101
New Jersey's oldest abandoned iron mine

224
As if the rain this minute stopped

FEAST OF SPIRITS
                      Words begin

WHAT ART IS
We play a game of hide and seek.

Holding
hands ready to explode

WHUSSY
Now, years later, telling it excites him

THE CRAZY ANIMALS
Last Friday evening I got pretty spread out

EARLY FALL
near the dry slough

PRAISE
a summer morning

SITTING IN THE BROWN CHAIR WITH LET'S PRETEND
ON THE RADIO
I don't think how the

WINDOWS IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE
Barred, as if her babies might

THE GOLD DRESSES
The threads glisten, almost

ANOTHER DAY ON THE COUCH
Fatigue burns me with a power

I WOULD GIVE YOU EVENING LIGHT
You spent the afternoon through

AM THE WATCHING
Our fire.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LAUNDRY
You thought you were high

RIVER IN THE QUIET ROOM
With a hard lead pencil I write a river

2 Poems By Simon Perchik

101


New Jersey's oldest abandoned iron mine
--even this sprout
sacrificed, its only leaf

as if inside some small cage
the last summer left
turning yellow, fell

--I listen for feathers
for this paper unfolding
almost a flower  --the Times

reports canaries gagging
by the millions :trees
disappearing in black love notes
in myself, in some forest

where tiny wings are rocking the Earth
are pages struggling
as wood has always risen
singing to each sailor --for just so long
sides against the sea

--over this worn-down mine
I cover my lips
till even the sun cries out
for air --miners too
can tell by their tongues

blacker and blacker, can hear
it is evening and a lone sea bird
--they even made a song for it.

Contents

224

As if the rain this minute stopped
and behind the invisible strings
a windowsill --its hard finish

stroked, not sure the sound
is dark enough, high enough
--head first each raindrop

ending its life next to wood
to this bewildered sun
this shadow in every direction

tumbling outloud --again more varnish
--the sill motionless from its dark stream
--you can't see the oars

but the brushing calms :the rocking
that surrounds all water
--what you hear never dries

is the sun clinging --this one plank
soaked in lullabies. What you hear
is the darkness closing its eyes.

Contents

3 poems by Janine H. Oshiro

FEAST OF SPIRITS

i. Bones

Words begin
in the body, at the table
I set for six.

We never throw the bones
to the dogs until the soup
has simmered three times.

My grandma opens
her freezer full of bones
stored in ziploc bags.

We eat.

ii Origins

My father likes bones,
pig’s feet soup. He chews
on gristle
saved in pools
of oil around the edge
for the end.

But this soup stews like the beginning.
Steam lifts from bowls full
of broth above the murky swamp.

Memory boils down
into spoonfuls I swallow
like medicine.

This is our meal together. It begins
with hunger and ends when the body breaks.
My belly still aches for you.

mother.

iii Wood

The table is the flat map of the world
between us, like the belief
in heaven and hell. We are all
in the kitchen conjuring up
concoctions of flesh and bone.
I navigate my way back to you
here. I set six places at the table
and discover none of them are empty.
After we consume the last lick
of soup I hold the lips
of two bowls together
to shape the world.

iiii Fire

I have feasted
on your death
picked clean
the bones
of your body.
I chew these words like gristle
and spit the fat back out to spark
the flame.

Contents

WHAT ART IS

We play a game of hide and seek.
I draw shapes and you find
hidden pictures:
a little mouse
muscle man
seahorse
bumblebee and flower.

You can find whole worlds
in unnamed shapes,
newly born, deformed jigsaw
pieces that fit no where.

Your father has told me secretly,
smugly that he has taught you symmetry.
So now your drawings are a perfect
mirror image folded:
balanced fields of daisies
proportioned people
harmonious sunbursts, rays equally distributed.
He tells me you grasp this concept completely
though I know breasts jiggle in dissimilar
weight from left to right
and each step is taken with a slightly
smaller or larger foot.
Even the earth is in between
egg-shaped and oval, wider around the equator
than the span from pole to pole.

It’s still a game of hide and seek, trying to find
meaning in line and shadow, composition
of events, chiaroscuro of emotion,
the impact of negative space.

Maybe your father is trying to hide
the whole truth. Life isn’t fair,
even or symmetrical on any level we can understand.
It’s more likely that it looks and feels like hell.
No erasers. Just this rough and final
sketch that you will somehow learn
to call beautiful.

