Hierophany

The way light slides across a wooden floor

I struggle w/ a hangnail making it worse

               the blue cornflowers
               in the rug at my feet

Remind me that Friday is just a day &

no one owes me anything

Dumbass move of the day.  Going into the
ladies’ room here at Neue Nationalgalerie.
Went into DAMEN for some unknown reason
(I’m an idiot?).  Came in and an older lady (55)
was washing her hands.  We conversed in the
mirror.  I was like, “What the hell is she doing
in here?”  Then she said something.  I said, “Sorry?”
I was still thinking it was her that was wrong
& what she had just said was her excuse
for being in the men’s room.

When he shook
the once-sand bottle

what was left made the sound
of a maple leaf growing

It is not possible, he thought,
and it would not be appropriate
for me to shake hands
with a leaf’s three jagged hands

Who needs leaves anyway?
Nothing but the fruited conspiracy
of seed and soil    repetitive, hogwash

But the aging leaf in the bottle
interrupted him saying,

Leaves run their veins in all directions
hoping to report “most sun”

They are green when they need to be,
and red in their rest        allegiant to none
but the season

When he finished drinking the leaf
he searched for a sunrise, any sunrise,
his head tilted back,
in sun-loving obeisance

OK, pop,
      paw-naw,
maybe if it weren’t
for you I’d be in that
ocean of debt, with
all the other sad fish,
fending off collecting
sharks, looking for
deeper water, where
I’d make my black silhouette
plain against a white sky—
too visible to the supperless
yellow eyes lurking below.
      Or, maybe you’re the
cage I’m in, making me
a tourist, a sight-seer.  Oh,
look at the sharks, paw,
they look hungry.  Gee, they’re
gnawing on the bars of
this cage, paw.  And then I
give two pulls on the line
and you reel me back up
and ask me what
I thought of it, and whether
I have a job yet.  Still
looking, I say.
      Or, maybe you’re the
boat, and you take me
deep-sea fishing, and
we catch one of those
sharks, one of those blood-
sniffing, two rows of
teeth, rough-sided,
cartilage-thick scavengers.
We fin ‘im for soup—
a delicacy I’m getting
a taste for— & then throw
‘im back over the side
and throttle off, you at
the helm, me at the bow
drinking a rum drink
and listening to
Jimmy Buffett on my
iPod.  Take us into
harbor, pop, I yell
into the wind.
Let’s go have mom
cook us up some of that
shark fin soup,
maybe watch the ballgame,
knock back a few local brews.
      Or, maybe you’re the
land.  Maybe I’ve never even
been in the ocean; I’ve only
read about sharks in books.
You’ve got a big shark’s
jaw in your office and I’ve
reached up to feel the teeth—
so sharp I slice myself.  When
my finger bleeds I suck on it
so I won’t get blood on
your office floor.  Later,
when we go to the beach,
I won’t even go in the water,
though you tell me it’s fine.
Dad, I say, I’m not so sure;
sharks can smell blood from miles away.
But you reassure me,
honestly believing that sharks
don’t come in this close; that
there’s no food for them
around here—no seals, no pups,
no sea lions / no unlucky bastards
without you to go in first, to
give a leg, to sake them on
your back of blood, your scalp,
your good name, your trust—
and anything else I can get
off of you before you’re gone.

          let me check my e-mail

                           real quick

     an eclipse of time & temperature

                  —you’re right

             It was in

                              Graham Greene,

                              Our Man in Havana.


       If you don’t think I love you,

                     then I don’t

by Adam Edell


                Need to get out to the desert this year.
                New Mexico? Arizona? Nevada?
                Sand, arched wolves, a full-bellied moon, eclipsed…

They touched their instruments like sacred objects,
notes floating upon an ashen incantation.
What I heard was "yeah, yeah"
but what I saw was my father at my age,
a wife and a child on the way.
Saw a row of blue corn, bending their bean-stalked ears towards starlight,
listening for those whispered glimmers,
shed a century before.
Crossed paths with a blue-eyed husky,
his questionmark tail aloft that low spring breeze.
We harvested sunchoke
(Winter roots born
from ragged, slumbering soil),
their sad sweetness, a burden of the last frost.
That drone goes on / you feel like you're lost,
like they forgot about you
leaning against a brick symphonic wall with one foot in a puddle.
But upon opening eyes, the reforming melody
the unpocketed smile, the barest hint of rhythm,
an awoken cymbal among brushed snakeskins.

