Conclusively by Fanny Howe

Conclusively

 

The night was almost too long to bear

Then there was evidence of mercy—a passing car—

milky air—and I could see

dry walls & gravel on the way to the highway

Atlantic for its grays

 

Loss is the fulfillment of the Law

Space collected on a long line

 

I was eliminated as a locus of mothering—

a she—physical but imaginary as a restless daughter

 

Why this body and not another

 

The one who came to destroy the works of women—their

offspring—

knew how many people were resisting incarnation

He counted on them by accommodating them

 

Guilt relieving guilt

is the get of killers whose mouths shine

I can't say enough about this—red because sore

& polished because wet

 

One died to become the spirit-guide

Before that time

there were second persons in everything

Then saints, then no one

to guide anyone to heaven

Cosmic expansion has gone on in its preferred direction

 

I can hear the hour, this never

happened to me before

One day I will shake the blue sky from my hair

and slip back to consciousness—

the things that is always aware

with or without a living creature to share its pleasures

 

Tonight I request the precious gift of final perseverance

shored up in my sheets

not far from a predawn holocaust

of traveling children 

The Little Miracles by Malika Booker

The Little Miracles

 

After ‘A Winter Night’ by Tomas Tranströmer (translated by Robin Robertson)

 

Since I found mother collapsed on the kitchen

floor, we siblings have become blindfolded mules

 

harnessed to carts filled with strain, lumbering

through a relentless storm, wanting to make

 

our mother walk on her own again, wanting to rest

our palms on her left leg and arm like Jesus, but

 

constellations do not gather like leaves in a teacup,

so what miracle, of what blood, of what feeble wishes

 

do we pray, happy no nails hammer plywood, building

a coffin, to house her dead weight, happy her journey

 

crawls as we her children hold on like drought holds out

for rain, learning what it is like to begin again, start

 

with the, the, the dog, the cat, the date, the year, the

stroke, the brain, the fenced in walls, she struggles

 

to dismantle brick on brick. She cannot break this,

we reason, watching her left hand in her lap, a useless

 

echo. We chew bitter bush, swallow our howling storm,

reluctantly splintering under the strain of our mother’s

 

ailing bed-rest. We smile at each of her feats: right hand

brushing her teeth in late evening, head able to lift

 

without the aid of a neck-brace, her off spring’s names

Malika, Phillip and Kwesi are chants repeated over

 

and over as if staking us children as her life’s work,

her blessings, showing how much we are loved. The days

 

she sings walk with me oh my Lord, over and over, walk

with me oh my Lord, through the darkest night… and I sing

 

with her, my tones flat to her soprano, just as you changed

the wind and walked upon the sea, conquer, my living Lord,

 

the storm that threatens me, and we sing and sing until

she says, Maliks, please stop the cat-wailing before

 

you voice mek rain fall, and look how the weather nice

outside eh! Then we laugh and laugh until almost giddy,

 

our mood light momentarily in this sterile room, where

each spoonful of pureed food slipped into her mouth

 

like a tender offering takes us a step away from feeding

tubes, and we are so thankful for each minuscule miracle.

  

A Winter Night by Tomas Tranströmer

A Winter Night

 

The storm puts its mouth to the house

and blows to get a tone.

I toss and turn, my closed eyes

reading the storm's text.

 

The child's eyes grow wide in the dark

and the storm howls for him.

Both love the swinging lamps;

both are halfway towards speech.

 

The storm has the hands and wings of a child.

Far away, travellers run for cover.

The house feels its own constellation of nails

holding the walls together.

 

The night is calm in our rooms,

where the echoes of all footsteps rest

like sunken leaves in a pond,

but the night outside is wild.

 

A darker storm stands over the world.

It puts its mouth to our soul

and blows to get a tone. We are afraid

the storm will blow us empty.

 

(Translated by Robin Robertson)

  

Poem by Katy Lederer

Poem

I think of your face and of its deepest bewilderment.

It makes me sad as if the morning

were a tower or pair

of them—haunted and pure,

degenerate, elevated, strange of view

in solitude. 

A Night in Brooklyn by Dennis Nurkse

A Night in Brooklyn

We undid a button,

turned out the light,

and in that narrow bed

we built the great city—

water towers, cisterns,

hot asphalt roofs, parks

septic tanks, arterial roads,

Canarsie, the intricate channels,

the seacoast, underwater mountains,

bluffs, islands, the next continent,

using only the palms of our hands

and the tips of our tongues, next

we made darkness itself, by then

it was time for daybreak

and we closed our eyes

until the sun rose

and we had to take it all to pieces

for there could be only one Brooklyn.  

Spoiler by Hala Alyan

Spoiler

 

Can you diagnose fear? The red tree blooming from uterus

to throat. It’s one long nerve, the doctor says. There’s a reason

breathing helps, the muscles slackening like a dead marriage.

Mine are simple things. Food poisoning in Paris. Hospital lobbies.

My husband laughing in another room. (The door closed.)

For days, I cradle my breast and worry the cyst like a bead.

There’s nothing to pray away. The tree loves her cutter.

The nightmares have stopped, I tell the doctor. I know why.

They stopped because I baptized them. This is how my mother

and I speak of dying—the thing you turn away by letting in.

I’m tired of April. It’s killed our matriarchs and, in the back yard,

I’ve planted an olive sapling in the wrong soil. There is a droopiness

to the branches that reminds me of my friend, the one who calls

to ask what’s the point, or the patients who come to me, swarmed

with misery and astonishment, their hearts like newborns after

the first needle. What now, they all want to know. What now.

I imagine it like a beach. There is a magnificent sand castle

that has taken years to build. A row of pink seashells for gables,

rooms of pebble and driftwood. This is your life. Then comes the affair,

nagging bloodwork, a freeway pileup. The tide moves in.

The water eats your work like a drove of wild birds. There is debris.

A tatter of sea grass and blood from where you scratched your own arm

trying to fight the current. It might not happen for a long time,

but one day you run your fingers through the sand again, scoop a fistful out,

and pat it into a new floor. You can believe in anything, so why not believe

this will last? The seashell rafter like eyes in the gloaming.

I’m here to tell you the tide will never stop coming in.

I’m here to tell you whatever you build will be ruined, so make it beautiful. 

By Small and Small: Midnight to 4 A.M. by Jack Gilbert

By Small and Small: Midnight to 4 A.M.

 

For eleven years I have regretted it,

regretted that I did not do what

I wanted to do as I sat there those

four hours watching her die. I wanted

to crawl in among the machinery

and hold her in my arms, knowing

the elementary, leftover bit of her

mind would dimly recognize it was me

carrying her to where she was going.