‘Day of the Dead’ by Stacey Johnson Donovan

    
    

1

Burying a person you love, actually doing the work,

gives you a capable feeling like baking bread.

So what if the spirit remains to flicker around

the bones.  It doesn’t mind the dirt like we do.

What if the ghost of the heart keeps beating.

Good.  Heart burning like a holy bush,

heart sweet as an orange stuck full of cloves,

heart calm, blue eyes unblinking.

See a flat skunk broil on the highway.

Watch the news.  Carry the body on

your shoulders.  Burn it with roses,

put it in the ground with rice and wine.

Don’t worry.  Heart sequined like Christmas.

It knows what to do.  Even when you’re dead,

when life may always hang over your head

for the sake of ritual and mystery. 

But being left alone is another thing.

Walking back home at night with a cup

of bitter beer you carry beneath your shirt—

it sloshes on your shirt, it has a few

bugs and leaves in it.  You’ll finish it.

You may keep on drinking it for years.

You may never forget how it used to be.

2

Death changes with climates.  In such a hot country

decay is so quick that there seems less to fear.

And thirst so rampant.  Tiny clay skulls

for the earlobes are charming.  Sugar skulls

for the children.  It’s hard to laugh at malice

but you laugh at what happens to everyone,

like you laugh at love, and know it’s serious.

A woman who knew she wanted to kill herself

suddenly wondered if she’d have the energy.

That made her grin.  The ones who kill themselves

have their own place to go.  It’s not heaven.

It’s dark, cold, but romantic in its way.

In a dark room, but alive, and drunk, dressed up

for someone and sweating, leaning out a window

to look down at the alley where gamblers hunch

with the dice that give off sparks when thrown.

Or you straddle the chair in front of the fan

before you get up for more, transistor, battered

flamenco guitar.  Dancing’s a matter

of life and death.  You feel them both at once.

Someone said, You need good memories

to keep you occupied through all the dead’s

long boring afternoons.  Do all you can.

(published in Grand Street 45, 1993)

'World’s Fair' by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

   

April 17, 1990, while listening to Ray Bradbury

              They were

                 architecture,

            they were cities of the

                     future and

                I was

                   dedicated

                       to building

               them and from

                    the lessons I

                     learned

            I tell

                this old story,

               I’ve told

                   it hundreds of times,

           Never

              tear up the future again,

                   Never listen to fools.

            The love pays back.

          If you love King Kong above

                 all the apes in the world

                         you’ll be hired,

                    just look at me

                                I am an

                             amalgam of loves.

(published in Grand Street 45, 1993)

'Collage: Murder Mystery' by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

    
    
                                        An eight year old boy.

                           Exclusive photos:  two brothers:

           How do you plan an accident?

                              One went to Harvard,

     he possesses an intelligence

Dr. Owens said, the other went to hell:

           he’s adapting....it is difficult to

 believe, he was tried three times.  After dozens of

         witnesses, Arthur doesn’t drink booze

  or gamble         he remains wary of men.

             For weeks no one would have thought

                   of a huge prehistoric mammoth, all we found

were clumps of gray animal fur.  Santiago couldn’t keep

       his big mouth shut, so no one would believe him, he was

           convicted of second degree murder, a few footprints

                   in Northern Mississippi, our perseverance

       nearly wasn’t enough:

               Arthur was in his final year of law school, it

      paid off, he took a job so he could help his brother,

           he found a tooth,

                       and it seems it would allow him

   to get the conviction overturned, to let his brother

                 be conscious of his mistakes,

                                  his three daughters, his own

         existence.  He seems

to be reasonably intelligent, sincere in wanting

               the things we learn, to get his

                     life in order and save himself.

  He says I think these things belong

       to all mankind.  Arthur Stratton Jr. said

                 he would donate the rare fossil

                            to a natural history museum.

(published in Grand Street 45, 1993)

'Coastline' by Hugh Behm-Steinberg

    

    

                               how we can be made out of stone

         or resemble an ancient coastline...

in the blink of the brightness,

              look at the land around us, how the sky

    gets to us, height and distance —

                           there’s so much to be desired,

it’s like drowning:

                                           the regret of drowning

                                   is the loss

                          of a narrow escape,

                  as men can do,

        lying out in the sun

                      when they’ve been drinking

                               and the light on the current

 is a line between us and the unreachable:

                                   when we sleep on the beach,

                      we do so out of faith,

    in our dreams we believe

                  in the chance to escape,

                                         to be pushed off into

                           nothing like a bird, a flying fish

              gulping, an undertow around

                                each ankle, an angel,

                        a welder on a bridge

    we float under

                    waving.

(published in Grand Street 54, Fall 1995)