Monthly Archives: January 2010

You Who I Love,

Who I do not love,
Who I don’t not love.

You who I stubbed my toe on,
And toed the line for.

You who I doted on,
Devoted on, pined for.

You who I seek,
Who I see.

You who seemed so impeccable to me.
You who seethed so impudently.

You with the comforts.
You with the comportment.

In your apart-ment
I could have but didn’t

(That wasn’t quite
The end of it).

You who went hidden.
You who went hungry.

You who, bedridden for weeks
Got a gangrenous angry.

You who came back from safari
In saffron robes.

You who I knew,
Who I’ll never, never know.

You who are both whole
And half. Both calm and wrath.

Both balm and malice.
You who rebuked then re-rebuked me.

You who I needled and needed.
You for whom I tolled like a bell.

For whom I descended into hell.
For whom the third day rising came far too fast.

You who cannot serve both god and glass.
You who cannot sever bad from bliss.

You who I kissed.
Who I cussed.

You who I love.
But not enough.

© 2010 Jill Alexander Essbaum

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I write your obituary for practice

I sign my name with a widow’s anguish,
A dowager’s flourish, a dangerous ease.
I donate your suits to charities.

I ask a sympathetic priest for prayers.
And send word to the office you won’t be in.
Won’t ever come back in again.

I wrestle myself into mourning dress.
I place the paperwhites on the sill.
I still my nerves with a happy pill.

I settle your debts, your bets, your accounts.
I count up your assets. Assess my regret.
Then I sit in our empty kitchenette.

And try my damnedest to forget.

© 2010 Jill Alexander Essbaum

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Use Somebody (Excerpt)

Am I only material
for you to feel?
Is that all you see
when you look at me?
-Robert Creeley

Wendy woke up to find the room cold. And empty. She watched her fingers roam the swirls of blue and whites on the quilt. A small tear opened the inside and a little down escaped through. She stuffed it back in and felt better. Less empty. She could relax because she had fixed something. And that something wouldn’t be irrevocably lost. She was crazy about stuff like that.
Jones should have been back by now. The endless touring, the days on the road promoting his band’s new album, was daunting. She lay there curled like a fetus and tried to hide from the fact that Jones was missing. His absence was like a presence itself.
Wendy fingered the Russian-doll bracelet that hung from her wrist. The smallest doll of the set, the doll without the hollow insides, she wore even in bed. A tiny ornament, her hand dwarfed the thing, so small she could have crushed it between her fingers.
In the note he’d left with the bracelet, Jones explained that it was something he was giving back to her. He had taken the smallest doll from her dresser as a souvenir while he was touring. He had decided to make the doll into a bracelet so that she could keep it as a souvenir of him instead. Wendy missed him so bad she wore it everywhere. It was the essence of Jones.
Before Jones, her moods had always been her impediment. Outside it could be sunny and warm but inside she would be gloomy. Sometimes she felt a love so great that it would leave her exhausted and pining for more. She would be eating a salad and it would be so good she’d relish in every bite, happiness exuding from her very pores, and it would be awesome like divine light happening to envelope her in its warmth. She’d be alone listening to a record, and the song would be just right. Or it’d be Jones and his smile. Everything would be so good she could pop with gladness. Then it would shift and she would be gloomy like an overcast day.
Lights and darks. That’s how she saw them. Like the patterns of her quilt, they complemented each other with their lights and darks.
She pushed her feet outside the blanket. It barely covered her. Her skin went white and goose-pimply.
From the time she was six and until she was eleven, she would play games of hide-and-seek by herself. Tucked inside a closet or breathing silently underneath her blanket, she would pretend she didn’t exist and things would suddenly feel safe. Her mind would be silent. She would cross her fingers until her mother found her like this, and banished her from her hiding spot. In those moments when she ceased to exist, she found herself feeling the most relieved. With Jones she no longer wanted to hide. Jones was a genius for turning things around. It was what made Wendy attached to him. With Jones she saw things in a way she wouldn’t have seen herself. Without Jones, everything was stale. Life left her without a sound.
She got up and went into the kitchen to fix herself some tea. A cup of tea wouldn’t save her. It wasn’t like she could poke her insides back in.
Under the sheets, Wendy could almost summon up Jones’ warmth. She propped two pillows up in the bed beside her. In the darkened room, they looked like Jones’ back. She squeezed Jones’ pillow to her chest, and was comforted. Lying there, she could feel their togetherness.



© 2010 My Nguyen

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On the Pills

On the pills, you don’t get hungry.

On the pills, whenever you dream you see your grandparents and every dead hamster you’ve ever owned.

On the pills, you are everywhere, you are everybody, you are every woman.

On the pills, you are a superman and everyone else is Little Bo Peep.

On the pills, all of your ex-lovers are in a hot tub, everyone is drinking Hennessey, and Bell Biv Devoe is playing on a boom box.

On the pills, every day is Christmas and every night is New Year’s Eve.

On the pills, this conversation is already being dug up by archaeologists on a distant planet. Or it never existed.

