Parang pag-ibig.

Failing and Flying

Jack Gilbert


Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

"Failing and Flying" by Jack Gilbert, from Refusing Heaven. (c) Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 . Reprinted without permission, The Writers Almanac.

Ngyar.

Woman's (G)lib

When he slows it

down, drives deep

I feel

Every ridge
More
And more
Than that catalog

of notches--his, mine,
Another's in another time--

The girl falls
In love again
And again.

For this and no other.

Or, A Draft Campaign Speech for Any of the Next Possible Philippine Presidents, Provided He Who Takes it Up, Makes it Happen;

And If No One Does, Then: If I were President, Because You All Refused To Do Your Jobs, goddammit

Strangely enough, when I began writing this speech, I could not stop thinking about the word ad hoc. I had always thought this word meant temporary, hastily put together for one purpose or another. I had imagined this meaning on to the word because of how we have always created, and treated, the numerous ad hoc committees to deal with and try to solve single parts of our multifarious problems.

Imagine my surprise, when upon closer inspection, I discover that, from the Latin, ad hoc literally means for this, toward this and no other. And it is for this and no other that I am more than willing to work and work hard in the next six years, as you leader and servant, as your next president: I am Filipino.

If not us, then who else?

And these are the things we need to do, that I will initiate, not in June, but starting right now:

(1) I will not only fight, but eradicate, corruption. I will punish those who have and will use the country's resources to their own ends, past present future. I will punish those who have used their power to abuse others. I will punish and punish heftily, that everyone will unlearn this habit. And I will eradicate it, by not making it easy, by not allowing it to be part of our everyday, by refusing to think it our culture. I will expedite government transactions and services, without shortcuts or short-cutting any one, and build a government that is not only happy to serve her people, but knows what an important job it is. I will get rid of all unnecessary procedures and payments, and make sure that everyone who approaches a government office gets served and served well, without having to be passed on to another office, or another person, or on to oblivion.

It is not only that we currently have corrupt officials in our government, but that we have a government that officially encourages corruption. I will speed things up that no one will have to pay extra to get what they deserve, when they need it. And I will pay our public servants well that they will not need you to pay them any more than what is fair and just.

Our current government only makes one thing easy: It makes it easy for us to leave the country. And though I will not refuse anyone who is not a criminal this choice, I will do better and make them want to stay.

(2) I will make Filipinos want to stay in the Philippines. I will do this not only by giving them jobs, but decent jobs worthy of their education and skills and inclination. I will make it worthy of their time. I will not give them "pwede na yan" jobs, just because the family needs to eat, or the eldest is about to start college, or God knows, because they need baon for elementary school tomorrow. And if and when they want to stay, I will give them every reason and opportunity to do so.

(3) I will give the best of the Philippines to the Filipinos, and not to the foreigners. I will ensure that the country and its people cater to the Philippines and to the Filipino. I will ensure that if Boracay is the best beach there is, or Sagada the best mountain getaway, then Filipinos can afford to enjoy them if they are so inclined, to their taste and financial capability. The hotel and department stores and all commercial establishments will serve both the local and the foreigner, the native and the foreign. The flight attendants will be kind and efficient to both the domestic helper coming home and the business man from Hong Kong.

I will make us proud to be Filipinos here and around the world, and I will make the world proud of the Filipino. And I will do this without wanting or pretending to be America, or insisting on America, or asking what America, or any other country, thinks.

And so that the Philippines, in turn, can giver her best to her people, (4) I will pass the Reproductive Health Bill. I will pass this bill because we need to control our population, and so much of our problems are rooted in this one problem. And we need to ensure that our natural resources are enough to support our people, now and in the future.

And I refuse to enter into any pro- or anti-life debates regarding this. I will not allow abortion during my rule, and this bill does not allow it either. What it does instead, is give the woman control over her body, the option to refuse her husband or lover sex, and provides her the option not to get pregnant should she wish to have sex. Neither does the bill judge her for it. Because what this bill ultimately wants, not just for women but for every single Filipino, is a chance at a fair and equitable share to our country's natural resources, a beginning of a life of quality.

