To Get Away From It All
Winifred Baer
keep going even after
you lose the trail
in the undergrowth.
Do not pack
a change of clothes,
a sleeping bag, a map,
a box of matches,
a pocket knife.
Walk until you forget
everything you have ever heard
about the wilderness: let the snake
make its own first impression,
learn for yourself the effects
of sun upon the skin,
of thirst upon the mind.
Get scared out of your wits.
Forget
these directions,
the songs your mother taught you,
the names of things, the sound of words.
Recover your senses.
Jenny Angelacos
PGR 29
Visitations
(for William Blake)
Under the tree in my yard I sit
waiting for angels, for wordless pictures
to liberate me from the kingdom of limits:
this is an arrow, this is a sidewalk,
this is the proper form.
As a child I searched for miracles
in the backyard shed,
on the way to school,
at the ends of books.
Not knowing what they looked like,
I overlooked them all.
I could wait here
for hours, for weeks
as I have waited three decades
for burning tigers and apocryphal songs,
but all I receive are blossoms,
leaves, coarse bark.
Ulrich Choitz
PGR 30
Heath Havlick
The Ceremony of the Bones
Wilma Marcus Chandler
We knew he’d be a peace, curled and soft, blending
With the rich, dark soil, union
Of his body with the body of the earth.
We buried him deep in the outer fields
Where the blackberries meet redwoods
And the grasses are parched from the summer wind
Next to the cat with the same name.
Max, the Cat was loved and mourned
And on her little grave wild strawberries
Have grown over the years
Unlike anything nearby,
poison oak and pine.
We wrapped Max, the Dog in his striped towel shroud,
Placed him lovingly in his grave, said dog prayers,
Planted a red Japonica vine and knelt placing stones like psalms
Of grief saying goodbye, goodbye over and over.
His three compadres from the houses up the hill
Sat obediently at the gravesite, watching.
The four had romped and tumbled together
For many years, he the tawny mutt, the others blonde and black
And russet redthe Four Dogsmen of the Land
Until, no longer able to see or hear, he stayed behind and slept on the
porch.
Later, while we slept, the three dogs
Dug him up, dragging him across the- fields,
Tearing him open and apart, not once, but night after night
And each day we dug the grave deeper and piled the stones higher
And each night the friends came again and carried him out
Onto the yellowed lawns until the severed parts
Became not the precise recognizable old haunches,
Abbreviated with arthritis and torqued
With the pattern of his walk
But more as the bones of deer and coyote
Found on the trails, generic, bleached and dried
Delicate fang, tiny leathered paw.
PGR 31
Now, each morning, almost with joy,
I go out expecting to find parts of him
Near the clothesline or along the ridge by the woodpile
And if there are none, some elemental part of the day’s wild promise,
Some expectant moment which was to have been
Given over to ecstatic prayer and reconciliation
Seems lost, so accustomed have I become
Now that the weeks and months have passed
To the discovery of a hip bone,
A back leg,
The long, clean spine,
The beautiful, whitened skull.
Janet Fine
PGR 32
Fuck
Roxan McDonald
Aunt Becky liked to fuck
she wasn’t exceptionally beautiful
or even a slut but I knew she liked
to fuck long before I knew what fucking
was. It was something in the way she moved
or breathed or the way her big ass swayed in
her jeans. She’d come visit and feed Mom
nasty stories and wine that came right out of a box.
I’d hide and watch their faces when she was telling those
stories. They’d get all glittery and squinty eyed. It seemed to wash
away all the tears and kids and rage.
they’d suddenly become
beautiful, craving beasts. Aunt Becky would throw her mousy brown
hair down her spine and moan and
laugh wide mouthed and grinning. They were talking fuck and I knew I
wanted
to grow up just to get some of that wine and fuck and shine like them.
In the morning she’d feed us bacon
and curl me up against her tits
and call me her girl.
I knew she was heaven to her man.
They’d go to sleep with
the smell of her sex wrapped around them and wake up to
hot bacon and soft tits.
When Aunt Becky fell in love Mom called her
a fag hag and stopped sending me to sleep on
her couch. Ricky loved Aunt Becky I could tell that.
He liked to fuck Aunt Becky too. I knew that too. I remember
him as being nice and making her smile and playing frisbee with
us in tight white shorts. What I didn’t know is that he liked
to wear Aunt Becky’s clothes and fuck men too.
