August 2002 | Janet Buck, poetry
We divided your stuff
on the tail of black limos
creeping the ragged streets.
My sister took the pretty towels —
the ones that said:
“Don’t touch, I stain;
Don’t fold, I tear.
Don’t use, I bite.”
All that was left was the lump of a chair
that cradled the crumbling straw.
From here, you argued with walls,
with a god you couldn’t see
but chose to trust no differently
than ducks fly south
imbued with promises of warmth.
An afghan draped across the back
to cover holes your spine had rubbed.
From here, you flipped like a caught trout
in the moon’s gray pail.
Watched as the rainfall bled
on fuzzy portraits of glass.
Listened as the furnace chirped
its bird-like morning arias.
From here, you grabbed an apron string
as love would jet from room to room.
Lit your pipe, gushed about her homemade pies.
Marked her lips with syrup spittle,
afterglow of Sunday waffles on the porch.
This old thing Grandma called
a wart on nice, an albatross of tackiness,
a dog to shoot, a rock to lift —
but never moved and dusted
like a precious mink in closets of the very rich.
Dimes between the cushion cracks.
Songs of sweat on beaten arms.
I had to keep this monument.
All your craters, all your perils,
all your Hells had settled here.
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
ten years spent in
light blue rooms with the
vague forms of women always
walking out the door
with this image of children in
barren villages
burning the american flag and
dancing on the graves of crack babies
always hovering at the
edge of my sight
maybe the taste of a stranger’s
pale luminous skin
when the phone rings at three
in the morning and a voice
that i can’t immediately place says
[i]i left him[/i]
says
[i]i love you[/i]
and it’s always at a point
where one season is giving way
to the next
where the boyfriend
has been arrested and the
daughter is screaming and the
president says that the first bombs
have been dropped
explains how the deaths of our enemies
are all victories for freedom
and i am hungover on the morning
of the abortion
i move slowly through the lines of protesters
with my hands balled into fists
with the phone number of
an old lover tucked into my wallet
and i am thinking of
her laugh
i am drinking someone’s blood
there is no chance for
any of us to
walk away from this unscarred
August 2002 | back-issues, John Sweet, poetry
a headache
just after midnight
as i try to remember why
i ever started writing
at all
a day spent walking
empty streets from a
forgotten part of my life
and i am tired of the past
and of my job like an
impossible weight
and i am tired
the house is old
the windows distorted
and i’m afraid of the day
my son begins to build a wall
between us
i’m afraid he will not be
able to
escape being my son
and this scorched taste
in my mouth is all i’ve kept of
the five thousand wasted days
spent trying to save the
woman who loved pain
from herself
or maybe i can finally
be honest
in this dark room
and admit that i was
worried about no one
but me
maybe i should mention
how i walked away
without hesitation when
her needs threatened
to smother the person
i was hoping to
become
maybe all of the
drowning
can still be saved
July 2002 | back-issues, fiction, Michael W. Giberson
I’ve got a streak of mean.
Yesterday I had to take the bus to work because the chariot was in the shop. I love to ride the bus because you meet all kinds of friendly persons from the lower socio-economic stratum. They’re far more interesting than rich white people.
So, anyway, I’m sitting on the bus near the driver and we stop for a wheel chair person. The bus has a lift platform that pushes out and down for the chair to roll up on. When the chair person rolls up on the platform, it pulls the bus over a fraction of an inch to the right, and the curb is too high at that spot so the platform is still in contact with the sidewalk and it won’t retract. After several unsuccessful tries, the bus driver, a short, black, female dynamo wearing black leather racing gloves, gets up and orders everybody sitting on the right side of the bus, maybe thirty people, to stand up and move over to the left side of the bus to shift the weight of the bus to the left so the platform will lift up enough to retract. The driver has to explain the concept several times before everybody gets the idea, but once they do, everyone cheerfully gets up and moves over and the bus shifts to the left just enough so the driver can operate the lift. Then everybody sits down and we’re on our way again, the whole bus laughing and talking about the experience.
About three stops later, the wheelchair person gets off the bus, again using the lift platform. But two other persons get on at the same stop, and they sit – you guessed it – on the right side of the bus, so the lift won’t retract again. This time all the people on the right side of the bus see what needs to be done and they all get up and move over to the left side of the bus again. All except this one fat lady. She had stood up on the previous occasion, so it’s not like she doesn’t know the score. She just doesn’t want to get up again, so she stays in her seat reading her book, no doubt thinking that the weight of one person won’t make any difference on a loaded, 40,000 lb mass transit vehicle. So she’s the only person on the right side of the bus.
The driver keeps trying to operate the lift, but it’s still stuck on the sidewalk. She tries and tries and the thing beeps and clicks and groans, but it won’t retract. The fat lady stays in her seat, reading her book. The bus driver keeps trying. She can’t see the fat lady because of all the people standing in the aisle, but everybody else on the bus is looking at the fat lady, waiting for her to get up, but she keeps on reading.
Finally, I get tired of it and I yell, “Hey, lady, get up and move over!”
The lady looks up and everybody’s watching her and she’s watching everybody back, and I can just see what she’s thinking: “If I stand up and move over, and the lift works, everybody will think it’s because I’m so fat.”
So she sits there for a minute more, and the lift still won’t retract, so finally, very reluctantly, she stands up and moves to the left side of the bus. At that instant, the lift pulls free and the driver is able to retract it.
So I says loud enough for everybody to hear, “Yup. It was her.”
Like I said: I’ve got a mean streak.
Just goes to show, though, that it ain’t over ’til the fat lady stands.
July 2002 | back-issues, Michael W. Giberson, poetry
[i]for Brent Stalker[/i]
If the dead could rise
To take your part,
And you lie
Bleeding in their stead,
The silent covenant
Between you bred
Of comradeship
Would not falter.
Do not rage your solvent heart.
Do not rue God’s bleeding altar.