Contents

HOLDING

hands ready to explode;
ten sticks of dynamite,
of skin pulled tight
and flesh ready to burst
at the seams.

Hands lined with work
and edged with dirt.
Stubby nails are panoramas
of full moons rising
above ragged cuticles.

Hands I fit
my own between.
My fingers trickle through like rain.
Her fingers are tough twigs to kindle,
her palm's a bed of stones.

Hands lifting
boxes, gripping weights
still cradle babies and hips
and dip fingers
into a jar of cream.

Hands capable of holding intention.
She calls them masculine.
I call them hands capable of holding
more than the distinction
of man and woman.

Contents

2 poems by Peter Sears

WHUSSY

Now, years later, telling it excites him,
even though he can't, he claims, get it right.
Get what right? I ask. And on he goes, complaining,
repeating himself, becoming agitated. Look,
he is scratching his beard again,
twiddling twirls of beard hair. I'd like to
twiddle him. I apologize. Why apologize?
he asks, you are such a whussy.
Right in my face, WHUSSY!
Slams his fist down on the table.
Now the table is good, but not that good.
A couple more slams and it's a goner.
He slams it again. I wasn't watching.
In a soft, totally phony voice he says,
keep in mind how gutsy I have to be
when I can't even say what it is.
I laugh, I can't help it, What twaddle!
He brings his fist down on the table
and that's it for the table. I take a piece
of the table, whack him on top of the head.
He grabs the wood, I tear it from his hand
and whack him. Up and down he jumps,
waving his torn hand and howling.
At this point I either leave,
which, he says, he can understand,
or go with him, a choice, he insists,
only a friend would make, adding
that he might, finally, get it right
were we to do this over again.

Contents

THE CRAZY ANIMALS SAY THEY LOVE ME

Last Friday evening I got pretty spread out
on the spiked sherbet punch at the Jello social
and wanted to become an accordian. Back home,
I tapped out tunes on the wall with my head,
missed, and landed out by the barn.

We like you this way, said the animals.
Those sticks in your hair are yummy.
Makes you look like you slept in a tree.
Dumb says the dog, fun says the pig.

Let's dance the Nantucket jig!
And if you really don't want to,
sit in the hay and bang on a bucket.
Dumb says the dog, fun says the pig.

Back home, I lean over to clean my shoes
and fall out of the chair. I get into bed
and my head spins like a whirlie bird.
Oh, the animals sing all night,
off key, starting over and over again.

Contents

2 poems  by David Laing


EARLY FALL

near the dry slough
	   from a black cottonwood
		       a shower of yellow leaves

a dozen at a time drop
	  stems first
		     down the cool air

are they letting go
	  or being released
		     who knows

flat or folded or curled
	  the heart-shaped leaves
		     try different paths

they float or spin or 
	  rock from side to side
		     some tumble some dive

ahead of me now
	  the trail blanketed
		     a springy mat

the woods hushed
	  except for the tap
		     leaves make

landing on leaves
	  adding themselves
		     to the earth

Contents

PRAISE

a summer morning
	  hot and still
		    sweet-scented sap

flows in the trees
	  cottonwood buds sticky
		    the bees hard at work

I enter the sanctuary
	  of a single tree
		    lean my head

in towards its silvery trunk
	  and look up into
		    the green vault of the leaves--

the faint hum
	  bees' wings--
		    a hymn of praise

gathers slowly
	  in my ear
		    it takes its time

getting here

Contents

3 poems by Lyn Lifshin

SITTING IN THE  BROWN CHAIR  WITH Let's Pretend ON THE RADIO

I don't think how the
m and m's that soothe 
only made my fat legs
worse. I'm not thinking
how my mother will
die, of fires that could
gulp a mother up. leave
me like Bambi. I'm not
going over the baby sitter's 
stories of what they did to
young girls in tunnels, of
the ovens and gas or have
nightmares I'll wake up
screaming for one whole
year wanting someone to
lie near me, hold me as if
from then on no one can get
close enough. I don't hear
my father and mother yelling,
my mother howling that if
he loved us he'd want to buy
a house, not stay in the apart-
ment he doesn't even pay
her father rent for but get
a place we wouldn't be
ashamed to bring friends. 
What I can drift and dream
in is more real. I don't want
to leave the world of golden
apples and silver geese. To
make sure, I close my eyes,
make a wish on the first hay
load of summer then wait
until it disappears

