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sparkle + blink 107
© 2020 Quiet Lightning

cover art © Judit Navratil

works.io/judit-navratil

“After Stuff Smith and/or Steve Reich” by Deborah Bernhardt

first appeared in Driftology (New Michigan Press, 2013)
“Hawking and Shot Dead Joint Statement” by Deborah Bernhardt
first appeared in New American Writing, Issue 38
“Sheldrake’s Telephone Studies” by Deborah Bernhardt
first appeared in Diagram 18.6

set in Absara

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quietlightning.org
su bmit @ qui e tl i g h tn i n g . o r g
 Contents
curated by
Chandler Fitchett + Sophia Passin
featured artist
judit navratil | works.io/judit-navratil

Elizabeth Burch-Hudson Poetry has ruined nature for me 1

Ladan Khoddam-Khorasani Questions for my Nasturtium 3
Robert Keim Abuela Linda’s Kitchen 7
Jeanie Ngo Intergenerational 9
Glenn Ingersoll Human Right 13
Andre Le Mont Wilson Apparition of Dreams 15
Brandon Henry Cento on the Irreconcilability
of Human Predation 19
Jane Mauchly Mourning Warbler... 21
Carla A. Hanson Tabernacle 23
Aleesha Lange Menstrual 25
Deborah Bernhardt After Stuff Smith
and/or Steve Reich 29
Karisma Rodriguez Morning Rush 31
Sorcha Collister Listen to the western
and the Friday night streets 33
Sorcha Collister Storms 35
Shirley Huey Downpour 37
Rohan DaCosta Typa Place 39
Brandon Henry Out-of-Work Cento 41
Andre Le Mont Wilson Br’er Terrapin 43
Wood Reede A Dog’s Heart 45
Brandon Henry Cento on Scrapyard Vultures 47
Alex Maceda Purple is a Late Blooming Color 49
Deborah Bernhardt Hawking and Shot Dead
Release Joint Statement 53
Sheldrake’s Telephone Studies 54
Doug Mathewson Paurl On His Side 57
Elisa Salasin Murmuration 61
Brandon Henry Light Pollution
Outside Sleeper, MO 65
 g is sponsor
et Lightnin ed b
Qu i y
 Quiet Lightning
A 501(c)3, the primary objective and purpose of Quiet
Lightning is to foster a community based on literary
expression and to provide an arena for said expression. QL
produces a bimonthly, submission-based reading series on
the first Monday of every other month, of which these
books (sparkle + blink) are verbatim transcripts.

Formed as a nonprofit in July 2011, the QL board is currently:

Evan Karp executive director

Chris Cole managing director
Meghan Thornton treasurer
Kelsey Schimmelman secretary
Christine No producer
Lisa Church curator liaison
Connie Zheng art director
Edmund Zagorin disruptor
Katie Tandy disruptor
Hadas Goshen disruptor
Sophia Passin disruptor

If you live in the Bay Area and are interested in

helping—on any level—please send us a line:

e v an @ qui et light nin g . o rg

 help us invest in a sustainable
e t hi c a l a r t s ecos ys t em

Support us on Patreon
patreon.com/quietlightning

t h a n k y o u t o o u r pat r o n s

yvonne campbell karen penley

sage curtis monica rocha
linette escobar jessie scrimager
chrissie karp jon siegel
miles karp
katie tandy
ronny kerr
charles kruger meghan thornton
jennifew lewis emily wolahan
shannon may edmund zagorin
sophia passin connie zheng
 et h Burch-Hu
z ab ds
o
li n
ruinePdoetry hasor me
E
nature f

I ask the sea for a sign,

awaiting permission to enter
but she has been reduced by poetic minds,
and so, I cannot discern nor hear
what she is trying to tell me.

1
 ddam-Kho
Kho ra
n sa
da n
La Que ns
for my Nstaiso
i
tu r ti u m
they visited
me in a stanza where we could be nearest each other
breathing.
–Layli Long Solider

Did you know?

Your grandfather picked me.

Did you know?

Your Baba, my firstborn, stormed into the world with
a head full of black hair, raised fists, and a smile.

Did you know?

Your father was the first—the only—to make
America his home.

Did you know?/plums are my favorite/i don’t like

winter so much/i wish I could visit Mecca with you
and hold your hand/i don’t care for jewelry/but place
a vase of freshly cut orchids onto my kitchen table/
with chickpea cookies
And I will grin.
And think about what is beautiful.
And temporary.

I wasn’t there to greet you when you transitioned

3
from womb to Mother Earth
But your Baba tells me you stormed into the world—
two weeks late—head full of black hair, raised index
and middle finger, as if greeting the world
Salam hamegee—deer hastam—but don’t get it twisted—
injaam.
I’m here.

Is it getting hotter where you are azizam?

I watch the news and the anchorwoman says the
earth is melting.

Your aunties tell me you have a picture of a woman as

the background of your cell phone
Neveesaneh? Toni Morrison? Who is she? Tell me
everything.

Ameh Mahboobeh tells me you don’t eat chicken,

beef or lamb—only fish. Why?
Amoo Yadollah tells me you like your coffee black—
Nescafe nah—sia doost dareh—like the tips of my
fingers after breaking open walnut shells in August.
Zahra tells me you love ghormeh sabzi and fesnjaan—
I wish I could make it for you, fresh. Watch you eat
and drink.
Zainab tells me you like pistachio ice cream—that
you walk as close as you can to water fountains.
Deena tells me you give tight hugs—like a bear
wrapped in syrup.
Mohammad Hossein tells me you’re afraid of heights
and always willing to go up to a stranger.
Nasibe tells me she’s taught you the phrase Gol
poshteruh nadarah—a flower has no front and no back.

