September 2017

VOL XXV, Issue 9, Number 293

Editor: Klaus J. Gerken

European Editor: Mois Benarroch

Contributing Editor: Jack R. Wesdorp

Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena; Oswald Le Winter;

Heather Ferguson; Patrick White

ISSN 1480-6401

Jorge Etcheverry Arcava

KJ Hannah Greenberg

Károly Fellinger

Paul Beckman

Lana Bella

Judy Katz-Levine

Joseph Farley

Gale Acuff

Carolyn Gregory

Jeff Bagato

Jorge Etcheverry Arcava

Look

Don't blame me.

You need to understand

That I have a social and cultural background

Hey, look, I got a past.

I'm not being born yesterday

(nor did I start to live when I met you)

If you'd give yourself the trouble to read

Some things that are being written in Europe

You'd understand that trend.

To be independent

Even lonely

From time to time

It makes me want to go out alone.

Smoke a couple of cigarettes

Or just for a walk

Along those half-empty streets

Especially at dawn

That Magic hour

Sometimes life itself makes me nervous

Not that I'm implying that I'm special.

Or something like that.

Anguish is not a university degree.

KJ Hannah Greenberg

The Raging One

The raging one, the lizard with the chemical Burn on his paw, is, at last, snoring off all

Environmental emendations that would-be

Ecological crews would make to his home.

His digestive process’ nasty. Lethal microbes

Lodge in his gut, ready to dissolve the viscera Of lesser critters, or foreigners’ data commerce,

Imported for “philanthropic” whys/wherefores.

The world over, collectors pay lots of cash

To amateurs inspired by textbook truths, Otherwise economically dissolute persons,

Plus random louts, bandits, also sadists.

It’s a good thing that the raging one can

Make short work of imprudent humans,

Properly defend his little Komodo habitat, Cause enough invaders to forever desist.

Spoiled Family Traditions

Domestic conventions, centered on endeavors in various corners,

Long ago, wordlessly, transformed charitably exploits, similarly

Distance learning, into chasing rabbits, gerenuks, plus hedgehogs

Around neighborhood forecourts, seminaries, buses, and taverns.

When fog chewed up our olden day ambitions, unlaxing them upon

Sampled wings, discarding carapaces, also dismembered antennae,

Fragments of metabolically hurtling alimentary canals shuddered.

Broken legs, as well as hideous assemblages got cut to banal hues.

Anyway, we tended the patterns of the sun and her sisters, stars Tired of ripping apart the dead insects we collected. Each small

Sampling of winged rainbows impelled us to pucker more death,

Discard further mating beacons, trash other flyers’ sense organs.

Posted against young saplings, or, alternatively, standing effiagial,

Perhaps with boxes holding scarves, lilies of the valley, dope, we, Confused from roasted raw poppies all gray-white clouds of mist,

Looked skyward. At trees' borders, flecked woodpeckers warbled.

Inexpert in the practice of social accountability, except for haruspicy,

Oodles of would-be lawyers, editors, aunts, uncles, grandparents bark Harsh responses to identical experiences, camouflage unctuous views

After precipitation falls, when good sources of salad greens go missing.

In bringing serious intensities of approachability to early emerging roses,

In spite of boom boxes, confetti, gin, adults learn how to cease worrying

Post plaques on polychrome walls, tribute perfervid others, croon, belch. Powerful therapies work as tutu-free ballerinas and denuded dandelions.

Spinning Solid, Linguistic, Pretty Lines

Certain of life's pleasures, plus severe gravities, served

Among lugs, including lummoxes, horrid murrains, salt,

Marginalize beasts prone to headaches.

It takes whizzing, buzzing books, cacophonies of benighted Souls (captious in their mongering), to prevent banal dripping

From mouths, texts, and keys.

We don’t appreciate mundanities’ breathing, ambulating, sight,

Their solid, linguistic, pretty lines, their irascibly colorful spaces,

Their exogenously driven centers.

Sure, some masters raise galoots to social pedestals, urge improvident

Fools to crush all semblances of kindness, mercy, delayed social justice,

Ask succor from penurious others.

Macerating, they demand our populous function without treasure, Lose interest in investigating wastrels’ glory, forget about means

Intended to uncover canards.

Without delay, they tout emissaries all up and down the media,

Eliminate materials superseding corporeal value, likewise Measure resulting graciousness.

