Crawling under the covers, parting their spooned figures, I am oblivious to what may have been interrupted, my parents’ rough sheets an ocean rumpled into crests and troughs in early morning light.
Once I hear of life’s whispered facts, a truth I desperately want to reject, the scene of that snuggling is drowned until my son’s own attraction to the heat of parental bodies.
The rescued memory of my parents’ double bed swims back to me. No longer boundless but a narrow raft framed in mahogany and barely wider than the length of a body – a careless stroke could knock
one overboard. How could my parents have slept soundly for a half century on that mattress full with the weight of shed skin, unseen parasites, quiet tears, above squalling springs while the house falls to pieces around them?
And what of the practice of the family bed, children never sleeping apart from parents. Should I have permitted my son to share our queen bed? Do children learn better or just sooner? What lesson is left to teach my son?
Let me be the mattress, home stead to absorb his injuries. Let him pillow heavy into me and contour a canal to slide through a second time, emerging unscathed, as when I first held him, held you, held
Ellen Sazzman is a Pushcart-nominated poet whose work has been recently published in Peregrine, Delmarva Review, Another Chicago Magazine, PANK, Connecticut River Review, Ekphrastic Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Sow’s Ear, Lilith, Common Ground, and CALYX, among others. She was awarded first place in the 2022 Dancing Poetry Festival, received an honorable mention in the 2019 Ginsberg poetry contest, was shortlisted for the 2018 O’Donoghue Prize, and was awarded first place in Poetica’s 2016 Rosenberg competition. Her poetry collection The Shomer (2021) was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the 2020 Elixir Antivenom Award and the 2019 Codhill Press Poetry Award.
Image: Uncredited, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
I’m from
potholes in the bóithrín road
limestone walls
whitethorn bushes
aged fields and mossy stones
drip-drip hedges before
a blue farm gate
apples rotting under orchard trees
old windows and doors beneath
a thatch roof that leaked
brown rain onto night homework.
A muddy path pocked with
cattle tracks
old stables before more fields
and a family dump
full of rusted pea tins and other junk
that we rescued to display along the longest rock
for our long, long days
of playing a game called “village shop.”
Death of a Friendship
That winter she flew transatlantic west and
I flew U.S. south
to a beachside motel
and sunny cafes where,
she said, our American waitstaff
are too smiley-chatty and that I’m
way too friendly back.
That week I was not thinking
of that day when we met
at convent school
where, 30 years ago, she led me across a room
for strawberry sweets that
made mouths and days and months bloom
bright and red.
That last night in the motel kitchenette
we drank wine
we ate shrimp and sauce that
turned our mouths bright red
until she set down her wine glass
to say:
Do you ever even hear yourself?
Like, why emigrate here
if you’re going to still talk so Paddy Mick?
That moment when I whispered, Your words really hurt
When I begged, Can you please stop?
when I watched her rock
back in that chair to laugh
at what I’d said and, later,
those sleepless hours in my motel bed
when I mourned all things that I’ve let
linger past their date
for death.
House of Make Believe
As if there’s never been an immigrant ship
a maid’s frilly cap
American children, grandchildren
transatlantic letters and flights back.
Today, six decades after that ship set sail
it’s as if Yankee Auntie had never been a girl
chasing through these Irish fields or
laughing in this thatch-roof house where, now,
there is only
her blue-tinted hair
her Yankee words that
draw me right there
to listen at that door.
“Gee! What a cute little kid!” says she
Then, sitting there in their Sunday best
My mother and grandmother
turn, smile, agree
as if they are not vexed at me
as if, later, I won’t get punished for this and
as if we don’t all live
in a house of make believe.
Áine Greaney is an Irish native who now lives in the Boston area. In addition to her books, her short essays, stories and poems have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Salon, The Boston Globe Magazine, Another Chicago Magazine, The Wisdom Daily, Grey Sparrow, The Mindful Word, Tendon and other publications. After a long hiatus from poetry writing, she (gleefully) returned to lyric writing during the pandemic lockdown. Visit her website.
Image “Fork in the road, Crucknacolly, Co. Mayo” from Jeremy Durrance under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
Brian Wilson and the Oceanic Feeling: a phantasiai
Having alluded to Amy Winehouse, Morris writes: “…in lyric / defense of other epistemes / As when Tony told Amy, ‘slow down, Tyger.’” That Blakean letter “y” is deliberate, a sign of a vanished episteme held in empathic respect. Morris has done this kind of typographical sleight of hand before, in a poem about another musician, Brian Wilson: “Brian Wilson, Brian Wilsno…” [sic] where what appears to be a typo is in fact a tiny glyph encoding a world of mental illness and struggle. Thus we hear of trumpet player Chet Baker’s musical “tootlessness” in one poem (horns toot, but the word is also missing an H), and only later learn that Baker’s teeth were knocked out over a bad heroin debt. Missing H, indeed. From Jay….’s review of Daniel Morris’ Hit Play, Hiram Poetry Review, Spring 2016, issue 77, p. 41.
