David Axelrod

Le Monde C’est Terrible

Whenever someone asks, what do you recall

about that time just before they were born,

what they mean isn’t the messy verge of the present

nor clocks ticking toward the same midnight.

I remember tweekers bickering at each other

on a park bench on Queen Anne Hill,

their faces like carved masks.

It was the same then as now, only rats

divide their cache equally among themselves

without a court ruling or a coup.

That’s the feeling I remember, afloat

in an intimacy we were fools enough

to say we’d arranged that night

to stay in the house of another couple

we never met, friends of a friend,

out of town over the holiday.

Our business done there the next day,

the house we slept in overnight

received its couple home from the coast

and the man on whose pillow

I lay my head, went into the garden

with a rifle and placed the barrel in his mouth.

Afterwards no one knew why. The sky

that morning we departed was clear,

the Sound glassy and the city, a towering mirror.

The next day was Obama’s Inauguration,

the beginning of a new world.

The rest it of since, you know.

The Persistence Forecast

We didn’t know our host

nor anyone else, much less how

we got invited to the party—

in fact, we were the first to arrive!—

but the persistence forecast called for

our catching Covid after that isolate year.

We were eager for it and wanted to hear

the Ladino singer from Beersheba.

And what a view from that suburban living room—

a case of wine and the entire 19th century

expanse of thunderstorms and lightening

branching over the Big Belts, miles high

beams of Bierstadt light sweeping east

over the capitol dome and Scratch Gravel Hills—

an entire world inside that room besieged

by tinder dry juniper, rabbitbrush and sage.

And I almost forgot about the trombone

the singer soloed on between verses of “Landarico”

sung in our medieval mother tongue

about the king’s golden pride

and his sleeping wife’s folly, mistaking his

for her lover’s pride that she gripped

in her dream only—the words never change,

only the answers change

and only as many as we can bear.     

---

David Axelrod teaches letterpress printing at the University of Montana and founded Bear Scratch Press. His 10th collection of poems is Skiing with Dostoyevsky: New & Selected Poems.

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Andy Macera

Boys In The Attic

The bigger boy sat on my chest,

my arms pinned to his knees,

lining my lips with red lipstick.

The mother hung

immaculate white sheets,

blinding in the harsh afternoon light,

desperately flapping in the wind

like the wings

of a trapped bird;

the father, shirtless,

caught in a webbed lawn chair,

the shade spraying coolness

like champagne,

smoked a victory cigar,

hanging on to a cold bottle of beer, the alcohol

anointing his son

after making the All-Star team.

This was August, 1973.

Aerosmith’s Dream On

soundproofed the walls.

The boy’s grin grew grotesque

as he leaned his phallus

closer to my face,

the opening like the barrel

of a gun,

and I remembered what I’d read

about being robbed:

don’t shout or scream,

take slow deep breaths,

tell yourself

everything will be okay.

After all, wasn’t the Candy Man dead?

Finally, give them what they want

so you can live,

and I did.

Whiteout

thirsty enough we lick each other’s watery eyes

we refuse to drink the Kool-Aid

the constant coughing from a soot-filled sky    

bakeries and backyards burning

scorched earth policy

soldiers laughing in limousines throw out rolls of paper towels

cleanup this shithole country

we sleep on empty supermarket shelves

the power never came back on

the haves are already on The Moon and Mars

everyone has a gun

blood on cribs and crayons

rumors of torture chambers for children

when touched women curl up tight like millipedes

if it is summer why do we see our breath

there are not enough coats

we count the broken white lines while walking on a freeway

everyone is an immigrant

where is the border

rival bodies sway from bridges and trees

severed hands grow from the sound hole of a broken guitar

rainbows painted on the nails

we pretend they are flowers

it is dangerous to hide a fetus or book

to wear the wrong color

we are unsure of the time

a fake sun hangs from the neck of a cloud

someone said the world has stopped spinning

there are only good people on one side

The Executioner

In the slideshow of his mind he can view

every condemned face,

the spine-chilling psychopath, the handsome charmer,

and when passing kids at recess

he images each convict at that age, like those boys

hurrying toward a row of doors,

which one to choose,

you can do anything written on blackboards and in books.

What he does is pull a lever to deliver

an electrical current of 2,300 volts through the

body of another human.

An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.

He is not some bourreau dressed like a jester in a

blood-red coat and eccentric hat lifting

severed heads from a basket.

He is more like Zeus throwing a lightning bolt.

He secretly keeps a list of final words.

Get the ride started I’m ready to go is a favorite.

Some are unrepentant, will spit at him; others have

a shiny new Christ jitterbugging in the

honky-tonk of their hearts.

When the curtain opens to reveal the observation room,

the victim’s family sitting silent, staring,

still stunned, it’s hard not to hear

the murderer repeat the last thing a young girl said,

as if hoping they were

the magic words: I want to live.

He tries not to think about the next life,

if he will be judged, if he will see these men again,

forgiven then, shaking his hand, an acknowledgement

that he was only doing his job.

He doesn’t think of himself as being

superstitious—what goes around comes around—

although he never flips on a light switch

in a room where one of his children

is seated in a chair.

---

Andy Macera has received awards from Plainsongs, Mad Poets Review and Philadelphia Poets. His work has also appeared in Pearl, Paterson Literary Review, Philadelphia Stories and other journals.

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Jonathan Chibuike Ukah

Stars in Our Farm

My grandmother planted stars on her farm;

each day as the war raged on every side;

she hid under the moon-lit cocoa plantation

and prayed that her stars survived the bombs,

the artillery, the Ogbunigwe and the ambushes,

Never minding the antelopes and snakes

They swoop in at random to gnaw at fruits;

She knew how to tame the wild;

and the heavy boots that marched,

their echoes tugging down the sky

and with it, the meatless stars.

She knew some of the stars were waiting

to break free from the walls of the sky

and falling on her as though she failed.

But my grandmother prayed harder,

rushed to the streams, raised a river,

and swamped her farm with the flood.

The stars survived the thirst and hunger.

My grandmother's stars germinated fruits

whose branches and leaves touched the moon.

Another’s Body

There was a time when my father told me,

that another man’s body was a piece of wood,

but the one I saw that day was mine,

lifeless, ashy, dotted with grey spots,

lying across the road like an abandoned soldier.

How I could see my happiness

sprawled on a canvas of sand and grass,

or my sadness splattered on my face

like a slew of pebbles in the wind,

filled me with pain and disgust.

How I watched men and women pass by,

throwing cursory glances at my naked body,

some wincing, whistling, whispering,

others halting their movements for a second

before continuing on their journey,

their fingers stuck within their noses.

I must have past decomposition on the way

the martyrdom of the good and the holy.

How goodness dies in the thought of evil

when we lack the boldness to confront fear,

realising that no good deeds go unpunished.

I asked myself what every man asks,

was I so mean and cruel to another’s body

lying in a ditch without a soul to rescue?

There was indeed a time when my father told me

that another man’s corpse was a piece of wood

lying across a shoulder on the way to a grave,

lying across our eyes, obstructing our view.

---

Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Impostor Journal.

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