Contents

WINDOWS IN MY MOTHER'S HOUSE

Barred, as if her babies might
fall to the street, Venetian blinds
down. She couldn't bear to have
one up or crooked. The huge
living room, a dark grey, painted
blue once by mistake they painted
over. She never fixed up the rooms,
waiting for a house with a yard
like a woman who has a dream of
a jet haired lover with a tilted
grin, lake river eyes, an Irish accent
who won't even go out for a beer,
spends 60 years waiting. When it's
too late for anything to grow except
what she can't stop, she starts
wanting green, wants light in rooms
she's been swooped up, kept hostage
in when her own grey walls seem
a tunnel closing in and she can't
swallow. Later the towels pinned
over glass to keep warm in the snow,
to shut out light and heat and air in
summer. She wants to see daisies,
black eyed susans and the sky on
the ambulance, wants to see trees,
Macy's, croissants, marzipan and
strawberries in cream, to sleep with
the light on, the curtains open
but doesn't want to see tiger lilies
she was always sure meant summer
was over

Contents

THE GOLD DRESSES

The threads glisten, almost
a night light opening the
door. After months away
I could forget it hangs there,
untouched, not worn almost
38 years: my mother's dress
for the wedding in photo
graphs in a film my sister
hoards so you can't see my
mother's arms move toward
me, how the bright petals
were less bright than her eyes.
The dress waits, encrusted
as moss on a stone. Sequins
would have lost their color
by now like her bones. If I
put it on, it might scorch like
iced railings on a tongue. For
one day, it held my mother
like a vase and she bloomed
like the lilacs in the myth of
the apartment a gone lover
filled with orchid, lavender,
violet and snow boughs.
When it held her, it held her
as close as a lover, didn't
suffocate but let her move
and dance, hold me in the
mirror. Never something I
could or would wear, I
brought it to my house to hang
here like a totem, a river
of what's gone, the print a
leaf makes in stone or amber.
The dress takes a deep breath,
waits patiently for something
that filled it to fill it again

Contents

Leo Yankevich

PRISONER

The rancid sky
The frail cobweb
The peeling paint
The patient spider

The good book
The hard cock
The naked bulb --

All I know of God
As I enter and re-enter
This prayer.

Contents

3 poems by Melanie Green

ANOTHER DAY ON THE COUCH

Fatigue burns me with a power
that leaves me hollow;
fires me empty
as a shotgun shell, spent
thunder, dark
lightning.

Fatigue carves me empty
as a wooden bowl
without fruit
on a forsaken table.

Fatigue corrodes
me, exposes, crushes
me, leaves me
nothing

but a thin love
for my own breath.

Contents

I WOULD GIVE YOU EVENING LIGHT

			for Sabine

	"Just to be is a blessing..."
			      Abraham J. Heschel 

You spent the afterrnoon through
your magnifying glass -- watching aphids
give birth. I recorded your message.
Awe, and the ragged
need for sleep in your voice.

Telephone to my ear, you announce
"I'm going to cry now." The sound
of tears cracks
like thunder across my dark skies
of holding.

If I could I would twist the pain
into a thousand doves
and send them to the sun to burn
and burn.

Remember resting together
under the lilac tree
before it was cut down?
You said to me, "I wouldn't
have met you..." Meaning the because
of our sorrow, this thread
of light. Unexpected
sheltering, unfinished delirium.

Each of us, somewhere,
is a splinter
of heaven a width of music
for someone else.
You're mine.

Contents

AM THE WATCHING

Our fire.
Our hotdogs our ketchup, marshmallows,
chocolate bars. Tablecloth, wind, the plastic knives.
I was thirty-eight
my mother was sixty-eight.
Watching the sun lose itself
in its turn to the sea.
The salt, the sinking.
When is it time to go in?
Scooping sand putting out the fire
my mother, uneven stones, lost
her footing	her hand out to catch hand to stop
hand to coals.

When did you know?
Must have been what it was
to have a daughter and watch her fall.
Childless I will have no children. Am the watching
now my mother the body
I entered the world from. Her cleaning-the-wound
body, singing-hymns,
taking-spiders-outside body.
What must leave.
Watching, should the years coming.
The take, the granted.
			
			appeared in Portland Alliance

Contents

2 poems by Verlena Orr

THE IMPORTANCE OF LAUNDRY

You thought you were high
on his short list of possibilities,
happily babbled to him about plans,
discovered you were an errand
on his list -- below laundry.

