Sixfold Poetry Summer 2014

  crossed, marked for the burning at birth. Pain? By

  now we know a thing or two about pain.

  Picture This

  Do you like a beach? Okay, then, a beach—

  in fact, your favorite beach, favorite because

  you’ve never been to this beach before—each

  sensation beckons you, opens you, draws

  you in, welcomes you to your beach—the sand

  envelops the bare contours of your feet,

  sunshine pours over you, here, where the land

  yields itself to the sea. A waiter greets

  you, hands you a glass of exquisite wine,

  the taste is an aria, it unfolds

  itself in your throat, your belly, the line

  between you and universe is gone, golden

  light floods through you, heals you, holds

  you, whispers everything’s going to be fine.

  The Champ

  The Champ is down, cold-cocked. Seven. Eight. Nine.

  (      two      heads      faces      backlit      floating  in  smoke

  floating  in  warm  wet  gauze     unending  wind

  choirs  of  voices    choirs  of  bells    one  face  broken

  one  barking    numbers   the  other  gone

  the other  ) The Champ stirs, shakes, slowly rises,

  staggers, steadies, blinks hard twice, unfreezes,

  nods all-clear. By God, the Champ fights on,

  tapping the gloves as if to strike a spark,

  as if to pray (  the other  ) and the crowd

  is delirious, a heaving sea of darkness

  and fists, cigars and fedoras, now

  rapt, now roaring, now howling like a raw

  nerve, electric, as the two of them dance

  the dance of circling beasts, now grappling, now glancing

  blows, now thunder—by God, the Champ fights on,

  unrelenting (the other) a quick left,

  a right, darting jabs, starting to connect,

  at last the Kid is on the ropes, a deft

  feint from the Champ, dauntless on the blood-flecked

  mat (the other), that bed of mortal conflict,

  the crowd’s madness is love, uppercut,

  the Kid’s head flies back, rock-a-shock, eyes shut,

  nimbus of sweat and blood—the Champ fights on,

  by God ( the other ) and the Kid is through.

  Carted off. And now the ref does his shtick,

  the big-mike announcer does his bit, too,

  the crowd trades backslaps and greenbacks. The fix

  is on, someone mutters gravely. (   gone

  never gone   ) Echoes and laughter, house lights.

  Janitors appear, disappear. The night

  is over—and by God, the Champ fights on.

  Daniel Stewart

  January

  I defy you this year with a smile

  less one tooth

  extracted because the bone

  that anchored it

  dissolved. Neglect born

  of neglect. A mother loves one

  son but not the other. A goose will kill

  its smallest, lamest mouth

  for the sake of other hungers.

  We endure

  inversion-gummed air, The Gap

  and I, ignore

  side streets rutted with snow

  marbled like foam on a latte.

  More than halfway through

  my forties I know

  better, January. If the boss I’d fire

  your ice; shove your single digits up your

  aurora borealis. I heart you

  like a clogged artery, stroke you

  like a pulse-burst. You’ve struck the sky

  of birds, strung the smog

  with tinsel. The frost-fringed dead

  limbs of the trees fool the kids

  but I’m lost

  as the starlings. Such garish

  garnish crowns you the grandest, damnedest

  widow. You suck

  me dry. My hands crack

  and flake. My lips need

  a balm. A stranger reached

  into me and wrenched

  out a tooth. He numbed me

  first—I felt nothing—but the cracking

  was like ice fallen through.

  I’ve fallen through you,

  January. Your frozen fist will wreck a face.

  I turn my cheek for you to kiss.

  April

  The white top reanimates, little stranglers

  haloed with petals. I thought I killed

  them all last year with poison, with my bare

  hands dragging them out of the graves

  they were digging in the lawn. Weeds

  always return. You never

  will. The neighbors started gardens but I’ve been

  wary, haven’t even tilled the weedy soil. Dandelions

  roar neon wounds. Wind riots

  in the budding plum, the frantic

  blossoms your absence. Sky an ache

  of angles through awkward branches. The poppies

  under fatten and stir.

  Bent, I spray white top and crabgrass; crush

  cheat; I resist. You insist

  the sky’s schizophrenic with clouds. The sky

  pales the way a face

  drains. The wind’s scouring tears

  eyes (a reflex) that reflect only the ordinary

  light. Mid-April, and frost expected after midnight.

  Corvette

  As if Cancer was a giant

  vampire that broke off the blackened

  fang it sucked the blood

  from my family with & left

  it in the flesh to fester.

