issue eleven

I have taught you all you need to know. A grosbeak skittered across the path,

 

but my dog was not distracted.His eyes shone with new understanding.

the eyes, mustaches, and cheekbones
for years settling on your dreams like dew.
You didn’t want to say Mass alone.

– Mass in Quarantine

Always her voice from the trenches,
rifle rising, taking aim:

 

    life isn’t easy, you know  
    good isn’t good enough
    I’m the only one can tell you this

– Love Poem for My Mother

On a Sabbath afternoon, we might watch men filling buckets
with slick, gray fish from the even grayer river

– I Remember Good Days

Just a face on a shirtless body,
a body so much older than the last time I saw it.
Mom texts
            Alcohol?
but I know the difference in wreckage,
how the body puffs when pickled, eats itself
when sleep or food is forgotten.

– Mugshot

                        …In a month,
my father will be sent by ship into battle,

unaware of the utter darkness there,
till his unit enters Buchenwald.

– War Time, 1942

At first, they removed the dirt with naked hands, the rocks hurt them, as if they were fighting them to avoid uncovering the hell of a son, a daughter stretching out their hand waiting for the fingers, the palm freed from solitude and abandonment.

– You Shall Be the Earth

Fear, misery, love, desire for vengeance are emotions strong enough to worm their way into the bowels of a house, coil into the walls, lurk in the long dim corridor shadows, fester at the back of musty cupboards and bedroom dresser drawers…

– The Truth About My Old Haunts

I had gone in to get her, confronted by dazed residents sitting like barnacles on ripped red vinyl chairs in a hot, smoke-filled lobby that burned my eyes and turned my stomach.

– Nocturnal Lagophthalmos

One day, you led me to a shadowy corner of the narthex where tilty circular stairs mounted the air. We tiptoed the steps, like a series of half-tones, to the pipes in the loft.

– The Heart and Other Organs