On the pills, you focus more on the shapes of heads and less on the expressions of faces.

On the pills, you figure when somebody gets upset in the long run shit will even out.

On the pills, you just worry about the next dosage 24-hour dosage

On the pills, you tend to repeat yourself.

On the pills, it’s impossible to take in a whole person so you focus on a passing butt, boob, or thigh.

On the pills, you just try to obey the majority of traffic laws and avoid all the hobos.

© 2010 Jeff Girod

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EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!

(poetry’s posthumous voice boils pacific)

Have you ever seriously considered,
Meditatively cud-chewed on gristle covered shank bone,
What might happen if poetry ran its course,
The last imaginative metaphor having been written,
That fateful day when the sword
Becomes mightier than the pen? Have you!
Would such an event prove cataclysmic,
Or would it merely be the silent sound
Of flatulence breaking the wind?
Would it be headline news
Or would it be buried somewhere in the obituaries
Behind the Want-Ads?

“Poetry, a 39 year old hermaphrodite
suffered a massive myocardial infarction
while addressing a crowd of circus lovers,
a carnivorous conclave of cardinals,
a flock of frocked obsessive compulsives behind closed doors.”

Maybe this event would make the ‘Personals,’
“SWF seeks SWM poetry lover
who loves to go down in the moonlight at midnight
during the monsoon season in Madagascar,”
or some such thing as that
with the emphasis on the significance of poetry,
its metaphysical effects on the lunar tides
and the ozone layer’s exponential ooze.

Maybe this event would make the Sports Page:
“Poetry strikes out on three low fast ones;
his Louisville Slugger never left his shoulder
and the bases were loaded in the bottom of the ninth!”

Hyperbole, you say! I don’t think so; when was the last time
You feasted on a good bowl of tripe,
The marble laden stomach of a slop fed swine
Or siphoned pickled pork from between the pig’s knuckles?

Or maybe it really would be the final sunset.
Our sun, the source of warmth, light, life and energy
Seen disappearing with resounding finality,
The agonizing sound of someone’s drowned voice
Boiling the Pacific.

© 2010 Richard Ilnicki

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The United Virtues of Tina (Excerpt)