Aunt Becky would come visit and cry over Ricky. She spent
years loving Ricky, leaving Ricky, pulling Ricky, straightening
Ricky out. Then Ricky moved to Carmel with his mom. Aunt Becky
brought me to see him. He was skinny and slumped and covered in big
red sores.
Aunt Becky kept kissing him and crying and he kept saying no no Rebecca
it’s not
safe. I believed him. I remember wanting to pull her off him and pour
peroxide in
PGR 33
his mouth. Carmel was cold and gray and Ricky died there.
Aunt Becky tried to explain A.I.D.S. to me but I already knew.
It was about fucking.
Aunt Becky spent years crying over the dead Ricky. Her pants
got looser, her laugh less thrown back. She almost never brought
wine in a box over any more. Mom said it was hopeless the way
Aunt Becky loved a homo. I thought it was hopeless the way the
fuck just seemed to fall right out of her.
Kelly Woods
PGR 34
Panties in the Street
Debra Spencer
Black lace rolled into a figure eight
at the edge of the sidewalk, lavender
spandex wadded tightly in the gutter,
pink cotton draped on a bus-stop
bench along the boulevard. On a wire
fence down a back alley, on a quiet street
near the library, a single pair swept aside
by the wheels of a passing car, alone
or with a wrinkled condom nearby
like the shed skin of a snake, panties
delicate, abandoned, flaming red or
cool blue or ice white against the blacktop.
They fell from the top of the laundry bag
while she struggled to hold the kids’ hands
crossing the street. He threw them from
the car after he dropped her off, not wanting
to leave them for his wife to find. His
blunt-fingered hands jerked them off
or her own small trembling hands
rolled them down her thighs,
her eyes on the gun or the knife. They were both
middle-aged, so drunk such niceties as
panties no longer mattered, didn’t even
glance around for the cops—fuck ‘em
—out here under what stars still shine
through a city night, out here among
the bourgeoisie and the Republicans.
They were in their late teens or early
twenties walking home toward parents
or roommates, prurience more urgent
with every step. They were stoned or maybe
just sick of being good, the trap of school
or jobs looming ahead of them, they
shucked off prudence as quickly as the
panties, a hand up under her skirt, a furtive
glance up & down the dark deserted street,
hearts beating, the first of many heedless acts,
or the last daring thing they’ll ever do.
PGR 35
Janet Fine
Sex On The Kitchen Floor
Can’t say I’ve done it
but there was that time
behind the boulder on the beach
on the steps at night in Venice
somewhere on the Interstate between
Phoenix and L.A.
in the field while our horses wandered home
naked in the car while 18 wheelers rolled by
fooling around in the bathtub
and then there was Greece again and again
the time with that rope but we won’t go there
unless blindfolded which isn’t a bad idea
but the bed’s a pleasant place to land
so I keep coming back there
and does it really matter anyway
even the missionaries
with their singular position
must have had it good enough
to call it sin.
PGR 36
Dane Cervine
The Day Before I Left You (For Good)
Allston James
I was half asleep on your sofa,
My blind hand reaching for your thigh or arm.
But instead, my fingers found the cool leg
Of the coffee table.
The revelation was that for a long moment
I thought it was you.
Cam Archer
PGR 37
Los Angeles
Debra Spencer
Grandpa moved slowly, said what he pleased,
his presence throughout the house like his own cigar smoke,
like the sound of the baseball game from the television in the morning
room,
line drives and Vin Scully striking the rattan chairs while Grandma
sat in the living room among her brass Chinese bells, the lamp
with Confucius beaming from the black lacquer end table
resting on the elegant floral carpet where children sprawled, playing fish
with cards she kept especially for us in the oak desk next to the formal
dining room, the long table draped with white linen where we all
sat down to eat, the sun in the western windows glinting through
cobalt glass onto white china, onto the family faces, big & little,
above corned beef and cabbage, above cherry pies, laughter rising
like smoke, wreathing the chandelier whose light, after dusk, spilled out
through filmy curtains onto bushes and sloping green lawn, down to the
tall
poplar trees whose branches began high above the sidewalk, where our
father
carried us in our pajamas (the smell of cigar still clinging) through the
dark
to the automobile, and we sped away, our parents silhouetted in the front
seat
against the here-and-gone glare of the streetlamps we passed as we
drove
among stop-and-go rubies and emeralds rushing into the curve of the
marble-veined
concrete freeway, while in the back window the city lay stretched along
the land
like a woman reclining, her rolling hips, the hollow curves of her valleys,
her firm hills, a woman wearing strings and strings of diamonds.
