Only as the Day is Long

Soon she will be no more than a passing thought,
a pang, a timpani of wind in the chimes, bent spoons
hung from the eaves on a first night in a new house
on a street where no dog sings, no cat visits
a neighbor cat in the middle of the street, winding
and rubbing fur against fur, throwing sparks.

Her atoms are out there, circling the earth, minus
her happiness, minus her grief, only her body’s
water atoms, her hair and bone and teeth atoms,
her fleshy atoms, her boozy atoms, her saltines
and cheese and tea, but not her piano concerto
atoms, her atoms of laughter and cruelty, her atoms
of lies and lilies along the driveway and her slippers,
Lord her slippers, where are they now?

-- Dorianne Laux

The Night Where You No Longer Live

Was it like lifting a veil

And was the grass treacherous, the green grass

Did you think of your own mother

Was it like a virus

Did the software flicker

And was this the beginning

Was it like that

Was there gas station food

and was it a long trip

And is there sun there

or drones

or punishment

or growth

Was it a blackout

And did you still create me

And what was I like on the first day of my life

Were we two from the start

And was our time an entrance

or an ending

Did we stand in the heated room

Did we look at the painting

Did the snow appear cold

Were our feet red with it, with the wet snow

And then what were our names

Did you love me or did I misunderstand

Is it terrible

Do you intend to come back

Do you hear the world’s keening

Will you stay the night

 

--Meghan O'Rourke

Unveiling, Wakefield

I say to the named granite stone, to the brown grass,
to the dead chrysanthemums, Mother, I still have a
body, what else could receive my mind’s transmissions,
its dots and dashes of pain? I expect and get no answer,
no loamy scent of her coral geraniums. She who is now
immaterial, for better or worse, no longer needs to speak
for me to hear, as in a continuous loop, classic messages
of wisdom, love and fury. MAKE! DO! a note on our fridge
commanded. Here I am making, unmaking, doing, undoing.

--Gail Mazur

A Kiss

And sometimes it is
loss

                                                         that we lose,

             and sometimes

it is just lips. When I was


                               a child, I would ask my mother
to tuck me

                                   in, wrap me tight in blankets,

             make me into a burrito.


                               Sometimes I would wait in bed,

pressing my body stiff, like a board,

mind like a feather, silly— setting the scene



                           to be seen.
                  
                                              So I could be wrapped.
                                              
                                                   So I could be kissed.


And what

                                    I miss most,


is being              made                                    again.


-- David Tomas Martinez