AMERICA
Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth.
Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
Giving me strength erect against her hate,
Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
Yet, as a rebel fronts a king in state,
I stand within her walls with not a shred
Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
And see her might and granite wonders there,
Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
Claude McKay, 1921
Shenandoah Literary
IN THIS DREAM
They’re here!
I rip the package,
pull sheer stocking over toes, ankle, shin,
beyond the line where prosthesis extends my leg.
This hosiery will animate prosthetic limbs,
transform molded resin into skin,
skirts soon fluttering along my thighs
as I skip on these feet,
attract with these calves,
no longer rolling on wheels or
hiding my legs from pitying stares.
I will be normal.
Yet as I examine my stockinged leg,
I discover the turquoise seam
marking the boundary of prosthesis and flesh.
Deformed, dependent, tricked by desperate hope,
I fold and cry, knowing I’ll never look or walk like others.
Perched on a nearby boulder, my Soul-body marvels
at the powerful wings unfurling from between my hunched
shoulders, grief shrouding me from their luminous tips
as they rise toward the sun.
Thank you to the editors ofriverbabble for first publishing this poem.
Do you scuttle lithely sand and stone,
peek out from rocks through half-shut lids
while others' hands are clasped in dance
beneath the bone-white crescent slit?
Are your eyes autonomous,
right darts to lips and left to toes;
as softer flesh sips steamed orgeat
do you watch the spoon, the ankles cross?
Do you begin each day with push-ups
then shield yourself from sun in shade;
when threatened do your muscles flex,
your speech reduce to a chortling hiss?
Do others comment, How cold your hands,
how dry your skin? Do you dream of
grasshoppers sweet in your mouth, or
screaming wake from the jaws of a snake?
Thank you to the editor of Something Like Homesickness: A Zapizdat Poetry Anthology for first publishing this poem.
COMMUNION
Dividing an elementary class into
boys on one side
girls on the other
invites each to imagine the other group has
cooties! cooties! cooties!
and leaves each vulnerable to those who thrive on power
yet united, we eliminate disease, produce
thriving meccas of cultural exchange,
launch ourselves through the universe….
If you think you’re invulnerable to ads and rhetoric,
think about a lemon—
thrust your teeth through thick
yellow skin to release zest’s
zinging scent and swallow
tart
puckering
juice.
That saliva now beading your gums is stimulated from the reptilian
brain targeted by an arsenal of ads and six-second sound bites that
riddle information till deception sounds like truth, our sanctity
plundered by those who weave their children in the woof of power
while snipping out poor to be fodder for war.
Girls-boys, red-blue, hick-elite, white-colored, gay-straight…
I can keep going since division perpetuates itself and
blinds us to our need to be touched and to touch
for we are not spiders, autonomous from birth, but must be suckled
once the thin film of mucus is wiped from our mouths;
if we didn’t thrive on touch our exterior would be hardened shell
rather than this overlay of neural sensors telling us when to swat,
run, rest, embrace
the Pleiades in every cell,the bell, the smile, the knife—
yet the nourished thrive amid those with hunger that
sinks skin between bones as the body
digests its own flesh to survive—
this inequity perpetuated through our mad divisions—
yet madness is tricky. We think of it as
moon howling
running naked through streets
invisible companions
but true madness skulks where plans are laid
to destroy this planet many times over
as if this could be done more than once
as if this is the best use of our lives
madness in the reverent joy of orchestrating Armageddon
as if some are connected
and others not
madness in numbing ourselves to suffering
in ways that cause more suffering
but before squaring off into us and them
remember glass houses
and heal thyself
for unraveling the madness of this world begins with me.
It begins with you.
Yet how do we wrap around the odd ones, the violent ones,
the ones who’d sooner slit a throat than say hello?
I know only that we start with kindness and cherishing
the children we create for they are our future, inheritors,
providers, while we are holy catalysts for communion.
If we choose to eliminate hunger, rein in our mad greed for power,
cherish this blue planet’s miraculous life, what force could shatter
our bond for each life is no more than kidney, cell, atom,
of the same body coalesced from stars and seas—
dust to sky to ocean to algae to fish to bird to human,
we are one being
the Pleiades in every cell,the bell, the smile, the knife—why not live as if we chose this sacred life?
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
LAST DAYS OF WINTER
War settles like dust for there is no other side
when winds blow particles from Sudan to
Hiroshima to icy rivers that wild coho
struggle against to lay their bright eggs.
On the first day of the first war declared in this century
the Asian Art Museum opens its doors with stilt-walkers
dressed as emperors and geishas, and with musicians
from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, for music and art
transcend transient politics and borders. Even
the museum’s map of Asia’s Buddhist centers
proclaims Tibet’s sovereignty within China’s
yawning border. Across the street a demonstration
swells before City Hall to protest a war
veiled in an amalgam of virtue, misinformation
and covert interests.