Yet, “fixed” goods, including: life, surfeit, and resurrection,

Can’t, to those of confused ilk, accomplish probable misery,

Fashion products we need.

Károly Fellinger

poems translated by Károly Sándor Pallai

PEBBLES SMELLING OF LEAF-MOULD

Death secretly tries out

every coffin, except for my father’s,

it doesn’t have the guts to do that, yet,

without it the dead will haunt

in the land of spirits, certainly,

he gets to God by following his shadow,

tricking him into switching places

for a negligible moment

while death, assiduously,

prepares the resurrection

with which it will have nothing to do

since it plays with the sins of others,

breaking them just like the flowerpot

with the earth and the flower

that my father had forgotten to water.

FROM AFAR

Those who feel lonely

when they are alone

have already experienced

solitude in a relationship,

in a hustling party,

in their mother’s womb

where they could have got lost

among the stars of chance

which were brought down to earth

instead of him.

TWO SURFACES

By morning,

a few stranded

shipwrecks remain

of my dream

and a survivor

on a deserted island.

It’s a wonder

if the world

flies away

with me.

REPLICA

I wandered through the cemetery with my mother,

we didn’t meet anyone,

my heart was like

a discarded aircraft,

withdrawn from circulation

which wasn’t given the chance

to crash,

at least accidentally

into the itching palm

of its creator, on the way home,

I was blinded by the December sunset,

I almost ran over a cyclist

who raked me over the coals,

he had the right, just like I have

a burial plot next to my father’s grave.

PAINKILLER

The devil is in the detail,

but this is a sort of a question of detail,

don’t make me recount all the rest,

heating is provided by solar panels

and windmills even in hell.

Hope is a worn collecting box

in the consecrated, brand new church,

where the congregation collects money

for the demolition of the walls each Sunday.

TIME HALT

John is accompanied by his selfish pain,

he would let himself go if he could,

if he could expose himself to death

to let it breath eternal life into him.

Silence says goodbye by stepping

on a mine, there’s a huge explosion,

poor John becomes deaf, he makes signs,

each of his limbs is now at the mercy of grace.

Paul Beckman

Friendly Banking

The woman sat across the desk from one of the assistant vice presidents. I heard her say

she had come to the bank on her lunch hour to open a checking account. I was in the adjoining

cubicle getting my checkbook balanced. We could see each other but not our respective assistant

vice presidents in these mostly glass office alternatives. She had curly red hair and a whiskey

baritone voice. And, since the walls were only about six feet high we could also hear the other

party if they used normal conversational tone.

The bank had just been remodeled, renamed and re-sloganed. YOUR BANK—THE

FRIENDLY BANK. I thought that HOOVER BANK AND TRUST was less than comforting but

the brain trust that picked out YOUR BANK as the new name must have been Abbott and

Costello devotees.

Where are you going?

YOUR BANK.

Why are you going to my bank? Why don’t you go to your own bank?

I am going to my own bank.

I thought you said you were going to my bank.

Don’t be silly. I’m going to YOUR BANK.

So, in the spirit of FRIENDLY BANKING, all of the officers including the manager of

the branch sat in glass cubicles and the only thing that differentiated them was the size of their

cubbies and the height of their glass walls. The tellers were behind counters but not separated

from the customers by glass. Some sat low and there were office chairs for the customers, and

some sat on high stools and their customers had the option of doing likewise.

“What is your maiden name?” the unseen assistant vice president asked the curly

redhead.

I stared straight away at Phoebe Hurst who, in the new “Friendly” mode, was

attempting the impossible—the balancing of my checkbook. I looked at her “Friendly Smile,”

the smile sticker that all employees had to wear. It was also the bank logo. . She wore her smiley

mouth on her left breast and even in all its cartoonish glory it looked obscene.

“It’ll be a lot easier, Mr. Mirsky, if you come in monthly and let me do this. Once it

gets to be over a year it takes quite a bit longer. Not that I mind, you understand,” she said

slapping her Friendly smile back on her lips, “but there’s no reason for you to have to sit around

for so long.”

“Your right,” I said and smiled back.

“We can put you on a regular schedule.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“Would you like to schedule next month’s balancing now?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I’ll have to call because I don’t know what my schedule will be.”

“Well, if you make this part of your schedule you can make appointments around it,”

Phoebe Hurst smiled back.

“If life were only that easy,” I said.

