All posts tagged: Issues

Aphorism 57: You Cannot Fail at Being You

By JOHN BLAIR 

We cherish ourselves even to the bones
which like some mother’s rigid hangers
hold us to our lacquered shapes in the smug 
dialetheia of am and briefly was until 
we come to our raveled ends       everyone 
just taking up space until space takes us back
one washed-out moment at a time        like tea 
leaves steeping in a cup until we’re ready 
for someone to bow in close and take
a quick ceremonial sip       then turn the cup
       wipe clean the rim and hand it carefully 
to yet another honored guest who       mindful 
of what we might let go to waste       will not 
leave until every drop is drunk.

Aphorism 57: You Cannot Fail at Being You
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Jack Benny

By MITCH SISSKIND

John Ashbery called me after he died
So you can imagine my excitement
When in his droll hyper-nasalated
Timbre quite undiminished by death
He chatted on about the bowls of
Pitted cherries provided as snack-food
In the upper worlds and of afternoons
Climbing trees with Edna Millay to read
Comic books with her in the branches.
Then his voice dropped two octaves
And he spoke solemnly of Jack Benny:
‘You can say funny things or say things
Funny but silence was the punchline
For Jack Benny.’ And he was gone.

Jack Benny
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Car Wash, Key Largo

By RICARDO PAU-LLOSA

2 Samuel 14:14

The soapy drench is physics drawn to river
toward me, 15 feet away in my flimsy
chair. At first its body fans to deliver
brims to concrete sinks I had not glimpsed,
then narrows to speed unveiling dips and bellies,
then courses on to a hole with a remnant pool
anchored by a cigar butt. A halt belies
its reaches. A lump has pushed the grey drool
around the promised lake in delta featherings
while another drive has passed beneath my seat
to rest in my colossal shadow, clearing
its slate of suds. The flow now ponds in the heat
and readies its ghost mirror to catch me, gray
in noon’s appraisals, the reaper of the day. 

Car Wash, Key Largo
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Milagro

By RUBÉN DEGOLLADO

Whatever you believe, know this: Teodoro Ramirez’s dog could see into the spirit world. Teddy, as he was called by everyone in barrio La Zavala, never shared this with anyone. Of course, the only people he could have shared this with would have been his co-workers or his tíos and tías, who only came by his house occasionally now that his mother, Josefina, had died, que en paz descanse. He probably could have told la Señora Izquierdo, the nice old lady who lived alone next door and brought him tamales every year when it was close to Christmas. She may not have believed him, but she would have listened.

Teddy believed lots of things his mother, Josefina, had told him and sometimes heard her voice even now that she was gone from this earth, the diabetes she’d had trouble controlling taking her too soon, que en paz descanse. Like if you went outside and got either your head or your feet wet, but not the rest of your body, you would catch a cold. If you ate hot flán or cake, your stomach would get sick. “Mi hijo,” she would say, “don’t eat that or you’ll get empachado.” If you pointed at a rainbow and then touched yourself without washing your hands, you would get pimples wherever you had touched yourself. But the one thing that helped Teddy comprehend how his dog was different was Josefina’s teachings about spirits. She had often said that any place—a house, a church, even a whole barrio—was imbued by either good or bad spirits that had influenced the events there. Teddy had even accompanied his mother on several limpias of homes, where she and the comadres from church anointed doorways with oil, waved bundles of burning sabio in hallways to clear the home of bad memories or mal espíritus that had plagued the families therein. 

Milagro
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Matryoshka in Odessa

By DIANE THIEL 

When I started out, it was mostly about the adventure, 
following Ivan and the firebird, heading into history
across the Black Sea, climbing the Odessa steps
through the resistance, then the suppression
which fed yet another resistance, following 
Pushkin through the tangle of fairy tales 

Matryoshka in Odessa
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The Human Revealed Unto Himself

By FAISAL ALHEBAINY
Translated from the Arabic by NASHWA NASRELDIN

The cold stings your skin as you walk out of the hotel. It’s your first visit to Europe. You’re with a cultured friend who knows these countries well and, most importantly, is an art enthusiast. He immediately suggests, with a friendly and zealous shake of the head: “How about a museum?” And you think it’s a great idea. Restaurants, cafés, streets, tourists, crowded squares… they’re the same everywhere. But if you go to a museum, you’ll be able to show off about it to your co-workers. And it’ll be a conversation starter with Sarah, the woman you can’t stop staring at, who has an odd-looking painting in her office and who once told you that it was by someone called Dalí, although you’ve already forgotten the rest of the name.

The Human Revealed Unto Himself
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Safety Advice for Staying Indoors

By MARY O’DONOGHUE 

 

The farmer’s daughter began her fifth period, more excavating, more mortal than the previous. The toilet under the stairs flushed half-heartedly, returning red-brown effluent. Go down, go away, be off to the underworld! She pumped a second time, jangled the handle to make her point. But there would be more. Dark clumps and entrails, another six days of the end of the world.

Safety Advice for Staying Indoors
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My Body as the George Washington Bridge All Lit Up at Midnight

By ALEXANDRA WATSON

 

434 wires unlock the land
double-decked suspension
hot for incandescence
a 14 lane corridor
top exposed
stiffening truss
to come over

limbs sling across the chasm
100 million self propelled cells
carbon hardening soft iron
opens all 29 tolls
bottom enclosed
can’t afford
unanchored

My Body as the George Washington Bridge All Lit Up at Midnight
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Family of Origin Rewrite: 1982

By K. IVER

 

My father teaches ethics at a university. 
My mother teaches ethics at a university. 
They save. Their money. Buy 
a large bungalow in Connecticut. 
They continue. Saving. Enough 
to support the San Francisco AIDS
Foundation and their baby.
They read the news and wish kindness
into our laws. One of them will say
Sweden hasn’t been to war since 1812. 
The other says you can start a business
in Sweden and get free healthcare.
They’re excited. About my arrival. 
They remain. Calm. When 
midnight cries wake them. 
My father waits. For my mother to heal. 
Before asking for sex. She’s good. 
At saying no. She throws meditation
and exercise and intense therapy 
at her trauma. Still goes to AA. 
When wrong. She promptly admits it. 
Every night she arrives home from
the university. Her soft. Low voice. 
Builds a replica in my throat. She wears 
minimal. Makeup. Cuts her nails down 
because who needs the fuss. When I walk. 
Into a room. And see my father. 
I continue walking in. When my father
and I leave. The house. Lots of women
introduce themselves. When we get back
he tears. Their numbers over the trash. 
On weekends my father and I dig 
in the dirt. I watch him plant 
lilac bulbs around the spruce. He lets 
my small hand pack the ground. 
Affirms it as help. When my father puts.
me to bed with true stories of him 
sewing clothes for new mothers 
in Ukraine. I fall asleep fast.

Family of Origin Rewrite: 1982
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