“A long, long time ago…,” Don McLean, “American Pie.”
I.
Gradual school excused me. Ticketed To stay De Wilde Jongen. Sybaritic, above Assessing risk in relation to Aristotle’s Definition of courage, I scribbled On a Guinness coaster (restained Genius) — a poem entitled “Brian Wilsno.”
Then, 30 years later, Jay, my stout ABD par-tay-bud, Who I’d not seen nor heard a peep since we’d “studied with” Allen Grossman (aka: memorized vatic utterances On autochtonics, apodictics, and anaphora, Then recited in shook voices still under construction) Reviewed (see above) my latest vanity pub In which (about this I was less than thrilled) Jay focused not on Hit Play, but rather Plough and Stars pub era blotto errata. As Jay somehow recalled, this ancient doggerel began: “Brian Wilsno, Wilsno…he’s our man If he didn’t do it, no one can.”
II.
Now 60, I lay during the day not asleep nor awake nor meditating exactly nor Knowing if eyes opening or closing Awareness I cannot regulate breath any more Than I can resist still loving the world I can’t stop Worrying about why it is 98 with 100 percent humidity at dawn in Indiana in April. We know why I can’t take toy terrier Meyer On the bone white sidewalk. His tender paws would burn. Better to fear 9.1 percent inflation, assault weapons, opioids, immune Escape co-vid, rate hike impact on 401K and likelihood of recession, Trump’s running in spite of hearings, Russia’s noose around Odessa leading to lost Ports to deliver fertilizer to Africa through Black Sea, Biden’s symbolic fall Off bike in Rehoboth, overturning Roe, decline of the Monarch butterfly –- ;
Spin, Little Mind, spin “like a record baby” until
Unwilled phantasiai, Enargeia absorbs Little Mind into pulp Blood orange soñar waves of Brian murmuring “Catch a wave and you’ll be riding on top of the world.”
Beach bubbles burst into oceanic feelings.
O Happy Daze of Big Boy Mind! To behold anew, Brian Wilson, rinsing waves of worry, Making horror go mild, darkness light,
A patronymic surname reassembling (Sno becoming son); As specter of fat angel in pinstripes Remains to rock the euphantasiotos role.
Bruuuuce! Is SO Pissed
At his daughter’s dressage.
“Jessica. Look at me in my face. This mug is become a tough piece of meat, rawhide. So old, me and Patti named you after an Allman instrumental. You see what raising you has done to me In the herringbone lines on this face. This late W.H. Auden face. This face that I deserve like my fate. What you are doing with Don Juan van de Donkhoeve Is DAMAGING this famous face!”
“This isn’t even about YOUR FACE, Dad. It’s about Bruuuce!”
“I still am so Bruuuce! Broadway died for me when I came alive. And you, dear daughter, will just have got to enter yourself Into an alternate Olympic event! How are your snowboarding Skills these days? Can you aim a rifle while crunching snow On them waffle skis I bought you in Vail for scoring Your B.A. in Art History down in Durham?”
“Skis! Equestrianism is a Summer sport! I can’t take up another discipline at the drop of a hat. I took our beloved Belgian warmblood down to Durham From Colts Neck Township when I was 20. Now I’m 29. That isn’t a hobby. I will honor my commitment to our nation By flying Don Juan to Tokyo in the cargo unit of our family jet So we can go for the Gold!” “The Gold. Just look at what is hanging On these walls. Them solid gold records paid for Duke and for Don Juan.”
“O Bossy Boss, can’t you just tie my riding records into your role As Rock and Roll Royalty? Focus on my American Exceptionalism.”
“Exceptionalism? Exceptionalism! EXCEPTIONALISM! Didn’t you Catch my drift on that album cover where I piss Old Glory?”
“That image may be as ambiguous as Jasper Johns’ white flag To art buffs like me, but Joe 6 Pack still buys your pride at being Born in the USA as you are believing that Bud Lite in your hand is for you. And what about your cheesy Chevy ad during this year’s Super Bowl?”
“Pure prose poetry. Plus needed to take my people’s minds off state cops Catching me DUI with an open bottle of Bacardi on the side of a cliff In Grand Forks beside my Kawasaki….Jess, point is, see, I speak Of six pack ham and eggers of darkness on the edge of towners of union carded Wedding coaters and of course we can’t forget tonight in Atlantic City Types with debts no honest man can pay…So, problem is, Sis, Dressage kinda cramps this old man’s style. Haven’t you read my work?”
