Les Bares

Oh Canada

This is what happens when clumsily knotted aspirations

come undone You camp illegally in the rest area

of the Bad River reservation In the middle of the night

almost apologetic tribal cops For your own good

order you to leave You load your bicycle and pedal

in the pensive moonlight musing

how romantic this nameless Wisconsin country road

with its full moon would be if only she were here

But she is somewhere in Greece squeezing the sun

a world away from the quiet reflecting eyes

that stalk these nocturnal woods suspiciously spying

a lone bicyclist with a dying flashlight

You cross over the border of the reservation of last resort

and burrow into your sleeping bag at a fire lane

much nearer to train tracks then you know

In your sleep of snarled traffic and red lights

your dream of America implodes with Vietnam

a lost draft deferment with tin soldiers and Nixon coming

with smoke and ashes cities burning and

with once daring to have a dream

—until tremors rumble ten yards from your head

A train hauling pulpwood lumbers and squeals

over loose train track ties thumped by wheel wobbling bogies

as if they were the pedals of a church organ stomped

by a heavy footed organist And with America lost

in the dark and your love for it convulsing

with the wail of a train horn this jilting wasteland

shakes empty and aching as you straddle your bicycle

Is this the road north It might as well be raining

---

Les Bares lives in Richmond, Virginia. He was the winner of the 2023 Meridian Journal Short Prose Prize. He also won the 2018 Princemere Poetry Prize. His work has or will appear in New York Quarterly, The Madison Review, The Midwest Review, Cream City Review, Southword (Ireland,) Stand (England,) and other journals.

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Linda Aldrich

Reading

A line of sudden text, the fox

startles out from under the fence

and crosses the field, her tracks

fast-filling with snow.

A fox is never a full sentence.

I grasp after her for meaning

like dreams that disintegrate.

If I knew she was coming,

would I see her better

sidelong, tell her better slant?

Iris brought messages from the gods

over bright-colored bridges,

the Greek word for rainbow,

for the petalled flowers our eyes

use to read the world, yet what

can be said for our brokenness,

the numbed drum of so many

flaccid hearts?

Even with a good seat in the zone

of totality, I could see through my

glasses only darkly as the moon

threw everything it had over the sun

and still couldn’t contain its powerful

explosion beyond all margins. Such

a fiery display, it caught us up short,

stopped the birds from singing,

stunned us into chilled silence.

I think of you, Mr. Tanaka, looking up

from your garden in Nagasaki

that morning. For a split second,

did you think the sun was falling

as your flowers scorched and

the heat wave melted your skin?

How could you know that splitting

atoms was beyond our reach, there

would be no going back, that we’d

forever live dumb and partial lives?

---

Linda Aldrich has written three collections of poetry, the most recent is entitled Ballast (2021). Linda was the Portland Poet Laureate from 2018 to 2021. She received the 2023 Maine Poetry Award for short works.

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Leanne Grabel

Stupid Blouse

Someone emailed me a poem by David Lehman.

I liked it and printed it.

I put it in my pocket.

There was a line about a piano:

Rank & file/Black & white.

I thought it was a good way to describe a piano.

Then I went to see my father.

He was asleep in his deathbed.

There was a tube down his throat.

It had a headlamp, a camera, and a sensor.

What was snorting down there?

Everyone was asking.

All the busy doctors were sifting through the membranes

caked with ash from cigar butts and steak fat.

He ate towers of salami, their casings stacked up like undershirts.

There were vats of anger.

Little sharp pellets of anguish.

And there was row of glass jars labeled Disappointments.

I went to see my father in my mother’s floral blouse.

It was probably crepe, so liquid.

Fit like a bath.

I knew my father would like it.

But I felt like a cupcake.

Or a cowgirl.

I sat on his deathbed and stared at the devastation.

Dry-eyed, lock-jawed, I put my hand on his arm.

His was mottled with blotches.

My hip touched his hip.

And I read him the poem by David Lehman.