And to be able to continue to that life of quality, (5) I will provide them with quality health care whether they can afford it or not. I will ensure that PhilHealth works to the advantage of both rich and poor, and is used in both public or private hospitals. I assure the poorest of the poor universal coverage. I will ensure too that our social security systems, whether public or private, work for everyone, that our premiums will result to returns when we need them.

(6) I will provide free and quality basic education, and ensure sources of scholarships and study-now-pay-later schemes for college and post-graduate degrees. I will ensure quality education is available to all Filipinos, whatever their economic class, and that information is available to them, and that it is waiting for them and not the other way around.

To do this I will pay the teachers well, and make sure they deserve it. I will ensure that history books teach them more than just dates and places, the science books the correct and updated science, that they learn to read well, and learn to love to read.

I will incent multinationals to train our workers and make them into world-class assets, in order to build on a high-value economy here that rests on its high-value workforce.

(7) I will make this country rich by making our farmers rich, by providing them with the help and support they need, whether it be science or subsidy, or protection from the storm, or from world markets. I will make it their option if they want to own their own land, or if land is not enough, the option to work as a collective. I will support their cooperatives, and watch the corporations that employ them.

(8) I will encourage green growth, not only because we need to cut down on greenhouse gases, but because we need to be energy-independent. Nor will I allow the first world to influence our decisions regarding our energy sources, because while climate change is a global problem, excessive green house gas emissions is not. Instead, I will promote energy efficiency, and natural resources management, because my priority is our development, and the quality of life of our people. I will build on the examples of some of our excellent local government units, who have done excellent comprehensive land-use planning, disaster management, community development, and self-sufficiency outside of Metro Manila.

And I encourage this because (9) I want to move development to other parts of the country, not just in the capital. I will decongest Metro Manila by moving development to the other regions, ensure that most opportunities available in the capital are available elsewhere. And I will spend on the necessary efficient infrastructure that will allow all this.

Lastly, I will do all this without sacrificing what makes us Filipino--whether it be in terms of culture or customs, beliefs, religion, region or tribe. If utang na loob is inherent to us, then I will encourage it because we need to help each other, not because help needs to be repaid. If ningas cugon describes our short-lived passions all too well, then we will do everything to fan the fire. If we have forgotten our Bayanihan culture, then we will teach it to ourselves and our kids again.

And if we need to do more, when have we ever turned our backs when it is family that asks and needs? We just need to widen our circles a little bit, and slowly widen the scope and capacity of who and how we love.

Let the next six years be temporal and not temporary, our responses to our problems urgent and not hasty, and if it be necessary that the next government act like an ad hoc committee, so be it. If I be judged by these promises, and measured by their fulfillment, bring it on. This is the call, and I will answer, and be answerable.

Through no choice of ours, we were born into this country. And for whatever reason or lack of choice, have remained her citizens. Who else will answer for us? We are the Philippines, we are Filipino. For this. No other.

#

Because it's another year. New. Again.

Guinea Pig

Julie Cadwallader-Staub


As if your cancer weren't enough,
the guinea pig is dying.
The kids brought him to me
wrapped in a bath towel
‘Do something, Mom.
Save his life.'

I'm a good mom.
I took time from work,
drove him to the vet,
paid $77.00 for his antibiotics.

Now, after the kids rush off to school,
you and I sit on the bed.
I hold the guinea pig, since he bites.
You fill the syringe.
We administer the foul smelling medicine,
hoping the little fellow will live.

admitting to each other:
if he doesn't,
it'll be good practice.


"Guinea Pig" by Julie Cadwallader-Staub. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

***

Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away

Gary Snyder

Who was this girl
In her white night gown
Clutching a pair of jeans

On a foggy redwood deck.
She looks up at me tender,
Calm, surprised,

What will we remember
Bodied thick with food and lovers
After twenty years.


"Looking at Pictures to Be Put Away" by Gary Snyder, from The Back Country. (c) New Directions, 1957. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

***

One Night

Jeremy Voigt


The car crossed two lanes of traffic
and a grass median before plowing
head-on into me, killing my wife,
unborn child, and myself. Before
I died I touched the shoulder
of a policeman, felt the sure strength
of his muscles, heard the only word
he spoke, "Jesus," and I smiled
because I stopped believing in him
long ago. He mistook my smile
for something positive and not listless
irony, and I tried to correct him,
but my throat stopped. Red lights.
Blue lights. Star's gases. I walked home.
My wife wandered off into a river
to give birth. I began calling my friends:
"We are all dead," I said into the phone.
I let them cry or exalt in turn, taking
note. I didn't know it would be this
simple. I slipped into a midnight robe,
poked holes in a black sheet, tore
into a loaf of bread. Wandered off
yeast-heavy neither rising nor falling.


