Five
by Christina Pugh
from The Right Hand
Every pin is a tender path.
Every arrow begins to sew.
The skin, not the mind, creates the soul.
Every arrow begins to sew.
The skin, not the mind, creates the soul.
All the nerve passageways crowd
Into a finger’s whorl.
A nexus: metropolitan.
A city in a palm.
Into a finger’s whorl.
A nexus: metropolitan.
A city in a palm.
Her hand moved slowly tectonically across my trunk
The other hand beneath my back was cradled an asymptote
West-East, east-west a lower premonition
Breathe with this I told myself the wind
have done
The other hand beneath my back was cradled an asymptote
West-East, east-west a lower premonition
Breathe with this I told myself the wind
have done
thus skin is the portal
the laminate the barrier
the reef against the system
or lesser systematic churn
What it may conduct I know
a harp amid the tremors
the laminate the barrier
the reef against the system
or lesser systematic churn
What it may conduct I know
a harp amid the tremors
And skin is an organ
Aeolian it bundles strums
Vesuvian it kindles
When pierced it will swarm
Aeolian it bundles strums
Vesuvian it kindles
When pierced it will swarm
Bird Calendar (Earth List)
by Kate Fagan
|
Eastern koel
January companion in the vertical air Brown thornbill March folds away its songs while sap falls Southern boobook May returns and the house is empty Powerful owl July cradled like a pine branch scored by talons Fan-tailed cuckoo September softens the hardest memory Grey butcherbird November warning before the sky darkens |
Sulphur-crested cockatoo
February rises like a burning mantle Grey goshawk April farewell to a dying tree Glossy black-cockatoo June cracks open as continents drift Yellow-faced honeyeater August cascading over ruined limbs Wonga pigeon October clock steadying sorrow Sacred kingfisher December fledgling by a dry creek |
Pavlov's Dogs
by Brian Culhane
In the midst of his famed experiments
(buzzer or tuning fork, food, salivation),
the Neva one night overflowed its banks
and the basement lab filled with icy water
as Pavlov’s dogs fruitlessly sought escape
from a tide they could hear and scent,
well before the flood reached muzzles,
long before sunlight might warm fur.
Hurriedly returning to the laboratory,
he caught their howling from the street
and found his dogs in states of shock:
some squatting in sodden straw, others
hunched frozen against the grey cages.
A wolfish lean mutt bayed in a frenzy;
a husky mix repeatedly rocked in place;
a mastiff he especially liked bit her bars.
Later on, the behaviorist was to observe
differing responses to quick movements
or sudden noises. Doors slammed shut
could, for example, elicit rage in Lady,
cowering in Jurka, in Joy despondency.
So, his subjects would live out their lives,
as he scrupulously recorded how each
bore the aftereffects of that inching flood.
I read no further, and yes, never learn
what he concluded about human trauma,
nor how that knowledge may enlighten
our too-readily enlightened age. Rather,
I skip ahead to Pavlov’s own biography,
his alarm at the rising tide of Marxism
(“for which I would not give a frog’s hind leg”),
and his last illness, double pneumonia.
Wishing a study of the final hours, he asked
a student to record, by guttering candles,
all the tell-tale somatic signs: shortening,
quickening, slowing of the breath; rattle
of uncleared respiratory mucus; duration
of fevers; pupil dilations; distress of any kind—
as if Mortality itself were somehow dictating.
What was worth the vigil? No notes survive.
Of course, given the wars, it is astonishing
Pavlov’s lab was ever preserved at all,
its black and white portraits of mangy dogs
hanging where someone long ago put them,
bearing names still legible in inked script:
Baikal. Ikar. Jack. Bierka. Big Boy. Thief.
I look into their eyes, saying the names aloud.
But the water rises, and there is no relief.
(buzzer or tuning fork, food, salivation),
the Neva one night overflowed its banks
and the basement lab filled with icy water
as Pavlov’s dogs fruitlessly sought escape
from a tide they could hear and scent,
well before the flood reached muzzles,
long before sunlight might warm fur.
