It's a predictable cycle
Peaceful Nature.
The hum of the streams
layered by the whistle and the **** call.
Sunning spring green grasses
dew soaking the new season's blade.
A croak interrupts the morning,
calling us out to the field.
Only we hold our position, listening in anticipation.
Nature excites us as though the unexpected will appear momentarily,
only it's the regularity that surprises.
Our nervous system is poised for action,
until we realize the day is relaxing, breathing deeply,
Sat in prayer and obedience.

Our lives are but a collection of the hours we spent loving one another.

I love you all.

I suppose society is wonderfully delightful.
To be in it is merely a bore.
But to be out of it simply a tragedy.

I hope you have not been leading a double life,
pretending to be wicked and being really good all the time.
That would be hypocrisy.

The only thing to do with good advice is pass it on;
it is never of any use to oneself.
To be modern is the only thing worth being nowadays.

Cannot be extracted when during meditation
liberation is gained thought becomes more
They do not see society. Unfortunately, Shankara's own
loss to a nation, transcendental consciousness the
becomes greatly overshadowed.

Back into the dark
where I am undiscoverable
left nightshade cloaked,
no stone turned,
no bell rung,
no tree carved,
no hammer swung.
No strong man,
no whipping post,
no beat down,
no anniversary toast,
no smart ***,
no sassy *****,
just floating now,
alone, alone, where I've put myself.
To find God again, to find God again.

Mother Rock,  I sit solidly on the porch
as the May wind blows the lanterns.
Like the family stone, I hold this space
while the children's lives soldier on
to the fields of hearts where swords and shields
penetrate and cover, where new blood is drawn.

I am finally finished playing in the war.
My position is still, as the wind washes past my solid form.
This day moves all around me,
with me washing away, eroding with each brush of every breeze,
my blue jeans fading in sunshine,
my gray hair streaking as it lingers to my shoulders.

A lane of Yellow led the eye
Unto a Purple Wood
Whose soft inhabitants to be
Surpasses solitude
If Bird the silence contradict
Or flower presume to show
In that low summer of the West
Impossible to know -

vaguen
(Samuel Beckett, notation on MS of Happy Days)


I
Fire comes bouncing in from the
desert a threat to houses Here’s
what we do says the King to
Rudyard Kipling who is visiting
Stuff wet rags in the eaves throw
the silverware in the swimming
pool And my letters Rudyard
Kipling is thinking will you be
pressing my letters to your
breast as we skid towards
the car Truly diverse people
the King and Kipling one or
the other was always getting
his feelings hurt Above them
a strip of once blue sky now
dark adust


II
Nowadays there are technicians
of despair you can work at it
Going to the Buddhist study
group I pass a thin crumpled
man at a wall his face on the
bricks Behind him another big
black city legs wide apart roaring
Say you aren’t stupid then why
aren’t you happy


III
New guy at the Buddhist study
group Eyes cut to bits I want
he keeps saying So I don’t get
so he keeps saying A bunch
of sage grass has blown onto
his head and grown down into
his mind He shakes hands with
everyone over and over again
at the door


IV
I had previously been to
the Old South Thirty minutes
into the faculty dinner a man
to my left drops his eyes and
his voice says he murdered his
brother with a shotgun when
he was twelve The other diners
appear to have heard this
before On the plane home I
sit across from a vet with a
falcon on his lap It observes
the other passengers severely
Drinks apple juice from a
cup with very small silver
lips


V
At twenty-eight thousand feet
above the uncarved block of
NY state a cricket jumps onto
my coat Vaguen it says






Anne Carson currently teaches at NYU and will publish a handmade book called NOX in 2010. She is the author of Autobiography of Red, Plainwater, and other books of poetry, non-fiction, and mixed genre.

This body needs a break,
heart muscle beaten down,
went tragedy from risk,
made hatred from adoring gaze.
Thought I'd spared his life,
turns out he a casualty.
Enemies all around,
light life flew far away.
Now grief builds in my center,
hardly a breath can leave my chest.
Love lost, never gained, all options just shut down.
Only God can heal this pain.

