Dead Leaves
Posted by Cortney Charleston | Filed under '10 Fall: IN//VERSE, Poetry
As the leaves rattle in breeze like bullied children, I reflect.
If autumn is another metaphor, it insists the most lovely
Things in this world are the ones leaving it. Dying.
If my life is another poem, this makes my little
Brother a metaphor. Lovely. Leaving. Dying.
For the sake of aesthetics we can call him November.
It’s fitting flesh. He has reddish brown skin and
Half his heart is in a grave. In plotting his demise
He had forgotten I would be home come December.
Maybe I have been the end of him from the very beginning.
It was assumed we would travel in the same direction.
Even our mother used to dress us in synonym.
He always struggled in his English classes and
I’m sure the results are related. He couldn’t
Define himself outside his relation to me.
No wonder he sees life as a prison sentence.
Those fingerprints on his eyes belong to me. I’ve
Reached out to him during dark hours, but I’m gone
Now. I only see him through telephones these days.
I remember every call vividly.
One in particular, sounded like wrist-slit and ankle-sprain.
The tone tinted maple leaf: red, alarming – my brother
Contracting into himself like an unspoken secret.
A tender laugh caved between his cheeks.
A blush surfacing like smoke. He burns
For the sake of another person’s happiness,
Since he understands you cannot
Be a martyr and die of natural causes.
So, he curves his mouth into moth wings.
Kisses the heat. Swallows his Aderol
Pills with a lava flow of vodka. Monk-like.
He’d been squinting at his prospects long enough to
Make the golden-twine of a noose resemble a halo.
People aren’t leaves despite how easy they fall.
We are foolish to consider suicides stunning.
Awestruck by their cold and colors so neither
Our fingers nor voices can be lifted, as the
Falling petals patty-cake the sidewalks softly
As kindergarten footsteps, until the echo
Disappears like cheer at the end of recess.
I often ponder where voices go once they fall to the ground.
I imagine he’d say they don’t ever reach heaven.
I imagine he’d say he couldn’t find the Lord
Even while he was high. I imagine that’s the
Essence of depression, but he knows it.
Melancholy has more mass than Catholics do.
He is by far the heaviest prayer I’ve ever lifted.
He needs help, but doesn’t
Feel comfortable asking for it. Not from me.
But I understand him, because we’re brothers.
The dread of being burdensome is a bond shared
Between us like blood, and bruises, and blue
Jeans neither one can wear anymore.
We both bow out when bowing down goes awry.
We both draw into ourselves like wrinkles.
We both know telephones aren’t happy places.
I wish he’d see we have more in common than the
Surname chaining our hearts to one another.
I tell him this, but he can’t see a locket through the skin.
I tell him not to fear splinters. I tell him they
Are the price of building beautiful things.
I tell him he has a beautiful spirit. I tell him he is black.
I tell him that his spirit should be skeptical of tree limbs.
I tell him to remember. I tell him to always
Remember: dead leaves; lives behind.
Paper Lantern
Posted by Justin Ching | Filed under '10 Fall: IN//VERSE, Poetry
After twenty one years of neglect,
Countless promises of next time,
And a Father who swore on his bank account,
The only God he has, that I better be here today,
I arrived at my Grandmother’s hospital bed,
In some parallel universe,
I’m sure we were inseparable,
I would come after church on Sundays,
Dressed in clothes that made me look more like a small penguin than young Christian,
She would bake me apple pie,
Let me eat it before supper,
And never make me finish my broccoli,
While told tales of the old country,
Fables of the handsome prince I would’ve become,
And I would in kind recount these anecdotes to all my friends,
Because everyone loves a good grandma story of simpler times and glory days,
But that never happened,
I arrived here a life too late,
I used to pull the sheets over my head when I was afraid,
Now I’m terrified of what’s beneath them:
A scarecrow crucified on wooden bones and tattered skin,
Her breath sounds like crumpled paper
Two Bright red lanterns wrinkled beneath her breastplates.
She smiles…painfully,
Her lips clawing away from her teeth like soldiers retreating from a two front war, and they just want to smell a home cooked meal again,
Pops says she recognizes me,
He’s always been a clever liar,
She has Alzheimer’s and I haven’t seen her since I could still hold my age in my right and left hands,
Strawman she is,
Her brain is absent as I have been,
How do you cry for a stranger?
Visiting hours for friends and family,
This feels more like hospice care
Once upon a time,
My father dragged me to her convalescent home,
Where I played hide-and-seek with pale faced zombies,
Ravenous for human flesh and anything warm that would touch them,
A hand
A cup of coffee
Or her last memory of the sun,
Years ago the Great Wall of China ran up her spine,
Rumor has it you can see this wonder from the moon,
But that’s just an urban legend,
Trust me, I’ve watched from farther away
From the other side of a casket,
And the front seat of a rental car,
She laid to rest in Monterey,
I can’t say Steinbeck ever walked this cemetery,
But I felt guilty with every sin east of his Eden.
We had the ceremony in a church,
Because that’s what people are supposed to do, The service was me, my father, and a priest paid by the hour,
No procession,
No mass requiem,
No Ave Maria sung by a woman in the only little Black dress she’ll never to want wear again,
Just prayers read off paper sheets folded like fast food menus,
Hands pressed like mantis,
Eyes up,
Ears open,
Hadn’t heard her real name until the undertaker read it in Chinese off the tombstone.
A shotgun funeral,
Fitting for a life that ran from bullets.
Fled a communist revolution with nothing but a suitcase and a first born son,
She put her past behind only for me to forget her until she past.
It’s only now that I realize I should have loved her like the lotus she was,
A flower that blooms from the mud,
But remains unstained.
