The Saint of Voiceless Crowds – Shana Wolstein
Rural girls ride the bus to work in maquiladoras, and each factory dreams
its work is creation. The dust cloud from the battle for Ciudad
Juarez hasn’t settled yet, women go to work and leave families standing
in the fire. Dust devils and scrub brush. The desert swallows its breath.
And the locals still climb rooftops to watch their history. As they did
when the Mexican Revolution came to America, at El Paso, and bored
Americans sat atop hotels to watch Pancho Villa and his troops.
It was the beginning of Hollywood—Pancho Villa, a ready celebrity.
He, born Doroteo, gift of God, re-named himself: Robin Hood,
born again from his own perseverance and fire, revenge
for the brand cut into his sister. He burned his face into a name,
silver and celluloid, trust and fear. Years later, risen again,
streets get named Siete Leguas, his horse. Tombs to visit
in each city, on Dia de los Muertos, a meal every day
he has been gone. His steps across the border are traced by feet—
descendants, trying to create their own legend, each day a lifetime.
El Paso still watching, from a distance.
The gangs decide to quit fighting for a day to show
they still know how to pull the breath from our throats.
And women disappear like credits at the end of the street.
You, my Uighur Traveler – Shana Wolstein
—if I ever write in another language, it will be
yours. Sounds the color of camel hair
When my eyes are their bluest,
and they're not blue. Our shadows left
their footsteps in the sand as they followed
behind us. We could run without moving.
And I wonder if I will ever think of what
I forgot, because I'm sure I have. The time
when the Ferris wheel stopped turning, but
that can't be it— I remember.
The way the smell of oil hung in the air, the sand
shifting under my fingernails, how I could see up
the pant-leg of the man above me, how he rattled
his foot like an angry snake, how you batted
your eyes until they watered and my hands
held your face in response. How the breeze
made us all sway just enough that I thought
we could catch the racing clouds. The sun
made our knees turn pink. Our hands
tangled like bridled rope. The sand shone
at dusk. Our arms grew sore from reaching for
each other. How we raced like dunes, found
ourselves alone, could no longer find
the words to speak a few dry syllables.
Division -- Bojan Louis
una polvareda grande
snaps the weak
points of mesquite,
fells mothegg-
filled saguaros—
divots across the desert
await gusts,
season’s last rainfall
*
esta ciudad slick
with engine oil
heated on asphalt
beneath las nubes
negras y cautelares
the city’s ashes
not of death
but movement
*
defying being bound
those who pray
para el norte
against shallow rooted
keepers of the gate
find reprieve in
jugs left out—
throats eased
*
brown shirt bruisers
and local locos
gunup to get-it-done
Grounding
Bojan Louis
Crespúculo,
una serpiente de polvo
—vans of la migra—
summoned by contratistas
cobardes who anticipate
a crack, irresolute
of its path.
Sin necesidad de herramientas
curb-plucked workers
walked barefoot
through cemento frió
and floated suave
the curing surface.
Now they sit encadenado
y se preguntan
if they’ll receive water
para lavar, la roca
hardening around their feet.
Hwéeldi [Place of Suffering]
A poem in Navajo & English
‘Aak’eed
takes the last
iinaa.
‘Ats’íís
crumpled on
nahasdzáán;
dineh bii kágí
wants off
ats’in.
Gather dii bali doo
bee’eldoo bik’a’—
leave łieshłibaha.
Na’zid doo do’oodłaa nahji’adiilil
with corpses—
dabii’izhi baadiyinah.
Place of Suffering [Hwéeldi]
Fall
takes the last
life.
Bodies
crumpled on
earth;
human skin
wants off its
bone.
Blankets and
bullets
leave dust.
Bury fear and doubt
with corpses—
forget those names.
WhytheCliché Thrives – Pamela Stewart
The white horse is Lady the black horse is Storm
The white sky is radiant black skies slam you indoors
The white iris, while sexy, is certainly bridal
The gentian, while literate, is downward sliding
How can you know where bright birds flying have dropped sunflower seeds?
People take apart their lives in springtime….
In Delhi there’s “Fair and Lovely” to lighten her face.
Here in the States, “Coppertone” for our pallid flesh.
In summer people lighten their hair,
darken the skin.
Yet you’re delighted at how last year’s birds have dropped enough
black seeds to thrust up the brightest of tall flowers —
Sudden all over your life!
If You Stay Here You’ll Be Trapped by God – Pamela Stewart
The rocking chair, like a boat cranky at its moorings,
holds me soft when I see how pretty she is, the 3rd wife, kind-eyed and smiling
with her fair tossed hair. And older!
I ‘m older too, but like the boat awkward, heavier than the other wives with my fat-ladened breasts pushing like a prow against the chair’s embrace. Suddenly, so many faces I knew appeared in little squares on the screen: glamorous, stained, roughened, textured by light and sometimes torn.
But there, the being-ness of the boy I loved at 13 is just as palpable.