“’Read’ your ‘Work’!? Now who is the pompous one, Mr. Ghost of Tom Joad?” Can’t you ‘read’ my red velvet jacket, pith helmet, and spurs as signs That signify how you made it out of Asbury Park? Dad, you transcended.”
“But, little girl, transcendence never was my bag. Like Ginzy, I sought the hip sublime on the Jersey Shore masked as Go Cart Mozart with Clarence as my sidekick Swedenborg. I so wanted, sis, For front doors to lead to the back seat of my little red wheeled coupe… Not no ideas, but slurping down the bucket of Stone Pony brew where you are Dancing the night away while Little Stevie and Southside Johnny duet ‘Walk Away Renee’.”
“Ah, Daddio, you don’t know who you are, so how can you know where you are?” “Huh.” “Face it. You are a balding filthy rich 70-year-old manic depressive
Who takes Joe Klein’s reading of Woody Guthrie a wee bit too seriously. Come on, you big palooka! Lighten up. Hang your fantasy of leather jacket Authenticity in the closet with your wire hangers. Act your age, not your show size. Accept what IS, and for you, dear dad, IS no longer means BOSS center stage humping Clarence Clemens for seven hours at the Garden on Christmas Eve awaiting Santa coming to town– neither Santa nor Clarence is ever coming back – But YOU BEING PROUD YOUR NOT SO LITTLE GIRL IS GOING FOR GOLD IN TOKYO. So quit bellyaching about your everyman image, and remember, Boardwalk greaseballs, Deep down, need to believe even brain dead dropouts from the shore can make it out To the country where their bucktoothed daughter’s teeth can get set straight Via Invisalign while giddy upping on the hill…So come on, pops, climb the hill with me.”
“Oh, I get you, Sassy Sister! Very subversive. That ‘hill’ ain’t no grassy mound In Potomac, Where we keep our stable, but I spy with my little eye a sly allusion to Amanda G.! This is all about Jan 6th, ‘we’ being my people! I get you! Now I’m proud poppa again.”
“O father of the unlaced Keds, when will you grow up?! I’ve got to go feed Don Juan His morning organic alfalfa.” “I pay for that alfalfa! Don’t forget that. I am the one
Who pays for organic!”
Daniel Morris is author of seven books on twentieth- and twenty-first century poetry and visual culture, editor or coeditor of five essay collections, and author of four books of poetry. Recent titles include Not Born Digital (Bloomsbury), Blue Poles (Marsh Hawk Press), a paperback reissue of his study of Nobel Laureate Louise Glück (University of Missouri Press), and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics since 1900. He is a professor of English at Purdue University, where he has taught since 1994.
Image: Huw Williams (Huwmanbeing), CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
I want you on my face Running rivers into my ears Drowning my (fuck) muddled mind Washing me clean
Transformed to a tall oak Leaving me (raw) bark naked Standing fertile Timeless in my desire
Strip me to the core Storm of nature’s reproduction Don’t stop gushing (Blow) me to and fro
Again, and again I want more Until I am soaked (wet) through Laid prostrate with adoration
* Never read this poem sitting down. Lie down or stand up. Memorize the poem if you’re going to recite it in public to make maximum eye contract with your audience, of one or many. No gesturing. Let your eyes and mouth do all the work. If this poem is intended as an aphrodisiac, use caution and be prepared for the outcome. No warranties are being granted or implied.
Nicole Farmer is a teacher living in Asheville, NC. Her poems have been published in over forty magazines including TheClosed Eye Open, Sad Girls Club, Poetry South, The Amistad, Quillkeepers Press, Haunted Waters Press, Wild Roof Journal, Bacopa Literary Review Review, and Kakalak. Nicole was awarded the First Prize in Prose Poetry from the Bacopa Literary Review in 2020. Her chapbook, Wet Underbelly Wind was published in 2022 by Finishing Line Press. She just completed her next book, entitled, Honest Sonnets: memories of an unorthodox childhood in verse.Website: NicoleFarmerpoetry.com
At the end of a night reviving memories we bled into
Like syringes
Our love – something greater than us
None of us – greater than us
I got cousins that’re cousins but don’t talk no more
Friends of mine I still can’t sit in the same room
I heard oil and water were once lovers
What to call – everything sitting between us
Static – Skin
Of course – ache and
Longing – for the vision
To see both sides – and the strength
To hold both sides straight – and still
A List of Times I’ve Seen My Father Cry
Before we were men / We were storm clouds My father was a boy / And I was too I was taught never cry / I always cried I was a boy / If my father cries he is too Dwayne writes / Boys hold oceans of tears I was a boy / I was an ocean My father was a boy / My father learned to swim My father learned to swim / He wasn’t my father I was a boy / I never learned to swim My father / Took me to the beach I can’t see / Through salt water My grandmother died / And I cried I’m still afraid / I’ll drown We are hurricanes / We were storm clouds I was an ocean / He wasn’t my father When he was a boy / And I cried Through salt water / I’m still afraid If my father cries / He is too I can’t see / My grandmother died And I cried / And I cried And I cried / Before we were men
A Rested Body
Yes / I know how long your nights have been
Little soldier always / at war / with yourself
It’s ok / the next line comes / the next day comes
It all comes and goes / and comes again
It can feel like / a tornado some days / can’t it
It can be hard / to feel some days / can’t it
Oh baby / I’m smiling cause I see all the blue sky
In your brown eyes / you want to go home?