Marc William DeGiere
PGR 38
Georgia
The only time she ever shined
was when she’d tell me about
that summer when she was
twelve at Aunt Eda Mae’s
She’d pull out that old tin jewelry
case and her voice would become
like air
her hard Oklahoma A’s
turning into a sweet Georgia
drawl
She’d show me her treasures
a ticket stub from a movie
a dollar bill rolled up into
a perfect little ring, crisp and
dark with sweat
a jar with a hard little bug
rattling around in it
and a picture of her standing in a
kitchen, flour on her hands
and her hair spilling like blood
from her scalp
Her eyes would pile up with tears
and she’d breathe out stories of
Aunt Eda Mae teaching her to
bake pie crusts as thin as Kleenex
and how peaches were so sweet
from all that sun and there was
so many that you couldn’t pick
em fast enough or can them
quick enough
and they’d end up rotting in
everyone’s yard
and of a boy who sat on the
porch with her, drank sun tea
and watched fire flies hovering
on the ground
Roxan McDonald
She’d tell me about how he held
her hand and took her to a show
and never once tried to you know
how he never called her Char or
Curly
and never made fun of her pencil
straight hair
and how on the day before she
left he slipped that little dollar
bill on her finger and said
“Someday, Charlotte
I’ll come marry you and you’ll
never have to go back to your
folks in Oklahoma.”
She’d tell me how after he left
her that night
she ran out into the yard and
caught one of those fire flies and
put it in a jar and held it in her
purse the whole bus ride home
she’d tell me this and I’d watch
her face alive and bright and
I’d think of husband number two
and how her eyes looked black
after he left and how all the
pictures
of her with my daddy she looked
starved somewhere else
she’d tell me about Georgia
and Aunt Eda Mae and that
boy and I’d watch her light up
and I could almost smell those
rotten peaches
PGR 39
Jenny Angelacos
PGR 40
Picture of My Father
Carol A. Housner
He sits at the edge of the couch, leaning forward,
arms curved around the sturdy, diaper clad body
of the little girl. They are both in profile,
looking at the television beyond the photo’s edge.
He is saying something, his face animated, persuasive,
holding her attention away from the camera,
away from the flash.
He is telling her, look! look at the rabbits! or perhaps,
is that Mickey Mouse? and her baby face is intent,
bird mouth slightly open and she is listening,
but it doesn’t really matter what he is saying.
She is listening to the cadence of his voice telling her
he loves her, feeling the warm weight of his hands
safe around her waist, holding her in place.
Darkness meshes the edges of the picture, threads
into his black hair and her pigtails, perched at the top
of her head like small starlings, poised for flight.
The flash has caught the folds of his khaki pants,
her doughy diaper, the disappearing gleam
of her white maryjanes.
He is pointing out the world to her and later
she will bring pieces of it back to him on paper.
He’ll die the day before her eighteenth birthday
and for most of her life he will be a memory.
But she will keep bringing him words
and he will continue to hold her in place.
Elizabeth Nissen
PGR 41
Photograph, 1995
Louise Loots Thorton
As I was looking for something else
I came across a photograph of my three children,
grown, smiling at the camera, at me.
I had carried it for so long the corners
were dog-eared, edges beginning to fray.
I put it down, anxious to keep searching for what I had lost,
when I was surprised by stinging against my eyelids,
as if my eyes knew something my mind did not.
What? I wondered. My children were all well,
no one in crisis. I could not remember
when the phone had been so still,
the red light on the answering machine shining steadily,
no urgent blinking, like lights on a police car,
lights on an ambulance, red flashes
slicing the darkness into shards.
In the photograph the three of them stand so close together,
Mark in the middle, Heather and Jean on either side,
their bodies touch, arms twine around each other.
My son’s dark blonde hair sticks straight up
like the feathers of a young rooster,
and his large, black-rimmed glasses rest
on his chiseled cheeks, delineate his nose, so like mine.
You can not tell that he has been battling
schizophrenia all his life, the only clue
his right hand stretched out straight behind Jean’s back
so that it does not quite touch her,
as if he is afraid to get too close to her,
to hurt her inadvertently.
