Not the sheet of paper rolled into a tight cone,
dipped into a paste of flour and water,
sharpened against a scrap of emery board.

But one that waits patiently to be folded.
The one crumbled up into a ball, or dancing, like
those sheets of paper observed by the first aviators
revolving in the currents of clouds.

Aye Luna, goddess of paper, unroll your mantle:
did you not glisten the skin of my first love
just before her mother came home
from the graveyard shift at Can-Co
and I slipped out the window, seen only
by you and the paperboy?

No, not the spear made of paper, flicked
from a notch in a pencil between prison bars,
across tiers and ramp ways, the one
that can pierce a man’s heart.

Without significance, wet paper in the rain.
The birth certificate, the death certificate,
the warrant, the summons, the sealed orders.

I want that sheet of paper slipped under a door
at midnight, that code invisible to all but candle flame.

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Richard Garcia is the author of The Persistence of Objects from BOA Editions. His poems have recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Georgia Review and Crazyhorse.

What do you see?
A woman falling into water.
What color is the water?
The color of Monday.

A woman falling into water.
She is naked — stark — her hair
the color of Monday.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.

She is naked — stark — her hair
nothing like leaves in spring.
She, like Ophelia, needs flowers.
Buds refusing to open

nothing like leaves in spring
Stems on her seashell hat
with buds refusing to open.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset

pokes out from under her seashell vest.
The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Her Fredricks of Hollywood corset —
too much mercury, unwanted guests.

The naked water polo was a bust, she said.
Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Too much mercury, unwanted guests.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.

Drowning on Thursday, she scolds the dogs.
Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Resigned to headaches, like an angel she dives in.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.

Victoria’s Secret hottie wears a clamshell teddy.
Lace laps at the shores of her hedge fund.
Goldfish swirl around her day-of-the-week panties.
What color is the water? The color of Monday.

by the Long Table Poets: Helen Brandenburg, Richard Garcia, Barbara Hagerty, Kit Loney, Susan Meyers, Deborah Lawson Scott, Katherine Williams, and Joe Zealberg

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Process notes

Richard Garcia writes:
This pantoum was composed at a class one evening at my house. Each student had a page from a collage novel by Max Ernst, A Week of Kindness. We also wrote the pantoum as a kind of exquisite corpse. The paper was folded so each student could only see the preceding stanza. To keep busy while each student worked on their section they were also writing a separate draft of their poem in any style they wished.

Eighty-three words leap from their horses. Eighty-three words all lie down, each bearing a sign on their chest. One forgot his hat, one forgot a feather. Not words, but Little Big Horn battle re-enactors at a sushi restaurant. No wonder they were confused — how can a horn be little and big at the same time? A man sitting beside me turned to face me. Can you lower your voice, he said. Surprise, he was my deceased father dressed up as Crazy Horse, that dandy.

There are times a man has to choose between a feather and a bullet. My father told me this. I’ve made a list of all the things he told me that were important, and this is first. Strange as it seems, there are eighty-three things on the list and he died on his eighty-third birthday, eighty-three days after my mother passed. There’s no explanation for this. Yesterday I was dismayed to discover my car is parked eighty-three steps from my front door.

In numerology eighty-three stands for eternity-and-a-half. They say Crazy Horse was late for the battle of Little Big Horn because he kept changing his outfits. Finally he had it right, his cream buckskins with the red and yellow tassels. At the end of each tassel, a crow feather. His braves, who had been waiting impatiently, were relieved to see him come out of his teepee. At that very moment in eternity, my father came out of the bathroom in the sushi restaurant.

When Crazy Horse died, eighty-three braves, in war colors with long headdresses of eagle feathers, danced around his body. The history of eighty-three, written on the back of a sushi menu in downtown Los Angeles is memorized by each sushi chef. That’s what I love about eighty-three, the color, the history. The only other number with a comparable story is one hundred and eleven. Yes, one hundred and eleven. But there is so much heartbreak there it makes me sob to tell.

by Rick Bursky and Richard Garcia

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Process notes

Richard writes:
Rick Bursky and I conceived this in a sushi restaurant. Some of the narrative comes from the local scene and our conversation at the meal. We decided to write alternate prose poem sections containing 83 words each and the word feather. I was intrigued by how seamless the sections were. One of the challenges was sticking to our “rules” but keeping each section fresh. It was fun and we are planning to try it again soon.

The bear did not return as he had promised. Parachutes bloomed and drifted silently into the darkness of that moment just before sleep, nodding as if in agreement.

It was then that the boy remembered there were three things he was supposed to remember. Did one go this way, or was it that way?

Maybe one got lost like the soldiers returning from the war and entering the wrong houses. But they were close, the houses were almost like their own houses. They recalled towers in flames, torn banners dangling from minarets.

But still, the bear did not return. Sometimes the boy could sense him in the rustle of leaves at the edge of the forest. He imagined him standing against a tree in a clearing, waiting for silence, for attention, as if he were about to tell a story.

The bear did not return as he had promised, so the child never left the cottage. Never Left the Cottage became his name — that’s what the hunters called him. Never spoke, never answered, although sometimes he did hop about the room like a sparrow on the grass, a tiny sparrow about to take flight.

Someday he would remember and tell them about The Three: three ways at the crossroads, three words to say or not to say, or maybe which three stars to follow.

They noticed that when light came into the room, not just daylight, but a beam with spirals of dust suspended in it like a diagram, the child welcomed it like an old friend, and moved his lips, silently.

The bear did not return as he had promised, so the child never left the cottage. The tree refused to grow.

Grandmother decided to cut it down. She swung her axe into its bark and it bled. Grandmother decided to leave the tree alone.

The boy dreamt that he was the only one who knew the answer to the riddle: the bear, the cottage, the tree. Or was it the stars, the crossroads, the words?

He set off to find where everyone had gone. When he looked back, it seemed the tree was much taller.

by Richard Garcia

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The masks on the wall remember everything:
how the tube of cortisone bobbed on the ocean,
and skidded off the back of a tortoise,
how the water in the Mexican, blue glass pitcher
beat to the same tempo as the table, and the table legs
were in touch with other table legs, deep in the earth.

And then there was the night of unsigned checks
flying through the air, settling on coffins
waiting to be buried. The next morning chocolate mints
arrived from the Andes. No one knew who sent them
but they were devoured eagerly. Even the dog
took mints to the ferret under the porch.

The author of the book on the table smiled.
He had posed for the picture and the book was published
with blank pages. Even now, the author
tried to look intelligent, thoughtful, kind, deep,
yet approachable—and though no longer young,
slightly dangerous to attractive women. He smiled

and kept smiling, for this was the moment the book
received its title, the moment the reader, O pale apothecary,
turned the pages with a wet finger, and the pages of the book,
all by themselves, were filling up with words.

by Richard Garcia

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