Ways of Rebelling Ways of Rebelling
Who needs to be at peace in the world? It helps to be between wars, to die a few times each day to understand your father’s sky, as you take it apart piece by piece and can’t feel anything, can’t feel the tree growing under your feet, the eyes poking night only to find another night to compare it to. Whoever heard of turning pain into hummingbirds or red birds—haven’t we grown? What does it mean to be older? Maybe a house without doors can still survive a storm. Maybe I can’t find the proper way to rebel or damn it, I can’t leave. I want to, but you grow inside of me. And as I watch you, before I know it, I’m too heavy, too full of you to move. Maybe that’s what they meant when they said you shouldn’t love a country too much.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Nathalie Handal
Suet Suet
It turns out I was killing the birds. I gave them what they wanted, what they craved: suet packed with seeds, hung swinging on the sycamore with chains. Suet brought the downy, the bellied, brought small clinging birds from the sadness of the woods. It fattened them. It readied them for winter. But with spring came the melting world: too rich, too much weakened their bones. And snapped them. You were light as a whisper when you lay on me. I ran my fingers over your chest as though I were dressing you in air—the only clothes I would ever want on you. Still, the mockingbird wants it the most, diving at the other birds, driving them away, his gray black white reel of wings—so fierce, I can’t even take it back. I never knew he would be angry, this bird I’ve heard so much about, sung about in songs, the one I was supposed to buy my baby, the one who learned my baby’s cries. There’s sun on the porch and I want you so bad I think I might die. I have hurt you harder than anyone has ever. I don’t know what is right. I don’t know whose turn it is to beg, to cry, to be wronged, to be wanted. All I know is when you lay down on me, I felt no weight. And when you touched my breasts, they began to weep. And when I said I was sorry, sorry, I am so so sorry, you lowered your head to my chest and drank.
May 15, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Alison Stine
Penzance Penzance
What if only your rich friends are beautiful? What if only they have exotic varieties of hydrangeas? It’s so quiet you can hear a Prius A cup of tea with a gauzy helix of steam above it Floppy hats, identical bags in several colors Somali brownish gray maxi dresses with shadows in folds instead of patterns Bees drop onto inconspicuous green flowers Giraffe markings tattooed on a shoulder I’ve seen that expression before It doesn’t take long for it to decide to flee
Apr 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Joel Sloman
What Did Clausen See What Did Clausen See
What did Clausen see in the sky? Probably no one will ever know. He flew in all excited from the garden (where he had been weeding carrots) and pointing to the clouds exclaimed: There, there! I asked him: Would you like a drink? But he, with a wild look in his eyes, just kept repeating: There, there! He wouldn’t respond to anything. Later he was taken to an insane asylum. (His furniture ended up on the auction block.) What did Clausen see in the sky? Probably no one will ever know. (translated from the Polish by Piotr Gwiazda)
Mar 13, 2013 / Books & the Arts / Grzegorz Wróblewski
Instructions From Lazarus Instructions From Lazarus
Having risen from the bed, after the ability to stand had been re-established, the gait still adjusting to the shifts of the body’s weight, I found myself in front of the streaked mirror in the hospital room. The halo was dull in that light, almost brushed in appearance. How saintly of me to wear a halo? I wanted a narrator to say: Here, he models the latest headwear, the finest in German engineering. But James Earl Jones was apparently unavailable. The pins buried in my skull looked like a nautical device of some kind. But there were no journeys for me to take, just a bed and a room. My nurse’s name was Zar, short for Lazarus. Of course his name was Lazarus. It fits with the theme of this whole thing. Zar said take it easy, said move slowly and think about each step as if you are learning to walk. But one doesn’t think about each step when learning to walk. We rise, we fumble, we shuffle, we fall. The wings, buried (thankfully) were just an itch between my shoulder blades, a slight tug on the muscles depending on the way I moved. Each night I prayed to make it out of the hospital before the wings made themselves known again.
Jan 30, 2013 / Books & the Arts / C. Dale Young
written on a paper bag written on a paper bag
clover flowers fleck to dirt withered ferns nuzzle furl plaid oak leaf mossy incline eaten leaf pinholes slunk rotted hemlocks crocus or lily-like leaves eclipse pond’s methane edges autumn drunken yellow jackets bees and reeds birch branch in beige sand wind peaks prods flower shadows wobble pronged bobbing filaments
Dec 31, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Jess Mynes
Back Back
Chuang Tzu asked the skull: what do you want? The skull said: to be rushing among all those who seem still tumbling from bed, to shower, to street, to work, hair still wet. The river wind must feel even fresher for them, a cold crown to their thoughts, as they marvel at the day’s news about minerals found on meteorites… I want to be, the skull said, back in New York.
Dec 5, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Donahue
Indian Song Indian Song
The stone is hard The stamen & pistil of this flower yet wild yet near The city street is dark This hand, these lips The stone is hard the city street dark The wild woodlands break out open upon the subterranean plains yet wild yet near The city is dark
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo
Untitled Untitled
All winter the leaves stay on this ground the sun The rake, the hoe the furrows the moon All winter embodies The ashes Working insects beneath
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo
Hidden Bird Hidden Bird
Song birds enter the morning the pre-dawn before the fires, you know, when the night floats away like vapor on a lake, or like kisses in the woods. Songs that even creation might not remember. Continuous, threaded, as if a cherry pit were stuck in the throat to produce the trumpet of the branches. So varies, yet never, changing through all the days, since reptiles fell to earth. I give up the reason for the sound I give up the creature of sound and the creator of the creatures and of us and of dawn and air and of vacuum and human inhumanity. I give up the song. I give up the place
Nov 20, 2012 / Books & the Arts / Joseph Ceravolo