Something ghostlike transforms this city.
While most stores close, in others clerks
focus like compulsive-obsessives just
to get through the day and homeless
walk the streets as if San Francisco’s
sole inhabitants. One woman, hair
plaited with a plethora of mismatched
ribbons mirroring her clothes, crosses
against red. She zigzags mostly between
the yellow lines while drivers remain
uncharacteristically patient as if
acknowledging the difficulty of accepting
war without dissolving in a despair that
threatens one’s ever-transient
connection with life.
Within these museum’s walls images of Buddha,
Bodhisattvas, White Tara embody prayers for all
sentient beings and symbolize compassion,
wisdom, the acceptance of suffering, as well as
our ability to skillfully control rather than be
controlled by our mad-wraith desires.
It’s no longer a matter of us versus them,
good versus evil. We are all messengers of God
and we are all godless. Energy is neither created
nor destroyed. All those who have lived and
don’t yet live share our bodies through the food
we eat, the air we breathe, the cells that ferociously
regenerate throughout our lives. Prayer wheels
fill these halls with unbound intent that passes
through the walls, the streets, the world: may all
beings be healthy, may all beings be happy,
may all beings live in peace.
SIMULTANEITY
When you touch me—I am
breath rather than a woman breathing.
One thousand wings, a single beat,
split sky with summer rain.
Breath rather than breathing
fills the empty glass.
Split sky with summer rain
to reveal horses carved in stone.
Fill the empty glass
with wine of roses, lilac, heather;
reveal horses carved in stone
but not hands that formed their symmetry.
With wine of roses, lilac, heather,
toast grass that fractures concrete blocks
but not hands that formed the symmetry
of streets concealing streams.
Toast grass that fractures concrete blocks
beside the woman reaching towards you;
on streets concealing streams
she begs for food, shelter beyond grasp.
There is a woman reaching towards you;
her face is old, possessions few,
as she begs for food, shelter beyond grasp,
and I see you, I see myself within her mask.
Her face is old, possessions few;
she came to laugh—she came to love,
and I see you, I see myself within her mask
reflecting how the earth breathes.
We came to laugh—we came to love;
one thousand wings, a single beat
reflecting how the earth breathes
when you touch me.
Drape
Me in
Crimson rOse petals,
garnets,
coraL,
RuBies
and feed me
dragon's Blood,
cherries,
straWberries,
plums,
salmon,
meRlot
then make me
glow,
flush,
blush,
BlooM
till I'm
Rubeous,
carneLian,
verMilioN
as ScarLet hummingbirds
SOAR from our
Mad
voRacious
heartS.
Thank you to the editor of Absinthe Revival for first publishing this poem.
Love’s a hitchhiker, so innocent in its leap that it doesn’t register torn seats or sunroofs but simply hears Come on in and feels that smile like a warm winter breeze,
but relationships are rarely so simple: the car must be washed repaired, replaced and trips planned and changed with the frequency of newborns’ diapers amidst increasing conflict till compromise shatters like a windshield at eighty against the centennial oak
but love, love’s not so complicated—once stripped of metal and fuel it shimmers naked, senses open to sky and skunk, blizzards and vistas, and is never
blind but radiant as a star and enigmatic as a body after the heart’s final beat.
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
beneath surgery-bright restaurant lights was the unspoken
collusion of employees and patrons to ignore the bone-defined
man as he tapped thin-paned glass to beg for food.
He shoved skeletal hands toward his gaping mouth as if to fill the gnawing
we could not imagine while digesting pasta and merlot rather than
our muscles to survive as this man’s body had, his hollowed face
pled as he mimed across the chasm of language, culture, class.
After the waiter returned our leftovers, snug in Styrofoam,
I took them across the restaurant, my legs heavy beneath
reproach’s hypnotic weight from those unwilling to squander
etiquette’s rules that insure our warmth while others freeze.
Through my breath outside, I saw him accept a dollar from two
spike-heeled women as they scuttled from a bar across the street,
yet money’s a tool for future trade, no immediate relief for a churning gut.
Drunk with hunger, he wavered in the crosswalk till a horn startled him
to the curb. Waving, I caught his eye, offered the bright box. Our eyes
locked yet he wouldn’t move, suspended in a code more compelling than
starvation, a code older than the south and dangerous as asphyxiation.
Cloaked in privilege, I left our paltry leftovers on the bus stop bench
and returned to the interior’s glare, each of us visible through glass walls.
He sprinted across the street, gulped what would have been tomorrow’s lunch, threw away the box, and returned to the window beside us.
He smiled, waved, tried to thank me, but I saw him only peripherally,
embarrassed to accept gratitude for so little before he walked away.
Thank you to the editors of decomp magazine who first published this poem.
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 