Generation

Every year, we fourteen cousins voyage to
Grandfather’s American Cottage where a Zeus-
head dinner bell clangs us in from the nation’s
grimeways.  Drawn to Wide-open Wood on great
Lake Michigan by the reverberation of summery
righteousness, we break from the schmoozing-
boozy-smoochy puppet show of urban life and
populate the Rockwell matrix, where orgasms are
the apple, the freckle, the deep “gee.”

For it is right to walk on pine carpeted forest floors
as if they were water, it is right to sit amber-
stunned by a driftwood fire, something hellish
contained; it is right to witness far thunderheads
trying to massacre an unkillable pagan lake.  Let
any clean force advance.  Let America scrub us
with her storms, those cattle-clouds, her rigor.
Grandfather says: “beautiful sights are a right.”

He has set up a world for his grandchildren.  We
fourteen have mealtimes eating beefsteak, beef-
steak tomatoes and beefsteak corn-on-the-cob.

The little kernel jackets wedge in our teeth.  He’s a
steel engineer in lumberjack flannel bringing
platters in from under a Yankee Maple where he’s
been herding animal bits across a grill, his Sears
Meat Dungeon®.

We see no darkness in him–skull tufts white as a
picket fence, spectacle lenses clear as ritual water,
wrists near thick as schooner booms.  Though we
fourteen all come from parents he finds weak and
reprobate, he is strong and carries two 75 pound
bags of charcoal like a Viking stealing Slavic twins
for thralldom.  Before we eat he asks, “who of you
has brought a sturdy word?”
 

– B.W. Ryan

I Just Got the Letter

I just got the letter
saying that they
locked you up now.  Guess I
should be in there
too.  They say you’re better
but you’ve lost your mind.

Your secret’s safe with me.
I hid the ski mask
in your sock drawer.

Oh, you would not believe
what else the letter had to say.
They say you threw away your tapes
and burned everyone’s pictures.
I don’t believe these words.

Everyone knows you hung
Billy’s portrait
above kitchen cutlery.

I knew you needed help but who am I
to judge?  God knows I needed time
to myself last month.  See you in May.
 

Keep in touch.
 

– Dustin Hathaway

Church of St. Woolworth’s

Cobalt blue transistor radio at
the Church of St. Woolworth’s.
Bruce Springsteen hanging in the
window–a skinny poet-god.
Four-feet-tall.  Wanting
everything,
I scoured the aisles with my eyes
& pudgy fingers, with a mood ring
on my index finger,
& a smiley face on my sweatshirt,
my hair back in oval, tortoise shell
barrettes; I found
the cobalt blue transistor radio,
that came with an earphone so tiny,
& thought
how luxurious the music would be
in the backyard, on the
street, on the school bus.
that radio persuaded my first friend
in the new neighborhood
to convert.
On the back steps sharing the cobalt
blue transistor radio
like jewelers handling a
star sapphire in the Diamond District,
We heard God & were
enlightened.
 

– Aimee Elizabeth Mardin

Crazy Ass Luke

And I sort of thought I wanted to
Tell Sarah
About Luke–
This crazy kid from high school
That wore pigtails in his hair
And let us spit in his mouth

And once in a while he would jump up in class
And scream that he couldn’t take it
Anymore!
Flip his desk upside down and leap
Out of the open window
And one time a substitute teacher burst
Into tears of fright and shame
Because she thought her lesson about
The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution
        of This Great Nation
Made him kill himself

But then she realized
That we were on the first floor
And Luke was standing outside pressing
His bare ass against the window pane
And I wouldn’t go so far
As to say
That she thought it was funny

But I know I did
 

– Paul Falzone

Half Empty Half Full

“Oh,” She said,
“That’s about the saddest thing there is.”
His lost erection hanging
Limp and afraid
In her hand

“No,” He said,
“That’s not quite true.”

“According to a survey published in last month’s
Journal of the American Medical Association,

“Americans agreed three to one
That the saddest thing there is
Is a mother monkey
Whose baby has died
But who still carries around the corpse
And cares for it
Suckles it
As though it were still alive…”

“What are you implying?” She said
 

– Paul Falzone

The Desirous Woman

A woman speaks to me
in a cold motel room.

It’s not important
for millions to desire me.

But it is important
that someone desires me.

It’s my shabbiest sex yet.
I hardly know the woman.

What I desire is a great
book, a month in Mexico,

a flash car.  I look her
over.  She is none of

these things.  She’s a
trashy romance novel.

