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Rika Lesser |
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I wanted both my parents to die together They did not oblige me though they formed the parental unit all my life Now my mother has out- lived it more than seven years, as my eldest sister & I approach our middle sister's second yahrzeit - or it us - as days shorten, reds deepen She knows us, Mother; when prompted re- members Milton, Fran How long would he have survived the loss of her? And her losses? Last week I may have saved my mother's life - I owe her my own many times over An antibiotic she is sensitive (read: allergic) to was prescribed and fed to her once or twice (Think positive: Mithridates, eating poisons, to build tolerance, become immune) I put an end to that "mistake" Dying now is not her choice Nor mine for her to make I want my mother to die in her sleep Where would you have yours die? And by what means? Rika Lesser
I came in any case, how could I have stayed away? The scent of lavender and jasmine. The wind - up here in the mountains the wind is always blowing - comes from the place behind the mountain of Hope where the sun just set It's getting dark fast. Like a shadow you emerge from the twilight I see your body has aged. The shawl over your shoulder gleams pale blue in the light of stars just lit I am struggling to be nothing but body. Massive. Solid You look at me. I am the childish young man you loved, the middle-aged man you left and now also the one you look at like a stranger Your attendants trail their particolored veils in my breast. I look around helplessly for the children Then you take hold of my left hand with your right and set your right foot on my left foot I am not Joachim and you are not Anna, but your rib cage heaves like hers and mine rises like his Then you turn around, and then I do Laughing you walk away from me. Your bare feet against the stones. The cicadas. The darkness. The lavender I go. I stamp. I scream. I laugh And your ladies depart my breast waving in their delightfully raw, high-heeled, satyrically reeling parade Magnus William-Olsson Translated from the Swedish by Rika Lesser This work is the authors' work; it appears here with the permission of the authors. We would like to remind our readers that it is a violation of copyright law to distribute this or any other poem appearing on the website without the express permission of the authors. |
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Starkey Flythe, Jr. |
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some message here, back roads, dusk, cows in half light, burnt tree stumps (black Angus), more sky, fields, woods than on the Interstate, less sense of where anyone is going if at all, as if simply being there was enough, and the others who seem to know so much more than we do, gone on ahead, an advertisement's destination. Here, clouds darken, lowering-that word! Is a storm coming, or is night simply falling the way night simply falls every evening no matter the day, no matter what has or hasn't happened, dark covering us, mantle, obliteration. The psychiatrist says, Wake up in another room. Night is the other room, the vessel we pour ourselves out of every morning, the clock ringing hope. Falling though, the world-toss, night, stocks, bonds, James Bond flung out of a plane to prove life is risk, that falling in love against our better judgment is our better judgment. We are taking a risk, here, alone, rain, this deserted way, asphalt wet, soft edges, deer, the temptation to fall- there it is again-asleep at the wheel, to let go, to find suddenly, or slowly, time has its own hands to choke-the throttle- or caress, the gas, that wherever we're going is no farther away than here, no different, this, destination within where we keep falling, even knowing, up. Starkey Flythe, Jr.
was a lamp, brass, maybe brass-plated, a Chinese boy who'd stopped fishing, or had he been carrying something? the bamboo pole with the buckets either end, laid down there, by his feet. And he sat on the metal grass, made himself comfortable, was reading, the intensest look on his brass face, a pigtail, coolie jacket, pajama pants. I stared at it for hours, the kind of thing a child wants to be or to be in or to break, be punished for as if being a child had rest stops and pit falls that should be got over fast and with a definite crash instead of being drawn out, infinitely. The coolie leaned against the glass cylinder where the light bulb socket was, fluted glass so the light flowed out in rainbows, and you could imagine the words, how if you mispronounced a Chinese syllable it meant midwife (whatever that was) instead of peony (which didn't grow here). On the top was a pagoda lid. The glass broke first. The pagoda rested on the naked light bulb until it got hot. My father bought a lower watt bulb. Then, against the wall on the top of the book shelf the boy, once a lamp, became an end, leaned and held National Geos and paperbacks. I wonder where it went, not valuable enough to steal, beautiful enough to survive people moving, tastes changing, broken marriages, lares, penates, fire, the frayed electric cord. Starkey Flythe, Jr. This work is the author's work; it appears here with the permission of the author. We would like to remind our readers that it is a violation of copyright law to distribute this or any other poem appearing on the website without the express permission of the author. |
