August 31st, 2008
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Kelly Sievers, CRNA
CEREMONY
Crouched
with balanced ease on sturdy legs Mya pulls
white socks from my father’s feet. Twisted
toes-riding-toes loom, nails thick, long,
and yellow as bad front teeth. She does not flinch,
slides each foot, turnip purple, into bubbling water.My father,
who has lived nearly ninety years in his
peasant body says, Old feet… She nods,
begins her work. When Mya massages
deep into his solid calves, he raises
his eyebrows, telling me this woman knows
what a job well done means.He did fine work
in tool and die for forty years. At home
he whistled Sousa from his workbench. Any job
worth doing… Our prizes: broken radios,
roller skates, or toasters with stubborn innards,
repaired with ease.His feet
soak now in soapy water. He watches
Mya shellac fuchsia on young toes. “You want?”
she asks. They laugh in unison. Beside
the bamboo plant a radio shifts tunes,
she hums, he whistles softly. Head bowed,she dries his feet.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
August 30th, 2008
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Judy Schaefer, RNC, MA
DAD’S REPORT OF A TORNADO IN MISSOURI
WHEN HE WAS A BOYI found a fence post and clung to it, held it
Called it “mama,” called it “my sweet Lord”
I found a way to pray, to beg to live on
I found the wind in the pockets of my skin
and in the portals of my soul
And suddenly the devil died
And suddenly my heart stood still
Still, I tell you, silent as any church
Still
And then, just as suddenly, I was ripped
My legs were torn, whipped from my hips
I was flung into an unwelcome sky
and when the sun returned
I had lost a hat and a boot
I did not die that day but I learned to count
My limbs, my toes, the numbers of my brothers,
my father—all there in the field
They, too, were still alive—alive, I tell you
There dropped by a black cloud, I fell to my knees
I learned to pray that day—for brothers
And for the small pulse within my feeble heart
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
August 29th, 2008
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Mary H. Palmer, RN, C, PhD
THE SEA TURTLE
Shoulder-deep in the sea turtle’s nest,
I search for remains, nothing alive.
The tiny turtles would have climbed
over each other, forming a living ladder
out of their sandy birth canal
leaving only the unhatched and dead behind.
Mongoose would have gotten any stragglers.
I am here only to count egg shells.My hand reaches bottom and scoops up
sand and bits of leathery shells. In their midst,
I find a black soft lump, a hatchling left behind.
It remains listless until I gently stroke its belly
until its life flickers and catches hold
as a flame lays claim to a
candle wick.It doesn’t have much of a chance.
Pelicans already circle. But waiting until night
so it can follow the moon to the
water is a death sentence too. I place it on
the sloping beach and whisper a prayer.
Without a backward glance
it paddles towards the water.
The waves are merciless,
cartwheeling it in the foam.
Head over tail. Head over tail.But it finds a current and starts its slow
submerged swim, a speck in the sea.
Too far in to return, the turtle breaks the
glimmering surface and takes its first
sea-borne breath.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
August 28th, 2008
Review by C. St. Pérez
SO WE HAVE BEEN GIVEN TIME OR
by Sawako Nakayasu
Verse Press/Wave Books
1938 Fairview Avenue East
Suite 201
Seattle, WA 98102
ISBN: 0-9746353-0-8
2004, 106pp., $13.00
www.wavepoetry.com
Antonin Artaud, in “The Theater of Cruelty,” urges to “abolish the stage and the auditorium and replace them by a single site, without partition or barrier of any kind, which will become the theater of the action.” Sawako Nakayasu’s So We Have Been Given Time Or constructs this borderless site and blurs the line between theater and poetry to allow “the magical means of art and speech to be exercised organically and altogether, like renewed exorcism” (Artaud).
This book opens by violently subverting the logic of playwriting tags*:
Characters:
geography enthusiast, twice removed.
brother, as in your.
or as in oh.
young Czech intellectual, female.
estranged or expatriated cousin, male.
young man of marrying age, recent dumpee.
his too-kind mother, a goose.
owner of the voice on the answering machine.
soccer player whiffing a penalty kick.
bartender outside of his natural environment.
innocent spectators […] (1)
August 27th, 2008
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Tracy Klein, RN, MS, FNP
NURSING INTERNSHIP, LA COUNTY, 1990
As the cancer patients died you smoked
Another cigarette down by the dormitory pool, arm
Dangling in the airless heat. A big
Pink swimsuit wrapped you like a blanket.
We’d wrestled the pool from the medical students
For the afternoon, as they studied up on bones.I was swaddling newborns all summer,
Purple heads aiming for the room air. Their
Bewildered mothers cradled them, fingers starred
In green tattoos, while palm trees waved
A first hello. It’s a rough life:
The scratch of bad guitars outside the
Chicken Hut, girls trying on sunglasses so the men
Can’t see their eyes. Often it’s a candle or a prayer between
Themselves and death: a glance, a finger sign.You fed the public hospital patients through various tubes
And afterwards drank private drinks down by the beach.
“It always starts so small” you say
Gesturing at the loss of whole limbs and breasts,
The smallness of their cancer growing. Released from
Work, I see the babies nightly in my dreams.
They rock themselves in plastic Bassinets.
Reach up with toes and fingers wiggling,
Proud of all their parts.
–from Rattle #28, Winter 2007
