THE KITCHEN

This fruit fly has been so bothersome

I know it in particular, I know it no longer by the swarm

It was born in a dirty sink, full of dishes

I’d rather amputate the kitchen than clean

Is this mango still organic in such conditions?

The bagel has a finger hole, I can carry it to safety

This place is a kitchen, unimaginably violent

Sterilize the cutlery, salt every wound, turn on the fan I cant stand the smell

Cuisine is the symbol of all great societies

Systematic destruction of all bacterial cultures

Erstwhile millions feed upon chicken hearts in the Midwest

I heard that in the early days of locomotion, people lived off of the land

People sneeze here quite often, bless you poor thing, always so kind

Dear Lord! I realize this kitchen has never been clean

(the exercise was to use the words: fruit fly, amputate, mango, bagel, finger, erstwhile, locomotion, and refer to a god)

Outside?

As I sit here, in this lonely chair, in front of this monstrous technology that has me strangled by my arms. I wonder. I wonder when. I wonder when this had to be this. When the end of nature and the beginning of innovation has resulted in this reality that so many face. I have it good. We all have it good. Yet, the emptiness takes over. Day after day. The same thing. Day after day. Have to find the glimpse. The wonder that once caught my eyes.

Ships That Pass In the Night**

People tell me I look angry when I walk,

but it's just that

the corners of my mouth sink like ships when I think.

And if I don't wave,

it's just that

my pupils face forwards

even when my brain ignores my retina.

And when I walk

the only waves I see

are waves sinking my relation-ships

that I think about while I'm walking,

because when I think my thoughts sink ships

like the corners of a mouth.

If you've ever ridden a horse from Troy

it's possible it wasn't a horse;

these are things my brain remembers,

not Supreme Court Justices,

or immigration acts

but A Tale of Two Cities,

and there are six people in space right now.

Sidewalks look flat here but

they will trip you in seconds.

It's the cracks -

they look even,

but they're mountains apart;

and you can tell by the way green grows there,

thriving in the gaps that bruise us.

Gravity wins,

gravity wins again,

the colossal cavity,

the lion's den,

the knock back flat im-pact body smack ground smacks back it's been years, fact:

This is an epic era of inertia,

if I go down I'm going nowhere and you know it.

** "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing, Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness; So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another, Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."

I want your darkness.
I want your pain.
I want your suffering.
I want your sorrow and your rage and your animal lust .
I want it marked on my body like a map,
and
I want you to taste it in my tears
and know that I have taken it from you.

I want to pay the price of being yours.
Show me, again, what
justice
feels like.
But first,

make me beg for it.

Make me yours and make me
something greater
than I could be for my self.

Don't give me a choice:
you have decided
that you want me -

I am too long forsaken
now ready to be taken,
sharpened, shaped, and straightened,
bound and gagged,
a helpless gift
bowing low to you,
to be grafted to your soul
in that beautiful place where our desires bloom as one.

Eager to worship and lain naked before
your deep and private eyes:
a yearning mind
a burning body
and a restless heart to be
arrested
caressed
and kept
as your most sacred possession.

Here with this ink
I grovel at your feet,
readier than any
to follow you
down that dark and burning path of my
submission
to your needs and desires.

I am wet clay to be molded by your
strong and loving hands;
I will stick to you
and get under your skin
if you win
everything
that I have to give.



By Carly De Neve Weckstein

a hope:
to never surrender
my love
for myself

that’s all i’ve got written
for now.