He brings me large drawings as vivid as stained glass,
variations of the monsters invading his dreams
that he has tamed, pinned down on paper,
stylized into black masks with pointed, sharp teeth,
the marks of warriors in turquoise and scarlet.
He leans into his other sister, Heather,
the one more like him,
the one who has struggled with depression, alcohol,
crack cocaine, prescription medications, bulimia,
anorexia, child sexual abuse, not enough of me,
PGR 42
I tell myself, still trying to find a way to keep her safe
after 34 years of failure, notes from teachers telling me
they lose her to daydreams, suicide notes,
emergency trips to LA, psychiatric wards,
the Santa Cruz County jail, treatment facilities
spreading from Salinas to San Francisco,
intent on addressing depression or drug abuse
but never both.
In the photograph, soft, afternoon light glances
from the honey-colored hair draped
over her right eye, or where the eye would be
if it were still there, if a bullet had not smashed
into it, a drug deal gone bad.
Light also glints from the gold hoop in her left ear,
caresses her cheek and chin,
falls on her brother’s left shoulder tucked
snug into her arm.
Deep red lipstick wobbles on and off
her lips as if she has forgotten to color
within the lines, her right hand not as steady
as her left, hanging still but useless at her side.
She writes me poems for my birthday,
or for no reason at all, telling me my heart is strong,
that she looks to me for courage, that she loves me.
Elizabeth Nissen
Her sister, Jean, stands on the other side of their brother,
holds tightly to his shoulder.
The same light catches her gleaming hair,
slides across the right shoulder of her Mickey Mouse shirt
and down her arm, jumps from her cocked elbow
to the hollow of her hand where it pools,
a pink bud bursting into bloom.
She leans into her brother as if there were no other place
she would rather be, as if losing him and her sister over
and over to their illnesses were not too much to pay
for this place in the universe next to them,
the third in a line of warriors.
She is the child who leaves gifts on my truck
as if the wind has blown them in:
bouquets of butter yellow and red roses,
zucchini from her garden, an orange Phillips 76 ball
bouncing atop my antenna.
PGR 43
When her first child was born she placed him
in her brother’s arms, then in her sister’s.
“This is your uncle,” she told her son. ”This is your aunt.”
For so long I watched them,
watched the clock when they were not home by midnight,
one a.m., two, watched as headlights miraculously
turned into our driveway after I had given them up for dead,
dying alone in cold emergency rooms, drowning in ditches,
cars turned upside down in black water, dying
from knives, tossed down ravines after rape,
dying from drug overdoses, from running
in front of a truck, running into the arms
of the ocean’s icy tentacles, terrified
of losing the infants I once bathed
and then buried my face in their luscious skin,
in the smells of bath oil, Ivory soap,
breathed them in.
In the photograph they watch me,
smiling, as if my fears have been for nothing,
as if they are stronger than I know,
as if no matter what happens, they will love me.
And as I gaze into their eyes my heart breaks open,
opens so wide I take in every living thing,
the seas and all the stars.
If I have done nothing else, I have loved them
Fiercely, loved them when I could not love myself,
loved them beyond everything,
loved them in all that is.
They are what I have been
looking for all my life.
Elizabeth Nissen
PGR 44
Our House
Carolyn Flynn
(After a poem by Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill)
Brother lies beached in the attic,
Remembering his old days of starched hair,
White shoes, and selling used cars
To lonely widows. He’s got
An intravenous line direct into the TV,
Like Elvis Presley in the last days,
And he can hardly move for empty Pepsi cans
And TV dinners piled waste-high about his bed.
And there’s dead Aunty Peg
Behind the room behind the kitchen
Her empty bottles piled
Like so many discarded babies.
We mostly keep away from that room
And nobody knows how the whisky keeps appearing,
Or why Aunty Peg’s still mumbling
Half a century into her ghosthood,
About how they shut down the GE plant
And took her pension, after she gave them her life.
Aunt Pauline’s still dying in childbirth,
Every day it seems, the blood from 1945 gushing
Under the door, the baby, never named,
Each day crying out and dying out.
We wash up the blood but never speak of it,
Like we were taught. Aunt Pauline seems resigned
To her endless unmourned job, each day shutting her eyes
For the last time, and each day there roars
Again between her legs a red mountain river
Moving too fast to capture.
