By Fay Dillof

But maybe you don’t have to be happy,
Kid, to be happy

you’re alive,
and it’s enough to stand on one leg, tilting,

and toss your heart like a stone.
To look at a magnolia tree

and see a magnolia tree. A crow, a crow.
Make something spectacular out of . . .

I hid, as a child,
notes beneath stones for my future self.

Now I am my future self
and could blame my upcoming operation.

Or the text I just wrote about my daughter,
not realizing she was on the thread. Roe,

overturned. Or my closest friends, all of them
away, it seems, in Italy or France

and how they won’t stop WhatsApping me.
But maybe you don’t have to be happy

to know what to do
with an afternoon as green as this.

---

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By Fay Dillof

It wasn’t hard,
my mother said.
With a sad
mother-in-law
and two toddlers
in her house,
she was busy.
Plus, the NICU
was a 30-minute drive away.
And she didn’t drive.
So concerning
her new baby––
out of sight,
out of mind.
A strategy
which, because it worked,
became the trick
my infant brain learned
to play as well.

                                                                                 •

                                                                        Why is it, a friend asks, you don’t trust anything unless you can kiss it?

•
If
I
recall
every
word
of
a
song
I
learned
when
my
child
was
small
in
which
archipelago
was
rhymed
with
said
hello,
why,
every time my husband returns from a trip and sees the way I look at him,
does he have to ask Remember me?

                                                                       Hello?

•

                                                                         Like chains of islands . . . stretching across three sections of the brain . . . neural pathways

                                     form––fast––during experiences of
high intensity . . . then later reactivate, through associative . . .

leaps . . .

                                                                    causing–– thwack !–– . . . flash-

backs . . . as in when my cousin . . . who’s been shot at . . . heard his friend . . .
yet another friend . . . had been . . . It’s an automatic
response . . . the instant recall of terror . . . the sense . . . sudden . . . intrusive and

interrupting . . . that it’s happening

                    again . . . when are trigg . . . thwack . . .

thwack-thwack thwack-thwack . . .

•
I wanted to die
when my child was born.
Postpartum, I was pumped
to jump in front of cars,
be eaten by flames, brawl––anything
to save her. I called this
a mother’s instinct to protect.
What it felt like, though,
was lust.

                                                                •                                                   
                                                                One way to communicate lust
                                                                in ASL is by tracing a line from the head
                                                                down
                                                                to
                                                                the
                                                                nape
                                                                of
                                                                the
                                                                   neck,

                                                                like this:

                                                                                                                                •                               
                                                                                                                                Remember when
                                                                                                                       you showed me another?

•
I had a friend when I was young
who had a rat named Memory.

Do you want to hold her?

                                                                   •                                                     
                                                                Daughter, the day                        

                                                                you were born, I placed two hands

                                                                in front of my chest,       
                                                                making the sign for door,            

                                                                and out, from the shadows , tiptoed
                                                                                                                                                a deer.

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By Fay Dillof

Remember waiting for the flight attendant to bring you your silver dinner? Then for her to free you of it? Buckled in, in blank suspension, confusing flying east with back in time? As if later, it might be anyone you ever adored, young as when last you saw them, waiting for you when you emerge, spacewalking through the humming tunnel.

And all the while, so far from earth, impossible not to think of death. All that life down there happening, heedless of one’s departure. Was it that––

a fright in how seamlessly the film is spliced?––or the pull of some half-belief in different planet, different moons?––that got me, long ago, to sleep with someone I didn’t want, cheating on someone who, up until then, I’d fooled myself I did. Lies exploding lies. Then universes.

It’s always out there somewhere, isn’t it––the damage or potential for it, like floating space debris? Now, trembling trees, sideways rain––there’s nothing not in motion, vexed by unseen forces. Love,

like I know the moon’s, I know your face, its different phases––waxing, waning, full. And this one too––not new but the worst––dark and turned away from me. How I wish I believed in the multiverse––this life, only one articulation of some big and/or in which we get it right. And

/or, what didn’t bring me to you? You to me. We were always meant to collide. But how can it be that

Wind, wind––headlights of a passing car

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By Maria Zoccola

probably it was dinner and dancing
or dinner and music or dinner and
i don’t know, some other postscript
to the initial round of consumption,
shooting or drinks or riding around
in his truck while he pointed out
land the company was buying up.
that’s not important. what i want to
remember is yanking the chain off
the door to get to him on the stoop,
evening sun slicing through every
chink in the slow-rotting pergola
overhead, den of carpenter bees
and termites eating their lives
straight into the bone. he smiled
at me, wire frames and pinstripes
and the same kind of watch my
father wore, and when he put out
his hand and said let’s get the hell
out of here, i grabbed on so tight
he cussed and had to shake me off
his fingers. it wasn’t always so
gory, is what i’m saying. or maybe
i mean that if there were problems,
i was still digging their roots.

