Truth
Hila Ratzabi - { I Don’t Care if Your Memoir is True, and Other Thoughts on Truth and Fiction }
Jessica Gross - { 2 Train, End to End }
Michael Henson - { Maggie Boylan }
Alissa Heyman - { I Married a Skull } { Shortly After the Wedding }{ The Silent Treatment }
Lynne Procope - { Doing It for Love } { The Poet Addresses Saartjie Baartman; The So Called Venus Hottentot. }
Tim Raymond - { Small }
Jaime Warburton - { This Is Not a Poem About a Dream } { - Red Moon Last Night }
Untruth
Shelly Oria - { Integrity }
Sheila Thorne - { Betrayal }
Jennifer Duffield White - { Blue-Sky Treason }
We Don't Know and They
Won't Tell Us
Tamiko Beyer - { We Don’t Know and They Won’t Tell Us ~ Poetry in the Space of Possibility }
Adam Auerbach - { Illustrations }
Simon Perchik - { Five Untitled Poems }
Lynne Procope - { The Mortal Danger of Redheads }
Hila Ratzabi - { I Have to Show My Appreciation to You for Rescuing Me from This Setting }
| Five Untitled Poems by Simon Perchik |
*
These plates, cups — a dim bulb
tracks their plausible man :no constellation
—even Gemini, their lips
once huge but I can still make out
—this chair, spoon, another spoon
—star to star as if some cave
its odd-shaped beast midair
spread out to dry this wall
this door imagined open.
I can trace — this room
this prairie flowing across and the wall
unable to hold on, its plaster
falling from one formation into another
—you won't remember what this dust
looked like, the night air
not yet dry, one plate
darker than the other — when the chair
was closer and lips.
*
A private gesture — suddenly one arm
rolls as if it found the field
could guess where the wind — you
don't see my hand over hand, by instinct
shoving the ground away — it's habit now
—wiping oil leaks
—strapped to a canvas shopping bag
full blown with groggy rags
with dangling countryside — every morning
one arm around this garbage can
calling airspeeds and where in this fuselage
there's some distance left — you
don't see the firewall
or my hand from behind, by accident
the wrong sky and the cloud has changed.
*
Just off the ground and the mower
needs adjustment, its wing
icing again, its heading
relentless, the crew struggling
—a sudden turbulence :dark clusters
gutting the air — from high up
I need more gloves, a shallow turn left
or right or everything I touch
bends into a battered circle :the blade
as if my breathing too, full throttle
and under this cowling, end over end
doors frozen shut, the men
can’t slip clear — there’s a small knob
and the wing dips almost as painfully
skids to dodge the vague stones
the sky I’m sure I saw.
*
This watch already gathering
—who would imagine winter
and you are holding my wrist
listening as if the way back
would lift my arm — snow too
is sorted into stones
and not stones, into eyes
that never move — do you still have lips?
This window too will close — every gesture
resets, veers into the Earth
into a morning and the Earth
still struggling to stay aloft
—even light is collecting, some darkness
here, there, here
and the watch each day slower
—what you hear is calling for you, is the dirt
gone lame, wary, step by step
dragging a place, encrusted, lost
and the frost between two stones
held fast to accept the cold
and among your eyes.
*
I tighten a gift for you
and the ivy across the street
slipping through my fingers
—for just an instant a fuse
stretching along the bricks
and workers below
have decided to open a mountainside
—it’s a small thing, the string
absorbing your gift
as if there will always be a wall
ready to fall and in winter the leaves
year to year remember
their same shape
and never any taller, know
exactly where and you
still living in another city
—I’m mailing you what it means
not to know, that in my hands
even cardboard has an edge
even string reaches an end
—you will open this box
and clearly a great rockslide :the knot
not any other place.