I’m sick
Of poems
Written about olive oil
And the glory of the Palestinian struggle
And I may love the people who write these things
But honesty is breaking through
It is breaking through because I am triggered
And I can’t help the nauseous feeling
I get when white boys
Intellectually
Artistically
Masturbate
Pretty words
All over the faces
Of people whose vocal chords
Have been uprooted
Only to be replanted
In sunny Tel Aviv
Inside the throats
Of two men
In rainbow flip flops

Those walls you speak of
That I speak of
We have never lived these walls
Who the fuck are you?
Don’t talk to me about Palestine
As if your moral compass is occupied
As if your tender words
Your disgust with apartheid
And night raids
And tear gas
And live bullets
That make dead people
Mean that you understand
That you are on the side of justice

No.
I don’t think that you claim to understand
You are aware of your privilege
And you act according to it
Trying to compromise it
At your own expense
For the benefit of
people
And you can’t help that this idea: “Social justice”
Makes your cock hard

You are an occupier
And so am I
And we speak of BDS
But that simple longing
For grandmother’s cooking
And our favorite chocolate
Perpetuates the evil doing
Carried out by our cousins and uncles
And mothers and fathers
Whom we love around the dinner table
And in doing so
In loving them
We legitimize their actions:
They are loved at home
They have friends and lovers and chocolate
And slow cooked breakfast
Because time is abundant
So who gives a fuck if a pregnant woman dies at a checkpoint

Soldiers leave their personal lives
That is
All that matters
All that makes them who they are
At the door to their house
Because they have
A key
And documents
And grandmother’s cooking
And when they come back
To open that door
There won’t be a soldier
Denying them entry
At gunpoint
Because that soldier is them
And soldiers don’t live at home



By Lior

The Wanderer (For Mahmoud Darwish and Emilio Ortega Aldrich)

I.
A wanderer stood still
For once
And gazed at the olives dangling from the branches
Admired the roots of their elders
And recalled how to their progeny they would write
Sermons, speeches, and manifestos
Solidifying the creed
A deliberate gift for every child
Of the uprooted pedigree

And beneath the soot of the family
The wanderer upended the tree
Brushed aside branches
And in their absence marked
The place of the forgotten leaves
Had he looked around for another soul
Together they would point, look, and see
And feel around for the wretched earth
Unearthing from the refuge
What it means to become human
To be free

He sat down long enough
To write a song
Of hopeful longing
And hoped to recognize a beard
Or to sing along with a laughter that comes
Not a month too soon after
The most difficult of years
And the howls of jackals
Split the moon into
Two
So that when he looked up
Huddled in the warmth, solemnly
He prayed that it would stay the same
Before it finally broke
Into three



II.
I stood
Apart from the rest of the town
To catch the wanderer’s solemn gaze
And when our eyes met I
Looked away
Only to witness my roof bleed from the glow of the sun



III.
Somehow it became clear
That I was not allowed to cry
So as the procession marched forward
I blinked dust
And drank my anger

My roof still ablaze
Reminded me of him
And of the Walls that stood still among us
Their paths paved,
Cutting deep between rows of signifiers
Casting aside the memory and significance
Of the way the birds flew
And how he remembered how they flew

He remembers still
The way the trees and their children
Sewed a home made of shade for the
Droplets and the olives to mingle by the roots
And the ovaries of others
Rolled gently, listlessly and unbounded
Their spirit settled in the very same shade

Bare and barren this season
So that even as they are torn
Mother from child
Brother from sister
They betray the faintest sense of warmth
As if life could not be torn from them
No matter how hard the machines force their tears

And amongst the whispers of the bulldozers
Lay the whimpers of the droplets
Forever longing for the companionship
Of the olives
And the listless breeze through the open window
Dries the drips of blood
That have leaked through the roof
Into the wanderer’s living room
To remind him of me

Oh your remarkable soul

Oh your remarkable soul
fraught with desire and this unspeakable worry
beating beneath your breast--emitting waves
affecting migrations adversely with the passion you conjure.
Soaring creatures blinded, beaching boats and bottlenoses.
High above the river bed it echos, answering the beck, with haste they call.
You've taken time now, sat alone, watched days go by and written stories
and still you watch your sheets make waves.
I check the ledger on that day and all days.
Just to collect your thoughts on the matter.

But I've seen the tears you wept and they do not toll for me.
I've seen hell and I've seen Paris.