4 
Ladan jaan. My bright flower. My nasturtium.
Eshkeh maman bozorgee.
Did you know?

Your Haji tells me he wrote you a poem and read it

outloud as you stepped into the house in September—
tears ran down his face—like hot water running from
the faucet before his wudu.

Do you read the Quran?/what do you break your fast

with?/will you have a sofreyeh agd at your wedding?/
what will you name your children?/what’s California
like?/is your chai filled with rosewater or mint? Or
both?

Are you happy?

Azizam, chee mikhay beh man begee?

My darling, what do you wish to tell me?

Aroom baash, naveh jaan. Ghoosh mikonam, azizam.

Daram ghoosh mikonam.
Be calm, my grand-daughter. I’m listening, my dear. I’m
listening.

 5
 rt Keim
Robe
A b u ela
Linda’s Kitchen

8:15 each morning, the boy from the Mercado de

Isabela delivers the day’s ingredients. Every day
another giant pot of food – enough to feed any twenty
friends, family, or strangers.

By mid-day, anyone lingering long enough for more

than a buenos tardes gets a plate of food. Today it’s arroz
con gondules, topped with pernil. At dusk, Emay scrapes
the uneaten into the garbage can by streetlamp light.

The half wall of sink and stove that makes up Abuela

Linda’s kitchen is, by all rights, Emay’s kitchen, though
she owns almost nothing. Every pan and utensil’s worn
spots were rubbed smooth by Emay’s work-hardened
hands. Every food made in this tiny “room” for the last
sixty-three years was prepared, cooked, served, and
cleaned up after by Emay.

Abuela Linda’s room is the closet-sized bedroom. The

low vibration of her condition’s death knell hums
below everything in the house, nearly inaudible after
two years in bed, except when she attempts speech.

Emay’s bed is the easy chair under the semi-

shrugging, sad-eyed portrait of Sagrado Corazón de
Jesús. He’s watched Emay wear the floor bare in the

7
triangle from chair to bed, bed to kitchen. Her swollen,
slippered feet scuffing away at the tiles.

Jesús, with his bleeding heart floating in front of him,

stares at the cracked walls in the kitchen tile from
twilight to twilight. He sees that they are not cracks
at all, but three thin lines stretching to and from the
water spigot. Lines of constantly moving ants, invisible
to old Emay’s clouded eyes.

8 R ob e r t K e i m
 Jeanie Ngo

Intergenerational

It is close to 1:30am. I am nineteen and in that murky

grey cloud of living at home and attending community
college. Most of my friends have left for Cal States and
UCs. It feels lonely, saving up money. I read about their
dorm life—RAs, sororities, shower shoes—stories that
weigh heavy on me with subtle commentary: too bad
she couldn’t get into a real college, too bad she couldn’t get
out, too bad she’s still living at home.

So, I’ve been out all day, sneaking whole pizzas into
the cheap movie theater and staying obnoxiously
long at Denny’s afterward. I’ve come home to find
my neighbors are having yet another party, the music
loud and the laughter strong. The smell of limes and
cilantro.

My mother sits on the floor of our apartment,

newspaper spread out in front of her, picking through
a pile of leaves to see which ones should be thrown
out before they go into her soup. She is enraptured,
her back facing me. I can see her through our big,
open windows before I even enter. My mother always
keeps doors and blinds open—it reminds her of the
friendly neighborhoods in Vietnam where she grew
up. There’s nothing she loves more than sunshine
and honesty. She is the purest person I know.

9
I squat in front of her, in the pure American garb of
boots and jeans and privilege, and look at her quiet
demeanor and homemade, mismatched pajamas. She
beams at me. “How was your night?” she asks, cutting
off a wayward, blackened stem with a knife. I am
reminded that she never had nights like mine. For her,
there was only war and work. Her immigrant status
and minimal English excludes her from movies and
non-Vietnamese restaurants. And so she waits for me
to come home and asks about my night.

Before I can answer, a group of teenagers from the

party are shouting at her through the window. Our
window. “Ching chong ling long ding dong!” Their
middle fingers push up at the corners of their eyes
before they disappear.

The music next door does nothing to fill the silence. I

am filled with a rage so deep and visceral, I am afraid
of what I might do. “How long have they been doing
that?” I demand. In all my years, I’ve never seen racism
directed so blatantly towards my mother, a woman of
4’11” who effortlessly gifts a smile to everyone she sees.
How dare they inject poison into our home like that?

“Have people done this before?” I ask. I want her to be

angry. I feel as if we’re right on the cusp of a moment
of cruel, intergenerational sobriety.

“Doesn’t that make you mad?” I prod. She nicks at

another stem with her blade, a light and graceful
movement that my eyes cannot help but track. Past her
downcast eyes, I can see the teenagers have left empty
bottles of Coke and beer on our doorsteps. I know my

10 J e an i e N go
mom will gather them tomorrow and leave them in a
little bin next to the dumpster to make it easier for
homeless people to collect. I suddenly feel guilty for
leaving her alone all day.

“Come,” she finally says, standing up with her bundle of

greens. “Are you hungry? Let me make you some soup
and then you can tell me about your night.” I sit at the
table and watch her float about the kitchen, telling her
the shallow stories she wants to hear.

When I am done, she smiles into the rising steam and

says, “That sounds like fun.” She places a bowl in front
of me and instructs me not to forget the black pepper
and fried onions.

“Aren’t you going to have some?” I ask as she sits across

from me.

“No,” she answers, “I made it for you.”

Je ani e Ngo 11
 Ingerso
enn ll
Gl
H uman Rig h t

Everybody has a right to happiness,

said the unhappy man.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha,
said the happy man.
Ha ha ha.