“Well, it could be easier. You could start with this one thing and fill in your time all

around it,” she said.

“But what happens if an appointment comes up and I have to cancel with you?”

“Don’t,” she said with another Friendly smile but not a Friendly voice.

Phoebe took her day book, turned a few pages and said, “Wednesday the fourteenth

seems like a good day. What time would you like to come in?”

If Phoebe were in sales, Mirsky thought, she would have given him a choice of two

times and had him select one, instead of leaving the question open ended and giving him his out.

But she was playing on his field now.

“I’ll call you when I get back to my office and check my schedule,” Mirsky lied.

Phoebe knew he was lying and Mirsky knew she knew. And both knew that there was a

limit to the amount of pressure she could put on him and that she had reached it.

“That’s fine,” Phoebe said and then stopped to listen to the conversation in the next

cubicle.

“Listen, I don’t have time for a lot of questions, I just want to open a checking

account.”

“It's part of the procedure for security reasons,” the Friendly strained voice said.

“But I don’t like me mother’s family so why should your security need my maiden

name?”

“It’s not a matter of like or not like,” she said, “it’s a matter of policy.”

“Well you can take your policy and shove it in that smiley face on your collar,” the

lady said as she pushed back her chair and stood. In a loud voice she said, “You’re not the only

bank in town and if you can’t open a checking account in ten minutes I’m sure someone else

can.”

All eyes were turned towards her as the manager with the Friendliest smile of all

walked over. “Why don’t you come to my office and we can set you up with a checking account

in no time,” she said and pointed to her smile sticker.

Curly Red’s chair clanged off the glass cubicle. She followed the manager, all the time

complaining about the bank and truth in advertising.

Phoebe Hurst looked at Mirsky, pushed his balanced checkbook to him and said, “This

town ought to get down on its knees every night and thank God that I don’t come to work

packing.” She got up and brushed past Mirsky and walked out of her cubicle without a Friendly

face.

The next day Mirsky had a message from Phoebe and the following day an email—both

of which he ignored. In that afternoon’s mail a postcard.

YOUR BANK WANTS YOUR MORTGAGE BUSINESS. CALL PHOEBE HURST

TODAY.

It was a business postcard no different from the kind other banks or mortgage

companies sent except that the smile logo was a little more Jack Nicholson smile than Friendly

Smile. Mirsky did what he always did with solicitations—he tossed it.

“Did you get my postcard?” the familiar voice asked.

“Who is this and what postcard?”

“Phoebe Hurst, Mirsky, and my mortgage postcard.”

“What about it?” Mirsky asked.

“Mirsky Real Estate hasn’t sent me any business so I assumed you hadn’t gotten my

card.”

“Well, I’ve had a long term mortgage relationship with THE CORNER BANK S & L,”

Mirsky said.

“That’s nice,” Phoebe Hurst said, “but why don’t you come in and we can discuss the

benefits of using our mortgage department?”

“I’ll pop in when I have a free moment,” Mirsky said.

“Which is better, Thursday or Friday? Phoebe Hurst asked. When Mirsky didn’t answer

quickly enough she added, “Morning or afternoon?”

“Um um,” Mirsky said while trying to extract himself from this conversation. She’s

been reading, he thought.

“Let’s call it Thursday noon and we’ll go out to lunch on me to talk about mortgages

and you can bring your checkbook along and I’ll balance that for you afterwards.”

“Phoebe,” Mirsky said, “I know that you’re . . .” and while he was speaking he

disconnected the call. He knew that people never suspect you of hanging up on them if the

disconnect happens when you are speaking. It’s a trick he learned when he first got in the

business and used to his benefit numerous times. His extension rang and he got up and walked

out the door for a lunch date with a martini.

Lana Bella

ARCTANGENT

Some other time, another hour,

will you ache where your inshore

thread the argyle of all that

unseen? In that space of hollow

where glacier might come and

feather you in ice, gentling only

when the marrow-you give flinch

to the sea, you'll have a talk

between the tree and your hands,

as if the fingers that cup the tiny

snails could shape the stays and

the buoys. Imagine this, your

sway of Crape myrtle patterned

long in the moonlight, and there

was nothing but a dawn to starve, you will need to lullaby riddling

the night, shivering as shadows

snaked up your arctangent back.

VERTIGO

What else is winter for but transparent hands

nudge flesh into black,

making peril of endings?

