George Bowering (British Columbia, Canada): from Musing On Some Poets

I have no remaining skill for form,
just feel words jostle each other in doorways on the way out, sit here this
evening remembering a former life. I’m with friends,
all lovely, all restrained by hope. All agreed without saying so—
those poets gave us a way to waste our lives,
saying useless things, smiling indulgently at each other’s personal diaspora,
carrying mismatched goodies on the way to the grave,
tripping, falling into holes, writing on dirt walls
a first and last sonnet—
solving all, coming to rest, combing hair, adjusting socks,
kissing nothing but the image of Jesus, disbursing mind as if it were mercury,
listening for the voices to arrive with the worms.

© George Bowering 2005

Jeffrey Ethan Lee (Boulder, Colorado, USA): "Invitation To A Disaster"

Skin hungry for your hands,
she comes up to your bedroom as a fan
of your poetry, but you’re Nobody, you say.
It doesn’t matter, she says.
She’s not the woman you love and can’t have,
she’s the baby you can have, and want,
in eccentric old clothes.
She keeps you up late cuddling her blues
which is fine, except she takes everything off,
(complaining it’s so hot!)
except her worn-out panties,
and it’s late but she doesn’t want to.

So, you sleep on the floor,
on something rock-hard, in your clothes.
Also, she wails her loneliness
and jealousy of your past.
But we just met, you say—
it doesn’t matter, she cries.
How can she be mad as a wife
on a first date, you think,
but it’s too late and sleep
overwhelms you and you recede.

Only near dawn, when she stumbles by casually,
half-waking and mostly naked,
and you reach up hungrily for her skin, tug her in,
you roll with her in your lust.
She steams up like dunked toast,
then crumbles into dripping sobs,
and then you have to stop,
soothe her and hold her together,
tenderly, as the non-drunk Dad she never had—
dawn enforces she really wants something else.

© Jeffrey Ethan Lee 2005

Mary Jo Malo (Forest, Ohio): "New Orleans Elegy: Down in Delacroix"

Blue rose, red brick cottage,
Styx nightmare—
should have passed on the Lethe—
oblivious CNN, numb—
only a matter of time before my eye levees broke,
carried my heart back down to Delacroix—

a gulf between the living and dead—

stilted homes
built on silted islands,
crumble down—
bait and outfitter’s gone,
fishing for babies now—

fuck nature’s seneschal,
Kyoto accord Bush-whacker,
Manchurian Candidate,
hope he perishes covered in black gold,
mired in muck,
lame duck,
choking on all that Texas tea—

no phone, no TV, no radio,
me and my seven babies,
stranded on a dilapidated rope bridge—
three of us can’t carry five—
water rising above our knees—
you choose—

rest in peace my babies,
my Acadian cousins—

© Mary Jo Malo 2005

Steve Dalachinsky (Manhattan, New York): "Invisible Ray #28 (Hurricane Katrina)"

Six spots
then three
and out—
I think he meant five or
ten (imagination (is

summer
scaffolding itself around
the coming fall

it’s the first three-day holiday
that I’m not glad to be having off

Donald is already stacking firewood
in his head
to verify a life
still lived,
his hands,
lungs,
a labor of patience,
his birthday soon to be behind him,
again
barbequed—

later the small reddening puffs
of clouds will slowly make their way
across the sky between buildings,
where the music will drench my hot, tired
soul, as “…pity divides the soul
and man unmans,”
as sorrow for others drowns
deep within my heavily lined pockets—

this weekend
I will collect part of the money
owed me,
buy a set of colored pencils
and a fifty-cent belt
off the street,
its memories
will immediately sift through my nostrils
like all the quinine ever used to cut dope—

tonight I will dream
that I’m being hoisted
away from polluted water,
death,
flowers,
friends,
governments,
rats,
rabbits,
prisons,
and pigs—

no more dirty laundry for a while,
or poisoned glass gloves,
my feet dangling safely above
the filth—

when I wake,
I will paint onions on my garlic,
snapshot the damned picture
for posterity,
kiss Precious Slaughter good morning,
rescue the bacon,
ignore the gallows
and the hearses,
and armchair the good weather
and the birds—

© Steve Dalachinsky, September 20, 2005

Chard deNiord (Putney, Vermont, USA): "Memoir"

I willed the knife to hit the mark and it did,
sometimes at the point, and stuck. Practice
led to skill, until my eyes were handkerchief-
covered, and my beloved straddled a wheel
for all to see as I threw at her. I hit the space
between her legs, beside her head, beneath
her arms. This was it, all or nothing: my life
and hers as a perfect twist where every night
she was reprieved for having lived, and I was
kissed as she was freed. This, as part of the act
that traveled the country, built my fame,
as the man who misses with perfect aim.