Ian also found himself fleeing from women who were a shade too self-reliant, too persistently capable. He had never, in his Kansas meanderings, met a woman with a wood shop in her garage; he had never met women who owned roto-tillers, chainsaws, and hydraulic wood-splitters that they towed behind a pickup truck. (A truck with a bumper sticker that said: SILLY BOYS: TRUCKS ARE FOR GIRLS!) Santa Fe was positively crawling with these kinds of women: Women who owned kayaks, and shotguns, and ice-climbing equipment; women who rode motorcycles (dirt bikes, even); women who walked huge snarling Rottweilers on thick choke chains. The dogs, the bikes, the guns were all a manifestations of a deeply disturbing revelation—that men were superfluous, that their skills and their toys and all of their bravado could be so easily co-opted. Men were the proverbial fish on a bicycle. Men were merely the people who sold theses intrepid women’s toys.
Ian could never admit that sexuality was the root of this threat. But then he met a force of nature named Ingrid at a Canyon Road gallery opening for Dennis Hopper. Ingrid was a Norwegian émigré with a master’s degree in exercise physiology. She worked the requisite two jobs: In spring and early summer Ingrid was a whitewater rafting guide, shooting the Taos Box with boatloads of terrified tourists. In winter she was a ski instructor—not just any instructor, mind you, but one who specialized in disabilities; amputees, autistic children, and people with “mobility issues.” Of course, Ingrid drove a pickup truck; a tricked-out monster with a CB radio, a gun rack, and a winch mounted on the front bumper (“for the boats”).
Ingrid was so radically different from anyone Ian had ever dated; she was like a third gender. For instance, she never discussed previous boyfriends or lovers. She never complained about a lack of money. She loved children, but didn’t seem to want any of her own. She did not read Toni Morrison, and had never heard of Maya Angelou. (She did read anthologies of letters; erotic letters by Anäis Nin.) Ingrid would drink one glass of wine with a meal, and then chase it with a couple of mojitos. She favored rare, bloody steaks that were all but twitching on the plate. Clearly, Ingrid loved to party, but she never told How-drunk-was-I stories about herself. She had women friends who lived like she did; Gina, the bartender who was also in the Ski Patrol; Irene, who did personal training and was dating a tribal policeman from Pojoaque Pueblo. Ingrid certainly exceeded Ian’s travel standards; she had lived all over Europe, she had plenty of vagabond stories. She was neither cuddly nor Reubenesque; Ingrid’s lithe and lanky frame was part gymnast, part triathlete. Ingrid was the most complete package that Ian could imagine. Her fabulousness begged the question of what could she possibly see in him?
Ian mulled this discrepancy one evening while they shared a patio table at Gabriel’s and watched their waiter mix fresh guacamole. He and Ingrid had not yet slept together; the relationship was in that third date netherplace, and Ian decided that candor was the best policy.
“I can’t help but think that maybe I’m not like other men you’ve dated,” he said.
Ingrid sipped her mojito and said: “Well, you are my first author.”
So that’s it, Ian thought, as they tucked into the dip and blue corn chips. She had tired of the calloused cowboys, the sensitive New Age guys, or the Santa Fe arts cadre. Ian presumed that Ingrid had dated artists, just not his kind of artist. The one personal dating revelation that Ingrid did share was during a discussion about her juvenile ski clients, the autistic ones who were “a handful.”
“Single men in this town all seem to hate children,” she said. “I talk about my students and their eyes glaze over.”
How ironic, Ian thought, for at that moment he was waging his own fight to keep from looking stone bored. Children were a complete abstraction to him; certainly nothing to be coveted or adored. They were fine for people like Ingrid who had the capacity to give a shit. But honestly: The little buggers were so persistently ill-behaved, careening about the market aisles like rogue gypsies; yowling in movie theaters, sneezing in every direction. And it seemed to Ian that most of their parents were insensitive, oblivious, or both. It was as if the very act of parenthood emasculated men—hardy, rugged men became mewling man-moms. Ian had just encountered a man-mom in that very restaurant; some guy returning from the restroom with baby in his arms. He had a bottle of formula stowed in the back pocket of his jeans, and had draped a frilly little spittle cloth over his shoulder—a grown man with a spittle cloth! Why don’t you just clip your nads and hand them over to your wife? Ian thought. Clearly, you won’t be needing them anymore.
“Hello? Hello, anybody home?” Ingrid snapped her fingers in Ian’s face. “Where did you just go?” she demanded.
“Oh, it’s just the work,” he said, with a shrug. “I’m past deadline on this Rex Cabot book…”
Ingrid issued a wry smile, then said, “I’ll bet I can think of something that would distract you.” She took his hand in hers and licked a swatch of guacamole from Ian’s thumb.
They finished dinner in a kind of pre-coital haze, then quickly departed in Ingrid’s truck. As they drove south, Ingrid suggested that Ian sit closer. He obliged, straddling the transmission hump and placing one hand on the inside of her knee. She winked at him and reciprocated. The arrangement was almost erotic, except that Ingrid’s truck had a manual transmission; her hand constantly jumped from Ian’ thigh to snatch the shift knob and grind the gearbox. Sitting that close, Ian could feel the leverage—the brute force of her. She was a formidable woman, unlike anything Ian had ever seduced. As if to underscore this, Ingrid launched into a description of the rescue procedure for man-overboard on the river boats. There is an especially gnarly stretch of rapids just above Embuto Station, she explained, where the boat reverses and the bow pops up. Tourists tend to pop up too, sailing into the raging water like popcorn out of a hot kettle. The guide, Ingrid explained (grind-grind; shift-shift), has just a few precious moments to snag the front panels of the person’s life vest.
“Sometimes they fight you, get to flailing and screaming,” Ingrid said. “The only way to calm them down is to give them a good slap.”
“You slap your clients?”
“When I have to,” she replied. “They usually thank me later (grind-grind; shift-shift). Anyway, you can’t lift an adult—especially a man—back into the boat by brute force. They’ll pull you in with them. So you’ve got to dunk them—”
“You dunk your drowning clients?”
“It’s not punishment, it’s technique,” she explained. “You bob them under; the vest will bring them back up, and you use that momentum to pull them in.”
“That works; bobbing them underwater?”
“Haven’t lost one yet!”
And in that moment, with that image, Ian felt his own gonads recoil; actually start to retract into his pelvic floor. Ian felt flushed; not from carnal anticipation, but from a visceral sense of dread. Ingrid’s story had conjured forth am image of what sex with her could be like—dunking, slapping, flailing about at her mercy! A woman like this—this gear-grinding Nordic Amazon—would pulverize him in bed. There would be no nibbling of napes, no eyelash kisses, no fluttery fingertip explorations of Ingrid’s fleshy portal. This steak-loving carnivore would treat Ian like her personal shift knob. He would be but a tiny man-mogul on her downhill race to orgasm. And what consequences awaited the man who displeased her? What if Ian failed to satisfy? Ian did not want to be that man, did not want to be Ingrid’s first author, did not want to have to make love like a gladiator. Ever kill anyone in the throes of passion, Ingrid? Haven’t lost one yet!
“I wonder if you could just drop me at my car?” Ian heard himself saying.
Ingrid did not respond, did not glance at him, and she let the truck’s engine tach up to a high whine before downshifting.
“Was it the dinner?” she finally said.
“No, no it’s just that I’m kind of preoccupied with this deadline.”
“I’m sure you are,” Ingrid said—issued—through her large, white teeth.
And that was how it ended; an ignominious back-track to a restaurant parking lot; silent, sullen, and caustic. After Ian climbed down from the truck, he tried to utter a farewell but Ingrid slammed the vehicle back into gear and squealed away, the passenger door flapping as she careened into the night.

END

© 2009 Monty Mickelson

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