fluke

my dad makes loads of money.
his parents didn't make loads of money,
nor their parents,
nor theirs.
his children will not make loads of money.
i wonder if my dad feels lonely being accomplished.
where did it come from?
his father was uneducated,
worked bulldozer, drag-line and dump truck.
where did it go?
his children are stick-limbed pansies,
a couple of academic know-nothings.
there's my dad, a handsome man
in the middle of a freak show.
he's proud of us for some reason. i'm certain his success
can be traced to
whatever that reason is.

to those we kill

we sent out a dove on the day we won
across the ocean with a red star
painted on her forehead and a bag
full of fish cheeks for the trip
to eat when floating on driftwood on those
long days before reaching land, land ho
and then everyone, everyone will know
the war is won.

we sent out a sub on the day we won
across the ocean with a flag painted
on the side, top, and bottom and
lobster tails for the men until they arrive
many days later with the news that
god is found and guess what,
god is ours.

we sent out some troops on the day we won
across the ocean with some guns,
but the bullets are putty and designed
to scare, just in case they fail to
understand that all is peace and
peace is found within our heads,
and now the peace is theirs or else
it's not at all.

we dropped a bomb on the day we won,
just one, just in case, just to clear the air,
just to show 'em we mean business
when we say it's clear, and it IS clear,
the horizon has no buildings,
so clear that on a nice day you can see
all the way to america, all the way to heaven,
even through the absurdity of hope.

plenty of time

out the door in the morning,
still early enough for sleep, you are the
firstborn or maybe the last person on earth.
should you go to the power plant,
read up on operations,
get the juice flowing for the evening,
because evenings are less kind
to last persons on earth,
or dig a well out back and wash up?
ah hell, there's enough time for that,
you think, as you pass the second to last
person on earth down the road.
you don't waste time talking,
there's plenty of time for
that she says with a look
and you agree, plenty of time
for that, but then there's that guy
and he probably wants her for himself.
why three? two would have been perfect,
a male and a female, but two males
and a female, that'll never work.
you realize there are not two males
but three and another woman
and someone else,
he's a stranger, not part of your tribe,
and come to think of it,
so were the others,
they were all strangers.
i bet my car still works too,
you think as you turn to walk home,
facing the crowd behind you.

- Jason Barber

Two Wars

Tonight,
though the morning over Baghdad
is thick with prayer and smoke,
and a dud missile bakes
in someone's smashed oven,
my prayers are for you, father,
and the quiet war slipping
clumsily over your wineglass;
hidden in the glance
you pass me with the butter.

You have the worn face of a ruler
on the evening of his exile
as you rise from the table
like a ghost from rubble,
telling me, deadpan, Oh,
I've had the runs for weeks.
I bulldoze peas around my plate
while you stumble toward the bathroom.

Since I came home and found you
mumbling in the TV light,
I've struggled to read the signs you left me:
two white pills on the dirty counter,
a shrine on the mantle in memory of Grams,
and your father's dull razor and shaving brush
gathering dust beside the sink.
I've prayed for someone to tell me
who you're fighting in there,
and which side will win.
I've wondered if you pray too,
as the fearful do, hunched in their kitchens
and pleading for bombs to freeze mid-plummet
when the jets yawn over the skyline.

Listen, father: my faith is shaky
and I know you've never been one for God.
I refuse to wait 'til the tally of dead
is flashed on the TV in months or years.
Will you be gone with the ghosts of war?
How many shots should I pour on your grave?
I'm tired of asking.
Answer me.

Alchemy

Look at you: hodgepodge,
Heinz 57, jumble of ancestors:
French Irish English American.
There's grampa's hairline fleeing
like a brown slug. Your mother's twig toes.
On the morning after, you sweat vodka like your father.
On your birthday the aunts swore
you looked like no one, and they were hopeful.
Yellow eyes, they said. Who else
has yellow eyes? Like hard sap
a mosquito might get stuck in,
or a dream. It's true
you've got two lungs
full of sulfur and ambition.
One from the mill and river at home:
stink of egg fart, dead fish, rain.
The other from that strange alchemy
of mixing each small jar on the spice rack.
Look at you: mirror to no one
and every uncle, aunt, cousin you've caught
toweled in the bathroom; bits of shaving cream
clinging to their face or legs.

What Christians Are Good For

To become a proper ghost
you can't waste your life
on greatness, you must
devote whole days
to riding the subway,
wear nondescript slacks,
and hum only slightly
annoying hymns,
so when finally your heart
putters out on the D train
it's likely some passenger
will be appropriately horrified
and suddenly ashamed
at having skipped church
every week since she was twelve,
and will later swear
to her fellow born-agains
that you're haunting her each time
someone with boring pants
takes the train to work.

- Sean Bishop

Takeout - Maryam Moody

i am thinking,
as i often do these days,
about you-

first of the cities you discovered
in the body i thought i knew
each with its own apartment
into which you moved,
one expansive
sunlit room at a time
one box, one vase, one expensive
loveseat;
lifting shades,
filling hallways with a fine dust.

and when i gave you
a key
you began
to receive mail there, in my body
and to order
takeout
from the chinese restaurant downstairs,
thai from that place down the block, and
letting the little white boxes
pile up next to the sink
which you knew
annoyed me
[tofu sam rod,
pork fried rice,
pad thai.]

