Adjourn Sojourn

The Dawn of Madness 30 Years Ago, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson clashed for the NCAA title and changed basketball forever March 26, 2009 marks the 30th anniversary of the epic NCAA championship clash between Larry Bird of Indiana State and Magic Johnson of Michigan State. March Madness was in full swing in 1979 when the Michigan State Spartans locked horns with the undefeated Indiana State Sycamores in the NCAA basketball title game. Featuring two future NBA superstars, the championship game proved to be one of the most heralded in college basketball history. The Michigan State Spartans, of the powerful Big Ten conference, were led by a flashy, gregarious point guard who represented black and urban America. On the other side, the unheralded Indiana State Sycamores had gone 33-0 on the back of the reclusive “hick from French Lick” who represented white and small town America. On Monday night, March 26, 1979, Indiana State and Michigan State met for the NCAA basketball championship in Sa...

Memory at its finest lacks corroboration —no photographs, no diaries— nothing to pin the past on the present with, to make it stick. Just because you've got this idea of red fields stretching along the tertiary roads of Saskatchewan, like blazing, contained fires— just because somewhere in your memory there's a rust-coloured pulse taking its place among canola yellow and flax fields the huddled blue of morning azures— just because you want to doesn't mean you can build a home for that old, peculiar ghost. Someone tells you you've imagined it, that gash across the ripe belly of summer, and for a year, maybe two, you believe them. Maybe you did invent it, maybe as you leaned, to escape the heat, out the Pontiac's backseat window you just remembered it that way because you preferred the better version. Someone tells you this. But what can they know of faith? To ask you to leave behind this insignificance. This innocence that can't be proved: what the child saw ...

Photo by Ivan Henares

for Stuart and Ali The dishes washed, the plates stacked Neatly in their cupboards, he scooped up a section Of the Sunday paper and slipped into the lounge, His belt stretched around a second slice of cake. He dozed off over the picture of a scoring hero And came to again at four, the house quiet, And brightness gone from the sky. He felt weak, Knowing that this day was done, or wasted, And thought about his school, how they Used to run for miles around a grass track And never get tired. He thought of friends Who had fallen into ambition, success And failure. He should have written letters But didn't. What was it that he had wanted, Running around that circle? What would He now say he had missed? Nothing. He felt That day's paper slip from his hands, His muscles loosen, and lids close over eyes That still stared into the near-dark garden Where small birds flitted about unnoticed. James W. Wood Southwest Review...

Here I am— of two minds: all eyes—all ears—for an echo. Driving into the sunset, who is not gold and mining? Who is not a piece of one, son-like in that way? I call you mine and I am yours. The tree lover becomes a tree, wooden and breathing in reverse, giving my livelihood away. Green and leafing canopy for the herd, I wear leaves with my skin, tear them off with my eyes. A bird flies over and I am birdbrained and precocious, flying before my time. I marry a bird, swallow it for its song, the vibrations singing I am . The bird and its flying, small-time creators, leave me with nothing to stake a life on. I have no choice. In the sun too much, charioteer and burning in my father's shoes, I call the whistling air— John Isles Inverse Sky University of Iowa Press

The thorns had hands. The fire stood still. It will take a hundred years to piece together a hundred dreams. A room of ashes was a room outspun. Mother says the heart is a wheel and it will turn as I turn. Quickly. Nightly. I married the owl. _______ I told her I could not walk, the walls circled my steps. I told her my flesh became stone and I did not bleed blood, but sound. What sound? I could not describe it; it was voiceless and low. But it was not. Mostly I was not alone in my solitude. My breath became the ghost of me or the ghost of an old man I'd long forgotten, a midnight grandfather. Pages of thoughts, they were not mine, though my hand mastered their language. I told her I cannot howl winsomely like vixens. Like thieves. I wandered the forest, fingering every loose twig, but I was sleeping. My hand, good as air, was sle...

I let my raw voice rise but I was chastised, asked to hold my tongue. I couldn't see the scenery for wings. What good is blocked out paradise? And hour after hour to hear that pallid music: dull, facetious words repeated to the same sweet harmonies, like the manna that rained constantly to feed us. —I was bored. I tore a feather from one wing and laid it on his throne, blood tipping the quill. God found the trifle and spent light rifling feathers to detect a spot of loss. So I confessed: I'd pulled it out for no good reason except my discontent. He threw me violently into chaos. Wracked with soot, my lush wings locked; now I could only lower myself slowly and sink until I glimpsed reflected rays in one thin strand of river through the garden. This seemed a lasting shape so I chose that for my seduction's body: sinuous bolts with skin like waves of water. Horizontally, I moved. Lisa Williams Woman Reading to the S...