13
 e Le Mont Wil
dr s on
An
Apparition
o f Dreams

Mom,
You never dreamed I would read your diaries after
your death, but I find more comfort in your dreams
than in the reality I’m living, now, in a time of a
pandemic. If given a choice between watching
the nightly news with its epidemic of bad news
or reading your dream diaries, I choose to be
Little Nemo in your Slumberland, Alice in your
Wonderland, Midsummer in your night’s dream:

On September 28, the day the jazz trumpeter, Miles

Davis, died, you dreamed he was high up, wore a
purple cape, and thanked you for your prayers.

On February 10, the day the Roots author, Alex Haley,

died, you dreamed he gave you a big turkey wing and
sliced you a lean ham, eliminating the fat.

On one date whose location I can’t find again in a

thousand pages of your diaries, you dreamed of Maya
Angelou. That’s all you wrote: “Dreamed of Maya
Angelou”, and, on December 9, when you gave
me a copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I
hugged you; but on February 28 when you saw her
perform in person, you were disappointed.

15
On June 22, you dreamed you rode a bus with Marlon
Brando.

I’m thinking, Really, Mom?

Which Brando? “Hey, Stellaaaa!” or “I’m gonna make
him an offer he can’t refuse.” Did you speak to him?
What did he say? Just as I imagined you chatting
with Brando on a bus through LA, I read the end of
your diary entry. Also riding your bus was Lionel
Richie of the Commodores.

I’m thinking, Really, Mom?

What the hell is Lionel Richie doing on a bus with
you and Brando? Lionel sang in a little higher voice
all the way home (you underlined) a poem your son
wrote. What? What happened to Brando? What does
your dream mean other than the world’s greatest
actor served as witness to your son’s poem sung by
the world’s greatest composer? But I find your dream
wonderful for your imagination and ambition.

Sometimes, Mom,
your nightmares resemble the nightmare I’m living:

On November 11, you dreamed of eggs bobbing in

blood. Not good, you added.

On December 10, you dreamed of a man lying in

the road. You went to help him. He motioned you
to place your hand on his side. You refused. His
side opened and pus flowed. You awoke, your heart
beating fast.

On December 26, you dreamed you were in a funeral

16 An dr e L e M on t Wi lson
home. When the hearse arrived, you saw a dead man
inside.

On January 20, you dreamed the devil delivered a

bronze-colored casket to your door.

Sometimes, Mom,
I wondered if, upon your death, as you knelt and
prayed on a dirty carpet before your bed, and your
heart spasmed until it stopped, you realized the
dream you dreamed on January 10:
You walked down a dark street. Yellow neon lights
blinked and drew you, like a Polyphemus moth, to a
porch light. You came upon a motion picture show
starring Cab Calloway. Resplendent in a white zoot
suit, he sat on a throne like the King of Sweden. His
wide brimmed fedora formed a halo around his head.
A spotlight shone on him. He stood from his throne
and walked through the black and white picture
screen and into the movie theater in full color. His
gold-plated chain jangled as he jazzed his way down
the steps in front of the screen. Scatting and jiving as
he sang “Hi-dee hi-dee hi-dee hi”, he sassed his way
up the theater aisle. When he reached you, he did a
split, rose, and offered you his hand. You took it.

Andre Le Mont Wi lson 17

 ndon Henry
Bra
Cen
to on lity
the Irreconcilabi
of Human redation
P
The piece is ready to end.
–Don Delillo
The Body Artist 1

Though we lay runways for death and grease death’s

perfect machines7,
lying in each other’s arms, dreaming of clemency 8.
I sometimes think of the lamb when I crawl down11
old among them. But when the fire had become
one thick, impenetrable column, the men watched4
the mammoth, the auroch, the cave bear, the
Neanderthal14.

But you didn’t. You found no ritual there

though you let yourself fall12
from the boring grind of dark and light 5:
away to the horizon. The way those last fishing boats
still 6
came about when an ancestor had his throat cut13
and they have made a new statement 2.
14,000 containers arranged 9
through moment after moment. Fighting down10
engine. Then nothing: I can’t hear the bugs. I don’t
see the birds3.

1.
Don Delillo – The Body Artist
2.
Norman Dubie – The Mercy Seat. “Hummingbirds”
3.
Rebecca Dunham – Cold Pastoral. “Elegy Written in Oil” 19
114

4.
Claudia Emerson – Secure the Shadow. “Calf Killings”
5.
B.H. Fairchild – Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest. “Weather
Report”
6.
Cecil Helman – Irregular Numbers of Beasts and Birds. “Sunset on the Pier”
7.
Rodney Jones – Transparent Gestures. “Burned Oil and Hawk”
8.
Yusef Komunyakaa – The Chameleon Couch. “The Last of the Monkey Gods”
9.
Hadara Bar-Nadav – The Frame Called Ruin. “Ache Becomes ‘Embankment’”
10.
Tom Sleigh – The Chain. “The Tank”
11.
Gerald Stern – This Time. “I sometimes think of the Lamb”
12.
Bruce Weigl – Declension in the Village of Chung Luong. “Coyote Near the
Hanford Road Bridge”
13.
Roger Weingarten – Ethan Benjamin Boldt. “And”
14.
David Wojahn – for the scribe. “Canis Familiarus”

20 Bran don H e n r y
 e Mauchly
Jan
Mourning Warbler
6/4/2020 SF

late morning
is it good?
it is a beautiful day
and Ahmaud Arbery should be alive to go for his run
down whatever street he wants,
the most beautiful
with the biggest, fullest trees
beeches, loblolly pines, river birch
listening peacefully to the birds’ song
a mourning warbler’s
celebration of beauty
.
Ahmaud Arbery
say his name
that’s not enough

21
 . Hans
rla A on
Ca
Tabernacle

It is late April, and the snows from the Jocko watershed

are melting and surging down into the valley, flooding
gravel roads and carving new cuts through the black
alluvial soil.

