BIRMINGHAM POETRY REVIEW, ZUZU'S PETALS, TOUCHSTONE, WINDSOR REVIEW, MAVERICK, HOLLINS CRITIC, ELLIPSIS, KANSAS QUARTERLY, BLUE UNICORN, SONOMA MANDALA LITERARY REVIEW, PARNASSUS LITERARY REVIEW.
LOVER'S BRIDGE My eyes saw not behind surfaces; my ears heard only the oscillations of atoms in air. What tone of sound, of light roused my sleeping perceptions? None. To me her eyes were always wide and loving, her voice always soft and soothing. The rupture came suddenly. Like some bridge too rigidly built, impervious to gales, never moving an inch, with tension testing its tensile strength, its inner stress unnoticed unless an ear would have touched the cold metal frame to hear the whining made by the metallic bonds twisting, but no ear heard. Snap! It's over. We are both alone on opposite sides. FRACTAL ENTITIES One package of bread falls off a truck owned by the Mega-Foods Conglomerate inc. Loss in profits--zero. One starving, homeless man grabs the bounty, rips open the package, and ravenously gorges. That a crumb will fall is mathematically certain. An ant scout happens on the fallen manna. It thrusts its antennae heavenward as if it were giving thanks. Two beings feasting. But there are more entities. Within the ant is a protozoan also reaping what is sown, and within the protozoan a bacterium finds its place at a table, while a singular viral particle can now gather an abundance of nucleotides, as universes of macromolecules are rearranged. Within the universes is one universe, and within that singular cosmos is a singular atom-- and around that atom, the turning constellations of quanta have set in motion a rippling cascade of causalities that puts food on an infinitely near yet infinitely distant table. And by that table yet another being feasts and offers up a prayer to the minutest of heavens. TWO ACCOUNTS FROM THE SENSES AND POSTSCRIPT Saw him grab her by the hair, a yank and her head jerked. All this under the naked hallway light bulb. Shadows were cast; she grabbed the closet doorknob, and while he tugged at her arm the door opened and closed, while the darkness within flashed. Her back eclipsed his towering form only up to his shoulders. His face, he could see his face through the keyhole. Then a final push. She careened backwards and over on the floor. Heard her yell, "Creep . . . loser . . . failure . . . jerk." Heard him say, "Enough." No, not enough. Her voice, "You're useless in bed and in getting bucks." Heard him cry, "Enough." No, not enough. Heard him again, "My fist, I'll ram my fist . . . " Heard her again, "If it wasn't for the brat, if it wasn't for the brat I'd leave this crap." Heard him plead, "Enough." No, not enough. Heard screams, slaps, and the slamming of the closet door. Then the crash, cries, and the caustic harmony of two angry voices. Little boy went back to his bed. Little boy couldn't get to the bathroom; they lurked in the hall. Little boy needed relief and found it: shut his eyes, put his hands over his ears, was deaf and blind--but could still feel-- felt warmth flow through his pajamas. FADING FAST INTO FOCUS Two 1855 daguerreotypes on my mother's wall of my grandparents many times great. Old country, middle class, stiff poses, properly dressed, and thoroughly unsmiling. They had many children, but the descendents from the other lines are strangers in the street to me. The Adam and Eve of my ancestry. Their parents' names are forever lost. I'm supposed to inherit their imposing frames, mount them on my own walls someday and endure their severe stares as I always have. Therein lies the paradox. Decades of light have slowly faded their features, only their sharp mouths and stern eyes remain finely etched. Should really store them in an album, but then my son would not grow up a bit awed, a bit humbled, under their magisterial gaze. It was their daily presence that made me care. But consigned to the darkness between album pages, they'd become to my son antiques to sell or trash to toss. Better to mount them in glaring sunlight, and let their physical presence fade while their memory is fixed for yet one more living generation. 1984, A REAGAN YEAR The layers made a thick skin that covered the hole, some long dead bum must have started the process to keep a cold draft from blowing through the wall. Thus a tradition began, for twenty years each movement bolstered this original patch. Poster by poster, two inches thick, "STOP GOLDWATER," "STOP THE WAR," "SDS," "LIBERATION," "STOP NIXON," all the way to "STOP REAGAN," pressed into a unity of a hardened paper hide that grew upon the abandoned, lower east side, tenement wall. I have seen it grow, year, by year. It's 1984, and a luxury condo will rise when this ruin is cleared. I take a knife and cut a circle. The cold draft can come through again. The tradition has ended. I hold the fabric in my hand. I try to tease away each layer in turn, hoping that each exposure would jog a memory of where I had been when each exposed cause was at its peak. But every layer I peel just rips the face off the previous cause. At last a grand merging of the left.