Hurriedly returning to the laboratory,
he caught their howling from the street
and found his dogs in states of shock:
some squatting in sodden straw, others
hunched frozen against the grey cages.
A wolfish lean mutt bayed in a frenzy;
a husky mix repeatedly rocked in place;
a mastiff he especially liked bit her bars.
Later on, the behaviorist was to observe
differing responses to quick movements
or sudden noises. Doors slammed shut
could, for example, elicit rage in Lady,
cowering in Jurka, in Joy despondency.
So, his subjects would live out their lives,
as he scrupulously recorded how each
bore the aftereffects of that inching flood.
I read no further, and yes, never learn
what he concluded about human trauma,
nor how that knowledge may enlighten
our too-readily enlightened age. Rather,
I skip ahead to Pavlov’s own biography,
his alarm at the rising tide of Marxism
(“for which I would not give a frog’s hind leg”),
and his last illness, double pneumonia.
Wishing a study of the final hours, he asked
a student to record, by guttering candles,
all the tell-tale somatic signs: shortening,
quickening, slowing of the breath; rattle
of uncleared respiratory mucus; duration
of fevers; pupil dilations; distress of any kind—
as if Mortality itself were somehow dictating.
What was worth the vigil? No notes survive.
Of course, given the wars, it is astonishing
Pavlov’s lab was ever preserved at all,
its black and white portraits of mangy dogs
hanging where someone long ago put them,
bearing names still legible in inked script:
Baikal. Ikar. Jack. Bierka. Big Boy. Thief.
I look into their eyes, saying the names aloud.
But the water rises, and there is no relief.
The Accident
by Kellam Ayres
Why hadn’t I noticed it before,
the protrusion below his shoulder?
My fingers press into the nub,
move up and down over the raised bone,
my palm grazing the spot above his heart.
His collarbone had given way long ago
after a drunken night in the valley,
when he’d pedaled his bike into a parked car.
We’d been together for a while,
but this was new to me.
The bone had taken three months to heal.
He’d slept propped up, immobilized
on a recliner in his parents’ television room,
sweating out the summer.
His mother had sliced strips of stick deodorant
with a worn-out knife, and carefully pressed them
into the ripe space between arm and body,
into the dampness of skin and hair.
I know his body, know what it does to mine,
and in his small bed my fingers grasp
this bit of helplessness.
He told me how, after the accident,
he’d wake in the night delirious
from the pain and drugs,
and sense he’d been babbling, crying.
Could still feel his mouth moving,
could taste the words still wild on his lips.
the protrusion below his shoulder?
My fingers press into the nub,
move up and down over the raised bone,
my palm grazing the spot above his heart.
His collarbone had given way long ago
after a drunken night in the valley,
when he’d pedaled his bike into a parked car.
We’d been together for a while,
but this was new to me.
The bone had taken three months to heal.
He’d slept propped up, immobilized
on a recliner in his parents’ television room,
sweating out the summer.
His mother had sliced strips of stick deodorant
with a worn-out knife, and carefully pressed them
into the ripe space between arm and body,
into the dampness of skin and hair.
I know his body, know what it does to mine,
and in his small bed my fingers grasp
this bit of helplessness.
He told me how, after the accident,
he’d wake in the night delirious
from the pain and drugs,
and sense he’d been babbling, crying.
Could still feel his mouth moving,
could taste the words still wild on his lips.
The Farmhouse
by Kellam Ayres
Give it new life, I thought,
the wrecked house, the apple orchard.
Camped on the edge of the property,
I’d wrapped myself in a wool blanket.
Deer hoofed through the thick field,
snapped fallen limbs
a few yards from where I slept.
Down the road lived a goat
named Festus, and when we met
I stared into his orange eyes.
His shelter was pitiful,
a small plastic dome
he ducked into when it rained.
Soon after, the house was mine.
Neighbors turned out with pies
and advice, and fresh eggs laid
by geese and bantam hens.
I tried to eat everything
before it spoiled. Cleared the brush,
peeled back layers of neglect,
while Festus stayed chained
to a metal spike in the ground,
walking in circles, wearing down
the frozen grass to bare mud.
the wrecked house, the apple orchard.