Chad Abushanab
Halloween


For Halloween this year I’ll be a man.
I’ll work my hands to ****** rags and use
my fists to prove which truths I understand.

I’ll paint my face into a mask of bruise,
like coming home after a barroom fight.
A man should fight, my father said, and lose

sometimes—his beaten brow will mock the night.
I’ll swallow up the pint of Cutty Sark.
I’ll stumble home and fumble with the light.

He said the bottle barely leaves a mark
burning away the places where you’ve bled.
On Halloween, I’ll drink the autumn dark.

I’ll be a man the way my father said.
On Halloween, we’re closer to the dead.
His teeth were crooked and his hands were red.

↔

Chad Abushanab is a PhD student at Texas Tech University. His poems and essays have appeared in Raintown Review, Bayou Magazine, Jellyfish Magazine, and Colorado Review, among others. He is the managing editor of Arcadia.

Our friendship was born dead.
Born into offenses of the flesh.
Birthed within burning hearts
crying for a tiny fragment
of the tastes
of our young days.
Days bound in sheets
scented and flavored by love making.

Your lives are much sweeter than mine,
triumphs mixed with parties,
action and crowds.

I can hear it when you speak up
despit your fear, agony, youth, or depression,
at least you drive
finding someone
or you paint your lips with color
smacking them on the cheek of a compadre.

You drink crap beer or wine
maybe you even smoke.
Vices.
Mine are long gone,
sacrificed.

You visit darkend, pulsing clubs
people know you
they even come up
honestly glad to see you,
you are embraced.

Did I tell you today how sorry I am?
I remember eating that last loaf of bread,
black bean and brown rice,
down Cherry Street one morning while I walked
myself to work.

Days gone by like tap, tap, tap down.

All my bad, bad days crept up on me.
Tears are fallin' now.
New days with snow light a way,
It's the big give away sale now,
Promise i won't crave what they were made to have.

Not mine, not mine,
do not covet, do not want.
Blessed with a cup of joe and a good son,
I do know what all that is worth.

Hold my hand please,
I'll need you in my hours of needs.

Time now to wait this out...
Life down for the winter.

Der Tag war weich,
leicht wie eine Feder,
Ihr Wunsch der Schönheit
links Freude in meinem jedem Atemzug .

The day was soft,
light as a feather,
Your wish of beauty
left delight within my every breath.

Disaster mister why do you haunt me?
Why do you send me beauty formed of friend
singing lullabies, wooing me even though he says
Not him, not me.
I can not help myself
craving his eyes to look, from a distant place
in the room I swoon in.

Upon my hands, the white of my skin,
the arc of my back, my shy insecurity.
His eyes never sway, swerve, or veer upon
any other delight that might tempt him with angelic grace.

This daydream consumes me,
each moment of waking hours ticked off by
a pretend tearing me from my life in three dimensions.

"The man of God does everything opposite to what the world does or approves of; he goes "against the grain" of society because he knows these things displease God"

So I fail to be upright, in full view.
   I ask to take this replayed vision away,
          remove the desire,
               change me, change this, let me know, remove my life.

Be bold enough
to send me to him
or from him
or him to me
or him from me
Or what have you given us all these days?

There is a little river that I sit by when I'm sad,
I'll stay there everyday
until I'm no longer mad.
When the rains fall down
upon my head,
I'll shelter under cover
of the trees growing tall
by the river.

There is a little river where I can be all alone.
No one can find me there
I can disappear and disappear.

Springtime awakens the concerto of fliers,
fluttering awake, rejoicing in their strength,
They sing to sound the morning and life itself,
calling through thin airs, while the cicadas sleep,
dominating the cathedral with their sunrise choir.

And you, as you rise, are showered by their concert.

To be satisfied, comfortable,
nay, even confident avec mon visage,
ma chemise, la couleur de ma texture,
the comforting weather forty years,
silvering chestnut, softened denim,
******* relaxing, cradled lower,
crows feet etched,
sun worn skin leathered well.