Stare - Maryam Moody

Once I dissected
a cow's eye, big as a plum tomato
with a scalpel, and a small
silver spoon.
Carefully I removed
the Jell-O cornea, sea blue
iris, retina
and set them in a petri dish
where they quivered,
bursting with life.

please
don't look
at me that way
now

going home

the trees grow skeletal and gray and the rutty dirt roads harden under them. the harbor freezes in so the muscled old steamship has to cut a slow path through the ice. with the cold comes the quiet.

we're hunkered down in our houses with our dogs and cats and prozac and vcr's. and when we go out, there's a certain system for saying hello. doesn't work in the summer of course, too many tourists to contend with, you hardly see your neighbors anyhow, and everyone's too worn with work. but in the winter, there's the coffee cup salute as you drive by a friend, you both lift your mug and nod your head as you pass by. there's the overenthusiastic "hey now!!" for times when you haven't seen someone in a long time. you smother them with hugs and questions and gossip. usually they won't realize you've forgotten their name. there's the quiet "hey" if you don't really want to talk, or ignoring each other altogether, because of that fight at town meeting, or a long standing rivalry between you and her son, or something.

i remember so much as i drift down these roads. look, there's the dock where my first girlfriend kissed me, her lips tasting of the sea and the cigarette between her calloused fingers. there's dad's boat, an old formula with aches in its bones sighing on its mooring. dad and i drive out there to check the bilge, but really i think its just to look at the water together, walk out on the jetty, vulnerable to the wind. the guys who sit on squid row- the bench at the side of the shack next to the gas station-are shooting the shit, trading fish stories in foul weather gear. the wind whips across the harbor and they nod their red salty faces hello.

- Elana Robinson-Lynch

the unresolved fate of the most beautiful woman in the world

the message on her answering machine was some cryptic shit.
said her beauty was pregnant,
and the stars had zippered themselves to her blouse.
guess she was bleaching them out, or in; somethin'-and her girlfriend
walks in, all expectation,
drops everything and just stares, groceries on the floor like a constellation.

i don't think they even saw each other.

when they held hands, they were bears' paws.
some of the looks they gave each other could crumple the sky.

when they found her, anyway, it was weeks too late.
lying in this field with roots ripped up all around & grass for clothes.
all the little blades riding up on her thighs,
and her just sitting there, head propped up on a rock, suckling this bottle of water.

the stalks must have been cement between her shoulder blades.

shawna said she saw cassiopeia like some perverse garter-belt stretching
down one leg,
but she craned her neck for a better view,
and the girl just dithered into the brush like some cosmic shadow
when the lights go out.

that's the last i heard, anyway.

- Adam Rubenstein

Reading The Boston Cooking School Cook Book, 1941

Popovers, page 90,
and boiled fish, such as Hake, with egg sauce, page 226
When I was little these were two of my favorite things
that my dad would make from this book

I like to read the names of the different sections and foods-
things that sound formal and old fashioned,
that I like the name of, or that I would just like to eat

Franconia Potatoes, or Brabant, Princess, Chartreuse, Alphonso, or Lyonnaise, 412-421
Fried Cucumbers‹dredge in flour, deep fry
Bermuda Slices Baked in Cream

For Children¹s Parties-
Peanut Butter Sandwiches or Checkerboard Sandwiches
Sponge Angel or any Simple Cake
Creamed Chicken on Toast, Bunny Salad

Coffee Tea Sugar Cream Lemon and Orange Slices at a Formal Tea
Open Tomato Sandwiches, Lemon Queens

Southern Dinner‹Watermelon Pickle, Fried Chicken, Hominy Cakes

A Christmas Dinner of Consommé, Roast Goose, Waldorf Salad
Mince Pie or Plum Pudding

Alligator Pear and Orange Salad
Creamed Chestnuts
Welsh Rarebit

Molded Salads, Mayonnaise in salads

Rice Pudding, 518, Tapioca
Apple Snow‹2 egg whites, applesauce

A Quick Breakfast‹Fresh Fruit, Poached Eggs, Toast, Marmalade, Coffee

- Rachel Schlein

to my cousin khalid, who i want to run:

you are too young to be a father
too small still to fill the role of great brown patriarch
or battered workingman.

i want you to run, now,
to a college where no one can pronounce your name
you can be the aid student who makes it good,
study pharmacy or even medicine.

you will forget her face first.
her warm brown body might haunt you,
as you start the steep hike
to money, freedom, and white pussy.

she will live with her mother.
your son will learn spanish.
he won't learn your name.

(i have to confess,
i have been broke brown and pregnant.
we know how it is
and secretly, only secretly do we hate you.)

- Sabeena Shah

Inside Her Hands

You have to wait
for the powder to dissolve
and settle until no air
remains in the syringe.

