poetry
EDITED BY Phillip X Levine
Wrong Number
Thelma Z. Lavine
I am the bomb. And by “the bomb” I mean I am some incendiary device hell-bent on destruction.
Thelma Z. Lavine, fascinating philosophy Professor in college she said once that she Had Infinite Husbands Thelma Z. Lavine told us that every Single story has to have a beginning a middle and of course an end. From there to here. Most people begin with arriving or leaving She said. If they arrive, they leave in the end. Not me I said so many years ago. If I like where I am I’m going to stay. Well said Thelma Z. Lavine. You’d be wrong.
I know this, because I can hear the ticking as I walk down the hallway to her room. “There was another bat in the house” I tell her. My daughter is peering through the din of her iridescent midnight bedroom while I speak this hasty lie through lips that feel as cold as my brother’s limbs grow. just a few miles away.
—Esther Cohen
Deliver Us from this Department Store, Amen
Lips that lie because I awoke her with my screaming. Though it seems like an echo now.
My father throws up in the Sears parking lot on the day we plan to shop for my communion dress. I think God wants him dead.
I am the bomb. Because the night that phone rang, it was mine.
It is Sunday afternoon, a baseball game static on the radio. Our secondhand station wagon is nosed into a spot overgrown with nettles and weeds.
Numb fingers find stored numbers, familiar to me as family. it goes: Asher, Broderick, Carter. ABC. Three pieces of what used to be five.
In the shadow of the driver’s side door, he is hunched on all fours. The reflection of his altered face on display in the bumper’s rim.
I am the bomb. And with every passing ring the ticking grows louder until I explode their phones, and their quiet homes. I gut their faith and any hope they still had left. My calls are over before the dispirited paramedics can pull the needle from his ravaged arm. It’s all business now, this shit ain’t new in my town. Our beautiful, broken brother is dead. This time there is no simple solution. No chasing this out the front door. No quick and dignified death. This bat is going to stick around for a while. —Stephanie Carter
On a Distant Prospect of the Zen Mountain Monastery I speed past you, silent one, admire your far-off gaze tranquil as a sky lake, and long for order in the jaws of desire as the kids scream in the back seat. —Thomas Festa
56 POETRY CHRONOGRAM 10/20
He becomes undone behind the department store, body pressed against hot pavement, hacking until there is nothing left at the back of his teeth. He rises, slow, from broken asphalt. Wipes the corners of his mouth on his shirt. Nods at the passenger seat. Now you must learn how to pray. —Samantha Spoto
A Lesson from the Dog He wolfs down his meal And totters into the next room Where he snuffles and wipes His mutton chops vigorously On the side of the footstool, As if its sole purpose is to Provide a napkin for the moist remains Stuck to his whiskers. Then he dashes into the next room, Launches himself sideways Onto the plush carpet, where he skids To a stop. Rolling and thrashing about On his back, he grunts the whole while. Now he stands, shakes, and saunters To his bed, tail wagging along the way. Circling its soft confines, He collapses in full contentment. His exhale reminds me of what I sometimes forget: A full belly, a place to lay your head, And the company of those that love you Are all you really need. —Randy Sutter
Pre-Pandemic Lust I wish your eyes would / Linger just a bit longer / And undress me slow. —Sage Higgins
you can feel it subtle soft like when someone special slips their fingers into yours, caressing you absently, intimately. that’s fall, autumn, time passing in adagio, stepchild of summer. a life lived in sunsets and evensong, twilight, and moons over harvest fields —Thomas Riker Full submission guidelines: Chronogram.com/submissions
