At the Blood Bank

obviously and deviously derived from Beatles album cover photo

At the Blood Bank

by Pat Tompkins

Clench, pierce, pump:

out flows a hot, dark pint.

Before I make a deposit,

the nurse checks pressure, heat, iron,

questions drugs, sex, travel.

How little a no or yes tells.

A plastic vein transfers saturated memory,

richer than my medical history:

remembrance of every song the Beatles sang

craving for ice cream and chocolate bittersweet

preference for Graham Greene and Edgar Allan Poe

delight in snapdragons and swimming

abhorrence of foie gras and caviar

fondness for spaniels and basset hounds

experience with Iowa winters and West Coast earthquakes

Every few months, I gain unknown relatives

eating dessert, petting dogs, singing of love, looking for clues.

Mingling talismans, blood sisters/brothers,

somewhere out there, my secret sharers.

~ first published in flashquake

Sneaking Up . . .

photart: ralph murre

Sneaking Up On You Bastard Poem You

by James Botsford

I came out to this old getaway

With only in mind to write

There were some maintenance repairs

Which took awhile

But a couple days later

I was nearly caught up

Til the storms hit

Requiring some clean up

And as it turned out

A few more repairs

And a couple days after that

And numerous old movies and

What bits of titillation I could find here for free

Which was interrupted by a conference call

I was under the weather

Cooking down a chicken carcass for soup

Haven’t made it past the mailbox

At the end of the lane

And after a fresh new heavy snow

Had to plow the lane again

So the recycling truck could get in

It’s been more than a week now but I’m

Sneaking up on you bastard poem you

~ previously published in Them Apples (Sandyhouse Press)

Crystal

artwork: ralph murre

Crystal

by James Reiss

A man wets his forefinger with his tongue and holds

up a perfect water glass, empty and glistening.

He is sitting at a table in a large

hall with other men in identical blue

blazers with eagle medallions over their breast pockets.

Now the first man fingers the glass

rim, tentatively, as if it were jagged-edged.

And now he strokes it clockwise, slowly, stopping

to wet his finger again and again, like an old

man paging through a book—until the glass

comes to life with a thin, high whine like nothing

he has ever heard, and the others look up in amazement, catching

on, holding up their glasses, too, wetting and stroking

them clockwise like ice skaters in unison.

All the glasses are coming to life now; their throats are

slowly catching fire, glistening with a thinner,

higher whine than any bird. It is like a pitch

pipe with wings. It is something like the music each

man heard when he stepped outside at night

for the first time alone as a boy. Then

there was nothing in the sky but stars and music.

And the sky was like glass.

~ first published in The New Yorker

Will

artwork: ralph murre

Will

by Bruce Dethlefsen

these are yours

the sun   the moon   the stars

the bike   the ball glove

okay   the boots

but you can’t have

the wars   the pain

and dread you can’t have that

oh yeah the rain

the rain I keep

sorry

~ previously published ( this morning! )

   in small talk (Little Eagle Press)

Well Hidden

artwork: ralph murre

Well Hidden

by M.J.Iuppa

Snooping under ivy, curly

and thick, we disturb

a sparrow’s nest, no bigger

than a measuringcup

full of fidget.

Tiny gray heads tilt

upward with eyes shut

tight– tongues fluttering

like monks in ecstatic

prayer, offering their hearts                                                                                     

to this day that has begun

with us eavesdropping

on their cloistered life–

their sole contemplation.

~ first published in The Victorian Violet Press Journal

Anomalies

photoart: ralph murre

Anomalies

by Marc J. Frazier

…for everything flowers from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness…

—Galway Kinnell

In the endless mall of Florida—a French patisserie run by French people. 

Birds flit for crumbs. 

Sherbet umbrellas beckon Town Cars of the aged to dock nearby. 

Scents of hibiscus, sunset-hued blossoms of tropical vines blend with that of yeast, humid asphalt, and Estée Lauder. 

There is no one left to love. 

Sometimes the evidence is overwhelming. 

Sometimes I wish a gull will miss landing on its piling. 

The real truth is that nothing mitigates. 

Lonely birds call through a pink dusk. 

If I could name the flora and fauna, I could cope with uncertainty.

I could walk outside to a gator in the pool. 

Surprising things happen. 

A double murderer was just arrested in Chicago where he’d lived as a poet for twenty years.

I have to write so many words just to survive. 

How many will it take to endure?  To be happy? 

The many places I’ve been make me like every place less. 

I love the romantic excess of Spanish explorers: cities of gold, fountain of youth. 

Here the old grow younger or think they do. 

Who am I to shadow conquerors? 

Sometimes a clean, well-lighted place is fine. 

Sometimes nothing is enough. 

Always that restlessness in the stalls. 

The need to be touched. 

The need to be reminded of my loveliness. 

As if I am one of the few who are chosen. 

Carlos Fuentes described Frida Kahlo with her jangling jewelry and intensity as her own opera. 

At times I am so tame I wonder if even the trained can prepare me for a return to the wild. 

At times the Leo in me sees the world as collateral. 

A woman in a poem hopes in the growth of two dozen seeds. 

The man thinks she expects too much: “To grow her a whole new life.” 

What can I expect here beside the ocean?

I do not ponder the damage done—a cul de sac of regret. 

Loss. 

Not everything happens for a reason. 

I hear orchids grow in wet seclusion. 

Stones are silent by choice. 

Water builds only to lose itself. 

Blue calms my tendency to wander, to see other sides. 

Life, like anything, is a habit, can be found almost anywhere, can happen to anyone.

