( Wellfleet, Massachusetts )
“How raw I am”
How raw I am
You find my words
give you heartburn.
They are not easily
digestible although
they compost well.
I have sharp edges
some rusty
some glinting bright.
You can’t pick me
up safely to discard
or file securely.
I sprout porcupine
quills, cactus spines
cholla that can’t be
brushed off but
irritate as they enter
your skin, your blood.
Women are not,
you say, supposed
to be wrought of flint
and recycled glass
of rich bottom mud
and fangs and bricks.
Oh, but we are.
We walk through the
valley of death
teeth chattering
and bared, ready
for fight or flight
or the strange
dangerous dance
of mating. I go
speaking myself again
and again like the cry
of a ravenous hawk.
© 2002 Marge Piercy
Claudia Grinnell
( Monroe, Louisiana )
The Man Next Door
I was not interested
in your pretty pictures,
your well-groomed lawns,
your honor-roll children.
It was a different house
that seduced me, before
I entered, I questioned: House,
will you tell me a story
of a man of water, a man
of clay? Indeed, there was
no laughter, no words,
only the sound of paws
coming down stairs, coming
to hang from my ears,
whispering, witness darkness
and something without
eyes. I am used
to this house now. I sleep
in this house now.
At night, my eye dreams
a body and two knees
pulled all the way
up to my mouth.
Paulo da Costa
( Calgary, Canada )
Mwatabu S. Okantahinevitable step
young tiko's dreams
scatter to pieces,
hang from the baobab tree,
a boom of a thousand drums
in the imagined luanda's
stadium where tiko's feet,
swift as birds, chased
a soccer ball of rags
gravel, grass and cloth
burrow in tiko's stump
in the boot of europe,
a church-going father
designs devices in explosive
greens and sands, calls
them butterflies, toys gliding
to the ground in the thousands.
his sister quit valsella last
month and greets him with a banner
at the end of the day
home at night,
in the undermining silence,
missing another goodnight kiss,
the father clings to his child's hand
tiko's femur
will continue the earthbound growth
piercing through flesh and skin,
seeking its sole
The Bassist by Greg Muller
( Philadelphia, Pennsylvania )
( Kent, Ohio )
Julie Bonaducehomeboy
I remember we called him, “Big Daddy Elmer Cook”— Ma Beulah’s boy. we were in junior high school. he was into A Love Supreme in 1966. he was into wing’d tipped shoes, but, he never conk’d his head. Elmer was into Coltrane, into Monk. he was into the “new music” years before I would learn it was new. I had been summer camp’d into Top 40 “Cousin’ Brucie,” integrated into pale “rock and roll.” I remember Big Daddy’s box front room on Oregon Street. he didn’t read comic books. Trane music blasted myopic Marvel Super Heroes— like Miles, he knew the real thing. even then, he refused to allow the other stuff entry into his world. he slept in Blues Minor. the sounds in Elmer’s room saved my memory: at Kent State I remembered Coltrane. white blood ran in the streets there one 70s May. it left white folks with a nagging after- Nixon need for the Average White Band— white boys turned to black blues in search of the soul their own history stole from them. 2 I had gone off to college. Big Daddy went off to Viet Nam— neither of us came home the same. war, and whitefolks seared scars across the bare flesh of our souls. we heard it in Dolphy’s Far Cry, saw it in Monk’s Ugly Beauty; felt it in Bud Powell’s frantic piano sadness; horn solos gave voice to feelings found in places words dare not tread. I remember, we called him, “Big Daddy …” the last time I saw him, he was standing on the corner, he had that far away look; his eyes set deep in his head.
( Portland, Oregon )
Primavera/Febbre Della Molla[Spring Fever or Fever Of The Motivating Force]
Every Spring, I fall: over a
curb, out of my car, onto a
secret. Like clickwork – April
clocks by, or May I stumble
into an awkward position or
circumstance.
It appears to be lunar. I lose the
largest bits of skin to hungry asphalt
when the moon is round and
seemingly full. Apparently not
too full for dessert on my
knee flesh or toe leather. Spring
has a most inconvenient appetite.
When June arrives (not a moment
too soon), I’m bejeweled in Band Aids; my
practical nephews advise against
bathing, saying it hurts. I tell them
I’ll muddle through. Still, I wish
that Spring could really hang me up
the most, like the song says. Hang me
up on a spindle with the coats or
even throw me into a cubby with
rubber boots and stray mittens. I
can do without the constant challenge
to my containment.