Tag: light

Two Poems by James Diaz

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I will not go to Darkness having known Nothing of the Light

And so I refuse imagination
As many times as it takes to stake pure claim
That this is exactly where and how it all happened

I will not be sweetened
I will not soften
I’ll rage at it often
And speak its full darkness

How the situation unfurls
Like skin shedding at dawn
If a body go to light
That it not do so alone

I have smoked the bitter to the base of the mountain
In such dimness as is found in the creek bed bottom of life
My toes kick up universes of particles
Until the muddy water claims me right up to the ankles

And I know that what you don’t heal from will set itself up, base camp, in the soul of all you are,
And it’ll hurt, sputter, and howl
Split you right down the middle
And open you up into a thousand points of light
Headed like fugitives
For the trees
The trees.

I will not be sweetened
I will not be eaten

I am what survived
And what didn’t
In one wild heavy breath

And I will not go to darkness having known nothing of the light.

*

Good Things

What an incessant talker
My mind is
Trilling like a strange bird
Clumsy, wanting what it wants
What it doesn’t know it wants

Last night in the mirror I cried
A cry so deep it made
All I was shudder
Regret is a country
I have fought fiercely for
I never threw a single battle

I read today of a severely abused boy who one day disappeared from therapy (no one, not even the foster system, could find him) and re-emerged an adult
To leave a note for his therapist
At the hospital where she worked,
She who had spent much of their time together
Softly crying, because, she didn’t know why,
Only that she couldn’t reach the boy,
Felt so powerless to help or touch his pain

The note said: “Ms. J, you’re crying was everything. Fred.”

And then,

“Me too.”

He disappeared again.

We try to make the pieces work.
Our fingers do their dance.
What music, to put a thing
Where it don’t belong
And make it sing anyway

Something touches an ancient hurt in us. Crying, and we don’t know why. Don’t want to encircle or run down so big a thing, that mystery that is, that was. All dumb and beautiful, all terrifyingly real.

I want to forgive
And today I have
Unexpectedly someone
Who did not ask for it
But I felt my heart move a muscle
And softness comes to us
When it comes
It has no reason to
But there it so often is
Unreasonably at the door.

When I have this feeling that I can’t make sense of
I do a whole lot of nothing with it
But it’s a returner
A real soul burner

I think of what it means to love
Yourself, to stop hurting what you are,
Just like a kid again, waiting for rescue
But tag, you’re it man

You learn to run with it.

Pain don’t need a reason.
It just is. Like a loose tooth;
You play around with it long enough
It sets itself free.

I’m still learning
How to
Throw a few
Battles.

That you don’t have to be deserving
Of your own love.
That it happened because it happened.
And you lived because you didn’t die.

No reason why, you just are
Like a fact
Here in the world
And anything really can happen.

Good things, even.
Good things.

*

James Diaz is the author of four full length collections of poetry, the latest of which, Once More, Into The Light, will be out in the world shortly from Alien Buddha Press. Their work has appeared most recently in Resurrection Mag, Londemere Lit, Jelly Squid, Sophon Lit, and San Pedro Review.

Three Poems by Justin Carter

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Bachelor Party Dunk Contest

My bachelor party wasn’t at some
         seedy strip club or

a casino across the Louisiana border.
         I got BBQ with old friends

who drove six hours
         for short rib Frito pies.

My wife was there, though I suppose
         she wasn’t my wife yet. It wasn’t

the conventional thing.
         A craft beer bar in town

was having a dunk contest
         in its side alley

so we headed over to see
         if any of us could dunk. The rim

was low enough for me to dream,
         but high enough that my best attempt

found my fingers just grazing
         the fringe of the net.

None of us made the final.
         Not that we expected to.

I had this whole plan: pull my phone out,
         mid-dunk, take a selfie

of that triumphant moment. Maybe,
         I thought, the judges

would give me extra points
         for the trick. But I couldn’t

make that leap—sometimes the mind
         gets ahead of the body.

