2012

The Conductors, Kate Worman-Becker

Driving Through the Darkness

        eloquence … stimulates all the rest … Emerson

Driving through the darkness alone

evening waited for your words to fill it

like the parched night waited for wetness to scatter

the lights of the city onto everything—

puddles, pavement, metal, window-glass, signs.

I’m hearing echoes of phrases. Impressions of things said

a cadence, a statement that repeats in my head

loosing myself in the charge of street- and tail-light—

pulsing fragments that stir the ember city.

Clear now of clouds, the moon—

that perfect silver pond of elements—

pulls my eyes up to the sky.

I don’t want to stop looking at it.

Though the road begs for my attention,

it hangs in my black eyes. It connects straight to my heart.

But I must drive on through the darkness alone.

Alone at certain times the streets at night are straighter and longer,

lonelier, and yet a place of strange contentment.

In your car, you are like the Sadhu in his cave

a wise and a mad man with an emergency brake for staff

cup holder for water vessel, dash for alter

moonlight and fluorescent for ash.

But any vehicle is just a bed in motion—

a place to position your thoughts and head—

always trying to understand how you got there again

where you’re going and how fast you can get back

to work or idleness in the end.

We are all vessels spread out in the hollow of night

dreaming unaccompanied, birthing by oneself, dying on our own.

Without looking honestly through the dark

without feelings to fuel or connections to make—we are only corpses.

Do not deny the Bast that sits by your side.

Grab a portion of the moon and put it in your pocket

to pull out when the light is low.

Prod those stubborn genes when they resist.

Your illuminating words can, and do, move the night.

Anita Stienstra

Title Unknown, Bethanny Spielman

Woman in Blue

She looks at me with her nearly closed

right eye, her left eye nothing but a gray

flap.  She tries to speak but hasn’t enough

of a mouth.  Who are the man and woman

behind her?  Pale faces, bodies melting,

the woman bubbling like champagne.

Clouds of smoke hover.  Are we allowed

to smoke?  I wouldn’t mind a cigarette

right now.  A vodka martini wouldn’t be

bad either.  These free-floating colors

don’t make sense.  Some bear resemblance

to human bodies but as hard as I try,

I can’t hold them together.  A cat white

as ermine stretches atop something blue. 

I hate cats.  At least this one isn’t black. 

A star once lived in the center of my mind. 

I didn’t see the supernova, but I know

there’s a black hole in my brain sucking out

memories.  I feel the hollow each one

leaves behind.  If I could, I’d leave,

but where would I go?  I can’t run. 

My legs and feet are rubbish.  I thought

this was a party.  The only treats I see are

those things in front of the woman in blue.

They look like cupcakes, devil’s food on

the bottom and a slathering of blue on top.

I’m not going to eat one of those lopsided

things.  They shouldn’t be there anyway.

That’s an ironing board, for God’s sake!

Pat Martin

Title Unknown, Sharon Yoswig

A Truth Revealed
in a Dream

This elegy for oaks is early

But the way of the world

Is that Griffin Woods will be sold,

The ancient trees sawed down,

The land stripped for a strip mall.

Acorns will rot under asphalt

And whose fault is it?

Clearly, the trees.

They don’t pay taxes.

                    

Lola Lucas

The Conductors, Kate Woman-Becker

The Conductors

            Two Views and a Haiku 

  

The end, when it came,

The last humans boarded ships

And set sail toward the stars.

Household pets went feral

When laps and can openers

Both disappeared

Into the thinnest of air.

Brick, metal and plastic eroded

On the planet they left behind,

Decayed even in cities above the rising tides,                     

Yet cells still built upon themselves                            

Becoming fur and claws and gleaming eyes.

How does a cat conduct himself

At the end of the world?

With dignity, of course,

Always dignity.                                                                

The cat fancier looks and thinks:

“Oh no, her paws and tummy will be all wet.”

The science fiction author:

 “The leaves show that it’s October Country.”

A Katrina survivor:

 “Just like when the waters receded in the lower 9^th ward.”

The ex-con:

            “Me, I ain’t never gonna get behind no bars again.”

A preacher:

            “So might the gates of Hell be guarded by a black furred Beelzebub!”

Inevitably,

Rails of thought lead us to our

Own destinations.

  Lola Lucas                            

Title Unknown, Mary Selinski

Autumn colors

As the crocus colors early Springtime lilac, mauve, the alabaster of pure hope,

The pumpkin colors Autumn fiery orange (recollecting Summer's Sun),

In a palette with

Dried cornstalk, whose knifeblade leaves blow, brown and curled, across the highways,

November's gold chrysanthemum (Death's unlikely companion),

Red maple, and

The leaves of sweet gum trees, stars in every color of the rainbow

Except blue,

Which would remind you:

Winter will come soon,

Blanketing these colors' warmth

With cold, dead, bleached-bones white

Under a troubled mackerel sky

Of gray.

Thus, under the Corn Moon, Harvest, Hunter's Moon,

We carve pumpkins into lanterns,

To carve from growing darkness just enough light

For one exuberant dance

Before the Full Cold Moon's hibernal rest.

Thea Chesley