Issue 6 – Poetry

Roses from Susan and a christening
into what I have no idea of.

On Terminal Disease Square, at the intersection of Doubt and Despair, live the Benders of time,

The art of sighing isn’t hard to master;
each day greets us with news of fresh disaster.

You could fly for an instant
whole body in separate hands
cupped and held hands
you could fly when they let you

Under the dresser
a small plastic button
uncovered as if
all of the sudden,

I could have used the set of traveling colors,
the brush with its barrel of water.

They still call it that
Even though now it’s all just screen time
Of course it is day
Definitely.

In the beginning there is chaos.
Alarms and running and pressured orders.
A conglomerate of people with a shared goal.

I laugh when others laugh,
but offer naught to conversation;
standing still against a shaded wall
observing without participation.

Snowflakes wide

as white hens. Amaranth

bleeds scarlet on the snow.

Midnight. Sleep eludes me.
As hours pass, my brain is full
of the usual black dogs

I’m twenty-one, touring a Chicago hospital in a dirty-snow winter, trailing a student who raves about the school, its illustrious doctors.

I remember her clumping tread
the rubber-tipped cane
striking the floor before
the halt-slide step

In a slot of Grandma Ada’s rolltop
I found a hand-colored photo
of Uncle D. in his Marine uniform, smiling,
eyes bluer than the overbright sky
of the hand-tinted tropical backdrop

Her mom’s been bleeding for days.
Transfusion after transfusion
As if her veins were sieves

Nanuk thought it was time,
time to go out on the ice,
to relieve her family of one more useless
mouth to feed during this hungry time

We’re all Gatsby, always have been, standing lonely on our own pier, 
Looking for the certain future, rich as Croesus, really, in this world, 
Food, rent, man, and printed books online. It’s all on line!

You will care for them when it’s time
With static eyes, pores firing off sweat,

sacrificing self.
physicians spend a lifetime,
to save another.

People flicker out. Each of us has an unknown
expiration date.

It was a fine Sunday morning
when I felt the first sign.

The guy in charge of the cemetery
said I would like this site.
It has a seasonal view, Mead’s Mountain in winter,
and you can hear the stream year-round.

I saw geraniums
in the first snow,
blood-bright,
upright,
and one yellow daisy.

Sunburnt stranger
Buries face in hands
Staggers shadeless sidewalk

Hands clasped,
fingers interlaced
for just a moment

We named you posthumously
since you died the same day
as the prince