~ first published in Rhino

Only after telling her . . .

photo: amy murre klemm

by Jeffrey Winke

Only after telling her…

…in a hasty cell call that he’s at a bar called NEPO does he realize that he read the neon window sign backwards.

long day

      a memory becomes

               today’s worry

~ first published in Modern Haiku   

CLOSURE

photo: ralph murre

                    CLOSURE

by Jude Genereaux

The house stood dark through winter’s snow

her name on the mail box

bannered life within

                 but the house stayed dark

through cold and ice and springtime rain 

‘til hyacinths

        daffodils announced renewal;

but the house stayed dark.

Come June, strange cars lined the drive

a great green steel bin appeared     quiet

people walked to it, discarding

broken bits of the past

tossing old chairs, spindly legs askew

sticking straight up (a signal for rescue?)

tables unworthy of saving, relics and 

furniture no longer wanted

into the bin

         while the house stayed dark.

Crackling with heat in the pre-summer sun

smoke plumed from a barrel as

people (her family?) relentlessly

fed the flames; fire devoured

the stuff of a quiet life

Discarded papers, shopping lists?

books and old journals?      (love letters?)

the air thick with the sweet incense of musty

      burning

           paper

words of love?    lust and longing?

O! the hidden lives languishing in boxes

old desks and cupboards filled with words

      Memory!

crackling in the fires of Absolution

honeyed smoke fragranced by life;

Just … trash.

Your secrets are safe old woman

                   they have saved you

no one will ever know your life

Your honor              and theirs

protected.

And the house stays dark.

~ previously published in There Is More Than One Door

   (The Looner Press)

Goddess Danced

photo: robert lee haycock

Goddess Danced

by Robert Lee Haycock

Goddess danced

Her everlasting dance

Bangles, beads

Went spinning from her skirts

Off they flew

Into the fecund dark

Growing there

Planted in fields of night

Stars, planets

And you, my Love, and me

~ first published in Medusa’s Kitchen

EVE # 9

detail: collaborative artwork by At the Well members

EVE #9

by Sharon Auberle

Aged as she is,

even now Eve

sees no reason

to stop

dancing.

Her favorite spot

is under the apple tree,

where the old snake

has been watching

her for years,

shedding one skin

after another,

his eyes

like diamonds

glittering

in the grass.

~ previously published in EVErywoman

   (Seven Islands Press)

A Pair of Shoes

17th century drawing, artist unknown

A Pair of Shoes

by Jan Oskar Hansen

She was nine years old wore a cotton dress, barefoot and had her

picture taken. Her mother had bought her a pair of new shoes,

and the shoes were so lovely she didn´t want to put them on yet.

Her mother relented the photograph was taken the girl holding

the shoes firmly in her little hands.

She looked into the camera with intense seriousness seeing into

a future she was not yet aware of, perhaps she was but couldn´t

articulate it, hence holding on to her shoes a symbol of the losses

she would suffer.

She married a farmer in Congo they had cattle and coconut trees.

Then came the revolution and since they had the wrong colour, not

black not white had to flee when crazed soldiers came, freedom

was for the masses, who took over the farm ate the milking cows, but

neglected to till the land. She ended up in a foreign land, but she

didn´t mind that so much her children had prospered and survived,

but she was always thrifty never threw away a thing.

~ Previously published in A Poet’s Almanac (cyberwit)

QUINCY, CALIFORNIA

artwork: ralph murre

QUINCY, CALIFORNIA

by Tony Gloeggler

The kind of town we stopped

for gas and asked directions

to that hillside inn ten years ago

When it rained and rained

and we stayed in bed, lost count

of the times we came and came

Kind of town you now live in

with your second husband, split

level home, road side mail box

Town you called from late last night

to tell me about the sharp pains

the red shredded things

that dropped into the water

as you sat on the toilet stool

forty years old, wanting your first child

~ first published in Mudfish

Unsterile Environment

artwork: carl larsson (from an old print)

Unsterile Environment       

 by Patricia Wellingham-Jones

Around the globe the wind swirls

in soft gusts and monsoons carrying particles

of the quick and the dead

to our lungs, into our cells,

making us all, as long as we live—

and thereafter—part of each other.

We all breathe—no exceptions—recycled air:

nomad’s sweat swept on a desert wind, bull elks

panting in the clash of rut, the last squawk

of a chicken caught in owl talons, a sick

old man’s groan. And star jasmine wafting

on a summer night, pine branches broken under snow,

a packed-diapered baby’s howl of rage.

I smile at the new mother

who wraps her infant against the warm breeze,

double-boils his bottles of water,

wards off big family kisses,

as if the baby weren’t already

inhaling the second-hand breath of the world.

~ first published in Moondance

The Laying of Hands

digital art: ralph murre

The Laying of Hands

by Stephen Anderson         

        

After the cutting,

After the slide under the microscope,

The herringbone stitches to the open flesh come

In a dutiful, meticulous sewing

Of the cancer-vacated crater in my temple,

Hybrid birth-child now of Nature and surgeon’s handiwork

Setting as right as possible all that had gone

So terribly wrong in a matter of mere decades,

Now hand-stitched and shiny like a fine, leather shoe.

~ first published in The Foundling Review

Why I Can't Be Your Lover

artwork: ralph murre

Why I Can’t Be Your Lover

by Susan Tepper

It was about the long stretch 

of body—

and rumpled sheets

Bodies on sheets, mine shorter

on top of your long body—

the milk caressing the pitcher

and traffic and the outside

rushing past high draped windows 

over-stuffed chair, a dresser,

a floor lamp bent at the odd angle

~ first published in The Somerville News