these sloppy greens are the goods

Staying by Pierluigi Cappello

My eyes turned to salt in looking back,

my thoughts stood still in gestures,

in the silence of what’s been done;

I gathered the crumbs of another lunch

and shook them into the garden’s vitreous air

where the sun’s just cracked and spilled.

Here, even a flutter of blackbird beyond the hedge

stands still, as my words stand still, like ships in bottles.

Your language is mine but mine is not yours.

At home, I could feel myself thinking

while the television glowed in shadow

and a film score spread like smoke in a saloon.

I keep to myself what it means to tend a fire,

the thick scent of soaked wood, a match between my fingers,

the way a day resides in what’s to do, in another light

split by the clouds, a different sunset tied to the tallest trees

flush in the eyes of houses, on the poor man’s livestock;

a touch here, a touch there — the way loneliness comes,

today, a day like this, one day more alone.

  

The Empty Glass by Louise Gluck

I asked for much; I received much. 

I asked for much; I received little, I received 

next to nothing. 

And between? A few umbrellas opened indoors. 

A pair of shoes by mistake on the kitchen table. 

O wrong, wrong—it was my nature. I was 

hard-hearted, remote. I was 

selfish, rigid to the point of tyranny. 

But I was always that person, even in early childhood. 

Small, dark-haired, dreaded by the other children. 

I never changed. Inside the glass, the abstract 

tide of fortune turned 

from high to low overnight. 

Was it the sea? Responding, maybe, 

to celestial force? To be safe, 

I prayed. I tried to be a better person. 

Soon it seemed to me that what began as terror 

and matured into moral narcissism 

might have become in fact 

actual human growth. Maybe 

this is what my friends meant, taking my hand, 

telling me they understood 

the abuse, the incredible shit I accepted, 

implying (so I once thought) I was a little sick 

to give so much for so little. 

Whereas they meant I was good (clasping my hand intensely)— 

a good friend and person, not a creature of pathos. 

I was not pathetic! I was writ large, 

like a queen or a saint. 

Well, it all makes for interesting conjecture. 

And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe 

in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying, 

a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse 

to persuade or seduce— 

What are we without this? 

Whirling in the dark universe, 

alone, afraid, unable to influence fate— 

What do we have really? 

Sad tricks with ladders and shoes, 

tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring 

attempts to build character. 

What do we have to appease the great forces? 

And I think in the end this was the question 

that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach, 

the Greek ships at the ready, the sea 

invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future 

lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking 

it could be controlled. He should have said 

I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

Cast Off by Belle Randall

If thy own hand . . . offend thee
      —Matthew 18:8

Self-hatred? No, no dear: that seems inflated—

chagrin: the shame you feel when friends withdraw

for reasons they leave tactfully unstated,

leaving you to guess at your faux pas

From all you did and didn’t say for ages,

as in some vast congressional report,

your sin, at last, is lost among the pages;

a snow of detail cuts inquiry short.

In downtown windows where late sunlight glares,

you see yourself, as if you’d never met.

Who is this rumpled lookalike who wears

a blouse like yours, the armpits dark with sweat?

Your eighth grade diary still makes you cringe

saved—for what?—that you might now despise

pages time has lent a jaundiced tinge

pouring forth their daisy-dotted i’s?

Some second-guesser in you finds untrue

the echo of your own voice in your ears,

and wants to ask which one most sickens you:

the voice that whines with neediness and fears,

Or one no doubts can ever undermine,

that speaks before a general assembly,

proclaiming loudly what to do with thine

own hand (or his, or mine), should it offend thee?

Love Poem by Dorothea Lasky

The rain whistled.

 

A taxi brought me to your apartment building

And there I stood.

 

I had dreamed a dream

Of us in a bedroom.

The light shining upon us in white sheets.

 

You were singing me a song of your sailing days

And in the dream

I reached deep in you and pulled out a cardinal

Which in bright red

Flew out the window.

 

Sometimes when we talk 

On the phone, I think to myself

That the deep perfect of your soul

Is what draws me to you.

But still what soul is perfect?

All souls are misshapen and off-colored.

Morning comes within a soul

And makes it obey another law

In which all souls are snowflakes.

