COWBOYS AND COUPLES

Fisk Park has become part of the river
Part of an old arrangement

As in those doggerel westerns,
Two sets of hombres, pistols drawn

Who keep riding their ponies
Past the same outcroppings and knolls

Or with couples long used to each other…

You do ramble, she said, biting a corner
Of toast. Just say flood and be done with it

Happens every year. That’s how big fish
Enter the pond…

That’s what I meant, he suggested,
Smoothing his mustache with forefinger

And thumb. Like renewal? she asked,
I don’t believe so, as she answered herself

After a moment,
More like monotony, the color of bark

from Skin, 2021

Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker
by Ocean Vuong

Mar.
Advil (ibuprofen), 4 pack
Sally Hansen Pink Nail Polish, 6 pack
Clorox Bleach, industrial size
Diane hair pins, 4 pack
Seafoam handheld mirror
“I Love New York” T-shirt, white, small

Apr.
Nongshim Ramen Noodle Bowl, 24 pack
Cotton Balls, 100 count
“Thank You For Your Loyalty” cards, 30 count
Toluene POR-15 40404 Solvent, 1 quart
UV LED Nail Lamp
Cuticle Oil, value pack
Clear Acrylic Nail Tips, 500 count

May
Advil (ibuprofen), 4 pack
Vicks VapoRub, twin pack
Portable Electric Nail Drill
Salonpas Heat-Activated muscle patch, 40 count
Lipstick, “Night Out Red”
Little Debbie Chocolate Zebra Cakes, 4 boxes

Jun.
Large faux-clay planter pots, value set
Carnation Condensed Milk, 6 pack
Clear Nail Art Acrylic Liquid Powder Dish Bowl, 2 pcs
Birthday Card—Son—Pop-up Mother and Son effect
Nike Elite Basketball Shorts, men’s small

Jul.
Saviland Holographic Gold Nail Powder, 6 colors
Nescafé Taster’s Choice Instant Coffee
Advil (ibuprofen), 4 pack
PIXNOR Pedicure Double-Sided Callus Remover
Bengay Medicated Cream, 3 pack

Aug.
Newchic Ochre Summer Dress Floral Print, sz 6
Wrigley’s Doublemint Gum, 8 pack
Plastic Adirondack Lawn Chair, colonial blue

Sep.
Nail buffers and files, 10 pcs
Coppertone Sunblock, 6 oz

Oct.
CozyNites Fleece Blanket, pink
Sleep-Ease Melatonin caps, 90 count
Icy Hot Maximum Strength pain relief pads

Nov.
Tampax, 24 count
Faux-Resin Hair clips, 3 pack

Dec.
Advil (ibuprofen) Maximum Strength, 4 pack
True-Gro Tulip Bulbs, 24 pcs

Jan.

Feb.
Healthline Compact Trigger Release Folding Walker
Yankee Candle, Midsummer’s Night, large jar

Mar.
Chemo-Glam cotton head scarf, sunrise pink
White Socks, women’s small, 12 pack

Apr.
Chemo-Glam cotton scarf, flower garden print
“Warrior Mom” Breast Cancer awareness T-shirt, pink and white

May
Mueller 255 Lumbar Support Back Brace

Jun.
Birthday Card—“Son, We Will Always Be Together,” Snoopy design

Jul.
Eternity Aluminum Urn, Dove and Rose engraved, small
Perfect Memories picture frame, 8 x 11 in, black
Burt’s Bees lip balm, Honey, 1 pc

Aug.

Sep.
Easy-Grow Windowsill herb garden

Oct.
YourStory Customized Memorial Plaque, 10 x 8 x 4 in
Winter coat, navy blue, x-small

Nov.
Wool socks, grey, 1 pair

Monologue for Saint Louis
by Colleen J. McElroy

home again and the heart barely there
when choked by clusters of words
thick as the clumps of blue-black
grapes we snitched every summer
from the neighbor’s arbor
succulent pockets of flesh laced
with green staining our lips and fingers

It is summer again and I am home
vowing penance for all my disappearances
since that first summer
when the arbor was clotted
with pockets of grapes latticed on each
interlocking vine

now earthworms have trellised the arbor
and that crumbling heap of rotting black
sticks cannot shield us from wind or words
we are the women we whispered about each summer
familiar houses and schoolyards have disappeared
childhood streets are blocked with singular black

one-way signs aligned like a lacework
of warnings or accusing fingers
I am home again
and my cousins sit in their cloaks of black
skin dragging me through twisted vines
of genetic maps thick with childhood vows

they remember each summer
how each year I vowed to return home
forever but I am lost in a riddle of words
home is a vacant lot its back yard clotted
with a stainless-steel arch and clusters
of tiny parks sprouting like trelliswork

enclosing some strange summer
resort my cousins of disappeared
into like the shadows of beasts and bad air
that infect this flat country and I am home
a stranger in love with words
with tart sweet clusters of poems

while you are healing
by K. C. Parm

you can fold yourself up
into halves,
quarters,
or more.
and still,
you won’t be small enough
for the ones who feel
entitled to your space.
so fuck it.
unfold.

