ANDREW HUBBARD – Priorities

Priorities

Reincarnation.
One of those things
I’d like to believe in but can’t
Because of the logical improbability
And the pile of unanswerable questions
About who and when and how and why.

But just suppose
(It’s ok to have a little fun)
That after 200 years of conscious sleep
Some benign authority
Brought you back, age 20
In perfect health, memories intact.

What would you do first?
Eat! Steak—shrimp—
Something with creamy garlic sauce—
Strawberries—chocolate ice cream.

And then make love
Again and again and again, with every sense
On overdrive, and doze off
Smelling her sweat and hearing her whispers.

You’d almost forgotten
How sensuous sleep can be.

Wake up. Repeat,
But with a change of menu:
Coffee, hot eggs with cheese melted over,
Cold white wine, bacon,
Peaches and whipped cream.

Continue this for forty years
Then turn your attention
To intellectual growth and refinement.
Sit with works of Plato, Milton,
Kant, Chaucer, and St. Augustine.
Twenty minutes should do it.
Then get back to the important stuff.

JULY 2020

JOHN TUSTIN – CUT OFF

CUT OFF

I used to rush home from work,

Especially if I knew my wife wasn’t going to be home yet

And if some asshole tried to cut me off

I’d gun it and curse him out,

Sometimes as we drove side by side.

I wasn’t going to take that shit,

I got cut off enough when I was home with my wife.

I would drive home and the best days were the days

When I had some time to myself before I had to pick her up.

Oh, the feeling of false freedom in those precious minutes!

Later, another good time was reading to my children before bed.

After they would finally fall asleep I would lie in bed with my son

And elongate the moments before I would have to get up

And get into bed with Her.

If I fell asleep in his bed or pretended to she would come and get me.

Finally I had had enough and I told her I wanted a divorce.

Her reaction was to unleash Hell all at once

Instead of little by little like she had been doing for fifteen years or so.

I lost everything and just about everyone I had

But now if I get cut off in traffic

I just stare in wonder at the taillights

Of whoever feels they need to get somewhere before I do

Thinking about a time that feels like decades ago

But was much less than that

When I decided a life of boiling pasta alone in an echoing kitchen

Was better than a living death in a house filled with anger

And that final day that

It was as if I was Yertle the Turtle

And I sneezed down there

At the bottom of the stack

And that bitch came tumbling down.

MARC CARVER – CURTAIN TWITCHERS

CURTAIN TWITCHERS
As I run the day to begin it
the sun comes up and I want to get out before anybody sees me and sees I have used up my quota for the day.
I think I can go out the front way once and out the back way the other time and no one will see me. Maybe I can sneak out two or three times in a day before all the curtain twitchers see me.
It is only a matter of time before the have a hot line.
I saw him going out again twice yesterday and three times on Monday.
People

John Dorroh – “It’s Probably More Than Colitis”

“It’s Probably More Than Colitis”

I like a woman with a clean colon,

the way she starts telling stories

at the end

and works back toward the beginning,

expecting me to connect all the dots.

She takes her temperature every hour,

tells me the results, wants for me

to tie a knot with my swollen tongue

in her cherry

stem. The french kiss should have been

the second best clue

that we wouldn’t click, at least not like that.

I can cuddle like a fish with the best of them,

but sometimes we have to be satisfied

with a flag at half mast. You can always

use tulips to brighten the

room. We fidget in the clinic for an hour

before they call her name.

She refuses my hand, gives me an orange-lipped

piranha smile, and disappears into the

blue-white light.

JOHN GREY – 2 POEMS

THE TRUNK

I nudge aside some old poems

to get at the real poetry:

love letters from a former flame.

I’ve no idea why I’ve kept them

only that I’m a hoarder,

even of affection.

There’s something of nostalgia

to them,

like the Marvel comics

in very good condition,

or the copy of Sports Illustrated

with Larry Bird on the cover,

celebrating a championship.