*

Everyone In Des Moines Wants To Talk About Caitlin Clark

& they don’t want to talk about the dissonance
of loving women’s sports at a time
when the governor is pushing the whole state
to the right, an acceleration
toward limiting so many things. This guy
walks up to me in a bar & asks if I
can tell him something he doesn’t know
about Caitlin Clark. I could have said
anything. I could have told him
that birds shoot from her hands when she releases
the logo three. Could have said
she knocked one in off the jumbotron.
Everything’s believable if you have
the right subject matter. My in-laws
complain that the game is on ESPN tonight
& they don’t have ESPN. We could fix that—
I could log them in so they could watch
what might be her collegiate swan song,
but I’m not sure they want that,
to potentially witness her end. No one
does. On Twitter, the sports business guy
makes another uninformed post about NIL
like that might change something,
a different decision. His words
fork no lightning. Tell me, the man says again
because I have stood there & said nothing.

* 

The ROMCO Super Late Model Series

I told my father I wanted to be a racer
at a car show in Houston,
which of course we couldn’t afford,

but we could afford the free tickets
one booth was giving out to something
called the ROMCO Super Late Model Series,

which was running at a track
on the northwest side of the city. That place
had the best cheeseburger I’ve still

ever eaten, my first onion bun. “Play
That Funky Music” blared
from a busted speaker. My parents

made friends with one driver’s wife.
I can’t tell you who won,
but after the checkered flag, when we went

back to the garage, that driver let me
sit in his car &, for a moment,
it felt like dreams might

be attainable. What’s it matter
that he’d finished near the back.
That we’d go there once more,

to see him run an even bigger race
& he’d finish worse than before.
He gave me a signed hat

for the 18-wheeler parts company
he ran up in Oklahoma. Years later,
I was watching a documentary

about a man & his tigers,
& in the background, that hat,
& I thought about that onion bun.

*

Justin Carter is the author of Brazos (Belle Point Press, 2024). His poems have appeared in Bat City Review, DIAGRAM, Sonora Review, and other spaces. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin currently lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor.

Two Poems by Craig Kirchner

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Size

I’m a 7 hat, a 10 ½ shoe and a large shirt.
We need sizes, rankings and ratings
for everything. Is it center, left of center,
far right. Is your hospital 1-star or 5-star,
how about your choice of restaurant?
I’m wondering, where would I stack up
in a personality ranking, 1-10,
how about on a dating site?

The business card scene in American Psycho,
the office stature ranked by location and view,
all with a number, pride and self-esteem.
What would you rank your parents, childhood,
the girth of your education?
I had an office once, it was about as big
as a queen-sized bed and had no windows.
I lasted 2 weeks, borrowed money, and bought a store.

The job, had I stayed would have been a 10,
the liquor store almost killed me.
I’m projecting next Friday will be an 8,
the cleaning lady is coming, I have a tee time,
a dinner date, and it’s not supposed to rain.
This number could jump up depending on sex,
but do the numbers really mean anything,
do we really need them?

These shoes fit, they’re a 10 ½ to me
and the rest of the world but they’ll still fit
when the size designation wears out.
Numbers are as important as we make them,
it’s 2 PM because the clock says so,
but our bodies know what time it really is
and that number is only important
if you have an appointment.

I’m 75, age is only a number, you’re only
as old as you feel. I never wore a watch,
don’t remember ever being late.
I’m looking to buy a hat,
no matter what the tag says,
I’ll try them on until one feels right,
fits nicely on my head and around my ego
which I’m sure is about a 7, or an 8.

*

Cognition

It’s Monday, I have an appointment
to get a thing, looks like a tiny pinecone
zapped off my forehead,
and my dermatologist wants to look at my Mohs scar.
Tuesday, early, first of the day I see my cardiologist.
I tell him of my AFib episode and my guess as to the trigger.
He says the EKG is perfect, my blood pressure was good,
and that all his patients should be doing so well.

