POETRY
Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history. ~Plato
Strictly Speaking
David Dionne
Someone long ago said that
garages do not need windows.
This was basically correct:
imagine your battered Ford Taurus drenched
in natural light
from a square of glass
with painted sash
and a sill to rest nuts and bolts on
in place of apple pies.
This is also basically correct:
houses do not need windows.
Strictly speaking
they are superfluous
like a great many things.
Houses, also, do not need
chairs
floors
tables
kitchens
or anything but walls and roof and door.
Let us inhabit the perfect house
with its one room
a place to be
when we cannot escape.
The floor begins as grass and slowly dies to soil
then dirt
then finally compacted earth.
The walls are solid and do not permit a draft.
The roof is strong and will not leak.
The door is resilient and will not be blown open by wind.
Each piece, then, is defined by is and not
and of course by don't
This, what's more, is basically correct:
we are not
what we do not
need.
Imagine your battered Ford Taurus heart drenched
in warm sunlight
from the kitchen window over the sink
with that awful white paint
and the wide sill covered in potted plants
and sun tea brewing.
Breakdown Crane
Ines Rossi Y Costa
​
A horizontal projection (a rail)
You swing about a vertical axis (a rope)
Assemble potential around you (unrealized father)
Now you are done erecting (crash forward)
with stoic surgical precision (terminal strain)
you collapse (murderer)
You hover over the kitchen table,
the metal gleams from your nosedrip,
I stabilize your shaky shoulders, your lips spill
words suspended in time:
I am the mechanism of a machine I can’t experience.
So you rigged your body beneath the overcast sky.
Funeral mourners gathered in a construction zone,
Face masks, our grief uniform,
crushed by your fallen monument,
we excavate memories and hoist narratives.
Your dog watched you disassemble
your last breath but he won’t tell
why a crane took flight on a Thursday night.
We never went back to Lookout Mountain
to dig out the treasure you buried for my children.
I crawled under firs; bare hands, grisly knees,
tripped on the cargo you lugged to the ridge,
unearthed. I met your disembodied
beauty overhead
and beneath the dirt, the levy.
Sunken arteries coagulate the hour
33 stories high, braced by two dates on a hill.
(undo)
My Grandfather's Coffee
Oviya Santiago
My grandfather was once an army gentleman.
Tall and thin, with silver gray hair combed back with oil.
Never so much as a crease on his
rice starched shirts.
In his mahogany cupboard he kept
his daily linens, waters of Jerusalem
poker cards from America, furs from Russia, and
a good inch of dust on his army cap
Every morning, we would slip on our sandals and
walk quietly through the dirty roads.
Cars, peddlers and motorbikes shot
past my grandfather
always missing by an inch.
The honk of cars and rickshaws speeding
flew dust and debris into the air
thick with a haze that made all cough.
The blistering sun trapped
the engine exhaust in a dirty
fog that always loomed above.
By noon the sun was looming high
mercilessly beating down on the bare arms and faces
of passersby who hurried
squinting under the sun’s glare.
That was when he would make coffee.
I watched him pour it
dark, sweet and fragrant
thickened with milk powder
into tiny tin cups.
Pour it back and forth
back and forth
from cup to saucer.
Monotony chiseled away
at the lengthening days
until the last cup was brewed and
mango bartered
As I sat on the train rattling through
towns and rice patties alike
pulled out empty tin of instant coffee
sniffed the lingering sweetness
amidst tobacco and gasoline
showed it to the cockroaches who
ran in and out of sight, along the
rusted window frames.
Hurricane Noa (1997)
Gabby Remington
Eye of the storm lined in black,
silver pierced smile and stained lips,
clad in ripped fishnet this is she.
It is always calm before the storm.
Silver pierced smile and stained lips.
Blood is thicker than water, yet she still has tears.
It is always calm before the storm.
Scattered scrapbooks litter the living room floor.
Blood is thicker than water, yet she still has tears
enough to drown the family tree.
Scattered scrapbooks litter the living room floor,
tattered pieces of a tarnished past.
It’s enough to drown the family tree
and turn the front door grey.
Tattered pieces of a tarnished past,
the home whirls in winds of chaos
and turns the front door grey.
Raised voices run red and veiny
as the home whirls in winds of chaos.
Submerged, the house falls quiet.
Raised voices run red and veiny.
Trailed by the shattered glass of broken windows.
Submerged, the house falls quiet
on its cracked foundation.
Trailed by the shattered glass of broken windows,
clad in ripped fishnet, this is she.
On a cracked foundation
the eye of the storm, lined in black.