Issue 9
December 2001
Janet Buck
Janet Buck's poetry, poetics, and fiction have appeared in CrossConnect, Kimera, 2River View, Stirring Magazine, The Adirondack Review, Stride Magazine, Steel Point Quarterly, The Danforth Review, Poetry Magazine.com, Southern Ocean Review, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, and a variety other print and internet publications. She is a two-time Pushcart Nominee, a recent recipient of The H.G. Wells Award for Literary Excellence, and one of six winning poets in the Kota Press Anthology Contest. In April 2000, Janet's poem "Acrylic Thighs" was featured at The United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City. The piece was paired with original artwork, translated into five languages and sent on tour to France, Japan, Brazil, Vietnam, and Australia. In the year 2001, Buck's poetry is scheduled to appear in The Montserrat Review, The Amercian Muse, The Carriage House Review, Runes: A Review of Poetry, Rockhurst Review, and dozens of journals world-wide. She is the author of four collections of poetry. For links to more of her work, visit: http://members.aol.com/jbuck22874/whatsnew.html
Shrapnel in a Livid Wound
Two weeks in ICU.
His kidneys turn to withered prunes.
Each moment drops like velvet flakes,
stray petals on a tile floor.
Why is it when men go for good,
our gardens leave.
Rose remains in brownish knots
turn shattered condoms minus birth.
Our wedding rings rub saddle sores.
A mourning kiss upon our cheeks
makes craters of our hollow eyes.At home, this massive emptiness --
the bed, a coliseum's round.
Warriors shrink from gilded heroes
lounging in an easy chair
to bookmarks in a hurried storm.
A single placemat, two by fours
across our temples pulsing
with the lemon sting
of suns no longer viable.Our eyebrows grow together now
like weeds some god forgot to spray.
Follicles of will retreat.
A river follows every blink.
A pie crust crumbles in our hands
like shrapnel in a livid wound.
Dresser drawers with negligees --
impossible to push or pull.
Every fish of every hour
we didn't fry begins to stink.
Thick Brows
Forty years and more have passed.
Loss, a noose that won't let go.
Thick shingles of his aging brows
marbled with this grief revived,
perhaps a little readier to slough patinas,
dig where depth is dangerous.
I meet your brother's gracious form,
see your smile in ivory cameos of teeth.
Question marks in hurricanes;
their radish strings on edges
of a livid moon. Here we stand
like toddlers on a balance beam.
Afraid to walk, afraid to not.
These Ithacas of grief engage.
Mine a life without your hands
to brush my ornery tresses out.
His without your crimson cheer
to cock his chin when
sugar rainbows flat dissolved.
Grabbing at your fading spirit,
salt mines in our swollen eyes.I pick his brain like children stroke
a cello's belly, wishing
for some score to play.
Hi to low, treble laughter
basser sadness boiling up.
Braid myself in afternoons
like roses chase a lattice frame.
A moment's puffy, light souffle.
If I ask, if I probe, if I drag
and dust old ghosts,
I worry that their eggs will fall.
Need writes awkward recipes.
I wonder why I feel at home
in oozing pupils of your past.
Sense a clearer sky ahead
around these bends of honesty.
Thorn and blossom, Siamese twins.
A bridge to build between the land
and dying's melancholy sea.
With Anchors GoneThis day of grief, gray marble in an aqua sky.
Forty years, two dozen months;
one eclipse keeps haunting you.
Kneeling near your sister's tomb,
grasses full of lurking snakes,
higher than they should have grown.
Stilts of courage buckle
in the summer shade.
She had held old horrors down,
fixed the wrongs assigned to you,
beveled all that jagged glass
which lacerates our innocence,
renders prayer an odd caprice,
shrinks the sun like argyle socks.I see her visage in your brows,
their thickets bleached by harboring,
their shingles loosened by the storm.
Bolts of cherish fastened to her memory.
She was dinghies, she was ropes,
a rosary that came to life,
took a prayer from church to street.
Laughter snapping sorrow's crunch
like summer peas releasing
pearls and mossy jewels.
Goodness bends thick prison bars.You've paced this beach alone too long,
tinkered with its undertow.
Anchors gone, we fumble in a raging sea.
Had I known your suffering,
I would have stretched my brittle palm,
lifted coffins of our ghosts,
exhumed the art she was to you.
Taken on our basilisks
with tiny feathers of a quill,
wiped the birches clean of frost,
been a porch swing for our tears
that didn't quit its lapping rites
because of rust and soggy pillows
pummeled by the iron hail.
The Woodshop
Earthy peppermint of wood
swells its breath.
Even dust is oxygen.
This is a church of permanent pews.
Uterus of giving's rose
chewing on its inner birth
no wallet could match
with greasy leaves of faceless green.
Art's posture is that hands on hips,
standing up against the dark.
Honing beauty from the plain.Every hinge and little nail,
every parcel of your love,
shaping darkness into light.
Whole stories in these splintered slabs.
Sculpted purpose same
as pages fill a book.
You sand a tiny baby grand,
stain it with retorts to tears.
Miniature heartbeats in the keys.
Each slat a board that fits its youth
among the other aging tabs.Is it here that you think?
Whittle down the manger death?
Fashion symbols from bare trees,
cast tension to a hungry wave,
and dissipate its ornery form?
Allegro smooth as velvet hats
march on Sundays in the sun
to finish prayers,
deliver them to steeple bells.
Even the saws hum.
This music carved from fallen bough.