Fence of Sticks by Deborah Digges

Fence of Sticks 

As I was building a fence of sticks I heard the question,

Weren’t there times worse than this for art?

Weren’t there those who, rather, bristled were they understood,

who worked alone, the manuscripts thrown out or bled beyond the margins.

I was sewing the wire between the pine and sycamore,

tightening the warp with willow and forsythia, some just in bloom.

I thought of those who’d rather hang themselves than call truth heresy.

Upon whose deaths the citizens rejoiced.

They who burned everything.

Those who died longing to say more, whose heads rolled singing.

I was strict with myself, worked long past noon.

The gloves made the weaving hard so I wrought barehanded.

So many pages ending _____, or neatly numbered, or written across the mind.

Those for whom art was not an occupation.

Indeed some never wrote again after what war or famine. Some wrote of nothing else.

I gathered the climbing roses’ whips almost impossible to fit,

that made a lovely spiraling pulled taut, resisting,

each section a stay against the ocean of dead leaves.

A wind came up, the early heat unnerving. Those who refused to make it easy.

They who’d be damned to change a word. The way it came to them

so they would claim. The way was given. How heavy the lengths,

year after year, of pine boughs, Christmas wreaths brown to the bone,

red ribbons like a shout, like an embarrassment,

the holly sprigs still sharp as thorns. Those who died having said too much.

Or who must stop every few lines to dip the quill. They who ran out of time.

Those who ripped folios from the classics.

The boxwood leaves, like oaks’, hold to the bough.

You must strip them by hand, yank the twigs backwards.

I took an ax to the twisted yew, blow after blow, and still it tore.

Its sap ruins this page. I had to pull myself away to write is this not happiness? 

Boy coming out Gay going far to Lady way to Queer by Rickey Laurentiis

Boy coming out Gay going far to Lady way to Queer

 

I confess the Trans is dangerous. It leans provocation

On the teeth of the mind: an idea, to kill all other ideas? like Category,

Order, Line? Suppose the Problem of the Century still

be the Color Line since the Problem is, increasingly, the line?

I walk my far lyric to self. Was I gay or trans, when? Will

I Rickey or Key? The Danger be if Trans willingly tear up and confuse all

Surfaces, & neat embankments and leveed cities sufficiently

keeping one hood from another, what else? If you Look

at me liking what you See-are you Gay? Fag? Distinctions Bi? What am l

going toward once a Boy-going-gay (never Man) coming forth to Lady,

(few deny) for Queer's umbrella (gained) for Dreamed

Queen (all gained) to What else? Tho if I be Queer should Women who snarl

Love at me be lesbian, are Men who throw want at me straight? Carl,

I was gay my whole twenties & do I miss it but I miss the staying gay

after tongues kiss, that little Bottom Shame glossed in that name, Bottom.

Now Gay to Queer Miss to Dream to Trans,* all nice. Tho trans will suffice.

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

On the Thirtieth Friday We Consider Plurals

 

At the border, a flock of journalists.

A sacrifice of tires burned behind us.

Beneath the picnic tents, a funeral of families.

What else will we become in Gaza if we gather,

if we carry our voices to the razored edge?

We were met by a gallop of prayers,

clamoring recitatives puncturing the shroud

of humid air. We were met by a delirium

 

of greetings, peace-be-upon-us surreal

between embraces, the horizon locked

and loaded. What is upon us

will require mercy. Let the plural be

a return of us. A carnage of blessings—

bodies freed from broken promises,

from the incumbrances of waiting.

Under Limestone by Richie Hofmann

Under Limestone

 

It rained in fluted torrents,

the earth smelled of manure.

It was like desire

entering and possessing you quietly.

We undressed.

The sun through the windows made shapes

on the couch I lay face down on.

Our jeans were soaked

and wrinkled on the radiator, our socks heavy.

Then your eyes were opening a little.

Then you could hear the mopeds starting up again.

When it was dry enough, we found a small bistro

where we had prosecco and fries,

and took pictures of one another in our damp clothes

under trees and buildings

of the hated regime.

Love Poem for an Apocalypse by Dave Lucas

Love Poem for an Apocalypse

 

I wish I’d met you after everything had burned,

after the markets crash and global sea levels rise.

The forests scorched. The grasslands trespassed.

My love, it is a whole life’s work to disappear—

ask the god with his head in the wolf’s mouth or

the serpent intent on swallowing all the earth.

Ask the senate subcommittee for market solutions

for late capitalism and early-onset dementia.

You and a bird flu could make me believe in fate.

I think we might be happy in the end, in the dark

of a hollow tree, a seed bank or blast-proof bunker,

if only you would sing the song I love, you know

the one about our precious eschatology, the one

I always ask to hear to lull me back to sleep.

In This Heavy Traffic by Charles Simić

In This Heavy Traffic

What if I were to ditch my car

And walk away without a glance back?

While drivers honk their horns

As I stroll into the nearby woods,

Determined, once and for all,

To swap this breed of raving lunatics

For a more benign kind who dwell

Long-haired and naked close to nature.

I’ll let the sun in the sky be my guide

As I roam the countryside, stopping

To chat with a porcupine or a butterfly,

While subsisting on edible plants I find,

Glad to share my meal with a moose,

Or find a bear licking my face

As I wake from a nap wondering, Where am I?

Stuck in the traffic, you damn fool!

Interlude by Seán Hewitt

Interlude

Go to the lamplight
Go to the empty ring-road in its sleep
Go to the gates, go through
Go in the dew with your wet shoes
to the river, to the oxbow, to the weir –
Is he there?

See where the willows shiver
See the yellow of the pollen on the surface
of the water – stardust
of his slyness, his slipping away –
his gone-before-you-got-here –

so turn, so follow the cortege
of the fallen leaves from the bank,
from the reeds where the coots
and the water voles nest
and find the iron bridge, and cross it

Go to the larks in the Papal field
Bend to the violets and the archangels
Go to the hawthorn and knock
for the stolen child. Go to the holm-oaks –
Is he there?

Say love, I have read the sacred book
of this park each night, I have known
its shibboleths, its ruminations,
its ghosts, its undead – the guards –
the fire in the gatehouse

and still, go on to the empty barracks
decrepit and ruinous, to the rook-riven
parapets. Go to the car park by the pitch
with the headlights waiting, with the engines
killed and the windscreens all fogged over

Stand in the purgatory behind the trees
to watch the man passing the windows
like an angel, bowing to them
Watch each pane of glass lower
See the faces lit in the dashboard glow –
But stop – any one of them
might be a guard, sitting out, so quick,
run, quick, follow

the bike-light as it rattles uphill
to the standing shadows – is that him
by the hawthorn with the lighter,
with the cigarette, wearing his mask?

No, but take his hand. Say come, let us
find him. And careful now of the mud-slick
passage through the thicket, through the thorns
and the dog rose to the grotto, to the splay
and coil of the bodies moving, slowly,
to the groans and the breath, to the open eyes

watching, to the white tissues
and the scuffed ground
and see that man, there –
the one bent over himself, emptying
the animal of his body over the earth –
show your wound to him, stranger.

Say, Stranger, prove my body –
Say, Love, am I not a ghost –