Memento Mori Minnesota

artwork: nicolaes berchem

Memento Mori Minnesota

 by Sarah Busse

End of June. In a few patches

in the upper reaches green

turns orange—the early

stages. Minnesota’s like

the Middle Ages, never far

from death, from dark, from winter.

Here, only doctors

and cereal boxes

talk any sense.

Eat fiber. Say your prayers.

The Renaissance

was born in a temperate

zone, with more lenient

weather, a kinder clime

altogether, where

sublime angels of perspective

tread the balmy air tuning

their lute strings. Of course

we know all along

those trees are wrong, but,

when we learn a friend might

have cancer, we don’t talk of it

with the windows open,

for fear our neighbor, Fate,

might hear. When she knocks,

we don’t open our door.

~ first published in White Pelican Review

photo: erik richardson

Heaney Whispers

by Erik Richardson

Sitting in the Dublin airport where runways left

a surgical scar in the midst of green-bellied fields

the country stares at me through Heaney’s eyes

through time. His picture whispers from the terminal wall

of railway children and telegraph wires

slightly out of place here. The whispers

move on through, me waiting like others before for a plane

with scalpel wings to sever me, history.

As the wings slice, peat-black shadows

bleed out to pool under me under crumbled ruins

unhealed and held in place

by rain and dark, by vigilant sheep, tangled

with winding roads

themselves cut through time

through the midst of green-bellied fields

~ originally published in Chiron Review

All this shake

photo: ralph murre

by Tom Montag

All this shake

of day and night,

that woman says;

all the lay

of shade and light;

all the bounding

silence; the green

streak of earth;

yes, the water;

yes, the sky;

all of everything

today. Amen.

~ previously published in That Woman

  (support provided by the Friends of Lorine Niedecker)

Saturday Night

artwork: ralph murre

Saturday Night

by Peggy Trojan                                                                                          

                                                                                                                  

We choose the top shelf where veterans go,

Sixty, in my prime, four, in his.

One hundred seventy degrees coaxes us to sit still,

adjusting to the heat.

We’d partnered before.  He knows the rules.

No clothes, no rough talk, no throwing water,

no obvious stares.  Church manners.

The room is small.  Lined in cedar, three tiers of bench.

Stove in the corner, topped with rocks.

Thermometer, dim light, water basin and dipper.

Birch bough switch for the penitent.

Having shed all visible signs of status at the door,

we sit side by side, equals.

Talk is sparse.  No chatter.  Quiet observation.

We sense the spirits of my parents, and their parents,

and parents before them.  We feel Finn.

We dip wash cloths in the basin between us

to cool our flaming faces.  Smile.

Talk becomes confident and wise.

“Did you ever notice, Gramma, that men and women

look the same from the back,

but not the front….?

Then dumps the communal water

on his head.

~ first published in The Finnish American Reporter

Notes from Skinner's Elbow

digital manipulation by ralph murre of photo by larry lemski

Notes from Skinner’s Elbow

by Michael Koehler

         1.

The wind never stops.

It is tireless like the river

and aloof.

The wind sometimes talks to the ground,

two hundred-year-old trees

shake at such dire language.

The moss crawls to the underside of boulders,

branches bump each other like angry men shoving.

Other times

it whispers to the top branches

of aspens,

trades secrets like shy young girls

who sit in the sun,

mouth to ear.

The wind can sound like a lullaby.

After the sun dies

I sleep in the arms of cedars.

When the sun is reborn

the first things I see are Kingfishers,

perched two to a branch

all up and down the river.

Their diving for minnows is a gentle blue hailstorm.

One time,

like a nightmare,

I heard the wind scream.

After the lumbermen left

the wind had no branches to rest on,

or sing through.

The wind became a gale,

furious, blind with anger.

Defeated, it left that part of the river.

Now it visits once or twice a year,

finds whatever it seeks,

comes back stronger the next year.

          2.

The time comes to put away the reels,

the rods, the tackle boxes.

