T.S. Eliot Homage (a love poem) Looking, now, at myself, do you think of me, later? When the tropical sun and high waves wash across my thin ankles? White-haired and crazy with spider-like legs, stumbling over small sand dunes— dunes I shall call memories. Should I be calling: — More champagne? Hashish? Incense? Should I be laughing: — Why have you forsaken me O Lord? Looking, then, at myself, and you, seeing you over my Paper-Mache shoulders— brittle, like old bird bones, these once worldly shoulders. Do you think of me? — And the angel of the Lord declared unto Mary that she was to be the Mother of God . . . White-haired and crazed, red bandana and erotic music. Original, native paintings upon my clay walls, so modest— The Mother of…
“Tiny Shredded Pieces,” A Story by Unimke Ushie
When my husband told me his mother was visiting London after our wedding in Nigeria when we last saw her, I remembered her not so soft hands tapping my buttocks, touching my breast and every crease around its plumpness, and saying –with a smile that did not wrinkle the skin around her eyes– “nwunye anyi, our wife, I’m just checking if your breasts have enough to support my unborn grandchildren.” I had a bland look on my face when she touched me, that is somehow the same now listening to my husband tell me of her coming to London. And soon I felt something I cannot see or name entering my body, and a damp wetness between my legs. “I’ll finally eat good food” he added. Avoiding my face. “Oh, Chikelu you know cooking is…
“Drawing Mannequin,” Poetry by Julia Franklin
Drawing Mannequin Mischief in monochrome. Subtle sidekick, sleek home of souls. Cold conjuror, no-face freedom. No life out of reach. The Pasta Hour Late walk, home again. Dark sky above, weak legs beneath. Fifteen-minute era of Waiting, Watching, and Stirring . . . To be rewarded with chewy-salty Victory, butter-cheese-fork Relief, calorie-laden Defiance, primal-unconditional Devotion. The Fire I come not from one house, but three. House Number One was festive, dependable, full of sweet dreams and hypotheticals that I shrugged off. House Number Two was empty, frigid and aloof, stripped to its skeleton, and infected with smoke. House Number Three was recuperating in the balm of springtime and accepting, sheepishly, the cardboard boxes that held its Number One face. …
“Sandy Ajax, We Hardly Knew You,” by James Hanna
The World Baseball League was born in the sixties in our suburban home in Virginia. My kid brother and I invented it on a sweltering Fourth of July. It was a heroic invention—a vehicle by which two nerdy kids might share the aura of champions. Armed with dice, meticulously drawn charts, and a cardboard baseball diamond, Robbie and I commanded the destinies of twenty baseball teams. We played daily throughout the long hot summers—up to six games a day—and we tweaked team standings and player averages after every game. So absorbed were we in horsehide heroics that we rendered the summers neither long nor hot. Our rosters consisted of four hundred individual players each represented by a 2” by 2” square of cardboard. Batting averages, fielding percentages, slugging potential, and base- running speed were recorded on each of these squares along…
“Finding Progressions in Mere Lists,” by M. A. Istvan
finding progressions in mere lists when none of the facts so integral to who you are can be reached absenting oneself from a situation by fainting sitting on a wood fence for hours in hope that a new face will show itself to talk failures loom larger in places where little else is around pinching the tongue of one seizuring the flood displacement would have been a glorified camping vacation had he not learned of her betrayal feigning knowledge of facts mentioned in an offhand tone as if you knew them already thoughts of suicide to stay in the game when mere to-do lists fail making the position clear threatens to make it vulnerable even the sexual organs of family are open for dinner conversation once…