Seasonal Affair and Funeral Lines

by Judith Steele

 
Seasonal Affair

 
May Day in Darwin, dragonflies in squadrons
Posses of fire-hawks cruise the air
I open your letter – familiar joy –and doubt.
In June fiery sunsets, and you
on the midnight plane.
Dry Season air of July is champagne
Our kisses intoxicate, our laughter sparkles
as if we never wept.

 
Late August wind blows down dead branches
We resurrect old anger, throw it around.
September builds humidity. We always return
to this sensual desire, and desire to be more than this.

 
Still October, still no rain, still purple clouds
without a breath of wind. We are careful,
speak of the past, but not the future.
November thunder drops sheets of water,
twisted sheets on our bed are soaked with lust.

 
Troppo December, and luminous bat-splat
on the only road out of here. You go south
to visit your children, return in flooded January.
We watch with envy reckless adolescents jump
off Nightcliff Jetty into monsoon seas.

 
February stars of wilted frangippanni
fall on ants recycling eyeless bird
in a mess of rotting mangoes.
Again, you ask me to live down south.
Again, I will not go. Again, you will not stay.
March mornings fall into a late monsoon trough,
breathe threat of cyclone. Again I prepare for the worst.

 
April is calm. Long Toms float beneath Rapid Creek Bridge
like Chinese brush strokes on pale green silk.
Torres Strait Pigeons have flown home. You too.
For each migration, a yearly return.
For every reconciliation, a separation

 
And then?
Anticipation …

 
May Day, dragonflies in squadrons …

 

 
Funeral Lines

 
Ephemeral beauty
born, grown,
mated, created
ephemeral life

 
Ephemeral beauty, scrub and shine,
make haste, vacuum time,
produce consume bigger and better
mountains of dust

 
Ephemeral beauty, make mistakes,
break your heart break your life,
we can’t go back, can’t restore
ephemeral innocence

 
Ephemeral beauty bound for dust
Create. From whatever you can.
Drudge when you must, compete if you lust,
make mistakes, weep and ache
Then Still Always Turn
to what you have to how you can
Create ephemeral beauty.

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Judith Steele is Australian. Her poetry has appeared in Northern Territory and South Australian publications including Northern Perspective, Northerly, Dymocks Northern Territory Literary Awards, Friendly Street Poets. Poetry or prose has appeared on websites including The Animist, Four and Twenty, Islet Online (as Dita West), In other Words:Merida .

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art by Kreso Cavlovic

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Public Relations and other poems

by Christopher Prewitt

 
Public Relations

 
It has been raining
but only on that side of town.

 
I go in my quiet way
nursing a fire ball,

 
wanting to be held in the air
that is screaming at me,

 
signing in at the front desk
of an old building

 
stained with streaks of milk
on the windows.

 
A young woman in a black dress
comes from the back to take my coat

 
and my teeth.
I try to ask her

 
why do daughters inflict violence on one another,
but she’s already at work

 
on my tongue.
It’s a device

 
that was once bright
as the silver coins

 
Judas will feel sad about forever.
There’s no time

 
to think about the rust.
I have to go.

 
I have to sit at my desk.
I have to write something brief

 
and apologetic
on behalf of my top floor shadow,

 
spinning with gold in his lap
and blood on his cheeks,

 
the company president.

 

Moonlight over Meat-eating Plants

Here’s how I write poems.
I live in a town.
I open my mouth.
The first person to kiss me
I come to resent.
The first gentle rain
to sleep at my feet
I hand over to the authorities.
Anyone who dines with me
at a Waffle House or a Golden Corral
has a friend for life.
Anyone who writes poems and hates poems
containing more than one language
and/or positive feelings
toward chain family restaurants
might as well kiss me
con lengua y uñas.
At the end of a long day being no one,
I make a simple dinner
for my wife,
and then I rub her back
until she falls asleep.
Just as I’m about to fall asleep,
I take my 3 subject notebook
and mechanical pencil
from the floor.
Every night I write
these same 2 lines over and over:

Christopher Prewitt,
You are a liar.

I can’t keep my eyes open.
I never get the title right.

 

Poema with Roses and Snowstorm

 

My son, you are better off
than a nightmare, any nightmare,

 
all the nightmares you’ve ever had
where the roses sprouting from your head

 
have teeth and they’re all falling out.
The person you love more than anything

 
has a ruby between their eyes—I won’t pretend
to know whom you love—and they’re angry

 
at you, so angry, they are snowstorm
as far as explanations go, as far as

 
explaining how they came to bury you
like Satan in the ice and the cold—

 
this is only a dream but your heart
is the heart of the cat

 
who sought warmth in the car engine
to put it bluntly. You are not

 
pure fear that is self saying to self
something. You are paper boat we are trying

 
with breaths gentle and constant to blow
through a wall of flame. We love you

 
precisely because you are fragility hiding nothing.
Drink this the mountain dew of our love. You are shaking

 

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Christopher Prewitt is a writer from southern Appalachia. His poems, fiction, and reviews have appeared in The Four Way Review, the NewerYork, The Cafe Ireal, Ghost Ocean Magazine, Vinyl, The Iowa Review, among others. His awards include nominations for the Best of the Net anthology and the Pushcart Prize, as well as the Billie & Curtis Owens Creative Writing Award. He is a former poetry editor at Inscape and Minnesota Review. He is at work on a novel, a full-length collection of poetry, and he has a chapbook ms. under review by editorial staffs.

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painting by Samuel Barrera

Serenity

photo by Angela M Campbell