#175: Three Poems by Diane Kirsten Martin

~This poem was previously published in Harvard Review (2011).

A Study in Chiaroscuro

Sometimes what feels good is the most dangerous.

Remember uncle sun staring down your décolletage.

Think the daintiest little bright mushrooms.

Whose fault is it if you won’t listen, if you

indulge too easily the heart’s clamor?

Inside a small screen, brown Bakelite exterior,

a cathode ray soul screams at each scuffle

closer to the goal line. Beyond, schoolmates

in penny loafers and knee socks shuffle down leafy

sidewalks, pressing loose leaf binders to the chest.

From the pellucid moment of this autumn morning,

you still can’t change the channel. You want to turn

blind eyes to that escapade. And to the airport angel

with her well-worn harp—could you afford to give

her absolution, say, an E-for-effort blessing?

If there were a God, do you think He would be

the red-shouldered hawk sheltering the fledgling,

or the fierce raptor seizing the gopher, greedy and slow,

clambering to its burrow? Shouldn’t the gopher be

warned by the shadow of the wings overhead?

*****

#174: "Tourist's Attraction" by Jessica Garratt

~This poem was originally published in Western Humanities Review (2012).

Tourist’s Attraction

“‘But what is it all about? People loose and at the same time caught. Caught and loose. All these people and you don’t know what joins them up.’”

                              –Frankie, from Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding

Living by myself in this house

which others have called home and then

not called home, each for their own

good reasons, reminds me to wonder

if what I have is a tourist’s

attraction to love. I’m reminded

how hard a tourist falls

when she feels herself set a little apart,

when she feels that old ache

in the eye, to see clear through

the signage that drew her

in the first place. To see through

is her mania – to see down

to the sacred bones of a sacred site

and through the bones

of the others who traveled there

(even those who traveled with her)

and clutter the air with their bright

t-shirts, their voices flashing

with a present tense

so annoyingly unshadowed

it won’t survive the glib back-glance

of Tuesday. Can you blame her

for wanting to dig down

to a bedrock Now? But I do. I

blame her. Looking through

has something of a look away

in its heart. An old desire of the young

to strip things down – dear

things, some – to an essence, bared like teeth

of the no longer living.

I’m thinking

of Machu Picchu there, if you want

to know.  The skulls, the sacrificed

virgins’ bones, the unmoved sacred stones…

It’s on my mind because this morning I stood

out on the porch of this house in Georgia

where I’m living temporarily, and where

Carson McCullers (now dead) once lived

as a child, less (but still) temporarily,

and I set up a card table – a pretty good copy

of the card table my grandmother put out in the den

for Gin Rummy with my sister and I

when we were kids – and I sat there

on the porch with the deck of cards

I bought earlier this summer in Peru

for Rummy with my sister

on trains and in the airport,

but today (and all week) I’ve played Solitaire

in Georgia’s late-summer, late-morning

heat, and on each card I slapped down,

a new dull snapshot shone

of Machu Picchu, blue sky

an ageless tapestry behind it. White spackle

of clouds. In a few, tourists

who must each, in that moment,

have felt the unyielding ground

supporting their feet, the reliable arch

of the view as it poured in like concrete

to meet the clarity of their eyes,

and not known another perspective

made them small, then guarded

by a two of spades, a jack of clubs, a diamond,

some hearts. It’s September now and still

nothing’s lined up, not once,

on the Solitaire front, so I go on

with the contented mania

of a slot machinist, more at home

with disequilibrium anyway.

#173: "The Boyfriend" by Sheri Joseph

~This story was originally published in The Kenyon Review (2003).

  

The Boyfriend

  

The cockatoo came in wheezing.  Its owner, a tall young woman with tired eyes, scooped the bird from a plastic cat carrier and placed it on the table before the vet.  “He doesn’t act right,” she said.  “Since yesterday.  Won’t eat or anything.”

              The vet, Dr. Wendy Howard, slim, freckled, and boyish, set her hands on her hips.  “Not feeling too good, huh?” she said to the bird, in the expressively sympathetic voice most people reserved for mopey children.   