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By John Gallaher

I search “What to wear when meeting your birth mother,” and the first result
is “Ways to Ruin an Adoption Reunion.” So now I have this new thought
to occupy myself with. “Be interested,” it says: favorite foods; favorite music;
what did they like to do in school; favorite place to vacation;
share pictures of yourself growing up.

In high school, junior year, I was George Gibbs in Our Town,
the 1938 meta-theatrical three-act play by Thornton Wilder,
regarding small-town Grover’s Corners. I married Emily Webb,
who died during intermission
and ghost-watched us through the final act, “Death
and Eternity.” She asks the Stage Manager if anyone
truly understands the value of life, and he responds, “Not really.”

The idea of the Our Town graveyard though, that’s something
I get: the names in order, catalogued, in their folding chairs,
neat rows, the Stage Manager wishing the audience a good night.

We botch so many things, whole lives sometimes.
People should say “botch” more. It’s a useful word,
so we don’t have to say “fuck up” so often. That’s what
I could say when I meet my birth mother. It will be a Monday,
we’ll be strangers in a restaurant who bear a resemblance,
and I will want nothing but to suddenly appear
in all her old family photos, birthdays,
4th of Julys, Christmases. I’m practicing each of them
in front of the bathroom mirror.

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By David Thoreen

Keep your line advancing north to south and east to west,
and that’s why you shut the overhead door against dust kicking up;
here’s how you light a grill and how to brush the grate

when it’s hot enough; and here’s how you fish an ice cube
from your drink and toss it on the sizzle and laugh;
and here’s how you sear the steaks two minutes each side at four-fifty

and how to pour a beer so it’s not all foam; here’s how you put two bottles
in the freezer to chill them quick; here’s how you install storm windows
in the fall; here’s how to tie a necktie in what they call a double Windsor;

and here’s how to pour a glass of wine so it doesn’t run down and stain
your mother’s good tablecloth; and here’s how you say a blessing
at Thanksgiving and how you tell Uncle Chuck to pump the brakes;

and here’s how you make an Old Fashioned by muddling sugar and bitters
in a short glass called a tumbler and add this much bourbon and then the ice,
stirring like you’re trying to decide whether to vote Republican or Republican—

and don’t forget the maraschino cherry; and here’s how after dinner
we’ll have dessert and football, if not necessarily in that order;
here’s how you cut a pie in slices the way your mother likes;

and here’s how you mix another one, and that’s how you get a first down;
and here’s how you wield a plunger; and here’s how you know it’s time
to call in the big guns; and here’s how you balance a checkbook;

and here’s how you polish dress shoes and drive to church in a snowstorm;
here’s how you shovel your walk and then your neighbor’s walk
because the lucky S.O.B.’s in Florida; and here’s how you light a fire

when the chimney’s cold and won’t draw; and here’s how you tell Uncle Chuck
he’s made his bed and now must lie in it; and here’s how you mix gin
and dry vermouth in a cocktail shaker and—no, you need a martini glass

for this; and here’s how you mix gin and lime juice and ribbons of cucumber
with ice in the cocktail shaker and strain it into a tumbler with fresh ice
before you top it with three ounces of tonic and stir like a man contemplating

the difference between sin and failure; and here’s how you burn rubber
if it’s a rental; and here’s how to freshen a lady’s drink; and here’s
a chart so you’ll remember which glass to use; and here’s how you prep

a surface for painting; and here’s how to get paint out of the can and onto the wall;
and here’s how you unbalance a checkbook; and here’s to God above
and save the middleman; and here’s how you change the sparkplugs

in a Ford; and here’s when you better start looking out for number one;
and here’s how you take a thermos to work; and here’s how you squeegee
a windshield; and that’s what happens when you fly too close to the curb,

and here’s how to change a tire; and here’s how to muddle your bitters;
and here’s how to take two tablets of Alka-Seltzer before work;
and here’s how to unwind after work; and here’s how to unwind some more;

and here’s how to slowly simmer and keep the lid on till there’s no
hiding that you’re a pot of boiling water; and here’s how you lie in bed
wondering why you didn’t make it.

