Jeanne Julian

The Burrowers Recall Life A.G.*

Windows instead of hatchways—before the sun up and melted our glass.

We ate crunch and color, and if you didn’t want a ceiling, you didn’t have to have one.

Sometimes I caress the carpet and pretend it’s growing. Like moss. Or bark. Or those stems

crowned with lace, roadside. Named for a monarch who united two countries. I forget who and which.

When there were monarchs—queens and butterflies—and countries. And weathered red barns. 

When weather was—not benign, exactly, but gradual. Like shorelines. Marsh or dunes. Remember?

Before the reefless sea encroached. And so much fresh water we could waste it on our skins.

Frolic, wetly! Now we wander our dim warren, guide-ropes at hand, wending from

and to our hollowed-out homes. Oh, and remember No justice, No peace?—that jingle we’d chant

before former higher-ups made their deals with the devil? His hell ascended. We dug down.

*Above Ground

Of Bone and Brain

1.

That weird scream, mine. Still hanging

there, in my reruns of the rain fall.

Like a hat I didn’t recognize,

left for someone else to claim.

Over seven prior decades, no bone

ever dared betray me. In no tumbles

from bikes, no skating mishaps,

no car crashes. Not one broke

its promise to uphold my tender

innards and fragile wrapper.

Then: what a bumbling bone-

head move, a slip, a slide

on slick wet grass and in a snap

the left strut angles, fissures, cracks

like a hidden wishbone. Lower leg

useless, loose as if dangling from a nail.

2.

Now knee flesh is stitched,

a metal plate holds fracture

like Thanksgiving leftovers,

and the mind, over the matter

of such wrack and gimp,

lacks its get-up-and-go too.

It limps along blind alleys, shuffles

its fun house of cards, not yet playing

with a full deck of neural tarot to signify,

weigh, meanings, past and future.

The Tower. The Hermit. The Chariot?

No Weight Bearing—that, at least, is clear.

3.

Weeks of weakness my burden,

splintered, stabbed, stitched, stiff,

lurching, I bear waiting but find

I can’t Atlas words or the world.

Idling by the bed, the wheelchair.

I’ve learned to propel, steer it,

gripping the edge of countertops

the way I clung to the edge

of the pool when learning to swim.

Choking on swallowed mistakes

until I surfaced to gulp air anew

and arms churned and finally kicks

kicked in, and flailing became strokes

necessary to stay afloat enough to think,

to think if I just keep going I might,

thankfully, not forever flounder, sink.

Backyard Fox

These days when dead birds,

strange storms, glacier melt

work to leave her blind

to all that’s bright, watching

the fox den from her window

offers a glimpse of hope.

Where once slopes held

old growth—birch, oak,

red spruce, white pine—

now stand fine homes

like hers, where she

raised her kids, tried

to teach them to be kind.

The fox kits pounce, roll,

and flit through one last

plot of trees.

They don’t care

when she stands near

to watch them romp

or learn to tear at meat.

At times, she thinks

she should stomp

or clap or scream

to help them share

the fear she knows

could save them,

save this world. 

---

Jeanne Julian is author of Like the O in Hope and two chapbooks. Her poems are in Kakalak, Panoply, RavensPerch, Ocotillo Review and elsewhere, and have won awards from Reed Magazine, Comstock Review, Naugatuck River Review, and Maine Poets’ Society. She reviews books for The Main Street Rag. www.jeannejulian.com

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Patrick Meeds

Dominoes Falling

I have a wobbly loose tooth memory.

Is it me or are things always changing?

I never thought I’d want to live in silence

but I’m haunted by a ghost who won’t stop talking.

It’s so good to see that you’re still breathing

so let’s forget that the night is cannon balling.

Every day brings a new set of bruises.

I’m not mad, I just like walking.

It’s 3 a.m. and I’m still not sleepy.

I’ll call you from the pay phone on the corner.

I remember all those school bus Fridays.

Always the last stop on a long ride home.

You were the best basement roller skater.

What was I thinking when I left you alone.

Up the stairs on hands and knees I’m crawling.

One look at you and the dominoes start falling.

I didn’t think you were ever really leaving

so forgive me if I never said goodbye.

---

Patrick Meeds lives in Syracuse, NY and studies writing at the Syracuse YMCA’s Downtown Writer’s Center. He has been previously published in Stone Canoe literary journal, the New Ohio Review, Tupelo Quarterly, the Atticus Review, Whiskey Island, Guernica, The Main Street Rag, and Nine Mile Review among others.

