault of night. Why must not death be redefined?