Sixfold Poetry Winter 2016

  your soul once carried. The softest

  cotton, fine grain of wood,

  tiny teeth of gravel, the twisting

  arms of waves or burst of flames,

  will bind to your flesh

  until you are no more

  than broken links of carbon.

  For those waiting to be identified,

  heaven is a white sheet too short

  to cover their feet.

  International Space Station, 23 July 2014

  on a photo by Alexander Gerst

  Light, invisible unless it strikes

  something: a wall, a tree, a sliver

  of smoke, your eye. Fireworks makers

  know how to make light whirl

  and dance, displacing the stars

  of midsummer or grip of winter.

  Entranced, one can only surrender.

  If you didn’t know what the bursts of light

  Alexander Gerst had captured in space,

  you could be forgiven for thinking

  they were beautiful, like filigree

  or deep sea creatures. But there,

  dark waters bordered

  by a scattering of lights, the beach

  where four children playing

  were blown up.

  Crocodiles in Belfast

  The morning radio reports

  another crocodile attacked a woman

  in Belfast. She was washing a bucket

  to be filled with river water to carry

  back home. Two other women armed

  with buckets were around. They screamed

  and clattered the hollow plastics,

  swung them against the crocodile's sides

  until it released the woman's leg.

  Annoyed, it withdrew to a quieter

  part of the river to wait in silence

  for another meal. The news

  will soon be forgotten

  before the woman's leg heals.

  But she will be going back

  to the river's edge

  while the drought extends its grip

  on the land and the men

  of the village go in search

  for work elsewhere in Mpumalanga.

  Women and Children First

  A woman, her grip

  tight as a fist, is pulling back

  the hijab of another woman.

  In the same frame, a boy

  with rubber sandals is poised

  to land a kick on her thawb.

  Just look closely.

  The soldiers

  in the background

  aren't doing anything.

  Melissa Cantrell

  Collision

  You were always there, it seemed, at the edges,

  gripping the hems of my weekend scenes.

  I, the allegiant regular—

  The bartenders knew my bottles,

  allowed tabs. I did not bluster, or get muddy.

  I left upright, with dignity and dollars in my pocket.

  You flitted, sulked, and roamed all over the joint,

  your orbit slushy, sequenced to a design

  only you could follow.

  Some nights, you plinked an entire roll of quarters into the jukebox,

  sifted out some lovelies from the stacks:

  Donny Hathaway if you ached.

  Coltrane for storms, sorting the debris in your head.

  Zeppelin or Jack White, if you wanted to brawl.

  You screamed for someone to turn it up.

  Swagger with a pool cue guitar.

  I caught you howling in the bathroom once.

  Pretended I hadn’t, and retreated.

  You came out wearing lipstick the shade of an open vein

  and left with your arms around a dizzy girl,

  her neck spattered crimson.

  You probably weren’t merciful that night.

  You were discussed.

  She spreads trouble.

  Rowdy.

  I outgrew turbulence long ago.

  Tossed it furious and berserk and spitting,

  a mad thing with plague in its blood.

  Shirked a bursting city too gutter sharp for me

  and staggered West, to unravel in peace

  with the rest of the quiet folk.

  So I tried to ignore you.

  But you just bustled in tonight,

  all yawning havoc and catastrophe,

  and skid a glass next to mine,

  your ante for uprooting my waveless world.

  Spark

  July 7th, and the fireworks loiter—

  Elemental fizzles to my north,

  cracking the night open

  like a lover with rude hands.

  Take that. Feel that.

  A wallop of copper, zinc, aluminum, iron.

  Most times, the chemistry gets folded up,

  discarded beneath the shiver and boom.

  Forgetting,

  Or not caring:

  We quarter the same fuels, tourists in our blood.

  We’re burning up there, too.

  Affliction

  At the next table, intruding—

  a clump of youth.

  Crooked, dropped-razor hair, unfinished faces.

  Kick started and roaring,

  slinging wide ideas over waffles and eggs.

  You drag out the usual colossal savages to debate:

  Death. War. Love.

  But remotely, just nibbling the corners.

  Notions deprived of knowing anything so stout,

  or final, as those beasts.

  Ozone and poses in your mouths.

  The residue left when experience withers,

  and all your crowing gives out.

  Something mean uncoils in me at your noise.

  I want to say:

  You are as significant as ortolans,

  glutted with a mash of half-grown gospel.

  Your end will be just as horrible,

  but you won’t gnash or scrabble

  when the brandy barrel locks shut.

