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YOUR BREAKERS
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THREE PETALS FOR INGA
I. Twin Fires
When the full and effulgent moon Sends its silver beams to dive Through the tall, dark trees, I soon See the twin fires of your eyes— That phosphorescence come alive!— And I need not wonder why.
II. Embraced
We’re each, in loving arms, embraced, and deep Is pleasure, rolled beneath the moon’s pale hue. And as I drift upon the pond of sleep, A piece of me awakens within you.
III. After a Hard Day
You stood silently in the grey hallway— Forever enstamped upon my memory— Glowing in cinnamon skin and azure eyes, Your face chiseled into honest warmth, With your soft hands cupped into a spoon, Ready to feed me with undying love That pooled from within you and strangely shined Like a thousand fireflies come alive. —Kjell Nykvist
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LOVE *
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MEDITATION ON SMOKING A CIGAR ON MY PORCH May, 2014
In the darkness after twilight I sit puffing a cigar. I can hear the distant rumble from the highway of the cars, While overhead in silence, slow traversing from afar, I see the dull red glimmer, wan, unreachable, of Mars.
I'll never see it closer; it's a place I'll never stand. If Man should ever travel there, by then I'll be long dead. My little place is puny; God's vast universe, so grand. Who can see me sitting here, my stogie glowing red?
—Eric Chevlen
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RING OF A TREE
Climbing up the sky to where God lives (when He’s not at work?, when He needs to get away?), towns and cities scatter on the earth’s rich velvet, gems and brooches, strands of pearls, toward a lipstick sunset’s firm delight dissolving at the edges and above to dark. The radar tracks us, point to point; we track our homes and jobs; the people there track us and other people we don’t know… the sky grows dense with tracking, thickens, fills, brims over and expands. A world is built, a rock is a web, a continent a drop of rain upon a web on a sodden lawn. My life, I’ve cursed the tiny grit and scratches: the stubborn doorknob, coffee’s steaming spill— without them, this would all collapse and spin into a tightening vortex, serpent-world swallowing itself into a knot imploding into nothingness—then gone. Up here, perspective spreads out like a lake, “Hey stupid” echoes back to me, a faint distinct indictment in the swelling black. For once I listen to myself without excuse, denial… just a hair on a dog barking and racing across the autumn sky.
—JB Mulligan
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IMPORT
You sit in a bar in a port by a foggy sea, which might be a pond for all you can tell. Beyond the clouds of fog, which pile like tumbled boulders, gather like hurricane waves, are glittering ports you’ve never seen, that send you gems and casks of honeyed wine, bolts of patterned silk in pastel slabs, cuckoo clocks and watches, ornaments and spoons – a universe of objects reflecting light the way the shore takes water in and spreads that same wave out to every other shore this sea can touch. You never get the package that you need. Box after box and barrel after barrel, time after time – you scatter clumps of straw, toss away locks, draw the tarp aside, and gaze upon magnificence and riches, more than enough to make a person happy... somebody somewhere else, perhaps, who waits for treasures that you store in cobwebbed rooms, write the items up on a storage log that yellows in a drawer in an ill-lit office, while they, somewhere, lift up your special thing and sigh, and shove it high atop some shelf in some dank basement where the vermin wait to scurry out when darkness fills the room while scuffed black boots pound stairs and streets toward a morning bar, where aging flesh descends upon a creaky wooden stool, and minds examine mounds of fog upon a sea with eyes grown blind by all that same display. The gulls cry out, unseen. The wine is thick. Its clotted sweetness drowns another moment.
—JB Mulligan
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LIES THAT I TOLD MYSELF
Like a television character I declaim: You deserve to be happy. Don’t let happiness pass you buy. Leaning on the windowsill I see he’s there, on another sidewalk, elusive, homeless.
Others hurry down the street, each to their home where their happiness dwells and patiently waits. Soon it will pour them a cup of tea and ask how it was.