December drifts with snow

under the oaks; cobblestones

graph with metal scores, wherefore comes the brassy

sounds of splinters,

each stirring appears a wave,

mere relic of ice lost in

its own exactness of memory. An elsewhere pulls within,

lit in cataract slate of

the fence post—strung up to

a height that froths down

the trees' dark rows,

stroking what continuous and seem as one,

as vertigo blinds softly on

frost-bound, stranger roads.

WRENS AND SWALLOWS

Trees in wet wood took shape, wrens

and swallows jarred the miles and

vaulted tall tuffs of yellow weeds. Life

in concert with smoke and mirror,

seeds born into wind in sinking reach,

moved swiftly through like myelin

harrowed of its master’s thirst. Echoes

pushed up, clinging to the feathered

flights like pilgrims travel beholden and

long, where the meager properties of

a quiet life rose by way of anorexic air,

motes rended circuitously spitting up

sparks. Swooped their little piles of

hybrid shadows, the easy birds took sky

torrid down to dust, kissed the earth-

quake country with lungfuls of sawflies.

GESTATION

Elsewhere, the orphaned notes of Bach drove into the snaked

skin of tobacco's scent, the wet

mouth blooming through noise

of insects; a startle, a rustling,

your nectar voice touched every

leaf, satin-lines reddened dark

with fallen mist. Floodlit, star-

eclipsed, you vibrated through

the soles of your stockinged feet,

eased down steep verdant of hill-

sides, scraped fingers on dusk’s

ruffled skirt. You remembered

then how you had glimpsed your

lone body amidst the hydrangea

vines weeping blue four-lobed deep,

where the swallowtail-wings lifted

at last to bless the Causeway Coast, peppering land with striated gold,

and no weather hydraulics could

have intruded on their comet-flight,

and your bestride bend upon the

tentacled hold of mums’ rubied heads.

ON THIS SIDE OF INSIDE

On this side of inside, I can't see

the rush of water with light turned

low. Bones made of glass held in

ruches like desert carillon, supine

glide on legato lake. Downstream,

earnest lips of plant life fluted with

neon fuzz, easing over the torsos

stiff of upthrust rocks, the likeness

all out of innocuous thorns frozen

in mud. Then at once, I gave pale

breaths to water moths on the wild

of curiosity, startling the ghosting

into bristled charge of variables,

whimpered up in a gather of flakes.

BECAUSE I KNEW YOUR FACE INSIDE THE EYE OF A VINTAGE CAMERA

A path to somewhere not here,

you pooled in hollow through film

of my vintage camera, a glowing

wyrm spun and interwove, raised

up the mounds of sand, shifting,

always shifting, cast me finally

over the spines of sun. I was inert,

orchard-lit with breaths of baying

horses, where you halted letting

in discord, immune to my concert

of shoulders above ribs, spilling

of bones refused to keep. But still

I coiled shadows lie, imagining you

smooth saline held in my invisible

depth-strokes, fluttering gradations

from periphery to bitten shins, as

you broke pale into the embrace of

vines, sent buds to sheath of red.

Judy Katz-Levine

When the night is an obsidian seed and sings

The well that came into being poured visions of wild streets, where

strangers played bongos, and the wind came up and then a rain, intense

and driving. I could not stop

remembering your hands, the way they left the trumpet, and came to

select a wild violet. For this, I

was never imprisoned again, and always say the name of the one who

saved my life, with feral songs, and

syncopated silences.

For MS In Santa Fe

There are mangoes in the way your drop your keys,

and there are mesas in the way you smile.

I was questioning myself by an arroyo with a fox,

and I came to an understanding that your hands return to youth.

Also, the kid who helped us lift the packages was so gentle

as to be hurt in a fight the night before, and there was a scar on his

chin.

Who remembers the constellation of the Big Dipper in the night

with its mirror of a lake high in the mountains of Santa Fe

Cries with me though I have only crystals of salt on my table

and a future that is filled with violets and no sabers ever again.

Crescent moon in your forehead, crescent moon in your daughter's palm,

there are prayers said when we are eating tacos, they are inscribed on

black parchment.