Camped on the edge of the property,
I’d wrapped myself in a wool blanket.
Deer hoofed through the thick field,
snapped fallen limbs
a few yards from where I slept.
Down the road lived a goat
named Festus, and when we met
I stared into his orange eyes.
His shelter was pitiful,
a small plastic dome
he ducked into when it rained.
Soon after, the house was mine.
Neighbors turned out with pies
and advice, and fresh eggs laid
by geese and bantam hens.
I tried to eat everything
before it spoiled. Cleared the brush,
peeled back layers of neglect,
while Festus stayed chained
to a metal spike in the ground,
walking in circles, wearing down
the frozen grass to bare mud.
Final Day
by Kellam Ayres
Even in August, a chill.
Boxes stacked on the painted pine floor.
Sheets pulled over the wingbacks, the sofa.
The door closed after letting in the last
of the room’s good air.
Years ago I burned here.
Brought him into the near dark.
Held his hands while he breathed in my hair,
passed it between his lips.
A Wyeth print hangs on the wall now,
farmers scything the fields,
a late-summer mowing. It means
almost nothing, you know how it is,
the image passed into scenery,
or shadows, years ago.
But here, once, he held me,
his arms around my body, my arms
reflecting his own, linked to him.
It seemed that we were endless.
On this, the last night of summer,
I sleep on a cot next to an open screen
and am soaked by the night rain.
Boxes stacked on the painted pine floor.
Sheets pulled over the wingbacks, the sofa.
The door closed after letting in the last
of the room’s good air.
Years ago I burned here.
Brought him into the near dark.
Held his hands while he breathed in my hair,
passed it between his lips.
A Wyeth print hangs on the wall now,
farmers scything the fields,
a late-summer mowing. It means
almost nothing, you know how it is,
the image passed into scenery,
or shadows, years ago.
But here, once, he held me,
his arms around my body, my arms
reflecting his own, linked to him.
It seemed that we were endless.
On this, the last night of summer,
I sleep on a cot next to an open screen
and am soaked by the night rain.
about your wings
by Jacqueline Kolosov
Moral gravity makes us fall toward the heights
– Simone Weil
white as the tundra
swan magnificent—
into un- tethered sky
we plunge
tempestuous visions
fledge into birds
what can one do
to ascend lower?
surrounding us
stars bright as sorrow
why then this
blood? why
this gravity
these talons?
– Simone Weil
white as the tundra
swan magnificent—
into un- tethered sky
we plunge
tempestuous visions
fledge into birds
what can one do
to ascend lower?
surrounding us
stars bright as sorrow
why then this
blood? why
this gravity
these talons?
Hush
by Jacqueline Kolosov
Nothing is the force which renovates the world
– Emily Dickinson
This mare who abides within. She is sculptural, fleet.
This mare of ebony mane and tail
whose brow bears a white star,
the kind a child’s hand
might make, one white streak in a body
resembling night.
This mare is the pasture’s stillness
whose eye contains the depths
of Baltic amber, gold thread of iris,
thorn, crown, bitterest tears.
The wind may gust, and here
on the high plains it does gust,
as it gusts in Damascus and Aleppo,
though I doubt there is silence there.
Why can we not remember
the feathered fall of angels,
the way the desert remembers the history of wind,
weightless, mute.
In ancient times keening gave shape to grief.
Bodies swayed and rocked.
Tell me, mare of the white star,
tail like the quill
with which God wrote His book into being,
is He still writing it now
so many children, wolf-eyed, hungry,
have ceased to speak
while poppies bloom
through the bones of the dead?
You, oh mare, can withstand wind
sharp as shards.
Help us, I beg you,
to remember our names.
– Emily Dickinson
This mare who abides within. She is sculptural, fleet.
This mare of ebony mane and tail
whose brow bears a white star,
the kind a child’s hand
might make, one white streak in a body
resembling night.
This mare is the pasture’s stillness
whose eye contains the depths
of Baltic amber, gold thread of iris,
thorn, crown, bitterest tears.
