Podcasts: June 2005 Archives
"Virgin Eyes" by M. Chavez appeared in the 9.3 (Spring 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
There's nothing to watch but the fields of little girls,
the flames licking their thighs, melting
sweet things.
They're falling
into dirt, onto asphalt.
Sticky, waiting for the kind
of boy
who would pick candy
up off the street and put it in his mouth.
"The Oldest Profession" by M. Chavez appeared in the 9.3 (Spring 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
She finds it difficult to breathe on all fours,
she's been hanging
like christ and her lungs are full.
She spews lust
at the guests,
they eat it
like pigs.
The heat of the spotlight
has burned her skin
to papyrus, she draws blood
back from the vein, writes
on the wall,
that she's pretty
and that it ought to be
worth something.
"Skin to Skin" by Wendy Tayor Carlisle appeared in the 9.3 (Spring 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
Skin cells move to the surface
as they mature, five layers basale to lucidum,
ending in the scaly corneum. Surgeons
must cut through them all to reach in,
the clock running on an operation
from the first incision to the last stitch--
skin to skin--a whole skin.
A person's loved ones don't know this,
might have no time to imagine the cut,
while she lives in wholeness,
never thinks, I could die,
before she does, the shattering
so absolute that we, coming along later,
can only stand dumb
beside a bridge abutment
where someone, even this soon,
has put down bouquets,
fresh daises, a bunch of silk flowers
in their glass bottle and tied
drugstore balloons on the railing,
a flash to remind us that the skin,
a membrane, can be callus
or a scab or petal or, in an instant, mist.
"Write" by Wendy Tayor Carlisle appeared in the 9.3 (Spring 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
Because of rain, your fingers becoming arthritic
Because of the freeway promising relief
Because of wiry hair
Because of the undone coming along behind
Because of chanting
Is it possible to choose?
Because the pain of outliving is a coal in the belly
Because we are held by the small cut
and the body is raked by sweat
Because otherwise swollen lips
work the hymn
Because it wipes off the idea of winter
Because the air is filled with letters
"the service of palpitations" by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero appears in the 9.4 (Summer 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
the service of palpitations
benign
say the physicians
it means nothing
when your heart
shakes a fist
in your chest
it means nothing
when your heart lets the rope
slip
and rappels sleep
far down the cliff
of consciousness
leaving you solitary
at the edge
with only the streetlight
filtering mindlessly orange
through gauze curtains
it is benign
when your heart offers you
death's cock-crow
as a familiar
waking after waking
so terror will be worn to a wispy rag
of morning twilight
by the time you arrive
at the fleeing edge of shadow
before that unquestionable dawn
"Old Woman at the Warm Spring" by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero appears in the 9.4 (Summer2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
I see myself simplify,
warmed from structure
into mist,
rising.
My faults,
wreaking fiery cracks
across my soul's sea floor,
secreted under
the hardening lava
of ordinary lies,
are simply, now, my faults.
And my breasts,
floating in this sulphur-scented water
like pale balloons
in loose and blue-veined cauls,
are simply, after all, my breasts.
"reading a letter from war, in summer" by Cheryl Wood Ruggiero appears in the 9.4 (Summer 2005) issue of The 2River View. Listen to the poem by clicking the title.
reading a letter from war, in summer
wheels whir and tick
a cyclist passes
dust wakes, rolls over, settles back to sleep
leaves stir and whicker
a late cicada razzes
thunder walks, growls over hills, shudders into heat
by the time I've drunk this sweet cold tea,
and read again your letter that arrived at noon,
fat drops will fall,
then hail
winds will swarm and track
across my face and over seas to shores of sand and lightning-fired glass,
and on and on to where, beyond bulwarks, your heart must--oh, must--still beat