There comes a day when it gets too dark

for hearts to intrude with hook and sinker.

A time when the river says

You have enjoyed my bounty.

Now you must listen to my story.

The deep grumble of the night river

glows over the fire pit

where oak and pine warm hearts.

So terrible is the river’s tale

that we might freeze to stone

if unguarded by flame.

As the moon swims through its bed of stars,

I listen.

When the story ends and light returns,

all I have the courage to say is,

River, my friend,

I have no place to stand.

Between water and land is a space

too insubstantial to hold me,

knowing what I know.

My brother tells me

the quest may be for each heart alone

but the journey can be shared.

          3.

We sit on the banks of the river

at Skinner’s Elbow and play our flutes.

The sun rises and blesses us,

who have asked for nothing

but another day to live, to love, to learn.

Because our flutes sing songs from our hearts,

we hear a question not meant for our ears;

a question trees ask the wind, rain, and the shadows:

Have our Brothers returned?

The red squirrel says to the white pine,

They play strange songs.

The raven says to the trillium,

They sing like mourners.

And the wind says to the eagle,

Yes, but they have learned their way here.

~ previously published in Notes from Skinner’s Elbow

   (Wolfsong Publications)

JUNE 18, 2004

JUNE 18, 2004

by Cathryn Cofell

This is the day you wake

and say: Who are you

and why are you wearing

those ridiculous pajamas? 

What happened to the sexy nightie

girl who used to slither up in you,

whisper Nancy Sinatra songs

but not the one about the boots?

This is the day you fall

out of love with yourself,

that day you realize

you will have to come up with

the all-time best break-up line,

but even as you think it, you know

it will never happen;

you will never leave your wretched self.

You will stay and stay and take it,

become the someone you really are,

a sloshy, spineless thing, old

and whiny, the fat outcast in glasses,

she’s back from the milk carton,

she’s back.

~ previously appeared in Sweet Curdle (Marsh River Editions)

Domestic Arts

photoart: ralph murre

Domestic Arts

by Donna Hilbert

I am a young mother

so bored staying home

I agree to play Bridge

with my neighbors,

whom I suspect put up with me

to find a fourth to fill the table.

They are goddesses of domestic arts,

and between games hold forth

on finer points of decoupage, macramé

and the transformation of cans

into casseroles.

Still I am smug,

for I have gifts of my own:

precognitive dreams

and gift of the phone,

which I demonstrate by chanting

Mother Mother Mother Dear

call me now while my friends are here,

and when the phone rings

they are believers.

Because I love an audience,

I tell them my dreams:

how I see trash cans burning

the night before they burst in flame

behind my house,

how Papa’s heart attack

awakens me from sleep.

How I knew the night before she labored

Jan’s baby boy would be born dead.

Now the neighbors play three-handed games—

Pinochle, Euchre—

keep their children indoors,

cross against the light

when they see me coming.

~ first published in Tears in the Fence

The Little Blue Horses

artwork: franz marc

The Little Blue Horses

by Pat Tompkins

Bold swoops of color, the canvas filled

 by three muscular blue animals,

 round haunches foreshortened

 black manes trace their curved necks.

Grazing a bright yellow and green field,

 heads tucked, shy, they do not gaze at the viewer.

 Pure potential energy of the new century

 before the war. The artist died at Verdun.

A quarter century later: Munich,

 an exhibit of “degenerate art” hosted by Hitler.

 “Die Kleinen blauen Pferde” shown

 with works by other artists. Verboten.

Picture Nazis angry about a painting

 of blue horses by Franz Marc.

 Goebbels and his ilk upset by horses

 the wrong color. Imagine the danger.

~ originally published in Everyday Weirdness

Returning to Work

artwork: ralph murre

Returning to Work

by Donal Mahoney

After the others had welcomed him back,

had shaken his hand and returned to their desks,

another as ancient pulled over his chair

to inquire of him who six months before

had been taken away

on a pallet of interlocked arms

and parallel faces:

“What happened that day?