Well, of course, you started to sob,
sank to a new low, suggested a laundromat
date where you could swill coffee, chain smoke,
listen to the rhythmic rub, whir and spin of machines.
"I'm keeping a low profile,"
he harrumphed, turning you down.

So there you were, left with your own
laundry and no setting for normal.
You are either permanently pressed,
or delicate. Your load imbalanced.
No gentle handwashing for you
carefully smoothed flat to dry.

Look Honey, you've had all the starch
scrubbed out of you. Scorched, shrunk
you are left limp, lobbed like a Cruise Missile
landing in his Goodwill clothespile. Pitiful, poor
dear! You only needed to be fluffed with no heat.

Contents

RIVER IN THE QUIET ROOM

With a hard lead pencil I write a river,
the only way out of this room.
My river, the one comfort I remember,
lunges at willow-bound walls,
rests in eddies, magnifies the rock bed.

No bed here, only soft walls, a window
frames the outside pines. I chant the river
through Kooskia, Asahka, Orofino.
Swift currents fill with rhythms of rock
and water. Rocks change places for a reason.
Fog moves in like a mask.

This year's spring runoff shoulders land
to the Pacific, and I make lists
of frozen tributaries.
South Fork of the Clearwater,
my river, rises. I am writing as fast as I can
to keep this river from flooding.
The room -- small, the pencil -- dull,
the clear water -- inescapable.

Contents

Bill Siverly

UMATILLA BEAT

From the front window desk of the Herald on Main Street,
I watch shoppers and shopkeepers heading for morning break:
Coffee and bear claws over gossip in Pheasant Cafe.
It's nineteen sixty-seven in July, and I am typing a headline:
Umatilla Man Clears Tunnels in Viet Nam.

The siren howls, and by reflex I grab the Rolleflex,
Rev up Rambler, race after fire trucks out on Punkin Road.
Flames and smoke billow skyward from mobile home.
Firemen with airpacks beckon coughing news kid
To shoot heroic action for front page next edition.

Kids with nothing to do but wait for the county fair
Ride bicycles in endless circles on residential streets.
Older ones like Johnny get drunk and pretend to be saved,
Raising arms and hallelujahs at tent revivals in Pasco,
Race cars by night, fall in love, and register for war.

Umatilla, once a boomtown for McNary Dam,
Once a northwest railhead with stores and bars galore,
Once imatilam, rocky bottom village with a vintage salmon run,
Now Umatilla watershed, a sink for runoff pesticide,
The town a shuttered ruin when the army has moved on.

Senator Hatfield, lobbied on legislation by local cattlemen,
Holds for my photography a slice of Hermiston watermelon.
Out of cattlemen earshot, I thank him for his stand against the war.
He thanks me, says "Our view remains unpopular"
(As long as young men rush to die, and old men urge them on).

Slow news day in town, I grab my Rolleflex,
Ramble out past Echo to check the facts of eternal return:
Dry wind blowing sand across old Paiute sagebrush earth;
Talkative August harvesters of mint and circles of corn;
Army Depot nerve gas bunkers, basking in the sun.

Main Street drugstore window features images of Beatles
Tricked out in Sergeant Pepper's splendid rainbow uniforms.
The war against the future never ends.
After my last assignment drinking beer with loud Jay-cees,
I pass the dark fairgrounds, quiet cemetery of dreams.

Contents

Michael Ferrell

SUNITA

The cipher in the eyes of the dead,
the sets of empty we collect,
the zero of my wasted heart
when the buyers don't buy
and the sellers won't stop selling.
Sunita, the young T amang,
deals me reclamation
in a small blue pouch.
"A passport purse," she tells me,
sensing perhaps my desperation for flight,
borders beyond my skin.
"Be my lucky day," she pleads,
"One hundred rupees?" 
In the claustrophobia of Kathmandu,
a flower of the Lalitpur poor,
the girl Sunita made me such a bargain
with one wide Nepali smile.
In time's delicate strangle
is not the best I could ever hope
from the shortness of my breath
her brief incarnation,
her small hand reaching for mine?
For a dollar and a hallf
I buy the blue bag,
her lucky day within.
I take her hand and don't let go.

Contents