A man said: I can't live and he lived long and meticulously then he stood still and said: but I can't love and he loved women and peace and unspoken shyness and an angel fought with him— I can't fight, said the man and he fought like a tiger, like a hare, and like a bag of bones the sun went down and still they fought on, the man and the angel, and the man said, with a melancholy note in his voice: now I know, I can't lose. Believe me, said an angel, I will save you. No, said a man, I don't believe you. You have to believe me, said the angel and he drove away the ambition of the man and his painful omniscience, gave him peace and large quantities of a rare, resilient happiness, such as had never been described. Do you believe me now, the angel asked and he looked at the man with unparalleled love and tenderness and the man whispered: I don't believe you. A man searched ...

I knew anger was a seven deadly sin because I knew her. Rage filled the house, lifted the curtains, fell asleep in the food, Woke up in the squealing tires of the car While I lived in my soundproof booth. ~ When the helping starts, the forgive, please forgive— You are doomed. Everything you said can and will be used against you, next session, next sin If you dare to agree that she behaved badly. Don't agree! Let her believe she is the sweet fool that she is. Every honest word, every real thought you had must not be had. There is no help, don't fool yourself, ~ run away, join the circus, hop a freight train, sign on for a sea voyage, hitchhike with a stranger down the highway: there's a reason for stories like this one, and she is the reason. Stephanie Brown Domestic Interior University of Pittsburgh Press

Too many of my dreams these days are boring. I expect to drop into the pillow and see the kind of action night is for— a psychic workout, romance, close escapes: Not much gets accomplished in a still-life; nobody looks at asters as a way to get a taste of life. I want to happen , not to slightly rearrange my day nightly in a recurring tablescape. Dreams! However beautiful the apples, fruit is low on drama, and I miss passion, flying, falling, being chased, crashing, panic—trauma—and I miss, small and quick, a movement in the grapes, and the shiver of a petal in the vase. Deborah Warren Dream with Flowers and Bowl of Fruit The University of Evansville Press

Because you do not know me, Francezca, you have every reason to be afraid— afraid because, while you are sleeping, I can be the moon, peeping in from out your window like some lonely lunar voyeur, or some rusty blade or kitchen knife when you feel like ending your life with a quick slash or laceration; because, when you wake up, I can be the toothbrush dangling silently in your bathroom, or the forlorn cotton bud preparing to rid your ears of dust and excessive earwax. This is no time to relax, Francezca— I can be anywhere anytime, anyone and anything you cannot even begin to imagine: the whipped cream on your waffle, the mothballs in your closet, the card tag of your tea bag, the jaundiced shade of moonlight, the moon-cake you hate, the steady staccato of rain, the flush’s fecal fouette, the hair inside your nose, your lip, your mole, black hair and brown irises, white teeth and red gums, your scalp, your skin, even your toenails. What is scary, Francezca, is the fact that you don’t e...

Learning to love differently is hard, love with the hands wide open, love with the doors banging on their hinges, the cupboard unlocked, the wind roaring and whimpering in the rooms rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds that thwack like rubber bands in an open palm. It hurts to love wide open stretching the muscles that feel as if they are made of wet plaster, then of blunt knives, then of sharp knives. It hurts to thwart the reflexes of grab, of clutch; to love and let go again and again. It pesters to remember the lover who is not in the bed, to hold back what is owed to the work that gutters like a candle in a cave without air, to love consciously, conscientiously, concretely, constructively. I can't do it, you say it's killing me, but you thrive, you glow on the street like a neon raspberry, You float and sail, a helium balloon bright bachelor's button blue and bobbing on the cold and hot winds of our breath, as we make and unmake in passionate diastole and systol...