“I’m going to the Brush,” she tells her mom, a completely

normal thing to do on this Montana Reservation.
Parents never question their children when they
wander and play outside, far from yards, phones,
supervising eyes.

She takes her pocketknife and an apple. Her little

chapel is on a small island in the middle of the creek
behind a thick patch of Purple Bull thistle, dried
out and crispy. Wending her way through this spiky
moat she finds black tree lichen, dark green moss,
dried yarrow, red buffalo berries, and a few fronds of
red cedar, used here for palms on Palm Sunday. The
journey always leaves her with stickers in her arms,
clothes and hair.

She drops to her knees and inhales the scent of the

black ground beneath her. It is cool and dank. She
tries to parse the odors, name what she smells. She
casts around in her mind for the labels that her
grandmother gave her as they walked along the ditch

23
 bank and in the pasture, calling for the recalcitrant
cows who had not shown up at milking time. But the
plants haven’t yet leafed out, and she can’t identify
twigs. Behind her in the short grass are buttercup
tendrils silking along the ground, their waxy flowers
newly emerged.

She reaches back into a corner of the shelter and

withdraws an ancient, water-soaked knot of wood
with whorls, knobs, and indentations. She knows
this gnarly piece of wood sequesters some secret bit
of knowledge, ready to be released. When she closes
her eyes and sniffs, wisps of ancient memories smoke
through her mind. She breathes deep and the cold of
the spring evening pricks at her neck and arms. She
feels almost as if she were floating, rising up and away.
She understands that she is about to be blessed with
something ephemeral, an important knowing. But
then Father Obersinner’s voice snakes into her mind:
I am the Lord your God; you shall have no strange gods
before me.

The feeling of expanding, of floating out and above

melts and spirits away into some unreachable crevice.
Her sense of solitude and belonging suddenly seem
wrong and the impending darkness feels strange.

Apologizing to the twilight, the chokecherries, the

soon-to-bloom serviceberries, the buttercups, and
the mud of her small island, she takes the knot of the
long-dead tree and jumps across the muddy water
away from the small peach-pit shaped piece of soil—a
long leap—to the other side of the stream.

24 C a rla A . H an s on
 esha Lange
Ale

M e nst r u a l

I knew that you started

your week

before you knew

that Sunday began.

Because after so much laughing

and touching

and learning

and growing

and moaning

you wrapped your legs around mine—

Once,

I learned that a body

was to be exhumed,

and while the coffin was decayed

25
 from the weather,

there was no access to the body

because a willow’s roots were wrapped

around her—

and when you finally lifted yourself off of my leg,

a little brownish-reddish spot was left

behind.

And I thought of

her blood

and my blood

and your blood

on my leg

—the woman’s spilled blood on a white wall, carpet,

and tiles,

all inconveniently tragic places to store your blood,

seeping into all of the little cracks

& making the clean up crew work four hours of overtime

because (and did you know that)

26 Al e e s h a L an ge
 they’ll have to remove all of the paneling on the walls

that the blood touched

so that the house can be sanitized. (?)

But there’s literally no clean up crew

when I’m alone

and in charge of myself

and I get blood all over the toilet seat,

and I feel that just a square or two of damp toilet paper

is enough to make it look

like I never spilled anything

on the seat,

and!

sometimes a drop of blood from the end

of the tampon just flies across the room
and splashes onto the wall;

do the panels in my bathroom have to be removed?—

and I wondered

how did she die anyway?

and for what reason did her body need to be exhumed?

Al e e sha Lange 27
 o rah Bernhar
D eb dt
A f t e r St u f f S m it h
a n d / o r Ste v e R e i c h

his name followed by a cut

his name followed by a cut
his name followed by a cut
I did not watch

use your whole arm

when you bow
slices of air

détaché
tuning your radius

pressing the sound

arm against
a sea stage left

by sinew to the moment

commissioned choral
Daniel Pearl Variations
layers of regress

and at the catachresis

of third remove
my tinny harp

29
 too sharp
no no
climb up that stair

household instrument on
Kármán Vortex Street
unsteady separation

of viscous over a body

singing of
suspended lines

telephone or power
Oh-spel-dah-doo-di

he says in the video

there is a street named after
my great-grandfather
Chaim Pearl

his name followed by a cut

his name followed by a cut
his name followed by a cut
I did not watch

30 D e b o ra h B e r n h ardt
 Rodrig
r isma ue
Ka z
M o rning Rush

There’s a middle-aged woman sitting

In the corner of the bus during morning rush,
With eyes as big as gourds,
Drinking in all the flesh, fabric,
And beaded frills of a bored young professional
Whose relaxed arm
Is tight-fistedly gripping the steel rod.

The woman with gourd eyes sketches

Everyone who ends up clutching the bar
After shifts at stops, the on and offs,
Looking at her subjects with the quality of curiosity
A baby uses to investigate the world.

The images sift through her discerning eyes

Trickling down her fingertips onto the patient page,
Which she occasionally gauges with mild curiosity:
One man’s jaw here, another’s forearm there.

Her subjects do not notice her

Or do not choose to look,
Their eyes like little teacups
With the saucers placed on top.