To be comfortable with my tone of beauty,
a select vintage for specific taste.

I'll not suite most passers by,
subtle, almost undetectable,
but for the one who cannot
     shake me from his memory,
the one who will turn to follow
     to witness my slow aging,
the one who's weather I recognize as home.

Goodbye...why?

Don't leave out the wandering door,
sit and finish these spiraled nutted cookies,
Apple Hill Special from the twisting trees
aging in the generations old summer tilled acreages.

We can glide our right hips over our right thighs

Shut down that calling of faint voices,
chattering through their cocktail party smiles.
While they promise a wealthy life
of building the all the world's a  stage,
hammers fall one-two, one-two.

Rest here your child upon this wood plank floor,
see how he crawls swiftly, ambling upwards, notice his mobility?

Child's pose, rest here

The pocked market walls of this tatty room enshrine him,
he has laid his foot falls down, see,
Resounding, forever to re-sound.

Breath in, breathing out

Wait You!
Before you leave,
turn towards the rising horizon,
this foothill sun has still to set.
The day draws on so we can listen, the fiddler,
have you seen him yet? In town? No?
Then you shall not leave until his strings are spent.

I say, "tell your story!"
No matter how many times it's been heard
Refuse the critics dogeared comments
about broken records,
get out of your rut,
let it go.

Our story is our pleasure
our experience of breath
Lived despite the presence
or non-presance of tragic moments.

Cut foot
bad catch
wrong number
missed bus

small instances of life:
lost job
low pay
Lonely Sundays
no friends.

Let me know, tell me each minute.
Share.

In order for our voice
to work properly,
our heart
must be spinning
while simultaneously
our mind
has clear vision.

All the while,
our will must possess
enough force to push truth
through so as to connect
the song of our life.
Then, God too might even listen.

Amen.

all the minutes in each day
ticked by with waking, working,
saying hello, tick, tick, tick,
according to plan.

until the explosion.

Rest, breath, let everything go,
hold on to the stable,
keep your job,
don't spend money,
take your time,
let the fire die.
Let the air blow by,
no need to move,
or build,
or go forward.
Stay quiet, stay still
sleep for a few days,
let the world walk by.

Flowers bloom yearly
then die. We make beds
for beauty, sheeting them
to make love.  Lovers coil
wrapping skin, sweating to
make a future enshrined with
devotions to their own.
Damp ground tread on by
feet running to demand what
they want for themselves. Running
over flowers pinking towards the sun;
wild, growing without struggle, until
they are trampled.

Jan. 26, 2009

today hasn't been special,
crescendo stilled or spent
in a farther landscape.

today I teetered on heavy sighs,
convinced myself to become more
dignified.

today I wished to wash away
the thoughts of a man in a distant land
laughing freely.

today I think I'll buckle up,
tighten my pack, walk a thousand miles
through thick jungle.

today I'll strip down naked,
wear gypsy spangled slippers,
dance wildly amongst a million strangers.

today I'll wonder If I can alter my life,
add a pound of flesh, and find
what I've been looking for all these years.

Today I am thankful for the silent moments
covering the morning hours,
minutes prolonged inside hushed walls,
absent the pressures of what I must provide.
I am serene.

The oakwood blazes hissing out snowfall's moisture,
kittens frolic, fluffily bouncing, pattering in holiday fluster.
The wintertide's sheepish wool in flight,
drifting upon the up-country's chilled breeze,
let's out a flaked trail towards our summit
crystallizing our land into a brilliant Wonderscape.

No toiling for me this day,
I am at rest, as is my whole house.
Thankfully piddling about
at their most cherished past times.
Allowed to delicately gaze at snowflakes
for hours.

What do you do when the world stops encouraging you?
You've passed the nubile age of 18-24
you are no longer a fledgling,
in fact, long past that point.
You have no charm in terms of possible potential
you've aged out of that category
Now you are only an uncomfortable, wierd old person in the audience
and God forbid if you try to get on stage,
embarressment, boredom, pity
that is your comeuppance.