But to whomever grants my ability to speak
and my ability to write, sing, and hate again
let that remarkable soul leave me now.
If not now, never.
My soles lay warm and paper thin.
From seeing San Francisco in the morning hours.
I crossed the Mississippi in spring and drowned in her majesty.
I hailed the garbage of the Thames and the dirt of Cadiz on the day the world ended.
And still I sit and wonder now, oh remarkable soul
to whom do I write my check of devotion.
For the spool keeps spinning and I keep knitting
the record keeps playing and I keep nodding.
And you keep writing, and I keep reading.
With fervor now I speak your name:
___________


Los Angeles 2010

I just came all over myself
Literally, thirty seconds ago
And you better damn well know
That I was planning on coming
Inside my belly button
And on the tummy hair which surrounds it
Right before writing this poem
I wanted to come and then write

Last night I was walking on Kingston Ave.
In Crown Heights
On my way to get some groceries for dinner
A man walked up to me:
“what are you some kind of fag? I thought you was a woman”
It was later that I realized
That it was my sexy legs that got his attention
My jeans were tight, that night (they always are)
I was wearing slip ons, and my pants are waaay too short for those shoes
It’s a hot look for me
Anyways
Calling me a fag was not enough
He thought I was a woman
Ahh.
So he saw my legs, and thought to himself:
“Damn baby, those are some fine ass legs”
And as his mind went to complete the thought:
“I’d love to tap that shit” – or, alternatively- “I’d love to stick my hard cock in her pussy”
His eyes wondered up my legs, past my chest
Until he caught sight of my full beard
And he felt emasculated
And diseased
And alone
And all he wanted was some hot ass
Cause he’s lonely
And a bigot
But I was just another faggot
So he had to say something
To regain his sense of self
To reassert his manhood
His ‘given’ right to dominate
Because otherwise
His whole world would fall apart
And he would have no support system
No one to hold him tight
And tell him that it’s ok if he wanted to fuck men
He would think himself a dirty, sick faggot
And probably hang himself
On his mother’s clothesline
Or blow his brains out
With his father’s shot-gun




By Lior

SPACE STATION

What a great day for humankind, the astronauts congratulated each other

Behind mirrored-glass visors and thick synthetic gloves

Natives of several countries, they gathered

To find life in outer space on the international space station

They ate exotic foods prior to departure

Lazing in deep space, find comfort in the earth that seeps from our bodies

We will soon search for the outside in each and every orifice

Pores, nostrils, ear canals, digestive tracts, windpipes and urethras

We will weave into one another simply performing

The daily tasks of intergalactic flight

To regain our sense of permeability, possible escape

Love made so primitive on such super computers

Photographs of home dissolve in these passing light years

Constellations of dye float weightless, without memory

Someone will complain to head quarters about the glare

The aluminum foil and neon lights overexpose these dreams of home décor

We have begun to cover portholes with curtains made of clothes

We are naked but we dress this space as if it was our home

There are microphones and cameras that record our every move

And research into the search for extraterrestrial life

We have beds with patterned linens, but instead we float as globes of tangled bodies

To orbit once more on a universal axis, to enjoy that familiar home seasickness

In our space station, all the world appears this way, at least at this stage of the mission

We are pleased to report to our donors that we have gathered glimpses into the beginnings of early alien life.

day dreaming

preservation of cultural identity was never part of the plan

but it had a nice ring to it

so academics

and elites

alike

found opportunity in vulnerability

and we wonder why there's christmas decorations

before Thanksgiving

preserving a dream that was never really dreamt

at least

not while sleeping

but done while

waiting for the clouds to crack

and the sky to drop

the forebodings

of a frustrated weatherman

but still no message

from the messenger himself

they say that

the Amazon

is the lung of the Earth

and we're smoking...

what does that make the Congo?

