Undun – a modern folk tale by Sissy Buckles

 

His gentle voice in bed
crooned hypnotic, a warm
soothing baritone caress
that used to make me feel like
I was completely safe and
there was nothing
that could harm me
in this vast detached world
as long as I was with him,
the man I fell in love with
over twenty years ago —
does he still exist,
the same man
whispering close one night
last month that he might stick
poison in my food
while he held me tight
in his arms, like a tiger
licking my ear, the vicious
kicks slamming me fierce
awake in the middle
of the night that he
miraculously disclaimed
as his mere restless dreams
the next morning
deciphering my doubts
and tilting reality
over innocuously shared
breakfast coffee “it’s all
made up in your mind, honey”
so that all I know
is I feel serene with him
right now, his banal tone
quieting me effortlessly
and how the good times
are placed over the bad
like an innocent Band-Aid
and it’s enough to just
feel good to relax a bit and
let down my ever present guard
for a brief moment
shake off the ceaseless
taut racing thoughts;
calm, even though this weekend
he talked about wanting
to take the Remington 1100
into the woods on our
property and shooting it
until he got his frustrations out.
His gun obsession seems
to be having less and less
of an effect on me, but
after all I was born on a farm
my daddy taught me
how to shoot safely when I
was mere ten years old,
still immaculate,
or am I just benumbed,
my anger stuffed down
where it used to boil inside me
like a wild animal,
far easier to mantle him with
emotions he’ll never have,
closing my eyes to the
ever present train wreck
headed my way.
He has stopped ordering
firearm supplies for now
and ended up with only
six shotguns, three revolvers and
his latest a mean looking
Ruger semi-automatic pistol,
tried to shoot a possum
crawling on our compost pile
and either missed it
or wounded, still smelling
the bloody kill fresh
from the week before when
he’d smashed one to grisly bits
along with her nest of babies
crushing them brutally
raising his heavy shovel
over and over and over
maniacal breathing so hard
I’d hoped he would have
a heart attack right
then and there
and he was so excited
to see another one today
through the kitchen window
couldn’t wait to run outside
kill it like a kid with his
new toy, not a dangerous
abuser with a deadly weapon,
and I, not living,
barely existing, waiting…

Siempre by Robert L. Penick

I remember you touched by holier hands
than mine and leaning into that void of
helplessness, your brown eyes scared with
the realization of who you were not and
what you were not becoming. Your hands
would clutch at any icon: The crucifix,
the phallus, the bottle of mad misery
you poured yourself into, always hoping
for relief, wishing for a cure some magic
to change you from poor desperate creature
wash your insides bleach your heart put
back the broken and empty pieces and make
you clean and whole again your hourglass
refilled your high school yearbook face
unlined sixteen years old before everything
went away leaving cold night increased
gravity gut a wet mop inside you twisted
wringing wet and always slowly unwinding.

I remember you sad and proper, reminding yourself
Not to beg when the scraps were yours to keep.

Two Poems by Bill Gainer

An Afternoon Nap

The flight didn’t really last that long
but there was that moment
that one moment when it felt like the sky
had no bottom.
Looking down
there was nothing to see
blue, gray, a mist of pink
no birds, dust, leaves blowing
just me, for a moment free
from whatever it is
chains me to myself.

____________

 

The Long Goodbye

She had that smile,
you know that smile,
the bad news smile.

She told me what they said
the best results
possibilities
things they could try.

I wanted to say
I’ll miss you
but you don’t
you don’t
say those things
at least
you’re not supposed to.

We set close
one tear away

wanting to know
why
and hoping
goodbye
would take a long
long time
to say.

____________

 

Bill Gainer holds a BA from St. Mary’s College and a MPA from the USF.  He is the publisher of the PEN Award winning R. L. Crow Publications and is the ongoing host of Red Alice’s Poetry Emporium. Gainer is internationally published and is known across the country for giving legendary fun filled performances. His latest book, Lipstick and Bullet Holes, is from Epic Rites Press, Canada (2014). Visit: billgainer.com.

DIANE DI PRIMA by Neeli Cherkovski

 

1

Orbs of trees
Splendid Light patches
Pinwheels sunflower
Worn sunlight brazen tune
Stern strong shoreline
Empowering and thoughtful
So much night falls
Over the fence
Here tundra powerful grass
Of lower Manhattan
She sweeps the upper
Atmosphere and
Throws the moon
Into the Hudson

Atlantic swells
In realms of
Imagination’s proud island
When you loom down
Beyond the gate

Heroic sight in hand
Turns summer into fall
At midnight
After the storm
Past sleeping fathers
In the churchyard

Daughter for winter’s
Dreadnought
Handsome mirrors hung
Where white tips
Read trees on banks
Of a wild River
South of the
Roaring iron ribs
Midtown

2

When she was young
Diane makes her way
To Ezra Pound incarcerated

Under the shade
His voice a crackly jolt
Birds settle

Asylum’s stand
Of trees
so many birds
Two poets
In the land of brazen
doorsteps
And distant cat-calls

3

Ezra worn from
Traveling to
Where stubborn Bulls
Pace the odes

Young Di Prima
Sitting on a piano
In the niche, her
Smile rests
On my palm

Now the sad rain
Hits our window
Down Bernal Hill
We meet for lunch
With Landry on
24th Street sweet
Moment cherished
Read for your birthday
You kissed me when I said
She raised the bookshelves
Of the neighborhood library
and later found
Duncan and Olson
In the monolithic fable

Amiri:
We be fine

We live in this fire

4

On our island stronghold
Ships arrive

One fatal day mortality
Gloom rude tule grid
The shipyard struggles
A poet bleeds
Under light rain
Every drop
a momentary ocean

Your mind voyaging
Intimate rock forms
In the middle
Of a word
Over darkened slope
Of a hillside

Your voice of liberation
On granite plates

Watch out
Wall Street
The lady brings
Solitude and splendor
Through a door
To the redwoods

Diane I feel
Words riding clouded
So much precision
In right moves, window
Wide open
You were torn
For the poem

Born into traffic
Of sons and daughters
Your library brightens
Single letters words
Like wood finches
In a light snowfall

Back east, one eye
On Whitman’s ponderous
Stone a hand
In ecstatic silence
As seagulls measure
The footsteps
Of a fallen star

Last Night I Dreamed About My Mother by James Babbs

last night
I dreamed about my mother
but not the way she was
at the end of her life
when she was confined to her bed
in the nursing home
the scarred tile floor
going from the front door
all the way to her room
no
this time she was young
her long dark hair falling
down past her shoulders
and she was able to walk again
moving around the room
waving her arms in the air
while I sat at the table
watching her
I was a little boy again
and she kept trying to make me laugh
most of the room
was hidden in darkness
and I wanted to touch her
but every time I reached for her
she was too far away