I read in the paper today was the birthday of the artist Jasper Johns, 95. I didn’t realize he was still alive. I remember him from Art History classes fifty years ago in college, his works on display at the BMA. This sometimes happens, an actor or a singer I’d assumed dead shows up in a story in the newspaper, very much alive. And yet I often dream one or the other of my deceased brothers is still living, often a dream about an argument we’re having, and when I wake up, I’m still … Continue reading Jasper Johns by Charles Rummelkamp→
Genius of oval, ovum, overlap capable of great feats, holding back the waterfall of too much cleavage or in my case, too vast a high plain of a post-mastectomy chest, thanks to this duchess of metal modesty protecting glamour girls and plain ones. Eagle landing to save the day and a nylon bag from spilling dozens of caramels in the gutter. Savior of a million opening nights everywhere from Broadway to small town high school renditions of The Music Man or Rent. Grandmother of agility in pink or blue bent on putting the safe … Continue reading Ode to a Safety Pin by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg→
At age five, after my country doctor grandfather dies, fascinated by the black-and-white photos in his discarded depression-era medical books stacked in a corner of the barn, I study at length, extra carefully, one picture of a man with not only bulging gray lumps on his neck and chest, but also a black rectangle covering his eyes. Why was it put there? Holding my hands over my eyes, trying to imagine what it is like to have a disfigured body, hearing rumbles and pings merging and building to a kettle drum crescendo as rain … Continue reading It’s Raining by Ben Sloan→
………………………………………………………….Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil, 1928) Since you last crossed the still, moonlit waters Waters grown moody for the fainting dawn Dawn advancing but for the last starlight Starlight gifts of spellbound magic for two Two, we knew, both full with reflected moods Moods long-expressed in your rhythmic cycles Cycles of your full light, waning for rest Rest like a new moon to relight our flame Flame of your crescent hung to leave hearts full Full moon, I was drawn to your drifting charm Charm found in your safe and secret refuge Refuge, never forgotten, for … Continue reading The Moon by Kenneth Boyd→
Let me tell you uncomfortable I am with silence. I am handcuffed to a joke I can’t tell. Two crows are where my lungs should be. My exhales are the shape of birds. This is serious business. This is an average Tuesday. Finger in the light socket. Fork in the garbage disposal. Recycling bin blown over by the wind. The week’s detritus spread out for all the neighbors to see. I’m hungry but all my knives are too dull to cut anything. The voice coach said sing from your diaphragm. Someday I’ll have an office … Continue reading Same River, Different Day by Patrick Meeds→
…………………………………………………….A poem is never finished, only abandoned …………………………………………………………..–Paul Valery In a downtown daze I trolled among towers reeking of success, rising proudly into the sky, and between them found an alley of orphans, all my incomplete gestures, children who made and dismayed me, never found a home in my heart. They fled the disregard to which I condemned them, banded together, unselfishly shared their pain and painkillers, and admired each others deformities. They tattooed my ink into their fists and waited, one-eyed and one-armed, (the eye full of spite, the arm heavily armed), hoping that … Continue reading Reckless Abandon by Dudley Stone→
My wife and I sought sanctuary by the lake, our two sons in tow. The four-hour car trip was nonstop requests for candy, cookies, sodas laced with anticipation, halted mid-sentence by the lake’s incantation: the first glimpse of cool, limpid waters and a sweeping lawn of conifers. We sailed among lake islands, swam alongside fish, dove for seashells among undulating stems of pondweed. One son claimed Lake George looked just like last year, emboldened as he sailed a Sunfish, while the younger insisted it was different every day. This was before we returned with his … Continue reading Lake George in My Heart by David Stern→
My grocery store is under siege by sleepwalkers who show up in pajamas moping from shelf to shelf for a precious memory. There is no one to guide them. Disposable employees are with- drawn or unhinged; I saw a clerk slap a senior shoplifter to the floor. The butcher who knew your name had a gentle funeral. St. Rita’s warm quiet bells called the old neighborhood together. Almost everyone wore their best. I watched it online in a suit & tie. Deli-lovers from bygone eras filled the pews with greetings & non-greetings. Neighbor-strangers are faux-blind. … Continue reading Shopping by Paul Joseph Enea→
Once mown a tedder spreads the murdered crop to dry, draws a swath, a windrow waiting. Three days of drought and the hay is fit to bind. Catch and stack. Catch and stack. Breathing diesel, dung, and latent threat, a shirtless boy, fourteen, the mud of field dust and sweat, scratched by each bail’s blades… until you’ve built a plinth above the wagon’s rim to stand atop — prince of something. Stand there rut-bouncing ‘till with one lethal bump, your hay mountain shakes you off. You hit the ground and roll to meet the … Continue reading Harvester by Ned Kraft→
“Instead of calling them beautiful there would be more warrant for describing women as the unesthetic sex. Neither for music, nor for poetry, nor for the fine arts have they really and truly any sense of susceptibility.” —Essay on Women, Arthur Schopenhauer See him sulking in the corner with his failed theories, posture rigid, tie-less Oxford buttoned to the neck. Only men possess the power of genius, he once claimed; the fair sex are mere distractions, vessels for reproduction. Art can be made of woman, but woman cannot make art. Now, everywhere he looks— female … Continue reading Schopenhauer Rues the Rise of Women by Bill Glose→
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