C4 Issue 2: Fall 2011
Unlike everything else, they were simple, comfortable. Perfect
to slip on and stumble to the coffee maker on some warm Saturday morning.
How much better then, on the promised day
when the mummy opens his sarcophagus, replaces his organs,
and rides his spectral armada through the underworld, past beasts
named Scowler, He-of-the-Loud-Voice, He-Whose-Face-is-Hot, Oppressor,
and Trembler. But before that, and before he founds his new city
among the Abodes of Those-Who-Live-on-Sweet-Things, he puts on
sandals someone carved and sized for him. I began home again,
and traveled through the farmer’s market beneath the gaze of
He-Whose-Face-is-Hot in the oppressive summer heat. In my pack I gathered
two apricots, two plums, two nectarines and the hope that they
would startle you when you came home to find them in a cold porcelain cup,
that the unanticipated gift would help set your heart in its right place again.
This Is What Faith Looks Like
By Derold Sligh
All I have to offer my poor people
is this apple in my hand, doctor,
one red apple.
—Nazim Hikmet
It hovers over your head,
ballooned and red,
tethered by a string.
Lying there folded
like an unread letter,
sprawled next to the lion’s hunger—
this is what faith looks like,
like sparrows pecking at invisible pianos
on the sidewalk—
the birds bow in excitement
as you close in. One leaves early,
startling the others,
then they rise in a hue
of dust toward the horizon.
They want you to follow.
It feels things out like hair—
on the forearms and the top of the head,
measures spaces like whiskers.
Placed out in front of you
like a lance.
This is what faith looks like.
The fog on grandma’s kitchen windows
clings to its transparent prison.
It wants to escape and commune
with the frost
on the other side of the glass.
It is November in Detroit,
which means the smell of snow
and exhaust hangs heavy in the air.
My grandmother has just melted
the ice ball in my chest with her smile.
I ride on her shoulders.
I fit there nicely.
She is waist-deep in Detroit.
Like a river (she is a river),
she carries anything she is given—
leaves and snow, twigs
and Styrofoam plates,
old underwear too small
for a growing grandson.
She turns what she is bequeathed
into useful things
like rags, patches, and rope.
She makes use of whatever she’s awarded—
a daughter, Detroit, a poem.
Like a river (she is a river),
she carries what she’s given.
This is what faith looks like.
What Remains
By Ed Tato
Ants traipse across the railing of my porch.
They look especially loathsome tonight—
the gasters of their spiked striped abdomens
distended and pronounced. They carry chunks
of lime left from my Bombay and tonic.
They gather at the edge of what remains—
a perfect frenzied feeding ring of ants
not slowed by their brothers sunk in green muck.
I go to bed but do not sleep, do not
dream of ants dragging off their dead.
Outer Casings
By Daniel Aristi
What is it again that they say about books
And their covers? So much fuss over the skull tattoo when
Eventually
Bones will always surface, all white and pristine. In any event, lobster carcasses
Look good on chinaware—
They look classy—and emit subtly
A tribute to the sacrifices your parents Bob and Martha made and how they paid up
For a good college God Bless the farm. And maybe at 85 I’ll be able then to strip an
Orange with a single peel,
One neat skin motorway from Pole to Pole, ultimate metaphor for a life both
Flawless and
Fruitful.
Golem
By Heather Elliott
It’s been said before
that the continents were mud
slapped on a turtle’s
wide shell. And we’re dust,
golems of some bearded god
who spat on the ground,
rolled the loose, wet crumbs
in a mold, fired up his kiln,
sent us tumbling out
like child-sized soldiers
on his palm, wrote secret words
across our foreheads.
Sometimes,
having given up on eyes,
I stare at people’s
foreheads, seeking clues.
Leaning on my grocery cart,
listening to the man
cracking his knuckles
with intense concentration,
I wonder which word
animates him now?
Navigating the frozen
parking lot, I see
a blonde woman pack
plastic bags in her van
robotically;
I
can hear gears working.
What are her instructions?
How many
settle
for being only
clay?
My own mind,
brown
dusting of bangs
against my
brow—what orders
did
my maker issue?