After Midnight

If I were a prophet drunk

I would spin your smile like a star

lifting from my palm

Hawk Tanka

red-tailed hawk drops down

stop the car to see him still

limpid light surrounds his wings

hen he lifts through cedars oaks

"Ot" - a sign - we rise

*"Ot" - translates as sign in Hebrew

Now You Know

sweet potato and a dragonfly hovering

over sand, a friend who will travel to Holland

speaks, there is a candle in my room

that now extinguished will hold me to a prayer

the prophet Zachariah was called this morning

and I listened and closed my eyes

swimming 10 laps in the water cold but warm currents

and the young man a lifeguard striding across a silver dock

an antique flute given to me by dad still sounds

haunting notes, I have uncovered it from its

underground destination

below the desk I used as an adolescent

and I will put my lips to a sapphire window

the came came down and rested before me

now you know

After Reading Yannis Ritsos' "Fourth Dimension"

It is with grave gestures of my hands that I call to a startled haw,

One must smile, but I cannot bring myself to taste pine needles in the

stillness of midnight.

A certain friend is in grave trouble, that is why.

And if there were the ability to name each wave, each water-smooth

shard

On the beach, I would remember walking with a giant

who was a great mathematician and could count the fingers

Of all the children who had fallen bleeding in a city of Syria

where a charred door was opening to let in the sky

A hole in the door like a wing, a sparrow flying through

A hawk startled by an explosion trying for a shaft of sun and

An updraft, so the red handkerchiefs in my non-dream

bobbing on the ocean backwash with corks and pieces of clam shell

Can only be a sign that there was one child in particular who was wounded

when she was having the same dream as I just had, of a fishnet with a sunfish let go,

Joseph Farley The Bastards Who are these bastards that rule the world? What rocks do they breed under? Where do they get their forked tongues that spit flame? How do they open their tight dirty fingers, stained with blood and gold long enough to point their guns at our heads?

no more no meat today. no meat any day. enough bodies on the strand. let them lay there, alone, uneaten.

Blood and Ink The poison in my brain Drips down through my arm, And leaks out of my fingers Into the pen I hold. Transferred to the ink, All this evil spills From the ball point, Pools of black, Shaped into words To make you ill, And make me feel No better either.

Dear Father This disaster you begot Calls out your name In this most unholy night, Asking why I was chosen To bear the burden Of your celestial heel Upon my head.

Reincarnation Blues This existence is wasted, Every drop. Pour me another glass. I’ll tell you when to stop. Make it tall and make it long, And I’ll drain every drop, And when that life too Has been turned to slop, I’ll drink the whole bottle, Or maybe the whole shop.

With A Song In My Heart There are people who hate me, And hate me with a passion. It seems their contempt Has become the latest fashion. I walk down the streets, Suffering their stares, Wondering at the birds Singing away without cares.

Levitation some days you are in the air. no one can see the quarter inch separating your shoes from the sidewalk, but you can feel the distance, know it could be millimeters or miles, but you are flying all the same.

High Time for the Devil The devil has got us by the balls. He laughs and gives a squeeze. Caught in this iron grip It is hard to do as you please. Just grit your teeth And swallow a scream, Take it day by day. Let the devil have his due. He’ll get his one day.

Gale Acuff Dodo In Sunday School all we talk about is God but then Miss Hooker says that God is everywhere anyway. No wonder I never see him, He's too close but still He's far away, too--and because He's close. She's my Sunday School teacher and I'm just ten years old so I guess I can trust her and she can sing and play the piano and tell a pretty mean Bible story. Today it was something about lilies in a field, that's where they live anyway unless you pick them and then they die but don't show death for a few days, and birds of the air, which is where birds belong but then there's penguins and kiwis and dodos and no bird can fly all the time, he'd drop dead. And God has His eye on the sparrow, too, Miss Hooker says that means He cares about every creature, no matter how small and I'm small for my age, I get beat up a lot but then I always start the fights, I've got something to prove. I'm not sure what because I haven't won one yet, a fight I mean, and anyway I like to pick on the bigger boys, it makes me feel tough and it's a good way to make friends. Sometimes they pull me up by the hand, it's a kind of handshake I guess, but sometimes they pick me up, all of me, and put me on my feet again. It's like rising from the dead if anything is, anything short of Jesus maybe. I don't walk around and show people that I'm still alive and I haven't ascended into Heaven and I'm not sitting on the right hand of God, not His hand, exactly, that's Bible-talk for the right side of God. I'm left-handed if it makes a difference. In Heaven I guess I'll be able to use them both. If they play baseball then I can switch-hit. That's something I can't do down here, on earth I mean. But I wouldn't want to be tall up there. I like myself fine as I am and anyway I'm still young, I might grow. I guess if I want to see God, before I die I mean, I have to learn to look