The wind may gust, and here
on the high plains it does gust,
as it gusts in Damascus and Aleppo,
though I doubt there is silence there.
Why can we not remember
the feathered fall of angels,
the way the desert remembers the history of wind,
weightless, mute.
In ancient times keening gave shape to grief.
Bodies swayed and rocked.
Tell me, mare of the white star,
tail like the quill
with which God wrote His book into being,
is He still writing it now
so many children, wolf-eyed, hungry,
have ceased to speak
while poppies bloom
through the bones of the dead?
You, oh mare, can withstand wind
sharp as shards.
Help us, I beg you,
to remember our names.
The North Atlantic Right Whale
by Jacqueline Kolosov
In death they float, and so became known
as the “right” whales. Escalating now, their vanishing. By day
the remaining few brave ships, nets. Ahab said the eyes
define the face of man. What of a whale’s eyes?
Theirs capture the light, too. Yet these great beings know
what is visible only within the dark, surfaces and depths. Today
the right whales numbers are three hundred. When their eyes
close, two portals remain open. How we see, we know.
But how little, how very little do we know.
as the “right” whales. Escalating now, their vanishing. By day
the remaining few brave ships, nets. Ahab said the eyes
define the face of man. What of a whale’s eyes?
Theirs capture the light, too. Yet these great beings know
what is visible only within the dark, surfaces and depths. Today
the right whales numbers are three hundred. When their eyes
close, two portals remain open. How we see, we know.
But how little, how very little do we know.
Broken Words
by Barrett Ahn
Shakes hand shakes head
long journey before words out of mouth
(use hands and eyes to convey meaning
wave around
gesture frantically
be emphatic on the tones I know)
Broken rice broken sounds
understand? no
cocks head, smiles shy
(next time, plan to bring my young, fluent niece)
Points to map points to self
attempts new phrase, hangs in air
too loud but repeats
maybe hearing issues
(realize the stranger has no hearing issues
know he just can’t decipher the foreign blanket
under which the question hides)
Gives up gives chance to another
sighs in relief as
stranger switches to language from home
(gestures are no longer necessary)
found someone familiar in foreign city.
long journey before words out of mouth
(use hands and eyes to convey meaning
wave around
gesture frantically
be emphatic on the tones I know)
Broken rice broken sounds
understand? no
cocks head, smiles shy
(next time, plan to bring my young, fluent niece)
Points to map points to self
attempts new phrase, hangs in air
too loud but repeats
maybe hearing issues
(realize the stranger has no hearing issues
know he just can’t decipher the foreign blanket
under which the question hides)
Gives up gives chance to another
sighs in relief as
stranger switches to language from home
(gestures are no longer necessary)
found someone familiar in foreign city.
The Inside Twitch
by Robert Okaji
Of leaving: nothing ever lasts
but odd habits and those rancid
bits of love’s lonely power grid
held hostage. Having survived blasts
of rage, battered enthusiasts
patch their holes and hope to mend. Did
you ever observe an eyelid
twitch from the inside? We outcasts
share these tales. I unlock the door,
step out into rain. How easy
to forget what we’ve lost, what we’ve
never held. I will sweep the floor,
wash dishes, cook, pick up debris,
set it aside, regret, heal. Grieve.
but odd habits and those rancid
bits of love’s lonely power grid
held hostage. Having survived blasts
of rage, battered enthusiasts
patch their holes and hope to mend. Did
you ever observe an eyelid
twitch from the inside? We outcasts
share these tales. I unlock the door,
step out into rain. How easy
to forget what we’ve lost, what we’ve
never held. I will sweep the floor,
wash dishes, cook, pick up debris,
set it aside, regret, heal. Grieve.
So I Am Little
by Hasham Khalid
And madness is like a discus
bolting and tearing the space with burgeoning circumference.
I have kept my little
And in keeping my little, found
all that is little is like me.
All that looks curious,
All that keeps waiting.
How patient I am in my vigil,
At the sorrow of the things passing.
How sane in my knowledge of our shrinking,
As time leaves us.
