Lunchbox Poems

Fragile like a child is fragile.

Destined not to be forever.

Destined to become other

To mother. Here I am

Sitting on a chair, thinking

About you. Thinking

About how it was

To talk to you.

How sometimes it was wonderful

And sometimes it was awful.

How drugs when drugs were

Undid the good almost entirely

But not entirely

Because good could always be seen

Glimmering like lame glimmers

In the window of a shop

Called Beautiful

Things Never Last Forever.

I loved you. I love you. You were.

And you are. Life is experience.

It’s all so simple. Experience is

The chair we sit on.

The sitting. The thinking

Of you where you are a blank

To be filled

In by missing. I loved you.

I love you like I love

All beautiful things.

True beauty is truly seldom.

You were. You are

In May. May now is looking onto

The June that is coming up.

This is how I measure

The year. Everything Was My Fault

Has been the theme of the song

I’ve been singing,

Even when you’ve told me to quiet.

I haven’t been quiet.

I’ve been crying. I think you

Have forgiven me. You keep

Putting your hand on my shoulder

When I’m crying.

Thank you for that. And

For the ineffable sense

Of continuance. You were. You are

The brightest thing in the shop window

And the most beautiful seldom I ever saw.

 MARY JO BANG

When the best of it is prized from the dung
of the Sumatran common palm civet,
sweetened like a cherry in the gut
of this little island cat, I feel better
about not drinking coffee, sipping instead sweet
tea crude as a hammer. I feel
better that I never read much
Tolstoy, stopped at the bulwark of so much
French. I should begin
a second life. I should not dream
of my macrobiotic afterlife
in which I am what I do not eat
and the animals I loved enough
to eat grass, to pretend one thing was another,
purr and sing and chirp
sweet hosannas outside my bedroom window
where sometimes we made
love but never continuances
of our selves which we’d name
Hank or Emily while saving up for Harvard.
I feel better that none of me
works well at all,
that for twenty years the fog
has never lifted
from the landscape I mean to cease defiling
someday. Thank you
cards I should have mailed
and gifts given
and favors repaid with crippling interest
I grow to love
the way I once loved
shame. What will I do with my days
now that my nights
are sublimely alone
and how will I make use of this wound
I carried like a map
so that I would never, never
lose you?

PAUL GUEST

of motherhood is splintered, frenzied, but struggling to sound calm,
it’s soy beans on the door mat and raspberry jam on the baseboard,
it’s relinquishing utopian desires for quiet and cups of tea,
it’s never finishing a meal but eating scraps of your child’s food
after he has chewed it thoughtfully and you believed gratefully only
to disgorge it into your outstretched hand, his saliva your saliva,
it’s him reaching for your face in the dark and sinking back relieved,
it’s that first, longed-for kiss, slow and premeditated, laying aside
his things and walking up and kissing you full on the lips with his
tiny, soft, wet mouth, completely by surprise, total abandon,
it’s thinking that your mind will never have sharp edges or straight
lines again, it’s being beaten and kicked by a screaming, back-
bending, contortionist, hair-pulling dervish who later subsides into
swollen-eyed, red-faced, runny-nosed calm in your arms,
it’s the sink full of dishes, plastic cups, bibs, tea-leaves, peach-peel,
pasta shells and peas, it’s ketchup at every meal and wondering
how a body can survive on no meat or vegetables, ever,
it’s the way his body curves into yours and how your arms are
strong enough to lift all twenty-six pounds of him over and over
again at all the wrong angles, it’s shocking wide awake each time
he murmurs in his sleep next door, it’s the invisible rubber band
between you, the pain in your belly and chest when you’re apart,
it’s seeing your life upended, its contents strewn around as if by a
tornado, and picking your way through the wreckage with no time
to care because something like passion is driving you on.

CATHERINE JAGOE

Happy Mother’s Day!

Spring, and the tulips urged me
stick to schedule, flower furiously.
I asked for mountains but settled
for some flood-buckled linoleum.
Air was the only sure thing
and even she put up a fight.
I called my eyes near-sighted,
my hands near misses, my arms
close calls, my face old hat,
my head a bluff and raised
my body, a wishing machine.
Stars, thanked. Days, numbered.
I wore a coat because you can’t trust
weather and I looked like rain.

DORA MALECH

The death toll continues to rise. My friends

displaced. Trees destroyed part of Kerry’s house

but everyone is safe. I’d like to get a dog

as long as it would never die. Today: the clouds

like a tattoo. Wanda believed she was going

to get better. For weeks after her death

packages arrived in the mail—all things she’d

ordered before she was on hospice:

a vegetable steamer, a juicer, a new healthy life.

Weddings & funerals in the span of a week.

Each year, the family grows & shrinks.

I search the classifieds for a new job,

a new place to live, a change. This happens

every two to three years, but I imagine

three years from now I’ll be too old to keep

this up. I should settle down, start a family, 

do all those things that people once

expected from me. Basically, give up.

“Living with the Blues.” If I could survive

here, with these simple wants, I’d be happy.

I just want to listen to music, read books,

eat food, drink beer & occasionally whiskey,

dance, and travel, see my friends & spend

my time with you. It sounds like I’m fifteen,

believing this could actually be possible.

The Idiot’s Guide to Living. 

Last day of April. Early morning sun,

open windows & birdsong. Saturday quiet

as the city sleeps in. Momentary stillness.

A cup of coffee & a book equals peace.

At least right now. The temporariness of it all

doesn’t matter. True spring on the horizon.

The mistake of placing hope in seasons,

to look forward to the days to come &

expect things to be better.    

GINA MYERS

leaving is not enough; you must

stay gone. train your heart

like a dog. change the locks

even on the house he’s never

visited. you lucky, lucky girl.

you have an apartment

just your size. a bathtub

full of tea. a heart the size

of Arizona, but not nearly

so arid. don’t wish away

your cracked past, your

crooked toes, your problems

are papier mache puppets

you made or bought because the vendor

at the market was so compelling you just

had to have them. you had to have him.

and you did. and now you pull down

the bridge between your houses,

you make him call before

he visits, you take a lover

for granted, you take

a lover who looks at you

like maybe you are magic. make

the first bottle you consume

in this place a relic. place it

on whatever altar you fashion

with a knife and five cranberries.

don’t lose too much weight.

stupid girls are always trying

to disappear as revenge. and you

are not stupid. you loved a man

with more hands than a parade

of beggars, and here you stand. heart

like a four-poster bed. heart like a canvas.

heart leaking something so strong

they can smell it in the street.

MARTY MCCONNELL

Settle into the earth and spread out

thin in every direction, your eyes closed

till birds shout carelessly in your ears

and you forget your ears,

and rabbits and deer and automobiles

walk on the dirt your body

which feeds the tree which becomes the stone

to mark you

crumbling. If you concentrate,

a button and a hair disintegrate so softly

you never knew they belonged to you

and never will again.

MELISSA KOOSMAN

My dreams no longer disguise themselves
as dreams.

In this one, my parents
are telling me the ways I’ve shamed them.
In this one, I am getting drunk
and spilling dirty dishes from my handbag
in front of everyone I know.

In this one, somebody I know has died; it doesn’t matter who.
I row alone to the middle of the lake
behind the house where I grew up.

The entire sky is gleaming pink
and purple, inexplicably. How did this happen? I ask,
as if an answer will come. I cry,
a little bit.

The waves sway me gently in the small boat,
a blot, the apex of the lake.

BRETT ELIZABETH JENKINS