Sep '02 [Home] 12 Burqa Michael Graves Recovery David Goldstein It Must Not Happen Sharon Olinka Invasion I (Sousse, Tunisia) Invasion II (Amsterdam) Andrew Oldham NPR Announces A Comet. The Phones Are Tapped. The Corner Store Is Empty Kimberly Burwick Auction Jim Boring Still Life with Sunrise Robert Klein Engler Equinoctial Cathy McArthur Contributor Notes ~ . ~ . ~ Burqa Michael Graves In this room Where damp gusts of wind Billow filmy curtains Beneath the light Of the Easter moon, I would begin to trace With hesitant hands In the coarse cloth Of the shroud you wear, Peaks and ravines, Rugged, ravaged terrain, And, trembling, St-step, To the likeness to Christ That you bear. ~ . ~ Recovery David Goldstein What happened?      Not waterfall, not bamboo grove, not cries of ice sellers. What did you do?      Hemorrhaged silence. Where was the tower?      It turned to rain and wept people. When did help arrive?      Nothing. I couldn't look up. Where did you go?       Where the missing stood. What did you see there?      Nothing. Why did you go?      To see that. How did you feel?      Like nothing folded into itself. No, how did you feel?      Intimacy of ash. Whom did you see?       A line of people with bandaged fingers. Did you know them?      They were hyperbaric, stitched with astonishment. Did you go to them? Did you speak?      Each piece of knowledge is a flame seeking its martyr. Did you go down to look?      A belated lighter peeled back the river. What had changed?      Codfish still feed. Mudflies snare in the hanging linden.      Someone's lover arrives in a dark cloud of hair. ~ . ~ It Must Not Happen Sharon Olinka My days like water. I clip the toenails of the Great One. Follow strict orders to obey him. Blurred hours of rinsing rice, endless fight against dust. Bleat of goats outside. Drawn to my husband's computer, not permitted to touch it. Renamed "Nafira." I was Stephanie, lived in Los Angeles. They call me one of the Saved Ones, but every night I dream of car keys, music, lipstick, movies, laughter and palm trees. My new husband is patient with me. He knows I saw buildings crumble, how thick smoke nearly claimed me. I thought, this must not happen. At times I feel fire burn through me. It's when I walk quietly towards the vegetable market, with my chaperone. Or when I remember my mother's shredding skin, don't understand why my husband lies beside me. What this has to do with God. But I knew when I brought the Great One soup, I could not kill him. I saw the Towers in his eyes. How silver cell phones, crumpled paper fell from windows. My shoes. My red dress. My cabinet of denials. My innocence. Where I once lived there were so many prayer vigils. I believed them. I saw the Great One's purple robe, his feet. I looked down, as instructed. Not at his face. I have become water. Everything has burned away. And even if I still believe I'll wake up tomorrow in my own bed, in Los Angeles, as I might, as you still might, wherever you are, know only this: the bad dream has entered us. We cannot lose ourselves, go to meet it. No more mass burials by a harbor. ("It Must Not Happen" is forthcoming in An Eye For An Eye Makes the Whole World Blind (Ed., Allen Cohen; Regent Press, Oakland, Calif.), an anthology responding to 9/11 and the bellicose Bush Administration.) ~ . ~ Invasion I (Sousse, Tunisia) Andrew Oldham The streets lined with acacias and olive trees, Exotic sounding names, flitting, tripping from the local tongue Are hauled in from the ocean, flapping in their nets, Sweet saffron fish, sugared, perfumed, edible Caught in the jasmine seller's breath, As he staggers down the alleyway from the petrol station Tossing paper and petals from his tattered pockets, Searching for faces without faces on his horizon And at night, he waits by the bay port lighthouse Guiding the ghosts back, singing, drinking, swearing at The U-boats without submariners, laughing at The soldiers without jack boots and graves Because they raped his land, left scars along her coastline, Imbedded pill boxes in her desert sand, took away her Sons, her daughters, her brothers, her sisters, her husbands Left a hole in her womb that they never filled, and The streets were lined with acacias and olives trees when they came, Exotic sounding names, which stumbled, tripped from their mouths Dredging the words from the bay port, leaving them to flap in the midday sun, Taking away her children, sweet, souls, dead. ~ . Invasion II (Amsterdam) Andrew Oldham Hunters come in the middle of the night, Take bunnies from their homes; force them Into streets, down back alleys and gutters Go bunnies, huddled together; they go Pushed and pounded by