A Myth of Devotion, by Louise Glück

When Hades decided he loved this girl he built for her a duplicate of earth, everything the same, down to the meadow, but with a bed added. Everything the same, including sunlight, because it would be hard on a young girl to go so quickly from bright light to utter darkness Gradually, he thought, he'd introduce the night, first as the shadows of fluttering leaves. Then moon, then stars. Then no moon, no stars. Let Persephone get used to it slowly. In the end, he thought, she'd find it comforting. A replica of earth except there was love here. Doesn't everyone want love? He waited many years, building a world, watching Persephone in the meadow. Persephone, a smeller, a taster. If you have one appetite, he thought, you have them all. Doesn't everyone want to feel in the night the beloved body, compass, polestar, to hear the quiet breathing that says I am alive, that means also you are alive, because you hear me, you are here with me. And when one turns, the other turns— That's what he felt, the lord of darkness, looking at the world he had constructed for Persephone. It never crossed his mind that there'd be no more smelling here, certainly no more eating. Guilt? Terror? The fear of love? These things he couldn't imagine; no lover ever imagines them. He dreams, he wonders what to call this place. First he thinks: The New Hell. Then: The Garden. In the end, he decides to name it Persephone's Girlhood. A soft light rising above the level meadow, behind the bed. He takes her in his arms. He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you but he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end you're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.

Hurry Toward the Beginning, by Li-Young Lee

is it because the hour is late
the dove sounds new,

no longer asking
a path to its father's house,
no longer begging shoes of its mother?

or is it because i can't tell departure
from arrival, the host from the guest,

the one who waits expectant at the window
from the one who, even now, tramples the dew?

i can't tell what my father said about the sea
we crossed together
from the sea itself,

or the rose's noon from my mother
crying on the stairs, lost
between a country and a country.

everywhere is home to the rain.
the hours themselves, where do they hide?
the fruit of listening, what's that?

are the days the offspring of distracted hands?
does waiting that grows out of waiting
grow lighter? what does my death weigh?
what's earlier, thirst or shade?
is all light late, the echo to some prior bell?

is it because i'm tired that i don't know?
or is it because i'm dying?
when will i be born? am i the flower,
wide awake inside the falling fruit?
or a man waiting for a woman
asleep behind a door?
what if a word unlocks
room after room the days
wait inside? still,

night amasses a foreground
current to my window.
listen. whose footsteps are those
hurrying toward beginning?

Ivy, Late Sun, With Fettucine, by David Citino

There is art on these walls, as if
windows could be improved on—
Dufy's riotous, variegated fields,
flashes of dancers by Degas,
posters bruiting shows of shows.

Yet as we wait for water to boil
for pasta, as chicken simmers
in Pinot grigio, lemon, basil,
I want the tongue of summer sun
on green afternoon leaves.

Now I know what ivy has tried
all my life to mean, and gold.
What, on a day so pure, can compete
with green? Yet we insist on not
leaving well enough alone. Years

I've stained the brightness of paper
with dark words, when I have
love, ivy's newest hues,
rooms and rooms of nothing but
everything there is, light, true light.

The Confession of An Apricot by Carl Adamshick

I love incorrectly.


There is a solemnity in hands,
the way a palm will curve
in accordance with a contour of skin,
the way it will release a story.

This should be a pilgrimage.
The touching of a source.
This is what sanctifies.

This pleading. This mercy.
I want to be a pilgrim to everyone,
close to the inaccuracies, the astringent
dislikes, the wayward peace, the private
words. I want to be close to the telling.
I want to feel everyone whisper.

After the blossoming I hang.
The encyclical that has come
through the branches
instructs us to root, to become
the design encapsulated within.

Flesh helping stone turn tree.

I do not want to hold life
at my extremities, see it prepare
itself for my own perpetuation.
I want to touch and be touched
by things similar in the world.

I want to know a few secular days
of perfection. Late in this one great season
the diffused morning light
hides the horizon of sea. Everything
the color of slate, a soft tablet
to press a philosophy to.

On Death, Without Exaggeration

  

It can't take a joke,
find a star, make a bridge.
It knows nothing about weaving, mining, farming,
building ships, or baking cakes.

In our planning for tomorrow,
it has the final word,
which is always beside the point.

It can't even get the things done
that are part of its trade:
dig a grave,
make a coffin,
clean up after itself.

Preoccupied with killing,
it does the job awkwardly,
without system or skill.
As though each of us were its first kill.

