TIM STALEY – A POEM FOR LANCE

DOOMSDAY JOGGING
(for Lance Leonard Gambrell)

Imagine a book
open to the black
depth of the universe.

Death is a wave of sound
you can’t wave off.

Sometimes instead of Lance dying
I imagine the tracks of a train
Vaselined and lit from behind
like an X-ray.

Sometimes instead of him dying
I imagine a steel-blue deity with 18 arms.
I guess 18 arms is how many arms it takes
to headlock something wrong.

I’m likely to round up a common stain
into a regional one or worse: a personal one.

The catch of crying is crying
kills bacteria, releases toxins,
improves vision.

Every white, elastomeric rooftop
in this desert town is haunted
by the dusty fingerprint of rain.
So much dust and blood work
between each papillary ridge.
The desert takes its time
showing us things die.

I was walking the acequia with my daughter
when she told me polar bears
have clear hair.

I was walking the acequia with my daughter
when a jellyfish of photons
came smearing across the tracks,
softening the steel.

I had a vision I went to see him
near the end in a hospital bed.
The walls were smoking
and we were playing dominoes
on a swiveling tray. It was horrifying,
I was still trying to win.

Lance writes poems on pizza boxes.
He gets to stay alive
a little while longer.

Last night tight ropes of light
crossed behind his eyes.
I wasn’t there. I was at home
looking for a dollar.

Last night in the pocket
of a yellow pillow, the tooth fairy
found my daughter’s 11th tooth.
The fairy came with a dollar,
dressed in mirage
except for his flip flops.
I heard in Mexico it’s a rat that comes;
it’s a rat that trades your tooth for cash.

I was walking the acequia with my daughter
when I told her polar bears have clear hair
because the air around those hairs
scatters light of every color
in every direction.
You could tell by her face,
the laws of light
were a let down.

Imagine a book
open on a table
only instead of pages
the black depth of the universe.
Now imagine
sunlight all spread out
on that same table.

Can you see him on a Tuesday in February?
Can you see him leaning
into the needles of wind like a vein?
Can you see him?
He’s walking there with me down Boutz
toward Avenida de Mesilla.
His curls so blond
they mirage.

James Croal Jackson – 2 poems

Always

You paint a heron blue

on brown branch. You

always create.

Your violin blurs into

hand-written sheet

music. Sunshine tints

your hair red. In autumn

you bury yourself

in leaves, tune strings

in the shadows to

summon the sun

and feed violets.

Blown-Minded

“I was born blown-minded

with an eye on oblivion.”

–Young Galaxy

I’ve been sitting at my desk,

no artistic talent, drawing

a primate, the universe,

a fetus, a circus, and

with each I realize I’m

just drawing myself

over and over again–

hurtling through space

and time in my muddled

mind to conclude I don’t

know shit. So all these

lines connect where?

I don’t know whether

I’m looking to God

or to get laid. It’s both

the same, really, accessing

the part of the brain that

activates to a higher calling.

Whether that’s the faith

that I exist right now!

Or I must reproduce!

doesn’t matter.

I am a goddamn mess

made of star matter

and the more I try to

laser-focus my brain

at understanding,

the more I learn

there’s nothing

there. I feel as empty

between my ears

as the space between

Earth and the moon,

but then I learn that

all of the planets

in the solar system

can fit in the distance

between those bodies?

Gray matter.

LANCE GAMBRELL – “TERMS OF SERVICE”

“Terms of Service”

A friend recently reminded me of the limited “terms of service” that she came with.

In the background, Ella Fitzgerald climbs a scale that we both saw coming; before the cholla.

No single hiker has ever felt sorry for me; least of all Ella.

ERREN KELLY – A SIN

A Sin

i could go to hell
for what i’m doing
for looking at white thighs
in a pair of levis
mama preached hate
as gospel
don’t talk to white girls
don’t get friendly with them
don’t trust them
she said
even though her best friend
was a white woman
she didn’t want a white man
come to her home
in the middle of the night
complaining about his daughter
being ” corrupted “

you invite me to church
as you take off your blouse
i say, i’ll think about it
i never thought much of jesus freaks
if god is everywhere
then why do we need religion
or a church to get closer
to him
and jesus was not white !
you take off your bra
and your globes succumb to gravity
and they drop downward
and become covered by curly
long red hair
your crucifix makes an imprint
as i press against you
as i kiss you

JUDY DeCROCE – MEN OF HAPPY GRILL

The East End

Bonesy never seemed to mind
his old man staggering home
careening from post to car to door
zigzag cadence, leading downhill
from Happy Grill.

Happy Grill

Its beery smell
settles out of a dark doorway
where sticky wooden floors hold them.

Them—
the ones always there;
men – only men
unimportant outside
but with a place here
a welcome.

Time suspends
as they step in
familiar
and watch their glasses
slowing sips as a whole day waits
with too much time.

JAMES P. ROBERTS – 3 POEMS

FLOW POETRY IN HUE, VIETNAM

                                                        for Adam

You speak to your ancestors
lying in shallow graves
mulched over by jungle.

You speak to alligators
and elephants, creatures
life spans longer than yours.

You speak to huddled mothers,
black-eyed babies who utter
never a word or cry.

You speak to bamboo winds,
hollow temples, dynasties fallen
and long forgotten.

