December 26th, 2011
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Stevie Edwards
WHAT I MEAN BY RUIN IS…
When there’s only condiments left in the fridge
and you join a free online dating service
so men will buy you dinner.
When you’ve shucked the night with the dull blade
of indecision and gulped down everything,
even the pearls.
When some old, left-handed love has left
your guitar strung backwards
and you can’t find any songs
for rain in its frets.
When you wake up next to the body
of your past and it looks ready
to wrinkle and bald.
When the last burn of summer is peeling
from your breasts and there’s nothing to husk
the pale, raw of new flesh.
When the woman who wears her hair
in the old way quits mumbling about Jesus
on the street corner and takes her salvation
pamphlets to a pauper’s grave.
When you’re too ugly to pray,
but pray
and the only voice
on the drunk subway wails
good grief.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
December 24th, 2011
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Kelly Cressio-Moeller
WAITING FOR CHARON IN THE ER
Bad news is always arriving.
—Adrienne Rich
Make a fist.
The ambulance ride
begins with a deep poke
into a surprised vein.
Open. Close. Time-lapse photography.
A lotus unfurling
petals in my palm. I see
sunlight breaking through crowns
of eucalyptus. I breathe oxygen
through a tube.
I’d recognize his face
anywhere: paramedic Gauguin,
Civilization is what makes you sick.
Is that why your Christs are yellow and green?
Yes, and blue trees.
What of the red door in the forest?
We are never out of the woods.
Gurneys glide gondola-quiet
through corridored canals.
An oarsman ferries me
into an X-ray room,
his shark tooth bracelet clangs
against the metal buoy.
I want to dive into
his seafoam scrubs,
breaststroke into March.
The doctor orders a rainbow
belt of slender vials.
She pockets my blood
in her jungle print top, swings
on a vine, disappears into
Rousseau’s foliage. I don’t
see her again for 2 hours.
She’s consulted the gorilla
who was sitting on my chest.
I eat red Jell-O with a spork.
Time drifts through saline solution.
A slow drip counts the day’s small hours.
I have the room to myself.
So tempting just
to lie there waiting, stock-still
with a coin in my mouth.
Note:
“Civilization is what makes you sick” is a quote from Paul Gauguin.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
December 23rd, 2011
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Christopher Crawford
SO GAY
How gay is it
for two men
to stroke
the same dog
at the same time.
What if they’re both
sitting on a sofa watching
When Harry Met Sally.
How about two men watching
the same gorgeous sunset
from the same high ridge.
And if a man daydreaming
on a bus ride finds his eyes when focus returns,
quite accidently, on the crotch
of the man seated opposite.
How about two men riding
a bus into a gorgeous sunset
or two gorgeous men watching
a sunset in silence. How about
two men daydreaming and stroking
a gorgeous dog and the dog makes
a strange deep sound of pleasure.
What if the men are old friends.
What if they’re brothers.
What if there’s music playing.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
Pushcart Prize Nominee
December 22nd, 2011
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Brendan Constantine
“SO GOD WILL KNOW YOU”
after Miroslav Valek
Go out, get us some money
and kill a dog. Take this coat,
this book of matches, a knife
from the wall to kill a dog
on the way. You need medicine;
if not now, you will—aspirin,
quinine, a packet of God.
These things are still strong
enough to heal the country
and kill a dog. Sulfur traps
in their intestines, from fruit,
toad stools; any limb off
a chocolate rabbit is death,
as it happens. This happens,
we spread a newspaper, cut
an onion, wait with each other.
You kill a dog; a shepherd, a bull,
a fool hound. Tell whoever
complains the dog has killed
your dog first, your older dog.
They won’t persist. The earth
is fed on the incorrigible. People
here worship this about the land;
that it is made rich by eating
thieves: the rabbit, the crow,
the pale gopher. Thus and so
we light a fire in a fireplace
and read half our book. Or sleep
in our beds and wake standing
by the window. If we call out,
the dogs inside us run away,
then creep back. They can
never come under our hands,
their softnesses. You must
keep the right things with you,
the family spoons, good spoons
to trade, to dig, to attract a dog.
You must expect to lose these
or not get enough for them. Have
some tea or ginger in your pocket
to offer the hermit, the widow
who takes you in against night,
the wild boy-man who thinks
he must be alone. Have a way
to mention us so they know
you cannot linger. At dawn
come home with money;
on the way, kill a dog.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
December 21st, 2011
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Sam Cheuk
DRAMATURGY
Let me tell you a lie I tell myself.
Suppose two men sit by one another
in a bar, empties fill the table. The old man asks,
“Do you hate me?” The young man looks away,
“No.” The old man insists, “Did you?”
Suppose the young man answers “Yes”
and orders another round.
Suppose the answer is no.
The old man creeps below the speed limit,
too drunk to be driving.
Beside him the young man examines
the old man’s face. He sees his wrist
gripped in his father’s hand,
the other a butcher knife. He looks
in the side view mirror, sees a dog
paralyzed on the floor, teeth bitten
through tongue, a note the child left his father.
Suppose there was a lesson,
or a game worth playing:
the young man reclines, lifts his feet to the dash,
unbuckles his seatbelt. The old man looks over
and says nothing. Suppose words are incised into the lip.
Suppose we can reinvent these scenes.
Suppose it will be my hand on the cleaver,
your grandson pleading to your face in mine.
Suppose each word is a parcel of forgiveness
I can give. Will you take them from me,
will you say something?
This is me, your child. Pallbearer of our name.
–from Rattle #35, Summer 2011
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