What do you do, then, when the world has no more encouragement for you?
By now you should have succeeded, or be on your comeback tour,
not still be in the gate!

Breath, hold in the hate, dissolve back into understanding, breath again.
Your chance hung there like a celluloid moment
on your twenty-third year, you were daring.
When the Midwestern plains rolled by undiscovered still
Preserved innocently in a Laura Ingels Wilder novel.

Rolling green waving grass
sunlight burning warm to my skin
sweat beads down and wets my cheaks
no where to go, everything to be.

The intellectual saddness of Camus was found by only by those diving into the abyss in search of divinity.

Bow your head, take one more breath, release...
your life had mistakes, fear, weaknesses you let rule the day.

I always have to say goodbye to those I love the most.
God wills them away on a higher flying cloud
and I shed those eventual tears
as they take flight above us.

Loss, my loss and my pain
watching them fly,
mixing with a flock so strong.
Them laughing, happy to be moving on,
not one sad note at losing me.

They fly and I wander,
they know and I search,
they find each other,
while I cry out into an emptiness.

nightfall
becomes my shroud
to hide my hunger for
impossible fruit growing far
away.

The war was everywhere,
          not just in the desert      
          where we expected it to be.          
One night I heard the war in the wall
          behind my head—
          an animal with thick skin-wings
beating another toothy beast,
         claws hitting fur, wood, flesh.
         I asked my neighbor later
what it had been like to be alive
         before a time of war,
         and he said it was funny we even
have a word for it, because
         everything that’s alive
         stays that way by tearing
heat from another’s belly.

by Hannah Gamble

This room is empty now. No words in here to complete the sentiment for the feelings that sweep over you when a person you care for walks away from your life leaving you in the room you have furnished for yourself.

They walk away into the empty zone mixed with new faces, red haired ladies in tight see through black bras, excellent jobs like stock analyst, lobbyist, journalist, emergency room nurse, or worse. They don't let anyting stick to their walls, not yet, not now. They get to rewrite their songbook while yours becomes yellowed, dogeared, coffee stained.

Your room, blanketed in dust, dirt in the corners, dog hair covering your bedquilts.  ***** laundry piles up, you never become wealthier or smarter.  Your circle of friends degenerates into locals and deadenders like yourself. Days pass, you become old.

You latch on to anything that is moving.  Hopefully it is moving upward and outward. You dream about driving away, far away from where you live, driving for miles into the desert.  You want to live in a town where nobody knows who you are, you don't know anyone either; your home an isolated, small, cheap apartment like the one you had when you were a freshly freed adult.

Dreaming and dreaming about a life where you can be left alone so you will have the freedom to maybe, this time, find a life that resembles your fantasy of what it is supposed to be like.  All the promises of what education and college would bear.  Intelligent friends, moving and shaking the conciousness and politics, life, and town were supposed to surround you, invite you to dinner parties where you would drink smart wine and discuss shaping the tone of the future.

Turning over in your sleep, you wish everything around you would walk out and leave you. Everything except your child. He would stay, weather the change, ride the storm into your own empty room where you could paint the walls of life newly.

a 1. I drink coffee every morning
b 2. while teachers in the south, east, and north
c 3. rise, listening with held breath
d 4. to a rhythm to which they will follow
a 5. our future into allowing
b 6. chosen students, blessed, permitted to go forth
c 7. to determine our fate like a Seth,
d 8. bearing fruit we are forced to swallow.
a 9. Peaceful coffee, too rich for mourning,
b 10. traffic passes our house driving toward
c 11. a place I'll pass like an exile abandoning my quest.
d 12. Turning, turning like a dervish skirt's bravado
c 13. chiseling out my worshipers niche with my best
d 14. hand, lying in hot dirt, closing my eyes to learned sorrow.

There is something about the texture
of a thought meant to heal
over the thought that
tears open and destroys the mind.

Pushing an agenda that needs no pushing
only simple loving,
simple ethics,
time of waiting,
allowing all good to work
in it's own course.

