The Sri Lankan with a Scar Across His Cheek

July 2020 | poetry

Through the glass doors,

at the back of the house,

she saw you dancing in the air

by the maples, at the

slanting gentle evening hour,

the day after you died.

You had insisted upon making love to her

when she came home with scars

where her lovely breasts had been.

It’s important to say they were lovely

because you were

and so was she and

you thought her scarred chest was too.

You always laughed at being the dark,

exotic stranger, the foreigner.

Their theories embraced the Other,

but your brown skin they secretly despised.

Speaking their tongue better,

your colleagues envied a playwriting,

motorcycling Sri Lankan

who knew the French, hifalutin books

better than they. Humbug, heartache—

they said you were remote.

You did lay on an Oxford accent

you picked up

in a half hour at Heathrow,

and despite the socialist rap,

strutted a bearing so regal,

you could be cast in a Kipling tale,

but the lines of students

were outside your door,

since uncommon mornings of mist

sticking to hills were in your eyes,

and your voice intoned prayers

for their kind of happiness,

so it might dance with yours.

In a cloud of fire, you rode up to my house

on a new roaring motorcycle.

Hadn’t seen you in months,

but you swooped up my woman

and took her careening

through Amish farmlands,

faster than she could breathe,

yellow machine outracing the hues

of yellow wildflowers,

so she came at eighty miles per.

Your last words while leaving school

for the weekend were I know

my body and the pain in  my chest

is just too much life,

screeching yellow,

so I need to paint myself

across the tan, black,

and white skins of women,

finding my own line

to ride breezes of the night

in a Buddhist concentration,

while longing to dance in the air.

Glen A. Mazis

Glen A. Mazis teaches philosophy and humanities at Penn State Harrisburg. He has published many poems in literary journals, including Rosebud, The North American Review, Sou’wester, Spoon River Poetry Review, Willow Review, The Atlanta Review, Reed Magazine and Asheville Poetry Review (best of 1994-2004). His poetry collection, The River Bends in Time, was published by Anaphora Literary Press in March 2012 (nominated for a Pushcart Prize). His poem won the 2019 New Orchard Press National Poetry contest [The Malovrh-Fenlon Prize] and a chapbook, The Body Is a Dancing Star is in press with them. He also writes books of cultural critique and philosophy, including his newest book, Merleau-Ponty and the Face of the World: Silence, Ethics, Imagination and Poetic Ontology, which appeared in October 2016 (State Univ. of New York Press).

The Pale Horse

April 2020 | poetry

The night the trees in the orchard

dropped their peaches,

the ground shook,

and a nurse told us it was almost time.

His breath was little then less.

With drooping eyes, he tried

to speak that day and night

when our whole world was stacked

against a disappearing sky.

We prayed his color,

somewhere between chlorine

and chlorophyll,

would pinken when dawn arrived,

turning blackness to rust and pink

and then, clear blue.

Taking turns warming his hand,

my daughter and I switched seats

and shared memories

we hoped he could understand.

But nothing could stop a breeze

from blowing from the four corners

of the room or a blare

from seven trumpets

calling to the sea to wash it crystal.

Teresa Sutton

Teresa Sutton’s fourth chapbook, “Ruby Slippers for Gretel,” (under different titles) was a top 50 finalist in the Wingless Dreamer 2019 Chapbook Competition and a semi-finalist in both the 2018 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award and the 2018 Quill’s Edge Press Chapbook Competition. Her third chapbook, “Breaking Newton’s Laws,” won 1st place in the Encircle Publication 2017 Chapbook Competition; One of the poems in the collection, “Dementia,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The final poem of the book, “Confiteor 2,” was honored with second prize in the 2018 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry. Sutton taught for 10 years at Marist College and 29 years as a high school English teacher. She has an MFA in poetry from Solstice at Pine Manor College, an MA in Literature from Western Connecticut State University, an MS in Education from SUNY New Paltz, and a BA from SUNY Albany.

Skin of the Days

April 2020 | poetry

I pulled the sheet over the hole again,

laid stones along the edge to stop

the wind from slapping it against the sky.

I didn’t want to see

how far down I’d have to leave him.

He’d showed me what I needed to know,

how to brine the meat in salt and garlic,

how to mix dill in the vinegar,

keep the cucumbers and carrots

crisp through months of snow

when I’d be alone

and no one would come up the mountain.

He taught me to talk to the mirror,

look in my own eyes, say I’m afraid,

the only way to pierce the cloud,

make it bleed your worry.

He’d always say there’s no one

who’ll get in the hole with you;

make your own mind.

For months I tried to shove the ache

back in the hole, wanted the days

to pile like shells into years,

cover it, settle the patched mound

‘til it was a flattened hill of my dead.

Every morning the steel on stone voice

cuts the air when I cook the oats,

raisins and molasses,

stare out the window at the snow,

roll his words in my mind.

Even now I whisper the rules:

throw salt over your shoulder to blind the devil,

be ready to say you’re sorry,

watch a man’s eyes when he talks

if I want to know

whether you can believe him.

Mark Anthony Burke

Mark Burke’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the North American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Sugar House Review, Nimrod International Journal and others. His work has recently been nominated for a Pushcart prize. See: markanthonyburkesongsandpoems.com