You speak to fog-shrouded mountains,
roiling muddy Mekong River,
a black market dog tag.

You speak to rows of mildewed books
in a dozen languages, histories
yearning to be heard.

The raucous birds speak to you:
Go back home or we will use your dreads
to feather our lonely nests.

AND IF PAIN BECOMES A POEM . . .

I am full of poetry.
Poetry screams from every pore of my body.

My right ankle cracks poems so loudly
a microphone twenty feet away picks up the sound.

My left elbow tightens hard enough
I cannot bend it to write a poem without a rough

shake. Electric pings course through my chest,
irregular rhythms, like free verse, thrum inside a fat breast.

(man tits . . . the worst kind of poetic pain!)
Clumsy fingers struggle to write a refrain.

Dimming eyes spill tears, these inky words,
bright flashes of images vanish, go unheard.

Yes, I could continue this medical literary litany
and if pain becomes a true poem, I will die saintly.

COWARDS

I see them on the news.
The scary people.
The scared people.
The people who think of nothing
but themselves.
Who watch as the chaos mounts.
The people who have built
their survival tombs,
stocked with enough food and ammunition
to last as long as necessary . . . until
the last not-one-of-us has fallen
and they can come out again.
These are the cowards.
The true cowards,
for they have the means to change
the situation,
to take charge
and avert the damnation.
But they won’t.
Because they are hollow.
They are too selfish.
They are too scared.
It is their own fear
that will doom them.
They will become nothing
but shadows
wandering
a destroyed land.

PHIL HUFFY – EMERITUS

Park View Drive rests at an early hour,

without tell-tale traffic

and before the sun better reveals

more recent influences.

Its stick built homes, in an older style,

date between the great wars

and upon brief observation

offer the appearance of days gone by.

Any original owners have long since departed.

The cedar roofs are also gone,

as are their more modern replacements

and even the replacements of those as well.

Near one end of the avenue

a figure steps from a clapboard colonial

and into the half-lit calm

of an emergent morning.

Though once considered a newcomer,

the Professor, as he is called,

and his equally credentialed spouse

have been in residence for many years.

In the past it was his practice

to enjoy long, vigorous walks

out through the neighborhood,

up the steep climb to the Reservoir, and around.

These days, he does not get far,

shuffling but a few doors from his own

before slowly coming about

and retracing his tentative steps.

The professor is a genial fellow,

viewed as neighborly and polite,

but in his current condition

he walks early and sometimes unnoticed,

thus avoiding inquiries as to his health

as he ponders his weakened state,

his hapless knees, eroding joints

and feet unwilling to convey their exact location

ROBERT OKAJI – I DANCED WITH A PLATYPUS TWENTY YEARS BACK

Which is of course a metaphor pointing out

disparities in function and form, and the dangers

inherent in assumption: despite its cute appearance,

the male platypus delivers venom through an ankle

spur on a hind limb; samba with one at your own

peril. My friend wanted to build a catapult, but I

convinced him that trebuchets more efficiently

demolish walls. Instead, he experimented with atlatls,

before reverting to his favorite compound bow. The

fly swatter remains my weapon of choice, followed

closely by steel toe boots. I have yet to meet a scorpion

whose armor could withstand them, but I would never

stomp a platypus without first determining its intentions

and seeking mediation, perhaps through handwritten

correspondence. Pencils owe their origin to the lead

stylus, which eventually morphed into the wood-cased

graphite tool we now use. In his day, Thoreau was better

known for pencil-making than cabin-building. Arthritic

joints prevent me from writing by hand, but I saw lumber

when necessary. According to Ovid, Talos, nephew of

Daedalus, invented the saw, using either a fish jaw or spine

as the model. I look at my food before eating, but the

platypus dives with closed eyes, and locates meals by

detecting electric currents through its bill. In considering

form, I assume function. But we know what that means.

JARED PEARCE – MY RESPONSE TO WHEN YOU ASKED HOW I SLEPT LAST NIGHT

You rolled and roiled like a deep thing,

a miniature whale or submarine,

a shark with ten thousand teeth,

the lighted jelly, pearl jammed

beneath, and spray and sway, disattached

like kelp wreaths. The tune you leak

swashes across your siren sigh

then grunts like the rock topped seal.

I cast out, but the pole don’t dip

then the oars can’t beat. The bilge

slime shines a blinding beam

so even the gull won’t come to eat.

The dinghy swirls and bangs the alarm

bell, mad to be further lost at sea.

JOHN GRAY – I KNEW A WOMAN

I knew a woman in a wheelchair,

lived in a clapboard house,

with a lawn she somehow trimmed.

and a garden she kept well-tended.

And another had breast cancer.

She wrote letters to all her friends

in the brief nauseous pauses

between radiation treatments.

Another had five kids

and a husband who walked out

but somehow put food on their table

and a roof over their head.

Another got a degree in some branch of science

and the consensus of her male friends was that

“I didn’t know women went in for

that sort of thing.”

Of course, there was the one

who was forever trying to hide

the bruises on her face with makeup,

stayed with her abuser.

And another who hated herself so much

she sat around the house all day,

getting fatter and fatter

so she could hate herself the more.

From the start, there was need for women.

And a physiology to go with it.

Life was incomplete. There was a vacuum.

And then all kinds started filling it.

Cacti Fur

a poetry high ground

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