Elizabeth Rae Bullmer

The Birds & The Boys

When I was ten years old and ready 

to mother something.         I thought 

I only wanted to birth boys,

that I would be good at water 

fights & tree forts;          I knew how 

to play in the dirt. Always wanted 

a skateboard & a slingshot—

not to aim at the birds.          I would 

have raised gentle boys 

with coarse ropes of hair & window-

ledge eyes, poet boys, dreamers,        

living together like thunder in sunshine.

I have never received anything 

I admitted to wanting aloud. 

As if the devil were listening,          or god 

thought lack could teach me

a lesson:          perhaps humility 

or how to keep my heart to myself;

children should be seen 

& unheard—dreams we believe

will define us, build our identity,

as if the earth were each dandelion 

& patch of red clover sprouting

from her surface, as if we become

what we create.          God cannot answer 

everyone’s prayers, & maybe some of those 

prayers are selfish or shallow—too foolish 

for anyone to support,          especially god.

What You Could Learn from This

Don’t fall in love with a body;

bodies don’t tell the truth.

They are unpredictable, unreliable.

You will think you know

every delicious inch of skin

only to discover a new scar

shimmering like lakeshore foam

at the receding hairline,

thinning tissue behind knees

or in the bend of elbows—

blood vessels branching violet

broken blooms, a dark spot

in the white of an eye

you had already memorized.

The body lies. And suddenly

you wake beside a perfect stranger

vaguely like your lover. Your palms

will pat and probe for familiar hand-

holds, landmarks, your favorite

birthmark just below the beltline,

and you will be abandoned.

Find something deeper to love:

the patient rise and fall of a

sleeping chest, so innocently

trusting in the next breath.

Beyond muscle and bone, gently

disintegrating, blown away by years,

long instead for the marrow—mold it, like putty

pressed to fit the shape of your mouth.

---

Elizabeth Rae Bullmer's most recent chapbook, Skipping Stones on the River Styx, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is a licensed massage and sound therapist, in Kalamazoo, MI.

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Randi Schalet

Memorial

No memorial for you,

Except the stray addict friend

Texting for a handout,

Except the meth-addled stranger

Parting his hair,

Then smoothing it down,

Then starting again,

The store window, his mirror.

No better than you, this soldier,

His name engraved on a granite bench

Beside the graffitied Hatch Shell.

His mother eating lunch,

Looking out at the Mystic River.

The same age as you when he went to war,

Your war with yourself.

Both of you gone now.

The last video you took--

Barefoot, sweatpants, black wifebeater--

The money laid out on the motel table,

Begging your dealer

For one last favor.

When you injected yourself

In the dry crease of your elbow,

Did you mean to die?

Or get high?

Does it matter?

---

Randi Schalet began writing poetry after her son died of an overdose in 2021. She has recently (2024) had work accepted in Peauxdunque Review, The Write Launch and Prime Time Magazine.

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Meredith Kirkwood

A Summer Evening Right Here

You & I sit on lawn chairs in the front yard.

There are too many roses blooming

because I am the gardener

and I can’t bear to thin the buds.

What if each one were a word or

a message? Irreplaceably precious?

Those yellow folds steadfastly

cup some spiders. Across the street

the neighbor’s old Ford up on blocks

rattles to the engine of her ‘89 Camaro

filling the expanse between sidewalks

with static which helps me not hear

my own heartbeat. The powerlines above

sag with some invisible weight.

You wonder out loud how much

they can take. Clouds above tinge pink.

Underneath them surely someone has died.

You might have died this year

but you didn’t. And that makes your existence

holy so I try to breathe your exhale

but the odor is oh-so-ordinary.

Still, I’ve stopped killing spiders

can’t stand to leave a single grape on the vine

or even to sleep sometimes because

since we’re all here it’s shockingly

extravagant and achingly fragile and

alertness seems called for.

Fire Season

1.

Wind, they say you are ancient.

A bird calls

without ever telling me its name.    

Smoke from a fire in the next valley

enters the meadow.

The green-brown and haze

of a forest unmade.

The grass waits for rain

or the mouth of a deer.

And the mountains are slowly

imperfectly blotted out.

2.

The entire Western Slope

is sending signals

to the possibility trapped

in space.

Trees proffer their carbon

through flame.

They have so much to give.

We have everything to lose.

Even now what objects

are falling to the sea?

Can the slump be measured in acres

or tons? And how many lungs

of how many creatures

shut down when they read

the smolder?

3.

What’s the equation that tells me

how many tears I should shed

for 40,000 acres?

I’m not trained for emotional

triage on burns of the heart.

With no funeral how do I grieve

the once-living green?

And do I trust the posts

that claim redemption

even before the fire

is 1 percent contained?

Unseasonable

This warm sun casting

wide-eyed clarity on every leaf

withered to reflectionless rust

by a heat exceeding

October’s range.

These blackbirds clustering

at the persimmon tree

pecking the unripe flesh

because they don’t have dreams

of winter juices.

That hummingbird looking

for raspberries

up and down the vine,

a cultic dance of desiring

the sweet of last season.

Some habits outlive their sense

long before we see it,

their sense but not their beauty,

their rusty brown, their puckered tongues,

their iridescent green sheen on our backs.

---

Meredith Kirkwood's poetry has been published in Iron Horse Literary Review, Sky Island Journal, Rogue Agent, and ONE ART, among others. Find her on the web at www.meredithkirkwood.net.

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