You’ll make it there / for now you can lay here
Beneath my love / I’ll brush your hair with a breeze
You can tell me about this journey you’re on
You haven’t forgotten right? / you’re headed somewhere
Brave traveler / brave traveler / trying your best
In a world of heartless men / and flying monkeys
And Witches / not as fabulous as me
Tough cookie / strong as you are human
This isn’t a stop / or a setback / It’s what’s ahead of you
Its apart of this adventure / as much as a wizard / or a wish
Yes / there’s a long way to go / and the next step
Is to come here / and rest a while
Because a rested body is a rested mind
Because a rested body is a rested mind
Because a rested body is a rested mind
the way i’m flying
I’m just tryna get over to the hospital. Over to the VA.
the driver doesn’t say a word, but nods, so unc steps on the bus but don’t even come past
the yellow line. he puts both his hands on the rails and he’s standing before everyone -he’s standing like these buses wasn’t made to make you bust-your-ass when the light turns green.
Shiit, always tryna give me a hard time. See, people-
he looks out and his eyes are just shattered glass in a pool of something slick, but the night is too dark to tell what. he lays these eyes on the people and the people on the bus did not know they were a people, but now they do.
I have walked across all of creation. I mean everymanner ofplace. I been up Hawaii, Georgia, Mississippi…
he’s listing avenues until you can’t tell if he is anymore.
See, way I’m flying, I may end up anywhere.
the people realize his hands -which are still holding the railings- are probably somewhere else. probably still rummaging through a duffel bag off somewhere far from where his mother was once alive, or hooking up with a rifle in some excuse of a war, or taking a shot of a lover’s lips.
See, way I’m flying you might never see me again. I got one bus ticket somewhere south of all this shit and I’m just waiting on the station to open.
no one knows what that means but the bus starts moving like a funeral pier and the people sit back in their seats while this man flickers like a lit match in a thunderstorm. and this woman in the front holding her son down to the seat with her peripheral starts saying “Watch my child.”
Always tryna give me a hard time…
he isn’t talking to her. you don’t know if she’s talking to him. she keeps saying “Watch my child.” i know she’s probably trying to keep the smell of alcohol from rubbing all over the open wound that is a black child’s body but it almost sounds like “Sir. I know where you’ve been. I know you do not come from a perfect home. From hands unburdened by the dirty work of a switch. But you come from survival…”
Shit, I know where I’m goin…
“…Watch my child. Please. At least till he’s old enough to know the wrong side of a streetlight. At least until he can be the monster they think he is.”
I know where I’m goin. I know where I’m goin…
he keeps saying it till i’m not sure if he’s trying to convince us or himself. it’s easy to get lost here. especially after all these years. new buildings. all the friends from around the corner now a eulogy. he’s standing before everyone -the whole city. a whole alive city and a whole dead city. a city of now and of then. he has that look, you can tell he’s watching the show, but also peeking behind the curtain.
The way I’m flying you might never see me again…
i try to get the nerve to speak up and say “This city is still the one you grew up in. Still the one you left. If you can live past today I promise it gets better. Come with me. I’ll take you to the corner store and get you a water. I’ll get you a shirt that says class of ‘none of your damn business’. I’ll remember your stories and write them down. I’m a writer. I grow stories in my backyard. We could share an orange. We could survive another night. Please, Sit down.
Enjoy the ride.”
but he’s already gone.
Kenny Carroll III (Hi!) is a writer, performer, teacher, and host from DC. He was the 2017 DC Youth Poet Laureate and in 2019 received the Thomas Lux scholarship from Sarah Lawrence. His work has been featured in the Split This Rock Quarry, The Hill Rag, Mixed Mag, and other publications. He’s been lucky enough to perform all over the country. He’s in love with pancakes, and he still can’t read in the car.
Image: Chuckwilliam07, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
