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Chapter One
Pears of the World
Sarah Nooter
Pears of the World
We, the pears of the world,
would like for you to eat us
whole. We want you to peel us,
to boil us, to poach us. Smother
us in the milk of raspberries. Singe
us with molten chocolate.
Grow us, pick us,
wash and slice us,
chew us,
tell us when we're too ripe
and too dry.
No, really.
Phoebe Prioleau
On the Corner of Fulton and Liberty
The woman in the
Contact-lens blue
Suit and matching stilettos catches her
Heel in the
Subway grating
At rush hour. She
Crouches, half
Barefoot, tugs
Three times as legs
Pass her by.
The shoe pops out-
Lucky! She
Didn't want
Anything more,
Elizabeth Bear
Driving Home at Night After Picking Up the Milk
A heron flew over the road and the car
by the neighbor's pond.
The headlights caught her white underbelly
brush of wide wings a small moon rising.
She must've been there fishing
long neck dipping to snip at the flicking tails
stilt legs treading through muddy water.
The drought left a wet smell at the bank,
grass reached towards the cracked mud.
The sun set with the rising wind that pushed rain
into Texas for the first time in five months.
She never did find a fish slow enough
for her to swallow.
She could pull herself away easily
raising those great feathers to the sky
skimming the water's surface as though she was the air
herself a bit of down instead of a great body.
She was a ghost too on the road home
another incomplete thought
one more unknown in the rearview mirror.
Katina Antoniades
1920
in a blue and white dress
she streams by on the sidewalk
the rain
and the night as soft as a dog, ear
Katina Antoniades
Poem at a Quarter to Six
my mind
winds rope
around the
stars & planets
to keep them together
Katrina Antoniades
Windsock
you are a windsock in a trailer park,
the only name I know on an unfamiliar map,
the last number counted between thunder and lightning.
Lauren Brozovich
A 1950s Televised A-Bomb Drill Aired for
Educational Purposes
written in response to scenes from the documentary The Atomic Café
In the camera's field of view
schoolchildren collapse
from their seats to the rectangles beneath
their desks, hands folded sepal
fashion over their necks. On the board
there may have been perfect cursive
words: sepal, petal, stamen, carpel
and opulent, Georgia O'Keefe chalk diagrams
of flower-ovaled ovaries, at-attention
stamens, the cocktail-straw-thin
pollen tube. On the teacher's desk
there might have even been a blue opened
flower with visible insides made
by a send-in science company out of
cloud-painted plastic and pin-stuck foam, pried
apart, hinged, so that the children could look
inside and feel. They may have even been learning
about touch-sensitive plant dynamics,
the spontaneous collapsing of leaves, petals, the whole
propaganda of evolution. Duck & cover: fifty
children sliding out of wooden seats into
fifty fetal-positioned 10-year-olds
separated from their at-home
mothers who flash across the screen
diving against kitchen cabinets, cooking
ranges, refrigerator grilles and folding
their dishwater hands prayer-like
over their kerchiefed
heads, perhaps breathing to God, mouths
pressed against braided rugs, that the
Bleeding Hearts they had felt blossom inside
themselves were as safe in their desk huddles
as this fall-out documentary promised and not as
vulnerable as they looked: retracted
blossom backs huddled over
heavy Easter hearts on a wooden floor
in which no seed could grow.
Lauren Brozovich
In the Girls' Dressing Room Before the Gulling
of Beatrice Scene in Shakespeare's Much Ado
About Nothing
... Does anyone have a
hair band? bobby
pins littering
the concrete, balanced half in
pursed mouths
like thermometers, slid into wavy
hair, pinned over the tips of
face-framing braids,
jumbles of white
wire hangers flagged with cleaners'
tickets, Victoria's
Secret bras, and 18th century petticoats,
thin backs wriggling into whalebone
bustiers, Can someone help me
get out? arms signalling
drowning from the tops of over-the-head
dresses, slim waists scratchscrimmed
in voile-&-stays, the
liquid rustle of girl-legs
stepping in and out of acetate
petticoats that stand
free form
like durable meringue lamp
shades, squares of blusher,
blue eye
shadow, thickened
mascara, Neapolitan pink &
blue stage-paint
scuffed over the vague white seats
of full skirts, pantalettes, petticoats ...