It’s Wednesday, I’m to meet and greet my new GP.
My last two left, one to a big title job,
the other went to South Carolina to be a missionary.
The girl weighing me and taking my blood pressure
tells me they all just call him Dr. V.
He’s young, seems efficient and smiles,
we go over medications, which takes a while
and no, I don’t still take Vicodin.

Two were prescribed for a root canal,
but I tell him he can renew that if he’d like.
He doesn’t mention that my blood pressure is 105
over some ridiculously low second number,
just that I should keep taking the two blood pressure meds.
Does anyone ever come off these?
We finish meds and he asks me how I am in general.
This is where I could have just said ‘fine’
but the storyteller in me went off.

He heard about the skin cancer, the bad knees
and phlegm, clearing my throat all the time,
and the lack of activity due to too hot to go outside
or its raining buckets,
or the gel shots only last 4 months, not 6,
and I realize I must sound like an ungrateful
hypochondriac, because poor thing can’t play golf.

I finish with so that’s me, and he asks if I’m depressed.
I tell him the skin cancer thing stressed me
and I was miserable for two weeks
but I didn’t want to kill myself.
Then he explains that Medicare requires a
cognitive test, I smile thinking of Trump.
He asked me my birthdate – I got it right.
what state are we in? Florida. Right.

What day is it? I said Thursday. Its Wednesday,
oh yeah Wednesday, I knew that.
Tell me as many animals as you can in one minute.
He looks at his watch and says go.
Dog, cat, elephant, I list about 10 more
and start thinking about getting the day of the week wrong,
unless it’s Thursday night football, it could be Tuesday,
Wednesday, Thursday, what do I care or know.

Jaguars, bears, falcons, lions. I already said lions, didn’t I?
He says you have 20 seconds left.
Alligators, crocodiles, lizards, and then I think
does anyone think of these as animals, they’re reptiles.
He says the questions will get harder now
and I get the addition and subtraction right.
He then tells a story about Jill the stockbroker,
who got married, had kids and went back to work as a teenager.

Keep in mind he’s sitting all the way across the room,
and I realize a lot of what I hear is convoluted
unless I can read lips. He asks me her name. Jill.
What did she do for a living? She was a stockbroker.
When did she go back to work?
As a teenager, but that doesn’t make sense, but it’s what I heard.
Listen again, he tells the whole story.
I’m feeling as useless as Jack, her husband.

Turns out she went back to work when the kids
became teenagers. She was middle age.
Interesting answer.
Can you repeat the words I listed when we started?
Apple, pen, tide, house, car.
I didn’t know when he listed them
if the middle word was tie, tied or tide,
but I repeated tide, and he said good.

That’s when it hit me. He wasn’t going to tell me
that I had not done well, or why Medicare needed to know
there was one more candidate for dementia.
He was just going to smile, give me a Flonase prescription,
let me keep the keys, see me in six months,
and send me on my way.
I asked him if I could write about our meeting.
He said he didn’t see why not.

*

Craig Kirchner thinks of poetry as hobo art, loves storytelling and the aesthetics of the paper and pen. He has had two poems nominated for the Pushcart, and has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels. Craig houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems in a folder on a laptop. These words tend to keep him straight. After a hiatus he was recently published in Decadent Review, Chiron Review, The Main Street Rag, Hamilton Stone Review, The Wise Owl, Dark Winter and several dozen other journals.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Plagiarism by W. D. Ehrhart

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Thirteen Ways of Looking at Plagiarism

1. My mom helped me a little.
2. Thomas Jefferson wrote that?
3. I did not use ChatGPT.
4. I’m not allowed to use ChatGPT?
5. I don’t know who put my name on this.
6. Well, yes, that does look like my handwriting.
7. What’s the big deal, anyway?
8. What are you, a Communist?
9. What are you, a Republican?
10. It’s not like I robbed a bank or something.
11. The cat’s got my tongue.
12. May I have a glass of water?
13. The dog ate my homework.

*

W. D. Ehrhart is author of Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland). His most recent collection is At Smedley Butler’s Grave (Moonstone).