She’s three years in a
third floor tenement

apartment.  She’s a
second hand Ford.

She’s what I’m reading
now.  She’s where I’m

living now.  She’s what
I’m driving now.  It is

important that someone
desires me, she repeats.

I tell her we each represent
our desire to desire.

Thankfully, we’re both
content to leave it at that.
 

– John Grey

Prick

I look in the pond and spit
mayflies dance over it just a little older than I am
there’s a noxious smell in the air which I think I
have brought with me
my mother nudges me or it’s an old girlfriend
causes me to curse
I think about buying a reckless old beat car
with some or all the money I have left
dive it off Palos Verdes
for some pieces of seconds I’d
be in a high rent expensive district
my mother if she had been alive
maybe say I had made it
 

– Peter Layton

The Woman Next Door

Under her dark hair,
a white bowl
of ashes from burnt poppies.

She is afraid
she’ll hear clothes drop
and become apples.

She is afraid
her hands will turn into magpies
and have shadows.

She is afraid her mirror might vanish.
She only bares her breasts to mirrors.
 

– Duane Locke

L

Every day I get on this train called Ordinary,
and just after it goes sub-terrainian I get out
and rise to the sunlit street above
like Lazarus with a vast knowledge of coffee
        and coffee type beverages.
No one seems to take notice.

Later, I’ll watch that train fly by my window
at speeds unimagined by pre-espresso man.

I have garbage, and I can throw it
        anywhere I like.
It’s like having a maid, a really lazy maid.

There are certain places downstairs
        where I can walk for miles
without moving an inch, and it’s free.

Sometimes I sit completely still and consider
        the nature of riddles.

At the end of the day I go back
        into the ground,
like Lazarus before anything special
        happened to him.
 

– Seth Fisher

Session Without End

She gets to be wounded:
a Mexican woman
on the couch
of a different culture.

She lies there lamenting
timing and circumstance,
beatings and
screamings and
the indifference
that permeates the air
in the hallways of subdivisions
before smart brown girls
slam the door for the last time,
jump into any car whose
engine revs with escape,
any boy, from anywhere else
whose arms can hold them.

What falls upon an eldest Mexican daughter?

Her own daughter doesn’t understand,
doesn’t stay away.
Her daughter learns Spanish
and visits the family she escaped from,
drives right up to the door,
cuts the engine and
arrives empty handed and alone.

Her daughter isn’t allowed tears:
any blood stained tragedies are hers to keep–
for not speaking up sooner.

The daughter lies awake
lamenting to no one
of timing and circumstance,
beatings and
screamings and
the indifference
permeating the air
every time she was near death,
told no one else was to blame.
What falls upon any daughter, mama?
 

– Margaret Elysia Garcia

Te Amo pero Mi Méxicano Diccionario esta Quebrado

O, mi bonita tijeras!
Tu corazón es como un grande queso.
Queiro escribir, en francés, tus labios con míos.
Queiro tomar tus ojos–una vez para cada hora
(pero nunca antes una media-hora
        haciendo mucho ejercicio o nadando).
Queiro encontrar tu espacio de G, y orbitar
        con mi distinto, gigantesco
submarino de pasión.
Queiro llamarte en la media noche
        (colecto, por supuesto).
Despertarte despacito con vasos de leche mala
        y las canciónes de Slim Whitman.
Te amo, mi muñeca costosa.
Con todo mi pegajoso cariño–
        y todas mi cartes de crédito.
Te amo siempre, o, al menos que uno de nosotros
        choque contra un autobús.
Te amo con mis piernas, mi boca,
        mis brazos, mis manos,
y unas partes que son plásticas.
Te amo sin pregunta.
Muero violentamente doscientas veinte y dos
        veces para ti.
Pero no doscientas veinte y tres–
        eso esta enpujando.
Queiro amarte, vida concentida.
Queiro correr lejos con tigo.
(Pero si stas muy cansado podemos caminar.)
Quiero ordenar, por favor, un pato de mantequilla.
O, no sabes que stoy tratando que dicer:
Te amo mi chiquita pero mi Méxicano diccionario esta quebrado.
 

– Jaimes Palacio

I Love You but My Mexican Dictionary is Broken
(The translation–for those who care for such things.)

