But on returning to the beach smiled
Sentiment to match the scenery
A love too great for the beginnings of notebooks
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Monthly Archives: April 2009
W.M. Akers — The Girl Who Was Afraid of Sand
Stephanie Knapp — Gilbert
There is a boy dancing alone outside after school
with a freckle dotting the underside of his nose,
and cheeks too chubby to keep him out of fights.
His books and pages are always spread on the floor around him
like a blooming white and ink flower,
or floating down the stairwell and resting on the bottom floor
before he can catch them midair.
He never answers with only one word
or stops to inhale when he reads,
or puts his punctuation points where they belong.
And he never, ever, blinks when he talks to you:
“Is this the answer I think that the girl in the story wants to act as Peter Pan because she is a girl so people say she can’t and that she shows them that she can and I think that it means too that she can do whatever she wants because she doesn’t listen to other people and that’s what I think wait no I think she is proud of herself and that’s why that’s why,”
And then the most hopeful smile you have ever seen.
Today this boy stopped my reading with a tap and asked,
one hand waving, pointing towards the sky outside,
and honest tears clouding his eyes,
“Was it ever black and white?”
Elina Mishuris — Devour
I tell her that she has a sick predisposition for the nearly dead, I think, because as usual we’re eating in a diner that looks like a mortuary prep room, full of the yellowing papyrus-skins of tough old matrons and veined reedy sparse everywhere husbands, some now husbands only retrospectively, and I want to know why she chooses this in a city where diners and diner-ees can be as bohemian as you’ve ever wanted them?
I can’t stomach those other places, Mimi says, and eats an entire burger nearly rare, or maybe the ketchup lake she drowned it in is what’s dripping out of the bun. Even the waiters here stumble heavily while they carry the Lunches of the Living Dead, which is exactly what’s inspirational, she says. I think it’s an inspiration to eat somewhere else, but Mimi only wants to go back to her apartment and have sex on the leather couch in the living room, which turns out all right because halfway through we fall from the couch and onto the rug. Sex on the couch is generally uncomfortable because the couch is summer sticky even in November but her boyfriend’s on the bed writing and does not want to be distracted. When he comes into the kitchen to get a glass of water I am scalding my hands at the sink and I tell him hello. It was my dad, I think, who told me the best thing to do in these situations is to be unfailingly polite, though I’m not really sure of the nature of this situation or what degree—version—of politeness is appropriate. I fumble with the faucet and splash him accidentally, but he doesn’t mind anyway because he is, I’ve been told, an interesting person.
Elina Mishuris — Moth
On Sunday we find a moth in the subway.
The dwarves have recoursed to the N for transport,
And send laden carts of earthy innards skimming rail past midnight
Amblers on midnight platforms, awaiting subterranean solutions
To their crises: location, speculation, otherwise.
The unions acknowledge built-in losses—coals
Tumbling from the loads on heaping carts, ending
Up sparkling gratis for underworlders on Canal, or
Growing gauzy wings, cast up
Just halfway—ceilingbound.
Stephanie Gilbert — The Cinque Terre Holiday
The holiday over, in a Rome deaf
to the gods of the past,
the night falling
in Cinque Terre,
our footsteps slow on the receding steps,
the milk mixing with honey in small cafés
the panini melting soft cheese in the morning,
but first, the moon must fade into the night sky
just above the frozen horizon,
how are we expected to measure distances over the water?
Franco calls down from the stairwell
as we put our bags behind the dresser
and ring our skirts out in the basin,
but the vibrant flowers over the balcony,
the green chair,
the blue folded umbrella,
none will compare to the sun spreading out over the sea’s border
like one thin diffusing cloud
none will compare to the way your hair looks when you twist it up
none will compare to the light crafts crowding the narrow streets at night
when the turf is too rough to hold it
none will compare to the delicious four course meal
the whole heads of shrimp that drip oil when you pull them apart
none will compare to the lime green tunnel
to the walk of love being a path far easier
than the walk of devotion
our hands smelled of cocoa butter
and the shower smelled of the waves
filling out your hair
The rocks cracked under the weight of the sea
and the ocean pounded—pounded against our ears
…and the night.
