Ruth Holzer, On the Way to Man in Moon Passage

Crushoa

From Kinvara I walked the few miles through the countryside of scrubby

grass, overgrown hedges and drystone walls, on a promised visit to my

London landlady’s older sister. She had stayed in her County Galway

birthplace and married a local farmer. As soon as I appeared at the door,

she hurried to feed me, tossing more chunks of turf on the fire and boiling

a fat brown egg in a tin can hanging over the hearth. She set out warm

homemade bread, blackberry jam, butter, and frothy fresh cream for the tea.

Pictures of the Pope, the Sacred Heart, and President Kennedy hung on the

whitewashed walls.

                             twilight

                             the blue smoke

                             of prayers     

Since their sons had emigrated, the two of them managed on their own,

raising barley and potatoes and keeping a few cows, sheep and chickens.

While we talked, she packed her husband’s lunch: a round white loaf and

a quart flask of tea. The neighbor’s little girl came over to carry it to the

fields. She hugged me when I left and wished me slán abhaile, safe home.

                             on and on

                             in all weathers

                             donkey cart

Further details

Xi Nan (西楠), Three Chapters

poem 5: The dismal life of smokers

I want to hide by the only open window at the end of the hospital corridor

and smoke a cigarette

but there are too many people, they're exercising

stretching arms, stretching legs, whatever

I thought even though they were stretching their arms and legs or whatever

nobody would walk to the window, so far back

But a big guy comes over

it’s like, he has already seen through my little plot

I want to smoke a cigarette in the small terrace on the sixth floor of the hospital

but there are signs everywhere in the small terrace:

smoke-free hospital, smoking is prohibited here, and so forth

The small terrace faces a row of doctors’ offices, their windows wide open

Damn it!

Anyway, I could smoke on the ground floor

There’s a big empty space for parking and turning cars

I go for a walk there whenever I get the chance

happy like a king, for a little while

The problem is

it's too troublesome to go to the ground floor:

I need to lock the room door—too many patients staying along the corridor

and I don't have the key

This means after the door is locked

just five minutes after I step downstairs for a smoke

I have to rush back up, pester the nurse for the key

and if I keep doing this

I will drive the nurses crazy

Finally, I decide to hide in the toilet in my ward to smoke

I take a disposable plastic cup

pour in some water

it then becomes a perfect ashtray

The cigarette butts I secretly smoked last few times

are lying quietly in the cup now

The butts are soaked, and the water has become yellow

like a kind of pleasant psychedelic soup

I pick up this cup again

lock myself in the toilet

devour my cigarette

I keep inhaling until the filter tip burning hot

Oh, damn sweet

Further details

Alan Perry, The Heart of it.

Necessary Matter

No matter how a freakish snowfall 

burdens the mesquite tree that leans

so heavily it bows to the equinox.

No matter that the palo verde in the median

can’t bear the weight of change,

halves itself so one shaft survives.

No matter that mourning doves tell me

they are contented with rainfall,

with each other, with their calling.

What matters is the moment

before absence, when recollection swells

amid breakdown, when there’s nothing

beyond horizon but sky. That’s when

there is no loss, only precedent

for grief—unbounded, sacred.

I want to tell you when my best friend died,

I wasn’t there. My phone rang off-key,

rattled and clicked like slipping breath.

There were only liminal spaces before

that winter, half of us bending toward earth

like a snow-laden trunk.

And in the moments after snow melts,

rivers come alive, reservoirs re-fill,

depth gradually returns.

Further details

Bethany Pope, The Horned God

Olathe, Kansas

I think about the kid every day.

I think about him every time I see

a dark-haired six-year-old shuffling along

with his hands clasped in front

and his eyes on the road.

I dream about him more

than is probably healthy. I think about

his too-big, sun-faded jean jacket.

I think about his dirty brown trousers,

corduroy shiny along the ass.

I think about his brown little ankles,

rising, naked, out of shoes that looked

like they belonged to somebody else.

I think about the way his tears

tracked clean trails on his cheeks

and how he sniffed them up

into his nose as he walked,

occasionally reaching up,

with his bound hands,

to wipe them away.

I only saw him for a few seconds,

before I took off running

(Birkenstocks flapping against the blacktop)

but the image might as well

be cut into the pale flesh of my brain.

Some moments form scar tissue,

especially when they're cutting into,

rubbing their filth into,

a wound that someone else left there,

which hasn't healed up yet,

and now never will.

He had a dog-collar,

a heavy choke chain, around his neck,

just barely visible beneath the ratty jacket.

The collar was linked up to a pair of testicle

handcuffs. They were made to look like gold.

The bit that's meant to swell

the head of a penis was fed

through the loop in the chain,

and the cuffs that are supposed to put

pressure on a pair of balls

were clamped round his wrists

so that if he tried to run,

he'd choke himself silly.

I thought the old man was his grandfather,

walking the highway behind him,

reading a jug book, I thought that until

he showed me his gun. His gun

was stuck through a leather clutch

that dangled off his belt.

And then I took off running.

Cowardice was part of it, yeah,

no getting around it. Cowardice played a part.

But also I didn't have a cellphone with me

and there was a 7/11 less than a mile

out of the scrub. I shoved aside

a fat, toothless girl who laughed

when I gave my descriptions to Dispatch.

'Was he selling his body?' She laughed

and laughed and I dream about that, too,

that joyless fucking cackle,

because I'd heard that laughter when I'd tried

to tell my social worker

what was happening to me at school.

Fuck that toothless girl.

Fuck the pain that hardened her over.

Fuck that old man with his own fucking gun.

Fuck everyone who'd fucked that child,

or wanted to, or thought about it,

or let it slide.

Fuck the whole goddamned country of America,

that scarifying place that set me to running,

that brutal land I'm running from still.

I think about that kid,

every fucking goddamned day,

and I pray to Jesus he's survived it.

But I don't think that he could have,

and anyway, I'll never know.

Further details