–Ruth Blumert
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GHOST TOWN
I found myself in a strange city the streets too wide, too empty, too meaningless I was confused that I had to leave my home unattached I stood, unsteady, no footing miles of losses behind me like the crumbs that would never lead me to return
I watched the finch fly through her familiar trees as I looked far for something to remind me of home but the past is a sad whisper on deserted streets ever out of reach each corner a wrong turn. —Susan Oleferuk
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REFLECTIONS
He sat in the barber's chair, reflected in the mirror, and the mirror opposite that mirror reflected the reflection, and that reflection, the reflection's reflection until he was lost to sight in the distant reaches of looking glass land that didn't exist in the space where he sat in the chair.
Mirrors are covered in mourning. No mirrors in synagogues. They either focus you on yourself, else perhaps threaten your here with their ever receding looking glass land of repetition. —Michael E. Stone
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FRESH WATER but, at nine, I didn’t feel sinful. I tried to think of anything that might have been really-really bad all year, but didn’t think being mean to my older sister was a sin.
"Why are we here, again?" My mother took my small hand.
we can begin our new year fresh."
like when my mother spoke Yiddish to herself when she was annoyed. She wasn’t angry here; she looked peaceful. How could she have any sins anyway? Only bad thing she did was give me a spoonful of castor oil every morning; I hate castor oil and she knows it!
cheat, gossip. My lies were ‘white lies’ intended so someone else wouldn’t feel humiliated. Was that sinful? I wasn’t greedy.
physically harmed anyone, never intentionally hurt someone’s feelings, was not manipulative nor deceitful. I’d never cheated on an exam, wasn’t arrogant or filled with a stuck-up attitude. What would I ‘cast’?
and I couldn’t make any sense of that. I had only turned twenty a month before; my younger sister had just become sixteen. My older sister, with her husband and infant daughter, sat on wooden boxes by covered mirrors and could not comprehend death being so quick and so permanent. Was anger and resentment in the ‘sin’ category or just the emotional upheaval one? Was confusion a sin? Was jealousy for others who had two living parents considered a sin? ‘Why’ had no answers. "A time to live" and then the time to die was not a comfort either.
daughter carry breadcrumbs to the water, for tashlich, and toss in their negative feelings as crumbs drop. Sin doesn’t even come up. I imagined my real or perceived emotions that are not positive or constructive: I could ‘cast’ those away. I could try and ‘cast’ the hurt by words that do affect me as I pretend words don’t wound. I could continue to attempt to accept what cannot be changed and ‘cast’ away unrealistic hopes. Because my friend shared her way of bending the ritual to make it accessible, my family and I could search for a peaceful year rather than look for something we each might have done that’s classified as a sin.
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—Constance Rowell Mastores * from The Hannah Senesh Set ENDURANCE IN KINGDOM
With all his soul Akiva fulfilled the verse and laughed. But even Akiva was not Akiva, not as we know him. Laughter was a sign of a story overlaying its story, a teacher sitting in the back of his own classroom, hand in front of his face, laughing at himself.
The self felt needs the self feeling, the face needs the hand, the muscle skin— and which was Akiva? The sides of a leaf, water water falls on—no gap but the eye’s quirk of continuity, its frame blinking seconds across the smooth stretch.
The particles strike their target while the wave keeps on going. Breaks and keeps going.
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ON HOLDING MY
MOTHER'S HAND AS SHE LAY DYING —Eric Chevlen
from The Hannah Senesh Set FOUNDATION CENTO
Son of man, dig now in the wall: Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, And from the nave build haunted heaven. Thus, Who has no house now, will never build one.
Dig the grave and let me lie. Glad As only they can praise, who build their days As it has usual done — If Birds should build birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field to build A city and tower, whose top may reach loud and long, I would build that dome in air, of my youth, to build Some tower of song
O you dig and I dig, and I dig through to you, And a small cabin build there, of clay Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built – Courtney Druz |