Excerpts from Issue 42
Two Stars
Last night two shooting stars scratched
brief paths across the New Mexico sky.
On the first I wished better vision for my sister,
on the second better poetry for myself.
Those stars were strong.
This morning the paper twitches toward an origami crane,
the keyboard chimes, my old black chair strains
to gallop across the meadow and clamber
to the mesa top.
I hope to God my sister doesn't
wake up, open her eyes, and burn
a hole in her husband's sleeping back.
Tim Amsden
Aunt Ethel, Please
Aunt Ethel, please tell them you're not confused.
You know who you are and that you live
on the tenth floor of Westlake Christian Terrace.
I know you're 92 and this is hard, but please
tell them I'm your niece and you're my mother's twin,
born on Perry Hill in Acushnet, Massachusetts,
not New Bedford, as my mother always said.
You're in the hospital, but you're not sick.
The problem is you don't know what day it is.
You look in the bathroom for milk and cheese
and swear that cake is ham and peas are bread.
Tell them you married Richard Hallam,
a Navy man, on Bastille Day in 1948,
that you played bingo with him every week
at the Officers' Club at Alameda Naval Air Station
and he made delicious stews and chocolate cakes.
"Did you finish your ice cream?" you ask.
"I hope you saved some for the little girl,"
but there's no ice cream here, no little girl.
Aunt Ethel, I want to take you back
to your apartment decked with knick-knacks
and greeting cards collected through the years,
but the doctors think you're too confused
to be alone. I don't want to leave you here,
all hunched and small. Please sit as straight
as you can and tell them tea is tea, the food
too bland. Do it for me. Tell me who I am.
Lucille Lang Day
LISTEN to Breathe by Sandra L. Jones
Admittances
When I grow weary
of the ceaseless prattle
of my brain-sealed
mind-talk, the inner
play-by-play man/
color commentator who
never lets the action
speak for itself, I
split off, stand away,
become the benign,
vigilant watcher
of the entity named
Skip Renker, who hurtles
or plods through his days,
his mind uttering
sloppy approximations
of things, of himself,
but who walked down
a corridor of pines
this morning, hearing
the wind and nothing else
for a moment, and later
kissed someone and fully
meant the give and take
of touch that admits
the utterly familiar other,
split like him, yet one, too.
Skip Renker
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continue to Issue 43: Winter 2007
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