"One Night" by Jeremy Voigt, from Neither Rising nor Falling. (c) Finishing line Press, 2009. Reprinted without permission from The Writers Almanac.

Haay.

December
Gary Johnson


A little girl is singing for the faithful to come ye
Joyful and triumphant, a song she loves,
And also the partridge in a pear tree
And the golden rings and the turtle doves.
In the dark streets, red lights and green and blue
Where the faithful live, some joyful, some troubled,
Enduring the cold and also the flu,
Taking the garbage out and keeping the sidewalk shoveled.
Not much triumph going on here--and yet
There is much we do not understand.
And my hopes and fears are met
In this small singer holding onto my hand.
Onward we go, faithfully, into the dark
And are there angels singing overhead? Hark.


"December" by Gary Johnson. Used without permission from The Writers Almanac.

To whom it may concern: this is (not exactly) fiction.

Dear All,

Merry Christmas to all of you, and to those you love!

First off, let me apologize for the lengthy silence from me and my family. I know you have all wanted to hear from us, especially about my Mom’s condition over the past few months.

Looking back on my previous letters to all of you, I realize that it has been more than six months since I last wrote. Again, I am sorry if this silence has led you to worry unnecessarily about my mom and her well-being. It has not been an easy going, but let me assure you now that Mommy is doing fine, and that she is at home, where we take turns taking care of her, together with a trusted nurse that stays with her on most nights.

I do feel a bit sad to tell you though, that my mom’s condition has hardly improved since she got out of the hospital last May. She is still bed-ridden and mostly unresponsive; although we still use the blink-once-for-yes scheme, and sometimes, it does seem like we do understand each other. As to her range of movements, there have been some improvements—she is often able to lift her head by herself, to spit, for example, or to help us when we move her about the bed, or during her rehab exercises. Some spastic movements are more pronounced as well—the curling of her hands to fists, and of her arms towards her chest, has been extended to her legs as well, although these movements are primarily involuntary.

Since the initial hospitalization, we have been back to the hospital twice. Once in ----- for 10 days because of an obstruction in her bowels: A simple colonoscopy was performed on her, and an extended stay required to balance her nutritional needs. The second was last week, and involved routine procedures to change her tracheal tube, a laryngoscopy to check her nasal passages and her vocal chords, and the last procedure was simply to transfer her feeding tube from her nose to a peg directly connected to her stomach. The last procedure was necessary to avoid the danger of choking, as well as to prevent possible infections through the old route.

I am sorry if this quick summary comes as a blow to all of you; please remember that all these happened in a span of more or less seven months. And though there definitely some stressful times for Mommy and for us, we have all been so much better ever since we’ve brought her home from that initial two-month hospital stay.

We have been... gifted, I suppose is the apt word this season, with just enough resources not to take anything for granted, and loving family and friends who are always willing to step up and help whenever we find ourselves lacking, or lost, or losing to despair. I say this because we have been quite successful (what an odd word to use in this context!), I think in the little adjustments and re-adjustments--the tailored and tapered accommodations necessary in a life so changed!—that it can become normal again.

Hah. Who would’ve thought I can say this, and all in my family believe it, seven months after what has passed? But I think, primarily, it is the relief of having her home again, and stable, and with us every day, that lends us, too, a certain strength and a more-than-enough semblance of normalcy which allows us to carry on with the necessary tasks, for her, and for ourselves. Our mom is home, and with us—perhaps this might be the beginning of all we begin to need, that the fulfilment of the rest becomes easier after this.

Am I making sense? Hehe. I feel selfish now, and not a little bit embarrassed, taking all of that time away in silence, and now, taking all of your time on these musings. But really, everything is as perfect as it can be in our world right now: It is 5:00 AM (perhaps why the philosophy! Sorry!), and I am on the last legs of my shift (and all of us halfway through) taking care of our mom (the 24^thand today), my sisters and our Dad asleep in preparation for the next shift; the nurse home with her family as the maid soon will be too. Everything and everyone where they should be this Christmas.