The writing is neat,

the passion likewise,

nothing, I’m sure,

like the long-trashed missives

I sent in response.

Reading between lines is called for.

But, to be honest,

I find more neatness,

only it’s invisible.

From memory,

there was no great passion

between the two of us.

It’s what comes of listening to Yes together.

And decking ourselves out

in bell-bottoms.

But they’re part of history.

And, to my mind,

must be preserved.

But I throw in a few

more useless items,

bury those letters deeper

going forward.

It’s enough to know they’re there.

No place else would have them.

THE CIGARETTE LONG AFTER

A double downer:

I feel dirty as soot,

sheets smell like dumpster fires.

And here,

on a motel side table,

one cigarette burns a long, neglected ash.

No need to smoke it.

This room’s like a cigarette

with me cocooned inside it.

You and I shared this roadside hideaway.

Years ago.

Before there were flat-screen TV’s.

Before there was flat anything.

Now I lie on a lumpy mattress.

staring up at the nicotine-stained ceiling.

My teeth grind the grit

of what was once desire.

HOLLY DAY – BLUE CAR

Blue Car

The car appeared outside the house, as if by magic

dropped from the sky into a pile of snow, tire tracks obliterated by fresh snow.

A sleeping bag blocked the back window completely, candy wrappers

could be seen on the front seat.

After a couple of days, my neighbor came over and asked me if it was my car

if I wouldn’t mind moving it so that her nephew could park there. I told her

how the car had just appeared in that spot, and that I didn’t think anyone

had come back for it since its arrival, although

I thought I saw a couple of people sitting in the front seat very late the night before

hands frantically moving in the dim overhead light

but it may have been a dream.

A week or so later, a tow truck came and got the car, probably called by my neighbor

the one who came over or perhaps a different one entirely

the spot where the car had been parked was black and green with oil and antifreeze

dirty snow and a couple of smashed beer cans. I watched the car get pulled

backwards down the street, waited for a door to fling open angrily

in the car or in a neighboring house, but no one came out after the car

no one chased the truck frantically down the street.

ELAINE WEBSTER – BORDERLINE

Borderline

Quiet along the border,

Stars and moon reflect on water,

Who would have guessed the effect Power had,

On woman, man, and beast?

Six hundred fifty miles,

Not long enough to stop the mix,

Of peoples, of places, of life.

Must build stronger and longer,

Wider and higher until the heavens can’t see,

The love of a boy and girl,

Divided at the Borderline.

Katrina learned early to be silent,

When asked about family.

She joked about her father wolf,

Uncle coyote and mother earth.

Shy smiles and giggles hid the fears,

That invaded her nighttime dreams.

Dash worked cattle and lived to ranch.

He’d seen them take the water,

From here and put it there.

The Power knew nothing

Of natural flows and the thirst,

The thirst of creation.

“Buenos Dias,” she said one morning,

To a pickup and a cowboy hat.

Kat knew better than to smile big,

The way he did, with such swag.

“Good morning,” he boasted,

Chest out and head high.

“Dash and Kat have a good ring,

Don’t you know?”

They met at sunset in a cabin,

In the shade of the Borderline.

The morning brought a sense of place.

Kat spied a wolf couple and two pups,

Through the pane-less window.

“Dash, that will be us,” she whispered.

“Kat, then let it be,” he answered.

Bingo came under a full moon,

His eyes filled with shooting stars.

No wonder he grew so tall,

So fast; to see beyond the Borderline.

The night the ICE-men came for Kat,

Dash and Bingo had no choice.

They stood back as the van took their own,

And howled in despair.

Soon many joined the pack,

Peering through the wall of fences.

At the Borderline both sides ran the gamut,

Back and forth in emotional and physical despair.

The wall extended further,

By the decree of Power.

Families divided—couldn’t get through.

Except to touch snouts or fingers,

Before the Borderline militia threatened,

With freedom denied or death.

“There have been walls like this,

Built to deny and control,” said Dash.

