by Justen Ahren

i.

When I need to see god, I watch my children sleep.
The trees in the distance
sway in the wind and snow. When I am in need,
I interrogate memories,

hold again my son’s hand in mine, see the tiny sun
in my glass of water.

ii.

I dreamt of silver buttons on their black coats.
I dreamt of snow

remaining on the coat sleeves, a moment before
melting, the fine lattice

of the snowflakes silence, miraculous
silence, the rifles aimed at

the buttons, I dreamt of
the air before the shots.

iii.

If I am a seed, are you what I open for?
And what are you now I am leafless

that for which I have lost everything?
I don’t mean to bring you down

but to ascend, what is required?
Love, do not tell me what

or who you are, I have no need of certainty.
In the search I may acquire

bright pieces, dribbles and grams.
My ignorance is your feeling

into the world as a creek. I, too, am being
gathered by a sea.

you are not remote, but always,
inevitable.

iv.

I met a woman last night in the Jardin just after midnight.
She introduced herself, and we sat together

on a bench. She fingered the buttons of her coat.
A child slept on her lap.

And feeling her need to talk, I let listening be my service.
That was all, I listened.

And I can’t say what, if anything more than this, I did.
And what was said, I don’t remember.

But, two strangers, we were no longer strange,
just openings between which god flew.

by William Carpenter

It’s one of those nights after the surrender of Iraq,
not much on TV any more, your family’s in another state
for Easter, and you’re watching “The Civil War” again.
McClellan’s wasting so much time at Sharpsburg that you
get a beer out of the kitchen and come back and he’s
still staring at the river. You shout at the daguerreotype:
attack, get it over with, Lee’s weak, you can finish him
off, but he won’t listen and the war goes on, the amputations
without anaesthesia, the men saying good–bye to their own hands
while Walt Whitman reads to them from Sir Walter Scott.
You’ve seen it twice. You know how it’s going to end.
You step out on the porch and look through the window
at the empty chair watching Jeb Stuart at Bull Run.
This is a foggy evening. You hear a footstep on the lawn,
a voice. You see a man with a white flag tied to his rifle,
a man in uniform with a leaflet that says I SURRENDER.
He’s got an eye missing, a tied–off pantleg, an AK–47
and a hole right through his chest to the other side.
He’s an Iraqi. He’s one of the dead soldiers that got bombed
by the B–52’s, and he wants you to bury him, not in the desert
either, but in your own front lawn, where your grass is just
sprouting like the first tender appearance of pubic hair.
The corpse looks through the window with his good eye while
the Union army under Sherman torches Atlanta, and the sight of
all those fires excites him even though he’s dead.
You want to give him a beer and feed him, but he starts
kneeling and kissing your hand, he starts pulling you toward
the lawn and making motions like a man digging a grave, but
you can’t do it, you can’t bury a human being in your yard.
He points with his rifle toward the flower patch, where
your tulips and crocuses are just coming out. Now the gun’s
right on you, and you don’t ask if a carcass can still pull
the trigger, you just dig, and when you’ve finished digging
the man lies down. Back on TV there’s a parade in New York City.
Lee has surrendered at Appomattox and the war is over, but not
for you; you have to cross this man’s arms over his chest and
lay his gun beside him and cover him over with black garden dirt.
You have to replant all the bulbs in the dark so that your wife
and kids won’t stumble upon the body and find out. You have to go
in and watch the shooting in Ford’s Theater because it’s not complete without the assassination; but it’s too late, they’ve shot Lincoln
and played the Star Spangled Banner and the screen is blank, it’s
only you and the dead soldier and there’s nothing he can do to help.

by Jayne Benjulian

Would Mother be young, standing in the middle
of Knight Street talking to Frances Druck?
The hem of her yellow apron ripples.
She looks back at the quiet house, the spot
where a child’s mouth fogs a circle
on the living room window. Did she say
take care of the children, the sentence blurred
to dust, like grey on a neglected table
the caretaker blows away. Atomized
in three directions. Call her back.
Once, she appeared in the silk of memory
waiting for our lives to begin. In the moment
the heart locks, I try a key, turning;
turning a tunnel at the end of our lives.

by Jayne Benjulian

           1

I left him once
when he disappeared for a day
I left him once
no one heard a word — he surfaced
later — what did he imagine —
time froze when he stepped off the earth.
I left him once.

           2

Then I asked him:
what rose up and what descended,
then I asked him
the definition of honor,
lie of omission, who are you
person with whom I am speaking?
Then I asked him.

           3

But it was not
the beginning, the beginning —
but it was not
all there was. There was a secret
soldered to our veins, a chill and
burning current, a child’s voice
but it was not.