They crash together in a new song,
with every wave comes a reunion of what you long for.

And so why does it hurt to be so rewarded?

by J Randall & R Wisdom


1.
Afghanistan is dicey these days!  You’ve got the Taliban back on the mend, gearing up for that big Spring Offensive, bombs going off all over the place.  And Cheney was there last week.  Oh, yeah.  He almost got killed.  But you know what would happen if Cheney died—

        Bush would be President.

          [Rimshot]


2.
I was reading the paper this morning, and I saw that Vice President Cheney had a blood-clot in his leg.  Oh, yeah.  Cheney is supposedly going to be alright, but you know, if he died, Bush would be dickless.

          [Rimshot]


3.
Yeah, Vice President Cheney made a surprise visit to Afghanistan last week.  Did you hear about that?  Even though his trip was unannounced the security was still really tight and Cheney was under a lot of pressure.  And, you know, I was thinking.  If he has another heart attack, Pelosi’s gonna be President.

          [Third and final rimshot]


          [Arm flap,
          "Goodnight everybody!"
          Exit stage left.]

by R.L. Wisdom


          I am on a bus with my wife.  I am talking to a tourist’s camera; saying, ‘The second time I died was because of a trolley.’
          A trolley races past, off its tracks.  The front of it misses the bus but by over-compensating our driver clips the rear of the trolley, sending the bus rolling, rolling.
          The rolling stops.  Everyone is startled for a long moment but people soon begin to move about and collect their bearings.  I can begin to hear sirens in the background.  Upon reaching the scene, emergency workers start to help passengers loose themselves from the wreckage.
          The workers keep walking past me as I lay there, still stunned.  This worries me.  I have died once before and the way I feel now is eerily familiar….
          Living people cannot see dead people.  And, being dead, I cannot see dead bodies.  My wife asks me what’s going on, so I explain.  We walk away from the wreckage and begin traveling down a side street.
          I must warn you that, at this point, I am not sure if my wife is dead or not.  I do not know myself whether I have been killed in the crash.  All logic is suspended.
          My wife asks me to walk back down the block to get some napkins from the take-out counter of a restaurant we’ve just passed.  There is a cut on her nose.
          I turn around and head back.  I come to a storefront with a big glass display window.  It is there that I become disoriented and almost lose myself in the mirror-like glass.  It takes all of my mental faculties what seems like a dozen minutes to extract myself from its reflective pool/pull.
          I continue toward the restaurant.  When I reach the restaurant I walk in only to find it perfectly empty.  It has just opened for business but sadly no patrons have yet wandered in.  
          I go up to the bar and grab a handful of paper napkins.  An old man tending bar turns around, glances in my direction, and nods.  I think nothing of it.  As I am walking out of the restaurant I notice how immaculately clean and shiny the floors are.  It occurs to me that I’ve probably sullied the area at the bar where I was standing, if only for a bit.  I walk back and take out a few napkins to wipe it down when the bartender says, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that.  I’ll have someone take care of it.’
          I nod, walk out, and cross the street.  I head back to my wife.  As I walk toward her I pass a group of guys walking in my direction.  Maybe they’ll go to the restaurant, I think.
          One of them calls out my name.  It is Adam, a great old friend from college.  I hug him and we chat for an instant.  I pull him aside and ask him, ‘Are you dead?’
          He laughs and tells me, ‘That is an insane question.’  But I tell him about the accident, the trolley, and how I’ve died for now the second time.
          He won’t believe me.  My wife approaches us.  As I begin to introduce her to Adam, he walks away.  I tell her about the conversation but she says, ‘I didn’t see you talking to anyone.’
          Then I tell her about the mesmerizing display glass and the immaculate shining floor, and about how my sense of reality was generally breaking down.  She looks startled and informs me that I never went into any restaurant, only into a vacant building.
          I am beginning to lose it, aren’t I?  I think I might be tripping acid.  I tell my wife that I’m having some sort of acid flashback and that she’ll have to please bear with me.
          She says the only thing I’m saying is, ‘But we’re dead.  But we’re dead.’  Over and over.  That’s what she says but I don’t believe her.  We’re not dead, are we?

In winter our stucco house
falls on its knees to the cold,
spilling our hidden secret of heat.
But we have nowhere else to go
so we crank and pay the gas co.