Antonia Alexandra Klimenko, “Don’t Smoke in Bed

Don’t Smoke in Bed

Antonia Alexandra Klimenko

Blessed are the trees that fall to earth from the height of centuries the vertical symme-tree of sky fall to earth as I fall to you with a hush then turn to ash

Camped as we are at Heart’s core the ground gives sway— your magnetic pull drawing me to you— opening your pathways your secret roots and springs— your bough breaking gently overhead

Branch by branch I descend into your forest— take refuge in your whirling blue jungle of stars your mother-tongue radiant and unspoken flickering through the leaves

Branch by branch I defend your shrinking shadow as I would my own— my own twisted limbs my own fading pages dripping with the sap of fresh sorrow

Here on the edge of the forest Night falls as trees into silence— the lament of felled Evergreen the shudder of every drum roll echoing in the subterranean passageways of my mind

Here on edge of extinction smoke rises and blossoms like breath into flower— passes through the cathedral of our sighs

the sleeping nightmare of a dream— the mouth of my contaminated river spilling into yours

Every night I cry Timberrrr! as I return to you my Wilderness Even now leaving my invisible trail across our weeping Universe

Every night I fall from grace then vanish into thin air I too under-developed and wild have defied your attempts to tame me

Unobtainable

Dale Champlin

“We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed until we drop.” —Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

Mother desired to be the best wife with the best life/thin-hipped petal-lipped/stacked but skinny/perfumed and gullible/Stepford unobtainable/not easily maintainable/she stuffed her drawers with teddies and rhinestone zoris/wore makeup sultry and moody/dressed in ostrich mules and see-through tulles/pampered and manicured/ toenails polished/heels smoothed/ears pierced/her ego soothed.

She piled her coffee table with magazines/romance novels and Dexatrim/stocked her bar with tequila/margaritas and mangos/ smoked oysters/Vienna sausages/green olives stuffed with pimento/ V-8 with vodka/cayenne/celery and a twist/she swilled/sucked and sucked-up Tab and Virginia Slims from morning until night/ her expression an illusion/a ring on her finger not in her tub. The way she lived/some days she couldn’t get off her hands and knees.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 20 An Affliction That Transfixes the Body

Dale Champlin I may be no more than a tchotchke on a shelf gathering dust that I will never return to.

My thoughts resurface as artifacts from days that precede the one I am in now— lured to the present by something I don’t quite understand like succulent pieces of fruit in lime Jell-O suspended in my mind until revealed in their entire multi-colored splendor.

I remember when my little girl’s brother wrapped me in a tin foil shroud and buried me in the garden like a time capsule. I was lucky she saw him from her bedroom window. I am one of the juicy bits from her childhood that she retrieves from her memory playhouse. She may suddenly recall other things she’s stashed beside me.

One month we thought Mother was baking us delicious Russian wedding cookies. All the kitchen counters were powdered with sugar in drifts like snow. How old will my girl be when she realizes that Mother was snorting blow? That needle tracks up and down her arms were not mosquito bites? When will my girl admit her delinquent brother deserved to be incarcerated?

That long ago day she pulled me slowly up from deep earth, unwrapped me and smoothed me over and over in her gentle hands to make sure I was whole. I brushed the tiny teardrop glistening on her cheek. When will she remember where she’s concealed me? What box, what chest, what burial?