Maybe I Was Meant To Be Humbled
by Elizabeth Garber
Maybe I needed to be broken, my will and desires,
visions shredded, leaving me facing empty nights, clear
eyed, neutral and alone, Balboa exploring a placid sea
not knowing if I am going anywhere but here, my
tangerine sheeted bed, my marmalade cat purring,
French Provencal blues, yellow flowered, orange
twirled squares sewed into a map staking out the world,
edges of the sea pouring off the square edges where
lions and basilisques hover out of sight, where ships
sail to the edge, hurtling off the flat earth’s rim.
Maybe
I was meant to plow my fierce dreams back into
the soil of sleep under flannelled perfume of cotton,
cologne of pillow, in the thrall of butterscotch light
licking my thoughts, lapping against my eyes as I pull
my frantic notebook to me, like a lover’s arm in the dark,
even though the comfort of another’s body is a fading story
I’ve lost the text for, the bookmark fell out of that page,
the volume closed and I slept past the plot, yawned as
that world vanished, ventriloquist of the afternoon,
Alfredo of the night, my coverlet of sleep hovering
under the sleep of bees, the sleep the sting brings,
hiving in the leaves waiting for our footsteps, waiting
for the embrace of bees to knot and choke the heart out
of its daily rippling struggles.
Maybe hope had to pack up
his charlatan’s embroidered cloth, the one he threw on
the ground in the market place for centuries, where
his dice and bones landed, twisting futures over every
surly wind.
Maybe the fortune teller’s
deck had to be overturned, the Tarot cards scattered to flit from branch
to branch like warblers, migrating soft blur of yellow,
beat of wings, fragile puff of feathers in the wind,
pumping their minute journey across ridiculous oceans,
Maybe their hope has feathers, but maybe mine
was meant to be broken, a crumbling parchment
scattering over north Atlantic seas.
Maybe I needed
to catapult from the suck of the gravitational field, like this
Timor Mortis Conturbat Me
by Anton Yakovlev
I took my time compartmentalizing with exotic relish
but eventually did shipwreck into your apartment’s
cracked-asphalt blue mountain, just in time for my haze
to hike in again. I couldn’t get enough
of your unsentimental photo abyss
which could also be used as a folding ghost
of dominant watersheds. I cleaned clocks,
keeping tranquility above legends.
Falling asleep to your elegiac Augustan fuck-ups
was salubrious enough, but your purple
ground me to cricket flour. Rogers and Hammerstein
pedaling is such an elusive science.
My faith in humanity was good and gone by the time
your fireproof circular token cult clashed with
the battalions in me — something you didn’t spot
until too late. Chopin jazzed the three blind mice.
If only you had known more preemptively
what I meant. Soon nothing more existed.
Nothing Happened
by Anton Yakovlev
When he finally managed not to exit at Exit 9,
after twenty-some years of being too scared
to drive outside Tarrytown, and just kept driving,
the sun hadn’t distracted him with its classic libertine light
nor had a truck or cones blocked the exit ramp.
He kept driving, and nothing happened.
He parked in Valhalla and had Caffè Verona.
When years later he finally managed to tell this story
to a genius who was so in love with him
her ghost car glided beside him on any highway,
the genius lay down on his baby grand and said,
“How wonderful!” He brewed her Caffè Verona.
When two weeks later she left him,
the sun didn’t distract him with its classic libertine light.
He drove outside Tarrytown, and nothing happened.
He parked in Valhalla.
Your Windmills Can Set Down Their Fireworks
by Anton Yakovlev
You’re losing me in counterfeit Tarot cards,
in lines you’ve written hoping for someone else
to slow your fall through the earth. I write
incomprehensible lyrics to be alone with your God.
Don’t look for me. I’m hanging out in your lobby,
but you left months ago. You were born and died
almost immediately according to that bystander.
Memories crash into my frozen yogurt.
You’re losing me when you say you’re a spirit world.
You’re losing me when you say you’re death.
I do not look for you in the early bird parking lots.
I do not look for you in the grapefruit shrubs.
I wanted to keep you alive;
now I’m an iPad streaming
news that never took place. I’m missing
the most important part of your parade.
I should be arrested for having lingered
this long. You ring like a carnival,
and no one understands you’re a manuscript
left in someone else’s Saragossa.
I see you in a forgotten coliseum. I see you now
as I never saw you in 1200 BC. I’m so scared I only
spoke to the God in you. And you —
you only see yourself as recyclables.