Saturday, August 17, 2013

All My Dreams Were Caring Women

by Poulome Mitra Shaw

All my dreams were caring women with hips and generous bosoms.
With the tender moon tucked within
With every disenchantment in their stride
They always walked back home
religiously, oh so religiously every night
without pleading with the closed doors
to unafraid beds violating the nightmares seen
They were caring women with forgiving hearts and large kind eyes
I always knew all my dreams were Mother's within.
They let go of all the verses that had baubles of disdain
I always knew all my dreams were Women within
They let go of every stab, every excess untold
I always knew my dreams never trembled
even when nightmare played out its role
They were compassionate women with tender smiles and loving arms.

Dreaming the Dirt

 by Corinne Gaston

Mother and child appear to me
out of the folds of a dreaming spirit
Before my eyes
They grow old, love, and die
And are reborn again.
They are surrounded by the grain
Endless growth and germination, the hot clay
In a world of soil and light
Arching over the earth, planting the seeds.
The mother
Who cradles the moon and child,
The sun that cradles the grain of the earth:
It is all done with purpose
The spirit folds them up
The seedling tucked into my mind’s womb
And then like a jolt
I am feeling the vines grow
I am inhaling the scents of foliage and compost
Dropped guavas
That are overripe and bursting
Full of that sweet-smelling pulp
The soil soothes me from the feet up
Grainy and damp
I am dreaming the dirt

Never

by Jay Sizemore

been bitten by a jellyfish,
tentacles and barbs injecting venom
into the fascia where the pain hides,
to the point a stranger’s urination
would seem like a comfort on the skin.
Been in a car crash any worse
than a fender-bender, backing into
that parked car the day my dad
had his first heart attack
or getting rear-ended
for paying attention to stop lights,
my neck whipped like a spring,
but not broken.
Seen a desert or a rattlesnake
in the wild, always through panes
of glass or the high gloss sheen
of magazine pages left open
in a doctor’s office.
Had such a moment of clarity
that I felt like God must be real,
clutching his ghost-like fist
around my heart until the joy
burst free, and even murder
had its proper place in the world.

Triangles

by Benjamin Grossman

are the crowned shapes. They were the earliest markings upon the walls, the beginning dribbles of art. “Pubic triangles” ancients called women’s reproductive organs before language grew immature. But some mummified opinion will say we are born from holes. Yes, circles bring us into life but all those circles lay at the center of closed v’s. More than God knows why Egyptian monuments aren’t pentagons. It wasn’t a crash that placed healthy eating inside of a pyramid. Aristotle understood the golden imprint a three-sided structure leaves upon a story.  A trapezoid must be a trapezoid. A square must be square or it risks being mistaken for a rectangle. But a triangle is a contortionist, able to shrink and expand and change while never changing. No matter the exterior conditions, the interior of a triangle will remain constant. We should all be turned green by the inner perfection of such a flexible shape.