  The white

  skeleton stretched grey

  skin into a yellowed

  grin, waved its claw

  like a magician

  performing a trick.

  Stripes

  our Brindle/Pit mix

  whined and sniffed a chrome

  wheel, lifted leg to piss

  but found Dad’s foot & curse

  up his ass instead.

  My brother

  hooted & drooled, lusted

  over the two-seater trap.

  Never good at math, Dad:

  We were four, not counting

  the dog.

  Splinter, I thought. Stab. Then:

  Dick.

  Told my brother he could pull it out

  of the garage. Turned to me

  O meat of him, grey-tinged pink with rotting, said:

  You get to wash it.

  Midnighting

  I like to do it while I’m drunk.

  I like to do it when I’m starved.

  Slick out under a fat

  moon dressed in black,

  even the shoes.

  Some nights call

  for hooves to clatter

  through quelled neighborhoods

  (The sleeping flinch

  while dreaming),

  others stripped

  naked as a wish

  to be helpless, to be

  holy.

  Others, lonely.

  Or, fashion paws

  from cat hair and nail parings

  to match the mask

  filched from the raccoon

  hunkered under

  the shed—paws

  ideal

  for scrambling

  up streetlights—now

  varmint stupid

  for starlight—pale

  as a secret

  no one burns to know,

  breath molecular

  chaos I marry

  to wind and go.

  17th

  August you give me a canker

  my periodontalist wants to biopsy

  you send me
flailing into rush hour

  you ding my fender

  you unfriend me

  you terrorize my mother out of language

  you berate her with dialysis

  you castigate her with leukemia

  you accuse us with fires

  you plaque the valley in smoke

  you cast deformed shadows

  you bully us into prayer

  Are you prone to canker sores

  You have a history

  of smoking (sinning)

  Do you suck hard candy

  Do you suck anything

  What about cinnamon

  what about turmeric coriander why

  is curry so expensive

  what about lemons

  what about getting darker instead of dusk

  What about Egypt Iraq Iran Syria

  Our lust

  for quinoa

  disempowers Bolivians

  On the Internet

  I saw a man eat another man’s heart

  I saw a man immolate himself

  You unveil the olinguito

  then beach hundreds of dolphins

  Thunder after midnight explodes

  me from dream

  shudders the windows

  catapults the cats

  casts serpents seething

  through the barren plum tree

  the shriveled raspberry

  a respite

  August

  your hard hot rain

  on my wet hapless face

  John Glowney

  Cigarettes

  What was cool

  was when an older boy snuck

  a girlie magazine

  out of Ross’ Five & Dime

  inside his shirt.

  No one knew girls like this

  in slips and filigreed bras

  with their compromised thighs

  and their bared knees,

  incongruous and lovely.

  What was cool

  was Bill the mechanic

  at Schmitty’s Garage

  with the cottony white

  of a Lucky Strike

  between two greasy black fingers

  and the time someone jacked a pack

  and we watched him smoke

  back of the little league field

  where the local bikers

  popped wheelies and burned rubber

  and he hacked and hacked

  because he said

  he liked it.

  What was cool

  was the chopped Harley

  we swore we’d take across the country

  the summer

  after graduating from laying back on our beds

  with our secret urges

  and our evolving plans

  and our mystical trances

  and our detailed seduction

  of the prettiest senior cheerleader

  who willingly unbuttoned her blouse

  gracefully as rain outside the upstairs window

  and our copies of True Detective under the mattress,

  the models’ eyes blocked

  with a black rectangle

  so they wouldn’t have to see

  what we were about to do

  as we lit up and lay there

  revving our engines

  in the glow and the ash and the smoke rings of ourselves.

  Boys

  A full nelson or Indian burn, jiu-jitsu

  or the flying drop kick,

  we smacked each other around in the parking lot

  after Sunday School.

  We caught the tomcats by their stringy tails

  and swung them,

  we peppered the granary eaves with bb shots

  killing replaceable sparrows.

  Slick green frogs, and mottled brown toads

  that peed in our sticky hands,

  we marooned in old washtubs

  until they curled up like old shoes.

  We pinched any girl we liked.

  The slow boys, the boys who couldn’t throw,

  we shoved into their lockers.

  The substitute teachers, especially the one

  with the lazy eye, weathered our snickers

  and spitballs. We taunted

  our retarded classmate until scolded,

  unashamed, the wild green pulse

  of our short attention spans

  fizzing in the sugary glitter

  of what comes next.