When the pure squeezes
out from between the
grip of controversy,
breaking free,
making it through
to clean breath,
it was not your strife or challenges
that dealt that win,
just the quiet innocence of nature
in it's own course.

To touch and tumble through thick of night
'Till they lay wasted on a Sacramento street 'till light,
Boys in brown dancing in the sky,
'Till boys no more ruled their lives.

'Till boys no more carved a bed,
Under a burnout too drenched to mend.
A thought for mine what shall I repair
On this dancing place we call our share.

'Till girls in sashes and shawls and bathing suits
One hundred years old with knowledge to boot
Of business and law, life and success,
Thousands of generations put to the test.

They win, They win, as they dance through the sun.
Dancing and singing, dancing and singing.  

June 26, 2008

Not all life is a state of euphoric bliss.
there is ache within many moments.
Reason with our lives,
convincing ourselves of our peace,
our quest, reaching, working, Tapas on.

Surrendering when exhausted,
our last struggle undone,
crying like children
because we have no recourse
from the power of God.

Whether we move or stand
his breath stokes our fires,
soothing our tears,
cradling our age.

The days wear us down,
the unresolved wish
inhabiting every moment
until we relinquish our grasp
around ourselves
and offer our lives up in a prayer.

housed in the corner
i never see it change position,
its sensitivity to climate,
nuances of atmosphere,
as though i lived among subtle genius.
assuring the appropriateness of sleevelessness,
i recognize devotion.

A bottle of wine with insult,
questions surrounding why waste your time
on a no where, out of step, out of economy,
low class, loser like me.

Hours went by.

Wonder if he will call again, and when.
I'll nail him then.
Point blank shotgun style.
Try not to make a joke out of it,
not too light,
nor too heavy.
Just wondering,
why the lie?

Never call again, what a fool.
What is my value?
Only I will know.
It is a figure I alone can cypher.

what matters more than
hot springs bubbling over
boulders fallen before men wanted
to sit among-st the steam?

details.

Empty rooms angry with patience
broken planks of olden wood flooring
wet with cat **** and rain.

This house held hope
until the town voted it
down. Ruined, useful only to
corrupt our stainless American children.

Where can I find our majesty in
the streets and towns of this country?!
The young hate the old. They laugh at us while we die.
By  the time we finally muster our gumption to live
they chase us from our homes by stealing our jobs and
not caring who they hurt.

young. take your time to wonder what you are doing.

winter winds blow fast
through desperate alleyways
chapping lips bright red.

nature mattered once.
Oak leaves rotting in autumn rain.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful hearth,
warm like hot orange tea,
spiced with an arm around my shoulder,
trimmed overhead with a garland draping an archway,
lit with warm flame,
tipped atop honey candlesticks,
standing at attention to salute my approach
to the fire.

I'll take this hand of mine, open palm wide,
fill it full of your stars, friends, laughing, spitting.
I'll enfold them in my grip
I'll lift them higher than I can see,
spin myself around like a prima ballerina
en point, arriere,
open my hand mid-turn and
let you aaaaaaaall flyyyyy awaaaaay....

To the cosmos again you return
to imbibe, rejoice, and celebrate.

Leaving me sitting still,
listening to the clear air passing by my ears.
Not one threat or fear lives in this breeze.
I am alive again!  
Thank God for this lesson before I die,
thanking him that I can try one more go around,
never again letting in the specter of disdain
for my flesh, my innards, my people, my blood.

Bow my head and release angry thoughts,
they need no longer haunt me.

Now good people...find me, find this place,
walk across my threshold and into my hot embrace,
I have been waiting, waiting, waiting,
for this very day.

till death
will find me still
wanting your surrender
wanting you to want me to lay
with you.

simple gestures of remorse like two words
held loosely in the mouth so with a whisper
they float upon the breath as you hum them
through on a song from your heart.

Prayer tonight, I'm happy today
I have a wicker table
with two unmatching wicker chairs.

I bought a wonderful woven turquoise place mat
for my cats so they won't be quite as messy.
I bought my boyfriend a cheap wicker Fedora.