O, my lovely scissors!
Your heart is like a big cheese.
I want to write, in French, your lips with mine.
I want to drink your eyes–one time every hour
(but never a half-hour before swimming
        or exercise).
I want to find your G spot and orbit it
        with my distinctive, gigantic
submarine of passion.
I want to call you in the middle of the night
        (collect, of course).
Slowly wake you up with glasses of sour milk
        and the songs of Slim Whitman.
I love you, my expensive doll.
Love you with all my sticky tenderness–
        and all my credit cards.
I love you forever, unless one of us
        gets hit by a bus.
I love you with my legs, my mouth,
        my arms, my hands,
and some parts which happen to be plastic.
I love you without question.
I’ll die, violently, two hundred and twenty two
        times for you.
But not two hundred and twenty three–
        that’s pushing it.
I want to love you, preferred one.
I want to run far away with you.
(But if you are too tired we can walk.)
I want to order, please, one duck made of butter.
O, don’t you know what I’m trying to say:
I love you but my Mexican dictionary is broken.
 

– Jaimes Palacio

Redwood

There are redwoods big enough
        to drive a car through.
All that I get is newspaper and it won’t stay lit,
        but I’m telling you,
if I could get the right kindling
        we might all be warm for a very long time.

Sometimes a fly gets caught in a web and
survives long enough to think that it is his.
He feels sorry for the other flies
        as they come stumbling in,
but he eats them all the same.

There are a few things about love
        that they don’t tell you in the songs,
for instance, the nausea and the chest pain.

Sometimes I get so lonely I fell like a redwood
        that’s been driven through.
 

– Seth Fisher

No One

There is no one to turn the bed into a boat
that is amazed by the green alphabets
        of the Amazon.
No one
to drop her earrings in an old, dry well.
No one.
No one
to persuade poppies to desert white vases, grow
among moss and grasses.

There is only tongues twisted by neons,
there are only those who tip with ankle bracelets
the owners of fireworks and ferris wheels.

There is no one to peep through my fingers
        at parrots,
no one who can speak the language of squid
        and rainbows.
 

– Duane Locke

You’ve Got to Hand it to Satan

All that power and he keeps
such a low profile.
I know he’s sitting alone
at the kitchen table of our fears
shuffling through recipes–
this one’s the roast beef
he cooks for each election.
Here are the truffles of war.
On a yellowed, creased card
are the gingersnaps he baked
when you were born.
        That bouillabaisse
he’s saving for later.

If I were in his place
I’d be doing a radio show
from my recliner of flame,
chuffing out bad one-liners:
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
I would crave the attention
of everyone with air conditioning.
I’d measure my success by numbers
on small dials marked “cooler.”

I’d huff a wind strong and hot
into all those bewildered faces.
I’d listen to your weak hearts
because the world’s got a good beat
and if Satan won’t dance to it
I will. Tap shoes shined,
I’ll shuffle-step continents loud
until no one can hear anything
above the roar of my feet.
I will be tornado, hurricane,
earthquake, and you won’t
remember your tiny, quiet hearts.
You won’t remember your own names.
You will not recognize me
as I smear you like grapes
and siphon you into
the great bottle of my mouth.
You’ll even forget
that I used to be human.
 

– Robert Wynne

California

california, california,
let me finish a poem or fill out a thought;
silence your freeways
& keep your cars closed a moment.
let me gather my thoughts.
cut off the ice machine
& its monotone mantra,
move me away from this distracted booth.
refill my coffee on time
& don’t let it cool itself.

california undress yourself,
return your clothes & cheerleader outfits,
let the cops twirl their cocks, not batons.
california run wild.
give me a moment.
uncap my pen
& let me run wild.
close down your highways
(they don’t move anyway)
& castrate your cars
(how many million?)

california, I’m just a man,
but given the chance
(just one moment, california!)
I’ll messiah your way out of this mire.
california, you’ve wasted your gold.
california,
guns & gangs & smog & AIDS & malls & Ronald
        Regan & off-shore drilling & crack & racism
        & quickness & quarantines & dying
        surfers&swimmers & interstate 5 & garden
        grove freeway
are not poetic things.
but you still can’t ignore them.

california do something!
california, please, do nothing
for a second.
pause
or stop.

you could be as beautiful as you look
        from a distance.

california, I am inspired by you,
amazed by you,
crazed by you, haunted, daunted and scared by
        you.

california, I’m in your Denny’s,
inspired by you.
& if you’d turn off this goddamn ice machine
& turn off the cars going by,
then maybe you could hear me singing you
        a praise.
 

– Derek Henderson