So often now pages of
letters and numbers
remind me of herds
of animals, schools of fish.
Alarm clock, apple
core,
purple ski pants
tangle me in metaphors
until the lake is
a mirror, until
my pen can open veins.
Shaken, I steal books
filled with icy facts.
My dad’s Consumer Reports,
Mom’s dictionary
of medicine, texts
from my sister’s nursing school.
None of them mention
golems or the soul,
but speak to the fragile shell
of the body; egg
balanced on a spoon
and how simple to rub the
words out, to leave the
forehead clean and cold.
Two Poems
By Kate Ruebenson
Tetherball
Anthropological
Girls would gather around that aluminum pole,
which grew from its head that one white string
holding at its other end that dirty sun orbiting in circles
The year it was put up no one remembers
in some unforeseen year it will come down for good,
but no one can fathom that happening
as long as they still play
The post has been re-hammered four times,
new ropes purchased seven times
it’s a pattern of wearing down and fixing up
wearing down and fixing up
Everything that’s been situated here has been and will be
three archery targets sit patiently with their green tarp hoods
across the field sits the lodge, from the pit you can see
/> senior section cabins clustered cozy in a huddle/like old friends
the Nest where all 87 of them sit in front of the fire during rain storms
On windy days smells of the lake
of the pines passing their needles to catch on neighboring trunks,
find their way on an upward breeze to the field where all the grass blades
point to the tetherball as if to imply: something important happens here.
Historical
Family histories couched in stories that recall origins in places
which have since become famous
my friends have traveled to the Colosseum and thought to themselves
of ancient ancestors with similar hair who sat in the rows
But my family history lies in a circumference
with a radius of three feet,
at a small all-girls camp in the Adirondacks
In which it seems, almost as if one tetherball game
has been in continual play over the course of many lives
sustained by girls with the family face
it will outlast me and the next ten daughters
Before bed Mom would tell me about
the glory of a victory foreseen,
when the thing spins so fast
it hugs the pole a million times
she had quite the reputation back in her day
it runs in the family—
cousin Nancy was eight when she beat the oldest girl at camp
Do the Nancy, became the cheer
cousin Barbara was known to have a nasty starting pitch
opponents would duck by instinct.
The stories like the game,
continual telling continual play.
Personal
The years I played
were a fair share of loss & win
by legacy, I thought I should have been better
until the game right before dinner on my last night as a camper,
pulling out talent like a bunny from a hat as if to say, I was saving it for this
earned me the title of magician, earned me the right to someday brag of my own victory
I think about myself and how I am also a conglomeration of everything before me
the flipbook generations of hands have clutched at soft yellow rubber,
varying sizes of fingertips tracing the lines around its globe,
holding not to the ball but to the moment before
it’s out of possession and in play
and suddenly I feel timeless.
Note to Anne
I.
Your daddy always wore a belt
Even to bed
And when I asked you why this was you said
He likes to feel contained.
II.
I didn’t know what that meant
Until yesterday:
Sitting down to write a
Poem
Thinking about how lately I’ve
Been so tangential
(Wanting to feel more
In control)
My hand led by karmic inspiration
Reached out
To the pegs on my wall, took down
My winter hat.
As I pulled it over my head the ideas
Which had tried to escape
Could no longer; blocked by
Multi-colored wool.
So I set them down carefully to the page
Like teacups on saucers
China clay writing: simple, subtle
How it feels
To not let go of myself
To keep myself inside myself.
What Insomnia Teaches Us
By Neil Carpathios
So you want to be a stop sign,
says the stop sign to the yield.
Meanwhile streets, the empty streets
wait and wait for shoes and tires.
Clouds slip off robes.
A dog barking, a train
ghosting tracks.
And what about
crows?
How they roost on wires
perfectly still without waking
in mid-air tumbling terrified
from dreams. My pillow
is breastless. A bone caught
in the wind’s throat.
Books on the shelf take moonlight
through glass; little chameleons
their spines. Close your eyes
and listen hard at least once
in your teensy life
whatever the stop sign says.