He said he liked the piano. I knew he would.

And then his eyes closed and he slept.

I could see his life force leaking out with every breath.

Three days later, he died.

My mother was on Pacific Avenue heading to the cleaners.

She was picking up that stupid blouse.

I was on I-5 heading North picking up where I left off

Ugly Love Seat

I had no idea how hard my mother worked

to colorize her life

bleached by the disenchantments of my father

who blamed her for his failings.

What color was that, his disenchantment?

Olive green? Puce?

It was splashed over everything–

the easy chairs, the dinnerware, the comforters, us.

My father was no carpenter, no sculptor, no lover.

His vision for himself was impossible.

He wanted a throne, a crown, a scepter, a fleet.

His failure was inevitable.

He called my mother cunt at the dinner table.

This insured his failure to rise.

His mouth kept him scudding through dirt

chewing on pebbles of calcified ire.

For their final house, my mother got a new couch.

The decorator called the color mushroom bisque.

A fabulous name for such a weak brown, a dark beige.

I should have helped her.

I should have helped her choose a gem tone.

An emerald green or garnet red.

I should have shut my father up

then washed his mouth out with soap.

Thinking about Being Called Trite by a Poet

In the dark with the truth

I began the sentence of my life

and found it so simple there was no way

back into qualifying my thoughts

with irony or anything like that.

I went to the fridge and opened it

                        –William Stafford

She had on a mask when she said it to me.

I don’t know if she saw me hear her

or if my hearing her indeed was the intent.

I thought of the first time I heard her read.

She was wearing a mask with a thick Irish accent.

I understood very little.

We were on the same bill and I used a synthesized beat.

The audience seemed to love the beat.

But I saw her get angry, her eyes and forehead furrowed.

I wanted to tell her I try to entertain.

I try to use words that roll together like cue balls

quietly clacking along.

Is such soft joy stupid?

I’ve worked every day for it–

that and clarity.

Soft joy is the harder of the two

but clarity is no walk in the park.

And thick words are such a complication.

I want to tell the Irish poet that on Sundays

I actually take my brain off.

I wash it, kiss it and blow out the grunt.

On Sundays, I try just to feel.

And that Sunday, I felt we poets were being pathetic . . . again

avidly counting audience

hungry for a prize that won’t come

Wool

I was always small and fast.

I already told you.

I was in a big hurry from day one.

Once in kindergarten

walking back from recess

I decided to slip into the bathroom.

The teacher kept walking and

so did most the class.

Only a couple girls stayed behind.

I waved them in.

It was my first act of defiance.

Or was it resistance?

Our teacher was French.

She wore black wool cardigans

buttoned in the back.

There was something so French about her lips.

They were wavy and wry

lopsided, and gymnastic.

Only Shirley McCoy stayed with me in the bathroom.

We were there for a minute max, spinning with fear and thrill.

Then the teacher appeared and yelled us back into line.

We both had to stand in the corner when we got back.

I had to do twice as much time as Shirley, though

since it was my idea.

I think I only got in trouble three times throughout school.

This was the first time.

It made me feel strong and excited.

I kept giggling with little control.

I was always giggling with little control.

Laughter was all I had.

I don't remember getting in trouble when I got home.

My father admired defiance.

He probably gave me a dollar.

I do remember what I wore.

My favorite dress.

A red plaid A-line with a sewn-in dickey in light wool.

And there were about sixty tiny buttons

all the way down the back.

They were red and shiny like cherries, little cherries.

That was one problem with the dress, all that buttoning.

But the main problem was the light wool.

There was a very small window for wool in Stockton.

And I realize I’m not as courageous as I once was.

I may be more defiant, perhaps, but in a sour-breathed whisper.

The quietness, I suppose, cancels it all out.

---

Leanne Grabel is In love with mixing genres, Grabel’s newest work, Old With Jokes, a performance and chapbook, was created for ArtLab 2023. She was recipient of Bread & Roses Award in 2020.

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