And this family now, which with all your help and support and prayers and well-wishes throughout this year and even previously, is still, at its core, the same family. For this alone, silence or no, we will be forever grateful.

I hope and pray that this Christmas morning finds you and your family complete too, at the core, or in the heart, where it matters most.

Our love to you in this most generous of seasons,

Andrea -----, with my Family

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Blood and more blood

The Thumb
Peter Schneider


In a nanosecond David lost his thumb,
the one his mother painted
with pine pitch when he was four
to keep him from forever sucking it.
Unable to distinguish human flesh
the McCormick silo filler
sliced it off--
nail, bone, knuckle--
and blew it skyward
an ounce of humanity
in a thousand tons of silage.

Taken by surprise
David suppressed the truth.
Before the rush of blood
he held up the stump
saw the clean cut
grey bone marrow visible
and thrust it in his mouth
where the memory
of childhood security lay.
Then he swore,
tears rushing to his eyes, and ran
holding the stump with his good hand
blood oozing between his fingers.

Joe, a huge bulk of a man
and a constant neighbor,
jumped from his wagon
caught David like a child
held him to his chest
not intimidated by blood
or the tears of a grown man.



"The Thumb" by Peter Schneider, from Line Fence. (c) Amherst Writers & Artists Press, 2006. Reposted from The Writers Almanac.

***

Because November is the weird boy of months.

How Many Nights
Galway Kinnell

How many nights
have I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, maker of night and day,

only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world,
hearing under the creaking snow
faint, peaceful breaths...
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant...

and above me
a wild crow crying 'yaw, yaw, yaw'
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.


***
Driving Nails
Gary L. Lark

I learned to walk stud walls
setting rafters when I was six.
I straightened nails for my father
to re-drive, piecing a home together
after work or on weekends.

We were called Okies by some
when we moved to the valley,
putting up our tar-papered shack.
Two years later a house was rising
to face them across the pasture.

The only plans were sketched
on a six inch pad, but all the corners
were true. The septic tank hole
was dug with pick and shovel.
Lumber carted home from the mill.

The only time help came
was when we poured the foundation.
Guys from the mill rode springing planks
to deliver tons of wet concrete by wheelbarrow,
tamped down with shovel handles.

My father beveled the molding,
drilled and set each piece of hardwood flooring,
not a nail would show. I crawled insulation
into tight places above the ceiling
and helped with rolled roofing.

Nobody mentioned our low rank
when my mother joined the garden club.


"How Many Nights" by Galway Kinnell, from Three Books. (c) Houghton Mifflin, 2002.
"Driving Nails" by Gary Lark, from Getting By. (c) Logan House, 2009.
Both reposted from The Writer's Almanac, without permission.

Erasures

Erasures
Sharon Bryan


My best lover ever
is dead. And

the second best.
Nothing to do

with me, it was years
since I'd seen them.

Still, they took
something with them

no one else knows
about me, and if I

know it, I know
only half, like every

other line of a poem.



"Erasures" by Sharon Bryan, from Sharp Stars. (c) BOA Editions, 2009. From The Writer's Almanac.

Reflection is not always a mirroring.

Harvest
Louise Gluck


It's autumn in the market--
not wise anymore to buy tomatoes.
They're beautiful still on the outside,
some perfectly round and red, the rare varieties
misshapen, individual, like human brains covered in red oilcloth--

Inside, they're gone. Black, moldy--
you can't take a bite without anxiety.
Here and there, among the tainted ones, a fruit
still perfect, picked before decay set in.

Instead of tomatoes, crops nobody really wants.
Pumpkins, a lot of pumpkins.
Gourds, ropes of dried chilies, braids of garlic.
The artisans weave dead flowers into wreaths;
they tie bits of colored yarn around dried lavender.
And people go on for a while buying these things
as though they thought the farmers would see to it
that things went back to normal:
the vines would go back to bearing new peas;
the first small lettuces, so fragile, so delicate, would begin
to poke out of the dirt.

Instead, it gets dark early.
And the rains get heavier; they carry
the weight of dead leaves.

At dusk, now, an atmosphere of threat, of foreboding.
And people feel this themselves; they give a name to the season,
harvest, to put a better face on these things.

