September 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
blood on the sheets
and you laugh
blood on the walls
the daughter
in the mother’s arms and
both of them dead
the boyfriend picked up
800 miles away
says he loves her but
can’t explain the gun
can’t explain the rope
around gorky’s neck or the
poet’s need to pick at
these open wounds
the ay the buildings burn
without reason
the cities where they
begin to dissolve
into suburbs and strip malls
your smile in
the weak sunlight of an
august afternoon
the way you taste
all of these things
held together by the
sheer force of anger
September 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
each day like filth
scraped from the eye of god
each moment pure
and i offer no explanations
when i tell you that
both are true
i eat dinner while paul hill
is put to death
i have seconds
and how is it that
in all the years i wasted in school
i never learned about
the babi yar ravine?
in whose blood are the names
of all the slaughtered
written?
picture the world reduced
to those who would invent the machine gun
and those who would use it
picture mercy as
being allowed to die before
your daughters are raped
remember that malevich had his reasons
for painting white on white
remember that pollock knew them
that he dreamed his own death
and does anyone care when a
pedophile priest is murdered?
is the world a better place when
his bones have been
picked clean by the crows?
it gets to the point where
every question is only a means
of avoiding the truth
where august becomes september
and none of us
can offer any comfort
and what i think about is
this waitress on her knees in a
dirty bathroom with her
pants undone and a stranger
standing over her
what i think about is
how good hatred feels
all of the ways it can be
turned into power
September 2003 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
at some point
america is supported by
nothing but the bones of
goebbels’ children
at some point
the starving have nothing to eat
but each other
and august of course
dissolves into september
and a seven year-old boy is hit
by a car while playing in the street
in front of my house
and what if no one
knows where he lives?
what if dali wakes up in a
room on fire?
at some point
there has to be a distinction between
reality and art
a woman’s eyeball sliced open
or a baby found dead in
a plastic bag on a street corner
my son drawing airplanes
at the dining room table
his smile
when i tell him a joke
all of the days i’ve wasted
waiting for
the future to arrive
August 2003 | back-issues, Kelley Jean White, poetry
to peel an orange in one continuous spiral
one perfect careful stripe of orange with just a fingernail
and thumb, lay the sweet fragrance onto hands
and into the room, put the fruit
one segment at a time
into your mouth, then rewind the peel
into a perfect globe, each edge remet and fit
to its brother whole, hollow, yes, emptied, but perfect still
August 2003 | back-issues, Kelley Jean White, poetry
Handmade
Golden light on a square
of overgrown grass and dandelions.
I pull the shade.
Yesterday
in the damp night
I shattered
china
on the porches
on the walkways
on the railings
on the doorways
on the thresholds
Since I could not speak
I wanted to bleed.
Now that you
have taken away
the key
I hate locks.
Breaking and entering
I have broken
my own hands.
(Handmade
Golden light on a square
of overgrown grass and dandelions.
I pull the shade.
Yesterday
in the damp night
I shattered
china
on the porches
on the walkways
on the railings
on the doorways
on the thresholds
Since I could not speak
I wanted to bleed.
Now that you
have taken away
the key
I hate locks.
Breaking and entering
I have broken
my own hands.
