Since you died,
……….I slip sideways through
……….the plastic flow of ice,
………………..resigned,
……….to the eventuality of burial.
The glacial blocks and till
……….of time,
………………..regained.
Not quietly like Proust with
……….tisane and madelines,
but open-mouthed,
into unanchored fear.
Tag: leap into the dark
To Carmen, 1913-1992: by Liliane Richman
The car is a menace tonight
steering me to the edge
Bony hands my skinny companions
take me to solid ground run me to the kitchen
for a fat red cabbage
to shred against the pain of forgetting
for no matter how many times
I try replaying your death I lose it
your face and eyes staring above the hospital bed
beyond a sea of relatives’ faces
Of course it wasn’t sudden
but hadn’t you always recovered from worse?
Typhus anorexia a stroke three days in a coma
The surgeons scraped blood from your brain
and said you’d never be the same
Indeed your vision and hearing progressively failed
together with ambulatory motion,
as family members helpless but habituated
wished you a Hollywood ending
better luck better health
God didn’t you deserve them
after the concentration camp
four children five daily flights of stairs?
Pinch me harder this scene is in a play
written by a sadist
She lay sheet up to her neck
breathing hard no rehearsal this
and the gauze with water on her lips no relief
Still she didn’t convince me
Were I Moses in spite of God’s bidding
I’d say no it’s unfair I cannot accept this
No death for me nor can I believe yours despite the evidence
your face stonewashed cleansed of sorrows
draped in the bed’s whiteness
ogival memory receding vertiginously
Copyright 2013 Liliane Richman, all rights reserved
To find more poems by Liliane Richman, click HERE.
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June 19, 2013: by Octavio Solis
Keeping vigil at the window
while my wife sleeps, my dogs, my child.
Night, keep your bargain.
The thin tree thins even more. It knows the sun is never coming back. The sea is a far-off sigh. A car travels slowly north, bewildered, as if there is no west, no east. A sleeping baby strapped in the car seat. The drunk pisses in the shadows which piss back at him the story of his life. I hear them tapping out the tune. Across the street, an invisible woman smokes at the window with the light out. She’s there, then gone. Almost there, and gone. Cold prayers slip unnoticed from the red tip of her cigarette. Tenuous lives suspended in the book of time, digging up the bones of love, is this what you call hope, is this how you find peace?
Too late, it’s done.
The moon already broken, already signaling the breach.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up and somebody will be dead.
Somebody will be born.
copyright 2013 Octavio Solis
to find more poetry by Octavio Solis, click HERE.
Bonnie McClellan-Broussard 