31
 r cha Colliste
So r
andListen to the western ets
the Friday night stre

Rhythmic clanking fading

Loud hissing
Hissing
Steam hissing
Men shouting
Gunfire popping
Gunfire continues
Steam hisses
Indistinct shouting
Gunfire
Gunfire popping
Man coughing
Woman screaming
Baby crying in the distance
Girl sobbing
Siren wailing
Candle crackling
Cracking clattering
Cars horn honking
Neighbour sneezing
Baby crying
Car radio bass rattling
Banging
Motorbike revving
Distant siren wailing
Siren passing
Quiet laughing. 33
- SET 2 -
 r cha Colliste
So r

St o r m s

Steam drips inside

On the Sunday night of a storm
The sanctity of the mind
Blown
The humid transport
Of pressurized thoughts
And no one knows what to blame

35
 ley Huey
Shir

Do wnpour

It never rains but it pours. That’s on the side of a

Morton’s salt container—the iconic girl in a yellow
dress with an umbrella the emissary for this necessary
element of our food. Just as fat is flavor, so is salt. Salt:
salt fish, salted caramel, that salty broad, salt on the
ground—crunching beneath my feet creating stability
amidst slippery puddles and ice. Salty, they say about
someone who tells dirty jokes. Salt on your come, salt
in blessings of the old, salt in the ponds when you
fly into or out of SFO—red like earth, red like clay.
Sometimes the body needs salt so clearly. I want potato
chips, with salty crystals on the side that touch the
tongue. I want bacon, salt mingling with fat and with
smoke. Salt in my tears as I think of what once was.
Salt in the brine of the chicken we used to bring to
grandfather’s grave in LA. Chicken in a plastic cooler.
Chicken, I made the chicken—finally—this year. Salt
in the water, salt in the chicken skin, salt in my tears as
I brought it to my father’s grave, an offering made by
these hands. Salt: it is essential to my life.

37
 han DaCosta
Ro

Typa Place

I burned my tongue on an onion ring

I was thinkin’ of a prairie
Typa place you take yo’ shoes off
“Not in” grandmama’s livin’ room
Not so different from that look in yo’ eyes
When you done gone mad in a mad city
And you so stir crazy that it hurts lately

All you wanna do is run wild

Like you ain’t been taught nuthin’
Typa place I lay my head down
Face to face wit yo’ soft side
I be tryna talk some sense to yuh

Befo’ I gih yuh duh world I gotta know

What iss hittin’ fuh

You suck yo’ teef and shiver by the radiator

You say yo’ supervisor don’t like yo’ attitude
You say you don’t like huh lazy eye
Who duh fuck she lookin’ at?
Who duh fuck she think she talkin’ to?
She need tuh worry ‘bout huh boyfriend
And why his hands got huh
Lookin’ like Kung Fu Panda every otha Monday
We agree on “Oh well”

39
 You huff and puff
While standing in the heatwaves
A melting snowflake slides down your neck
“You so pretty
Juss like a chocolate bunny on Easter Sunday”

You put a square to yo’ face

And dream of ancestral planes
You open your eyes to food deserts
Fraudulent niggas and scams
And the only typa pyramids
“They” could manage to arrange

I say quit playin’ and come to bed

Let us perform a ritual,
Let us chant with our private parts poking out

We ain’t got sage but we got incense

I bet if yuh quit complainin’ you could hear da ocean

I stubbed my toe on the auction block

I was thinking about family values
Fantasizing ‘bout Rihanna
I was seeing jets over Mesopotamia
Typa place I lay my head down

40 R oh an D a C o s ta
 ndon Henry
Bra
O ut-o f-
W ork Cent o

My sister’s out of work and my brother’s

out of work and my other brother’s
out work, these are facts available now 9
in recycled newspapers where
Romeo and Juliet meet14.
You get paid the same no matter 5
the green city or the yellow road that leads there7.
Often, I am at a loss to know 8
the close connection between the two, the liquid 15
the telephone wires never touch
themselves, not even at night
when the lips are asleep11.
But here, we Americans just kiss12
to remember that boys were out on the hills 6.
Palms dancing above tambourines4
Woody Guthrie’s “Car Song” was spinning out its
final notes3.
Parking it later where the Rio Grande narrows2.
Maybe just to get this memory back1
that makes me stare out the window and want10
until all of the food on my plate was gone13.

1.
Michael Burns – It will Be All Right in the Morning. “I Drop My Daughter
off at the Early Morning Prayer Rally”
2.
Marcus Cafagña – The Broken World. “Remission”
3.
David Clewell – Almost Nothing To Be Scared Of. “Too Far this Time”
4.
Victor Hernández-Cruz – Panoramas. “Panoramas”

41
 5.
Jim Daniels – Punching Out. “Where I’m at: Factory Education”
6.
Norman Dubie – In the Dead of the Night, 1975. “Monologue of Two Moons,
Nude with Crests, 1938”
7.
B.H. Fairchild – Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest. “The
Second Annual Wizard of Oz Reunion in Liberal, KS”
8.
Robert Gibb – The Origins of Evening. “The Connection to the Dark”
9.
Bob Hicok – Words for Empty and Words for Full. “In these Times”
10.
Lynda Hull – Ghost Money. “Night Waitress”
11.
Hadara Bar-Nadav – The Frame Called Ruin. “Let Me Hold the Kaleidoscope”
12.
Michael Meyerhoffer - Damnatio Memoriae. “Father Time and Baby New Year”
13.
Jane Shore – Happy Family. “Mrs. Hitler”
14.
Tom Sleigh – Station Zed. “Homage to Mary Hamilton”
15.
Gerald Stern – Bread without Sugar. “The Founder”

42 Bran don H e n r y
 e Le Mont Wil
dr s on
An
B r ’e r Te r r a p i n

My mother left Texas and its lynching trees as soon

as she graduated from high school in 1954. She
returned to California where her family had worked
the shipyards during World War II. She married, had
two kids, and divorced. According to my elder brother,
Terry, she called her mother back in Texas and asked,
“Mama, can I come home and live with you?”

Mama spoke into the phone, “Humph, you’re raising

two black boys who’ve always lived in the city. One
boy is fast, like Br’er Rabbit; the other boy is slow, like
Br’er Terrapin and doesn’t have the right temperament
to live in the South. You bring him down here, and he’s
bound to say or do something that will get himself
lynched.”

