Brenda Bellinger

Terminus (a pantoum)
 
Unfinished business gathers dust and waits
Television commercials demand attention
His weak, withered hand reaches for the remote
His eyes close tightly in response to pain

Television commercials demand attention
The swamp cooler drones and telephone rings
His eyes close tightly in response to pain
A social worker will come by with paperwork

The swamp cooler drones and telephone rings
After morphine, I see his muscles relax
A social worker will come by with paperwork
Coughing interrupts the ticking of the clock

After morphine, I see his muscles relax
He watches as I connect his feeding tube
Coughing interrupts the ticking of the clock
Sweat pools in hollows and folds of his skin

He watches as I connect his feeding tube
His weak, withered hand reaches for the remote
Sweat pools in hollows and folds of his skin
Unfinished business gathers dust and waits

Tricia Knoll

Bleached Prayer Flags
 
Today stuttered at faded white cotton prayer flags
over the garden gate. Children’s hands
colored them with fabric pens.
Summer bleached them into ghost messages

to plants growing fine without aphorisms.
Perhaps I saw the faded faces of bees.
Bees of the doorway. Behind the flags, red spires
of amaranth and a wheelbarrow of gourds.

I lived to see the harvest of the seed.
Now I hang a line in my studio. A thin black wire
for small banners from rice paper and glue, snipped photos
from magazines, trimmed words like wood cuts.

They will not fade, nor tease me with Tibetan.
Done with one, hang another with tiny laundry clips.
When prayer goes dry and weathered,
wash and wring out another.

Yes, first the bees. Then smartphone photos of rudbeckia,
pearly everlasting and echinacea, spreading welcome
mats in the front garden. Next gray whales ride
the line with waves, blown surf and silenced sonar.

No forgetting what hung up last week, the week before
when fall dryness came, aging that turns
the skin to leather, tough and scaled
begging for herb creams named for fairies.

When prayers dry up like a leaf
and decide to leave the tree,
a flag of gold dropped
dropped from the memory string.

Carol Barrett

Esther Takes in a Stray Cat
 
Abandoned like you to a fever of sand, I begged
the wind. The wind sent nothing back to mother, mother.
When the sand had done with stinging, it was my name
carried on the wind’s back. Cousin Mordecai took me in.
Empty of sleep, I let go the dead for the mirage of laughter,
a round of bread. Now this, my cousin’s hairbrush
runs the long bone of your spine, taming another
wild mane, lair of gold, downy side up on this old brace
of knees. My mother’s wedding sash played my waist –
the frayed rainbow you bat above the bed.
So I learned the grainy ways of this world,
a woman’s gait, a man’s fixed meter. You too
will learn the palace grounds, and because
you are the Queen’s kitten, not be disallowed.
For I will yet use what I have for a thing of good,
I will bend my purpose. Orphaned strangers
to court, we fathom deeds stranger than this.
I broke the King’s rule, escaped my death,
this to guard a nation’s breath. You who could not
deign your future, dared, alone and scruffy,
confront a Queen. Such an entrance, yes!

So be my Cactus Flower, the joy I wake to
when chamber curtains blow like sand through hands
that once held absence like a stone. Here give chase
to wing, the moth that enters, uninvited, the lamp oil
light of night. When thirst rebounds, lap from a petaled
bowl of hyacinths. Feast days I will slip you a rummy
sliver of pheasant, three morsels of fish, a dab
of the soft brain of a lamb. We will make of loss
a sacred thing, the waiting room of royalty. Cactus Flower,
come be King here, scarved and belled. One hundred
wives will kneel before you, clatter castanets above
your crown. When evening brings their jasmine palms,
hear their moosh, moosh quell the wind. Lift your ringed
tail high and hum. For what does one need to call a place
home, but a name, a slab of stone warm in the sun,
and a stray old cheek for that sweet cactus tongue?

Nan Rush

The Sad Women
 
The sad women go to Zesto’s
on a hot summer Sunday
and order plain hamburgers,
double, to go.
They sit and bask
in the air-conditioning
while the burgers cook.

The sad women wait for
their plain burgers and
remember the days when,
with zest, they licked and sucked
the sweat of their lovers
and felt their own sweat
trickle slowly down their sides
in the sticky summer heat.

Entwined with their lovers,
nothing was plain
but their love,
stark, bare,
the light through the windows
unmasking all
on those spicy summer Sundays
when food was the last thing
on their minds.

