Forgetting you is like a lion
by Francine Witte
pawhappy and swatting
at me like I’m a heatwave
mosquito. I try to explain
that you and I are over,
and can I please enjoy my tea?
I offer to add you to my
history or my reflection,
showing up as a frown line
of a single gray hair. But
if forgetting you insists
on being like a lion complete
with jungle crown, years
of sniffing for blood, I might
have to get a weapon. Not
a gun, per se, or a spear, but
something better. Legs that can
outran a memory, or eyes
that can stare down a catbeast,
look into its open cave mouth,
and when it rolls out that long
carpet tongue, I can simply
stand there and yawn back.
Jazzman
by Dave Morrison
He felt it on his
eyelids before he
opened them, that
simple, insistent pattern,
a drummer with a broken
stick, a dancer with a
clubfoot, a box of rolling
pins dumped down the
lighthouse stairs.
He hummed it to himself
through the toothbrush
foam, tap-danced it down
the stairs, heard snatches of
it in the subway wheels, tried
to whistle it under his breath,
fingered chords on his pant legs,
chased the melody like a fat man
chasing a butterfly with a heavy
net, almost got it, almost . . .
Found himself at work, the butterfly
gone out an open window, fifty
joyless tasks nipping at his cuffs like
fifty bad little dogs . . . but that night the
idea crawled out of his horn and burst
like fireworks and he was mesmerized and
grateful, and so so happy
Welcome Homesick
by Dave Morrison
Just to see if I can
do it, I want to try to
write a long poem, a
rambling poem, a poem
that goes out the door with
no destination in mind, just
the need for fresh air and a
change of scenery, a poem
that gives in to restlessness and
curiosity, a poem that nods to
its neighbors but doesn’t stop to
chat, a poem comfortable with
the lack of a plan, a poem capable
of buying a bus ticket and blocking
out the worries (Is the front door
locked? Is the cat fed? What about
work? Will people think I’ve
lost it?) and following the muse.
I want to write a poem that doesn’t
care how it looks, a poem that
doesn’t mind being stared at or
ignored, a spontaneous poem that
could sleep on a stranger’s couch,
join a party in an Italian restaurant,
or slip into the back of a quiet church.
I want to write a poem that could take
a job in a diner under a made-up
name and create a new life like one
might draw a house design on the
back of a placemat, a poem that would
discover that it was capable of nobler,
or darker acts than it thought possible.
Or maybe the poem walks downtown,
drinks cup after cup of coffee at the bus
station while reading the list of
destinations and watching the daylight
change through the windows, then
walks home with a bottle of wine in
a paper bag, feeds the cat, and takes out
a pen and paper.
First Date
by Elizabeth Garber
December afternoon, we strode across frozen crust
of cut meadow. The curve of earth soon swallowed
your old white cape, faded barn, your carefully
built stone walls. We peered into the forest tangle,
silver birch, alder thicket, bronze oak leaves trembling.
Our eyes were shy, darting, hiding like deer shadows.
We knelt to marvel at crystal columns erupted out
of frozen mud. In the growing quiet, flickering fine
snow etched the ice-streaked earth, catching on
broken paled grasses, highlighting hidden tracings
of a tractor’s path. We faced a vast sky filling with
fine lace. Standing separate. Stilled. Hushed. Chill
dusted our faces. Our breathing, pale shadows, our
vanishing, timeless. It was only our fingers, unused
to bite of cold, that grasped us back, startled. Our
eyes met in a smile that was deeper, as if something
had been settled. We returned toward a lamp, lit over
your kitchen table, streaking fire across whitened grass.