At the time of their conversation, several years had

passed since Emmett Till, a black boy from Chicago,
had been lynched, when he visited relatives in
Mississippi, for supposedly whistling at a white
woman. My mother decided to stay and remarry in
California where I became her next son born in a state
where lynchings supposedly didn’t occur. However,
with each killing of an unarmed African American,
I feel a growing awareness that what happened to
blacks in the Jim Crow South, could happen to me

43
 today anywhere in America. Whenever I go on walks
in an Oakland suburb and see a barren tree overlooking
the marsh, I imagine myself hanging from it and hurry
home before dark.

44 An dr e L e M on t Wi lson
 d Reede
Woo

A D o g ’s H e a r t

She fell in love too easily. It was a painful problem.

She decided her heart needed protection, so she took
to dressing it in a heavy coat with a thick fur lining.
Buttoned tight and safe from the elements, it was
sheltered, hidden, quietly detached.

One day she was late for life, and in her haste, she
forgot to button the coat. Her heart was exposed. It
felt rather good, so she left it unprotected. She even
relaxed a little, which she should have never done
because that’s when she lost it, her heart that is, not
her mind. That came later. One minute her heart was
there; the next it was gone.

She panicked. She looked everywhere, under the bed,

in her husband’s vest pocket, her son’s backpack, at the
back of the kitchen cupboard behind the condiments.
No luck, though she did find her pride along with an
antiquated tin of baking powder.

She threw away her pride and placed the tin of baking
powder in the hole where her heart had lived. As you
can imagine, it was too small and kept falling out.
In desperation she tried other substitutes, a potted
geranium, a super-sized box of cinnamon candies,
a goose-necked lamp from her parents’ garage.

45
Nothing fit, nothing lasted for long, nothing felt right.

With the loss of her heart, she suffered the loss of her
equilibrium. The world was no longer flat; it curved
and pulsed at an alarming speed. She took to walking
backward, always looking over her shoulder. She
was never certain of the curb and worried she would
misstep, decompose into mulch and weeds and leaves.

Her dog reminded her that she needed a heart to get

on in the world. She thanked him and then reminded
him that he was wise, but a show-off. Her cat suggested
she try walking on all fours. She thanked her cat and
then pointed out that he had only one eye; therefore,
his perspective might be off.

One day her dog came to her stiffly, walking on his

hind legs. He was clutching a package wrapped in soft
green velvet. “Take this,” he said. “It is a piece of my
heart. I have more than enough for two, and besides,
I sleep most the day. I don’t need it as much as you
do. My only condition is that you promise you won’t
conceal it. It is such a beautiful heart it would be a
shame to hide it.”

She thanked her faithful friend and carefully placed his

heart in the hole where hers had lived. It fit perfectly.

Life is still curved and pulsing, and at times she is

inclined to walk backward, but to her credit, most days
she bravely faces the world even when it seems a most
disagreeable place. She has also discovered that a good
scratch behind the ears solves most issues.

46 Wood R e e de
 ndon Henry
Bra

C n
ScrapyeanrtdoVo
ultures

Here the body is the sheared-off wing

of the Trans-Avia plane
lying in a scrapheap12
about nail & hammer, plank & uneasy sky11
the clang of iron and the burst and hiss of the cutting
torch 8.
It is simple and American, machines and steel 5
and mangling all of it in the crusher 14.

Dead things here get a fan club

of vultures10.
The weedy heart of the junkyard 6

a dull dazzle of horseflies, a few puddles9,

lumps of charcoal, pieces of daub and bone2
teeth shredding the slick lining to a satin nest 7.

What just frightened them into flight - 3

in terms of planes, in terms of spatial organization1
unable to stand the sight of another13
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings4.

1.
Hadara Bar-Nadav – The Frame Called Ruin. “Fields, Ribbons, Folds: Somatic
Landscapes (for Zaha Hadid)”
2.
Michael Burns – It Will Be All Right in the Morning. “Where DeSoto Met the
Casqui”

47
 3.
Billy Collins – Ballistics. “Ornithography”
4.
David Bottoms – Under the Vulture Tree. “Under the Vulture Tree”
5.
Jim Daniels – Punching Out. “Soo Locks”
6.
James Dickey – Poems 1957-1967. “Cherrylog Road”
7.
Rebecca Dunham – The Glass Armonica. “A Frighful Release”
8.
B.H. Fairchild – Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest.
“The Potato Eaters”
9.
Rodney Jones – Things that Happen Once. “The Troubles that Women
Start are Men”
10.
Bob Hicok – Elegy Owed. “Circle in the Sky”
11.
Yusef Komunyakaa – The Emperor of Water Clocks. “Fortress”
12.
Tom Sleigh – Station Zed. “KM4”
13.
Roger Weingarten – Shadow Shadow. “Gulf Stream”
14.
C.K. Williams – Lies. “Trash”

48 Bran don H e n r y
 x Maceda
Ale

Late BlPurple is a olor

o o min g C

Purple is a late blooming color. I know, because I’ve

watched the colors bloom.

The thing about radically simplifying your life is you

have time to visit the flowers every day. Every day, I
walk the same path, and at some point, the flowers
began to bloom. I realized why there was so much
written about spring and so much written about
flowers. Because have you seen the audacity of the early
blooming flowers? Do you see the energy with which
they burst forth out into a world still half bathed in
winter, a world with a palette of stale sticks and dry
bones and at best, moments of deep forest green?

The audacity of the early blooming flowers. They do

not bother to creep up on you, how could they, when
you walk the same path everyday? You would notice.
One still morning they just appear, covered in dew,
faces turned up towards the sun in salutation, sprung
up as if winter never occurred at all. It is almost naive
to be grateful for them, because their presence screams,
“as if I ever left!!!” What must it feel like to be so
bold in your being that one is forced to question
whether there was ever being without you in the
first place? I am so shocked by the audacity of the

49
 early blooming flowers that I have no choice but to
stare. I still remain too awe-struck to know whether or
not they are in fact a dream.