No one would say.”

Both men talked softly,

held cigarette rites:

the delights of the tapping,

the lighting, the stubbing,

the one man explaining,

the other one listening,

both of them knowing

a matter of months.

~ first published in Cinquefoil

Playing the Train

Playing the Train

for Donald Byrd

by Karl Garson

Nights, noise out of time

drove him from the building

and into the subway where tracks

clicked like the good sidemen

he couldn't afford.

He'd work the valves quietly

and ride them to the end of the line.

Dozens of trips and he'd know

the flip side of silence

is recorded alone,

and being there has nothing

to do with where you are.

~ previously published in Barnwood

How I Got My Wings

public sculpture, buenos aires

How I Got My Wings

by Lisa Vihos

They began                                                   

as an annoying itch                          

between my shoulder blades                                   

running along the scapula                           

like poison ivy                                               

turned pins and needles                               

turned porcupine quills                                

instigating an irritation                    

so profound I had to drink                           

myself to sleep each night;                           

a half bottle of cabernet                               

per side. I was beside myself                        

with grief over a wide array                        

of losses over a long trail                              

of years and tears.                                        

Tears, I had shed                               

by the bucket.                                                           

But one day

the itch was gone.

I woke up with a feather

tickling my nose, realizing

my own wings caressed

my face like the hands

of a phantom lover

who wanted me blessed,

wanted to tease me awake

and surprise me

with a gift. The gift

to fly up out of the pain

at the drop of a hat

or the flap of a wing

like going airborne

in a dream.

~ first published in Seems

Sundays on the South Side

artwork: ralph murre

Sundays on the South Side

by Robert M. Zoschke

one day driving over to Auntie’s

a huge red sign appeared

on a rubble strewn street corner

along Cicero Avenue

Gas City the sign hollered

and watching that joint

rise up from the ground

was a thrill

first Chi Town station

with a mini mart

and huge signs

warning not to shoplift

I was a young kid then

staring at those signs

I was still a

good kid

best part about going to Auntie’s

was Uncle waiting

on his racing pigeons to

land and hop into the coop

two years of pleading with Auntie

please let me sit outside with Uncle

finally she talked to him

and he said okay

Uncle never said anything

he just sweated it out

waiting on his birds

corner of 59th and Hamlin

before she died I asked Auntie

why Uncle was always so serious

sweating out those birds

coming home

Auntie said Robert those men

bet a lotta money on them birds

and Robert I mean

a lotta money

~ previously published in THE LOWDOWN (Street Corner Press)

Brassai I

self-portrait: george brassai

Brassai I

by Jessica Goody      

Reclining nude,

Supine

Charcoal shadows

A bare torso

Arching taut.

The narrow pit

Of the navel a cavern,

A black hole

In the galaxy of your frame.

Breasts rolling like eyes,

Nipples glaring;

Bands of light stretch across your abdomen.

Armpits and pelvis lined in black

As though streaked with tar.

The line bisecting your body

From breast bone to uterine point

As though a white-gloved

Surgeon is standing

Out of frame, ready

To press down

With the silver arrow of his scalpel,

Drawing blood darker than any shadow.

The portrait of your

Sinewy, bare expanse of skin

Lying helpless as a suicide risk

Strapped to a stretcher, a velvet chaise lounge,

Stylishly accessorized

With leather bands;

Not so much a fashion statement

As a tool of self-preservation.

I can imagine

Your silvery skin

Peeled back, pinned in place

Like a biology-class vivisection,

Flesh butterflied

And anchored with hypodermic-sharp

Nails from Jesus’ cross.

Your bones,

Pearl-white and gleaming in bas-relief,

Like black-light posters

In a crack house,

Like Limoges

Glowing in grandmother’s teak hutch.

Not a photograph

Or a French postcard

a la Bellocq’s cathouse nudes,

as an x-ray

glowing on a neon screen.

~ first published in Cyclamens and Swords