  Taken by surprise.

  Compromised.

  (Your ramparts were so radiant, so tough, how did they fail?

  Cobbled of followers, feeds, personas—

  garbage slathered in every crevice, to keep out the rain and ruin.)

  Spines duped into believing

  a hashtag hits harder than what’s waiting for you outside,

  in the years rattling ahead.

  I’ve met the slashing gods.

  I’ve learned to salute lesser ones.

  Those who really understand how to sink into the gray spots:

  Comfort. Quiet. Rest.

  The burn cures of aging.

  I want to say these things.

  Give warning before you tumble out of this place.

  Be the sapped, seen-it-all diviner

  who lurches in, rips up your rails,

  alters the story before it’s too late.

  Instead, I let you carry on.

  (Struck feeble and flightless.)

  Pay my check.

  Leave you to prod giants,

  already hearing your bones crunch between their teeth.

  Martin Conte

  Hair

  Without the princess headdress,

      jango jive do rag,

  mother’s skull stretched bare—

  spotty crust of hilltop,

  tall grass are clumps of hair,

  decaying under boulder.

  Tufts clung where she left them

      to stick from kerchief—

  my Queen, my Hippolyta—

  stray antennae, strands of memory.

  She came downstairs uncovered once,

  emerged earthworm, caught me

      with eyes wide.

  This mother not mine, this woman

      unknown. Once,

  when I was four, I learned to braid

      her wai
st length cascade,

  fibers of her being, feeling part—

  Oh Queen, Oh Hippolyta—

  of her tumorless universe.

  After chemo, it grew in

  gray and brittle, a brillo scrub.

  She chopped it to military attention.

  Now it drapes, chainmail of the knight,

  clinking over shoulders, shining with frost.

  My Queen, My Hippolyta:

  you are dressed for battle.

  Skin

  Ichthyosis is a family of disorders characterized by dry or scaly and thickened skin. — NIH

  When Narcissus finally disturbed the water,

  out leapt a salmon, shimmered fish

  to baby, human, unwieldy and foreign,

  landlocked lips chapped without gills.

  My body was disaster, dying faster

  day by day. I was no miracle

  no flower petals here, just

  suicidal sandpaper scales.

  My grandfather, filleting fish,

  fit me in the skin.

  Ichthyosis, jutting long line in a short poem.

  At school they ooh and aah

  queues of them to touch the grit,

  crinkling white clutch shunting

  off a dying birch.

  Show them the unaching scars

  as if I received these

  symboled marks

  for their breath only!

  says Coriolanus in English class.

  We're their side-show, a need

  to know how riddled we are, and so

  to feel smooth themselves.

  Will they recognize me

  in tomorrow's skin suit

  rioting roots beneath

  the bed, polluted air

  of me and my dead?

  Have they consumed me yet?

  I die faster

  minute by minute.

  Flesh

  4 and 20 blackbirds baked in a pie . . .

  as the needle's eye looks for mincemeat inside.

  Who knew they could all fit?

  Unfolding a thousand times

  over, from plant to blue to needle's plow

  across the blank hayfield of my leg.

  They're coming up for me.

  How do they see through

  such a black lens?

  The crow's sense

  is underestimated

  at the estimator's expense.

  "What will you name her?"

  the tattoo mystic says to me,

  tickling my thigh like a baby's,

  while the crow's belly

  with its tender sheet

  inches over my shy body

  like ink on the underside of heaven.

  She's made it over my chest,

  nipples a smudge,

  disappearing towards my inside

  horizon, hairy skies.

  My skin repeating itself,

  black limb on black limb

  making what white is left glow alien,

  splintered web of moon

  at the bottom of a stone well.

  the punk poet tattoo lady

  has a mother's unbreaking touch.

  The crow's wing brushes

  the nape of my neck.

  I'm drowning in them.

  Crows don't down,

  their baby feathers

  are never found.

  AJ Powell

  The Road to Homer

  As the brief night lifts its gray blanket

  My eyes drink long draughts of wilderness

  The road is hedged by granite crumble and rock slab

  The flora is white lace and purple garnish

  Peninsular waters of cold turquoise flash sunlight

  Off the wings of a blanched low-soaring seabird

  Waterfall strands plummet past the height of skyscrapers

  Down mountain mammoths my sight can’t keep in frame

  Clouds in highest climes perch on peaks

  Like egrets on the shoulders of elephants

  The spires of this cathedral are green tangle-trees

  Snagging my soul on their branches

  My throat is thick with gasping

  I am diminutive and wide-eyed

  My senses are swallowed

  By the ample world

  If civilization drowns in the ices we melt

  I will come here, become a bear,

  And feast on salmon and honey

  Caterpillar Girl

  Daughter, did I step on you?