“Yes, I know and they did not last,” Bingo pondered,

With the strategy bouncing in his head.

“We will bring Kat and Los Lobos home,

On the next full moon.”

The Power ordered a cover-up,

Of how a Dreamer could be deported.

Kat faced the Press from her refuge,

In the church near the Borderline.

She could see the wall of fences,

From the pain-filled window of her soul.

Dash and Bingo gambled all they had,

To spread the word of wrongs to be righted.

Their travels took them places,

Where anyone would listen to the pleas of families divided.

No one knows how it happened,

How a Wolf Pack and a Mujer came to Power.

The Press swarmed the White House lawn,

To report the confrontation between Ruler and Ruled.

Bingo led the Mass of People—

Until they filled the World with new understanding.

He stood tall and saw Beyond the Borderline.

Find Elaine online here.

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CALLING ALL POETS BORN IN NEW MEXICO

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Grandma Moses Press will be publishing a poetry anthology containing only poets born in New Mexico. Lots of writers call New Mexico home, but for this project, we’re only interested in poets who were born here.

If you were born in New Mexico (you don’t have to show us your papers), and you would like a shot at being included in this unique chapbook, please send up to 5 poems to: grandmamosespress@gmail.com

Your poems don’t have to be related to New Mexico, but if they are it will help your poem’s chances of being included in this anthology.

Of course we can’t offer you any money for your poems. If you want money for your poems please contact Penguin Publishing and take it up with them. They can be reached at 1-800-733-3000 between the hours of 8:30 AM and 6:30 PM Eastern.

2 POEMS – RICKY WINTERS

“#24”
A single mind
Over crowded with different colored emotions
Divided by the even and odds of the feeling
For bravery can’t be without fear and sadness without happiness
But the fear and sadness have switched themselves into a pair
A pair that’s making you push that EMERGENCY EXIT

“Dysphoria”

mother, forgive me for i have sinned i am the monster who will slaughter your daughter and parade her corpse around

I will mutilate her skin, form her a new friend

i will poison her blood, with poisonous T

i will eliminate these lumps, flat chested dreams will someday come true

So open your mind before your mouth

It’s my time to shine, my imprisoning time has been done

I am your son.

4 POEMS – DAVE SLAGLE

Forecast

Another rain prediction
while the alfalfa turns blue.
Hurricane moving toward Baja.
Fronts shifting.

I found more photos
showing what I missed.
But none of divorces
or the miscarriage
or the two bouts with lymphoma.
Just beautiful Marianna
with her smile owning
the light and everyone.

Albums arrayed as they were.
My worries now
from the future,
while I feel the tug
of an anchor’s rope.

Cardboard Box

I’m careful with the sides,
coming unglued,
and the warped shape,
water damaged and
no longer perfect.

It holds the twigs
that start my late fire
to which I add bigger wood
keeping the box well away
as flames absorb grief
venting into summer.

If only these feelings would
recycle back to those evenings
when we were teens in Tucson
smoking and talking
on the edge of change.

It was a time like this box,
in need of care.
And I left it out
in August rain.
Wet cardboard
never again smooth and virgin.

Shop Tree

A weather measure
comes from clouds
behind the big shop tree.
Where are they going?
Are they fast or heavy?

One has to stare
because today they are slow
and not going
yesterday’s way.
A soft mantras

calming and true.
Keep looking,
be patient,
and from distraction,
their new form

will carry you
into the future
the sweetness here now
the surprises
you’ll never guess.

Meteors

Would this meteor shower
make me cry?
Because it will be so beautiful
and really far away.

Finding some kleenex
in Marianna’s purse,
breathing in the closeness.
And remembering through decades

to a time, on my bicycle
riding home
after Marianna
and more than i deserved,
stunned by a celestial
streak that wouldn’t end.

Amazement light years away.
My bicycle noisy in desert dirt.
Elevating my heart
to an unfortunate level
I’d never forget.

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground

realnm