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H.E. Fisher

A Cigarette Burns on the Asphalt in the Hospital Parking Lot

Half-smoked, half-alive,

blazing chemical-orange head.

Why let it burn? Why not snuff it?

The reason I’m here doesn’t matter.

Missing is the frosted pink lipstick stain on the white filter.

Indelible lip lines like a thumb print, an ID,

traces of evidence, a crime committed, arson,

the bloom of her incineration.

My mother went into her car to smoke.

You couldn’t see in.

Smoke like a passenger.

(My children are old enough to know

I’m flammable.)

We were in the center of town when the old

apartment building on Riverside and Park caught fire.

It’s impossible to describe the violence.

She took my hand, held us in place.

Aunt Doris Said Make the Fear Big

It would be no surprise if missiles, from the plural

            missilia—gifts thrown by emperors to people

on the streets—will soon be aimed at the moon,

            shot down, its stones used to make cities bigger.

Someone’s always deciding they need land more

            than people or homes.

What walks or stands is ground            

            to white powder like a drug—hate’s opiate.

Doris said if you make the fear big enough        

  whatever you think will happen

   won’t be as bad as expected.

Look into the whites of children’s eyes,

the walls they hardly knew

pressed like flowers.

I heard a eulogist at a funeral say

his fallen daughter                                                     

was as big as libraries of song.

A friend removed his brother’s urn

from its cardboard box, took

a handful of ash, tossed it over          

his shoulder for luck like salt.

          How big can something be once it’s gone?

Let the snow on the branch get heavy, Doris said.

Birds

            with a line from Hamlet

            Sparrows came to America on ships to work, replace

the birds and animals who once ate pests but were murdered

or displaced by lands cleared when the first factories were built.

            In Dhaka, cracks appeared in a garment factory’s walls.

The boss said, Work. The building collapsed. Buried workers drank

urine to survive in the rubble. Bits of fast fashion covered the dead.

            When the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was on fire, workers

went up in smoke, others jumped from windows. Sometimes nothing

carries us. Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese, the youngest, fourteen, died.

            Once, I looked out my children’s bedroom window

and saw men and women in good suits jump from the burning

Towers, arms flailing, legs cycling.

            I study history, shorn truths recounted in my old threadbare

classrooms’ texts, held by unruly dates and definitions, hungry for crumbs.

There is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.         

            O Ophelia, there is no providence in labor’s coin.

Only kings and presidents, owners and fathers.

But I think you knew that on the way to the brook.

Hospital-Issued Plastic Bag for Patient Belongings

Big enough to fit a winter coat, men’s size 12s,

wallet, the clothes he wore in the ambulance.

We all have them in the Care Unit’s waiting

room—  a tableau of chemical white hospital-

branded bags, logo like the dull, familiar face

of a neighbor, tightly knotted. Vending machine,

unmanned reception desk, vinyl furniture, floor,

wallpaper—  everything beige. We wait hemmed

by time’s thrift. Disposable gloves, syringes, cannula,

tubing, monitors—  the bags are only one symptom—

paradox of the polymer world of a hospital, landfill

for the sick, where physicians vow First, do no harm.

Decay, 1981

Every train starts in a tunnel before departing. Every window of every train reflects the people

on it. My face looks back at me. It is not hyperbole to say I am surprised to see myself. The car smells of commuter cocktails, cigarettes, and newsprint. A young man, seated across from me, about my age, faces forward, then turns away, corkscrewing his body toward his reflection, eyes locking onto something I cannot see. His mouth forms a circle I pray into. Years later, I stream a movie about zombies on a train and remember him and my prayer, unanswered. Unlike in the movie, there’s no hero on the train to rescue me from the dead. The young man’s eyes glide slightly to the left, align with mine, window to window, reflection to reflection. The darkness of his mouth I enter is mine. I am dead  for you, Mother. I am dead for you. He nods, Yes, as if I’d spoken out loud. The conductor stops at my seat, asks for my ticket. Punches it.

---

H.E. Fisher is the author of the collection STERILE FIELD (Free Lines Press, 2022) and chapbook JANE ALMOST ALWAYS SMILES (Moonstone Arts Center Press, 2022). H.E.’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, Psaltery & Lyre, DMQ Review, Ligeia Magazine, Broadsided Press, and Whale Road Review, among other publications. H.E. was awarded City College of New York’s 2019 Stark Poetry Prize and has received nominations for Best of the Net and The Pushcart Prize, and is a recipient of the Poets Afloat residency. H.E. is a writing coach and editor, and currently lives in the Hudson River Valley.

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