The gourds are rotting on the ground, the sweet blue grapes are finished.
A few roots, maybe, but the ground's so hard the farmers think
it isn't worth the effort to dig them out. For what?
To stand in the marketplace under a thin umbrella, in the rain, in the cold,
no customers anymore?

And then the frost comes; there's no more question of harvest.
The snow begins; the pretense of life ends.
The earth is white now; the fields shine when the moon rises.

I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.



"Harvest" by Louise Gluck from A Village Life. (c) Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009. From The writer's Almanac.

For the sake of my hair, let me say this.

The radio on my cab going to Ortigas today was on DZXL 558, with one of the Tulfo brothers hosting. The topic of conversation was HB 5043, or the Reproductive Health Bill. His guests were Cong. Defensor, who is for the RH Bill, an archbishop and a representative from the Buhay Party-List, who were against it.

Here is what I remember of what they said:

Cong. Defensor only elaborated on the provisions of the bill, mainly government funding for population control programs, including contraceptives and prophylactics. He emphasized that the bill is still anti-abortion, despite its call for government-funded family planning methods.

The Archbishop (I didn't get his name, a very telling miss on my part) argued quite sensibly, I think, and "not as a Catholic," he said, for the risk of bloodying the hands of some unwitting user of a possibly abortive drug. Do we really want someone unknowingly committing the sin of abortion, he asked. Would we want such a burden on someone's shoulders?

The Buhay party-list rep echoed the point of the Archbishop, with less sense and wit.

These three were not simultaneous guests in the program, but were interviewed consecutively. After these phone-ins, Tulfo summarized the entire thing by saying that overpopulation is not a problem, because people are assets. See how our millions of OFWs save our economy with their remittances, he said. Look at China's population, he said, there's a whole lot more of them, and they're doing fine.

What is wrong with this picture? Wait, let me rephrase. Where do I start, with all that is wrong in this picture? And I am not even going to touch Tulfo's smirking remarks with a ten-foot pole.

So let me avoid tearing out my hair. This is my problem: Where is the woman's voice in all this?

Why were the guest all men? And with Tulfo leading the pack, sounding very smug and TNL, agreeing enthusiastically with his last two guests, while being lukewarm and not at all encouraging with the first, there was not a single female voice, nor a single statement for the female in that discussion.

Why this is important to me, is obvious, if you will simply dismiss me as a feminist. But consider my basic point, that the whole contraception issue should be a woman's decision. This is not a feminist statement, it is biological. If your reproductive system can't house a baby, then sorry, your inputs here are peripheral.

So again: Where is the woman's voice in all this?

This is what I am trying to say: The fact of pregnancy, and the question of abortion, is a female problem, by virtue of our biology. And if we choose to keep our reproductive organs, then we have to be given the right to decide what goes on, and what goes in there. Be it the consent to sex, the decision to avoid pregnancy, the fact of pregnancy, and the trial of letting it go. Sure, the last decision may be affected by what a guy has to say ("I'll marry you" more often than not standing for "I want the baby"), but it is the woman and her body who will go through the pregnancy--all nine months of it. Is it too much to ask that the decision be hers?

And for all the arguments and discussions and posters (See Notes below) on the RH Bill, has there been any on the basis of biology? And its lopsided possibilities, its general inevitability?

As an environmental science major, let me say that overpopulation is a problem. Put that with poverty, the inequitable distribution and access to wealth and resources, then you have the root of all our major environmental problems all over the world. Not to mention the general "history of inequity" of this country.

As someone who finished college--hell, high school even--let me say that education is a major factor in the decision-making that women go through before they consider sex and what they do about it and its consequences when the deed is done.

As someone who is not Catholic, let me say that I appreciate, and find beautiful, the collective act of looking after our souls.

But as a woman, let me say this: I am my body, too. Let me.

***
NOTES:

1. Click here for the full text of HB 5043. Here's another.
2. Oist, believe me, this is the most serious I've been tackling this issue. And I have to say, the most I've enjoyed is retelling the anti-RH Bill posters all over Iloilo City around December last year: No to HB 5043: No to abortion. Yes to life. No to free sex. (Yes to prostitution?)
3. Seriously, though, my point is not for or against the Bill. That's your decision.
4. What can I say? When the talk's of sex and the body, I get fired up.
5. "I am woman, hear me roar."

