Archive
Translations
I. Fear
bleating….broken….bare boned
skin held together with epoxy…..with ligatures
what wants to pull apart when the body is no longer of service
what falls into disuse as soon as blood stops circulating
(the mass spread before we could catch it
we’re sorry
maybe you need some time alone
here’s someone you can call
they should be able to assist you)
II. Isolation
lament for the ICU
lament for the gathering sky
lament for masturbation
lament for holidays
lament for morphine
lament for making no sense
lament for aphasia
III. Choking Hazards
swollen tongue….cotton rags
too many syllables in the throat
breath held in the chest….fluid into lungs
medical implements used for the going-over
IV. The Body
what has gone unnoticed for years
what has given us no reason to complain
where is the ripcord….the safety manual
why can’t the dismissal be temporary
the weight of weight
final acts….an untidy separation
V. Removal
before going under
we all laugh the drunken laugh
of the soon to be sliced open
Winter Cedars
These solitary things —
……………………………wretched statues
……….fragments
…………………………….of the waxing moon
For all this to happen
…………………………….becoming landscape
myself
………………….my mouth
in prayer
………………….To attach myself
ghostly…….terrible
………………………….to the tall cedars
by Jeffery Beam
Between Season
Spears of new jonquils push through black
mulch beside sweet-green hair of garlic,
nets of shivering rosemary and sage,
leafless stalk of a prickly old climber.
I turn a palm of dark crumbling winter
leaves into damp soil, mix in crushed eggshells,
coffee grounds dried in a ceramic bowl
from a week of mornings. In the latent
garden ferns send furry runners under
cover to network with iris tubers,
bulbous elephant ears, blind-white onions.
If I poke the lean edge of my trowel
into earth, decaying smells of birthing
rise from what lies beneath that skin to mine.
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November Impatiens
Frozen/thawed,
they dangle from a large
porch planter’s edge,
yesterday pinks and reds heaped
high after long summer, mild fall, delayed
cold, reduced overnight to nothing, no twinge
of color left, limp stems you cringe,
coming and going, to glimpse, but once inside,
forget. My father calls to say
my mother is in the hospital, knee
given out three hundred
miles away; morphine-tongued, she babbles later about my
broken-legged father’s meal delivery schedule, my brother’s anger, my
husband, out of town again.
by Wendy Vardaman
Last of December
Cottonwood flames, cherry parallels fire —
out of the crack and hinge, quiet whistle
over the grate: a comfort to know the dead sing
even as they pass into the new year.
by Todd Davis
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Cracks
In the week that winter
yields to spring, the last snow seeps
into the saggy-doored garage, between wide foundation gaps,
through unevenly settled concrete plates, mixing there
with leaves left by late November:
fall sediment that dries, shrinks, then swells and steeps
as thaw replaces freeze, requiring lapsed
rituals of broom and rake, soap and wipe. I clear
a path to reach my sleeping bike;
extract a stack of dingy plastic chairs, once white;
excavate the dog’s ripe backyard waste,
look for crocus, daffodil, lilac
that shoot up and open in a blink; debate whether we ought
to risk geraniums yet; watch for signs of the buried-last-fall cat, heaved back.
by Wendy Vardaman
Grand Station
Pigeons pick mites from wings,
perch on rivets, shelter of steel,
provide a warm animal smell,
and the shadow of the bridge
and the gurgling of their throats
makes me feel, just for one moment, I’m home
in the barn, before it burned down.
But I’m not; I’m an urban girl now.
I see bottlecaps bent back
and rusted; old beer glass, clouded and green —
this is the jade of a jaded city.
Thistle, its blooms so soft, so rough.
From the dust on the grass I know
I am home.
by Colleen McKee
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qarrtsiluni 