  Caterpillar of my heart

  With your spiney sensitivity

  Feeling for the world’s

  Hard corners and soft edges

  Inching along

  Bristly-soft and vulnerable

  You taste and test

  And button-hunt and press

  And press and press

  To know your power

  Build your defenses

  Arm yourself and

  With charm and glances

  Disarm us

  My foot falls heavy and large sometimes

  My beak-like words

  Peck and threaten to consume

  Your still-soft self

  I am sorry

  I will do better to protect for you

  This world-sized, lifelong

  Chrysallis

  Your wings are readying

  Present and developing

  At times dampened by sorrow

  And the everyday betrayals we adults visit upon

  You and all child-hearts

  Inch along still, growing girl

  Travel and transform

  Then

         Spread

                Lift

                    Ascend

  But perch again

  Near

  I’ll tame my steps yet

  Sandpaper on Silk

  Life is sandpaper on silk

  Snags are inevitable

  When the beautiful and the rough

  Rub against each other like lovers

  It isn’t the sandpaper’s fault

  Ontologically speaking

  It has its place, can make

  A hewn log as smooth as . . .

  Silk too has its attributes

  A fragile beauty which

  Falls like water, whisper soft on skin

  (Though I’m not sure the worm’s perspective on it)

  Life is the terrible disappearing space between them

  The unraveling of fine things

  Brought too close for their own good

  Balmy summer temperatures meet ice caps

  And all our polar bears are left drowning

  Lives march to matter more than gunshots

  Neighborhoods divide along fault lines

  Of difference and indifference

  Mid-life crises leave children

  Half-orphaned every other week and holidays

  How can we contain our contradictions?

  How do we reconcile

  Peace and power

  Romance and reality

  The Just Cause and the just flawed

  Without tearing up hearts or

  Lopping off heads in private jihads

  Bloody and holy and now?

  Life is sandpaper on silk

  Or a junkie’s temporary ecstasy

  Or a flaming marshmallow—sugar turned to ash

  Sun Salutation

  We rest at night under star shine or cloud cover

  Forgetting

  The sun is always mountaineering

  Our sun makes a repetition of ascents we suckle on

  Like a baby at the breast, hovering hummingbird at blossom

  We sip and sup the sun assuming

  She will never tire, always return

  The golden orb sits herself upon the horizon

  Gathers her breath

  And begins her climb to the peak of the sky

  Onl
y to descend from her zenith

  To a rest she never reaches

  Finding yet another day to scale

  And so she clambers on

  Delivering again to us

  The gossamer goodness

  Of her warmth and illumination

  When the world turns cactus on us

  When our atmosphere burns toxic with vitriol

  When life is a live wire that snaps toward our hearts

  When our minds lay the lash down on our own backs

  Then let us look up

  The sky is firmament

  And we are living upside-down

  So in the morning

  I will sit under the caress

  Of the sun’s side-slanting first rays

  And consider my small self

  I will watch the sun Rise

  Gather my thankful breath

  And proceed, breathing

  Leaping with Esther

  “Who knows whether,” or so the story goes, “you have been lifted up

  For such a time as this?”

  A question, not a statement:

  Who knows whether?

  For there is God’s grace spread abroad in the world

  And then there is consistent stupidity and even

  Dumb Luck

  I for one can’t tell the difference

  Most days are through a glass darkly

  And no clarion Christ calls to me

  From the noise of my circumstances

  God visits me like light skipping on water

  My life briefly blessed by

  A ripple that makes me blink

  And but for my watering eyes

  I might not know it was there

  Such is the God I know and love

  Better by the contours of my longing

  Than my faith

  So, “Who knows whether?”

  A grand Maybe, a glorious Perhaps

  Holding familiar uncertainties:

  Dark Humor and Bright Pain and “Who knows whether?”

  A plan exists, things come together for good

  Or

  We are simply spinning unhinged in a fathomless sky

  All we know is Esther

  Writhed in great anguish, risked her very life

  For permission to throw a cocktail party

  She must’ve read the Psalmist who penned the 23rd:

  Yay though I walk

                “Fast for me.”

  Through the Valley of Death

                “If I perish I perish”

  Thus she dressed in her best,

  Prepared to gamble on her best guesses