The Dead Layer

Arielle Hebert

Ten years after Florida and I can still remember that girl,

burning in alchemical fire, 

joy hungry. She never dreamedshe’d outlive leaving home. But here I am.

In oil painting, you must first paint the dead layer.

Unseen foundations, lumps and scrapes for depth and texture.

And I took such care with my dead layer, thoughtI’d live my whole life there. 

But it’s been ten years.

My winter skin has lost its tolerance for sun.

Visiting home is a training exercise in breathing underwater,

and I was never the strongest swimmer. 

Meanwhile, I’ve met mountains. Seasons. 

True hearts.

I curve the palette knife loaded with paint, layer after layer.

For pines and hemlocks, for diving into the Eno quarry sinkholeand floating down the Haw River with my love.

For October’s pumpkin patches and February’s daffodils.

Summer’s green veiling our nearest neighbor.

Now I know. The chroma, the brilliance.

None of it could have happened without rowing in the channelunder the one-lane bridge at Blackburn Point, without Banyan treesor hibiscus flowers, without those early parties on 39th Streetand the fights at Bayshore, without chain smoking griefaway in the side yard, and loving people at the wrong time,without sunburns and oranges, all the blue hours,low tides, crushed white moonshells underneath.

Hurricane Blues

Arielle Hebert

People couldn’t help but give them names,

to tell one from another.Some seasons exhaust the alphabetnaming violences.

Six months of repeated beatings,lightning strikes and heat waves.

One hurricane can alter a coastline, a life.

Ours is a culture of disaster.Entire families board up the windowsthen go surfing. Sandbag the foundationthen jetski the drowned streets.

Kids get out kites and canoes.Even if there’s no powerand the bottled water’s running out.

This is how we grew up, taking paradisetides one day at a time, holding handsat three funerals my senior year alone.

We tossed in our handful of dirt.

We hugged the mothers of the dead.

After parties became hereafter parties.

We danced in our funeral clothes,

kept late night vigils,

post-apocalyptic parties,under-the-sea parties,

no-tomorrow parties.

We treaded grief like water,

missed hurricanes in the off season,

when chaos ebbed enoughfor us to see clearly, all the damage.

Stonewall to Standing Rock

BY Julian T. Brolaski

who by the time it arrived had made its plan heretofore stonewall   it had not a penny thats not true it had several pennies   can you make a sovereign nation a national park how condescending instead just tell them to honor the treaty   what can poetry do it cant not not do nothing it must undulate w/ the 2:30 pm dance music the sole patrons at stonewall   there was a shooting in ohio today the music made me feel a little anxious it was hard thumping dance music a notch upwards of 100 bpm notoriously the beat of life the optimum tempo for cpr I consider downloading a metronome real quick to test it to tap it out but I don’t want to be ‘anywhere near’ my phone meaning it’s in my bag on the stool 2 feet from me   there is an amy winehouse video on no sound at least I think it is amy winehouse she is at a funeral black and white there is a stuffed bird slightly obscuring my view of the tv it looks like a kind of tall pigeon w/ mottled brown and russet with a white ringlet necklace and black dots is it a carrier pigeon I wonder I sent a text to jocelyn at standing rock several texts   are you still on the road ariana and i r gonna go out there in december sending love to you tried calling bt yr mailbox is full send a sign when u can xoxo howdy.  thinking of u w love. hope all is well.  send smoke signal telegram carrier pigeon  send love to my twospirits at the winyan camp.   last night we prayed for her and for zephyr and l. frank & the twospirits especially at standing rock there’s no sign of that struggle here but they are selling tshirts      commemorating the other and the six days of riots led by transwomen of color they later tried to whitewash in that      terrible movie like it was all these hot angry upright downright forthright white gays       so ready for the revolution  and now people are treating standing rock like burning man   a drink called goslings videos by the pigeon misaligned with the music the smell of booze in the air made both of us recoil slightly I saw or felt it   I’m here to make a poem I was already paid for when I had less than $2 in my bank account (and I joked I would go right to the bar and buy every- body drinks ) not even enough for a subway ride and I used the 58 cents I’d gotten for busking for the first time alone in the long hallway between the library at bryant park and the orange line trains by the ovid quote ‘gutta cavat lapidem’ water (or a drop of water really) hollows out a stone.   lapidum a stone or rock ariana once described cd wright’s style      as ‘lapidary’ I loved this as a description of writing like the hieroglyphics are literally lapidary and I told my grandmother about it as we were driving from mescalero to albuquerque she knew all about the plants and the names for all the rockforms mesas or buttes or ziggurats and I said how do you know all these she said by long observation and I used to study geology in college I wanted to major in it but they wouldn’t allow women to major in the hard sciences then so she began to study religion tho she already had medicine   ricky martin on the beach or is it someone younger sexier the grand canyon splitting apart is it an ad is it a video even the sands at the beach are bouncing with the beat the tempo has stayed very similar this whole time a tick up I suspect from 100bpm

Meditatio

Ezra Pound

When I carefully consider the curious habits of dogs,

I am compelled to admit

That man is the superior animal.

When I consider the curious habits of man,

I confess, my friend, 

I am puzzled.

Summer Night riverside

Sara Teasdale

1884 –1933

In the wild soft summer darkness How many and many a night we two together Sat in the park and watched the Hudson Wearing her lights like golden spangles Glinting on black satin. The rail along the curving pathway Was low in a happy place to let us cross, And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom Sheltered us, While your kisses and the flowers, Falling, falling, Tangled in my hair.... The frail white stars moved slowly over the sky. And now, far off In the fragrant darkness The tree is tremulous again with bloom For June comes back. To-night what girl Dreamily before her mirror shakes from her hair This year’s blossoms, clinging to its coils?

Strawberrying

May Swenson

1913 –1989

My hands are murder-red. Many a plump head

drops on the heap in the basket. Or, ripe

to bursting, they might be hearts, matching

the blackbird’s wing-fleck. Gripped to a reed

he shrieks his ko-ka-ree in the next field.

He’s left his peck in some juicy cheeks, when

at first blush and mostly white, they showed

streaks of sweetness to the marauder.

We’re picking near the shore, the morning

sunny, a slight wind moving rough-veined leaves

our hands rumple among. Fingers find by feel

the ready fruit in clusters. Here and there,

their squishy wounds . . . . Flesh was perfect

yesterday . . . . June was for gorging . . . .

sweet hearts young and firm before decay.

“Take only the biggest, and not too ripe,”

a mother calls to her girl and boy, barefoot

in the furrows. “Don’t step on any. Don’t

change rows. Don’t eat too many.” Mesmerized

by the largesse, the children squat and pull

and pick handfuls of rich scarlets, half

for the baskets, half for avid mouths.

Soon, whole faces are stained.

A crop this thick begs for plunder. Ripeness

wants to be ravished, as udders of cows when hard,

the blue-veined bags distended, ache to be stripped.

Hunkered in mud between the rows, sun burning

the backs of our necks, we grope for, and rip loose

soft nippled heads. If they bleed—too soft—

let them stay. Let them rot in the heat.

When, hidden away in a damp hollow under moldy

leaves, I come upon a clump of heart-shapes

once red, now spiderspit-gray, intact but empty,

still attached to their dead stems—

families smothered as at Pompeii—I rise

and stretch. I eat one more big ripe lopped

head. Red-handed, I leave the field.

Summer Stars

Carl Sandburg

1878 –1967

Bend low again, night of summer stars.

So near you are, sky of summer stars, So near, a long-arm man can pick off stars, Pick off what he wants in the sky bowl, So near you are, summer stars, So near, strumming, strumming,                 

So lazy and hum-strumming.