so that I don't see Him all at once and can pick Him out in a single thing even though He's in everything. That's a neat trick. If I could do that I'd be rich and told Miss Hooker after Sunday School class this morning--she made me sit down, or she asked me to, this isn't regular school so her powers are weak --and she warned me not to lay up treasures on earth but in Heaven, it's my eternal soul she's worried about so I told her Don't worry, ma'am, if I make a bundle I'll give it all away. She smiled. When she smiles I think that I don't want to die but I know I'm going to one day, who knows when except for God, but I'm not worried. She's got nice teeth and gums. I'd like to go inside and slide down her tongue into her belly and that would make me like Jonah. Somehow I'd come back to tell about it. Then I'd be rich. Then I'd give it away and be rich again. I like religion. If I liked it any more I'd be God. People would look and look for me and not see me. Then they wouldn't. That's how they would.

Engagement There's no school like Sunday School because there's God and I don't get Him anywhere else, not regular school, Monday through Friday, or at home or even when I'm buying comic books. I get to see Miss Hooker, my teacher, for about an hour and see her again for another hour or so at the church service, her red hair sticks out like Planet Mars in the solar system, and when she turns her head my way I see her green eyes and freckles. She doesn't have a husband and I don't think a boyfriend so that means she's up for grabs, not that I'd grab her, I'm a gentleman, but I mean she's still available and there's still time for me, I'm 10 to her 25, so if she can hang on for a few more years and I can, too, I'll ask her for a date, and put enough of those together and you have a courtship and if that lasts long enough you get engaged and if she likes the ring enough not to give it back or ask you for a nicer one, she expects you to give her a better one anyway at the altar, then you have a marriage and babies. And a long time after that you both die, usually one after the other, one at a time that is, and since Miss Hooker's so much older that means her time comes first and I might have to wait again, maybe fifteen years, to see her again, if we have working eyes when we're dead. In Sunday School this morning she said we get new bodies in Heaven so I guess new eyes as well. But between getting married and dying there's something called life. I don't know much about it but it includes jobs and cars and moving and pets and kids growing up and TV and movies and taxes. We'll fill that in when the time comes, if it does. If not, then I'll have to marry someone else but then the story will be very much the same, just with a different wife, and Miss Hooker will have a different husband. After Sunday School this morning I asked her why people should bother to live at all when they're just going to die on the far side of birth and after all that's in-between. It's a fair question. If I knew I was headed for Heaven when I die then why

not just die now and even kill myself? I considered it our first date. We were alone for a few minutes before church. I was all dolled up like I was taking her to a dance. I kept my hands out of my pockets. I didn't pick my nose or scratch my butt. My clip-on bow tie is new. What do you talk about on a first date anyway? Miss Hooker said that if I die in sin I'll have no chance for Heaven and that if I kill myself to get there I won't--I'll go to Hell because only God gets to kill, unless you're a soldier or policeman or it's self-defense. I think that's all in the Bible somewhere. I should've known but I'm not a good student. Don't you want to go to Heaven, she asked. Sure, if that's where you're going, I answered. Then she smiled many smiles in just one smile. I guess what I told her is I love you and I guess that she signified it back. I could be wrong but I think we're engaged. If she breaks it I'll have a broken heart. I'll have one sooner or later, I'm sure, so I might as well have it now. It could be a blessing. It means I'll learn something.

Spectacles I dreamt I died and went to Heaven and saw Miss Hooker there, she's my Sunday School teacher, standing behind God as He searched for my name in the Book of Life. I sin a heap so I didn't expect me to be listed in the Book, my name that is, and I got nervous, God starting over again at the beginning to make sure He didn't miss me the next time through or had me written down somewhere else. I was ready to accept the worst and prepared myself for the Lake of Everlasting Fire, I learned to swim last summer, when God dropped His glasses and blamed if they didn't shatter into a million pieces, shards is a fancier word, or a billion more likely. Miss Hooker stepped out from be -hind God, she was ready with her broom and dustpan like she is at the end of class in our portable building at church and sometimes I help her, it's not just being charitable because though I'm just 10 to her 25 I'm in love with her and want to marry her someday but in my dream where we're both dead is there still hope or none at all? Sometimes I stack hymnbooks and take out the trash. Now I couldn't move. Miss Hooker swept and swept the broken bits of glass into the dustpan and when she finished she'd swept them all back together into God's glasses. I whistled and said Well, that's the damndest thing I've ever seen. Then God said, Ain't it, though, and set them back on His face and asked, Now where was I, just like Father did when he was explaining to me last night where babies come from. I don't think he knows. I never learned but fell asleep and woke up in this dream, which ends, if it ever will, with God saying that He's sending me back to earth--Now where did his name get off to? Miss Hooker, go back with him and keep an eye on him and don't let him die until I've figure out for certain how many sins he's good for. Whew. Close. Tomorrow I'll see Miss Hooker at Sunday School again. That means a night of more dreaming. I hope I dream I don't.