Grandma I am so sorry,
If I ever have the chance to make it right,
Find myself in the Human province of the Chinese countryside,
I will craft this poem into a fleet of origami boats,
Place a candle in each,
Sail my one-man navy of flames, down the Yangtze river until the ghosts know that my Grandmother’s face launched a thousand ships,
And I intend to bring her back,
This is an Illiad penned on the inside of a paper lantern,
May it illuminate her story into the night,
Amen.
Tags: IN//VERSE, Justin Ching, Paper Lantern
blasphemy
Posted by Tiffany Kang | Filed under '10 Fall: IN//VERSE, Poetry, Print
It’s one of those nights that begs for forgiveness in its last words
As if morning were on her deathbed, just a few breaths away from dawn
yet unable to muster the strength to rise and shine.
On a night like this, a man sinks deep into the seat
of the last train home
on his very first day of work
and it comes as no surprise to him that he already feels tired.
Between sips of a tin beer can and the parting of his lips
he wonders if God fell asleep
if God ever glances over His shoulder, hoping the angels don’t walk in on unholy moments
He wonders if God ever gets soaked in the rain,
patiently waiting outside our windows
His holy robes of gold drenched in the salt and sweat and heavenly tears
His crown of wax melting, dripping down his face
as our sin spreads like wildfire
You know not pain until breathe the heartbreak of God.
You see, the windows of this train
and all trains
have been stained grey with nameless fingerprint graffiti
and the nicotine breath of bruised lungs
Only God knows how many hopeless hearts rested their heavy heads against the glass tonight
how many eyes gazed into the windowpane’s reflection and wondered,
is that what I really look like?
how many watched the world blur into blackness,
wishing their lives would just do the same.
And so the train crawled on home
a sweet chariot pulled by a chain gang of angels
and slaves.
The man imagines God is bored
sitting on His throne with both legs propped up,
smoking a fat black cigar
He feeds off the grease of human faith and our occasional desperation
The obesity of Glory is too golden, altogether
Folding paper airplanes out of our prayers and with a flick of his wrist
He tosses them aimlessly through acid rain and hurricanes
almost all of which catch fire on the way down
scalding to ashes and smothering the earth’s face lightly as dirt
Only the luckiest ones are answered
he’s stopped wishing You’ll answer his.
God forbid the moon shine tonight
don’t remind him of darkness relative
to light.
The man knows God has been playing games with him
catch me if you can, hide and seek, but above all, follow the leader
God never lets him win and never loses on purpose
His pride is too perfect so it demands knees to the floor and brings death to the doors
of all who refuse to worship a God who
never leaves his phone on and always leaves his water running
wasteful and cunning, God is hit and run
and we are hit the hardest.
The man is waiting, and he is trying
He is still trying to wait, but he waits much more than he tries
Don’t you know that he still has dreams?
Don’t you know that I still have dreams?
Though the clouds pour blood from the nails in Your palms
please don’t crucify my skies
Don’t hang me like a lantern, dangling at Your will
I have so much light left to give.
Forgive me, Father
for I know not what I do
because I know not You
although I wish -
I wish to God I did.
That Love
Posted by Simone Stolzoff | Filed under '10 Spring: Lords of the Fly, Announcements, Print
I want to scale the summits of our silence
Trace the topography and texture of the undulating sound waves
like I used to stroke the grooves of the wind outside the passengers seat.
From the start when
I will wait to approach, my heart will thump like a sly bassline
while I picture you strumming serenades on my heartstrings,
you’ll have me syncopating syllables like chambers.
If your heart is as big as my heartbeat will suggest,
I’ll have to buy you a bigger cage before then.
From the start, you’ll just be her—
A she and an I was without a we.
Beauty will be in the arms of who can hold her.
All I want is to be the he in your heart
and when intimidation turns into infatuation and you finally can become my you,
I will hate how easily you’ll be able to make or break my day.
Your eyes will wait like Christmas eve.
Your smile will dimple rooms like stars do july.
I will put them in a glass jar—
Don’t worry I’ll poke holes in the top so they can breath.
And put that container, shining like an inside of a firework,
on the pedestal next to your face.
But truthfully, the love I want at two shades over 19 years isn’t that poetic.
Cuz I want that:
I spend a disproportionate amount of time on your facebook profile type love,
that girl I wanna take you out to commons type love,
that I will ask your name before my tongue goes down your throat type love.
But it’s also:
that I left a spot for your head carved in my shoulder type love,
that I carry your stories on the inside of my teeth so only I know why I’m smiling type love .
The truth is I’d be just fine with that “like” type love.
Cuz so far I tend to be that guy that lets go after the honeymoon,
yet to be the one to go all in with a 7 2 off suited clinging to that one heart in my hand and hoping to find a pair.
So I’ll wait for the day where I’ll realize that sometimes dancing is the storm is prettier than in the shine,
wait for that love that’s more than something a woman gives and a man takes,
wait for that love that has no regard for timing or discretion,
that love that god writes sunsets about,
that Garret writes poems about,
that wars fought, leaders shot,
that love that romantics rot for.
The closest I’ve come to crying for love was in the fourth grade when I realized Jordan Leonard was too popular for me.
And I know weeping for a girl doesn’t quite gel with this Judeo-Thug persona I’m going for,
but if that’s what it takes to get that Jenifer-Aniston-movie type love, I’ll cry and swim down my check waterfalls into the river I cry myself.
Right now love is someone that I admire, but don’t yet know like the trash man on my block or the inventor of bendy straws.
So I’m not sure if I can write a love poem while its still just a prospect pirouetting on my horizon.
But hopefully I’ll find it,
Like finding five dollar bill in folds of denim.
And when I do find that love
You’ll be the first to hear about it.