Oh, it has its triumphs,
but look at its countless defeats,
missed blows,
and repeat attempts!

Sometimes it isn't strong enough
to swat a fly from the air.
Many are the caterpillars
that have outcrawled it.

All those bulbs, pods,
tentacles, fins, tracheae,
nuptial plumage, and winter fur
show that it has fallen behind
with its halfhearted work.

Ill will won't help
and even our lending a hand with wars and coups d'etat
is so far not enough.

Hearts beat inside eggs.
Babies' skeletons grow.
Seeds, hard at work, sprout their first tiny pair of leaves
and sometimes even tall trees fall away.

Whoever claims that it's omnipotent
is himself living proof
that it's not.

There's no life
that couldn't be immortal
if only for a moment.

Death
always arrives by that very moment too late.

In vain it tugs at the knob
of the invisible door.
As far as you've come
can't be undone.

The Madness of King George

It was time for me to go. I drank
a beer and a whiskey and should have been sipping
Italian sodas, should have been home
watching an old movie
or reading Twain but I decided to feed my limitations
instead. Get a little drunk. Get a little sad.
The woman sitting next to me calls herself Summer
and keeps touching her lips
and scratching her thigh
and ordering a martini
and talking about history. George Washington
and the madness of King George. “He would walk around
the palace garden wearing nothing
but his crown, crying, holding his gaudy scepter in his hands
like an infant.” I am like him, I thought,
and ask for my bill
while this other person, this other
life puts her hand on my knee. “Do you ever think
about what would have happened if Germany won the war?”
she says. Street signs in two languages.
The Jews really gone. And the Mormons too. Oktoberfest
everywhere. I can see the line
her underwear is making beneath the gray silk. I can see
the wash of freckles on her shoulders.
This is what loneliness is all about. A table
full of bread and wine and you starving but unable to eat or drink,
just staring at it like you were staring
at a television set. “I think Amelia Earhart is alive and living
in Florida… there are pictures of her
walking on the beach.” Her and Elvis and the Kennedy Brothers.
History getting undead
and moving to warmer climates. I am peering out
from my own grave,
I think, and pay my tab. I put my coat on
and Summer is sliding her long index finger around the rim
of her glass and then licking it. “This economy,”
she says,“the price of gas!… It’s almost like we’re living
in wartime” I am closing my wallet.
I am stepping away from the bar,
looking at her, stranger now than when we met an hour ago,
when I first noticed her neck, her breasts. “But we are,” I say,
“We are living in wartime”
And then her finger stops and she looks up at me and says “Oh, I know,
but I mean really, really at war, you know like here, where you and I are.

Incest Taboo - Denise Duhamel

     

      It always freaked me out when my father
      
called my mother "Mommy," as in "Mommy,

      let's pack up the car and go for a drive!"

      I grew up to be afraid of birds.

      I swerve now whenever a sparrow swoops
      
towards my windshield. I can't go to the beach

      because of the seagulls that dive and circle

      like hornets or warplanes. Even humming 

      birds creep me out, the way they just hover

      quivering like they are about to explode.

      Blue jays, robins, even doves have wronged
      
me, one way or the other. All lousy parrots.

      I was changing my bathing suit at the beach

      house my parents rented. It was a parrot
      green one-piece with a yellow swoop

      of daisies down the front. It was wrong

      the way my brother Fred barged in--the bird

      brain--without knocking, his voice exploding,

      "The drive-in starts in two minutes!" He hovered,
      
my suit rolled down around my hips. "Mommy
      
wants you to hurry up," he said, leering. The hum

      of a car engine out front, my father

      honking. Then Fred backed away. My suit left wet circles

      

on the floor. On the movie screen, explosive
      
wings and Tippi Hedren. Two clean semi-circles

      arched the dusty windshield, a splatter of white bird
      
poop the wipers couldn't reach. My father

      yelled, "Mommy! Look at that! They're running the wrong
      
way!" Sea water sloshed in my ears, humming,

      the soundtrack fading in and out, dialogue swooping
      
from the crackling gray box hanging from my mother's
      
window. Fred avoided looking at me. He parroted

      bird screeches. His fat greasy hands hovering
      
over the popcorn made me say, "You ugly beached

      whale! Share!...Mom and Dad, look, Fred's driving



      me to drink!" "That's enough," my father replied, hum-

      drum dad-talk, as though the drive-in

      was as good a place as any to announce my wrong
      
turn, to foreshadow my own alcoholism. Beach
      
bunny Jane, fourteen--that's me--with a father
      
as good or bad as most, a hovering
      
mother. Did I know then I'd wind up terrified of birds--
      
hunched under bar stools, screaming about the parrot
      
on Baretta's shoulder? The next day I circled
      
the beach house block on a rusty bike. "My mother's
      
a bitch," I said, meaning Fred. Freckles exploded

      on my arms. My ponytail, a bright chestnut swoop.