“Epic II”
by Anaïs Mitchell, from Hadestown (2019)

[ORPHEUS]
King of silver, king of gold
And everything glittering under the ground
Hades is king of oil and coal
And the riches that flow where those rivers are found
But for half of the year with Persephone gone
His loneliness moves in him, crude and black
He thinks of his wife in the arms of the sun
And jealousy fuels him and feeds him and fills him
With doubt that she’ll ever come
Dread that she’ll never come
Doubt that his lover will ever come back

King of mortar, king of bricks
The River Styx is a river of stones
And Hades lays them high and thick
With a million hands that are not his own
With a million hands, he builds a wall
Around all of the riches he digs from the earth
The pickaxe flashes, the hammer falls
And crashing and pounding
His rivers surround him
And drown out the sound of the song he once heard
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la-la
La-la-la-la-la-la

In Search of Poetry
by Brian Bilston

why is poetry so boring
why is poetry hard to understand
why is poetry considered non-fiction
is poetry a good clothing brand

poetry is an act of hope
poetry is a waste of time
poetry is a way of taking life by the throat
poetry is not supposed to rhyme

why is poetry important
why does poetry exist
why is poetry pretentious
who is the better poet shakespeare or taylor swift

poetry is a political act
poetry is an egg with a horse inside
poetry is the best words in the best order
poetry is the mother of lies

why do poets repeat lines
do poems have to follow rules
why do poets repeat lines
why is poetry taught in school

poetry helps mental health
poetry is not real
poetry is the music of the soul
poetry makes you feel

(2024)

 

Because you are not the admired nightingale.
Because you are not the noble doe.
Because you are not the picturesque
ermine, armadillo, or bat.
They’ve been written, and I don’t know their song
the way I know your scuttling between walls.
The scent of your collapsed corpse rotting
beneath floorboards. Your frantic squeals
as you wrestle at your own fur from glue traps,
ripping flesh from skin in an attempt to survive.

Because in July of ’97, you birthed a legion
on 109th, swarmed from behind dumpsters,
made our street infamous for something
other than crack. Shoot, We nicknamed you “Cat-killer,”
raced with you through open hydrants,
screeched like you when Siete blasted
aluminum bat into your brethren’s skull—
the sound like slapped down dominoes. You reigned
that summer, Rat
And even when they sent exterminators,
set flame to garbage, half dead, and on fire, you
pushed on.

Because even though you’re an inelegant, simple,
a mammal bottom-feeder, always fricking famished
little ugly thing that feasts on what crumbs fall
from the corner of our mouths, but you live
uncuddled, uncoddled, can’t be bought at Petco
and fed to fat snakes because you are not the maze-rat
of labs: pale, pretty-eyed, trained.
You raise yourself sharp-fanged, clawed, scarred,
patched dark—because of this alone he should love you.
But look at the beast, the poet tells me.
The table is already full,
and Rat, you are not a right, worthy thing.
Every time they say that
take your gutter, your dirt coat, fill this page, Rat
Scrape your underbelly against street, concrete, you better
squeak and raise the whole world, Rat;
let loose a plague of words, Rat,
and remind them that you, that I—
we are worthy of every poem.
Here.

Veronica Patterson

Gravity

At the window facing west, I gauge the storm’s debris—
last leaves, twisted locust pods spilling seeds, bare branches,
long strips of bark peeled from the old maple. Squirrels
frenzied in the disordered too-much. One pauses,
erect, on one end of a curved strip of bark. Another, leaping
from the maple’s trunk, lands on the other end, lifting
the first, which comes down, whipping the other up,
and for an oddly elastic moment they jump alternately,
see-sawing. I laugh. True story, I could add, as we
sometimes say, as if none of the others we told
were. Truth being no more than—no, released from—
this rib of bark in the littered back yard. For a moment
I see my younger brother in his torn blue jacket, straddling
a board on one side of a fulcrum, rising on a playground
a thousand miles away, as the years come down.

Forthcoming in Tar River Review

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

BY EMILY DICKINSON

“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –

I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.

(1861)

—————————————————————————————-

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

by Caitlin Seida

Hope is not the thing with feathers
That comes home to roost
When you need it most.

Hope is an ugly thing
With teeth and claws and
Patchy fur that’s seen some shit.

It’s what thrives in the discards
And survives in the ugliest parts of our world,
Able to find a way to go on
When nothing else can even find a way in.

It’s the gritty, nasty little carrier of such
diseases as
optimism, persistence,
Perseverance and joy,
Transmissible as it drags its tail across
your path
and
bites you in the ass.

Hope is not some delicate, beautiful bird,
Emily.
It’s a lowly little sewer rat
That snorts pesticides like they were
Lines of coke and still
Shows up on time to work the next day
Looking no worse for wear.

(from My Broken Voice, 2018)

Accents

by Denice Frohman

my mom holds her accent like a shotgun
with two good hands

her tongue
all brass knuckle
her hips, are all laughter and wind clap

she speaks a sanchocho of spanish and english,
pushing up and against one another in rapid fire

there is no tellin’ my mama to be “quiet,”
my mama don’t know “quiet”

her voice is one size
better fit all and you best not
tell her to hush, she waited
too many years for her voice to arrive
to be told it needed house-keeping.

english sits in her mouth remixed
so “strawberry” becomes “eh-strawbeddy”
and “cookie” becomes “eh-cookie”
and kitchen, key chain, and chicken
all sound the same.

my mama doesn’t say “yes”
she says, “ah ha”
and suddenly
the sky in her mouth
becomes Hector Lavoe song.

her tongue
can’t lay itself down
flat enough
for the english language.

it got too much hip,
too much bone,
too much conga,
too much cuatro
to two step,
got too many piano keys
in between her teeth
it got too much clave
too much hand clap,
got too much salsa to sit still

it be an anxious child wanting
to make Play-Doh
out of concrete, english
be too neat for
her kind of wonderful

her words spill in conversation
between women whose hands are all they got
sometimes our hands are all we got,
and accents that remind us
that we are still bomba, still plena

say, “wepa!”
and a stranger becomes your hermano,
say, “dale!”
and a crowd becomes a family reunion.

my mama’s tongue is a telegram from her mother
decorated with the coqui’s of el campo,

so even when her lips can barely
stretch themselves around english,
her accent
is a stubborn compass
always pointing her
towards home…