And the boy I loved at 14 hasn’t changed much under Florida’s heat and dazzle except now I talk with him more than I ever did leaning with my teen-age mooniness.
How elastic the soul that can catch up on 51 years with a few words and a profile of Nicky,
poetry’s most famous cockatoo! Now, in front of me, that lush, graceful girl
who made me bristlesurvives cancer and a son’s suicide.
She humbles me, as rocking, rocking I pray to do some mortal good
and wonder who is Nancy, a red-head
I don’t recognize? I could pace and circle this screen all day to re-love them all especially
the 3rd wife of my 2nd husband who smiles with the warmth of an old friend insisting, “But you look great! You’ve never looked so good!”
The Executors – Pamela Stewart
his books her hair! their corgi’s name
the pearly fountain pen with aqua ink they shared
down the block, bar-music and rain punctuate
papers smoothed open in layers
large hands rummage a plate of almonds and cheese please
let me pour you another gin and please tell me again
that reliable anecdote of her soft red hair
Mosto Por Vino – Lucile Barker
The leaves turn straight
from yellow to brown.
There are no deep reds,
no burgundied drips
onto the sidewalk.
The leaves fall quickly,
as if to avoid the suffering
of staying on the parent trees.
The leaves lie in the gutter,
pave the streets with gold,
and my neighbors sacrifice,
building fires to send smoke signals
to the gods of winter,
telling them that all is prepared.
Yet through the smoke
comes another smell.
I smell purple on each side street,
and remember that winter
is made of smoky fireplaces
and bittersweet deep red wine,
the color stolen from autumn leaves.
CONFESSION – David Spicer
The napalm body bags fell out of copters
like horoscopes from homeless stars.
Limbs danced to jazz like tax collectors
on April 16th, and I shunned the war
to join the country club, drink champagne
in coffee shops, carry a masterpiece
of a checkbook. A vitamin demon, I ate
custard pie, vegetable soup, bread,
and dreamed of Tahitian concubines. Slept
in limousines under apple trees in October
dusk, took forty vows drunk in a monastery.
A blasé genius, all right: I soothed
my ego, sunbathed on magic
furniture. I had no guts, couldn’t kill slopes,
true, but I loved to paint wood with green lacquer,
anything to avoid target practice, a casket,
and daggers of the maimed. I finally
shacked up with an ugly duchess, sired a clan
of ingrates and misogynists. Like all people,
I divorced. Changed channels every
two minutes, hated my insane asylum job
and the pinky ring boss who ignored me.
I avoided one disaster to find shelter in another.
Older and syphilitic, I played Showdown
and bashed the nurse’s head with a doorknob
in an assault of erotic glee. No, I wait
for the suicide machine, my hope,
my consumer’s delight, my only asset.
PROPOSAL – David Spicer
Raoul: a lover’s name in the neo-disco age.
An amnesiac cartographer of the tabloid heart,
I adopt that champagne title, its existential karma.
Adele: you never frown, not in a raped Brazil
where we meet, not in your incest bikini,
your marmoreal thighs that whisper Sayonara
on the goateed shore every bleached midnight.
I love you, Adele, your equator soul and karate eyes.
Standing on the veranda, you nod like a stunned starling
in the coup d’état moonlight of the exterminated utopia.
Adele, that houseguest of the histrionic
Bahamas, wake with me on the rich brink of the wasted estate,
ignore the caskets of science, the urns of the world’s breakdown,
help me illustrate our bequeathed scenarios.
No, let us flee in a litany of scat songs,
the aroma of wintergreen gone behind promiscuous memories,
and ride away on the yacht through the river’s couture.
We’ll escape the rotten beach and aspire to be rude gods.
CHIMES – David Spicer
Stuffed animals and parakeets
left my bedroom long ago.
As a child I yearned to pray
like a priest but segued into
smart aleck comments before I wore
graduation gowns and embraced
the propaganda of cool in
a yellow Mustang convertible. Better
than horseback, I kidded the rest
of the pillheads at the receiving station.
Bartenders, waiters, construction workers,
we welcomed the government to ship us
to the Arabic war zone and landed
one autumn night with weapons
across our young backs. Beautiful lions,
we thought the reception a surgery waiting
room, an author’s book party, a puppet show
at the park. We shot and bombed the bastards
but didn’t bury them, their distant screams—
one extended slur of chimes.
The highlight, of course,
the end, no mistake: like celebrities
in a hit film, we followed the parade marshals
down Fifth Avenue. The traffic jam for
peace, the violent clerks of war, we arrived
home heroes, our price for kicking asses
of strangers one moment alive, the next
dead as a village of holy men with their throats cut.
ROMANCE – David Spicer
I once played guitar at a gas station
between accidents and hostile customers
to promote a career as a poet.
A refugee from reality, I sold my soul
to procreate words, wore cashmere cardigans
in barns and antique shops with linoleum
floors and savage geraniums. Ambitious,
I sported black sarongs, ate bonbons
and drank saltwater before each morphine audition.
