Now all that we have seen can wait.
I’m a slow fire, burning out:
watching you.
You were always so careful.
What did you have to be so careful for?
What grace of the body
tired and waiting for the silver tongue
to sweep him awake
should rough you into waking
to hold my hand
curse the gods
hit the road
armed or unarmed
in song?
What grip is it
in your balls
to know the weapons I’ve kept
under your porch
under your tongue
and eyeballs
singing?
The House on the Hill
It was modest yet distinguished
Gleaming white clapboards three stories high,
Green shutters and a turn-off driveway
To the huge garage that you knew
Without being told used to be
A real carriage house.
They were regular people
Mowed their own lawn
Didn’t send their daughter away to school.
She went to the town school
With us regular guys, and if
Her clothes were a little better
It was so subtle even the girls
Couldn’t find a way to be put off.
What she saw in me I can’t imagine
But I had her first, in the back
Of her Dad’s station wagon
A dozen times,
Another dozen times.
And then she went with Preston
Told him she was a virgin.
We giggled together over that.
She was pregnant by one of us
I was sure at the time.
Now I’m a little less sure
But whatever, he did the right thing
And married her, white dress and all.
They settled down,
I went away,
And it was twenty years
Before I saw her again.
She had lost three babies in a row
And her pretty body
Was sixty pounds heavier.
Preston was out of work.
I didn’t know what to say.
This is life I guess
In a small town, probably
It’s life anywhere.
the santa fe trail
you can read maps by starlight
in places i’ve been
and you sleep like shit
off the mexican beer
and wake up covered in bites
in hotels where
life is impossible
and everything still alive
wants blood.
did you know what you wanted
at the taco truck in dale hart?
do you know that there’s a
whole country out there
that doesn’t care about new york?
i do now.
i might know everything now.
i’ve drank from the shallow creeks.
i’ve chewed the tacos rellenos with
fire still in the seeds.
i looked up for god and every grackle
in the tree followed my gaze.
next time i’ll follow the trails in the sand
and the small streams will lead me to the window rock.
or maybe the other way –
to lay down in a graveyard
where desert rats use cow skulls as ashtrays.
and if the rains ever come again
maybe white petals
will bud up from my bones
and a lost rabbit can
spend a day
sleeping under my shade.
Read more "DAVE SLAGLE – KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT"Knowing What You Want
It’s complicated,
helping somebody.What am I after?
What do you want?
Who goes first?Notes passed in school.
How to weed this garden?
What are the others like?
Can only try.Have to dress for work,
and understand the garden
and get really dirty.Have to be willing
to see flowers fail.
SUMMER AT 7,000 Summer gets me drunk because I don’t think; I jump in, head-first. It’s like the folklore of the 60s and 70s; simplified America, beyond recognition. Mark U. says that I am a conosuer of characters. Cluckasourus agrees. All I want is to change a life, all I need is a dopamine release, […]
Read more "SUMMER AT 7,000 – LANCE GAMBRELL"Spike Carr is a 15-almost-16 year old writer from Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is her first publication.
Read more "TIC TOC – SPIKE CARR"NAPALM
The boy wears only a pale green shirt,
no pants or shorts or shoes–a six-year-old,
fat stick in hand, squatting in the dirt.
He glances up as our convoy passes,
eyes dark and blank, and shifts his weight
to favor his left leg, ridges of scar
from ankle to hip twisted and shiny as plastic.
Yellow dust, kicked up by our truck
hangs in the air, thick and choking.
But the boy, face calm as a cat, just stares,
only his eyelids moving, up and down
up and down. Finally, he looks away and
raising his club, resumes his task,
pounding ants.
~
This poem was originally published in Second Skin by Terry Hertzler (Caernarvon Press, 2003)
Read more "TERRY HERTZLER – NAPALM"