I am sitting under the tree my great-grandparents planted, together, the day he went to war.
Strangers own this house now and were nonplussed or moved by my request to spend some time here. The tree is an oak,
not big by oak standards; only a century has passed since they fought the war to end wars, and a century
is but an oak’s childhood. It is a stately tree, planted near no other, and has grown tall
and broad. My great-grandmother was seven months pregnant that day with my grandmother.
There is a picture, taken by a neighbor, an old sepia photograph. A man in uniform,
his young bride, her hands on her stomach, his arm around her, the seedling in the middle. Their last
day together. He sailed for France. A month later she died in childbirth.
Glimmerings
The candle flame is real. I know I am real because it burns me.
Sometimes I cry myself to sleep with the lights on, but I am not afraid of the dark.
One night we sat around the bonfire in the Oregon desert. Too close was too hot; too cold, too far away. That night I learned about love.
I came to Phoenix because my life was over. I chose it for its name, a place for a new start.
I placed my palm on the plexiglass, inches from the tyger in the Baltimore zoo. I felt no heat.
Here on the edge of twilight I stand half in, half out of day. My left foot is the sunset’s child.
I sleep in a room filled with red light from the vacancy sign outside my window. Even eyelids cannot keep it at bay.
I often see the light at the end of the tunnel just as I am learning to love the dark.
See how sunlight gleams off the dome of the corn-filled silo?
When I was a boy, I wished on the first star. I do not remember if I stopped wishing when I found you, or when you were gone.
Marc A. Drexler grew up in Iowa, and has lived in Maryland or DC since graduating from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1981 with a degree in mathematics. He believes strongly in non-hierarchical organizational structures in which everyone is equal. He worked for fourteen years at the Maryland Food Collective, and is currently a member of the Earth Collective, the group of roughly 8 billion people who make all the decisions on how we interact with our planet. He has been a Community Teaching Assistant with the on-line Coursera class Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo). He writes poetry to express with words what cannot be said with words. Locally, Marc has had a poem selected as a Split This Rock Poem of the Week and appeared in the Maryland Writers Association’s 2020 Poetry Contest anthology Maryland in Poetry. Since the beginning of the pandemic he has been exploring the hiking paths and neighborhoods in and around the parts of Seneca Creek State Park near his home in Gaithersburg. He is more satisfied by routes which complete a loop rather than retracing the outward path in return.
March The muscularity of your siloed silhouette laid itself on my shadowy desk one day, with white open palm on my tan arm—as if your body was fashioned as pulley elevating me, with robotic release of self and selflessness, to an outline of us. Now your hand is a response to my hand; opening or closing instinctively on demand like a Venus flytrap fluttering in newfound domesticity, tamed, by the soothing squelch of steadfast soles on oak floor in the am and your tangerine peals of laughter in the pm —banquet of sound of tip taps of laptops and hip hop on our background box—provoked me to see beauty even in the day-old residue of your blessed brewed tea. And so, having unbuckled two habits to tailor them to cohabit, I take your hand and wear it on my heart (lace sleeve), enduringly and endearingly, with vows as forever fashion.
May
But when fashion is forever and the wearer transient, the fashion is fashioned into something once inhabited. It’s not forever, but still in time.
You become the fading smell left behind in our silver silk sheets, the yellow sweat stains on the underarms of your white cotton vest, the tear in your threadbare socks, farewell tears on your four eyes, and a belt you fancied around your throat far more than your waist.
I now style myself from the absence of yourself, as a lone figure of mourning in timeless black— black lace tights you can’t peel off, a dress that hugs, and wrinkled knee-high boots that walk your wake.
The ring re-designs itself from occupier of the fourth finger of your left hand to a platinum pendulum pacifying my neck.
My hands do not grope each other in prayer. I can’t feel, touch nor see your familiar form. But I will your physical strength to my mind as a muscle memory of us and dad walk me down the pews, through the tearful covid masked hues, to the lilied podium where – as keeper of your memory, planner of a wedding that wasn’t and a funeral that was – I say I do (love and let go).
Technificance
Let’s live behind the curtains? Only out, we go, with the trash to carton cappuccino Amazon seas and back to our 600 sq ft of terra firma. Cool off, take a deep dive into communal pool of data – navigate the high seas of the internet and Zoom the borderless – then mount two screens side-by-side and squint go(o)ggleyed into new-fangled binoculars.