In the Beginning Miss Hooker says that she wants me to go to Heaven when I die and not to Hell. Well, I will if I can, I told her. And she tells me that I can but I must stop sinning first, but she also says that sin comes naturally to folks, no thanks to Adam and Eve and of course the serpent in the Garden of Eden so I'll have to be persistent, she says, which means to keep trying, not to sin that is. She's big on sinning, not doing it I mean, and says that whatever else I do don't die in sin or that spells Hell right off the bat, no chance for forgiveness, I'll wake up dead in Hell and the first face I'll see will be Satan's. She says I'll wish I was dead then but of course I already am--will be I mean. My soul will live eternally and that's what Satan wants the most because it lives forever and can be tortured all that time. That's how he gets his jollies, she says. I respect that. She's beautiful, red hair and green eyes and freckles. And she's old enough to know about everything, 25 to my 10, and teaches us for free, our church only pays our preacher but Miss Hooker's a cosmetologist for real. Mother swears by her and comes home looking younger and smelling sweeter and maybe Heaven's like that, they doll you up but you have to pay a price. But Mother keeps having to go back, say once a month, but when you die you go to stay. I guess one price buys it all. I don't want to die but everyone has to, Miss Hooker says. That's Adam and Eve again. And Jesus died so that even though we will we won't, at least our souls won't, and who really wants to keep his body eternally? In Heaven it would just be in the way. Even so, I hope before I die to touch Miss Hooker, maybe give her a kiss or marry her and give us a baby, however that works. For Mary it was God, I guess. I'm no God so there must be another way and I'll learn about it somehow. Maybe Miss Hooker will show me or I'll get it in school or my folks will break down and answer what I often ask, Just how did I get here, anyway? But Mother says it's not where I came from but

what I'm going to do while I'm stuck here. That's pretty wise but it's not an answer. I ask Father, who says to ask Mother. That's pretty sly of him, but ditto. So after Sunday School next week I'll corner Miss Hooker and ask her. If she plays dumb I might ask her to marry me when I'm grown, say 17 to her 32, and if she says yes I'll kiss her some more. Maybe where our baby comes from is where I come from, and she does, too. I'll ask how it's done and if she says for me to wait I guess I will. It must be pretty good, like Christmas morning, maybe, or birthdays, or passing a hard test, or throwing strikes when you want to and really need to, or learning to ride a bike, that balancing without falling, or going to Heaven.

Carolyn Gregory

CIRQUE

1.

At the well dressed refugee camp,

all the women and children line up

in rain, waiting for the toilets.

Children tag along in the downpour,

carrying soggy popcorn and wet cups.

Their good shoes have holes in the heel

and toe,

happy to be doing something different

than waiting for boats.

The women wear makeup and flip-flops,

having had brunch as they carry

bad memories of the Fourth,

turned psychotic with explosions.

2.

I have always loved the circus

because it made things sparkle,

did not matter if there were lions

or elephants.

They were secondary to magic

plied with jugglers,

acrobats on six chairs piled toward the sky.

They would swing through space

in azure robes

as the girls in hula hoop skirts wobbled by.

Clapping sparked electricity under the tents

and little kids asked their dads if it was magic

when performers jumped through hoops of fire.

3.

Between the camps and the circus,

following orders and magic,

there are many paths --

some end in golden seats,

some in the desert.

A thousand will dissolve under firebombs,

a dozen offer joy to the world

to the grandchildren of emperors.

Will we spin in our silken gowns near the winner's circle

or ascend, rags shaking over our blood and bones?

AT THE TWENTY FOUR HOUR STORE

They scratch and scratch at back tables

until their fingers bleed on paper.

No matter. It's a daily deal.