Little Brother’s in the basement
Playing with old phones,
Inserting and moving wires,
Finding connections in unlikely places.
We worry though about the dust
In cold basement corners, harsh green tiles,
His pudgy legs marked with lines and dirt
From since the house began.
PGR 45
Big Sister’s taken Mother’s room
Though one day we noticed
She’d grown into the bed
And couldn’t disentangle herself.
At first we thought it odd,
The way she walked through the house
Carrying the place
Our parents did their business
Right there on her back.
But later it seemed natural,
Like she’d always been shaped that way.
In a tiny room on the second floor,
Down the hall from Grandma’s,
With a small green door painted thick,
Live the Little Green Men
Who have plagued our house for millennia.
Behind that door, we know,
Are our belts, hats, shoes and school papers.
Lots of our money.
They gather our stuff with glee,
Move it to other parts of the house.
Downstairs, by Little Brother, for instance,
To get him in trouble.
They’re always making merry,
Just when we think we’ll finally
Be able to settle down into things.
And still that wouldn’t be so bad,
If Father would keep to his closet.
There’s plenty of room,
We’ve each had to take the measure
Of the place. Now it’s his turn,
Fair is fair,
Though his ghost objects,
And different sisters slide in there with him
On lazy afternoons when there’s nothing else to do.
Some days he slams loud against the door,
Keening his fate, and the whole house
Trembles with the wailing.
Mother holds the whole place, of course,
Like our house is anchored
In some round clear plastic jar
PGR 46
Katherine Mitchell
She can pick up and shake
When she wants it to snow.
We’re that small compared to her.
She’s the mortar and paint and wood.
She’s the bricks, she’s the bushes,
The air itself. We didn’t know this till she died
And it seemed the whole house
Rattled with her transition.
Not that we don’t go on in our game way
It’s just that sometimes we each of us
Wonder if we’re supposed
To be living on in our house.
Perhaps some mistake put us here
Rather than in some other place,
A place where sunlight reigns
And passionflowers flow fragrance
Into the nostrils of contented people
Without histories.
Marilyn Ryan
PGR 47
Hope
The truth about twenty
Is the chill that it brings:
We enter adulthood
On the edge of this year,
Cutting the future open,
Discovering the permanence of wounds.
Failures can be categorized now;
Loneliness grows empirical and detailed.
This is a gyp, I say, this is such a joke!
Our souls restrained by clocks and words,
Our bodies glowing as we die,
Love a lit window late at night–
The struggle out of sleep,
The fear that wins the day.
There is a Japanese maple
That breathes its colors,
Through the glass of my window,
Like a fiery revelation;
I spent a hundred dollars
To dye my hair that shade
And, of course, it wasn’t the same.
I smoke cigarettes to filter the world;
I do drugs to feel exaltation;
Often I want to sleep till I die,
Till I am the opposite of alive,
Forgotten, forgetting, nothing…
And yet
After swimming forlornly
To the bottom of my bed,
When I wake
My first thought
Leaps to him
Like a magic wild fish
Jumping out of water.
And yet
I was there that time
PGR 48
Ursula Lindsey
We spilled our willing blood
To shine by vampire stars;
The night bit us beautiful,
And bruised us with its love.
I have faith left
In spills, skids, and falls;
In sudden, artless seductions.
Hope chokes and gasps, then screams
Its stubborn, fighting chance;
Bald head still soft to death,
More still: blood-red alive.
Elizabeth Nissen
PGR 49
An Unexpressed Protest
Nura Hossainzadeh
The man sips lazily the tea from a golden tea cup
The boy gulps down hungrily the water from a blood-stained canteen
The man gazes at his reflection in the cup, grinning to check for food
between his teeth
The boy gazes up into the sky, praying to God that this will not be the
last time he will see the clouds
The man says, “I want land, I want money, I want power.”
The boy whispers, barely able to form words with his dried blood-caked
mouth, “I want my mother, I want a girl, I want life.”