I believe in the great discovery. I believe in the man who will make the discovery. I believe in the terror of the man who will make the discovery. I believe in the pallor of his face, the nausea, the cold sweat on his lip. I believe in the burning of the notes, the burning of them ashes, the burning of every last one. I believe in the scattering of the numbers, the scattering of them with no regret. I believe in the quickness of the man, the precision of his movements, his uncoerced free will. I believe in the smashing of the tablets, the pouring out of the liquids, the extinguishing of the ray. I assert that all will work out, and that it will not be too late, and that things will unfold in the absence of witnesses. No one will find out, of that I am sure, neither wife nor wall, not even bird, for it may well sing. I believe in the stayed hand, I believe in the ruined career, I believe in the wasted labor of many years. I believe in the secret taken to the grave. For me these words ...

by M. B. Powell We ought, first of all, to note her oceanic eyes flecked with sea wrack. And we should pause to consider the wavy wilderness of her damp hair. I will not dwell on her cheeks ruddy under my thumbstrokes. I will not attempt to explain the shapely abalone shells of her ears. I wish to call your attention to the cunning animal of her mouth, muscular. I wish to say something about the mollusky dark language of her kisses. I am obliged to mention her sudden breasts, breaching, rhythmic. And I am perfectly astounded at her finger charting my lips round her nipple. Here, in this connection, let us notice her nipple against the roof of my mouth. Here, in passing, let us observe ...

By John Keats O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery’s song. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna-dew, And sure in language strange she said— ‘I love thee true’. She took me to h...

By T. S. Eliot I The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. II The morning comes to consciousness Of faint stale smells of beer From the sawdust-trampled street With all its muddy feet that press To early coffee-stands. With the other masquerades That time resumes, One thinks of all the hands That are raising dingy shades In a thousand furnished rooms. III You tossed a blanket from the bed, You lay upon your back, and waited; You dozed, and watched the night revealing The thousand sordid images Of which your soul was constituted; They flickered against the ceiling. And when all the world came back And the light c...

By Louise Glück You saved me, you should remember me. The spring of the year; young men buying tickets for the ferryboats. Laughter, because the air is full of apple blossoms. When I woke up, I realized I was capable of the same feeling. I remember sounds like that from my childhood, laughter for no cause, simply because the world is beautiful, something like that. Lugano. Tables under the apple trees. Deckhands raising and lowering the colored flags. And by the lake’s edge, a young man throws his hat into the water; perhaps his sweetheart has accepted him. Crucial sounds or gestures like a track laid down before the larger themes and then unused, buried. Islands in the distance. My mother holding out a plate of little cakes— as far as I remember, changed in no detail, the moment vivid, intact, having never been exposed to light, so that I woke elated, at my age hungry for life, utterly confident— By the tables, patches of new grass, the pale green pieced into the ...

By John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starred face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the fairy power Of unreflecting love—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

By Ha Jin We used to like talking about grief Our journals and letters were packed with losses, complaints, and sorrows. Even if there was no grief we wouldn’t stop lamenting as though longing for the charm of a distressed face. Then we couldn’t help expressing grief So many things descended without warning: labor wasted, loves lost, houses gone, marriages broken, friends estranged, ambitions worn away by immediate needs. Words lined up in our throats for a good whining. Grief seemed like an endless river— the only immortal flow of life. After losing a land and then giving up a tongue, we stopped talking of grief Smiles began to brighten our faces. We laugh a lot, at our own mess. Things become beautiful, even hailstones in the strawberry fields. Ha Jin, “Ways of Talking” from Facing Shadows. Copyright © 1996 by Ha Jin. Reprinted with the permission of Hanging Loose Press.

I would remain by night with you who, having held me once, wrapped everything I knew into my sleeping body's hold and held fast and stayed. You shuttled in sleep against me and away, not sleeping, beached and exhausted by wine and rushes from another life whose body my body meant to alter. But I am wayfaring and recently wrecked; I understand the cost of pulling free from what once loved you. I would remain by night with you, if the night is clear enough to see by, and the wind light enough to draw the stars in the skin's skies open, and the waves you sensed through the dress in the wind are real, and only mine. Joanna Klink Boston Review January / February 2009

By Edna St. Vincent Millay What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning; but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply, And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than before: I cannot say what loves have come and gone, I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.