the hunters Into the centre of the plaza, beneath the monument Boxed in from all sides by the hunters' guns First there is silence, then sound, then light, And all the bunnies rush up to the yellow stars Then float back down to the cobbles, like snow, like ash ~ . ~ NPR Announces A Comet. The Phones Are Tapped. The Corner Store Is Empty Kimberly Burwick you assail the silent and untitled brevity while someone dials a set of numbers. nearby someone is celebrating something: a birthday, a comet, a corner of the sky. What is weightless and wingless carries me nowhere I want to be. somewhere it is six o'clock. somewhere fear is divisible by ten. what is manic and in motion materializes into demographics. her whisper, his hat, your unintentional conversation. the losses pile on top of one another like commas. ways to connect her shoes to your last night together, his fast track to my wife's office, their argument to our standing here now. Unlawful ways to abuse the systematic pause and subsequent coupling and uncoupling of terms. when you outline what is cruel and unnatural I check the guidelines for carrying water. This cast iron pot, that porcelain vase, this old slipper, will hold rain. ~ . ~ Auction Jim Boring "Not many out there." She turned toward the window, looked and nodded. A corner of wallpaper was peeling up near the sink. She touched it and recoiled as though something had bitten her. What's wrong with me? she thought, fussing with wallpaper now. The old man doesn't look good. His face is gray. I hope he makes it through this. He stood and stared without expression Drumming his fingers on the countertop. "Not many out there," he said again as though he had forgotten. In the yard, the furniture stands confused Too old, too frail, too yesterday. This is good, this will work, this is okay. And the heavy equipment hunched like abandoned circus elephants With the work gone and the parade gone on without them. He sat heavily on the old sofa and felt a spring tense beneath him. Won't have to put up with that anymore, this sofa like some archer stretching Ready to shoot him in the ass. He rubbed the worn nap with his rough hand. Go ahead, sofa, shoot. The toilet flushed. What's she doing in there? Third time this morning. She doesn't want to show it but she is having a hard time. His throat tightened. All she has ever had is a hard time. In the yard, friends and strangers touched their things Decided mostly not to buy, their faces somber Their glances toward the window shy. Might as well burn it all. Might as well pile it up and climb on top of it And burn it all. "You all right?" "My stomach, that's all." "Be over soon," he said. She stood over him and touched his thin hair. ~ . ~ Still Life with Sunrise Robert Klein Engler At dawn, flocks of gulls renounce the lake and fly off west to feed—their cries, like the cries of babies, fade to silhouettes of wings that flap from water up to the air. Something is happening above the trees— still at attention, but tinged with trembling. They are cautious of the light September brings. I read the trembling written in the air against the words of childhood lost like birds. Where is duty? Where is fear? A sacred routine of water birds assures the dawn unwinds. My mother, in the garden of memory, goes out in the morning too, with a basket for flowers. Her skirt collects the dew like pearls. I watch the beauty of her naked blade. Zinnias, cut off like straws, give up their platforms of color to grace a table by the window. A light through gauze will play on their perfume. If angels wrapped with robes of silk come close, they surely bend amazed to see our ways. The girl who spreads her legs like wings, the boy who rides the midnight of the peacock's eye, the man who stays bewildered in the waste of seeds, these are what the angels see, then pause like gulls, to curl away in whirlpools of brittle leaves. ~ . ~ Equinoctial Cathy McArthur What is it about this summer that keeps me counting orange tiger lilies, yellow coreopsis in the garden since you left? At noon they face the sun as if expecting an arrival. I won't separate them, only mid-August:  bed's a mess:  scattered blanket of leaves tossed from last night's storm. Rain splashes my window:  brief- ly then moves on. Shades of light and dark:  Dr. Faustus curtain on the lawn. When will it all disappear? Colors flash. Days long- ing for what was lost, I won't cut flowers, throw them away. What stems from my neglect? I wonder where are you today, my heart spilling out perennial seeds of warning:  summer not over, yard lush with blooms; so little decay. I should have told you; I'll hold you yet, one morning. Contributor Notes