  And when, in the delivery room,

  our first-born arrives,

  howling, a boy,

  we sit there and blubber

  like big old crybabies.

  Paradise of Wounds

  I’d have done anything in those days.

  Cut off my ear. Smashed

  my red convertible

  through the mayor’s front window.

  Played strip-poker with the nuns

  under the table. I had no quarrel

  with the universal laws of nature

  or other local customs

  but I ostentatiously rejected

  the Pythagorean Theorem

  and flouted gravity

  by floating over the bright raft

  of the tennis courts at night.

  I’ve crawled under the bed sheets

  of their hourly-rate motels

  like an amorous cockroach,

  I’ve waited at their bus stops

  to taste the sublimities of cocaine,

  the narcotic joys

  they kept in coat pockets,

  I’ve been jonesing

  for their hammer and nail

  sex, I’ve hung out with them

  in our jail cell, our belts

  around our necks.

  I’ve shared the clear cold vision

  of the damned,

  who have seen the fruits

  of their pleasures

  and delights sour,

  whose heads are the stinging jellyfish mothers

  of a thousand motives.

  At The Museum of Don’t Come Back

  Memory’s a stranger in a diner

  eating the blue plate special,

  rubbing one hairy ear with a spoon.

  Don’t look back the way a train

  leaves the station and the countryside

  shrinks, the tiny red barns

  glowing in warm yellow light. I’ve

  been riding with the crop-duster,

  out-dated county map in hand,

  wheel and dive, wind bucking the struts,

  following my instincts into the cross-hatch

  of fence-rows,

  the drift of forgetfulness under telephone lines

  poisonous beyond the fields’ lush edges.

  Each time it’s like visiting a museum,

  the early years taming this mid-west

  glacial till. Scythes. Old threshing machines.

  Frost on all the exhibits. Some kind

  of raw rust on the plough-blades.

  What I have laid aside extends for miles.

  Sunday Morning

  And the gray in the sky today is nothing

  that a fresh coat of paint

  and some flowers wouldn’t fix. Violets, fuchsia

  arranged in the cloud-beds,

  some wanton tulips,

  and the wind blowsy in the trees

  cluttering the air with the smell of fresh mown grass

  and gasoline

  and sparrows

  like the change in your trousers

  scattered on a bare patch of sidewalk.

  And the sun, roused like a king

  who demands all attention, then sleeps

  like a baby as the party carries on.

  No politics, just a silence

  so clear you thought

  you could sing it, or somebody could,

  some gorgeous voice in the scuffed static,

  the needle stuck in the groove.

  Hannah Call
ahan

  The Ptarmigan Suite

  1.

  When I first flew south

  I was brown with white wings

  And I lived above the timberline.

  In winter, white with black tails,

  I frequented the tundra,

  Quiet farms, yards, and barren hills

  And loved willow scrub the best.

  If you’d sat down in a sheltered valley

  I might have called to you

  As I did in those days,

  A deep and raucous holler

  Had I pebbles in my voice box:

  Go-out! Go-out!

  Go-back!

  Go-back!

  2.

  The first time I pore over A Field Guide to the Birds

  I obsess over the ptarmigan, willow and rock. Why,

  Here’s a sort of grouse shaped like a horn of plenty,

  Unremarkable; once I was described as a plain Jane;

  Stout, brown, pigeon-like, but lacking what it takes to live in density

  And it makes the sound of a soul leading a body toward fire.

  3.

  Chimney Swift

  Whippoorwill

  Some birds look like sails when they fly

  Or sound like harps when they sing

  And the myth I’ve heard is that the Devil

  Is where the birds sing through the night,

  In winter white, off a quiet hill

  Eclipsed by the willow scrub.

  I’ve heard a big, big ghost

  Is who shelters the sheltered valleys.

  Truthfully, I’m not for superstition

  But if you could change colors,

  Could leave when it snowed, could

  Fly off the moment you were scared,

  There would be a name in the ether

  For you.

  4.

  Despite the ways each bird in Heaven is superior to me

  Only I step this far back when needing to look.

  As for now, we’ve all gone: shot, caged, or eaten.

  We sit around trying to arrive collectively at something real,

  Something about what it meant to live as birds.

  One bird says This is what the wind felt like,

  One says This is what it felt like for the wind to blow,

  One even says Here’s a sensation similar to the wind.