They are then replaced by the fragility of the cherry

blossom: a beauty so delicate, so fleeting, so engrossing
that you cannot help but be brought to tears. Much
has been written about her, too, so I will keep it brief.
All I will say is that I am not sure which is preferred:
her petals as they bud from their pink capsule, as they
lay on the grass, as if from ground instead of tree, or
as they float down like snowflakes, in transition from
the former to the latter.

For eight weeks I’ve watched the flowers, I’ve watched

them every day. I might cry with the kelp but I rejoice
with the flowers. As I visit them I feel my heart
blossom with the naive audacity of joy; how dare I –
me! Me, etched of semi-permanent winter, of smoke
and dry bones and a wish for a moment of deep forest
green. But I do, I rejoice. I am a flower after all, my
purpose is to blossom.

I visit the flowers everyday, and so I have noticed,

purple is a late blooming color. I know this, because
I have watched the colors bloom. But little has been
written about this fact.

The thing is, the flowers were done. They were over. A
greyness had settled in over spring and the twinkle of
the leaves, while present, had lost its magic and I was
relegated to purchasing cut sunflowers from the store
on the corner, willing them to have the audacity of the
flowers I remember, then remembering – they are cut

50 Al e x M a c e da
sunflowers, purchased from the store on the corner.
Truthfully, my spirit has been weak and I have needed
the memory of boldness of the early bloom and its
sharp contrast to winter to remember that I, too, can
burst forward in a spring of color, despite everything.
The path I walk every day has begun to dry, and while
my heart remembered its prior joy, it’s seemed to
fade in slow motion like the snowflakes of the cherry
blossom tree, in transition, closer to the ground than
to the bud. The magic seemed to die. And while I still
had a sort of hope, it was a sad sort of stillness.

But quietly, purple has begun to puncture my path,

emerging from shrubs that I thought were but fillers
for the empty space along the paved pathways, trees
that I did not imagine could bloom. Purple has
sprouted from weeds in the cracks of my sidewalk
and through the tips of the holes of my chain link
fence. I had already surrendered my spring to the next
season. I thanked it and I bid it goodbye, grateful for
the brief period of rebirth, ready for the dry spell of
summer – which is just winter, with fewer clothes. I
held the memory of my joy, thinking the audacity of
the early blooming flower was all that I was allowed
to have, being careful not to grasp it too tight, lest the
memory fade away. I thought I did not deserve more
spring, not me, etched of smoke and dry bones, not me
who was shocked to be allowed to touch the spring at
all. But purple is a late blooming color. Purple is a late
blooming color. Purple is a late blooming color and
spring is still here.

Al e x Ma ce da 51
 o rah Bernhar
D eb dt
H aw k i n
g and Shot Dead
R e leas
e Joint Statement

Use birchwood taster spoons

to bury us in the sky. Choose spots
not too milky, not sparse. As needed,
X-acto fuss to wedge us. Light pollution
as headlamps; heavy pollution
as Mod Podge to sylvan decoupage
our decompose. Scoop out
just enough leafy galaxy.
We’re barely anything.
Not splinters to a cluster.
Not even slips. Our slip knots

pulled. Close one eye,

crush our heads. Unlike
the beginning, space-time with edge.
Our naught bits, like everybody’s,
were fuzz from neutrinos. Starts. Stars.

Anomalies are necessary

for our speech synthesizer’s correct timing.
Emma González holds a silent
six minutes and about twenty seconds.

53
 Sheldrake’s Telephone Studies

May I help who’s next in line

to prove dialing telepathy.

Randomizing ribbed casino dice cups.

[S]uccessful identification of callers

rooted in closeness,
not physical proximity.

Longitudes lovely and lush

due to variance in kindness

and latitude of glass.

May I help who’s next

measure momentum’s radiant

and fibroblast ranginess.

May I help who’s next.

That person will be you,

merged into the referent

who, can I,

almost know but for

the call of uncertainty principle.

54 D e b o ra h B e r n h ardt
Can you know
if I don’t

know what it’s like to be a bird.

The sun is essentially gashes

like my chest cavity.

Cut radiance sonars

through multi-ply
Armantroutian tone.

I’d like a Carl-a-Jung-a-ling

ringtone. If you’re just tuning in,

if or if not, we’re talking

about distance feeling.

What it means for us.

Can I hear you

now past the horizon.

That blue is all in a rush. Who’s next.

De bora h Be rnha rdt 55

 u g Mathewso
Do n
Paurl On His Side

Snow begun to swirl, just getting to be dark. Cut

enough wood for one day, my brother Paurl and me.
Been cutting along the ridge that divides the old farm
in two. His hundred acres on the back side of the ridge
and my hundred in front. He took the truck and I
started walking back with my saw and Maize, my wife’s
old dog. Real quiet, nice out there along the ridge like
that. I’d set the saw down to answer a not particularly
urgent call of nature and the dog gone exploring when
I heard her voice.

“Well look who’s out here waterin’ the flowers.”

...... She’d been dead now for years, Lurleen had. Wasn’t
sure I heard right. I zipped up at least before turning
around. Sitting on a stone wall, there she was. Wearing
that little blue dress with yellow flowers on it, smoking
her Pall Mall.

“Yeah, it’s me alright, back from the dead you could say,
but I’m not back… just visiting.”

I must of stood there like a hooked trout with my

mouth open, blinking away and trying to clear my
throat. She was pretty as a summer day, with her
hair done nice and that smart aleck grin of hers.

57
“Oh, come on Tommy, loosen up will ya! I just wanted
to say hello before I went to see him ……. How is he ……
How’s he doing now?”

