Lucretia ...after Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting

I.

I will tell you because

only you will understand:

Sextus had me first.

with me, he was silent;

he offered no threat,

did not fool me--

I just gave in.

gave in.

what do you call it, Lucretia?

surrender?

submission?

choice?

now we both know: there is no choice.

II.

there is a sense of self-betrayal,

a gasp in your chest

when you look at my bed;

the scent on your dress, always,

a handful of spit and sweat,

the tragic film of memory.

there is the fight to not remember

when you were younger,

when you fell asleep in the arms of God,

and he loved you more

than you will e v e r know again.

III.

here is how you work, Lucretia:

you lie

and you take it.

(but I took it, then I lied.)

like a good wife, you told your husband,

and your husband consoled you:

you did not sin because your body did not sin.

your body did not sin because your mind did not sin.

and your mind did not sin because

you did not feel pleasure.

(then pleasure must be sin)

IV.

let me tell you a secret:

some nights I dream about Sextus,

and I think I would like to love him.

I think I would like for him to love me.

here is another secret:

I wish he had kissed me.

did he kiss you, Lucretia?

I would rot with jealousy.

V.

what does sin feel like to you, Lucretia?

does it feel like pleasure?

or does it feel like guilt?

both and also something in between:

a void with anxiety

panging from within.

we’re supposed to be scared 

of these things, Lucretia:

the strong arms with the gentle hands

the breath in our ears on the verge of sleep

but to find solace,

we must find comfort.

VI.

comfort is the ghost I hold at night,

wanting, wishing it would hold me back.

fear is waking in damp sheets,

forgetting where I came from,

remembering where I am.

VII.

guilt was two weapons on the table before you:

silence and the knife

I admire you for choosing the latter, Lucretia,

because I chose the sharper,

though we both chose tools of strife.

now everything I have felt each night

you feel in this single moment

while I still have many nights left to go--

so dig that knife in hard, Lucretia

take it all in one blow

© Katherine Freeman, 2012

Rembrandt's Lucretia, 1666
Photo from Wikimedia Commons
Painting in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Rank

Something there is that is rotten in the state of state

that imposes the doorman’s snappy salute to the uptown patron;

      leaves the frazzled waitress to grovel for a tip;

      requires genuflection as the lawn-mower man

scraps for yard-work from the landed

      mandates a nod of submission in the workplace.

Something there is that is rank.

Congress can pass laws yet gravity never yields.

The somebodies define the nobodies as sure as 

the earth whirls through the cosmos.

Something there is that is rotten in this state of flux

that pinches the wallet and soul as a new Lexus rolls off the lot;

        tears at the heart as the face sags and the butt balloons;

        shreds all our dignity as we don the faddish blouse made in

  sweat or slurp the coffee grown for pesos, sold for dollars;

        diminishes as we venerate the half witted celebs we see on TV.

Something there is that is rank.

Somebody will see all this status anxiety as silly. 

Somebody will realize nobody is a nobody. 

Some will some day, I am quite sure.

Something there is that is rotten in the state of affairs

that sets the wild-eyed beggar-man to spinning for the ‘bus fare’;

      demands of the happy bride a vow to love and to obey;

      forces the fragile, uniformed maid to make the careful show of

deference to her subtle employer as she dusts the tabletop;

      gnaws at the plumber as he bends over in ill fitting jeans.

Something there is that is rank.

© Byron Harris, 2012 

Waitress serving in a restaurant while wearing a chicken costume
Photo by Ross Berteig, Wikimedia Commons

The Answer for the World

What is the answer for the world?

Where do we go from here?

How can we bring peace to this troubled world?

When will we stop this violence?

All these questions make me wonder,

And I am not quite sure where to go.

I want to find the answers,

But only questions come.

Love comes to mind, and it feels so right,

And yet, its not as easy as it is said.

Why can't we stand on the shoulders of Love

And enclose ourselves with a blanket of Caring?

If we could only stand firm

And share our love with the world,

Then maybe peace could come from deep down;

But violence seems to stop us.

Oh! Violence, why are you so deeply rooted?

You hurt so many of us,

And we find it all around us,

And it seems to choke us.

So we must find a way to reach out

And bring forth the love we have,

So that we can take each day

And say, "LOVE is the answer!"

                             © Hilda Ward, 2012

Blankets and care being provided to people rescued when their boat
capsized in Baltimore's Inner Harbor
U.S. Navy photo by Machinery Repairman 2nd Class Jerry Neblett. ~Wikimedia 

Word into Light

I was taught as a child that

Every book was as sacred as Bibles.

