Issue 13 - December 2008 - Poetry

Digesting Voicelessness by Joao Coelho

God bears the shape of my wounds
and I the rising sun's.

Tell me I am here.
Tell me I am something
other than this I've felt
ever since I was my father's child.

Sleep was the fever of Summer wings,
our splintered feet begging please
'til the vesper bell hummed
in the pendulous wind
as if smothered.

We'd often dream of drowning,
knuckle-deep into the womb
for her breath to funnel through
like the voice of God,
but it never came;

we'd flicker at the touch,
purring, our bodies leaning
towards the rivers
as if threatning to fly
but never really flying.

Tell me I am here: peel my lungs back
so I can breathe.

At night we were ghosts, teethless,
our ribs stinging against the flesh
like paperweights;

we'd sit out on the front porch
with swollen necks
from swallowing the sky too fast
and count crows sneaking
out of the dark
and from our tongues,
slowly, slowly, slowly.

Bathroom similes, Thursday morning by Tony Garner

You are like the bathroom carpet
warm but impractical
You soak me up when I aim badly

You are like the metal toilet roll dispenser guard
Clangy when the roll is empty
You watch me in my intimate moments

You are unlike the glass for toothbrushes
A layer of scum on the bottom
I would not only notice you if you weren't there

You are like the unreliable electric scales
Only read a weight if you feel like it
You require tapping to operate

You are unlike the dirty jay cloth
Used for cleaning the toilet |
You don't have to absorb my pee

(except when you're like the carpet
warm but impractical
soaking me up when I aim badly)

You are like the contact lens holder
With its' weird, circly flaps
It's yours, you left it here, but I don't mind

You are unlike the shower head holder
Broken so I have to hold the head myself
You broke it, and you would never break yourself
Though I might break myself without you

You are like the bathroom carpet
Warm but impractical
You soak me up when I aim badly.

The song that I came to sing by Aditi Machado

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day. I have spent my days in stringing and unstringing my instrument. - Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore

In the rain, earth-smell spines
upwards, sturdy as shrubs; thorns
prick me as I run through the forest
that is called the monsoon.

I'm late: he must have left by now
and won't see my face slashed
with rain and leaves; my hair
whipped into a strange font,

saying almost what is on my mind.
Or maybe he will wait,
an umbrella in hand
so that he can smoke a dry cigarette.

The storm still blooms; violent creepers
grasp my ankle, but I've reached somehow
to find Vikas on a bench in a park,
and I sit by him, and breathe out.

Bananas by Rob A Mackenzie

With each edition of today’s Evening News,
a free banana. And no, this is not a wind-up
or some poetic artifice at work on your
subconscious – the banana means nothing
other than itself. You can read the news,
banana in hand, and with each mouthful,
the page will soften its focus until only
the horoscope feels like harder copy
than the banana’s flesh. If you decide,
on the basis of today’s experiment,
that tomorrow’s banana cannot come
quick enough, the early editions will carry
a free DVD of a Hollywood movie no one
has never seen. An imaginary banana
will pop up around the one-hour mark.
If you try a banana once, you can’t stop.

The Phoenix by Ariel Parsons

The weeds reach out to greet me.
What genus are you,
one-two,
paired crime?
Curious tendrils with child's hands.

I condescend--
the grass pokes through my blister cracks
my shadow burnt on the pavement.
My hairy limbs entwining thus,
I am no forest fire.

Egg, enflamed and swollen.

Graphic Novel by Phoebe Salzman-Cohen

In the first panel, the girl
enters the bookstore
and watches herself sweat in the boy’s glasses. Then
she sits down next to the graphic novels
he’s on the other side and she
pretends not to notice him choosing between Dante
and Marvel.

There’s a shot of the way
she organizes her hand- palm, air, cheek
it looks like a desert and the space
underneath the sky.
She teaches herself to breathe, and her tongue
breaks away from her lips

and she stands. There is a page
where she begins to talk but stops herself
Her fist releases and the boy
follows her. The girl
becomes someone else, stands strangely
and says “I really like 

you.” He looks down, whispers
something she doesn’t want to hear
and they finish. 

She watches the way she thinks in
the bathroom mirror
because it isn’t beautiful enough.

Knock, Knock, Knocking on Heavens Door by Vincent Turner

I wish I could’ve blamed it on the lack of air.
Mother atop a Welsh mountain, arms outstretched,

Palms pushed towards the sky. We kids laughing
At the strange way she heckled at the heavens.

Father lowered her arms, it was his gentleness
That caused us concern, we stood with the wind

Slapping our faces, aimlessly kicking browned
Bracken. It was meant to be a fun family holiday.

Looking back I suppose it was the closest she
Could get to God, for him to hear her query the pain. I

Remember the clouds, how when she screamed
They parted, Paul the youngest thought

He saw the face of a Dinosaur in the form of grey
Mist, given our mothers beaten look as we trekked

Silently back to the town below, I guess she
Saw neither God nor hope. We never spoke of it,

Even when they took her away one morning as
We slept, “she’s gone for somewhere to rest” said

Our father, yet it was the trembling anger in his voice
That led us to believe that God had finally come.

Winter by Christian Ward

You cannot dream of winter

happening because it is always

there in the background,

whatever month it is. Walking

along a pier in August you

will hear it grinding against

the iron legs, in the gulls’ mews.

Sitting on the porch in April,

you will feel it rubbing against

your legs, turning your skin

white as milk. Fake a surprise look

in November when snow falls,

ignore the glimpse of ice behind

your parents’ eyes.

Snowblind by Allie Weatherbee

It would be nice, to fall into December
and let myself be crushed by the thrill of
the frosted blur, traverse this clandestine
wonderland and search for the warmth

of your heart, chase the dull and dreary
clouds and beg for them to open, dream
another blizzard and taste another freeze.
The snow has stopped and I'm barely

breathing, not to embrace the chill
but to be a part of you, still. I am
crystalline, I am vacant, I am dancing,
soft, amongst my peers and landing,

a blanket of ambiguity.
You are March, and I will melt.

 

© Read This Magazine 2008.