BARBARA TAKENAGA ~

R E A D      M E

CHARLES BOWDEN / EDWARD ABBEY ~

R E A D       M E

REGINALD DWAYNE BETTS ~

When I Think of Tamir Rice While Driving

in the backseat of my car are my own sons,

still not yet Tamir’s age, already having heard

me warn them against playing with toy pistols,

though my rhetoric is always about what I don’t

like, not what I fear, because sometimes

I think of  Tamir Rice & shed tears, the weeping

all another insignificance, all another way to avoid

saying what should be said: the Second Amendment

is a ruthless one, the pomp & constitutional circumstance

that says my arms should be heavy with the weight

of a pistol when forced to confront death like

this: a child, a hidden toy gun, an officer that fires

before his heart beats twice. My two young sons play

in the backseat while the video of  Tamir dying

plays in my head, & for everything I do know, the thing

I don’t say is that this should not be the brick and mortar

of poetry, the moment when a black father drives

his black sons to school & the thing in the air is the death

of a black boy that the father cannot mention,

because to mention the death is to invite discussion

of  taboo: if you touch my sons the crimson

that touches the concrete must belong, at some point,

to you, the police officer who justifies the echo

of the fired pistol; taboo: the thing that says that justice

is a killer’s body mangled and disrupted by bullets

because his mind would not accept the narrative

of  your child’s dignity, of  his right to life, of  his humanity,

and the crystalline brilliance you saw when your boys first breathed;

the narrative must invite more than the children bleeding

on crisp fall days; & this is why I hate it all, the people around me,

the black people who march, the white people who cheer,

the other brown people, Latinos & Asians & all the colors of   humanity

that we erase in this American dance around death, as we

are not permitted to articulate the reasons we might yearn

to see a man die; there is so much that has to disappear

for my mind not to abandon sanity: Tamir for instance, everything

about him, even as his face, really and truly reminds me

of my own, in the last photo I took before heading off

to a cell, disappears, and all I have stomach for is blood,

and there is a part of me that wishes that it would go away,

the memories, & that I could abandon all talk of making it right

& justice. But my mind is no sieve & sanity is no elixir & I am bound

to be haunted by the strength that lets Tamir’s father,

mother, kinfolk resist the temptation to turn everything

they see into a grave & make home the series of cells

that so many of my brothers already call their tomb.

______________________

Reginald Dwayne Betts

Felon

Norton, 2019

U.S. HIGHBALL ~

YOKEL ( 10 ) ~

S O N   O F

Y O K E L

It was the opportunity to be ignorant

that I improved

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Hot Work Day

My young son

points over the

pasture gate high

off into the woods

edge shade and says,

Let’s walk up to

there — can we?

Of course we can

                                   for Carson

Staring At the Engine

Hood up

Greased hands of both natives

Wool caps pulled over the ears

Splashes of oil on snow and scrap metal

Grimy tools in a shiny toolbox

Baby cries from the trailer

Driving

Once upon a time all of us drove

Pieces of junk — VWs, old trucks, 

Screwed back together wagons —

And then there was the day the

Newcomers came and better vehicles

Were always around, driven the fastest —

But the newcomers had a funny 

Way of breaking themselves in —

First they were courteous and only

After awhile did their speed pick up

And about the same time the natives

Began to show forth with new sports

Vehicles all sponsored by a bank

Loan that almost always went broke

And soon enough they were back in

Pieces of junk so that we can always

Tell the difference between who

Is who

In Valley

One day my son

and I went to watch

a helicopter lift out

hardwood logs from

a steep shady woodlot

no skidder dared to reach

the helicopter made its

hitch and drop every

three minutes, it was

something to see, as

the long cable swept

the tree tops with an

oak log a few of us

stood far below on

an old farm bridge

greatly diminished

______________

Bob Arnold

Yokel

Longhouse

2011

ANNA KARINA ~

A n n a      K a r i n a

1940 Denmark ~ 2019 Paris

THE HOBO 1869-1956 ~

R E A D      M E

GEORGE KALAMARAS ~

Had I Had A Daughter Named Delia






Had I had a daughter I would have named her Delia.

Nobody names their sons George anymore.



The name Delia contains the sway of a dark fluid flower.

Nobody names their daughters Delia anymore.



Had I a fish, I would have called it beloved whopping cough

      to which I am inscribed.

Nobody calls their coughs tenderly anymore.



Had I loved a fig, I would have called it certain lovely fig in

      the now of my mouth.

No one describes the mouthed-now of lovely anymore.



Had Delia and I been father and daughter, I would have

      held her fever, clutched her daily dissolve, taught her

      the invisible, all the ways of softness I know, even how

      to release that certain vulnerable hunch she'd no

      doubt inherit from my own childhood strain.

No one teaches touch anymore, a way to kiss the inside

      bleeding of a star, anymore.



Had Delia asked me, Dad, I don't understand boys. I am

      unsure of my sway, the mood of my moon— how can I

      rejoice? I would have named her normal.

No one is named normal anymore.



Had I had a daughter named Delia, I would have loved

      her just for being my daughter, asked her to name her

      daughter Delia too.

At least when you're sixty-three and male and

      childless and male, nobody names their daughter's

      daughter anymore.



_____________________

George Kalamaras
Luminous in the Owl's Rib
Dos Madres 2019

JOSEPH MASSEY ~

Blinds





To listen

is to see



when the light

is a thing



felt in the ear —

it rings



you awake.




~






A dream's jagged

remains, what

morning absorbs.



Light, only light,

in place of nothing

left to remember.




~






Cliff face

shaded in

April snow

that fell

for an hour

overnight.



~





Off the highway

a stand of birch slants



above a vernal pool.

Sight slows to hold



flaked white

raked through



a stretched wreck of landscape.





~





A tree as thin

as your wrist



sprays

from the split



in a river rock.




~






A flag's reflection

dents the

water,



blurs

the debris,

mostly leaves.




~






When shadow

ingests shadow



and road clatter

thins into crickets.



When the notebook's

margins are lost



and language

sprawls. When



windows turn

brown, vacant



in their glare.





~





I return

to my body



attached to

a long vowel



stretched

between us.





________________
Joseph Massey
A New Silence
Shearsman Books
2019

GARY HOTHAM (HAIKU THEORY) ~

      squeezing

into our universe

cherry blossoms











      incoming clouds

the Atlantic rolls over

           our feet











          after Bach

space for snow to fall

            deeper











          filling the dark

a star with its own distance

         from the others










      inside

the goodbye

the snowman










    
      far into morning

clouds getting their way

         with the sky










          fog

letting us back

          in



_________________

Gary Hotham
Rightsizing the Universe:
Haiku Theory
Yiqralo Press
2019

DEAR MIND (JOHN LEVY) ~

Dear Mind,



You are dear.  Without you I'm nothing.

Often with you I'm almost nothing



but you tell me that I can't really

conceive of nothing, so you instruct me



to use "almost" up there. When I first learned

your name, Mind, I was a child.



Your name was not one of those words

that interested me. It seemed like other words



for things, like car, sidewalk, leaf.

Except unlike those things I couldn't see you



or ride inside you (it never occurred to me

I could) or walk on top of you or watch you



turn colors and fall. In many ways both of us

miss those days, days that if there were no school



were sometimes fabulously unending.

The nights were rarely as good, school or not, since



you made me so afraid of the dark. Yes, I'm

blaming you. And whatever parts of me



are not you

also deserve blame. So here we are, both



67, truly approaching the dark. You suggest I write

"truly and falsely approaching the dark"



and there, have I satisfied you?




______
______________

John Levy
Silence Like Another Name
otata's bookshelf
2019