Let me be glitter on your skin
Or the sunlight clasping your spine
As the ringing voice of early morning,
Wakes the earth.
Here I have found in your scent in your clumsiness,
My own body made into a flower.
Call this thing love,
Our mooring in the littleness of each other.
bolting and tearing the space with burgeoning circumference.
I have kept my little
And in keeping my little, found
all that is little is like me.
All that looks curious,
All that keeps waiting.
How patient I am in my vigil,
At the sorrow of the things passing.
How sane in my knowledge of our shrinking,
As time leaves us.
Let me be glitter on your skin
Or the sunlight clasping your spine
As the ringing voice of early morning,
Wakes the earth.
Here I have found in your scent in your clumsiness,
My own body made into a flower.
Call this thing love,
Our mooring in the littleness of each other.
Home (A Quick Guide to Forced Displacement)
by Daniel Carden Nemo
“No human being should be deprived of his metaxu, that is to say of those relative
and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul
and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible.”
– Simone Weil
and mixed blessings (home, country, traditions, culture, etc.) which warm and nourish the soul
and without which, short of sainthood, a human life is not possible.”
– Simone Weil
Let us rest a little.
There is much to take in here. After a long process of disintegration,
rootedness. The life instinct, exceeding bounds, gives off sparks
before it breaks free
and burns itself out
in a flashover.
To break free
will take a lifetime.
A lifetime is a type of flammable cladding
anxious to ingest the oxygen in cavity walls.
The blaze burrows through at length
and eats away at it,
as a blaze would.
Memory is the conductor
as well as the meeting place. The air’s circular presence
feels orchestrated by some vague, ambient compulsion
toward a symmetry that precedes intention. At the sharp end of the passage-
way
were they a substance
in a vessel being filled
the same memories would turn up the self-
same passageway, again--
they’d continue, the self repeat,
visible only in retrospect—
you left to see how far you’d come--
looking back, you were a navigational hyperlink,
collapsed, light at nightfall the final sight to mark your progress,
all initial and ulterior installments of escapement born out of a mere change of direction.
Flux.
Reflux.
[It’s why you are always starting over.]
Run motions of repetition to reach an entry point.
Foster, for what it’s worth,
an image,
a destination…
You feel you are changing yet again. You’d like to ask
what dead book fiction was used to shroud, to mask everyone’s spirit
of discernment so completely,
is it true there isn’t a valve to shut off the flow of that blue smoke in here
the outlet pressure’s going to exceed 1000 kPa and someone may choke to death
before they iron out eventual bugs and safety flaws
and add new self-correcting features,
plus that piece
that has been lodged in you
internalized
like a compression field around a nexus of events might,
and why not, reveal a trace in a case of evidence without clues
as from a swift underwater explosion
during which for a subject to be transformed
it must be stowed at the center of its vulnerability,
it, the subject,
and then propelled high into the air
so as to reflect upside down
in the flashing eye-ball in the sky
the seeing of events as image,
as destination,
not the kind one feels confined to but a harbor of pursuit,
a transplant of the will to believe no less desirous than habitual,
habitually a size too large.
Because the first act of war is feeling small.
Hard to know when to stop, having arrived into the world head first,
anonymously, the next place beside the last, so few crossing rafts.
Micro-Machinist
by Daniel Carden Nemo
Back inside the ring-shaped tunnel fluorescents trace a pale, lavender tint.
Memory flashes spark the place like lightning:
a series of configurations of reflective acts
without reflection
gathered in the walls themselves, not in the mind,
along floorboards and hallways, in the slow accretion of breath
on windowpanes.
A baseline unreality dances with the real from the confinement of the naming self.
Confinement has a long memory,
like prayer—interiors fetched from dream and visions stay silent
because all speech
is deceptive
and imperfect,
retrieved with that smoky fidelity
peculiar to sleep, returned altered, its dimensions suspect, corners warped
slightly away from the truth.
But prayer isn’t so much asking as it is just being still.
The sound of the town waking up to life
matched to the waking town’s
unique sound print
reveals
a voice signal
unaccounted for.
