My Beard, Mostly Gray Now

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Brandon Krieg

My beard, mostly gray now.
Pile in the sink like snow driven over
by trucks delivering toothbrushes
people could have gone to get themselves.
I scoop the pile into the toilet,
where it floats on my reflected face.
I’m cleaning the sink and Ez runs in,
pisses before I’ve flushed.
“Hey, you’re peeing on my beard!” I shout.
He notices and laughs, runs out again
to the video game he is playing
with a cousin three thousand miles away.

Who knows how far my beard will go?
Will it be filtered with the solid wastes,
will it be straw in the shit-mud bricks
the palace of the future will be built with?
Someone could pull a strand from the wall,
read my DNA, but who has time,
and the most titillatingly criminal
thing I’ve done is click to get
a yardstick delivered in a giant box—
selfish, lazy, but perfectly legal.

That was months ago, and I still haven’t
measured anything. I prefer not to know
the exact smallness of my life in
the eyes of the metric system. I kiss you
in the kitchen with smooth face
for the first time in months, and you
smile like remembering something.

Brandon Krieg's most recent collection is Magnifier, winner of the 2019 Colorado Prize for Poetry chosen by Kazim Ali and finalist for the 2022 ASLE Book Award in Environmental Creative Writing. He lives in Kutztown, PA and teaches at Kutztown University.



Fruits and Vegetables

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Carol Hart

How complicated you were! You could be
so kind, so sweetly consoling, when it came
to skinned knees and childhood illnesses.


But you never kissed or hugged, and rarely
praised. I remember asking, Am I pretty?
You said, Yes, to me you are. All mothers
think their children are good-looking.


You were determined to be a perfect mother
by the light of the USDA Food Pyramid,
which led to our war of wills over lima beans.


I didn’t know then how delicious they are fresh,
simmered with butter, thyme and cream. Maybe
you never knew. Yours were Birds Eye Frozen—
boiled, salted, turned out onto the plate.


I was fussy about seeds and peels. You bought
a bunch of Thomson Seedless. I refused them.
So you sat with paring knife and patience,


and peeled them, one by one. I watched,
amazed, how carefully you stripped away
the thin skins, wasting no flesh, leaving
the grapes perfectly intact, one by one,


until you filled a bowl which you put
in front of me. I spooned them down in
greedy mouthfuls, not pausing to savor or


admire how pretty they were, shimmery pale,
delicately striped with dark green veins.
You were understandably annoyed.
Because this bowl of grapes was your love.

The only love you had to give, which was not
the love I hungered for and craved, which
I refused in this way, turned into nothing.

 

Author’s Note: It would be nice to say this poem came from some Proustian encounter with a bunch of grapes. But it arrived more subtly, on the occasion of my last birthday, a time for looking backwards. Thinking of my mother, I remembered her peeling grapes for me—remembered as well how I had gobbled them down, though I knew I was behaving badly. The motive given in the poem might be true. It is at least an offering to my mother’s memory, my attempt to understand her at last. 

Carol Hart is the author of two works of fiction, A History of the Novel in Ants (2010) and Marius & Delia, by D. M. (2021), both published by SpringStreet Books. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Scientific American, Southern Poetry Review and Paperbark. She lives in the Philadelphia area. 



Two Poems by Matthew Murrey

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Cassini’s End

What a finale, to go down in flames
all the while streaming
fresh details right to the end.
Twenty years was good enough.
They gave it one last loop
then sent it—foiled in gold—to burn.
Flare or stumble, may my last efforts
be so focused on my beloved
Earth, until I tumble and lose touch.
Brief pendant on a tether of smoke,
picture it blazing unseen high above Saturn’s
ferocious storms. Then radio silence forever.

Van Gogh’s Two Chairs

In the simple one his pipe and pouch
of tobacco. In his friend’s fine chair
two books and a lit candle. Oh,
to live and love like a small
flame. A book or smoke
can bring reverie
or bind you
to habits hard
to break. What breaks—
promises, the heart, the hold
on what’s real? Through cracks
in what seems whole, I find myself
seeking out a bit of joy—vivid colors
and swirls that some will always insist
are nothing but sky, lamplight, and stars.

Author’s Note: The seed of the Cassini poem was an animated video produced by NASA which showed the satellite burning up on its entry into Saturn's atmosphere. The image of it immediately brought to mind a bright pendant on a necklace. The online presentation can be found here: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/cassini/the-journey/the-grand-finale/. The Van Gogh poem took off for me when I learned that Vincent's painting of Gauguin's chair was kept from view for decades by Johanna Bonger who inherited the pair of paintings as the widow of  Vincent's brother Theo, but refused to loan out the one painting due to her dislike of Gauguin. People can read about that back story and see the paintings here: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/jun/18/revealed-van-gogh-empty-chair-paintings-gauguin 

Matthew Murrey’s poems have appeared widely, most recently in Poetry East, Jet Fuel Review, and Split Rock Review. He’s an NEA Fellowship recipient, and his collection, Bulletproof, was published in 2019 by Jacar Press. He was a public school librarian for over twenty years and lives in Urbana, Illinois. His website is at https://www.matthewmurrey.net/ and he is on Twitter and Instagram @mytwords. 

Midwest Winter

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Sharon Ackerman

To pass the time,
we make snow cream
with milk and sugar
or chunk off frozen swords
hanging from the eaves.
My mother has a way of holding herself
on gray days, wool coat
circling her middle, the same way a cat
curls to comfort itself
when in pain. She rues the day
she moved here, where wind bucks
and rears up at the window
with no mountain to break its spirit.
A flat freeze yields to nothing
but on black nights, we find light
layered in frost glistening
on the low grass, miles of it,
the moon an icicle
willing to make a deal with us,
swapping its glow for cold.

Author’s Note: This poem is my recollection of my family’s experience of migrating out of southeast Kentucky, the longing for mountains from the flatlands of Indiana and the primacy of extended kin and the landscapes that live within us. 

Sharon Ackerman lives near the Blue Ridge of Virginia. Her poems have appeared in the Southern Humanities Review, Atlanta Review, Cumberland River Review, Coal Hill Review, and others. She is poetry editor for Streetlight Magazine.  



Lament of the Afflicted

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Deborah-Zenha Adams

In that year of subtle omens, all the irises
bloomed yellow, harbingers of passion and betrayal,
and we cut bouquets to fill a broken vase.

Next there came a wailing wind
even though the burdened air was stalled
and bamboo chimes hung stagnant.

Words you never spoke brushed like premonition
against my neck, a witching chill
that froze our tongues and sliced the truth.

Lightning flashed and thunder knocked
three times, an incantation calling out the demons
that cackle when we tiptoe past closed doors.

I’ve heard footsteps in the attic,
found a trail of black feathers on the stairs,
and tasted cold metal in my cheek.

Shades appear at the treeline between dark and day
crooking their fingers, beckoning, taunting.
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine going there.

Did we break the seal of some pharaoh’s tomb,
defile a sacred cloth, cross a black cat’s path?
Isn’t there a counter spell to correct our sins?

What would I offer in trade to erase
the trail we’ve left? Can we unspin the wheel
and chance we’ll get it right the second time?

Never mind. I know better. There’s no stopping
the forward motion of a curse once
it learns the taste of your name.

 

Deborah-Zenha Adams is a seventh-generation Tennesseean. Her written work has appeared or will soon appear in Adelaide Literary Magazine, Sheila-na-gig, One, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Waterwheel Review, among other places.