Literary as hell.
Love was there
spreading hope like jam over my taste buds.
Then the first skipping rope broke,
got snared on a fence and frayed.
I stole away on a subway train where
hundreds have gone walking into a warzone.
Amen to the end and the predator’s
happy-go-lucky disposition. One claw,
one tentacle, in flowing precise motion.
Another lifetime and it may be different,
tender as lovers beneath their first full moon,
or worse, like cartilage deteriorating.
My parents rest in drawers of steel,
within shiny, cushioned boxes
behind walls of stone.
Slid in like bakers’ trays,
but they will not rise,
will not resurrect, Continue reading
You are just a tiny pinpointing dot
But you can pin an end onto
Anything, anybody, even the entire cosmos
From the strongest statement
In the most powerful discourse
To the weakest form
Of the representation of life
A solid full stop
A minimal black hole
Among all punctuation marks
You have the most uses:
In ancient Greek you were meant
To cut off everything as if to show
All the continuity in modern English
Even in Chinese, or Babelangue
Art should be a work able to startle the heart
Belief is impossible with a lie in it, while
Business never goes well without sin in between
Fact cannot be produced in a factory
Issue is anything that can lead you to sue, while
Life, like your wife, is always a matter of if
Recovery always implies something that’s over
Signature reveals the nature of the signer, while the
White have a hidden agenda to hit; by the way
Forget what you may wish to get:
Passion is the emotion of an ass
*******
Places I called home in two thousand and ten:
A fine mattress of ferns and horsetails
By the ocean a salty bedroom beneath cedar boughs
Under a tarp roof erected in back yards
I was kept safe in the court of this Church
Where Nuns corralled a herd of six year olds inside
Sweet sisters of mercy turned blind eyes
Let me sleep safe underneath these oaks.
I was blessed with lentils and with love poems.
I was blessed by Gods you’ve never heard of.
I ate sardine and sriracha sandwiches beside the pacific.
I ate boiled fiddleheads in the rain,
I positioned strategic tin can rain catchers above my head.
I met at least a hundred Gods of kindness
I met at least two dozen street smart Gods of generosity.
The dread spider the afternoon shakes the weirdo haircut the animal bar rioting
the antique footstool the working mama my bathtub tortured my windsock
limp my wango lifeboat put out on the curb backache death your dew dew door
knob your wild worldlessness you attitude adjuster our forever yawn
spazz overtime naps matchpoint a plasma thrown pillow against a windowpane
cracker skin and casual bear life a normalcy handshake a just pope stick a lewd
leopardskin coat my silence eating custard my custard pussy purring I am purple
and poisonous I am tired of this game my cheek hollows twitchy my spoons
twisted in agony and the elusive dollar dollar bills dropped in the toilet bowl goodbye.
I was wearing pristine
White jodhpurs
When the symbol
Of my ladylife bloomed
I was laying roses
Among the snow
I was weeping rubies
All over the sheets
I saved the petals
Preserved in pages
Drops dried in vials
To use as future magic
My hands bloodstained
I prayed to Yoni
I prayed to Sekhmet
Goddess of my blood
I cried to lost childhood
I painted red footprints
Through deserts of Jasper
Crystal blood of Gaia.
Jennifer Wesle is putting the finishing touches on a poetry chapbook. A lifelong home-schooled student, she is working on double major in English and Psychology through distance education. Her poems are published or forthcoming in Bluestockings Magazine and The Furious Gazelle. Although a born and raised west coast Canadian she leads a semi-nomadic life and is currently living, finding inspiration, learning Italian and eating in Italy.
Follow her on Twitter: @jennyiwesle
JUDGMENT
The curved lip at the bottom of the
Coffee pot saves the white tablecloth
From a tiny drop traveling down the
Body of the pot with malicious intent.
Nothing saves the waitress or the meal
As food tumbles from the tray to the floor
In a violent crash of humiliation.
Cry for the poor fish sandwich, cut down
Before its prime, and decide not to tip.
Jon Bredeson is a gay poet, fiction writer, and English major at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is an MFA applicant, and currently at work on his first chapbook. He is likely to be found reading poetry, fiction, and/or comic books at any given time of day, and has no plans to seek treatment for his literary addiction.
(For M)
I remember an imperfect night in a Tokyo bar
Crowded with Marines
And exotic women wearing flannel and black leather
Hoping for God knows what
My best friend screwing a woman with bad teeth in the only bathroom
Causing a line out the door
And much desperation
We missed the last train to Yokosuka
Had to sleep on the train station sidewalk
Waking to the buzz of a Tokyo morning
Gazing up meekly into the bewildered eyes
Of an old woman selling magazines and trinkets
To weary morning commuters
he can’t read my writing
what do you mean
you write pottery?
okay so I do
make clay from mud
and I spin it Continue reading
One rode horses. The other danced. Their house
sat cool under sycamores. When they fought,
they raged, and when done, done. Their mother mourned
their father, as they did, but laughter made
grief music, his absence palpable and sweet.
One hummed as the day’s one cool breeze bellied
the screen, a muslin dress hiked above her waist.
The other retched into a milk-glass bowl
as a friend massaged her neck and told
how yoga or acupuncture could help.
A guest might point to clouds ridged and rain-black
as those that made his London hostel stay
a run from doorway to miserable
doorway—no, ridged as a rug a kid
has slid down Grandmother’s dust-mopped hallway.
He lies panting, sore, then up, run, slide
till she yells Stop it! He lies hungry, glad,
her handiwork bunched round his feet. Ridges
like that. What do they think? One scrubs the sink.
The other says We need rain. Mother says
Matthew’s coming. How about chicken
on the grill? Bees go where bees go.
Swallows plunge and shrill over the lawn.
By the time Matthew and the kids stand soaked
on the porch, they’ve spread the food, bunched lilacs
in green-glass vases, ridden, cooled, curried
and nuzzled Desiree, the boarded mare.
They eat their usual meal of wine, meat
and contradiction. Fall for the dancer
as she fingers the mole on her neck or leans
her head back to yawn or executes one
of her innumerable stretches. Fall
for the honey and gravel in the other’s
every syllable, forgetting
for a long time how love takes a whole heart
and the will to sit in the dark without
hope while things work out, or not.
Lilacs drop petals on the table
Luke made Sarah the week before he died.
No matter how much you loved baseball, how much your grandchildren
adored your every smile & syllable, no matter the five milligrams
of social justice you sprinkled on the scale, the dissertations
inconceivable without your wisdom, the wife you worshipped
& tended & grieved, the agony you endured, the drugs that eased it,
the thoughts you could no longer form, the breath you could no longer draw,
I’d still, if I could go back thirty years, tear out with my teeth
the elbow you buried in my kidney as I missed another pretty layup,
grind your face into the asphalt & pour into your hairy ear
misery’s hot gasoline, pour till both you & the coward
who has always limped off the court gumming the pabulum
of peace & love were dead.
During the yard time 3 days ago
My inner self finally managed to flee
From the prison heavily guarded
With the high walls of my yellowish
Skin and electrical wires
Made of my id nerve endings
However, once free wandering
In the endless desert nearby, I
Felt like a gold fish jumping out of
The glass water jug: shall I return
To my cell and continue my chained life
Or die a free death in the wild open? Continue reading
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