Apparently the rape capital of the world*

Poems/Haifa

I looked into the mirror and said it out loud

The insides of my stomach turning to acid

Fighting their ascent as my eyes moistened

But I am not crying, because I am fighting

And the choking intonations char my vocal chords black
And I am grasping at every last bit of memory I own
Before the bombings
And before the funeral
And before I saw Oklahoma mourn from Saba’s couch in Haifa

I’ve been grasping
Trying to resuscitate pieces of the train tracks
Preserving the snow-padded footsteps
Wails and bones
Both the broken kind and the kind you can see right through the skin
Those who died within the womb
And without
Smells of the vaulted rooms and the burning furnace
The kind that smells like my family

No! I grab myself
And I’m shivering now
I am grasping and I am reliving
Painstakingly reliving and fragmenting whatever is left of the fragments
Because when they come out
Words do not suffice
And my charred throat has caught up with me and leaves me silent

But I am not fighting anymore,
So maybe it’s okay to cry now.

When you heard us whispering through the corridor

Many busy days

we have crossed the threshold,

dangled over the murky bottom,

wrecked and wrought and rampaged,

stolen and been stolen from,

our fingers stained with rasberry blood;

And we've stuck our flag in the dirt

and built our tree houses there,

and buried our dead animals in the soil,

and marked the spot with pretty stones,

we've slept too little,

we've slept too much,

we've seen too little,

we've seen too much.

We've seen too much.

רוח גולה

מאז ומתמיד הייתה לי תחושה
שבעצם ולמרות הכל
יש בי רוח גולה וזהות סמוייה
כאילו אני שד שמסתתר
באיזה חדר מעופש עם אור מהבהב
והאמת היא
שאני לא כל כך בטוחה בעצמי
רוח גולה זה לא ממשי, וכמובן שאני בכלל פוחדת שמישהו יגלה את הסוד הזה
את הסוד הזה אני שומרת טוב טוב בבטן

The next poem will

The next poem will stand out,
etch itself
in my memory
but
every time I read it
I will understand it differently

The next poem will be a palimpsest
(a new word
which has
etched itself
in my memory
like a poem)
and will rewrite itself anew
over the vestiges
of its old self.
vestiges
like electronic footprints
like crayonic finger marks
that belong to me and you alike.

It might surrender but with intention
It will definitely smell, if i have my way

There is no way to know if it will remember

With Apologies For Canon* Fire

I crossed the Bay to the West amidst a flurry of gales and considered the minds of my current company--those of the crippling, familial, the falsely angst-driven, the humbling strangers,

the like.

I emerged on the dock with less than I began and a sickening feeling of the quickly approaching madness--the days
when Whitman will no longer ride ferries across the East--delivered instead by a carefully measured culture dosage of
amino-acids and pundit-purported importance injected into the neck and embraced soon after.

Leaves abridged with a commemorative thumb drive. Tip your waitress and grab a cougaran.

O, you children GET OUT. Cough up your love and dissect it. Place it under your white screens and toss up your love.

The reverberations of your guitar strings are emitted by your star-gazing, splintered fingernails. You grow them long for passerbys. You grow them long for peace of mind.
Your genes wind and twist and sway. You write them down in your bound blue books and secure them with tape and a scribbled inscription. Magnifying glasses capture the sun and burn them past recognition.
Out of which desire do you work? The marquee runs low on letters.
Grab the cardboard of the lowly and paint it black. Spit on it till it sticks.
Your mind-numbing delusions. You fools.
The days of men move past the days of exhibition.

I bottle my breath and ship it east. Burlap sacks filled with glass bottles and gold tops. Gone are the days when such devices held jam.
Like your mother used to make--
sweet and debilitating is the compassion spread on a slightly burnt piece of bread.
Workers remove the tops and the Lion escapes?
Don't pervert this. Don't you dare.
That ferry has long since sunk. Its hull has been obliterated--Resurrected on high (45" vinyl) and used as skeet targets.
I'd stitch my jacket tomorrow to form this ship if it meant I hadn't died in vain. I'd caress this woman's fabric, kiss her cheek, and set sail if I could play the note that raised the ship and sustained its course. I'd sing the siren's song without this guttural bellow.