The day my mother dropped a net of oranges on the kitchen table and the net broke and oranges rolled and we snatched them, my brother and I, peeled back the skin and bit deep to make the juice explode with our laughter, and my father spun one orange in his palm and said quietly, "This was Christmas, 1938," said it without bitterness or anger, just observing his life from far away, this tiny world cupped in one palm, I learned I had no way to comprehend an orange. Sean Lause Beloit Poetry Journal Winter 2008/9

When Adam and Eve lived in the garden they hadn't yet learned how to forget. For them every day was the same day. Flowers opened, then closed. They went where the light told them to go. They slept when it left, and did not dream. What could they have remembered, who had never been children? Sometimes Adam felt a soreness in his side, but if this was pain it didn't appear to require a name, or suggest the idea that anything else might be taken away. The bright flowers unfolded, swayed in the breeze. It was the snake, of course, who knew about the past—that such a place could exist. He understood how people would yearn for whatever they'd lost, and so to survive they'd need to forget. Soon the garden will be gone, the snake thought, and in time God himself. These were the last days—Adam and Eve tending the luxurious plants, the snake watching from above. He knew what had to happen next, how persuasive was the taste of that apple. And then the history of forgetting w...

...at ngayon di pa rin alam kung ba't tayo nandito

. . . as if weather were a cure for childhood. --Bin Ramke As if time were a cure. As if all things pass, this too shall pass were a cure for time, the time it takes, time enough, a little more time. As if waking with a taste in your mouth were a cure for childhood, a sweaty sweaty dream, a monster, an angel in the closet, under the bed were a cure for a ghost. As if a thing lost or forgotten, discarded, fled, written down and revised, revisited were a cure for dead dogs, dogs put to sleep, put down, put out of mind, put that way were a cure for the facts. As if this were a cure for that. As if what happened, events as told, as tell about the teller were a cure for what ails, what finally ends, what time has taken its toll on. As if what can be hoped for, what works, what heals were a cure. As if a cure were needed. Craig Morgan Teicher

Tonight, for the first time in many years, there appeared to me again a vision of the earth's splendor: in the evening sky the first star seemed to increase in brilliance as the earth darkened until at last it could grow no darker. And the light, which was the light of death, seemed to restore to earth its power to console. There were no other stars. Only the one whose name I knew as in my other life I did her injury: Venus, star of the early evening, to you I dedicate my vision, since on this blank surface you have cast enough light to make my thought visible again. Louise Glück Averno Farrar, Straus and Giroux

That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. But not enough. Derek Walcott from Selected Poems by Derek Walcott 2007 Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Bon Voyage

Many feathers. In the silence of many feathers. - Robert Bly Today my window spoke to me in the language of leaves, told me of gravity and the tired hands of twilight day after day pulling at the trees’ thousand fingers, the trees with their lifetime of cycles, the wind, its invisible wings. I have seen things only words will outlive , it said. But even words kneel before the silence of feathers. Once a poet peered inside the hollow of a tree and discovered words, and now I steal from him, repeat his curved consonants, the illusion of presence. In the secret, dim light I run my hands over the carcass of some dead creature he might have seen still heaving its last sighs. A window knows nothing of the sorrows of speech, the weight of things breaking as wind carries them away from tongue. Darkness moves against darkness, night dresses its sleepy body in shadows, whispers its stories, and my window speaks what it sees. While I see only what is spoken: A poet peers inside a tree and sees ca...

Mikael De Lara Co Malamig dito sa kabundukan. Dumating ako nang mag-isa, naghahanap ng katahimikan, ngunit ano ang inabot kundi ang mga kuliglig na humuhuni ng sarili-sarili nilang mga pagdurusa sa ilalim ng makapal na damo? Tinatawag ng mga kuwago ang mga kaluluwa ng nagsilagas na dahon. Pinagpapasahan ng mga puno ang tinig ng mga nagsasaya sa pusod ng gubat, iniaabot sa nakapinid kong bintana. Paano kong malilimot ang daan pauwi? Ibinubulong ng mga bulaklak ang huling linya ng tulang ito. Mapangutya ang titig ng buwan. Walang sapilitang paglimot. After the Summer and Sadness Drove Me from the City It is cold up here in the mountain. I came alone, looking for quiet, instead what do I find but each cricket singing a verse of suffering under the thick grass? Owls summon the countless souls of fallen leaves. The trees pass around the sound of merriment within the forest’s navel, until it reaches my closed window. How do I forget the way home? The flowers whisper these last few lines. The...