“Paurl?, okay enough I guess, but since you left he just

stays close to home. I mean, I got a town job and all,
but not Paurl. He been alone back there just sitting
since you died.”

They’d been married, I don’t know, four, five years

when she took off. Not another man mind you, just
wasn’t of a mindset to live way out here, be poor, be
a farmer’s wife. She’d gone west, had some kinda
waitress job when she got killed. Car accident.

“Truth to tell Lurleen, he’s not so good. Took you

leaving hard. Real hard. Still does. Keeps to himself and
workin’ his side. He’s my brother and all that, but a I
gotta say, I just wish he’d find another woman or get
a hobby or some god-dammed thing and stop moping.
Do something! Nobody gives a shit what!”

We were both quiet after that. Maybe I said too much,

but I started feelin’ uncomfortable (uncomfortable
with a ghost mind you) and thought I should change
the subject.

“I gotta ask, Lurleen, …… what’s it like being dead?”

“Alright,” she sighed. “No better than livin’, just

different. Never cold, never hungry, and not bored
like you’d think. Remember those View-Master things
we had growing up? You could put in a little cartoon
or somethin’ about state parks, it’s like that, only you

58 D oug M at h e w s o n
don’t get to push down the lever… it just happens.
Things keep changing, never know where you’ll end
up…… but I wanted to set things straight with your
brother. Not sure when I might be back.”

“I don’t know,” I said “it’s good to see you and all, but
Paurl, well, you know how he can be, he’s different.”

“Different!” she laughed, “Ya think? Thought maybe

I pop up out of the damned fireplace and give him
a fright, but that won’t solve the problem. I need to
explain, explain it wasn’t him.”

“Lurleen honey, what can you ever say that’ll patch

things up? Paurl’s sitting back there feeling sorry for
hisself, and you’re dead! Nothin’s gonna change any of
that!”

She looked down, nodded some. Then it came to me.

“Course ……, you could take him with you.”

Dou g Mat he wson 59

 a Salasin
Elis

Murmuration

I cannot forget the cadence

of his thank yous
they come back to me like a lullaby
a chant for life
like a long cool drink, a sigh
an exhale, the chorus
of our own special song.

I cannot rid myself of deep

bone gratitude that arrives
on a frequency heard by those
on this earth that never have to ask
if a dying man said thank you
as I was asked that morning
in the kitchen upon returning
home.

Did he say thank you?

I cannot answer. I cannot speak. I cannot tell of

my uncle, tumor swelling chest with limbs turned useless
his once man-body now stained with urine and open sores.

I cannot explain the cancer, the waning life I lifted

Into the dilapidated Guadalajara taxi broken
passenger seat that won’t stay upright but that’s ok
because neither will Sal’s broken body.
61
 I cannot tell of kindness, that driver
maneuvering cobblestone streets with tenderness
of last rites because each bump in the road shakes
bones
rattles tumors each sudden stop a shotgun
of pain, a guttural moan, potential death.

I cannot tell of my hesitancy

to reach forward from the back seat
to rest my hand ever so gently
on my uncle’s one tumorless shoulder
not wanting to add to agony —
but I do reach I do say
I am here.
That is all.
I am here.

I cannot tell of that moment

when Sal lifted his fingers to mine
of how he brushed my skin
with wonder and the thirst
of someone that has not touched love
for months for years and who knows
that there is not much touching left.

I cannot express that under my hands

I feel Sal’s breathing lengthen & slow
with whispered thank yous again
and again: Thank you, thank you, thank you
thankyouthankyou, thank you so very much,
thank you. (helpme! ayudame!)
oh god. thank you. Over and again

I cannot capture those thank yous

62 Eli s a S a l as i n
how they swoop and dance
his chant, a declaration
a murmuration —

I cannot yet say this out loud:

Show me how not to be afraid.
Show me that I exist to gleam
like the sinewy stream that flows
down this mountainside show me
that I can rise to the symphony
of my uncle’s thank yous. Show me
that I can love as gracefully
as those wheeling and diving words —

I cannot – I want to – but I cannot translate:

Starlings murmur, lovers murmur
and Sal murmurs in and out
of the final days of his life: Thank you thank you
each thank you rising with the murmuration of poet
voices
that murmur this is how to live into past into future:
murmur of love

lost: of a marriage that cannot survive:

murmur of wake up: murmur me down
that stream to the root: this incantation:
this thank you, thank you, thankyousoverymuch,
thank you.

El i sa Sa lasi n 63
 ndon Henry
Bra
L i g h t P o ll u ti o n
O u tsid e Sleep e r , M O

Gary drove a forklift at the pipe yard and drank

Worcestershire in his beer. I never saw anyone do that
before. He ate sardines in yellow cans and sometimes
stole copper parts in his lunchbox.

Small bits they won’t miss [and] there ain’t nothin’ wrong
with takin’ change.

His father was a ham-radio man who had a transmission

from the launch of Hubble. They’d talk about space
debris sometimes – how it had its own trajectory and
looked like ice in the telescope.

Small bits of this stuff, making a dump

above the world and how light from the sun irradiates
it. In the snow shed, pulling out the tow chains, we
couldn’t see for the dark. Our hands to the tin walls
as cold cans. The snow we kicked in over cardboard
and straw, the chains’ sound a clinking jar of pennies.
Gary cussing about light pollution over his bent trailer
in Sleeper, MO. About the billboards and the adult
video arcade

lit up like Busch Stadium

65
under Laclede County clouds. How growing up, his
father had a platform on a bald clearing. How in the
90’s they could see Saturn. How bit by bit, after his dad
died from drinking, the sun and the ice broke it down.
How it’s just a piling of trash past the trees now. Like
you ‘n me here, pullin’… chain. [And then the light came.]
We can’t see shit. [And then more light came].

66 Bran don H e n r y
- september 7, 2020 -