There would be no writing in them,

No tearing or bending of pages.

There would only be the reverence of reading,

Of epiphanies waiting for seekers between the lines,

Of new chapters opening in the face of closed doors.

There would only be the reward of seeing libraries as temples,

As spaces where chapter and verse minister to every unknowing,

Of seeing bookshelves as sanctuary where God begins as word 

and transforms into the light.

 

© Camisha Jones, 2012

Book of Kells, 8th Century; from Wikimedia Commons
Now in Trinity College Library, Dublin

Small Town

My childhood self

still walks the streets of the village

where I loved to visit

a grandmother, dead long ago.

Her aged friends

are still vivid in my mind.

One had a parrot that nipped my nose

and a goldfish pond

where the brilliant fish

eluded my childish grasp.

Another came to tea

and was given elderberry wine

because “the doctor ordered it.”

A glowering distant cousin 

with a crippled foot who came to visit

preferred to sleep on a feather bed,

so in the heat of summer

I dragged the dusty thing from the attic,

grumbling and resentful of that gloomy relative.

A box of demi-tasse cups

was given me by one of those women.

“Don’t wait too long to marry,”

was her advice.  -- ”I did.”

I sensed the sorrow of her life.

Unmarried women of uncertain age

seemed prevalent.

Why did they never wed?

Did the young men leave

for livelier towns?

Or did their beaux

go off to war and die?

Their locked trunks in the attic

were seldom opened,

holding treasures (I supposed)

for which they had no room

in the straitened circumstances

to which they had come.

Now aging as well,

I return to find

old houses remain,

still beautiful and cared for,

and the county courthouse

with the Civil War cannonball

still lodged in its pillar

looks solid and unchanged.

But busy stores

that then sold thread

and shoes and ice cream

now stand empty and forlorn,

and the ghosts of my childhood friends

walk the silent streets.

© Peggy Latham, 2012

County Courthouse; photo by Tony Russell

Ancient Conversations

The river of our tongues has dried to cracked earth.  

Too long since wear, crawfish pronunciations,

and bullfrog syllables are shells and lumps of sand now.

Ē kapuna, make wai ‘ia au.

I am thirsty for the metaphors of our grandmothers,

their every breath a prayer for peace and unchecked giving,

and receiving was as easy as a nap with a pole in my hand on a warm day.

I crave the torrents from times when women were gardens

and there was only one table to put a vase on.

Yet in place of flowers, homework, and electronic debris,

bountiful food prepared with god in mind was served

to strangers passing through the channel.

© Sarah Bordeau-Rigterink, 2012

Hawaiians eating poi, c. 1896
Photo by Strohmeyer & Wyman
From Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress

Give Me Something to Write

Give me something to write.

Inside me I hold a book,

Filled with page, after page, after never-ending page of hungry space.

My pages long for tales of the countless hours we’ve spent running through the night,

Of the oceans of color we’ve consumed painting the world with our souls.

There are words

That dripped from your lip like dew drops on a desert flower.

My pages thirst for them,

Were made for them,

Want  them to come home.

Send them home.

Your very walk inspires metaphors,

Metaphors with the power to make rational thought question its own existence.

Send your words and your metaphors home.

My pages will cradle them – like the moonlight,

Show them the freedom they were born to possess.

Run with me.

Let’s find our way out of this strange skin we wear,

So that we can unhide our holy.

Release the ember inside us that wants to burn like a bonfire unbridled.

This holy bonfire that burns truer than anything else that has ever burned,

This, too, would I write on my pages,

If you would let me.

My pages want only to remember:

Stories of us;

And of how we got here;

Stories of how we bent ruthlessly the rigid lines of this world’s senseless sheet music.

On those nights we ran, the paint still wet under our fingernails,

We pursued an irony we had only heard existed,

Tried to outrun a past we were destined to miss like a lost limb,

Our steps, accidental brush strokes on an ever-shifting canvas.

My pages want to remember the days,

The days when we knew what we wanted

Yet didn’t know what we knew.

We recognized beauty in all its forms.

And simplicity came naturally.

They were yours, and mine, and ours.

Send them home.

Inside me I hold a book.

So give me something to write.

© Axel Cooper, 2012

Artist Painting at Central Park
Photo by SpyON from Wikimedia Commons