Looks like my face is getting a bit older now amidst this sea-salt and wine. I will judge my decisions and those of my father. Tonight I'll swim where I sweep--the sweet halls of days of by.



Los Angeles 2010

what will the next poem look like?

When the world
demands you write
a happy poem
will you deliver it
with your grin
door-to-door?
Or will you sleep
through the afternoon
while the neighbors
read it aloud
to their families?
Will you craft it
lovingly with
your own hands?
Or will you use
something
now broken and
irreplaceable?

And what will the next
poem look like?
Like the ground
upon which
my home is built
plush and summer green
even in Autumn?
Will it brim with the scent
of roses
and tomatoes which
I’ve planted
with some help from Ima?
Or will it look like
a talisman
wrapped around your neck
tightly
lovingly accentuating
your cheeks
and mapping the ridged valley
of your skin?

And will the poem
respect the poet
despite everything
that has come
between them
and everything that
still might?
Will it still smell
like Haifa
in the springtime
or like Gaza year round?
Will it lie
supinely on a park bench
waiting
in vain
to remember
that we have done
our very best
to forget it?
Or will it surrender
every urge
to a stranger
with sad eyes
and a long walk home?

Blaise's Notebook

Blaise handed me an empty notebook
I started several poems
Thought I could compile them
Burned myself trying
Maybe a workshop
Maybe work on handwriting
Or make a list, yes make a list:
Think about Dolores Park
And then about Macon
Try a sonnet
Or a psalm
Palm my anxieties
Save face
ee cummings is laughing
When he realizes
I am more coherent
But far less of a statesman
Maybe I’m a better list-maker
Or maybe I should stop using hyphens

Pisces Fish Must Always Swim

I dove into you
with no oxygen tank or snorkel mask
so how was I to see clearly
or breathe easy?

I dove head first
feet paired, tightly together
for perfect form and fluidity
but not genuine stability

I dove into you
to explore
the depths
of me

I dove into you
so that you
wouldn't dive
into me




By Blaise Hammer

(Hold On) My People

In my blue eyes
I do not believe in my people
Unless my people
Are the same abject
Subjects of dispossession
The same lambs
Walking to slaughter
Surrounded by the gallows of martyrs
As the ones you call your own

In my hands I do not hold
The bones of my ancestry
Unless my ancestors
Are the same ones who
Climbed numbly
Out of Ghetto caskets
The same caskets now used
By people I no longer recognize
The ones I call my own

I feel alone writing in this poem
Until I hear the lyrics of dead brothers
Uplifted! The bandied Yiddish spirit!
Branded like a number and seared into me like the vision of
The Jew in my father’s courtyard playing a broken violin
While ships set sail for Palestine
The hair of Auschwitz
Falls upon the rust of Majdanek
The meekness of Galut is shed over and over
Like skins of the python

Because in Warsaw I see The Avenues
Huey and Marek and the crickets dancing
The streets aflame and the boiler rooms below
Waiting for the fire next time

In panopticised spatiality
I am continuously deconstructing temporality
Why am I stuck inside this (un)clear academic jar(gon)?
I want to barf

The barfesization of Israel/Palestine is almost as bad as its Judeization
and its like Im outside of my own corporeality
dealing only with imagined communities of gendered impunites

can I really learn more about dichotomized sexualities from you, Fouboutlerfbvre,
than from you, post-modern phenomenologically constituted reality?