Emma DeGrand — Childhood
My mom found
my little sister’s Barbie dolls
in a pile on the basement floor.
None of us remember
what I did
with their heads.
Lucas A. Gerber — The New Manuscript
In an alley walking home I met Shakespeare. Only he had inhabited the body of the orange Cingular mascot. He’s been doing this for the last couple months to veil his identity. It’s the reason there are theories that he was a fraud.
He gave me a new manuscript he’d been working on. I stuffed it in my backpack and turned around to leave. There are never any words when we meet. As I walked back into the street, I faced back to see if he had left yet. There was an orange outfit lying on the ground like a Cingular guy shed his skin.
I got home and opened the manuscript. It was titled “I knew there would be a day when I would regret not buying a couch for my office. This is that day.” After reading it I threw it in the fireplace. He doesn’t like when I try to publish his stuff. He’s in his Emily Dickinson phase.
He wrote me a short note on the back page which I kept though: “We are like dreamers (until we reach Jerusalem). And tell Bob Dylan that I neither don pointed shoes nor converse with French girls.”
Kiki Von Glinow — Used Car Lot
Lined up like a carton of steel cigarettes,
They stare back at us.
We straighten our collars,
We feign affluence.
He asks us what we want,
We give him blank eyes like dual exhaust.
He changes the intonation of his question
As if that will help.
We tell him to stop playing Regis.
Fine, final answer.
Sunburned skin sticking to hot leather
We like the sienna brown rather than the tan.
We’ll take the British racing green
The champagne gold is a little too…
We can’t put our finger on it
So it finds something else.
The hood is a dusty canvas,
The lonely finger paints a heart.
He wants her gone.
She’s a real beauty he convinces us,
Get her on the highway and let her run.
We nod like obedient pets and say
“Well, what about suicide doors?”
Our Regis won’t crack a smile,
So we shift gears.
We put on our adult faces,
They fit better since we last checked.
He knows we mean business now,
We’re not ones to screw around.
Let the negotiations begin? Don’t think so.
We pick our price and stick to it.
Not a penny higher, we don’t have it.
Not a dime lower, we want to spend it.
Wren Edward Roberts — Rockets Fall on Rocket Falls
It was a beautiful summer. We spent our days in front of the television and our nights kissing boys we barely knew. But every time, we came home and we were virgins again. We weren’t sisters, but we weren’t just friends. I would call us lovers, but we did not love.
We would go out to the point where there was no more light and just stare up at the stars. Venus, Jupiter, Mars. Canes Major, Canes Minor, The Milky Way. We told each other secrets without even speaking a word.
My best friend, at sixteen, was a goddess. She could make the moon bow at her feet, and walk upon water as if it were glass. She would disappear for days at a time before coming home in a burst of light, diamonds dripping from her fingertips.
Sometimes, we would run through the forest like a pack of wolves, hungry for the hunt, hungry for the kill, hungry for a sense of emptiness we could never quite find.
She could hear the music of the stars, the vibrations of God. All I could do was see the clouds cover our world in a blanket of forgotten words. She danced like a crazy woman around the fire to the heartbeat of the jungle, and all I could do was watch because I did not believe in the spirit of joy.
I didn’t want to know her tricks; she never offered to share.
Posted in Prose
Tagged love story, nostalgia, prose poem, Serious, Wren Edward Roberts
Wren Edward Roberts — For Alex, Alone in Iowa
I have occupied that space: the one
where you now sit, clutching letters
never mailed, letters mailed too soon,
letters you were too afraid to read, to write, to
even think about thinking…thinking…
We have both fallen in love with
strangers, dangers, immigrants who never
saw a green card in hand, who worked
harder than either of us ever will
which is a lie, and not a very good one
either.
I drove across two states on a whim
because you were lonely and needed
something. Something we both know
but cannot say because we both write
secrets in our palms, and those are not
for sharing. And I refuse
to betray them.
Posted in Poetry
Tagged friends!, love story, Serious, travel, Wren Edward Roberts