Geo-block the deck, put on headsets It’s time to stow the masses and get metaverse passes.
Don’t peak behind the curtains— Inside, you stay, to mull their müll. Mutti says architecture of sky is freed of 80,000 kg flying furniture, minimalism suits sky best, with stretches of white-on-white, flecks of blue we no longer imbue our hue into the apertures of the CO2 ceiling, the horizon is now a flat image and the clouds only exist in Azure, vitamin D is procured from selfie stars low in light terabyte, but the sun is yet to set on the trending filters of day.
Best believe. And lungs will feel the ambition of Paris deal and rewind to cheerful green.
Draw the curtains. Shutter the shops. Ground the sky. Draft in the supertankers, store the oily glut. Haul the trucks, stockpile the corporeal guts. Put on your sea legs, don construction masks, pause with ease of war fought for headscarf. Tiananmen, Tahrir, Taksim – our stolperstein is killer without face, killer of public space, incubator of net states.
Duckduckgo – we query – how to inject an economy of wanton abandon, of institutionalised trust out of stock, highly leveraged with no herd immunity to herd mentality that s[t]imulates liquidity by capitalising inequality?
When the upward curve flattens and gets its margin call the big reveal is the world template built behind the wall.
The long smell
It’s summer and gas leak particles root to the bottom note of the foggy bottom and rise from the recesses of the mind, through the ubiquitous AC and blunt humidity, the wharf’s salty catch of the day, the mall’s crisp cut green. It’s the subversive stillness of a seductive summer sauntering off the sidewalk and sideways to me.
I saved the season’s last inhale for the night I met you. I was led by the nose to get dressed up that day, in fragrant white notes, bouquets of black, and morello-stained lips. A fierce foraging through scraps of unrecycled outfits.
First sight gave hope to second sight. Of a future no longer dressed with mind, but undressed by heart; con gusto, bil-qalb. I exhaled and inhaled, remembering to breathe, as we became passenger to playful palms that interlaced the other and took off, thereafter.
Holding hands led in airplane mode for a while—frequently, then moderately. Exclusively and almost always unapologetically. To single-handedly block the white noise of external distraction that saps romantic energy like mental open tabs and paused dating apps. But we weren’t in low power mode. We were on high frequency.
Senses, of which we have 5, are heightened when one is on standby. We were in active listening mode to each other’s tender touch. My skin had sprouted olfactory sensibilities set off by you. Your smell was a fragrant flashback to something I simply knew. Your touch was like gaining something never thought lost – Nostalgia – lived like it’s a verb in the present tense, nostalging.
Love was on the nose, but you couldn’t smell it. So senses, of which you had 4, became just 3. Without smell, you lost sight of us and I lost your touch. Mediterranean Tense is what you began to make of me because future tense is what I hoped to make of you.
I sniffed for love until past tense is what became of us.
Kristina Miggiani writes: I am a Maltese lawyer and poet, working in the area of financial integrity. I currently work at the IMF and in my free time I ardently journal, write poetry, and practice yoga. I have won some national poetry and story slam competitions, but the process of writing is the best reward. I have been writing poetry since I was 10 years old—as a hobby that helped me find my voice and guiding me to my career as a lawyer.
Image by Unstable.atom – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78183214
when you were in my belly, small as a grapefruit seed. Within the dark of my womb you shone of your own constellation- star glow- growing and expanding out from our own little galaxy.
The orange and white cat named Zsa Zsa Gabor slept each night between my legs at the cave of your exit, as if to prevent your early admission from Heavenly to Earthly realm.
I dreamed once that you arrived, I stood silently in the hospital elevator holding you riding to the sound of Muzak, we beamed into each other’s celestial eyes. You, a boy, Orion the hunter, and I, Euryale, the mother.
You came with no fuss at all, my girl, my darling collection of perfectly aligned stars, transitioned from cold night sky slipped into a warm cotton wrap held to my bare swollen chest, mouth agape in slumber. I named you Rhea, Mother of the Gods.
Casa de Piedimonte
On a sunrise slope Mid-century modern Brick archways Pool in the back Tennis court on the side you wear these things like a headdress.
You home a koi pond with statues of Greek beauties neighboring the Japanese Tea Room You home a tiny stained-glass chapel Brand new kitchen Original master bath with a teal sunken tub.