 

Once at a funeral, a man had died

And with the prayers said, his soul flew up in a hurry

Like it had been let out of something awful.

It was strangely colored, that soul.

And it was a funny shape and a funny temperature.

As it blew away, all of us looking felt the cold.

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” 

The giver by James Baldwin

If the hope of giving

is to love the living,

the giver risks madness

in the act of giving.

Some such lesson I seemed to see

in the faces that surrounded me.

Needy and blind, unhopeful, unlifted,

what gift would give them the gift to be gifted?

          The giver is no less adrift

          than those who are clamouring for the gift.

If they cannot claim it, if it is not there,

if their empty fingers beat the empty air

and the giver goes down on his knees in prayer

knows that all of his giving has been for naught

and that nothing was ever what he thought

and turns in his guilty bed to stare

at the starving multitudes standing there

and rises from bed to curse at heaven,

he must yet understand that to whom much is given

much will be taken, and justly so:

I cannot tell how much I owe.

What I Like by Alice Fulton

Friend-the face I wallow toward
through the scrimmage of shut faces.
Arms like towropes to haul me home, aide-
memoire, my lost childhood docks, a bottled ark
in harbor. Friend-I can't forget
how even the word contains an end.
We circle each other in a sacred bolero,
imagining strategems: postures and imposters.
Cold convictions keep us solo. I ahem
and hedge my affections. Who'll blow the first kiss,
land it like the lifeforces we feel,
tickling at each wrist? It should be easy
easy to take your hand, whisper down the distance
labeled hers or his: what I like about you is

The Makings of Monday Miyukguk

I miss you, Reggie.

Meaninglessness by Stephen Dunn

He was staring at one of its faces,
fine-boned, with one of those faint,
appealing scars, a face he might
seek out at a party on a night
he couldn't help himself again.

He'd learned, but forgotten,
the pointlessness of seeking;
he was, after all, alive,
and desire often sent him aching
toward some same mistake.

The museum was spacious, the walls full
of those gestures towards permanence
he wanted to believe mattered.
No longer was he sure they did.
But he was there, had paid his money.

The definition of beauty, Valery said, is easy;
it's what leads you to desperation.
He moved from room to room
and the face moved with him.
Renoir's women looked merely healthy.

A museum guard trailed, careful
not to hover. Meaninglessness,
he remembered(but not in time),
is what always makes a promise.
Otherwise we'd expect little

from it, no bloodrush, or grand
holiday of the mind, no sweet
prolonged forgetfulness
about what the future hold, no cheers
from the suddenly awakened soul.

Wanderlusting

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."  

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

The Wake Was a Line and We Watched by Mary Jo Bang

While we stood in the window and wept.
Well, not wept but sniveled
A little and wiped our eyes
On a coat sleeve. What

Were we thinking, I wonder now.
It was fall.
It was clear. A boat sat
Throwing a reflection of itself

Onto a body of water.
It sits and sits. As the ornament is
A monument so is the bird in the sky
One with the eyes

That were taking it all in.
An argument for a theory
Of all-in-oneness. All as all. Imagine
The “I” as a camera turned on

To a mirror.
Where the face in the mirror
Isn’t that of the one looking in
But of Jacqueline Onassis

Or someone else famous
Beyond saying.
A full fifteen minutes.
It’s in the nature of looking

At the future while married to the moment.
It’s Disney’s “Mickey
And The Broken Mirror Mishap”
All over again.

The jagged glass reforming
Into a narrative where
The core event keeps clicking into place
As a great, a terrible, shattering.

This thought leads straight
To the darkest thought: I miss home.
Like a child misses home, or
A line drawing of a Quebec Marmot.

That’s what happens.
Meanwhile, the madness.
The brain-gray concourse.
The utter factuality of the few true things.

goodgawd...WTF

Watch:

The Untrustworthy Speaker by Louise Gluck

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken. 

I don’t see anything objectively. 

I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist. 

When I speak passionately, 

that’s when I’m least to be trusted. 

It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised 

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight. 

In the end, they’re wasted— 

I never see myself, 

standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand. 

That’s why I can’t account 

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends. 

In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous. 

