by Sharon Olinka

Winter, 1973: her gallery.
Margarita smelled of amber.
Daughter of an exiled countess.
Silver bracelets, three on each wrist.
Her hug, kiss on both cheeks.
Allo! Welcome!   Jazz musicians
played at Bertrand’s opening.
He just won the Prix de Rome.
It felt like home.

Margarita’s apartment,
view of Fifth Avenue.
Silently the housekeeper
brought out gilt–edged plates.
Bland roast beef, mashed potatoes.
Friedrich didn’t like to be called Fred.
Margarita suggested I try the Chilean wine.
Friedrich’s shiny, straight blond
hair neatly parted, to one side.

Now on his third glass of wine,
Friedrich spoke of a country estate.
Berry picking. Childhood summers.
His dear Uncle Carl, who had been
in the SS, who had meant well.
His goodness misunderstood.

They seemed so happy. Margarita
pouring yet more wine for Friedrich.
I almost hesitated. But didn’t. Said “I’m Jewish.”
Their faces wide
with We didn’t know.

Outside, more wind.
Gargoyle snouts obscured by snow.
One angel statue caught my eye.

Lips faintly purple.
Sweet smile full of secrets.
Two elongated, pearly teeth.

by Sharon Olinka

This is for the day your lips
parted, and I sucked
guava candy, melting in your mouth.
Candy bought the week
your mother died.

Nothing could have gotten
you to go back, just that,
her death, memories too strong
of police thugs, threats
of arrest and torture.

Then your escape.
Flight from friends,
from family, enclosed
world of the University
of the Andes, to New York
and subsequent poverty.
You dreamer, fighter,
believer in truths
of the body.

Your skin of
muscled silk.
The beauty mark near
your waist, so like
mine. Your cock
an exact fit, to the hilt.
No matter when you
entered, I was yours. Open
and wet. Your love of
figs, chocolate, and grapes.
Your teal blue eyes,
like mist on water.
Thin chest that made me
feel each time I held
you was the first,
encircling you, protective.
Your murmuring and cries,
as you rested
in my ocean.

Who would burst
out the door
as you did, in a light jacket
during a snowstorm, just
to be inside me?

I fooled myself I could have you.
Other women ruined you.
A bad mother beat you
with coat hangers.

Only once
did a guava sweetness
briefly enter my mouth.

by Christian Teresi

The Naga were headhunters, but wrote butterfly
On the parched reliefs of temples, and in manuscripts born
By monastics that knew anything meaningful is without speaking.

They wrote butterfly to tell you who their ancestors were.
When they stopped cutting the heads off missionaries they started
To care about clothes. Some think the Naga are not Naga

If they cannot hunt heads. Some Naga still believe
In were–tigers who travel to the spirit world to speak
With the dead, which is to say they speak with butterflies.

The Naga wrote butterfly, and I still know what they mean.
After enough time, no one remember who anyone was.
Butterflies as the reincarnation of dead warriors to some,

Or foretell imminent evil to others. The Naga know butterflies
Conjoined to the air as silence is the most meaningful prayer.
These ancient ways are gone, but they show us something

Of what they were at least for now. In the beginning,
There was the way wings sigh and ease down without kneeling.
There was nectar and the migration from one belief to another.

by Christian Teresi

As a boy he hauled full buckets, first light breaching
The details of cleared acreage, and thankfully again
When the day closed with the latch to the storage tank.

The balance of his efforts now replaced by vacuum hoses,
Herd size, volume of raw milk. The cost of production
Always more than the return. He recalls his father saying,

This will always be a way to make a living. The dairyman
Leaves alone the young calves not old enough to milk,
The ones that require the least, and goes after the heifers

Whose pendulums are always either feeding machines
Or birthing, and watches their heads twitch, so slight,
Indistinguishable from no or a nod. Each cow stares

From the preceding stall, waits stupidly, indifferent
To the muzzle flash. To help them along his rifle stares
Long enough at the empty space their head just held

To see if each still twitches. Then, if necessary, again.
All fifty–one shot in turn. Hulking beastly dominos.
The dairyman takes them all with him, since he suspects

He will not know how to let go of busy. So let them all go
Together. Echoes in the barn — the same sound
Of target practice. His finger knows the body of the trigger

And exhale — the sound just like a new gun being sighted —
Or all those times he sat in tree stands — his bead on some
Unlucky animal — the slog of his breath pulled from him.