by Alicia Fisher

It was vengeance, hot and dove – soft, that brought you
to the wide doomy edge, a lucid candle
standing Godtall and bleeding into its
brass: fire in the thighs, fire in the thumbs.  You were hungry and bruised and in
love with the certain grim tang that catastrophe
brings to your tongue.  You went one on one with the ghost.
Hamlet, I am the ivy snaked around your heart —
lovely white constrictor.  I make you nervous, but so do
crowds and black spirits — like the black ones
who raped me, say.  All while the ladies clacked across
the raw linoleum in their bright deaf heels —
So I can relate in a way.
Why the sky that day ?  Why did your father have to show up
in his battle robes ?  Good demon, be sweet and tell me — where does sugar
come from — ask me, ask me son!
Momma, why did you murder every last good
intention ?  I’ll give you fairy tales about slit lily throats, solid puke – logic.

Doves squeal in brutal ecstasy, a purgatory opera.
These are my golden breasts.  I go dead in the heart, go to the edge
and spread my legs wide for the sky: they say you do not have to be good
as long as you shimmer and sway in pure
lunar nakedness.  They say God will hand over the candle.
I will know then where my sad son came from, my boy
with his long fine fingers and strong tongue, his mad – dreams ringing dead bells,
dead bells in my womb’s – ear: raw sugar and silver
spoons can’t sweeten the fact that my only son has gone in –
sane, has gone like every ghost – harassed child before him up
to the safe shelf of his room where the wooden toy soldiers eat calamity
and scoop out their own crying eyes, slit their Achilles heels —
For all of fiction’s history: a ghost king.  So do
what the revisionist does, an every day simplicity — re – write me, me whom the black
spirits ravished.  It’s a given: my baby’s battered heart swelled
at that first Ophelia – taste.  It is done!  There is rape in the masses. There is
everywhere a mother who makes and breaks a son.

by Bill Edmondson

At St. Mary’s of the Assumption
Under infrequent sun
At certain times    on certain days
The shadow of a woman’s breast
Graces the cupola
Although this revelation
Sent newsmen tingling up and down
Small streets    to find an angle
The breast is better seen as maternal

For it has to be as mother
She opens her arms
This long    shocked    afternoon
Mourners flock here to grieve

I’d be with them
If only I believed
Not down at the Castle Club in the Tenderloin
Where three somber shots of Jack Daniels
Line up on the bar
One for a decent mayor
One for a pioneer
One for she who must wear a city’s scar

by Bill Edmondson

The night I fell backward off the stool
At Rancho Nicasio Bar
And the owner suggested
I get the hell out    I gathered my bones
Jerry    I managed
I can’t stop this    I’ve got to be with her
Then tacked on out of there
Past mounted skulls of animals dropped into dark
The door swung open
First a mothy light grazed my head
Then I woke in his cabin

by Bill Edmondson

You’ve parked on the overpass
Must get down to Beale Street
Could take the long way around
But the unmarked mouth of a stairwell pulls
And as we ignore warnings of wind shear    a lover’s spouse
You drop in    helpless now as spider in porcelain

Steps here rigid    sharp    recede
The passage narrow and mean
Designed for a mugger’s privacy
You want to go straight down quick to the end
But slow to sidestep sops in urine pools
While around you
Graffiti – bramble claws
You pass a recess in the wall
Where he may be to    greet
You should have gone around

Beale Street leads to beaded
Drinks    delicious
Gasp from a lover’s mouth
Release

On your return    sated
Twist through streets as you will
You’ll end up here
Above    your car patient and caring    waits
You steady your heartbeat
Start to climb