The man sits back in his chair, putting his foot on a polished wood table,
deliberating the next move he will make, the next death
certificate he will sign
The boy sinks more into the earth, feeling the cold soil and the pools of
blood under him
The man looks admiringly at the awards and honors covering the wall,
awards and honors for murder and heartbreak and selfishness
The boy tears off a piece of his uniform, pulling off the stars and letting
them too sink into the cold soil, and wrapping the piece of cloth
around the wound on his arm that is persistently gushing blood
The man looks, his face beaming red with pride, at the map on the wall
that is colored almost entirely red, red for the lands taken at too
high a price, red for lost blood, red for evil
The boy looks, his face white from the smarting pain of his wounds and
the agony of staring death right into its hideous face, at his open
stomach, almost entirely red from blood
The man counts his money, wiping smudges off the shiny surfaces
The boy counts the seconds he knows are his very last, savoring them yet
eager to end them, and wipes the tears and blood off of his face
The man clenches his fists and boxes the wall, as if to show off his
strength to the furniture and the air and the fly sitting in the
corner
The boy clenches his fists in pain, the tear-blood solution seeping
between his fingers
The man looks at his calendar hung on the wall, mentally noting the
peace treaty negotiation meeting he must attend
The boy thinks about the happy memories of his past that are no longer
existent and will never exist againfor he has no future
The man laughs, “Hahaha...useless negotiations. Time easily bought.”
The boy cries, “Mother! How I wish I had more time!”
PGR 50
The man picks up the telephone, “We need thirty thousand more, and we
need them right away.”
The boy drops his canteen, convulsions shaking his body, anger at God,
anger at evil, and anger at war shaking his soul
The man says, “I want land, I want money, I want power.”
The boy says nothing, his eyes closed and his mouth wide open as if in
the midst of a protest he had not had the time to express
Marc William DeGiere
PGR 51
Untitled
Jessica Roa
A history was denied me
My grandmother’s tongue ripped out of my mouth
I was too young to know how to grieve the loss properly
The wound healed
In the shape of my Americanness
Work hard I heard
And so I did
My 22nd year the truth was revealed to me
“White man is on top,
And you, sorry honey, you’re somewhere near the bottom”
Anger
Anger turned my insides into a seething crimson
The death of my ignorance shook me hard and choked me out of
my complacency
I have fallen many times
since the first breaths of truth were inhaled
But I always come back to standing
And now
A language has been found
The language of the colonizer
twisted and shape-shifted to resist
to empower
Their words, now mine, woven into a tempestuous cloth
that’s wrapped protectively around my shoulders
Their words, now mine, used to reclaim my history
to reclaim what was taken from me
And to make the promise
To speak the words
That this is only the beginning
PGR 52
Bruce Telopa Bigelow
PGR 53
Fear
Amber Coverdale Sumrall
She wore it against her skin like sackcloth,
those long summer afternoons when she was the same age as I am now.
In the sanctuary of her kitchen, doors double-locked,
shades lowered, she began collecting newspapers, magazines,
stacking them on windowseats, chairs, filling all the places
she might have rested, perhaps permitting herself to speak
the word, that one syllable, even once.
I am the age she was when her hands first started to flutter,
when the word began to take form in darting, birdlike movements,
in the way she never lighted on a single thing for very long.
And because I know this word, have felt its talons pierce me,
lift me from one landscape to another, I can name it for her,
say what she could not say: I am afraid. This is killing me.
She swallowed the word like bitter medicine, offered it up
for the poor souls in Purgatory, choosing the cage, the clipped wings,
his cruelty. Though he was gone from the house she could not relax,
worried about sunlight fading the wallpaper, carpet,
wore her robe all day or stayed in bed, sick with migraine.
Her children stopped coming home after school.
Nerves, he said, implying she was on the road to crazy.
She ironed, scrubbed floors, polished silver,
chopped onions and peppers, kept dinner warm in the oven
even though he was with another and would not be coming home.
She paced from room to room, listening for his car in the driveway,
occasionally parting the heavy damask drapes to look out upon a world
she no longer inhabited, a place in which anything could happen.
Bruce Telopa Bigelow
PGR 54
In Jesse’s House
Sylvia Barton
she left most of her furniture
she recalls the sound of country music
how sweet he seemed when he was sober
the tyranny of his sudden anger
she recalls the sound of country music
mostly she remembers fear
the tyranny of his sudden anger
her impulsive move into his home
mostly she remembers fear
his strangling hands around her neck
her impulsive move into his home
disoriented, becoming conscious
his strangling hands around her neck
she remembers how it felt like death
disoriented, becoming conscious
she cried and let him comfort her
she remembers how it felt like death
he was the reason for her fear
she cried and let him comfort her
afterwards, he begged forgiveness
he was the reason for her fear
his loaded rifle against her head
afterwards, he begged forgiveness
pulled the trigger beside her ear
his loaded rifle against her head
how sweet he seemed when he was sober
pulled the trigger beside her ear
she left most of her furniture
Bruce Telopa Bigelow
PGR 55
Breathing the Stories of Your Life
Dee Roe
Imagine how old you might be,
when you shut your eyes,
if no one told you
and you had to guess.
