Issue Nine

Everything

Everything–
a haughty word, inflated by pride.
It should be written in quotes.
It pretends to miss nothing,
to scoop up, encompass, to savor and own.
While it is nothing more than
a snowflake in a downpour.

Plato, or Why

Out of unclear reasons,
in unknown circumstances
the Ideal Form ceased being enough for itself.

But it couldn’t go on and on without end,
carved out of darkness, chiseled out of starlight,
over the world in its gardens dreamy.

Why in the hell did it have to start looking for new impressions
in the lowly company of matter?

What did it need of followers,
mediocrities, the unlucky,
those without any hope for eternity?
Wisdom limping
with a thorn wedged in its heel?
Harmony uprooted
by raging water?
Beauty
with its intestines unconcealed
and Goodness
–why with a shadow,
when it didn’t have one before?

There must have been some reason,
even if a small insubstantial one,
but this will not be revealed even by the Naked Truth
busy with its rummaging
for earthly clothes.

In addition these terrible poets, Plato,
shavings at the bases of statues scattered with a blow,
a waste of the alp’s superior achievements in Silence...


The Invention of What

Mercy, justice, eternal torment, salvation, everlasting bliss (further explication, please),
and, yes, damnation–some days he felt like he was ordering appetizers without a menu,
chair and table invisible, twin mirages the waiter and cook. Mostly, he found himself
drawn toward a few lazy sunbeams not made of light, those shimmering mountains
in the distance not built of rock. Too many doctors, co-pays, prescription drug choices.
If it’s true a goldfish has a memory of about three seconds, there’s no point in tightening
the thumb screws, stretching the rack. Speaking of water, six billion people plus
(see: census, world). Each of us a small, tired wave attempting to reach shore.
Curse that shifting sand, those geologists with their plate tectonics. Five servings
of vegetables a day?–ha! He couldn’t finish chewing his daily supply of unanswered
questions, couldn’t tell if they were protein or fat. Stuck at an impasse while,
simultaneously, being on the gad. Oh, Lord, he thought, unfolding his phantom napkin,
What if this is the inextricable condition of life?

–Thom Ward


The Foreskin

I planted the little curl of skin under the magnolia. For a long time I
could not remember the name for it, because though I had heard the
word and its definition many times, when confronted with the tiny
curl of flesh, the word did not seem to resemble the thing I held in
hand, as words so often do not resemble the things they represent, or
what we imagine them to represent; words can even destroy in their
saying the very thing for which they stand. The little curl was pinkish,
like an overbred white rabbit’s eyes, and yellowing white, like the petals
of the magnolia blooms, and a soft blue; and it had a crust of red, for
no one had washed it, those who might have done so unprepared for
the request for it, so they handed it over in its sullied form, which
made it, I thought, more beautiful. And then I did not know what to
do with it, for it seemed of great value to me, the purest portion of
the man-child’s pleasure returned to god, so that the small rain of god
might overshadow the rest of his pleasure, make a fertile field of it;
and it seemed that the pain, too, the boy had felt when the knife peeled
the portion away, and the pain of watching, who was afraid to
follow the ancient covenants and afraid not to, were folded into this
piece of flesh. So I planted it in the black dirt at the crest of the field,
and then I planted the magnolia over it. That was the order, first the
little petal, now dried, and then the new bush, and in one year or two
the bush made blossoms that began as furred buds, like the budding
horns of young deer, and turned into large flowers that seemed to
have been pieced together with curls of flesh, but magnified, as if under
glass, magnified and made dazzling by the sun.

–Brigit Pegeen Kelly
“The Orchard”  Reprinted with permission from BOA Editions, Ltd

    –Collage by Isabelle Pelissier