Cherry-Baby,
What was your mantra?
Poetry 85
Lauren Brazeal: Germ
Germ, We’re huddled in the dark because the room’s painted black, because OD shook us and said a helicopter’s circling the roof and any minute we’ll be cornered. Any minute, men with guns will find us. But we can hide here, our whispers coiling, watching yellow stars writhe and scatter in our eyes. The ceiling’s […]
John Timpane: Yo Yo Ma and His Cello
_____________________October 17, 1999 Yo Yo Ma, Yo Yo Ma, you forgot your cello, yo! Yo Yo Ma, Yo Yo Ma, you forgot your cello, yo! Think Yo Yo Ma, think Yo, Another Yo and Ma, Think “cello.” So Does he. He Is his cello; his Cello is he. He Rode a taxi Twenty October minutes […]
Mara Jebsen: Manhatta Menagerie
(Manahatta, I’ve heard, was once the word for “hilly island in wolf country”) each was crouched in the bare-bone black- knuckle misery of his private winter. then come the intoxicant of air. now, unfurling from our spines: small creatures— a dragon, wolf, tender-necked giraffe; the tawny, sweet-blooded african lion; a witch stick-puppet from our childhoods […]
Mara Jebsen: A Reason to Howl
A grieving mind is wild dogs & flowers. It wags a center like a stamen, like a dusty yellow tongue. It soothes the heartache of a widow as she grips a wooden spoon, plumping up a chicken in a pot of sliced onion. Her bad husband undid her apron. He was risen shining-fresh from the […]
Mara Jebsen: Island
Love is a country I lived in once. You can only get there by boat. Over here, things are pretty good. The grass grows straight & the sky makes sense. I have a lot of little tasks. Sometimes when I sing, I sound like someone else. Birds interest […]