I want an autoethnography but I can't figure out the condition of my own coloniality

Existentially speaking, who epistemologically am I anyway?
any etiologies I come up with always sway

In that little space in between my fingers and the keyboard
I have specialized sledgehammer to smash away and de-juxtapose the concomitant elements of my and your linguistic socializations

So lets drink a potion of collective amnesia for all the populations
retract respective ismization
call it dropping acid or whatever you like

Enter the world of the kaleidoscope
be happy in your banality
trip out on your complicity
naturalize your emotions
eat drink breath
you're alive

el calor
y
el pie
se encuentran
y
se abrazan
mientras que
el resto de la ciudad
ora
para el frío
que nunca
llegará

@ The Phenomenon of Indian Surrogate Colonies (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/world/asia/10surrogate.html)

We have thought this through

We want to have a child

Sterilize the laboratory at once

Magnify the lens, let the doctor find the egg

Turn off the lights, turn on the televisions

What kind of sex will get you to make this cup overflow

These moments are not appropriate for family photo albums, what a shame

Stainless steel turkey basters and a young brown woman

We have carefully designed our in vitro conception

On a tropical beach, before a sunrise, on the New Year, in a bed of sweaty sheets

All our girls wear bright-colored saris, do not worry the dyes are all natural

Each month you'll receive a picture, your baby will be blue

Oh baby, I love you

I think this will be good for us both

This is my first poem
Well, the first one
I’ll ever be proud of
It is about not feeling
Anxious.
After one lovely evening
Spent with one lovely person

We didn’t fuck
Or even kiss
But we will
Maybe tomorrow

…

Consent is not merely a signal or an offer:
It is not simply “yes, you may…”
Consent is a capacity

I’d like to be your friend,
In whatever capacity is consensual

Let’s talk about fucking:
How you like it; how I like it
Cause I’d really...
(Really)
Love to fuck you






By music was my first gay lover

pieces from the other night (asaf sessions)

DOES THE WASP LEARN HOW TO MAKE ITS NEST

I have eaten raw honeycomb that is made from intelligent designs

There are some optical illusions that people make to help me see differently

Remember to take the kaleidoscopes we have provided as party favors

On evolutionary charts the wasp and the honeybee are quite far from one another

Falling upon right angles and geometric lines we can see common families

WHAT IS A HELIOPHOBE

Someone has made a few figure eights in the sky

The news helicopters reporting on the scene

Ruined the silence the hypnotist needed

To make his pay at the neighbor’s birthday party

To which we had donated all of our televisions and radios

We heard only of the news that a party had been spoiled

My father studies clouds and could tell something was up

The weatherman would explain that the accumulation of jet streams

Had entangled a plane, forcing it to make such strange formations

UNTITLED

Smoke your pipe

From a distance

Anticipate the

Smoke more

Thoroughly

But be less sure

Its coming

The Holocaust is a lesson plan
And a deadline
And a due date
And a sliver
And an ocean
And a victim
And a taker
And a giver
And a story
Of a story
Of a cheekbone
And its ashes
And an eyelid
And its pupil
And its color
And its lashes
And it’s heavy
And it’s lighter
And it’s money
And it’s worthy
And it’s leveled
And it’s clothed
And it’s naked
And it’s dirty
And it’s over
And it’s never
Ever over
And it’s present
And it’s cross-eyed
And it’s yellow
And it’s oval
And it’s crescent
And it’s frightening
And it’s here
And it’s coming
And a joke
And it eats you
Like it eats me
And it’s cancer
And it’s smoke
And it’s payback
And it’s solace
And it’s refuge
And it’s time
And its children
And their keepers
Force their sorrows
Onto mine

love love love love love love

love love love love love love
felt in the coldest rooms
tastes like dry ice
wrapped in
sheets of bad prose
and an index of
self-referential poems

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
smells like
those same sheets
and only sometimes
without that part
about love

