The first in a series of poetry chapbooks.
Contributors: Cathleen Richardson Bailey, David Baratier, Richard Blevins, Susan Brennan, James E. Cherry, Jim Daniels, Corie Feiner, Rina Ferrarelli, Adam Fieled, Brian Patrick Heston, Jeffrey Ethan Lee, Laurie Mazzaferro, Stephen Murabito, Sue William Silverman, Gary Widger.
From the book:
My Roommate’s Box of Worms
The cat, Slink, and I sniff the air holes.
Robin tears up strips of newspaper,
feeds them a half a pound of food scraps daily.
Sometimes I will suddenly remember the box;
silent inside, a squirming dark heat.
They eat through the president’s haircut, last week’s train crash,
Macy’s underwear sale.
The dead worms, they eat.
What’s wrong with the earth? I ask.
My sister argues for cremation,
Mom doesn’t want to lay in a box waiting for crawlers.
And Julie’s right.
A clean torch burst in spark under the wild sky…
Susan, it’s more like a furnace…and you don’t do it outside.
In the middle of night, Slink and I sit by the worms.
Do they ever dream of soil,
shimmying one long hole?
Interview @ Columbine
I was by the water fountain waiting my turn, behind a popular girl.
You see, I was a nobody, like them, but I am
OK with it. I like my world secret.
Nothing flutters when my name is called in home room.
I’d rather watch the pretty girls get their hearts stomped by boys who try too hard;
I wouldn’t want to have to come into school and see my boyfriend’s arm stretched
up someone else’s locker.
Besides, as you can tell from my notebook, I’m hot for the lead singer of Destroyer Farm.
He’s ugly, but he’s free. No one really gets it. And I don’t care.
Your camera is so bright, I’m like, burning.
Yield
Wild honey, wild oats, tall grass, seeds and nuts.
Red squirrel, grey rabbits, mustang, bear, buffalo.
Those who have been hunted, forsaken — it’s not your fault.
It’s about a vision; it’s about how god told only him,
it’s about the birds’ song rippled from beak to beak.
Sleeping creatures woke to a sudden flood.
Do you know Jonestown, Guyana?
I walked like a shadow looking up at myself.
Skinned blue and you said drink in the kingdom of heaven,
drink your own ash and you will rest beneath a rain of hammers.
Eddie and the Rabbits
In the dream, the rabbits spoke in a strange, slow language.
We need you, who have hands, to build us a palace.
I convinced Eddie, the shyest boy in the neighborhood,
to help me. In the dream, my dolls
sit on mushrooms, and the old rabbit cage, emptied
since last Easter, is pulled open by vines.
The dream bunnies, warm and soft when you held them close,
trusted skin. Their ears, sheer endive leaves rotated towards breath.
We heaped dead leaves on a branch scaffolding, set out food daily
and grew cotton tails. Eddie’s ears furred up.
From trees, we focused fresh wet moonlight on the leafy mound.
But never saw the rabbits.
Though they ate our offerings
and perforated winter with tracks of their existence.
What were we hoping for?