Three Poems
By Samantha Ten Eyck
Now I Can Tell You
Now I can tell you
how I stained my jacket with cartoonish teardrops,
walking down a staircase in the Bronx
to the corner store for Drano & Dutch Masters,
high on, but underwhelmed by, the ecstasy
I took with a coworker
because it was there
& it was free.
I can tell you how we danced to Patti Smith
in his living room
until it was time to go to work & blog about
Top Chef & CSI: Miami.
I can tell you about Angelique,
a dominatrix with one arm who
could still show you the ropes.
I can tell you how the sun setting in Washington Heights
illuminated the syringes & glass in the dirt,
like urban pearls—
beautiful at a calculated distance,
like flying into a populated city,
idealizing the grid from thousands of feet.
I can tell you about 4th of July on a rooftop
in the lower east side,
how we couldn’t see the fireworks but still looked
in the direction of the explosions.
How I got drunk on canned Kirin Ichiban
& sang The Little Mermaid soundtrack
on the same roof to a pilled-out audience
until the sun came up
& we drifted towards our subway stations,
too empty to try to sleep together.
I can tell you that I trained so hard that the pain
woke me up in the middle of the night,
a box fan blowing in hot street air as I crawled
to the floor & hugged my knees.
I can tell you that it makes sense to punch & be punched.
I can tell you about taking a bus to see my dad
after the chemotherapy,
how he’d show me that he could squeeze pus out of his fingernails.
How his body was bloated & hairless,
unfamiliar.
I can tell you how on the ride back
the skyline gave me a flicker of clichéd hope
until I walked into Port Authority to find my train home.
I can tell you all of this now because I’m on a plane
to a small Midwestern town
& I’m afraid I might forget.
Not thinking about my mother in China
My mother went to sleep in the continent
of North America.
She didn’t roll over in foreign hotel sheets,
& wonder where her family went.
Her voice never pulsed through
the receiver from Beijing
& I didn’t keep the punctured black mouth
of the phone
far from my ear.
I didn’t sit in silence, cleaning my email
inbox while she chatted about bird nest soup.
My mind wasn’t calm when she talked
about the government calling her phone,
or the dead people she saw
in the house next door.
My voice didn’t crack & tell her
be careful. My thumb didn’t push
the red button on the sweaty phone.
I didn’t get up & walk like the dead might,
into th
e kitchen to make some tea.
I didn’t rip the casing open
like a trained animal,
or plug the electric kettle
into the stained outlet.
When the tea dripped down my throat
like a hot IV
I didn’t pack the thought of her
neatly into the box of tea bags.
I didn’t place this box
on the top shelf to steep
until she didn’t come home.
Driving to Arizona
The Toyota Tercel lurched like a dying wolf,
& the hula dancer on the dash screamed.
My sister handed me the pipe shaped like a mushroom
& asked me to take the wheel while she bashed
the content of the cubbyhole around to find an orange Bic.
I was 15 & terrified so she took the pipe from me & held
it to her lips while I swerved to miss a dead cat.
The desert was getting nearer because I could taste
the dry cactus flower air, but suddenly I was swimming
in my sister’s exhalation & to my young lungs
the burnt weed smelled like destruction.
The wind outside sounded dark blue in my ears
as Suzie exited towards the Denny’s & pushed
the pipe towards me. I took it, because I was old.
A teacher once told me that I was conscientious
& I had to look it up.
In the Denny’s parking lot,
the pipe rested awkwardly in my lips.
My sister guided my fingers over the intricate system
of little holes & told me when to stop sucking in.
I felt like a sick dragon & I blamed the fire on my sister,
who laughed like some drunk flukey & shook the whole
bastard car.
It started to rain because God hates us.
I was so hungry I could have eaten a horse, so I demanded
that Suzie take me into Denny’s & buy me a cold drink.
The fat waitress of doom asked us “what can I getcha?”
We weren’t ready to order, so her ass walked away
like a sack of gravy.
My sister was grinning at me & I thought
that weed did absolutely nothing for me, & I ripped
the laminated menu right in half. Bo Bo does not do drugs.
The waitress sauntered up again in her hand-dyed shoes.
One day, I thought, she will feel what it’s like to be loved.