Tefilin/ Yona Wallach

Come to me

don’t let me do a thing

you will do for me

you will do everything for me

anything I start to do

you will do for me instead

I will lay tefilin

I will pray

Even the tefilin you lay for me

Fasten it on my hand

Use it on me

Slide it gently over my body

Rub it on me well

On every spot arouse me

Make me swoon with sensations

Pass it over my clitorous

Tie my hips with it

So that I come fast

Use it on me

Tie my arms and legs

Do your deeds

Despite my will

Turn me over on my belly

And put the tefilin in my mouth as reins

Ride me I’m a horse

Pull my head back

Until I yell in pain

And you are pleasured

Then I will slide it on your body

With an intention that is not concealed

O how cruel will be my face

I will slide it slowly over your body

Slowly slowly slowly

Around your neck I will wrap it

I’ll wrap a couple times around your neck, from one end

And from the other end I’ll tie it to something solid

Especially heavy maybe that spins

I’ll pull and pull

Until your soul comes out

Until I choke you

Completely with the tefilin

Long enough for the entire stage

And to go all the way through the astounded audience

**translated from Hebrew:

http://www.fresh.co.il/vBulletin/showthread.php?t=311940

San Francisco

I.
Last night I went searching
And found what I was looking for
Near the only dry spot in San Francisco

II.
My maps
Though they were not maps at all
Lead me through those difficult avenues that we all try our best to avoid

III.
And because maps cannot read the weather forecast
I knew to try my hardest
The way my father had taught me

IV.
And I thought of you
Briefly thought of you
And knew a poem was on its way

We are kids and we want to stage a production

We uprooted our neighbor’s lawn to use as the backdrop for only one scene

Steal your father’s gun and your mother’s nightgown

Brush your blonde hair with pink fingernails to hold a clear sight on the sun

Smoke a cigarette through rouged lips to become familiar with wind speeds

Shoot to kill, but accuracy is not important because we’ll keep the victim off screen

Induce your body into spasms, to avoid the blame from settling on any single part

Listen as the rifle cracks and fades into the walk of a woman in high-heels

Though we cannot read nor write, we all must learn to improvise

Trajectory

Lawns
always remind me of White
Houses.
the vast and manicured expanses around a
trigger
leave enough space for safely aiming and shooting

Darts
kept in the museumified treasure box of a
child,
pried from, discovered in the grip of delicate
bone.
Unrusty, dusty there be shinning a
pellet,
is discovered by metal detector equipped
children,
in their front yards which a hundred years ago did not look the
same.
Standing on the dirt is a father burying, digging an
arrowhead
is tossed into a improvised
grave
dug for the warm and comfortable entrails nestling a
bullet
is downward tumbling toward the
ground,
is burrowing, puncturing, striking a
pigeon.

Flying across the sky looking ahead, not at what's fired out a long solid
barrel
of a recreational or precautionary
rifle
in the hands of a human with a very different
countenance
than that of the one sitting in the White
House,
who holds a wide flat button for
doomsday

MOON

One day I want to walk on the moon

Though I know there are no days on the moon

Tell time according to the gears of a clock

I have investigated this moon

Closely in my daily life, collecting

Moon dust and rocks off the kitchen floor

That is just as cold as the surface of the moon

I don’t hold my breath

So I sink to the bottom of the swimming pool

And walk on the floor as if it was the moon

I sleep in bedrooms without roofs as much as I can

To close my eyes, to feel as close to the silence

As must be on the moon

I drink till I get sick to perfect my orbits

I talk to people about the moon

Not for their science, but for its sound

That rolls as a word as round as moon in the mouth

I take pictures of crescents, harvests and blues

Each day of the month, recollecting each type of moon

I sit in my room for hours writing about the world outside.

To practice what life I would live on the moon.

First workshop

I got this idea from from another website. Write something about, inspired by or completely unrelated to this picture. I wish I had a bigger picture because you can tell she has a cigarette in her mouth and pink nails.

Weekly Workshop

In addition to the poems we normally (sporadically) post, we will now have weekly workshops. The intention is to have a weekly prompt or idea. Whoever wants can participate in these exercises as an opportunity to write for practice even when inspiration may be running low. When you write something and post it, add the label, WORKSHOP that way all the posts related to the weekly workshop are concentrated in once place. If you can't figure it out, I'll label it for you. If you want to participate ask me to make you an author on the website or just send me your stuff to post.

