Cul-De-Sac

I’m going to holler into the darkness

pray someone answers me back

for the road is dark and made

of uneven cobblestone. The needles press against my skin

the hobos glare     children taunt     I walk

alone dropping pieces of skin

dead     mostly but I’m bleeding

tearing away at what can be seen

the epidermis is what causes trouble

dry and wet

cold and warm

sent out into the night.

I’m going to holler into the darkness

hope someone answers

everyone seems dead

or a million miles away.

Words go unanswered.

The SOS is kicked back into beach.

Sleep well into the darkness

I’ll be here     washing and wishing

things weren’t stacked so tall

things weren’t falling apart

I gave away all of my thread

the needles are under my skin

     a saw to check for my life

sifting and unable

to catch light.

Jennifer Taylor

When Looking at the Columbia River is Like Listening to God

I thought of suffocation

I thought of sebaceous oil and dirt in pores

And how last night you said
I broke you

It was the most truthful
phrase you had said in years

one axiom I could
believe because

I myself had thought it true
for years

Felt the cracking
these clicks inside me

severed moments
where I no longer told myself

There, there now
But instead said

Ok, then
and felt the fissures

the truth packed down
the air kicked out

So, along I-84
as my eyes flitted with exhaustion
and my lungs asked for air

I thought of oil and dirt in pores

I thought of suffocation

The Goddess and Her Ram

According to the stars
we only had a 50/50 chance of surviving
so I count it as a miracle
that we lasted this long. Perhaps the fire in you
could no longer stand
the dirty virgin of me and just set fire
to the whole thing
screaming     just stay.

I took a cue from you
and lit a match, but sinking it
into soil never made a blaze. You attained 
no bonfire in my perceived failure, only smoke. 
Your coward of a wheat harvest mistress 
is about small symbols of methodology
of waiting for the elements
to mate.

You lit your own match.
Your wild curled horns shone 
in the light
and in your blue irises.
The shed of potting soils and tools
ignited as you vomited up kerosene to feed
the slow determined waves
your back rolling
the flames growing large
over the smolder between my legs
the matchbook
between my teeth.

When you had finished heaving
the sirens coming in the wake
I wanted to hover over the clover
and take the burn instead but
my toes hooked in the soil.
I walked steady
hand lying open the fence with a howl
never looking from a Southward
direction. I let the matchbook
fall where it may.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

She Cannot Get

She cannot get

this close to the fire.

She wants to wander the edge of your blade

and run it down her arm

like she did the scissors

when disowned by her sister.

In her mother’s bathroom

she cried, hoped to pass out

or submerge the edge.

But she couldn’t let the blood come

a mother

with a liturgical life long

job to be present for the multitude of cells 
that turned into her child.

Her wrists are volleyballs for saints 

walking tightropes of dirty needles in twine.

No one is going to love her

like her father does.

Paned windows cut through her in Paris–

saints in colored glass, Jesus’ crown of thorns.

Held against the chest of her faith when she looks forward

is the thought: no one wants to hear these things. How

she wants to depart but can’t. How she lives

and the way it blisters.

Don’t talk to her about your desire

the way you should have been

the things you should have said.

You are refuse

blowing in the breeze

on the Rue du Chevalier

that blew up her dress

and went on your merry way.

Jennifer Miller McIntyre

Hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul"

"When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll; Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say, It is well, it is well, with my soul."

A Poem Too Good Not To Share

PACKET
by Jamie Ross

A green light that comes
when you never saw it coming, never
heard it, felt it, but you knew it

like the woman in the sandlot
behind Abram's Grill
who's just lost her lenses,
on her hands and knees, her
hair cut short but seems as if
it's flowing, and the rush
on her throat like a rise
from birth, the music in the car

as the engine goes silent
while you fold down a seat
for the stashed beam lantern
with it's yellow plastic grip, six
Ray-O-Vacs, the
movement in the trees
beyond Lake Michigan. It's

a wave like that
when the wind gets lost
and the mail-boat from Racine, three
hours late, cracks into a tanker,
where the crew, like you, has
waited on the decks, in the hold
for two months out, to send

a message home—or to get a
certain scent, for just one instant,
of weeds, in the dirt, the both

of you groping.

Wall Project

Records affixed to the wall with command poster strips.

Records: $.99 per record
Command adhesive: $1.84 per 8 pack.

= $7.64 plus taxes.

I am planning on adding two to four more records. I didn't realize how large the wall was!