where is the river :: a poetry experiment

Lauren Bender :: Six poems Valerie Witte :: Five poems Garrett Phelan :: Three poems Matt Morris :: Three poems Forrest Rapier :: Two poems Joel Robert Ferguson :: Four poems

  Strays Living near the Saint John’s River My fathermark could be a drawbridge, slowly raising over stillwater—splitting himself for a beam and faded, inglorious flags.   Every wayward barge in the marsh sidles-up drunk in the daytime—he scrubs his head in a clawfoot washtub while Mozart levitates Elise above a frozen pond.   Thomas Street neighborhood strays, the addicts and wildcats, splay on his loveseats and rockers as invisible X marks dot the mango-violet horizon.   First time I gathered her fuzzy, little striped lump of a body in my rough palms, she was all cough and bone. Tigress descendant,   puff with a knack-for-dozing under tables, the royal kind of rare beast made for psalms or rhymes. After a few, luxuriant   weeks of canned tuna and horse, we blew fat as basketballs, slouched and lumbered like buzzsaws humming lullabies for the Lazarus cicadas.   Where we’re living now, people disappear—die and get found.     ...

  Epilogue IX   have I fallen edwin began although fallen may be inaccurate if it conjures in the mind’s  eye a halcyon sky-blue feather floating against bleached & bloated clouds reminiscent of  brow furrowed he paused to flip through a handy book then added  constable’s study of clouds oil & canvas 1822 with no intimation to its elusive  source that proverbial bird of song & story a symbol of happiness having just flitted by  warbling subtly camouflaged into your disfavor would it be more precise to ask  edwin uncertain he’d made his point clear posited have I plummeted or perhaps  plunged both indicating a rapid steep often violent descent as if I were sporting concrete  sneakers among the silt bog moss duckweed assorted plastic handguns paper ballots tolkien                        rings carp a whirlpool washer-dryer combo rusted hulls & s...

  Wash Ancestors Take a shower. Walk past away. Watch it get sucked down the drain. Clean out all the debris between words. Smile at someone, anyone. Make love to a loved one. Make love to anyone. How do you do that? Wait for the sun to move so you can sit in the shade. Wait for your breath to make song. Wait or Walk. Choices. Meet a friend at the library. Meet a stranger in a book. Before you go to bed, pardon yourself. Greet ancestors. Wash their bones.       Walking Theory for Brothers I know everything about you.    The dirt in the creases of your hand.    The bad kidney. The liver turning you yellow.    All the ball games you never played.    The children without your name resting on their tongues.    Reach in and take the unsaid words from my mouth, feel the heft of them.      I stray.     Walls.     I get stuck.    Errant steps.  ...

  Encapsulation I stop to buy a necklace on my way out, one you won't like, a silver cross, but it doesn't mean I want   anything more any more than it means you want to be a mother when you browse baby shoes and have   mini-breakdowns over the smallness of their feet. There is something so beautiful about a cross. You   know how I feel about shapes. You know how I want to surround myself with symbols. Somehow, I have to   singe a significance into my skin and hope to have stamina enough to hold onto it a while. Or else my eyes   will search out what is missing, something you call my selfish game. I promise I would never want   to offend by wearing a beloved god in my attempt to kick crawling away, but in the dark it's hard to have   integrity at core, so much core forced out by fears.     Golden shovel: “You want to have feet. / You want to have eyes. / You want to have fears.” – Jane Hirshfield     V...

  4. Are you so sure we can move freely in space : somewhere behind me, on the periphery, at the bar : while M ’s work is read, by others as it forever will be : they were tucked in, recessed : was it fear : what a thought : I forgot I’d write about them : not too much : the emcee said to read any length of time, drink this : what cost tribute : I met her partner, I thought it was her partner : I’d seen images on her wall many times : many seemed to involve homemade pie : how context expands dimensionality, but the room was small : shut down now, two years later, another victim : outside D mentioned them while catching a car : I am not one to ask, I said : then told her : they fade into the background, shadow cast on a surface, a body intercepting light : 7. It’s a mistake to do things too easily : two days after, we collectively resorted to some form of normal, posts about dinner, cats : but her final messages continued surfacing : pictures of leaves ask to be identified : the...

  Around a Bone-Setting L ogistics were the thing: backlog from the first wave, caution as procedure, locked wings and fail-safes in place. No other family, I could only enter alone. You were four nights waiting with radial and ulna cracked o pen as if that pothole in the crosswalk had wanted to slurp up your marrow. Ball popped from elbow socket too. One i n a million, freak fall, only cliches. Premature birth, inward at ankles, tiny elf feet were Judases with toes pointing up, last link rolled in a reaction. After you had hazed through h ours of the knife, setting, pins and plates, w e ate fried pickles and cheeseless, meatless, pizza that was an ordeal to get onto the ward. Outside, things were bad trending worse. Patients smoked by the William Avenue entrance, masks cupping their chins. A month would pass a nd we'd be saying, hey, at least it all happened before the second wave. Til then, pain management for you; f or your neighbour those four nights n ot so much. With cracked ...