Kate Clanchy The way we can’t remember heat, forget the sweat and how we wore a weightless shirt on chafing skin, the way we lose the taste of raspberries, each winter; but know at once, come sharp July, the vein burning in the curtain, and from that light - the block of sun on hot crushed sheets - the blazing world we’ll walk in, was how it was, your touch. Nor the rest, not how we left, the drunkenness, just your half-stifled, clumsy, frightened reach, my uncurled hand, our fingers, meshed, -like the first dazzled flinch from heat or between the teeth, pips, a metal taste.

Mikael De Lara Co Walang makapapansin. Maglalakad ako sa hardin ng aking kapitbahay at isa-isang durukutin ang mata ng mga bulaklak. Darapa ang damo sa ilalim ng aking talampakan. Lalapat ang mga dahon sa kapwa nila dahon. Kaba ang tawag dito, o alisuag. Sapagkat kung ako’y magkakasala, at walang makakikita, maaari kong sabihing hangin ang nagkuyom sa makahiya. Hindi ako. Sapagkat hindi mo matitiyak kung ano ang naglalaho sa bawat pagpikit mo. Maaaring wala. Maaaring sa isang balkonahe, sa isang dako ng mundo, may dumarapong paruparo. Ang totoo? Madaling-araw dito. Nakakuyom ang mga makahiya. Heto: isang sugat. Sa iyo ko lamang aaminin. Sa dakong ito ng mundo, iisa ang ngalan namin ng hangin.

Su Tung P'o (1036-1101) “The weakest wine is better than warm water. Rags are better than no clothes at all. An ugly wife and a quarrelsome concubine Are better than an empty house.” The weaker the wine, The easier it is to drink two cups. The thinner the robe, The easier it is to wear it double. Ugliness and beauty are opposites, But when you’re drunk, one is as good as the other. Ugly wives and quarrelsome concubines, The older they grow, the more they’re alike. Live unknown if you would realize your end. Follow the advice of your common sense. Avoid the Imperial Audience Chamber, the Eastern Flowery Hall. The dust of the times and the wind of the Northern Pass. One hundred years is a long time, But at last it comes to an end. Meanwhile it is no greater accomplishment To be a rich corpse or a poor one. Jewels of jade and pearl are put in the mouths Of the illustrious dead To conserve their bodies. They do them no good, but after a thousand years, They feed the robbers of their t...

JOSEPH FARLEY -- For Kenneth Koch 1. Trail blazers cut down the trees and make a path that leads somewhere, but not necessarily where they were trying to go. 2. Others followed, built cities in the wilderness. 3. What path is this I have set upon? What path is this that you have followed? 4. Afterwards, some people missed the trees. 5. Some people haven't noticed the trees are missing. 6. It all ends the same. That's nothing new. All roads lead to Rome. All poetry obscures the obvious, or makes it more so.

Jennifer's Feminist Poem you can be a lesbian lapping honeyed flesh-pit where warm clear lava is like the goo of rolling worms, slop, slapping tails like bull-whip snap: ah love, is freedom what tastes sweet? or her, yr girlfriend, caught turning on a spit of delicious moans, stripped & skinned alive above gorgeous flames of yr volcanic tongue, rawness burnt away but everything pink remains, boiled? i've never met a genital who wasn't metaphoric right at my lips. most clean human bodies taste good a couple years, then bland, nothing, not even dead-musky. cunt or cock or big toe or tit, we ripen as teens, sweeten in our 20's, sour in 30's providing the mind works, & in our 40's nobody even sniffs us. breaking skin, love is spiritual fucking, ghosts enmeshed like clouds & sun-shades somewhere in the past & very far away. SYLVIA PLATH MEETS D.A. LEVY IN SUICIDE HEAVEN (from the dual chapbook with paul weinman, AIRY EL, From Da Dead Press) "fu...

(Variations on a Theme by Arkaye Kierulf) Lolito Go I believe in freedom, and the freedom to believe is supreme. I believe in Arkaye Kierulf. Yes, in the quiet dignity of horses too. I believe in turtles, that they are better than horses, but kings and emperors did not ride on them. I believe in Anaphora and in all it has to say. I believe poems like this make a better day. I believe that stupidity strengthens, depth is one of the weak’s defenses. I believe in orgasm. I believe that when God created the clitoris, he was having fun. I believe in deja vu, and this is one. I believe in English subtitles for the hearing impaired. I believe some love are just impaired. I believe love is better off impaired. I believe in shampoo plus conditioner. I believe in my hair. I believe in every tick that lives in my hair. I believe that behind my hair is an envious onlooker. “I believe in America,” claims Bonasera in the opening seconds of The Godfather. I believe in my mother’s laughter, despite ...