The signal is a wave flowing through our bodies.
When sounded clear it streams right through, lifesize, sonorant howl hardened into everyday acoustics, the guards cashing in each time it runs across
free to continue plaiting
fresh data strands unimpeded, ununiform with the near-
daylight sweep
so that we should access information
at a higher speed, then become it.
Our thoughts are slow-navigating afterthoughts
tethered to events idly dissolving behind them.
Everything takes place before us as if on a screen we watch,
memories pin us back every .4 seconds generating miles and miles of industrious erosion.
Nothing that we choose sits still.
An investigation has been launched, is now ongoing, persists
in the mirage configured/
reconfigured
in the eyes of statues
we can’t escape around the room,
a kind of watching that predates the watcher,
each figure engaged in a meditation whose object had been forgotten
but whose form remained intact.
Saying, how is the thing felt
when there’s no getting through in order to begin to feel at all?
Insofar as the nervous mind supplies the system’s orchestra,
life awaits the big homecoming
cheering on
nothing but survival training
with a deathwish: the music crumbles the alveoli on either side of the recruit’s heart--
Having come across the late familiar missing of the soul, his own private micro-
machinist, all that commands him does not exist.
Memory flashes spark the place like lightning:
a series of configurations of reflective acts
without reflection
gathered in the walls themselves, not in the mind,
along floorboards and hallways, in the slow accretion of breath
on windowpanes.
A baseline unreality dances with the real from the confinement of the naming self.
Confinement has a long memory,
like prayer—interiors fetched from dream and visions stay silent
because all speech
is deceptive
and imperfect,
retrieved with that smoky fidelity
peculiar to sleep, returned altered, its dimensions suspect, corners warped
slightly away from the truth.
But prayer isn’t so much asking as it is just being still.
The sound of the town waking up to life
matched to the waking town’s
unique sound print
reveals
a voice signal
unaccounted for.
The signal is a wave flowing through our bodies.
When sounded clear it streams right through, lifesize, sonorant howl hardened into everyday acoustics, the guards cashing in each time it runs across
free to continue plaiting
fresh data strands unimpeded, ununiform with the near-
daylight sweep
so that we should access information
at a higher speed, then become it.
Our thoughts are slow-navigating afterthoughts
tethered to events idly dissolving behind them.
Everything takes place before us as if on a screen we watch,
memories pin us back every .4 seconds generating miles and miles of industrious erosion.
Nothing that we choose sits still.
An investigation has been launched, is now ongoing, persists
in the mirage configured/
reconfigured
in the eyes of statues
we can’t escape around the room,
a kind of watching that predates the watcher,
each figure engaged in a meditation whose object had been forgotten
but whose form remained intact.
Saying, how is the thing felt
when there’s no getting through in order to begin to feel at all?
Insofar as the nervous mind supplies the system’s orchestra,
life awaits the big homecoming
cheering on
nothing but survival training
with a deathwish: the music crumbles the alveoli on either side of the recruit’s heart--
Having come across the late familiar missing of the soul, his own private micro-
machinist, all that commands him does not exist.
Click & Connect
by Daniel Carden Nemo
At night tricks of light sleep at dark angles,
unlived edges blend in
and blow the design out of scale.
The heart feels like waves gently rock you in the middle of the sea.
Its action extends
and contracts
the somatic parameters
of an interbeing
turned inward searching,
sets for it a rhythm…
Less and less conscious,
the rhythm is scalloped, rationalized
same as a destructive impulse.
Proceed by connecting the following statements:
You don’t yet KNOW yourself.
You drink down nature so she spits you back OUT.
You remain deeply UNHAPPY.
unlived edges blend in
and blow the design out of scale.
The heart feels like waves gently rock you in the middle of the sea.
Its action extends
and contracts
the somatic parameters
of an interbeing
turned inward searching,
sets for it a rhythm…
Less and less conscious,
the rhythm is scalloped, rationalized
same as a destructive impulse.
Proceed by connecting the following statements:
You don’t yet KNOW yourself.
You drink down nature so she spits you back OUT.
You remain deeply UNHAPPY.