Years line up like colored cups
you sip from slowly:
soft apricot of an unfurling spring,
fragile white holding new birth,
the indigo of grief.
Your heart wears all these colors.
Your mouth remembers ripe tomatoes,
their dusty scent filling the air
as you moved with him in the neighbor’s field,
red juice dripping onto the ground.
The skin forgets nothing; everything is there.
Andrew Shachat
Your feet remember dancing the Salsa,
sequins flashing on satin heels in a Mexican bar,
the flushed air entering like an intimate friend,
or hurrying in the dark,
the restless child waiting.
Your hands remember the quiet house, how it held you;
the turning of the lamp calling to family through falling light,
rooms filling with voices, the misted windows,
home a safe steamer heading into the night.
Perhaps you are rocking on the wide porch of your life,
an old woman with no surprises,
waiting for the years to catch up to you.
Dry leaves from the oak in the yard
fall to the ground like yellowed photographs.
Or are you living in an early memory,
the dark haired girl running in a yellow dress.
Light falls through trees as you turn around and around
and realize, for the first time; this is your life, your body,
and you will travel all the places it takes you.
PGR 56
Breathing Room
Susan Allison
I can’t remember how many times
you threw furniture
while the children held
my legs and cried
faces buried in my dress;
or how often you raged
red faced about
spilled milk
a towel on the floor
a bowl downstairs.
Now
I sit by the Big Sur River
as white water tumbles
over smooth rock
and breathe children’s laughter;
relieved
you’re not here to tell me
how to back the car
put up the tent
prime the stove;
you’re not here to tell me
I’m fat
or coerce me into quick sex
because
I left.
Janet Fine
PGR 57
Night Lights
Roxan McDonald
Lovers, like the sun, are always most beautiful
when coming or going.
Jeffery McDaniel
If I were to write it all
from beginning to end
I’d follow night-lights through the mess that
we were and the mess I am now
I’d go back all the way back to when you
acted like an asshole in that coffee shop when we
were only teenagers and I couldn’t help but brag about
my tattoo artist boyfriend
I’d go back to Halloween and my latex pants and
you making it obvious that you’d be with me if I wasn’t already
spending that night with Jimmy. I’d want to fast forward through Sarahliking
you and
all those problems I had with Jimmy and just get to that night on the rock. No,
I’d backup go to driving around for hours in that little Mazda of mine and
Marvin Gaye and “Let’s Get It On” playing over and over and not wanting to
leave each other but not wanting to risk anything. Then I’d jump to that night on
the rock and you holding me over the edge between your legs and the way you
wouldn’t kiss me would only push your lips across my neck my forehead
the backs of my hands my knees my hair but not my mouth. I’d stay there for
days
mulling over every single piece of that explosive feeling of knowing you were a
Big one for me knowing I was gonna lose myself lose everything I felt strong
about and love you and love my weakness. I’d stay on that rock for days where I
was willing to risk it all and I wouldn’t go forward to the years of fear the years
I spent hiding from you and all the things I would give up to be with you. I’d
skip over every part of the world I traveled to get away from you and my fear of
how big love can be and how much it can
shrink a woman’s life. I’d skip over all that. I’d hang out in my trailer too small
for you to stretch out in but you spending days in there with me and the t.v. and
chinese food.
I’d spend months on that piece of grass we took a nap on in s.j. I’d live for
years in that fucked up bumpy bed under the comforter I bought you that you
sleep under now with that sweet brown girl. I’d skip that part. No, I wouldn’t.
I’d sleep with that part under my pillow. I’d watch you holding her loving her
watch her clean up your messes and laugh at your dumb jokes I’d watch that
part like a movie reel every day in traffic reminding me that I was no good for
you that all I want in the whole world is your happiness your contentment that
all I want is to be without this pride this drive this crazy craziness that keeps me
from that part of me that could
PGR 58
love you
the way I could
love you
if I weren’t
the way
I
am.
Kearstin Krehbiel
PGR 59