Lori Levy

Purple Yams
 
Our debts are magical: they keep growing and growing
like the beans Jack planted in his mother’s garden.
We, too, look for a castle in the sky,
but instead of a hen who lays golden eggs,
we glimpse the boot of the giant, stamping, crushing.

Another bill unpaid or paid partially or late.
The world shrinks to the size of a coin; my life,
the constant counting of what I have or don’t have.
I inhale scarcity, exhale scarcity.
It settles on my tongue, sharp as complaint.
Whines in my ears. Crawls like an itch along my skin.

So I borrow my son’s Discman and go to bed with a professor—
his voice soothing me, teaching me Mindfulness, Meditation.
Focus on your breath, he says. Observing without judging.
I close my eyes, pay attention to my breathing,
how it carries me away—to Stephanie, my son’s girlfriend.
To her laughter and her long, black hair. My breathing turns to
cocoa: I am sipping the Mexican hot chocolate
she made us one evening, cinnamon-flavored,
cool whip on top. And now I’m biting into
hopia, the Filipino pastries she buys for us,
flaky, filled with yams, purple yams. Ube.
I am savoring the sweetness, mesmerized by that purple,
how it lures me to meadows of iris and lavender; speaks to me
of amethyst. Of emperors in long robes.
Hopia, I murmur. Like a chant, a mantra. Hopia. Hopia.

I open my eyes. My husband lies beside me
in the semi-dark room, a spot of light on the wall
where the nightlight casts its glow.
I see purple in the shadows.

Eileen Malone

Sundowning
 
At the heel of every day, lighting in here goes
strange, as do our nursing home attendants
when we point to the bloodbath of a sunset
smashing itself onto our windows

there, there, they say, it’s not the end of the world
it is simply time for the daytime shift to go home
and the night shift to arrive, there is nothing to fear
what you have is a condition called sundown syndrome
swallow this pill, it will calm you

but the sun is bleeding itself to death sucking us
into its collapse, every sunset, every sundown
every end of every day, we swallow the pills
an old patient dies, a new patient arrives
the rest of us fall asleep in our chairs
the sun implodes, draws us closer.

Joanne Brown

Ode to American Communists
 
On the sidewalk soapbox in East Flatbush
my mother called out lines from leaflets
by the Young Communist League,
collar 
of her brown woolen coat
buttoned tight 
against the chill.
Some, hurrying home with herring,
sour pickles, sweet cream and strawberries,
stopped to listen as the sky grew dim
and haloed light from street lamps shone.

Workers Unite! And they did for a while
like bright coins in a purse make a dollar.
It had some good in it – at the steel and textile mills,
actors studios, government bureaus.
And there was a family feeling around the table
covered in red-checked oil cloth, set with borscht,
roast chicken, cole slaw, and coffee cake.

They were smart, they’d read Marx’s Manifesto.
They tossed their hot-potato opinions,
each in their own eyes scathingly correct,
but not heard by another for an instant
as their burning fists hit the table and my heart
leaped but could not find cover in its ribbed cage.

They took the Fifth Amendment, did not name names
though their jobs were at stake and there were children
to feed. Small ancillary soldiers, we sat at one end
of the table, eating our kugel in silence.
One of the hard-liners sat opposite me.
I looked in the mirror behind his head.
“Am I blocking your view?” he quipped.
Fifteen and not keen on dialectical materialism,
I’d been wondering if I was pretty.

When the sky grew dim, an army of fireflies arrived.
The boys tore off their pale lime lights
but I saved one in a jar. While the grownups expounded
their righteousness, I watched it light up, do what fireflies do –
warn away a predator, defend its territory, look for a mate.
But it was alone, apart from the others —
and the etching on the glass obscured its shining.

Jeanie Greensfelder

Red Cross Baby-Care Class, 1958
 
I pin a diaper on a naked doll and watch other
soon-to-be mothers smiling at their dollies.

The nurse corrects me: You’ll stab your baby.
You must point the pin away from its body.

Husbands stand, smoke, and laugh together.
Mine tells his barefoot and pregnant joke.

I never planned to be here, never wanted kids,
never held an infant. The nurse drones on

about burping, bathing, blanket wrapping,
baby’s floppy head, and why it might cry.

My doll stares at me—I’m back when I was six,
the day I ran to my room, grabbed my doll,

tore her clothes, yelled, yanked arms
and legs out of their sockets, tipped her head,

closing her eyes so she wouldn’t stare at me,
stupid baby with a pee-pee in the middle of her back.

Now, I want to cry.
I point my pin with care.