Games people play.

I. 20 Questions

1. Name the number. Number all the names.
2. Right or wrong?
3. Wrong, and write.

***
4. Boxers vs. briefs?
5. Briefer and briefer.
6. Briefed.

***
7. Let's play catch-up!
8. Catch up! The game began long ago.
9. Catch up? The game began long ago...
10. Catch, v.: To save?
11. Catch, n.: A trap.

***
11. Draw a straw.
12. Luck of the draw.
13. Thirteen.

***
14. And so it goes.
15. So how goes it?
16. ...
17. I drew the same blank, baby.

***
18. Neither here nor there.
19. Look elsewhere?
20. Time's up.

The perfect is forgotten.

I never take afternoon naps, and I never sleep in the middle of a book.

Or I would have said that, before I did both at the same time, quite some time ago.

You had just left the house for work, and I picked up the book to pretend I didn't mind the alone. It was a good book, too, but far too close to home to sit well.

Or far too close to leaving, I should say. I was leaving.

So it seemed the perfect time to do what one doesn't usually do, so close to leaving. Fall in love, live in one house, go to work. Read books, take naps.

I didn't actually mean to take a nap. That was self defense. The book was on to something I would've appreciated not knowing at that time.

***
We had a schedule, you remember? You'd wake up at around 9, work on your thesis. I'd sleep til an hour later. Then we'd have coffee, and a bit of breakfast if you felt hungry enough to cook. Then you'd go back to work, and I would pretend to start packing my things. Then it was off to lunch, mostly at the school cafeteria, after which you'd be off to work. And so would I.

But I didn't have work that day, did I? Or perhaps I told you I didn't, hoping you wouldn't too. The weeks had trickled down to days--hours really--and I didn't feel like following the same schedule with so little time left. We had taken it for granted, all those weeks, and I wanted to tell you, Fuck the schedule.

But then you'd come home around 6, like you always did. And we'd have dinner and drinks with friends at that bar--what was it called again? No matter. We'd come home, make love, sleep. We couldn't fuck the schedule, we were too busy perfecting it.

How could we forget?

***
When I said I was pretending to pack my things, I really was packing my things. I would work at the kitchen table, near the window where I could smoke. Near the window that we never closed, despite the weather slowly turning to winter. I was typing up all the stuff I'd written in scattered notebooks across the two years, putting them in little files in my laptop.

Paper packs really tight, and heavy.

Computer files, on the other hand, weighed nothing. This is scientific fact. A laptop with as much free space as a clean slate weighed exactly the same as the same laptop packed to overflowing.

The same couldn't be said for my suitcase.

***
I couldn't carry everything home with me, as it was.

Most especially the book, since it was yours. So I was determined to finish it before I had to leave. I was lying in bed, that same afternoon I didn't mean to take a nap, just right after you gave me a kiss goodbye. I had opened it up to the last chapter, I think. I finished that book, I'm sure now, because I remember that last sentence. Then I fell asleep.

***
Or I forced myself to sleep. In any case, I remember waking up, thinking you'd come home. I thought I saw you at the bedroom door.

I got up and went down the stairs, but you weren't there. I was dreaming, godammit. I was dreaming and now I was awake, 2 long hours more to wait. I went to the kitchen and shove the 2 burners open, it was cold. It was 4PM, and only October, and it was friggin' cold. Colder I think for it being only summer a few weeks ago.

I sat down at the kitchen table for a cigarette, and that's when I notice it: The window was closed.

***
All this was quite some time ago. But sometimes, that window bothers me. Did you close it, or did I?

I had forgotten all this, to tell the truth. But I still have all those files in my laptop, and its memory, by God, far, far better than mine.

Is writing. Is.

-Where is it?

-Here.

-Really? Where? I can't see it.

-It's just here.

-Is it sleeping?

-Maybe. C'mon! Wouldn't be answering if it were sleeping.

-Right. Maybe.

-You get some sleep.

-Right. Maybe.

In The Night Orchard

In The Night Orchard
R. T. Smith


I know, because Paul has told me
a hundred times, that the deer
gliding tonight through tangleweed
and trashwood, then bounding across
Mount Atlas Road, are after his pears.

