Ron Kolm, “Mama Said

Mama Said

Ron Kolm

When I was young My Mother said to me: “Son, you got big tender chops Don’t get eaten –Save your butts & ends And keep your navel clean.”

But me, A victim of circumstance From way back, met her, The salamander center of the universe Who gave to me The perfect bed of tongues And now all I want to do Is live on the edge of her dream.

I hold my eyes In my hands Like two hot coals. O God Make me fleet, Grant me speed.

Worth the Wait

Alan Britt

I had a rock, a sack, a rock on my back, much like the rocks shouldered by billions before me. But my rock, my rock with a clock stuck in its windpipe grew tentacles like some cephalopod morphing from a morning glory blue watering can in a Renoir garden into a Van Gogh bloody sky in the blink.

Somehow this rock got stuck; so now I don’t know if jellyfish are the answer or if I should slide my antlers across George Harrison’s Gretsch for the refugees of Bangladesh or the refugees of small-town Indiana corporate pit stops & car dealerships.

I don’t know if opal fireflies flashing at dusk mean the same today as they did when I was backless.

I don’t know.

I wish I knew, but those days everything spun with the universe, & Spanish moss filtered my waking thoughts, & wheat was blood & blood was wheat, so it’s no wonder a defrocked priest appeared as saint to escort me through the various levels of Purgatory.

Dusted by opal fireflies during Saturday evening cabernet, I’m all flesh, no bone.

Distracted by something there is that isn’t a cow town glistening diamond debris from a jeweler’s vibrations splashing starlings like a forgotten Pollock murmuration across the horizon—easily distracted by a dignitary with an apple for a head— easily distracted by a clergyman strapped to a lusty piano weighed down by one dead cow—distracted when I get distracted—distracted by maple & ash, distracted by oak leaves that never will be color wheel red, or distracted by rubber when 58.

I tossed rubber into the dumpster not knowing that rubber plays an important role in the way things are—soles shifting plates like catgut, like a bat’s umbrella wings, like moonlight blistering a pair of sunglasses in a darkened auditorium, like downtown windows about to break, like toupees floating on the lake, like a card trick signaling a long walk home, like a herd of rhinos flooding Times Square as the ball drops amidst red, white & blue confetti for the new year while 300-story multinationals cook the books for the next third world overdue for a monetary intervention.

My memory foam pillow cricks my neck, & about now I’m braiding eagle feathers dipped in Jupiter light, eagle feathers dusting the dogwoods along Butler Road, eagle feathers heavy with 18th century inkwells, eagle feathers that defy the laws of gravity & long for a future that humanely embraces the universe, a future acknowledging unconscionable behavior from the past while promising equality for every living person on this planet so help us every single deity that’s ever been invented on this godforsaken planet.

Worth the wait.

The Opiate, Winter Vol. 24 Glad We Had This Talk

Alan Britt

Thoughts like seaweed dangle the hooks of your smile, each briny bubble, each rusted berry once broiled by the sun bleeding like fireworks inside a galvanized bucket in the middle of panic traversing the skulls of newborns squirming like tadpoles from the Big Bang—look into my agate eyes below two flaming horns trapped in an arena filled with jesters, breathe their vapor & imagine digesting flutes masticated by their vapor, let thoughts like seaweed sloshing two thighs barnacled with desire convince you that you aren’t leaving here without me, & tell me you haven’t slimed the very rocks stranding us below an opal firefly’s lighthouse—that starving on the prowl female firefly posing as the harvest moon saying run better run lest you attract the jalapeño thorn of scorpion dawn—saying run better run—thoughts like an orchestra crashing brasses & violas molded from the bones of atoms that used to be Stegosaurus plates plus a host of tiny mammals first thought to be primitive but later discovered to be on their one trillionth run at a dominant lifeform on this azure marble—thoughts dying too young & exploding like fibers from marigolds embracing solar flares—likewise thoughts packing hours into designer purses slung from the shoulders of widows of those who died too young imploring folks to pay attention—thoughts like tongues of the plow or ballads reminding us of things we need reminding of—thoughts wearing headphones in a control room or lighting the wicks for kerosene heaters on a bitter Moorhead, Minnesota night, a night filled with conviction in the face of consternation, a night that shook its fist at the stars like Blake, a night that gathered stray mollusks into its marsupial pouch, night that purchased half of New Jersey plus a good stretch of lakefront that used to be glacier—thoughts in turn blinded by human nature—the way it goes un-for-tu-nate-ly.