You homed a family since 1950 Italian & proud. Imported lights from Turkey Oh, steal my heart already! Unfinished basement Library with a secret wall passageway, that’s for novels.
Within you I see the long presence of a man. He loved you, you homed him. I see parties by the pool adults carrying martini glasses & laughing. How I wish it could be, that I were to fill you up with my presence, talk to the koi meditate by the stained-glass paint my joy on your walls, But alas, the sale has gone to the highest bidder. I will never get to drink in your sunrise.
Jennifer McKeen Rodrigues currently lives on the sacred Powhatan land of Fairfax, VA. She is trained as a certified yoga therapist & trauma informed yoga teacher, military spouse, & mom. She has been published in The Muleskinner Journal, tiny frights, Amethyst Review, The Martello Journal, & Bluepepper as either poet or photographer. She would like to thank Not the Rodeo Poets for their undying support and love.
Image by Bernard Spragg. NZ from Christchurch, New Zealand, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
When my computer’s platform for attending virtual meetings crashed, and my IT specialist recommended I give control, I eagerly abdicated.
Cursor moved as though on autopilot, clicked here and there, scanned code that made no sense to me.
How easy it would be to relinquish control to someone who knew better how to navigate the mysterious code of life—
but before I could explore the fantasy, IT had returned control to me
just in time for my next virtual meeting.
Social Media Boycott
A pity, to wait the year’s lingering days, long, cold winters, flash-in-the-pan summers, occasional whiffs of spring flowers and leaps into crispy piles of autumn leaves,
the whole year waiting for that brilliant moment: the accumulation of “happy birthday” greetings on your electronic wall for all to see.
Passionate copy-and-paste words of heartfelt feeling— “happy birthday” and “have a good one”— emojis that live up to their names, heartfelt gifs and images evoking a laugh or cry.
The joining of humanity singing birthday wishes like so many cards that did not require postage or the purchase of a card or even the uncovering of a freebie charity card kicking around in a junk drawer.
Oh, you can relate to the reason behind the boycott: the overreach of the venue, injustice of the situation, mistreatment, wrongs in need of righting.
You stand with the boycotters in solidarity! We will not take this, we will disappear from this electronic venue to inflict the sting of our strike! We will be missed!
Alas, we are missed.
Such a pity.
Did it have to happen on my birthday, you wonder as you find solace in your social media “memories” from this day in yesteryears.
Eric D. Goodman lives and writes in Maryland, where he’s remained sheltered in place for most of the pandemic, spending a portion of his hermithood writing poetry. He’s author of Wrecks and Ruins (Loyola University’s Apprentice House Press, 2022) The Color of Jadeite (Apprentice House, 2020), Setting the Family Free (Apprentice House, 2019), Womb: a novel in utero (Merge Publishing, 2017) Tracks: A Novel in Stories (Atticus Books, 2011), and Flightless Goose, (Writers Lair Books, 2008). More than a hundred short stories, articles, and travel stories have been published in literary journals, magazines, and periodicals. His poetry has been published in Gargoyle, Loch Raven Review, North of Oxford, The Five-Ten, and Bourgeon. Learn more about Eric and his writing at www.EricDGoodman.com.
I was very young, but I remember all the adults talking about it.
Who Shot J.R.? they would ask each other.
I did not know who J.R. was, but everyone seemed very concerned.
There was so much speculation.
CBS marketing the catchphrase on television. Beaming it into every stupid home.
Magazines showed up with: Who Shot J.R.? plastered across all the covers.
This J.R. must be a very important person! I thought. A famous president or scientist.
Everyone wanted to know.
So concerned about Who Shot J.R.? And never once about who shot all those other real people that never mattered.
Friday I’m in Love (with Rita)
She sounds like she should be able to run faster than any other land mammal.
Friday I’m In Love with Rita.
Lazily chewing on this short order breakfast omelette.
Almost grazing in some peeling squeaky wheel banquette by the window.
Various condiment guts dried to the side of flippant squeeze bottle nozzle.
Her address in my pocket, or at least the one she gave me.
Who cares if it turns out to be another demolition site of flighty hard hats.
That perfectly tousled hair! Her perfume living rent free up my nostrils.
I feel 20 pounds lighter in spite of what the scale says.
Help old ladies across the street because the world is not half bad again.
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many mounds of snow. His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Bourgeon, Setu, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.