Michael McNeilley my eyelids bang open and I wake sudden as summer fire spreads down dry arroyos - her lovely nameless face floats above me in the heat - a dissipating cloud of dream that rims a thought that will not clear. but the lost green eyes and hair not red but not blonde her smile the old smile back in place draw down icons of memory - through the freckles that spread wild to the line across her breasts where freckles end and I can see in the dark - the whiteness of the curve below untouched by sun - the suprising pubic manicure shaved small in the shape of a heart. she speaks my name I cannot speak hers. and I roll in my sheets chilled but sweating out the sudden details gusting through - the alcoholic memory of that first evening rush from bar to bed pulling desperate relevance from every article and consonance from every vowel - ...

Michael McNeilley wishing I had something to say to you that something had happened I could relate some thing you would find interesting if you were here but nothing keeps happening in almost fall still you sit in my head waiting or I think this since I never know when you will appear but you always do eventually unexpectedly and I find I remember things about you things I do not know though it is nice to think of them and I go back to cutting up onions making coffee it occurs to me to smoke but I light the filter that burned taste like the one firemen have always with them you can remember tastes you know like I remember you standing naked in my bathroom you or your shadow at the window the light a halo through your hair watching the moon and as you ...

RUTH DAIGON we made a party for everyone we knew and those we never knew drank new wine ate fruit out of season and sat on the ground the smell of damp rising rich between our knees and remembered everything we'd done or imagined told stories of a woman who wore her flesh like armor of a child who swallowed its reflection in the mirror of a man whose clothes smelled like travel we talked to the sound of baroque violins walked into rooms our heads sprouting ornaments and later went back to doing what we always do

Jack Alvarez Ngayon, susubukan kong maglakad patalikod upang balikan… sapagkat ang buhay ay naglalakbay, naglalakad patungo sa nakaraan mga panahong sa pagpikit ng mata at maghihintay sa durungawan ay di na kita matatandaan kinabukasan sapagkat ang buhay ay naglalayag, naglalakad patungo sa kasalukuyan mga panahong sa paglingon ay naroon ka sa aking tabi kahit nanggagambala ang bangungot sa gabi sapagkat ang buhay ay nananaginip, naglalakad patungo sa hinaharap mga panahong sa higaan ay naroon ang iyong mukha kahit parte ka na lang ng aking pangungulila Muli, susubukan kong maglakad patalikod upang talikuran…

T . K i l g o r e S p l a k e early morning pale light, shadows disappearing, bright lumensense slowly creeping, covering quilt, pillow bedroom corners, greybeard lover drifting, quitely dreamy intoxication, sweet woman in love aromas, electricity, naked spine curving embrace, shrunken testicles bled dry, wrinkled skinny bag, loose wet dribble ooze, old man sudden sadness, reminded impossibility only one life, young woman, bathroom mirror reflection, cupping plump breast, caressing pink nipple, darker cerise areola, momentarily lost in relentless tides, lives, pilish ancestor's past dreaming of beyond, leaving only world they knew, continuous bloody rush carrying ovum, sperm, birthing life, aborted fetus, sweat, tears, flooding, sunday vision, little girl pinkness like baltic coral shell, vistual seashore holiday, late spring blossom, dwor maz picnic, early summer respite, keilbasas roasting, pieogis simmering, brief pause in marzukas, music and dancing, tawny distant sis...

and yet we think that song outlasts us all: wrecked devotion the wept face of desire, a kind of savage caring that reseeds itself and grows in clusters oh, you who are young, consider how quickly the body deranges itself how time, the cruel banker, forecloses us to snowdrifts white as god's own ribs what else but to linger in the slight shade of those sapling branches yearning for that vernal beau. for don't birds covet the seeds of the honey locust and doesn't the ewe have a nose for wet filaree and slender oats foraged in the meadow kit foxes crave the blacktailed hare: how this longing grabs me by the nape guess I figured to be done with desire, if I could write it out dispense with any evidence, the way one burns a pile of twigs and brush what was his name? I'd ask myself, that guy with the sideburns and charming smile the one I hoped that, as from a sip of hemlock, I'd expire with him on my tongue silly poet, silly man: thought I could m...