My son spoke with another Jew
and met someone from my people.

Today was blessedly hot, thank God!
I only worked a little.

Tonight is quiet, and my family is close,
My prayer tonight is happy,
So be it.

I find myself stranded, dangling, isolated, unrepresented.
I am a woman, though I won't march this January.

I believe in equality amongst all nations, races, genders
although I have no argument for the lack thereof.

The outrage of vibrant young ethnic men and women
is not mine to share, my white skin paints me guilty.

I am poor, have been my whole life.
I am not mad about it, had I worked harder, read more, wrote more, even cared more, I might have enjoyed the spoils.

I realize there is a stratosphere where dazzling ebony dancers,
stained with dye, decorated in braids, colored like Amazonian royalty
move their minds through a dreamspace whispering the laws of tomorrow.

I do not have an access pass to this heaven.
I can not feel it,
hear it,
find it.
I see it, I  stumble upon it from time to time, only to watch it
envious.

feeling...
it seems like I
will never be rid of
my feelings for you even if
I should.

Twilight time,
be it day's rise or fall,
brings our cherished companion,
our life's source to us or from.

In hues like kingly plum,
a shy girl's blush,
the Indian turquoise,
diving or surfacing,
it merges through delicate moments.

We wait in it's seamless motion,
watching each second and half,
putting all other details on hold,
soaking up the last or the first of the day's heat,
as the crescendo of light flashes upon the sky.

why does Christ want me?
So much to send to me
a valient messenger
so beautiful a soliloqy
even when I am present.

Christ thank you for
your message, fearful
am I not to be humbled,
humiliated, terrified of my
own wickedness

What a coward I am
not to believe, to scoff at the idea
of you, believing that my
faith in God is stronger than you.

How ****** am I to think
I can live without remorse or
conviction, only how will i know
when my heart has turned towards you?

Pleasure is for the beautiful,
while with ease of face and blessed body
they float, flow, slink, and slow grace.

Puritan rigor and worked hands
for comely folk.
Thick of stock in legs and waist,
face puffed, fattened cheeks, folding in upon itself.
Grown into a gross excuse
fitted only for hard labor.
Barely surviving.

You need to go, you have ruined this road,
There is no market for redemption here.
Christ hangs in a tree over yonder,
Pray there, he alone offers relief.

Mine is a human heart,
Aching and torn.
Seven years it takes mine
To heal and regrow.

Monday morning
kitten climbs
cloudy sky.

nothing to say with nothing to do
on a day when all that i've heard
reminds me of lies told to me in my youth.

Rocks fall into our laps without
tearing one thread of our lives or futures,
money will fall and grow from trees

Men love larger women and thin ladies
struggle more than we are told.

Beauty is more than skin deep and different than in the eyes of the beholders,
although beauty has no consistency and anything can be beautiful.

Risks and amazing lives wait for us all, waiting for us to open the door, call our agent,
answer a casting call, play our drums.

Do anything you like, it will be the right turn,
all I've heard today were echos of lies.

Lauri Anderson Alford
more or less



fifteen years ago more or less
my father killed a man
on the road with his car
of course to him
it isn’t more or less
he knows the date the time
to the minute
the pattern on the man’s shirt
how blood on asphalt looks
only like water
lately he’s been repeating himself
calling to tell me the same things
over and over again
my grandmother has died
his sisters are *******
there was bone in the ashes
I worry he might disappear
again as he did
fifteen years ago more or less
when the road took the man
more or less
after he died more or less
while my father watched
more or less or more
which is it I want to know
because a thing like that
can never be both
or else it is nothing
only more and never less
or less and never more
more road more black
more wet more night less
stars less sight more
fast more glass
less heart less breath
less hands on chest
more quiet more time
more nothing and always
more and more and more
and more less

↔

Lauri Anderson Alford’s writing has appeared in Cincinnati Review, Greensboro Review, The Common, Willow Springs, Meridian, and elsewhere. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and sons. Visit her online at www.lauriandersonalford.com.