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By Linda Bamber

1. Cocktails with a Curator

Idle moment in the day
Cocktails with a Curator playing on my laptop
the Italian-inflected curator going through the idiotic ritual
of matching a cocktail to the featured painting but
urbanely
his dignity uninjured
(I love this guy!)

and I’m eating lunch, when
BOING!
something flashes on the screen.
Three men with rifles trudging home

very little to show for the morning’s outing
one measly rabbit
nine hungry dogs
village life. It’s Bruegel’s famous Hunters in the Snow
WHAM!

I keep using these caps in an attempt to express
the shock I felt
sandwich halfway to my mouth
stars coming out of my boinked brain

but Mr. Smoothie has moved on.
Up now is a portrait of Charles the First (Hunters’ first owner)
painted from below
so he’d look taller than he was.
Charles is all in silks

huge hat
hand on hip
elbow in the viewer’s face as if to say
fuck-you-I’m-King. In Hunters the figures all know

their own significance
as Charles the Short did not
or his very horse wouldn’t have had to be depicted bowing down to him
nostrils to the ground. For Bruegel

size is about perspective
not ego
the women stoking fire near an inn
smaller only because farther from the viewer
not less consequential.
Others bearing burdens down the hill
are smaller still

at the bottom on a greenish lake
a dozen skaters just
a few black brushstrokes each
but playing hockey
dancing
falling
rushing to the fallen one to help. Are you alright?
Are you alright? I’m fine
I’ve just had my head
mysteriously boinked

not chopped off like poor Charles’.
Who lived, says Smooth, in tumultuous times.

2. Not Dead

My basement is crammed with the past.
I don’t expect to lose my head betimes, like Charles,
but time’s a-wasting, so routinely I resolve to clear it out.
Suddenly

a photo of myself at six
stops me like a slap.
Behind me hangs a reproduction of . . .

Hunters in the Snow! The damn thing dwelt in my earliest home
wired my neurons
disappeared

so of course my head went wham when it came back!
Now here’s this little gap-toothed Linda
smiling to oblige
the photo’s edges crinkled
as if a pinking shears had cut it out. How many of me are there
back there / down here?

I feel a fleeting helpless obligation
to retrieve them all. Among the skaters
one
horizontal millimeter stroke of red reads as
some girl’s skirt.
Seconds ago she was holding hands with some fellow brushstrokes
now on their way to help the fallen friend. Will he disintegrate

without her
like my hasty, not-dead, brush-stroked life
dissolving as I go? Or (egregiously) find someone else?

No. This is Bruegel’s Hunters in the Snow.
A fire is being stoked to roast a meal.
The hunters have come home.
No way this kid skates off with someone else.

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By Angela Ball

Where we set foot
matters, is status
and purchase.

If on red,
you may be important;
on purple, royal. Stepping

out, stepping in;
stealing someone’s place
in a coffee line, pharmacy,

or marriage; watching a horseshow
without realizing that the horses’
high-stepping energy

comes from lead weights
added to their iron shoes. The riders
form a line. Slowly, the judge walks

horse to horse, checking
conformation, feeling
his trick knee, thinking of the arrogant

Nazis of his youth, whose goosesteps said
We will stamp you out forever,
vermin Jews.

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By Kimberly Johnson

Wow, what a dumb universe: I’m the one
Always running after risk, who can’t walk
Past a vertical fancy of sandstone

Without eyeballing a route up, who’ll take
What the stranger offers, scoff the fire code,
Jump out of planes, rev the dirtbike

Past a hundred out on desert washboard roads,
Was me who bought the snake, sweet snuggly pet
For the kid but really because I love to fold

Its girth around my neck and stroll the street,
Half lightheaded and half charmed
To feel it clench its length around my throat,

Was you who kept your distance, so alarmed
At salmonella, as you were at heights,

---

Tight spots, stage lights, throngs, germs, and other harms,
Preferring to be imperiled by the night
Sky with its changing moon-moods, and by poems.

I crash around like rashness is my birthright,
Like I want to kiss death daily on the mouth.
Hellbent and headlong my nymphly feet

Stomp around on muddy fate’s doubtful path
Like it’s never going to stomp me back,
Like it’s not coiled down in the undergrowth,

Never going to rattle scales or choke
Around the windpipe in sinuous turns
Or ankle-prick with single venomed strike.

I’m the one holds the firework as it burns.
You’re the one safe as houses. Safe as urns.

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