Maybe one will win something

and buy a new house

or pick up a mistress with a pot full of

thousand dollar bills.

Standing in line for new tickets,

they wear patched jeans

with holes in the pockets.

One dreams of fat cigars

in his own nightclub

though his car has been towed.

The woman buying cat food

calls this a den of iniquity

on her way to Bible study.

HOME OF SALT AND MARBLE

The marble taken from the walls

have turned to salt and might explode.

The canals have seeped through

and taken over.

More skeletons in yet another closet

where famous ghosts chat

about Ms. Guggenheim's nude march

into the canal to remember

her father sinking with the Titanic.

Oh, Venice, you are topsy turvy

with white gloved waiters,

balustrades and fires!

Masked balls, lawyers and the Mafia

all riding gondolas!

An aria is sung through the burning opera

now painted by an artist

wearing his own suit of flames!

Lord Byron broods in the piazza

while Ezra Pound teaches his daughter

how to translate the Cantos.

The society of masks proffers fans

as the sunset flares over sinking palaces

and pledges to build more.

NEAR THE SPIRIT TREE (for Zinta)

1.

The world outside grows blurry with winter.

She re-stocks the piles to keep

the stove burning and her pets alive.

They hunker down.

Storm watches come and go

with heavy boughs and icicles

while the hens thrive, keeping each other

warm with ruffed downy feathers

and the memory of those who died

when a raccoon struck.

Her writer's cottage matches the elements

as she unrolls a hand-painted birthday card,

bright colors celebrating her parents and sister,

son and grandchildren.

She is not ignorant of lynchings or false elections

but continues to grow her winter plumage,

brushing her big dog when snow comes down

and the White Leghorn scratches his yellow claw

as the groggy cat returns to a nap.

2.

These are life and death matters

though they seem domestic

with wood and hens,

a birthday in the snow.

A man froze out in the woods

fifty years ago,

his arms full of frostbite and the struggle

facing a storm below zero, holes in his boots.

The sheriff did not find him till spring

when the snow melted and his gloves were found.

No one knew his name.

She knows that story like the back of her hand,

translated with veins and a few age spots.

She cherishes her family and her animal friends,

clearing out the path in winter

to make a clear road all the way home.

WITH HIS INDENTATIONS

He carved the stick with his indentations,

offering it to the child in the village of cobblestones,

made love to her mother secretly

before the war lined up men in trenches

like jacks to be tossed in the wind.

Sharp-minded in business,

his instincts were stronger still

as he followed desire by its hot flames

into his lady's heart

though her radiance dissolved

when the howitzers struck

and tunnels buried the men alive.

What was her smile, how did you

spell her name?

The men thought about cups of tea, instead.

The underground was plundered,

a teacup's Delft pattern shattered.

They wore helmets with lamps attached

to survey the buried damage

as they wondered if there was any purpose

left before them at the tunnel's end.

Jeff Bagato

The Breech Birth of Democracy

Hello Kritos boy,

your pre-christian

milk eyes

sparkling like leaves

in the dawn

I can let the train just

bring me here to your

feet and waking up—

lacing sandal thongs

to Magna Carta, heliocentric

America and League of Nations—

to the nobodies

who never drowned

in stone, just

water or blood or air

These visions have a human reference point

Leave off—

Grow strong—

What hunger do you feel—

this you indulge;

my theory is that advertising

is not felt the same as

nutrient need or the want

to hold your tender love to your loins

and heart—over time you

can tell the hungers that fade

or are meant to change with

the winds of electronic glass and lights

the alien eye looks deep

into your soul and

sees nothing

kill this eye. Reward

the one that looks

in not blind

I am dreaming of the night I died

Out of House, Out of Home

There were times when her head

narrowed in and begged to crack,

pressure spilling out like a melon

under a hammer—

like sucking a piece of the sweet

red flesh to pull down her girdle

and take the demerol in her ass

voice seeping out like a wind

over ruins

under the sun it was easier

picking bananas with the world

closing into a tunnel of frosted light

Camilla spoke English to the nurse—

a language I will never

understand, but which chases

away my life, my husband,

my sons

a language I will never

understand

the cot was thin and she lay heavy there,

the curtain on rings

pulled around her like a shroud

the cross at her neck was never

less there—

I can die

at home just as easily

as here

All selections are copyrighted by their respective authors.

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YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2016 by Klaus J. Gerken.

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