One day it happened: a woman resembling
Marlene Dietrich appeared in a taxi
beside the unleaded pump. She preened,
painted toenails her only vice, said
she held me in awe, gave me a medieval penny.
Her eyes the color of seaweed, she said Goodbye
with a bravado I’ll never forget.
I responded by quitting the job and carried
my baggage to the airport. I never saw her again,
a trump card against claustrophobia.
Now I’m an émigré from my own persona,
I admire nobody, and want to escape this skin
to be a forester. After all, I hear she lives
in the deep woods where I can say Thank you
and return her Goodbye.
Requiem – Kristine Chalifoux
I have never found it much use to talk to the dead.
Though I have lit candles, you’ve never come
To look at what you left behind:
Granted, there’s no heavy guilt or pain
I must come to terms with, just the bitter ache
Of what could have been, but wasn’t.
Milosz, in those dark years after the war
Stood alone in a barren Polish graveyard
To ask thedead to visit him no more.
They replied to him in the screams
Of ravens flying low over the graves of those
Once loved. When I call to you from the wood’s
Edge, the wind brings nothing. Our small history
No more weighty than a translucent cicada
Shell still clinging to the bark of sweetgum.
In the Currents of the River of Love – Kristine Chalifoux
Surely we have piled the good deeds high enough
Surely they can’t ask any more of us than has already been asked
We have eaten shame and humility, a steady diet. Surely
When the sun skirts away behind the cloud and the cold
Wind blows straight down from the north this time
We will find ourselves a shelter, four strong walls
And a roof to hold back the worst the heavens can fling down.
But no. Yesterday lunching amid bric-a-brac
And the polite susurrus of “catching up,” a sudden
Dart, an unexpected knife thrust. She didn’t know,
How could she, yet how could I respond and shame filled
My mouth again like the ancient loam that clogs
The deltas of ancient rivers. All day I’ve lumbered
In that swampy marsh of anger, resentment and guilt.
When did I become a woman other woman might find
Pitiful? For love? For love? For love? And was it love
That rose up then dark and seething, the coiled serpent
Of hate and lashed out at you again and again?
What piece of this wide web we’re snared in
Needs to be cut to free us? Where are our wings of wax?
Imagine my surprise when I pulled out my life raft
So fragile, it can withstand nothing. What good
Is poetry that can’t save a drowning woman or pry the raft
Off the sand bar at the mouth of the river when the
Sun has beaten back the water and the wind has dried
The earth into hard baked clay and the boat is hopelessly mired.
Reading Simko
For Daniel Simko
We were all young then. It was
New York in the ‘80s, before
The crash, and though we had
Little money, there was always
A twenty for a couple of pints
Of McSorley’s or a bottle of red wine.
There were always books, too,
Overflowing the shelves
In your surprisingly chic Chelsea condo
Piled on tables, or stacked on the floor.
Books and poetry, always there was
Poetry. I remember watching you
One winter evening when the grey
Shroud of clouds folded over
The last winter light from the sky
And you, walking, your broad Slovak face
Resolutely set against the snow’s
Stinging crystals, half hidden
Beneath a huge striped umbrella!
Our own Fellini movie come to life.
That image, one of the photos
Memory took for me unbidden
Has stayed all these years through the long
Silence when we lost touch.
You went on to other people, other haunts
Yet it returns to me now, reading this slim volume.
You always did have the heart of one who suffers
A man who should have stood
In the midst of one of the twentieth
Century’s unfolding tragedies
But the irony was you didn’t
And you were forced to hew your poems
Out of the solitary mute granite of the self.
For all that, your book is good, even luminous,
And I —who have come so close to giving up
Despite all we talked about so fervently
And what you struggled for years to wrench
Out of the safe complacency of your life
To bear witness to something worthy of poetry—
Take heart from the black and white
This cool smooth book in my hands.
from Sisyphean S-curve – Phillip Barron
Amid black and yellow signs of traffic and bureaucracy stands a billboard,its creosote-soaked legs rising from soggy floodplains to present asales pitch todaily commuters. The purveyors of anew tequila have brandedtheir liquor with imagery evoking that of José Guadalupe Posada, whose satirical sketches of skulls have beenappropriated by Dia de los Muertos celebrants. The skull has eyes rather thanempty sockets, as if Dr. T.J. Eckleburg watches over us in his afterlife.According to the billboard, the tequila is the taste of Mexico.
I remember a woman huddled under brightly colored rags against a walloutside
the Banamex ATM on Avenida Hidalgo in Oaxaca. I think about thethousands
of young women employed in the maquiladoras along the border and the hundreds
of maquiladeros killed in Ciudad Juárez since 1993, where no one is paying attention,
but where Bolaño’s secret of the world is hidden. I think about the escalating violence
of competing drug cartels spun out of control, Dante-esque descriptions of retribution after retribution on the anarchic streets of Torreón, where police patrol the avenidas in body armor and skull-painted masks. I think of Mexico and wonder what it might taste like.