Michael Daley

One October in the West

Written on a glossy postcard for a niece’s birthday

Just yesterday, I remembered you were born in Massachusetts

on a day I eased down off a freight train

onto oil-blackened ballast in Salt Lake City. So long ago—

and longer for your sister who is brilliant

and sacred to her students in their need—but you,

a cowgirl trucker now, hauling stallions across the Rockies,

were my sister’s first swaddled miracle.

I phoned that day across barbecue America

from Tony’s backyard. Tony—he would die with thousands

who flat-out kept dying of AIDS,

until the government, its own families ravaged,

legalized a cocktail cracked by road-weary veins,

and never admitted thousands of deaths were preventable.

Over the phone, I suggested for you a soft middle name,

sprouted from your great grandfather’s Gaelic essence,

another teamster of horses, Tom the O’Fahy,

old shoe worn to a bare syllabic outcry

across a continent alphabetized by the immigration goddesses—

his children’s name: Fay, the breath of fairies—

like Tony was in his so unMorman backyard,

a sour breeze wafting off the Great Salt Lake

on freight train coal dust, where freezing men bed down

to a boxcar whiskey, and cackle at your first crisp starry night.

Whoda Wanna Thinka Doin That

Up at the 7th floor window of a downtown townhouse

my grip won’t unstick off the top rung of the ladder,

cranked up from cobblestones and tipped in place

against powdery brick, soot, and mortar by the contractor,

descendant he says of Johnny Appleseed,

who cups his hands at his mouth like a megaphone,

“Hook your leg around the ladder and use both hands.”

I won’t look down. “Both hands. C’mon, you bastard, paint!”

I try to, and push the brush along window trim just once

before I clutch the top rung again. “Let go!”

The whole street hears me quail back, “Can’t.”

“Your Fired!” says Johnny Appleseed. “Get off my ladder.”

A week later, working for Vinny the Speed, former sheet-rocker,

he sent me up a scaffold, told me boss around the crew

and paint the ceiling in the brownstone we gutted and sheet-rocked

for the great great something grandson of Mark Twain or so he said,

a cameraman who planned to herd elephants in for photo shoots.

“Who’da wanna thinka doin’ somethin’ like that?” asked the crew.

I crawled up with shaky knees and arms, hair wet from the ceiling,

and barely stood still on those wobbly top planks to roll a coat

of dripping paint let alone boss around—that high

someone sneezed and I clung to the wall like Kafka’s bug.

Michael Daley, born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts, has lived in the Pacific Northwest for more than 50 years. He's the author of 16 books, three of which were published in 2022: Reinhabited: New & Selected Poems (Dos Madres, Loveland, OH), Telemachus, a novel (Pleasure Boat Studio, Seattle, WA), and True Heresies, poems (Cervena Barva, Somerville, MA). He is managing editor of The Madrona Project, an anthology series published by Empty Bowl of Chimacum, Washington. A retired teacher, he lives in Anacortes, Washington.

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Kiyoshi Hirawa

Malodorous

I wonder what your hands do when they’re not hitting me.

Do they punch little ships into bottles,

slap stamps into albums,

strangle clay on the potter’s wheel?

Or am I your only hobby?

I wonder what your hands do just before they hit me.

Do the fingers curl into those rage-white snails,

or do they relax into those red sausages to slap and smack,

wary of the loud percussion,

but warier of the permissive silence?

I wonder how they feel after they hit me.

Do they sting,

or throb,

or tremble,

or want to apologize?

Like I did.

I wonder if your hands bruise everything they touch,

if apples and bananas instinctively flinch,

if pears and peaches blanch themselves,

cowed by the prospect of ten-day tattoos?

I wonder why you say you know me like the back of your hand.

Is that where I’ve left my permanent imprint?

I watch your hands take out the garbage.

Melon rinds, chicken fat,

burnt garlic bread, week-old pizza,

and all the food that got thrown and then thrown out.

I see you cradle the trash across the threshold, nestle it by the curb,

and briefly wonder before I leave,

if I should’ve just stopped showering.

Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet and writer whose work focuses on trauma, resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked.

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Jeff Friedman and Meg Pokrass

Fruit Season

When I called my girlfriend, lover, she said, “What do you mean by that?” I sat on our new peach colored sofa, thinking about her peachy cheeks, the peach-colored cushions and pillows and her fluffy peach slippers.. She slammed down her dog-eared copy of James and the Giant Peach and glared. “Have I now been demoted?” she asked. “On the contrary, Lover,” I said, feeling the sun on my brow and sweating like a cold peach taken out of the Fridge, the orange fuzz on my cheeks frizzing.. “A lover is a lover and who doesn’t want to be a lover? “Me,” she said. Slick with peach-colored lipstick, her lower lip quivered, and there was a little peach stain on her large front teeth. As the sun began to set, her peachiness was turning dark. Suddenly, I remembered eating a strawberry with my former lover, the juice dripping down her chin, her strawberry blond hair warming my cheek.

Steve the Spider Plant

She named her sick plant after her ex-husband. She tried to talk to it every day, but like her husband, the plant was silent. She would take it outside so that both of them could bask on the sunny deck. She googled plant foods with curative powers and found out about a company that promised instant health with a few drops for a few weeks. She enjoyed sitting outside with her plant much more than with her ex-husband, who took up all the air around them with his deep, heavy sighs. She thought about the things they did and didn’t do when they were a young couple. How they talked about standing under the spray of Niagra Falls, reading Neruda to each other, but never did. How they almost adopted a ten month old boy, but at the last second, dropped out. After that, their rootedness to each other began to shrivel. She remembered the way his spindly arms draped over her shoulders on the living room sofa. and the faded brown spots on the back of his hands and on his white forearms. She sprinkled the plant with the magical drops and asked it to remember its dreams. The plant wilted a little more.

Dry Sparks

While working at the nail salon, I was always thinking about the sounds of people’s nails on different surfaces. The longest nails tapped the lightest, but still created a sound something like a tap dancers shoes clicking over sawdust.  Some customers set their nails down in front of me as though they were diamonds in the rough. Other customers slashed the air with their dull yellow talons and ordered me to make them glow like fool’s gold. And others barely had nails, their shy curled fingers red at the cuticles, their fingertips beating against the counter. As I looked in the mirror, I could see my mother’s face rising behind me, her neat red nails combing through my hair—dry sparks leaping into air.

Jeff Friedman has published 10 collections of poetry and prose and has collaborated on two books of translations. His most recent collection, Ashes in Paradise, has just been published by Madhat Press. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards. Meg Pokrass has published seven collections including flash fiction and two flash novellas. Her recent collection The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories, will be published by Dzanc Books in 2024. Meg is the Founding Editor of Best Microfiction.

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