by Mark Melnicove

Don’t chew on plastic soldiers! my mother shouted,
ripping them from my mouth,
they’ll make you sick! she warned, leaving me
without troops on the stairway landing
to watch her calves tramp down treads to the kitchen,
where she blasted out smoke from Pall–Malls
and whipped up eggs in a blender.
I had no desire to join her below —
I could smell a war burning —
nor did she call after.

by Stephen Cramer

We could have borrowed beads from our parents’ dresser tops
or peeled faux mother of pearl buttons from our sweaters,

but immobile treasures bored us — luxury was all in the pursuit —
so we took the risk of dusk & thorns for fireflies, the barbs

suddenly lashing our shins & wrists because fireflies have no horns or teeth
or talons, & that means they seek the safety of briars until the right

female flickers the right combination from her abdomen, releasing the males
into the cool night air of this late June field. In this late June field

filled with rusting farm equipment, we were shadows among
darker shadows, these living jewels irresistible because of their here — not

here — here — not here — the six syllables of bioluminescence
crammed into a series of sparks & glitter. Here’s how to become rich

through death: by being eight years old. By being intoxicated
by June nights. By being unaware that this flashing in the thickets

is the simplest form of flirtation & defense. I didn’t know we were death
when we trapped the fireflies in Ball jars. I was thinking

we’d have pets for a quarter of an hour before we released them,
oblivious that jarring them meant that some would crush them

into amulets, rings, diadems, earrings, until my neighbor grabbed my hand
& squished an abdomen onto my ring finger. The previous summer,

the same neighbor tried to keep a small perch she’d pulled from the creek.
We’d watched it shimmy & dart, an opaline flash among the reeds,

till it snagged on her line. Then it sat in a bowl of water, bedroom–bound,
where it turned stagnant after searching for a safe corner

that wasn’t there. A week later it was belly up, its scales as crisp
as that summer night when someone tried to press another living ember

onto my wrist. I flinched. Let me do it myself. & when they cupped the firefly
into my palm I turned & let it go, the light limping back into the darkness

where it belonged, leaving me as rich, as poor as any jewel–less king.

by Stephen Cramer

Steel lemmings, they follow one another as they’d grown
accustomed to all those years, the old New York City subway

cars hauled away from the cavernous platforms of Madison & 5th
to speed toward their final stop on the ocean floor. Stacked

onto a barge & conducted out to the depths, the 18 ton cars
are lifted with a front end loader & dumped, their doors

permanently open to take in the transit of brackish
liquid & foam. Ten years later, the corrosion is to be expected.

What’s not: the coral & anemones blooming in chestnut spangles
& token–sized rosettes, the stalactites almost glitzy in their burgundy,

plum & orange, the school of fish feinting one way then another inside
this pseudo coral reef. So much richness among the tedium

of the subway’s metal, & there always has been:
a regular on my commute fifteen years ago, a blind woman

threaded her way through the cars as she has threaded her way
through my dreams ever since, reshaping the lyrics of “Amazing Grace”

to I was blind, oh praise the lord . . . The silent rush
hour crowd parted for her as the lyrics spilled through the track’s

metallic chant & thrum, the cracked leather of her voice binding us strangers
like family before it pooled in the dusty corners. In my dream,

her voice morphs into matter, each note a silver–scaled muscle, until the song
is a school of fish flashing & skimming from her mouth,

each silver body spangling the air before our eyes, rubbing the pearly
swish of a tail against our earlobes. The darting sparks of fish

use the subway to keep away from the threat of larger mouths,
the four feet of coiling hunger that slide by those graffitied windows.

Through many dangers, toils, & snares I have already come. Through all the world’s strangeness, we learn to make a home.

by Stephen Cramer

This is the liquid mantra that the woman
in the bespangled mumu repeats every three & a half

breaths, practically singing while suit after suit passes
her by on the way to the night’s accumulation

of faxes & the bottomless K–cup. Her voice, tossed
into the uptown breeze, pools for a moment on the ate

before letting itself tumble into the roiling rapids
of ba–na–na–too–dah–lah, the syllables floating so

buoyantly on top of all the city’s offerings — the passing subwoofer’s thunder, the prehistoric groan of air brakes —

like a pebble on a storm–tossed wave, & I sing it
to myself, then I sing it out loud, & it’s a full

two blocks later before the words unknot themselves
& reform into: eight bananas, two dollars.

For a moment I’m let down that this morning’s mantra
had really just been a commercial, so I tune

the meaning out & turn the sounds back into
the benediction that they seem to want to be,

& they rise into the sky & say it’ll all be okay
to those in rags & those in suits, those who understand

what people are trying to tell them, & those
who get things all wrong, & they fall over the city

like a blanket of soot & diamonds.