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Handhold (for a Zygote)


Welcome. You’ll be good. A jaw infused
with appointed energy, and a brain

the diameter of a crown. You will
not have paradise — not yet, right angles

and endless repairs of etceteras.
The world will be a lover’s apple to

fuss about, your heart an adding machine
with zero to solve. What it is to be

made of feelings. Somewhere ceiling tiles
fall out and break. See how it will happen —

you’ll lose your lovely coloring, and your
tiny spine will have to bend, bend, and bend.



-Andrew Demcak

~~~~~

Sorrow

I was standing at the bus stop.
I took a seat while a man
placed his sorrow on my lap
and asked me to wait.

I waited while every bus
I had ever waited for passed by.

There I am with my grandmother
as she takes my hand and we
go up the steps and the bus driver
looks at our brown eyes with his blue eyes.

We pay the toll and take a seat.
Morning turns to an afternoon
and an afternoon turns to a night
and a night turns to sorrow.

There I am at 16 and my sister and I
are standing on Sunset Boulevard
waiting for the bus that will take us
to school and there are others waiting.

We let the old lady take our seat and
we stand with our twenty books in hand.
Sorrow breaks our back.

There I am at 20 crossing the street
to take the bus that will take me home
after work. The bus passes by before
I make it to the stop.
It starts to rain sorrow.

There I am at 37 waiting for the bus
to take me to work postpartum.
My breasts are heavy. They leak
sorrow down my dress.

Here I am at 48 and sorrow
waits for a man to return.

-Didi Menendez

~~~~~


A girl named Scuba


We named our daughter Scuba. I am not sure how it happened, some say we should have named her after a famous literary friend in a career advancing homage, others that it should be a family name, or, if we wanted to stay within the water element, to invoke the powerful like Poseidon, the great turtle underneath us or re-invigorate a failure like Aquaman or The Prince of Tides. You don’t know what it’s like, you who named your kids before meeting them, you who didn’t spend a week in intensive care waiting for word about an aqueous angel, you who never held water.

-David Baratier

~~~~~

body tree

While rain chafed dirty slow
against the storm drain, the world became
a stage, tomfooled tableau. A lifetime
of tumbling through areola-haired, tender
blue bindweeds scrambling for attention.
I need to be bandaged, want a windswept avowal
to plaster the heart of the god who gave my unhappiness.
More than pistilpages, corrugated metal.
Tempests tear over ruching my world,
upholding the tiniest gesture. See—
I know you could be the wrong person,
be in the wrong place, wrong time,
be too this or that,
by the hurly-burly around you. I know
at first you try to hold on
to the slivers of good
luck lost, seeing them spin away like leaves
caught in blades of a windshield.

I’ve heard it said no one gets a cross
they can’t bear. Let me tell you:
I don’t want to be told I’m too pretty
to be a secretary, a teller, a waitress— no
more. It never dies,
poverty, just becomes a lake reaching
my feet through unwieldy weeds.
How would you like to be told:
No, not even a stripper, you with the face
that launched a thousand catfights,
no matter how many times
you ugly yourself up and try to
lie down on Second Avenue,
to release house roaches
trapped in your sleeves.
They just scurry to the top
leaves of the littleleaf linden,
while you lose breath below,
planted, knowing what is left
of you, until finally
they scamper away beyond recall
into morning and you wait
for the sleep so doused in dreams
you never want to wake.

-Nanette Rayman-Rivera

~~~~~~

My Piano

You’ve had a day like this,
and so you know what I mean
when I say that

I wish I had a piano.

I wish I could pull the little stool out
and settle in, savor
that moment as my hands hang
over the keys — just before notes arise
to do my bidding
like 88 genies unleashed from ivory bottles.

I wouldn’t wish for anything more
than well-made scales and
disciplined arpeggios.

Okay — I’m lying —

I’d love something baroque
to lift me — and my piano —
up like a magic carpet
high above the suburban sprawl,
traffic,
alarm clocks,
and daytime talk show hosts.

Somewhere up there among the stars
I’d play the accompaniment
to Holst’s Planets,
and dispute Copernicus’ findings
about the revolution of the Earth.

Soon the entire cosmos
would align itself around
our song,
correcting the error
of its previously incomprehensible ways.

-Mark Bonica


~~~~