      Years later, at the party, my husband hovers

      over me, trying to control my drinking, swooping
      
towards each rum and coke, like a father
      
tying to save the boiler before it explodes,

      like a mother bargaining with the beach--

      "Give me back my son and I'll be the best mother
      
in the whole world! I know I was wrong

      to let Fred swim alone." She'd trusted that circle

      the sun made in the sky, but never again. "Jane drives
      
herself crazy with regret," my husband says, a parrot

      to my whims. The party is humming

      with rumors, guests screeching like dawn-inspired birds.

      

I never wanted to become a mommy.
      
That is, I wanted to stay sexy, unburdened

      by diapers. I wanted to walk a birdless beach
      
without a string of toddlers behind me, pull-toys humming.

      I was sure my body would explode. 

      during childbirth. I dreamt of parrots,

      instead of babies, flying through my legs. My father

      had wanted a boy, someone he could teach to drive

      gold balls into the future, someone he could swoop
      
down and lift to the basketball hoop, a circle

      of victory. He had Fred who hovered

      behind him, a cub, until everything went wrong.

      

I say the same words over and over, a parrot

      who wants the Prozac-cracker. My therapist wears the wrong
      
colors--spring, though she's clearly an autumn. Explosive

      dinosaur earrings brush her neck, hover

      near her collar. I'm distracted, humming

      "The Wind Beneath My Wings," drawing a circle

      around each question. "If we'd rented a beach

      house, I think I'd remember!" my father's voice swoops.

      He reminds me Fred was a good son, a Boy Scout. The Birds
      
is my least favorite movie. "What drive-in?

      We never went to any drive-ins," my mother 

      insists. "I don't like mosquitoes. Just ask your father."



      How can I break the incest taboo circling 

      my own marriage? My husband looks less like my father

      when he wears my lingerie. I don't hum

      even when he's sick--I won't soothe him like a mommy.

      Every girl is part Jane--part me--hovering 

      around puberty, a sleazy corner. Adults drive
by
      quickly so they won't remember their imploding

      hearts, nothing ever as intense again. Bird
      -
watching aggravates me. "It's wrong,"

      my mother said, talking about girl watching, Fred's swooping
      
eyes scanning breasts and things, his mouth parroting
      
his friends' dirty talk. All winter he waited for the beach.

      

Baretta's parrot, also named Fred, drives

      me to think about that moldy beach
      
house where Fred picked up my wet suit. His voice hovered

      close to my ears. "Everything's related. Parrots

      descend from dinosaurs. That's why mommy
      
is afraid of them," Fred said, swooping

      my bathing suit into the air, humming

      a Donny and Marie love song. "You're so wrong!"
      
I said, about the parrots with the dinosaur grandfathers.

      Fred locked my door with a hook that looked like a bird's 

      beak and flapped his arms like a seagull wings, circling

      a fish who was me. My insides exploded



      as he pushed me on the twin bed, his palm swooping
      
over my mouth. Now the radio explodes
      
I'm a bitch. I'm a lover. I'm a child. I'm a mother
      
trying to shock me with its top ten song, circle
      
lyrics that make me wish I still had the parrot

      green bathing suit that proved my bird-

      bee-beeing brother walked in on me, then hovered.

      That proved he came in again, after my father
      
had fallen asleep, dreaming of a walk on the beach

      all by himself. I don't think he was wrong
      
to want out, my mother in the shower, humming.



      Fred liked to shoot things, especially birds

      which were more challenging than cans. His guns hummed

      with promises of taxidermy. Parrot-

      sized birds he couldn't name were driven
      
out of trees and plopped dead in circles

      onto the ground. I knew killing was wrong, 

      even birds, and I'd yell to my mother,

      "Make him stop!" She waited for beach-

      weather, then buried her son's fun, explosive

      pangs of anger in her chest. "You're his father,
      
talk to him," she said as her husband swooped

      his fork to his plate--me crying, silence hovering.

