Eileen Tabios (St. Helena, California, USA): Three Poems

GRACE REDDENS
(after Christian Hawkey’s “Thistles for Finches”)

In the passage of a blink
a howl descended
as grace bubbled up—

A trash can
kicked down the stairs:
music and laughter

because el cubo de la basura was painted
as red as your lipstick
as red as flamenco

I recognize the helplessness
of those who must dance
and those who can only witness—

Flounces transcended
the polyester reality of her skirt
As well, oh pale limbs

revealing a ziggurat
tattooed on an inner thigh
on an area where inscription must have been desperate
with hurt


FLOODED THROUGH
(after Christian Hawkey’s “He Spoke and, Speaking, Realized He Could Speak”)

1)
A room emptied
of all but curtains

despite expensive velvet
despite no rips

A room empty
amidst its curtains—

Well, except for
that useless light

and the body drowning
in it as a hand writes

2)
As a hand writes,
In Iranian mythology,
the cypress formed
the vegetal metaphor
for fire, for flame

“and reminded men
of the paradise he had lost”

(Paraphrasing and quoting in No. 2 from a randomly-opened page, P. 86, from The Olive Harvest, a memoir by Carol Drinkwater, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2004)


PAINTING DANCE
(after Christian Hawkey’s “Spring Fever”)

… wind permanently delayed
ignores my open mouth.
Instead, blue triangles kick up
zero ash, dancing with red squares

Sequins wait for
flamboyance
without knowing the outcome of
“Matte vs Glass”


© Eileen Tabios 2008

Didi Menendez (Bloomington, Illinois, USA): Two Poems

SALTPETER

I used to share a drink 
with Toulouse-Lautrec but then I
contracted syphilis and they
sent me away to the same island
with Napoleon Bonaparte.
He was such a bugger.
He used to spit when he spoke.
It was very hard to get back
on the horse when you need
to keep wiping your eyes.
Did you know my sister
was ironing her skirt last
time saw her? Don't tell...
you have a sister too?
Did you see that game last night?
DiMaggio was at his best. Wouldn't
you say the same? You are going
to have to speak louder. I am deaf
in my left ear. I went into shell shock
while in Saigon. Van Gogh lost
his ear in Viet Nam too.
He was my bunk buddy.

Let's sit down a spell.

Do you play cards? There is a good
game going on right now in the next
room. Every Tuesday. I used to play
the stock market but lost it all in 1929.
The fall was brilliant.
Did you know that right before you hit
the pavement you see everything
very clear so very clear and it feels
like everything will remain like this forever
and then everything goes black.

About that cafeteria food— be careful
with the jello. They put saltpeter in it.
Shh. Quiet. Quiet. You don't want anyone
hearing us do you? Stick with me kid.
I haven't had an erection since the crucifixion.
Sometimes I scratch my balls
as if they're still there.


UNTYING KNOTS

In eighth grade Rosa
became zealous with
Johnson & Johnson
baby powder. She'd
take showers before
being dropped off
every morning at
St. Peter and Paul
Catholic School
by the Roads in
Miami, Florida, 1973.

Betty took the bus with
us to school. Her hair
was dyed blond because
her mother owned the
beauty salon off Calle Ocho.
This is important to know
because Betty had her hair
chopped ala Ziggy Stardust
when everyone was
feathering theirs.

I forgot to mention
that we are all Cuban
boys and girls whose
parents all left because
of the Revolution between
1959 and 1966.
Betty once said
to us while Rosa
was not around
that Rosa was
powdered up because
she wanted to be white.

As these words
escaped her strawberry
glossed lips
three nuns walked
past the flag pole,
three girls held their right
hand to their heart,
a pigeon landed on the
asphalt and cooed, my father
walked past the school
yard carrying my lunch
in a paper bag, boys turned
their head to the street
as a green Impala drove by,
the American flag made
sounds against the wind.

I looked down at my feet
and pulled up my navy
blue socks and noticed
the laces on my black
and white oxford shoes
had become untied—

© Didi Menendez 2008

Paul Siegell (Philly, USA): Three Poems

*11.17.05 – Galactic – TLA, PA*
(—most I've ever seen Fisher dance)

word moves
tour words
words with eyes open and mouths about to:

direction words:
start here, head down, turn left—hup,
two miles and a u-turn, retrace, turn right—
grocery list words:
pick this up, and this, o and don’t forget this:

put a “re” before “new”
after a space add “orleans”
and, crushed, you’ve got memorial words
constructive words—the t-shirt words
of a saxophonists in a quintet
from a mending delta city—

jazz-funk yeah-word fusions, song-
building, song-storming rock and
crowds of words
true word wings and roll word concerts
word tickets to word parties
eventful words and all the words attending
cute-girl words, stunning loveliness word
eyelashes, applause for word rhythms and bold
word drumming, beat-controlling time words
bouncing towering-wow words—
that moly is holy wow words—

with knowledge of not enough words:
you’ve gotta allow the wows—

and where do all these words come from?

useless words! instrumental-only words!
words pict outta the crowd:

there’re bands I love that never sing a word.

*06.22.07 – Wilco – Count Basie Theatre, NJ*

all for the show of audience,

a lyricist serves his language as if pulling down a building
from the small city block of bar tap architecture. a fluid,

inebriating pour.

like an ashtray anthem, lest we’ve penned some other medicine,
drinking smoke swims overhead in the night’s aquarium of air.

charged by an avant-guitar, listen-licked by the lyricist,

Wilco tension crescendos rendezvous with introspective
fluorescence

and whip the attendance of epileptic starfish into flight—

but what are the chords to when the kick drum shakes the serifs
off the alphabet in my eyesight?

if you look close enough, chord constellations take great pains—
while as wise as time, the audible dance of a drummer at drums

handshakes all the letters a pick uses, from string to string,
to spell a scale in the taxicab of a measure.


*06.28.07 – Ryan Adams & the Cardinals – F at the TLA, PA*
(—for the sold-out, short-show disappointed)

a fan-thrown
rose

bemoans
stage front

as roadies
tear down

to boos

© Paul Siegell 2008

Laura Goldstein (Chicago, USA): "A Creature..."

A CREATURE THAT HAD LIFE IN IT BUT NO LONGER HAS LIFE IN IT

daft habits jolt into damped laps, you can say “don’t worry about it” several many times and at the end of what’s this an episode, fractured season realized into sub pieces we’ll then see that but the telling truth of now begs you, new friend, for some other advice—

relax into civilization. money ekes out the pores: cleaning it kills it. I thought that I would write you but you’re already written. I thought that I could fight you but I’m actually smitten. i thought that I was right in the place where I’m sitting but actually I’m already off on a mission—

flowers unearthed strewn in and around the empty fire time and time in, time out again,  eventual crumble toward the end of something’s life span, not visible but sensed, why denote or demarcate an aspect that evokes questioning on grounds of difference. it was in the 80s when these questions began to solidify and then step backwards—

and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving (robinson crusoe) about a bucket or a truck of coins could now be considered a truckload of corrected manuscripts corrected by the finest editors, copied by the cunningest hacks, manifested by the most brilliant businessmen working in the literary world today—

© Laura Goldstein 2008