still life

the Thing i hate about chicago
is that you can't even cry in your
own car without people staring at
you.

rather than allowing you to blend into
the welcome anonymity of the
muted browns and blacks,

they stare with their fish eyes
not judging, not comforting,
but there.

Suits

by David R. Slavitt

Each morning, as I confront my closet's array,
I have to admit again that the life I lead
is hardly good enough: I have not been named
ambassador to Malta; I am not on the board

of any college or large corporation; I shall not
receive a major prize today and pose
for photographers. Those suits, the shirts, the ties
are ready, but I am not, and the shoes are shined

as they wait for different occasions than I imagined
on the tailor's block, when I shopped for a dandified
future brighter than what I expect or deserve.
Even for weddings and funerals that require
a suit, I choose from the second best, reserving
that one for the dream into which I yet hope to awake.

Starlings in Winter

by Mary Oliver

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can't imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,

even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

An Apology

It's funny how anger
often dissolves into hurt
and then guilt
and then remorse.
Like an alka-seltzer
wreaking havoc
in the glass
before it settles
and mends.

Marina

I drove down to the river tonight
in my dad's black pick-up.
The trees were half frozen twigs
slightly waving as if
encouraging me to go and see
those sad, tall boats
packed in shrink wrap-
attempting to wear their names
in spite of the season.

The Sacred

by Stephen Dunn

After the teacher asked if anyone had
a sacred place
and the students fidgeted and shrank

in their chairs, the most serious of them all
said it was his car,
being in it alone, his tape deck playing

things he'd chosen, and others knew the truth
had been spoken
and began speaking about their rooms,

their hiding places, but the car kept coming up,
the car in motion,
music filling it, and sometimes one other person

who understood the bright altar of the dashboard
and how far away
a car could take him from the need

to speak, or to answer, the key
in having a key
and putting it in, and going.

Diagramming Won’t Help This Situation by Kevin Brown

Grammatical rules have always baffled
me, leaving me wondering whether my
life is transitive or intransitive, if I am the
subject or object of my life, and no one
has been able to provide words to describe
my actions, even if they do end in –ly.

But now the problem seems to be with
pronouns: I am unwilling to be him
and you are unable to be her, so we
will never be them~the ones talking
about what they need from the grocery

store because the Rogers are coming for
dinner tonight; the couple saving for a
vacation, perhaps a cruise to Alaska or a
museum tour of Europe; the two who meet
with a financial advisor to plan their children's

college fund while still managing to set enough
aside for their retirement~and so we will
continue to be nothing more than sentence
fragments, perfectly fine for effect,
but forever looking for the missing
part of speech we can never seem to find.

Fireflies by Cecilia Woloch

And these are my vices:
impatience, bad temper, wine,
the more than occasional cigarette,
an almost unquenchable thirst to be kissed,
a hunger that isn't hunger
but something like fear, a staunching of dread
and a taste for bitter gossip
of those who've wronged me--for bitterness--
and flirting with strangers and saying sweetheart
to children whose names I don't even know
and driving too fast and not being Buddhist
enough to let insects live in my house
or those cute little toylike mice
whose soft grey bodies in sticky traps
I carry, lifeless, out to the trash
and that I sometimes prefer the company of a book
to a human being, and humming
and living inside my head
and how as a girl I trailed a slow-hipped aunt
at twilight across the lawn
and learned to catch fireflies in my hands,
to smear their sticky, still-pulsing flickering
onto my fingers and earlobes like jewels.

Ben by David Budbill

You can see him in the village almost anytime.
He's always on the street.
At noon he ambles down to Jerry's
in case a trucker who's stopped by for lunch
might feel like buying him a sandwich.
Don't misunderstand, Ben's not starving;
he's there each noon because he's sociable,
not because he's hungry.
He is a friend to everyone except the haughty.

There are at least half a dozen families in the village
who make sure he always has enough to eat
and there are places
where he's welcome to come in and spend the night.

Ben is a cynic in the Greek and philosophic sense,
one who gives his life to simplicity
seeking only the necessities
so he can spend his days
in the presence of his dreams.

Ben is a vision of another way,
the vessel in this place for
ancient Christian mystic, Buddhist recluse, Taoist hermit.
Chuang Tzu, The Abbot Moses, Meister Eckhart,
Khamtul Rimpoche, Thomas Merton--
all these and all the others live in Ben, because

in America only a dog
can spend his days
on the street or by the river
in quiet contemplation
and be fed.

Cantaloupe

by Lee Robinson

Friday I sniffed it
in the grocery store, turned it
in my hands, looking
for bruises
in the rough, webbed rind.
My mother's voice--the one
I carry always in my head--
pronounced it fine. Ripe,
but not too soft.

I bagged and bought it,
would have given it to you
for breakfast--this fruit
first grown in Cantalupo, not far
from Rome. I imagined you,
my sleepy emperor, coming
to the table in your towel toga,
digging into the luscious
orange flesh
with a golden spoon,

and afterwards,
reclining, your smile
satisfied,
imperial.

Now I open the trunk of my car
to find the cantaloupe
still there, flattened, sour,
having baked all weekend
in August's oven.

Grieving is useless,
my mother would say,
Just get another.

Bur why am I so certain
that no other fruit
will ever be as sweet
as that--

the one
I would have cut in half,
scooped the seeds from,
that one I would have given you
on Saturday morning?

Latina Worker by Doren Robbins

Then I notice through a triple-Americano-awakening moment,
in the mall food court, a young Latina cleaning around by the chrome rail
at Sbarro Pizza. Maybe a Guatemalan, possibly Salvadoran or
Honduran--

could've been Argentinean or Columbian, Chilean, Bolivian,
Panamanian--good chance a Peruvian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Mayan,
Toltec, Sephardic, Huichol coffee plantation or U.S. Fruit Company

or tobacco company or auto industry slave labor robot or CIA-trained
death squad Guardia Nacional butchery massacre survivor.

Several tables down from mine--roughly stacking chairs on tops
of tables--cussing in Spanish, in the mall food court, she hates her job,
I hate her job.

Pink and White by Deborah Garrison

Peonies are the only flower I care for
and when I saw them from the window
yesterday, tumbled and heavy along
a fence, fully exploded, nodding
at the ground, hanging their heads but not
yet spoiled, I remembered
a summer (maybe seven years
ago, or was it ten?) I wasn't sure
our love would come again,
and here I am, almost

kissing the grass like that,
bursting and rich, cracked
all over like broken cake--
makes you cry but still sweet.

A linear trajectory
is what they tell us that we need
but tell me- when has speed
been our friend?

This limbo is bad for us
they tell us not to put our trust
in boomerangs
and hammock swings.

Praise

by Michael Chitwood

Physical therapists have opened a clinic in the office next to mine.
This morning one of them is treating a cystic fibrosis patient. The
patient lies face down on a table, and the therapist slaps up and down
the back with open hands. It loosens the mucus building up in the
lungs. Through the wall, it sounds like one person giving a long,
determined standing ovation.
Finally, I've listened long enough and go out for a walk. The church
across the street has just reseeded its lawn, and the caretaker is trying
to shoo away pigeons that are feeding in the straw.
"Get! Get!" he shouts, and claps his hands.
The pigeons rise in unison and swirl away with a sound like gloved
applause.