Houses on Hills

The first house on a hill:

It overlooked the apartment complex we'd just moved from. I was eight, but the symbolic weight of living room windows framing a life left behind was not lost on me. My sister was six and less philosophically inclined.

“The pool! Can we still go to it? I see it like a bathtub.”

“No.” I'd tell her. Stern. “We can never go back, we are here now, and will build our own swimming pool.”

In court terms: adultery happened; divorce happened. In ten year old sensations: the ground fell out, the darkness in the corners spread. Two houses now.

My mother's house, the wounded:

This hill was the kind that only flood zone regulators new about. The yard was full of trees, no way to see what was below us, and the incline was so gradual that my eleven year old lungs didn't notice.

But during tornado season, the creek behind our house would rise and rise. Flash flood warnings would flash on TV. Footage of tires, pieces of roof, entire trees, swirling in brown froth. I wanted it to come. I'd go down to the creek when my mother was too busy on the phone, telling stories of what she'd found out about my father. I did see a tire, a piece of roof, half a tree. I saw myself fall in and get swept all the way to the Cumberland, climbing on shore in downtown Nashville and going by myself to the Hard Rock Cafe, people staring, exclaiming, how brave, she's soaked, and getting a new, dry, free T-shirt.

But my mom would always reassure us, even with black under her eyes, even with the lawyer on hold.

“The water won't ever reach us. It can't get to us here.”

My father's house, the stubborn:

He moved in with the other woman and told us, always, that what he did was right, we just couldn't see that yet. Didn't have the perspective. They became rich. Even richer than we were before. He told us, always, it was because of her. She knew how to handle money.

From our house in the mountains we could see a lake and peaks like alps on all sides. But we used the cheapest toilet paper, the kind that feels like scratches, because she knew how to handle money.

With red asses we could sit and see mountains change shape in the sunlight, with the seasons. But my dad, it seemed, kept his eyes on the road that wound down and down, a vanishing point, watching all the people who didn't have his perspective become smaller and farther away.

My home, the child:

I moved to a sunny city with no-one I knew. I have a balcony in the hills. I sit, stoned, and stare at the palm trees, whose long skinny stalks remind me where I am.

There are hills I can see over, and hills that shadow me, their homes winking “someday” in the twilight. I can see in the windows of those on three sides. I watch them and wonder what their homes have been like.

By Suzannah Powell

Different Houses

Your house is different than mine, she said
Yours has heat
Light that spreads recklessly
Basil plants
Framed photographs
Things that remind you of home even as you stand within it
And how can you stand it?

Mine, she said
Is full of receipts and debt
Aching stomachs
Roaches that build their lives apace
Passports and expired plane tickets
Faucets that forgot how to drip

I have been hearing lately, that we can live forever.

With conviction I can say, “We have never been closer!”

Middle class budgets are figuring eternity into ennui in installments.

Families are around tables discussing their options.

Move your focus, from object to object in quick saccade.

Regimens of exercises are highly recommended.

Nonsense! Did you know that even a butterfly lives a lifetime?

Traveling salesmen will sell immortality out of orange tweed suits.

Screen Sci-fi Hollywood films to practice your instincts.

Give the children vintage butter beans, to distance a past.

Children and Parents will be allowed to act the same.

In the name of fairness, eternal life will be prescribed at 35.

It involves the least amount of effort and difficulty.

We will laugh at these memories and forget how far we have come.

To write a song or poem
Of war
Comes easy to me
After all
The only weapon I have ever held is my pen

a poem is a mirror
and sometimes i see myself
In it
not smiling like i do in Ima’s photo albums
and not crying like the way i did over lovers whose scent
still burns deep into my nostrils

and sometimes i don’t see myself
In it
i see the people i carry in my pockets
Amichai, Darwish, Shabtai
i make them my own, sometimes
smeared ink on
crumbling pieces of paper in
a notebook that smells like New York City