© Chard deNiord 2007

Chard deNiord (Putney, Vermont, USA): "Nor Ever Would Be"

Memory is almost enough if you’re in solitary
or intensive care, in which case the past merges
with the present, in such a way that time passes
imperceptibly, as though time itself was calling you to lose
yourself in various versions of what only partly happened,
so that you’re here and not here at the same time,
both real and virtual, adding recall to supposition
and vice versa in the mercy of waiting somewhere.
As if, also, the Higher Power were cognizant from the start
that pre-humans were destined to become human,
that moment they became aware that they were remembering,
and it wasn’t enough, and as an addendum
to this thought, that nothing was enough, nor would ever be,
or would be. A wind blows across the earth like a page:
more, more— whatever it is. See how it passes away—
girders and all— in the flames you can only see on the screen
of your lids, not so towering but persistent, licking.

The single stroke that Lily made comes close—
her simple, ungifted mark that was enough for then,
and now, which is all anyone could hope for at the end
of a war, which it always is, at least so far. So far.

© Chard deNiord 2007

Jeffrey Ethan Lee (Boulder, Colorado, USA): "Night Out With My Sister's Contact Improvisational Dance Girlfriends"

I.
The deal—
I felt in my guts that something was up,
the way Jude led me in,
“you swore
you’d take off your clothes,
do anything we want…”
(pinching my waist)
“and we’ll enlighten you…”
(unbuttoning there)
“if you’ll just slip into this…”
and she handed me
a small black velvet dress.
(loosening lower)
“No, I’m not gonna—”

Carol measured meticulously
up under my shirt
“It’ll fit,” she burst,
(stroking my chest)
“besides, you’re a poet—
think of this as research…”
“Uh-uh”
(my buckle popped)
Carol’s bourbon voice was so hot,
“But I just took it off for you…”
(my ear caught fire)
“Whoa…”
“Strip.”

I should’ve known it was a trap
when my shoulders got stuck
halfway through, with most of the narrows
still overhead, and nothing below—
in the bathroom I gasped,
“Help! I’m trapped in this thing!”
They crowded in behind, and slowly
tugged down the sturdy, strangling tube,
and then the taping and shaping
of the slimy, squishy balloons.
Jude poked one, pushed the other and snapped,
“You see— you see
what we go through for you?”

II.
After he said, “Hey baby…”
“Hey baby yourself.
You’re making a fatal error,” I warned,
shouting over the authentically retro pop,
in a muscle-bound nylon shirt,
half open to fur and cheap gold chains,
he stared straight through,
Carol in my clothes
and Jude in overalls.
Jude challenged him:
“I bet my girlfriend here
could kill you arm wrestling.”
He sneered, “It’s impossible…
I may be a moron, but things like that
just do NOT happen.”
Jude chimed, “Well, you’re at least half-right…”
Then her eyes counted the seconds til he realized
he was being trashed (her sort of IQ test).
Oh no, his eyes were glazed
In soft focus, sticking to me like white glue…
Jude clasped my cheek and cracked,
“Baby, he’s smitten.”
“Don’t kid.”
“I bet his chest size is bigger than his IQ…”
My feelings were mixed—
I didn’t want to laugh,
but when she did the math,
“A forty-six plus four— for that deep manly shag.”
I was shaking so hard I thought
my balloons would pop.
Not seeing what was really shaking,
he stepped close and asked, full of hope,

“So, you wanna dance?”

“Sorry, I don’t dance with men
whose tits are bigger than mine.”

Finally, a frown, hostility,
maybe even violence in the making.
But Jude gently slipped her body up
against Mr. Rug and shrugged,
“Well, she tried to warn you—
she’s not a girl who misses much.”

© Jeffrey Ethan Lee 2005