People like me, who seem selfless, 

we’re the cripples, the liars; 

we’re the ones who should be factored out 

in the interest of truth. 

When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges. 

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers. 

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas 

red and bright pink. 

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself 

to the older daughter, block her out: 

when a living thing is hurt like that, 

in its deepest workings, 

all function is altered. 

That’s why I’m not to be trusted. 

Because a wound to the heart 

is also a wound to the mind.

Undertow by Dean Young

People looking at the sea, 

makes them feel less terrible about themselves, 

the sea's behaving abominably, 

seems never satisfied, 

what it throws away it dashes down 

then wants back, yanks back. 

Comparatively, thinks one vice president, 

what are my frauds but nudged along 

misunderstandings already there? 

I can't believe I ever worried 

about my betrayals, thinks the analyst 

benefitting facially from the sea's raged-up mist. 

Obviously I'm not the only one suffering 

an identity crisis knows the boy 

who wants to be a lawyer no more. 

Nothing can stay long, cogitates the dog, 

so maybe a life of fetch is not a wasted life. 

And the sea heaves and cleaves and seethes, 

shoots snot out, goes to bed only to wake 

shouting in the mansion of the night, pacing, 

pacing, making tea then spilling it, 

sudden outloud laughter snort, Oh what the 

heck, I probably drove myself crazy, 

thinks the sea, kissing all those strangers, 

forgiving them no matter what, liars 

in confession, vomitters of plastics 

and fossil fuels but what a stricken 

elixir I've become even to my becalmed depths, 

while through its head swim a million 

fishes seemingly made of light 

eating each other.

Belief in Magic by Dean Young

How could I not?

Have seen a man walk up to a piano

and both survive.

Have turned the exterminator away.

Seen lipstick on a wine glass not shatter the wine.

Seen rainbows in puddles.

Been recognized by stray dogs.

I believe reality is approximately 65% if.

All rivers are full of sky.

Waterfalls are in the mind.

We all come from slime.

Even alpacas.

I believe we’re surrounded by crystals.

Not just Alexander Vvedensky.

Maybe dysentery, maybe a guard’s bullet did him in.

Nonetheless.

Nevertheless

I believe there are many kingdoms left.

The Declaration of Independence was written with a feather.

A single gem has throbbed in my chest my whole life

even though

even though this is my second heart.

Because the first failed,

such was its opportunity.

Was cut out in pieces and incinerated.

I asked.

And so was denied the chance to regard my own heart

in a jar.

Strange tangled imp.

Wee sleekit in red brambles.

You know what it feels like to hold

a burning piece of paper, maybe even

trying to read it as the flames get close

to your fingers until all you’re holding

is a curl of ash by its white ear tip

yet the words still hover in the air?

That’s how I feel now.

You'd Think The Sky Would Run Out Of Water by Todd Colby

You'd think the sky would run out of water,

but it won't; it just keeps coming down. I need someone

to marvel at the breath escaping from me.

Do you have a natural resource you prefer to exploit?

Does someone think of you and turn the channel?

How would you ever know?

Have you ever zoned out during Downton Abbey?

I'm certain of something I'd prefer not to tell you about.

"Slow down," you say. But I can already see my breath,

and its only October. Walking with you is making everything

watery and spazzed out, like a movie about sex

where I have sex and people are all like,

"He's amazing, we really like his sex style!"

But I digress. Will you please stand up when called upon to tell

the audience how wonderful I was in my best moments;

like someone in senior management delegating things and being sure

of everything but how to stop? I promise I'll make this up to 

you. I'll write your name on the menu board,

and people will come into the store all expectant of you.

1 

Our Minds buzz like bees 
but not the bees' minds. 
It's just wings not heart 
they say, moving from flower to flower. 


37 


Beware, o wanderer, the road is walking too, 
said Rilke one day to no one in particular 
as good poets address the six directions. 
If you can't bow, you're dead meat. You'll break 
like uncooked spaghetti. Listen to the gods. 
They're shouting in your ear every second 


12 


Not here and now but now and here. 
If you don't know the difference 
is a matter of life and death, get down 
naked on bare knees in the snow 
and study the ticking of your watch.