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WHITE WEDDING
I thought jelly fish were lungs. Spirits
of men who had drowned. When I stepped
aboard the ships, I checked the bunks—
looked for the rind of a lime or a journal that trembled
with dust. I found a smeared wax-dripped page,
memorized and punched soft by a pestle moon.
I’ve forgotten all my grammar, my ciphers and my
codes. I can’t recall if Caliban is real, or a fish
Grandma boiled down to soothe my scratchy throat.
I will resist the temptation to be straight, Love. When
I arrive next Thursday in my wedding dress and you
call my name across the blue ripples of wave that hiss
like breakfast butter, I’ll not hesitate. I will
release the tattered map that I borrowed and tucked
inside my garter. My white ballerina slippers will tap
like gulls on the wide plank that connects you to me.
You have promised that below, lung men will
suck and stir the water into batter to make our wedding
cake. It is to be shared with all the ghosts who would
have attended but remembered in time to offer regrets.
Laurie Byro
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ON LOVE AND SONG AND DEATH
(as ever, for PMD)
I’ve failed to concede the half-life of grief,
believing, naively, that it must end,
or, at the very least, begin to fade,
as it had done after my parents’ deaths.
Instead, I hear an endless loop of songs—
joyous bits restored— a requiem of love.
Melody, tragedy— mingling for love.
Most operas burst with loud melodic grief.
Carmen, blasé, spurns Don José’s last song;
His blade ensured her waited, fated end.
Sopranos revel in their onstage deaths—
the music swells, the lights discreetly fade.
The day they sang your mass will never fade;
a Jew, well-armed with thirty years of love,
I called five priests about my lover’s death,
incensed by their indifference to my grief,
till one enlightened Jesuit saw an end
to our impasse, and grasped the psalm we’d sung.
The Bach Chorale, the poignant Handel songs,
the organ postlude, artfully to fade,
at last could bring anxiety to end,
as music’s classic monuments to love
now lost, gave voice to disconsolate grief,
relieved the cruel exigence of death.
Enduring the one never-dreamt-of death,
I weep my way through melancholy song,
deplete what must be nearly all my grief.
As new loss comes, the need to mourn must fade,
though not, of course, the endless need to love,
the constant which, alone, can never end.
Some day, (please God, quite distant!) life will end—
Delicious as it’s been, one can’t cheat death.
Until we pass, we crave the balm of love,
continuing to hear its siren song,
a craving which, with luck, will never fade,
throughout the toll of years and loss and grief.
And yet, despite grief and predestined death,
warmth, which could end, as time deletes old songs,
never really fades, when there has been love.
Mitchell Geller (EDowson)
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a good day to die
(i)
September in Wisconsin
is like spent wood
burning; living near
the Chippewa river
where final letters are written,
hunger is fed its last supper
and breezes cross river water
as softly as a woman’s failing breath
at the bottom of her hour
(ii)
by Friday I want her
kneaded into rye,
set on a warm window sill
covered with a damp towel,
allowing her to rise
by morning
(iii)
by Sunday she couldn’t see
me anymore; it was raining
and I watched my words,
pale as newsprint,
running together;
being no longer useful,
I threw them away
(iv)
a blue carnation,
white chrysanthemums;
all relative, withering
in lieu of last rites
Tim J. Brennan (68degrees)
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