three poems by LYNNE SAVITT

CANCER

when doctor told me i wasn’t surprised
like stars in wyoming skies summer
of 1976 my family twinkles with tumors
& mine waited me out giving me life
poetry children sex grandkids dogs
retirement cannot complain breast
i carried meat balloons headlights
from age twelve there is pain regiment
treatments to increase length of life i
ask for two years to see my oldest
granddaughter graduate medical
school is not so bad younger grand
kids surviving covid lessons at home
gymnastics swim team chances taken
for life i want long healthy peaceful
roads with joyful rides for all of them
will be my loving legacy from stolen
decades thoughtless debauchery no
regrets blessed to hear younger one
speak on carbon footprints see their
visions for better world what more
could i ask already my head stuffed
with passionate unforgettable photos
flash behind my eyelids glad i never
wasted time on philosophy of mortality
kiss me i tell my men in pink cougar
dreams i still have sunsets & my darling
fluffy dogs nestled by neck

____________

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY

you fell again singing one stanza
songs left on my voicemail sweet
but weak look for package of frosted
christmas cookies i sent yr way green
red sprinkle dotted trees & creamy
white angels long way from porno
dvds & sex toys we used to exchange
clipped conversation hard for you
to hold phone my burns not healed
yet & trying to kick pain pills i can’t
be anywhere but here hugging toilet
like cool detached lover is this the
way we end locked in our separate
apartments talking sports & grandkids
i laugh when you say i’d like to bite
yr ass & ask where are yr teeth oh,
baby, this our fall from grace but
not from love

____________

MORTALITY

she thought of the workshop
taken in her twenties when award
winning poet told her to tackle
important subjects death politics
of war the holocaust for over fifty
years she used sex as metaphor
juice to write never tired of its
physical mental muse wore it
like her trademark hats never
sorry for body parts sliding on
her page wetting all appetites
into her seventies still pursuing
lust now sweet little tarts having
devoured frosted cake of its last
crumb then doctor said it’s cancer
where did hunger flee to surgery
tattooed for radiation where does
sloppy lush liquid go when they
slice her & fry her & she cannot
touch loved ones in virus gone
crazy world dries up everything
inside her wish for one more
chocolate stranger’s kiss one
more wet pineapple poem

Vision of Andrew by Paul Jones

 

Andy had become so religious that he demanded that we stop the car at every railroad crossing. The signs, he said, were signs of Saint Andrew his Name Saint and Patron. Andy wanted to get out and kneel at each one. “You were first to recognize Him. Now recognize me, Your child,” he shouted to wherever he imagined Andrew might be hiding. Around some building, in bushes, inside the crossing signals, any bus or truck passing, a pair of blue birds, the sky as blue as the flag of Scotland. Or its mirrored stigmata, the cross of blood on Andy’s wrist.

Two poems by Tom Montag

–selections from my on-going series “The Woman in an Imaginary Painting.” 

 

Love is simply
another kind
of sorrow. She

knows it. She keeps
her heart where her
heart keeps wisdom.

You won’t see that
in this moment
as she poses.

The pose is all
she has to hold
against her pain.

---

There are no
mourning doves

in her world,
no soft, sighing

woo-woo-woos,
no morning

sadnesses
in the trees.

She does not
know their song.

The sorrows
she holds are

all her own.

____________

Tom Montag’s books of poetry include: Making Hay & Other Poems; Middle Ground; The Big Book of Ben Zen; In This Place: Selected Poems 1982-2013; This Wrecked World; The Miles No One Wants; Imagination’s Place; Love Poems; and Seventy at Seventy. His poem ‘Lecturing My Daughter in Her First Fall Rain’ has been permanently incorporated into the design of the Milwaukee Convention Center. He blogs at The Middlewesterner. With David Graham he recently co-edited Local News: Poetry About Small Towns.

New Year’s Eve, Still Single With Twilight Zone by Rikki Santer

Yearful tearful of days swirl away like
moths in the night and I find myself still
orbiting without a reliable storyline so I tune
into the next 24 hours of tooth & claw in this
other dimension that pokes at my ears with its
four-note motif of crawly dissonance &
dangerous bongos. The slip & slide of
binge, each two-act shadow box skitters
after that spot in my mind where Breton
claimed contradiction surrenders, each
supernatural chamber piece a funhouse
mirror, endurance run that forgives for
awhile my whack-a-mole life.