            Cassandra, the technician, waited at Wendy’s left shoulder like a pink-smocked soldier at ease, ready in case she were needed.  Though trained in numerous technical tasks befitting her title, her primary job, as it turned out, was to restrain the animals for the vet’s examination.  This one, an umbrella cockatoo—a common variety the size of a small chicken—appeared too lethargic to need restraint.  Otherwise she would have stepped to the table without being beckoned and taken hold, one thumb notched into the crevice beneath the cockatoo’s nutcracker beak and the other hand pinning the wings, leaving the sternum untouched so as not to interfere with breathing.  In a year of handling exotics, she had learned to accomplish restraint so that Wendy almost never had to speak a word of instruction, whatever manner of bird, mammal, or reptile awaited her on the table.    

            She watched now as Wendy slid the towel from the bottom of the bird’s carrier and frowned at the droppings.  The owner yawned, pressing at the sockets of her eyes, where the skin was deeply tanned and printed with the remains of yesterday’s mascara.  She was maybe thirty, attractive, though she had the sordid, much-handled look of a child’s favorite Barbie.  Her ponytail, long and striped with peroxide, looked less like a hairstyle than a convenient handle for dragging her around.  Cassandra imagined she must have survived something, escaped and settled into a solitary life with this pet. 

            “His name’s Oscar,” the owner added, while Wendy set her fingertips along both sides of the bird’s jaw, as if to critically admire a beauty.  The bird shifted its gray feet on the table and settled back to torpor.  Its eyes, like the woman’s, opened only by half. 

#172: Two Poems by Bobbi Lurie

            

~This poem was previously published in Nimrod (2002).

KABUL

This afternoon I went to the jar, sank my finger in the honey. 

No one saw me so I let the sweetness linger on my tongue. 

At night I paint black around my eyes.

I wash it off at morning.

When everyone’s asleep, I draw on scraps of paper 

I’ve collected, the backs of labels, edges torn from newspapers.

This is my secret.

                        *

Coming back from the highway with my brothers,

I dropped my spade, went to lean against the shed,

Heard Father’s voice coming from within.

He was laughing with Abdullah who says he’ll buy me

For three bags of wheat

When Father’s done with me.

When he does I’ll slash my body with petrol, 

Strike the match like Laida did.

I watched those two fools empty a giant vat of honey

Into another vat, saw them pull out long tubes 

They scraped with their hands, licked with their tongues. 

Beneath the amber honey, I saw guns.

Father caught me looking, jumped off his chair, 

His hands were claws dripping towards me, 

Shoving me hard against the wall, grabbing me there. 

Whore!! he screamed then spit on me.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. 

I covered my face.

Back in the tent 

Mother was making lentils, 

Hunched over the fire.

I pulled the spoon from her hand, stirred the pot 

As if I were her daughter.

                        *

Today, walking with my brothers, I saw Bashir.

He was leaning against a wall, one leg missing.

I knew, still a shock went through me 

Seeing the dirty rags tied around his stump, the blood dried,

What looked like pus. 

And how he stood as if he had a leg.

Strange how we never speak 

But I walk through him with my eyes, 

Enter his hidden rooms. 

He was speaking with Khangal about the enemy

But his soft eyes were blazing holes in me,

Forcing me to see the sky and trees with deeper color.

Khangal saw me looking, threw his spade hard against my leg,

The pain was so intense. I bled and bled,

Putting pressure on the wound with just my hand,

My burkha drenched in blood,

He pulled me up by my hair.

I burned in the part of me which was not hurt.

                        *

Tonight Father had guests. I heard them say 

They liked the bread.

I baked it 

While Mother took a nap. 

She did not say

I baked it. She turned her back to me.

                        *

I feel sickness inside me all the time.

I enter the back rooms with my father, 

  

Creep out like a rat trapped in its maze,

Seek escape in the next cage where Mother stands

Brewing the food, keeping us snared in this affliction called life.

And I think of our martyrs dying for freedom. 

I would like to die for freedom.

But I am a woman

And I do not believe in the paradise Father speaks about

While he beats me with his stick.

                        *

But everyday I keep collecting my scraps of paper.

And when everyone’s asleep, 

I draw Bashir, his stump, my father with his guns,

My mother hunched over the fire, stirring lentils.

I draw them all out of me.

I open myself to the darkness.

I wait for night to speak.

 *****