Pruning the Agaves

 

A comet of freeze slams our backyard white—

 

shuts ants in their tunnels, locks bile

in the ducts, blocks with ice her portal vein

 

makes succulents messy puppets

stretched yellow against the snow.

 

Before the freeze their heads were fierce spires

with time to hoist their cymes of yellow flowers.

 

Now she’s hoarse with shrieking, I hear her

between the blows of my shovel, into the rot

 

I slosh my blade, she fades, is that

our phone ringing? is it Houston? do they

 

have a liver? is the jet on the way?

I keep hauling agaves to the dumpster,

 

they smell of tequila and vomit, yellow ooze

stains my gloves. Suzanne stalls on the threshold,

 

says, spring is coming, but it’s not to us

the promise of spring is made.

~

This poem was originally published in Staley’s debut collection Lost On My Own Street.

 

Read more "POETRY: TIM STALEY – PRUNING THE AGAVES"

The Act of Canning Tomatoes 

 

“Good to see you alive.”

 

“You too.”

 

“How are you?”

 

Well, plugging away at least.

Sometimes I even forget you are out there.

I get a rush at your name then anger all over again,

then just sad…

It’s called:

Settling.

Deciding.

Replacing thoughts.

I go to work,

working on talking to me, preserving me.

It reminds me of the labor of tomato canning:

 

Boiling water to remove skin, the squeeze to remove seeds, sanitizing lids and jars,

sweating over the stove, burning fingers, packing the tomatoes tight.

Testing, tapping to assure the seal.

Being the bacteria slayer.

Unpacking rubies to the mudroom shelves….

Unpacking my life,to assemble, store, once more.

Killing bacteria is hard stuff.

I am resolved for this minute, this second, this hour,

to cut, scald, juice, seal,and hot water bath can.

It is called Self Preservation.

 

“I am fine.”

“And you?”

 

Read more "POETRY: Barbara A Meier – The Act of Canning Tomatoes"

Galilee

Early sun yawning,
stretched out rays,
light show sparkles at water’s edge
do you love me?

Wooden vessel,
safely sand-wedged
nets bulge while stomachs ache
do you love me?

Fish, skewered
on an open flame,
glazed-out charred eyes, blackened skin
do you love me?

Pass the pieces,
chew the flesh,
feed them, feed them,
do you love me?

Now older, withered,
led by another,
belts and chains and murder
do you love me?

Read more "POETRY: ANTON ROSE – GALILEE"

Good Work Is Hard To Find

One clown shy of a circus,
the noose tightening . . .

Maybe I could sell pamphlets
or forge a career in whale-watching.
Maybe I can tune engines for a living
or find work looking up at the sky.

My last position was awkward
and difficult to maintain.
My last job was painting the centuries,
examining leavings,
setting alight broken-up furniture.

I’ve had more jobs than hot dinners.
Apprentice shoeshine boy.
Glove-buffer. Sentence-finisher.
The guy who sweeps up after the elephants.
I’ve been employed to watch ditches.
A paperclip-maker. Tambourine jockey.
Professional time-filler-inner.

And you go where the work is.
Tierra del Fuego’s seedy underside.
The slums of Alaska.
Half way in and out of the Atlantic tide.

Once I built some private hells,
but no one would buy them.
I was a part-time cat-walker. A full time fool.
The inventor of thumbless mittens.
I’ve gone down for a penny and stopped on a dime.
In this down-sizing economy
I admit my thoughts have turned to crime.
Shooting the breeze. Stealing breaths. Killing time.
I’ve taken courses in lobotomies.
I’ve attended janitor university.
Learned to cut grass by correspondence.

And you know those ads on matchbook covers?
I wouldn’t answer them.

Read more "POETRY: BRUCE MCRAE – GOOD WORK IS HARD TO FIND"

 

Before the Crying

One last one

Before the crying

Must be soothed

By either of us.

One about your feet

Now plump and weighted.

 

How small they were then, wrapped in bags,

Summer sloshing through the snow.

We wandered together.

Searching for an open pharmacy.

A trek duly and subconsciously

influence by your Quakerism

 

And my Catholicism.

The sentimentalist in me

Would take your swollen feet

Indefinitely, to have more time,

To savor this, because I fear I didn’t

do it well enough when in bags.

Read more "POETRY: Philip Rafferty – Before the Crying"

Jen Escapes the Ruins in Austin, Collin Will Follow

I found these handwritten notes
sent by a woman named Jen
to a man named Collin

In them Jen acknowledges
the two of them as “poets” and talks
of the importance of
handwriting (it is close to speech)
and imagines that Collin
feels the same about his typewriter

Eh. . . . there is a little reminiscence
about a party, a little filament
about some vague romance,
repeated mentions of vodka and
“drunken poetry talks”

Jen describes her failure to
harness a strange,
abstract voice,
is finding it hard to beat away
the locals’ influence

Says there is a lot
of poetry ahead for both of them,
they are, after all,
young

Well, Jen,
Collin,
drink in your own
rooms away from your peers

After the conversation has died down
and the last cigarette has burned,
open the notebook up

Cut back on the letter writing
and write more poetry

Pack your luggage and get
out of dodge, avoid a
trip into stark perdition
because I suspect

your final tally of conversations,
and smokes, and drinks, and levitating
parties, and grandstand speeches – will
greatly outnumber and overwhelm
your poetry

Read more "POETRY: BROC RIBLET – JEN ESCAPES THE RUINS IN AUSTIN, COLLIN WILL FOLLOW"