      I finally felt happy, though I knew it was wrong.

      At Fred's funeral, his girl-watching buddies hovered

      near the casket, crying in huddles, circles

      football players make before they swoop

      and clobber the other team. I was learning to drive.

      I'd missed drivers' ed to stand with my father

      near the casket. My mother kept fainting, parroting,

      "Thanks for coming," to the mourners whose grief exploded
      
like shaken soda bottles. Sometimes I hear them hum

      like I did that summer at the beach

      when bottles popped right on 7-11 shelves. A bird-

      like cashier. Glass shards. My father yelling, "Look, Mommy!

      

Look at that!" My father and mother

      sill don't remember seeing Hitchcock's The Birds
      
or the swooping seagulls. Even the beach house
      
is caught in a blurry circle of memory, humming

      and hovering, ready to explode. It doesn't help

      I get details wrong--

      Baretta had a cockatoo, not a parrot.

     

Another Awkward Stage of Convalescence, Bob Hicock

Drunk, I kissed the moon
where it stretched on the floor.
I'd removed happiness from a green bottle,
both sipped and gulped
just as a river changes its mind,
mostly there was a flood in my mouth

because I wanted to love the toaster
as soon as possible, and the toothbrush
with multi-level brissels
created by dental science, and the walls
holding pictures in front of their faces
to veil the boredom of living

fifty years without once
turning the other way. I wanted
the halo a cheap beaujolais paints
over everything like artists gave the holy
before perspective was invented,
and for a moment thought in the glow

of fermented bliss that the bending
of spoons by the will was inevitable,
just as the dark-skinned would kiss
the light-skinned and those with money
and lakefront homes would open
their verandas and offer trays

of cucumber sandwiches to the poor
scuttling along the fringes of their lawns
looking for holes in the concertina wire.
Of course I had to share this ocean
of acceptance and was soon on the phone
with a woman from Nogales whose hips

had gone steady with mine. I told her
I was over her by pretending I was just
a friend calling to say the Snow Drops
had nuzzled through dirt to shake
their bells in April wind. This
threw her off the scent of my anguish

as did the cement mixer of my voice, as did
the long pause during which I memorized
her breathing and stared at my toes
like we were still together, reading
until out eyes slid from the page
and books fell off the bed to pound

their applause as our tongues searched
each others' body. When she said
she had to go like a cop telling a bum
to move on, I began drinking downhill,
with speed that grew its own speed,
and fixed on this image with a flagellant's

zeal, how she, returning to bed, cupped
her lover's crotch and whispered not
to worry, it was no one on the phone,
and proved again how forgotten I'd become
while I, bent over the cold confessional,
listened to the night's sole point of honesty.

Holiday Sestina with Zombies, JoAnna Novak

Wherein I'll chew calcified dainties & address
my recent proclivity for living the dead, home
grown & headband-bound with those white
gauze guides to life: a bit unfit, a little
too lascivious—she wanted, she suffered—
throats & apertures, composed & shot.

I mean, just look at her. There's bloodshot
eyes & that unraveling ravishment, undressing
all hours of the night, raised rumor-suffering,
café curtains studded with blood-red homes.
One at a time, the living start to look a little
more like a box of unmentionables. White

between the fingers, racing hearts gulping white
air—when it's invisible, it's all the rage, one shot
to test her tolerance for analgesics, days littered
with useful secrets & let's get boned dressed
up like other people. One night we stayed home,
got a little high, & she orgasmed into suffering.

No one ate pineapple or crullers. We just suffered
through a can of peaches in syrup, tap water white-
clouded & tinny. The movie where the lady's home
vendettas act in curious ways: the animals are shot
standing. The tulips ooze yellow pus. Boys dressed
for debauch, delirious in the datura & just a little

too dreamy-eyed over leaving Christchurch sans little
trumpets, spiny fruit, & a single evening of sexless suffering
in the bush. It was one of those nights without address,
landmark, or catcall & she launched into lording white
elephants out back—but, then maybe my shot's
off, maybe she was dishabille & crumby, homesick

for one roomful of revenants. This was the last home
without sores. The prize driveway, scoured-shoal, lit
by luminaries. She said time's right for God's shot
glass. Our final holiday season pre-price suffering
adjustments, gifted malaise—a lot of pearly whites
bared amidst a village haunting where undressing

addresses our homes of Christmas past,
little white doves arcing through golden
velum shot with starburst punches & suffering