Can someone curl my hair?
half-done heads sharing
caddies of hot
rollers, stained white gloves, lace
veils, nosegays, a circlet of fake
flowers, camisoles of laundered
paper, Tuscany-smooth
ankles caught up in
Maypole ribbon, flurries of cheek
pinching, blush
brushes, eyelash curlers ...
the fabulousness
of getting dressed to arrive
breathlessly undressed
onstage in camisoles & tiers of wedding
cake petticoats to fold back over our knees
like bedcovers and ballerina
feet to unbind & slip naked into silver
bowls of freezing water....
Keystone
Fida Fida Fida Fida
They say that firemen are good chefs.
I often see them in the supermarket,
patrolling the produce,
browsing through the spice section.
Their raincoats and helmets
are a strange sight,
standing out like the one little girl on
the carousel who's twice the size of anyone else.
I always knew they would be there before I went inside-
their truck wasn't usually parked on the street.
The firemen sit in their station,
relaxing on couches,
watching Oprah
and Yan Can Cook
and scribbling down recipes.
One time a firehouse caught fire when the firemen
went out one day to fight another fire.
Some rookie must have burned the muffins.
Matthew Moses
Farmacy
Down on the farmacy
the personal care items
lie slightly ajar.
Moisturizer and Shampoo
peeking out into their new world
already instinctively looking
for some poor soul
with dry skin and dirty hair.
Down on the farmacy
the feminine products
are harvested
along with transparent deodorants
and fluorescent toothbrushes.
They say
pharmers are a rough breed
waking up before dawn
to water the condoms
and milk the shaving cream.
Yesterday Congress passed the
farmacy bill,
insuring a brighter-toothed
shinier-haired, better-smelling America.
They say
the farmacies are the backbone of
this beautiful nation.
Julia Kate Jarcho
Iconography
At night the supermarket
is nearly empty. One girl
head heavy
leans on her friends
quietly
with a laugh sometimes.
I have never seen a bird
so perfect in its flight
as she in her unsteady fall.
A wind of lavender hair
covers her eyes. Hunched
she sways in absolute time
with our generation, our ragged
apocalypse, but we can only call her
Sophie, or Violet.
Rebecca Givens
The Twist of Her Head
the twist of her head
was like the dictates of fate
the green of her dress
could cure colds
the sweat
on her brow was the water of Bath
which could bring you health again
you told me this
after a long day of work
your car had broken down
and you were forced to leave it
by the side of the road
find another mode of transportation
search the want ads
for another home
you told me this
as you were crying
how did I get to be such an old man
able to believe that a face
could save me
I saw it only once
on the outbound train
Jenny Jones Image Retention She had turned her head away, but I could still see the distant look across her face. It did not dispel her need to talk about it. All the time that had passed since she'd realised that she had lost him, only now was she able to pin it down to an exact moment. Maybe even a date if she looked back through calendars, diaries of that summer. She put down the coffee mug I had filled for her and began the story, never once looking me in the eye. I knew why. Had she caught my eye, had she caught anyone's eye, the reality of the truth and understanding that lies in the pupil and the iris might have outweighed his importance and sunk her story back to earth. There she would find it so easy and so comfortable to slip again in to dismissing it as imagination, an illusion of her heart. But she continued, driven by the power of her conviction. It had been a lighthearted summer evening. She was heading out for dinner, going through the motions of forgetting about him. What had passed between them before he left was complicated, she realised that now. But it had been different then. She recalled to me the colour of the sky, watching the rain clouds outside my kitchen window. A deep, golden blue, were her words. She said that she had always known when their paths were about to collide, she could feel it inside her bones. But on this fair summer evening her mind's laughter had silenced her nagging fears of his ghost. But, she hallo laughed, feeling his presence in her vicinity did not mean that her stomach maintained its functions on her friend's declaration that he was looming on the horizon. In front of the tartan shop, with a man and a woman she understood were his brother and his brother's girlfriend, without being told. He looked desperate; he was causing a fuss, waving his arms, emphatically stressing his problem. She did not hear any of the words he was using to explain his difficulty in shopping for wedding presents. His mouth was as blank as a goldfish's to her. His arm actions carried the motion to the flops of blond on his head. As they approached she only halfheartedly answered his polite greetings and enquiries into her well-being. She told me that she had not looked at him once, and that was why she remembered the sky so well ... she had looked up at the buildings somewhere to the right of his left shoulder. Image retention. The grey tenement of the upper floors of department stores is still fixed on her retina. (Continues...) |