My mother showed me
how the doctor showed her
to put the medicine in her veins.

Her knuckles swell
and lock up; she can't
make a fist. Inside my mother's
hands, arthritis aches so she
can't open jars, asks me to, but
never so much as swallows a pill
in front of me. Yet,
here she was, lifting her skirt
to her thigh, revealing the bruises
of the clumsy first injections.

First Christmas I am home she tells me
I'm pain free. First time she's mentioned
the illness in months. Only thing is,
my father adds, the nature of the disease
is chronic; her body will eventually
stop responding to the injections.

She's started knitting again. She makes gifts
mostly. Together we drive to a small yarn shop
outside town, and on the door, a post-it note
reads: Closed. Out of town, funeral,
mother died-back Tuesday. We exchange
comments regarding such strange
frankness, then cross the street to a used
furniture store where she buys a bureau
she will paint. In fifth grade, I learned that Renoir
taped brushes to his palms so he could keep
painting even when his hands could no longer
grasp. She thinks hands are sacred, to be used
for music. At age seven, I took
piano lessons for her; at age nine, cello.

Two years ago, the family moved
to a new house so her bedroom would be
on the first floor. Crippling is eventual,
inevitable; she has known this since
she was twenty-five. In the new yard, my mother
gardens. She digs holes without machines,
uses her hands.

On the Bus

Two men behind me speak
in outdated slang about phone sex
and twenty-two cent raises. I hear an insect buzzing
behind me, and one of the men strokes between
my shoulder blades. I turn for an awkward
Thank you, and he's sorry he had to
touch me, he didn't want to have to,
but it might have stung if he hadn't.
I rush off the bus at the next stop, still

imagining strange hands saving me from insects that
stung me when I was eight, and then across
the left eye, three times after getting trapped
in unbrushed hair. Then, half-blind, eye swollen
shut, I took the stings in the backyard, took them
and covered my face in mud and baking soda, removed
the stingers long after the bees died. I then spent summers

hiding in neighbors' cars, under swing sets, behind
screen doors. I learned how to avoid bees: standing still,
wearing dull colors, no perfume, never running. And I'm still
afraid. This summer, a bees' nest fell through
our laundry room ceiling. I couldn't wash
my clothes for a week, could hear the buzzing
through the kitchen wall. A man set off
explosions in our attic to kill all of them‹they died
on the tile floor in piles we spent the day sweeping.

I couldn't help but come home and lock
the door, and when some new boy
took me to his dark room, I couldn't help but whisper
over the buzzing inside him, crossing
my legs and saying Thank you.

- Ashley Williard

Kindergarten, Tarboro, North Carolina

Mrs. Lassiter used to take Darnell Battle
into the restroom at the back of the class.
I thought sometimes I could hear her yelling at him,
but I'm not sure if she ever did anything else.
The closed door was thick and heavy.
Sometimes we would hear the toilet flush.
Loud and sudden.

Darnell Battle was older than me.
If my shoe came untied
he could help me
because he knew how.
Darnell Battle was black.
He used to say to me:
"Your daddy's my doctor."
He looked very small when Mrs. Lassiter had him by the shoulder.
Mrs. Lassiter was tall and white and her hair was one color
but her eyebrows were another.
She was always
so nice to me.

Untitled Poem

There was a day
late last week, perhaps.
A Thursday, I think.
A normal day,
in all ways but one.
On that Thursday,
in mid-March-
as snow melted all across Northampton,
bananas blossomed in León,
children awoke in Ladakh,
cattle lowed in Shandong,
and a woman drank tea in St. Petersburg‹
all was well.
Between one sunrise
and the next
no one awoke to gunfire crackling in the alley outside,
no one had to forego breakfast again
that their children and husband might eat instead.
No one in the entire District of Columbia
pretended to make love to strangers
for another hit.
In Chengue,
not a single villager
was hacked to death all day,
nor in Sindhuli,
nor in Petén.
No one bled to death alone
in the back alleys of Khartoum,
Johannesburg,
Manhattan,
or Mumbai.
Not a single woman or young boy
was held down in tears
in Bilbao,
Laramie,
Münich,
or Jamaica Plain,
while a man they most likely knew beforehand
raped them.
No one cried all day long
except tears of joy.
Two people in Boone County kissed for the first time.
One of them was sixty-two.
Women in burqas all across
Riyadh
and Jiddah
stopped what they were doing at
5:58 pm,
opened windows and doors
and watched as the sun slowly set.
No one anywhere
was bruised
by belt buckles,
or branding irons
on the backs of their legs
or sides of their head that day.
For a whole day
no one lived in fear.
Come evening time,
people laughed,
and told one another the truth.
And at the end of the day,
as people in Fresno,
Paraná,
Abuja,
and Havana
were going to sleep,
they did so without dread,
and without trembling.
The next day things went back to normal
in New Delhi when the crime syndicate cut off limbs to make better beggars,
and in New Brunswick when Edward Stevens beat his wife,
Melanie,
with his bare fists.
But there was that day,
a whole day:
we get at least that much.

- Michael Winslow