Catharine Clark-Sayles

Act 2, Scene 2
 
A poem will not change a diaper.
A poem will not catch a fish.
Having caught it,
a poem will not gut
and clean the fish
nor fry it crisp in oil.

In poems you can die of love
and die of its lack.
To write a poem is an act of love.
To read a poem is an act of love
unless it is an assignment
for eighth-grade English

where Mrs. Baker of the mustache
and jiggling arms
chalks the blackboard
with sentence diagrams
of Juliet’s speech mooning
over the balcony rail

for her Romeo; but somewhere
in that room of restless
fourteen-year-olds
one or two will reach through
the fence of subject/ verb,
the pickets of preposition

to find a few small words
that will fly into their ears
and inhabit with the exotic plumage
of meter and metaphor,
singing feathery songs
of what love might be.

And in the world
of diapers and frying fish
years go by
love comes and is lost
and a poem may stay
to hold it all.

Catherine McGuire

The Final Frontier
 
It’s hard convincing the control tower
that the mile marker says 60 –
this journey so treacherous
wasn’t rigged to reach 25.
Now the outer hull is dinged and creaky,
the pistons don’t pump like before,
extra oil to replace leaks
seems never to go far enough.
The windshield’s blurry –
smeared and dotted – the speakers crackle and fade.
The grappling hooks are clumsy; some glitch
in the wiring. Thrusters don’t, and landing gear
has lost the shock absorbers – the whole thing rattles
and just barely hangs together.
(And they say 60 is the new 40.)
The crew is still eager, though sleep-starved
and there must be more ahead
if we take it cautiously, protect the main engine,
slap a few patches on the sides…

Cynthia Hoffman

City Terrace, East Los Angeles, 1952
 
wooden stairs
weather worn
and steep
rise from the ground

beside
the sun baked
swirled stucco wall
high above the cellar

where gold
peaches and apricots
gleam in canning jars
above the dirt floor

the stairs end
at the splintered landing
the screened door open
to the service porch inside

standing in bare feet
on the worn linoleum
forehead mirrored
in sweat and steam

my mother leans
over the washboard
arms deep in a sink
of blue-gray water

her elbows plunge
and rise again like wings
ancient rhythm rubbing white
my father’s work shirts

Nancy Meyer

Undersides
 
You lie under a stand of Queen Anne’s Lace.
Five-foot tall ones, blooms held up to the sky
like candelabras. Look up
at their undersides. Light
pierces each floret, tattoos
your cheek, frilly.
Quiet, hear the bluster of bees.
If the ground is not too lumpy
under your spine, rest long enough
to inhale the astringent stalks
stroke their hairy length.

Maybe a friend lies with you, little
fingers touching along the sides,
palms sensing the first warmth
of the soil in spring.
Play along the rim of a fingernail.
Raise your clasped hands and sing
My Only Sunshine, just sing it
before you feel foolish.

Or tell stories
dizzying over and over
down grassy slopes until
you create a new world. Then
sit up, a happy sick swirl
back when
that sensation was fun.
Before you notice the itch
from the grass or mind
the stains on your shorts.

Lie here long enough
to contemplate why you don’t usually
lie
on the ground
under Queen Anne’s Lace.
Why not,
since you are happy now.
Just imagining it.

Bonnie Lyons

Dulcinea Tries to Comfort Don Quixote
 
Back then,
with my full breasts
lean hips and flat belly,
you loved my body
because it was beautiful.

Now when the downward
pull of gravity and the grave
have taken a little here
added a lot more there,
you can love my body only

because it is my body.
Absurdly unexpected as all
these predictable losses,
we enter the real
age of romantic love.

Hineni
 
What I want
is to say Hineni:
The three-in-one Hebrew word
(our verbal trinity)
meaning “Here I am” or
“I am here,”
even “I-here-am.”
The patriarchs’ answer to God’s question:
“Where are you?”
God must know where we are
so the question means
“Are you listening?
Are you present
attending
now and here?”
 
Endless ways of not being here
of being in the past
or the future
or so self-
divided as to be no place
No I.
Then there is no present.
Then the present is empty–or full
only of anxiety or boredom
 
Arriving in Vermont
I saw a sign:
“Moose Crossing”
and wasted days
looking for that awkward-adolescent creature.
Then one evening on the screens
huge pale green moths–lunas!
and smaller violet and lemon ones–
art deco dreams–
No burning bush
but their translucent wings and
cotton candy bodies whispered
“Look at, not for.”
Hineni.