I write for ghosts I write for you, old women who sit at the gates, spin yarn and knit socks for the dead. My every gesture is mirrored by a thousand hands. I carry these faces inside me, on my back, on my feet. The ghosts don’t let me sleep. They gather on windowsills and roofs, in the moon’s breath, and chat with chattering teeth. I write for my father who still hangs on in Skype, to reach him, fill the gap with words. Hang on, Daddy, hang on. Here’s a rope ladder. Here are the words, Daddy. Here’s the blood, the new heart, the straw. Scriu pentru stafii Scriu pentru voi, femei batrane ce stati la porti, toarceti si impletiti ciorapi pentru morti. Fiecare gest mi-e oglindit de o mie de maini. Port aceste fete in mine, pe picioare, in spate. Stafiile nu ma lasa sa dorm. Se strang [...]
Mike Foldes
Anger Managment A man wanted to control his anger, so frightful even grizzly bears feared him. A shaman told him to insult and beat a log with a stick until he was exhausted. When the weary man returned and asked, “What lesson have I learned?” the shaman replied, ______________“Be like the log.” KOHT’AENE TS’AKUT’EH (Literally “The man who gets angry”) Koht’aene ts’akut’eh, tsaani lii koht’aene. C’ededliinen koht’aene yaa nitezet ‘eł tson decen kae sen xał k’e tsaa. Koht’aene na’idyaa ‘eł yaa “Yidi uzadalts’et?” c’ededliinen yaa, ______________“Cic’uunen decen.” _________________________________________ John Elvis Smelcer is one of the founding editors, and poetry editor, of Rosebud magazine, about to release its 50th consecutive quarterly issue in March. Smelcer is a Clifford D. Clark Fellow in English at Binghamton University in upstate New York. Smelcer is one of the last speakers on earth of the Ahtna Athabaskan language, an endangered Alaska Native language. Only 20 [...]
Piercings Pierced flesh grows back like graffiti painted over the morning after wounds we carry from the dark show scars we cannot hide in the mirror my piercings are invisible to the naked eye but mark me as a troubled heart nailed to your memory slowly mending _________________________________________ Rob Mustard‘s first ebook of poems, Blue Moon, was published in December. As he writes on his poetry site, www.rhmustard.com, “My poems are about love, death, the power of memory to save us. I am most interested in the unexpected ways words speak to each other, the hidden meaning they reveal about us and the world.” Rob lives in Los Angeles. Related Posts Poem of the Week: Bernadette Mayer Poem of the Week: Peter Kline Poem of the Week: Robert Kelly Poem of the Week: Lizzy McDaniel Poem of the Week: Joan Larkin
I was concerned about not knowing. Concerned about not being known. Yet I did little to be known outside of persevering with the work. The work being whatever I was doing at the time in my virtual creative space. Mind, body. Divine intervention. Spiritual revelation. The meaning of every day was living every day as if to make it your last. Life was simple. Inevitable. We invited chaos, we invented dogma, we were what we were trying to be but its presence when achieved was fleeting as the collision of particles in an accelerator. That was yesterday. The smoke was good, the powder okay. In good company we passed days and nights, weeks and months, then years, basking in the nexus of our personal style of aesthetic nihilism. Tomato Soup. “I’m not going to talk to you, either.” I pushed colored wax as far as it would go, canvas board [...]