And who could blame them?
On the threshold of autumn, the Asian
imports, more amazing than any Seckle
or indigenous apple, start to ripen.
Then a passing crow will peck one open.

That's when the whitetails who bed
and gather beyond Matson's pasture
will catch the scent and begin to stir.
It's a dry time, and they go slowly mad
for sweetness. No fence can stop them.

The farmers like Paul will admit
it starts in hunger, but how suddenly
need goes to frenzy and sheer plunder.
When the blush-gold windfalls are gone
and the low boughs are stripped

of anything resembling bounty, bucks
will rise on their hind legs and clamber
up the trunks. Last week Cecil Emore
found one strangled in a fork,
his twisted antlers tangled as if

some hunter had hung him there
to cure. We all remember what it's like,
this driven season, this delirium
for something not yet given a name,
but the world turns us practical, tames

us to yearn for milder pleasures.
For Augustine, it was actual pears
that brought him out of the shadows
and over a wall, for Eve, the secret
inside what we now say was an apple.

Others have given up safety for less,
and I wonder, catching an eight-point
buck outlined on the ridge amid spruce,
if it's this moonstruck nature that renders
the ruminants beautiful, or if we stalk

them out of envy, not for the grace
of their gliding, but for the unadorned
instinct that draws them after dark
into trespass and the need to ruin
the sweetest thing they've ever known.


"In The Night Orchard" by R. T. Smith, from Brightwood. (c) Louisiana State University Press, 2004.

Moving Day

Moving Day
Ron Koertge


While sitting home one night, I hear burglars fiddling
with the lock. This is what I've been waiting for!

I run around to the back and open the door, invite
them in, and pour some drinks. I tell them to relax,
and I help them off with shoes and masks.

In a little while we are fast friends, and after a dozen
toasts to J. Edgar Hoover, they begin to carry things out.
I point to the hidden silver, hold the door as they
wrestle with the bed, and generally make myself useful.

When they get the truck loaded and come back inside
for one last brandy, I get the drop on them. Using Spike's
gun, I shoot them both and imprint Blackie's
prints on the handle.

Then I get in the van and drive away,
a happy man.


"Moving Day" by Ron Koertge, from Making Love to Roget's Wife: Poems New and Selected. (c) University of Arkansas Press, 1997.

Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In

Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In
Debra Nystrom


No moon; the pickup's headlights stare
across the river from the bluff above, where
fields of sunflower heads turn away,
waiting for dawn. It's cold, yelps Amy,
and Brian calls where are you
but she screams no, get away, so
he and Tommy laugh, dive under for
her legs again. In March I skated over
this same place, past Farm Island, leaving
my track lines in the snow hard to imagine
now, and even then the water must
have moved like this beneath me, erasing
bodies' outlines, as if everything touched
everything all the time.


"Skinny-Dipping After Work at the Drive-In", by Debra Nystrom from Bad River Road. (c) Sarabande Books, 2009.

Straightpins

Straightpins
Jo McDougall


Growing up in a small town,
we didn't notice
the background figures of our lives,
gray men, gnarled women,
dropping from us silently
like straightpins to a dressmaker's floor.
The old did not die
but simply vanished
like discs of snow on our tongues.
We knew nothing then of nothingness
or pain or loss--
our days filled with open fields,
football,
turtles and cows.

One day we noticed
Death has a musty breath,
that some we loved
died dreadfully,
that dying
sometimes takes time.
Now, standing in a supermarket line
or easing out of a parking lot,
we realize
we've become the hazy backgrounds
of younger lives.
How long has it been,
we ask no one in particular,
since we've seen a turtle
or a cow?



"Straightpins" by Jo McDougall, from Satisfied with Havoc. (c) Autumn House Press, 2004.

Occupation

Occupation
Eliza Griswold


The prostitutes in Kabul tap their feet
beneath their faded burqas in the heat.

For bread or fifteen cents, they'll take a man to bed--
their husbands dead, their seven kids unfed--

and thanks to occupation, rents have risen twentyfold,
their chickens, pots and carpets have been sold.

Two years ago, the Talibs favored boys and left the girls alone.
A woman then was worth her weight in stone.


"Occupation" by Eliza Griswold, from Wideawake Field. (c) Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008.