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Poems
Please For Tonight
Andrea Wendling
Please for tonight
Just be my wife
She is my life, my center,
She is what makes me whole
And I am finding I cannot exist
Without her
Smell like her
Like hayfields after a day of hard work
lavender and milk baths
Warm breezes blowing through still forests
All of this mixed with the soap
That we shared
That now too slowly disappears
Touch me like she would
Like I belonged to her
Slow, steady, without surprises
Know instinctively when I need to be calmed
And understand when I need
Your lips, your touch
So desperately that
Washing Feet
Robert Fawcett
Being thorough, I remove a holey sock
to view a diabetic man’s filthy feet.
I use the time to complete our talk
of what drove him to live on the street
as I wonder how any of this can help.
While he tells me more of his medical past,
I run warm water into a stainless bowl.
I immerse both his feet and begin to ask
myself what good it does for this poor soul
to allow himself to undergo this ablution.
Enduring Guardianship
Sue Ogle
I was cool on the way to the lawyer, we’d talked it all through, no problem.
So why am I remembering the old kauri house where the wiring was dodgy
and I held my breath as she flicked the switch to turn off the power? How can
I do it without her, flick off the switch of life, decide on her fate or my own,
without consultation, alone? What if she goes and I’m inconsolable?
What if she stays and doesn’t know me?
And why am I seeing Durdle Door, that day when the Sea Scouts came upon
The Whole Story
Veneta Masson
After she died
there was talk of war
the stock market crashed
the cat didn’t eat for three days
her youngest came home from school in tears
her husband grew a beard.
I do not lie when I tell you these things
nor do I tell the whole story.
I do not say that her funeral day dawned bright
and unrepentant
or that all the sunflowers in the city
were gathered at her wake.
I do not mention the ruffled bride
also in white, waiting discreetly outside
the door of the chapel.
I do not tell how, at
Through a Hollow Tube
Jan Jahner
She carries forward the bundle like a giant fish
vacant eyes above wood-smoked plaid bathrobe
hook me as we unwrap his blue stillness
words swim upstream,
I am swallowed by a wave, standing by admissions, heading out to sea.
I left mine on the rug by her sister, curled in cartoons.
Room Four has a gurney and a chair
Stained, nail-bitten fingers slide through silky dark hair
She starts again, how the cabin was cold, how she wrapped him up tight
how he should be hungry, mine holds her bottle now.
One year out from nursing school in Adrenaline Heights
The Irony of Being a Student
Cole Sterling
True difficulty lies not
In school, or staying involved,
Or scoring well on tests.
Time and dedication are mandatory.
Everyone can distinguish black from white,
And everyone can sculpt something from clay.
But being able to paint the empty spaces with color,
Fill the cracks with laughter and passion and spirit–
Such an art is easily forgotten,
Or easily ignored.
Rhodopsin alone could suffice for reading resumes,
So why waste the time developing a genuine heart?
True difficulty lies
In learning when to slow down–
When to surrender yourself to life’s passions
First Visit
Allan Peterkin
He told me
in passing
somewhere in the list
of bad luck and
bad choices
all the things
that had somehow
brought him here
This telling
was so soft
as to be dream-like
that
she had
fallen
off a ride
at the county fair
on a day he
was trying to be her dad
Didn’t make it
was all he said
then moved on
to the next wreck
(the first divorce)
I didn’t ask
what I wanted to
how old
was it
ICU
Sara Rempe
like monks through a garden, all focus
and white cotton, soaping, rinsing,
lifting her body to sponge
her swollen skin. We were
there when they cleaned her
of diarrhea, sliding an arm
under her when she struggled to move
she’d groan, suck in, drop–
limbs like thin shoots
of bamboo: rickety and trembling
under a papery sheet.
She’d climbed a mountain the week
before, stretching in the thin pure
Unresponsive
Addeane Caelleigh
Do the trees, like us, dream
of falling, falling into the earth’s flat embrace
or share the lilies’ dread of being ripped
from the dark earth,
ungrounded?
Maybe they are more like my friend Annie,
who dreams of being on stage naked
but unembarrassed,
continuing her favorite lecture
to the unseen watchers beyond the lights.
I hope my mother, who has been sleeping so long,
is like my friend,
unafraid and doing what she loves,
with no fear of being ripped from
