Blues Bix

wouldn't stay in
school but went
out to the docks
in Davenport
listened to the

long shore men
singing and
talking. His
father sent him
to Chicago.

it didn't help,
he heard Louis
Armstrong,
played in bars.
White guy with a

horn. Blues in
the butter. Died
of booze before
hitting 30, the
light on his horn,

the moon, a bottle.

--Lyn Lifshin
from Free Lunch, issue #25

Butterly: Upon Mistyping“Butterfly“
(For X.)

I love you butterly, butterly woman,
who melts in my mouth.
My margarine life is over, thanks to you.

I’ve never been betterly, butterly one.
Such a spread you are, the best spread,
there before me! I’m toast.

Seeing your hair fan out butterly on a pillow
fattens my feelings.
I want you butterly,
that badly, by the stick,
I want you in a dish,
crystal, from Waterford.

And I love you at room temperature,
a little soft, perfectly responsive
to the slightest touch.

What price butterly?
Only fools ask.
That the heart can pay and pay
and the butterly still be free
is a butterly mystery.

So let’s be butterly together,
the basic ingredient
for a sauce extraordinaire.
We’ll pour ourselves everywhere

Churning and churning,
not bitterly, no,
but butterly shall we go.

—Philip Dacey
from Free Lunch, issue #26

Making a Brouse Bed

You’ve reached the end of daylight, and now each step
You take in the woods is even more unlikely
To be right than those you spent
Changing your mind and direction
Under the sun. So having nothing
Ready-made to sleep on, you make a bed.
The earth and your body both have hidebound views
On territorial rights: not giving in
When they meet, either of them,
So you strip the most thickly needled branches
From the lowest limbs and shingle them, one tier
After another tier, the length of you,
And caulk them with bushy ends. All of them curved
Upward once, angling for light,
So now you turn them down like natural springs.
You’ve made your bed. Now you must lie in it
As cautiously as an invalid, interfering
As little as possible with the shape
Of things to come, and settle down for the night.
You may add a comfort
From what you’ve gathered beside you—the dead leaves
And stems, the spindrift of flowers and ferns,
The drying cast-offs of the forest floor—
And spread them over you against the quivering
And the chill, which are sure to come. What happens to you
Then is, loosely speaking, falling asleep
As you accept the shelter of your eyelids
And, look, even before you know how to panic
In those deeper woods on fire behind your forehead,
You smother the light by closing your mind’s eye.

—David Wagoner
from Free Lunch, issue #27

The Art of Losing It

I had an idea how this should start
but I lost it.
And I lost the words to describe how everyone of
my friends is lost
so many
they outnumber the lost tribes of Israel
(which women are now saying got lost because none
of the men would ask for directions
“Turn right at the first ziggurat,
you can’t miss it.”)
Sorry, I just lost my train of thought. Oh yes,
my friends are all lost.

John writes that he is lost in the Midwest
Bill can’t seem to find himself,
Jim lost his wife, Jill lost her husband to another woman,
Dick tells me he lost his youth,
Carl is losing his mind or his job
(I seem to have lost his letter)
and Charley is slowly losing it
while Pete gapes into the refrigerator
remembering the term
“memory loss.”
They are not alone (my friends).
I turn on the radio and a preacher tells me
we are all lost
and we better find Jesus
whom I presume is also lost and won’t ask for directions.
I read that 90% of matter in the universe is unaccounted for.
In other words, it’s lost. Lost worlds, lost continents, lost horizons,
lost weekends...
Am I losing you?
I’ve lost so many.
Mother, father,
sister, brother,
friends...sometimes thinking about loss I lose
my sense of humor.
And no, I will not ask for directions. I’ve lost my faith in people
who give directions. I believe only in those little
maps with an arrow pointing to the words:

You Are Here!

—Frank Murphy
from Free Lunch, issue #28

Knowing

We position blame thick enough
to embosk us. Shave your beards,

uncover your heads, turn against
your god that we might feel safe

again in dust-to-dust days when cheeks
are too choked with ash for turning.

In a year or more the knowledge
will still be there, but softened with

the debris of living, vines of ivy
on stone castle walls. We will know,

but forget, when forgetfulness
becomes easier for us than blame.

Two days later, we talk of pacifism
and hatred, blame, serendipity,

cruelty. We have seen the flames
too often already, from fresh angles

with new amateur screamings.
Pinsky will say that poetry may not

have words for this, but that will not
stop the poets from attempting

to scribe apocalypse. And I,
the solar-plexus-twisted poet

l repeat all those people
softer with each viewing, until

only your shirt hears me, then
the fabric, then the thin, thin thread.

—Ruth E. Foley
from Free Lunch, issue #29

heavy set women

They carry too much
for their hearts,
heaving slowly
up stairs
or gliding
smooth as ships
through stores
and parking lots,
these women
from a different family,

not my lineage
of thin women,
a well-indoctrinated
stricter set
who hate the code,
break it and atone,
but keep the infractions few
and in check.

I stare at them
like a rude child,
the big women
at simple tasks,
how their hands
take more time
folding or smoothing
a cloth, napkin, letter—
feeling texture,
prolonging, it seems,
with head aslant
and smile, some secret
pleasure in tenderness.

—Molly Hunter Giles
from Free Lunch, issue #30

“The World and Life Are One”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Dear loving and beloved, though my pace
is growing slow, I ask you not to cry.

As I go forward into dying, the world
is slowing from its fury to a crawl.

A film is forming on the silver moon,
promising the end of tides, romance.

Nothing now can rescue Newton’s laws.
When finally my breath ceases, they will lapse.

Now that the world is ending, I can speak
the uttermost of love and not hold back.

I don’t expect to speak from another world.
This is my only world—don’t wait for word.

As I embraced the world, so it did me.
As it of me, so I of it, will soon be free.

—Richard P. Richte
from Free Lunch, issue #31

This Is a Story That Someone Is Trying to Remember
(After Valerie and Ed Smallfield)

If I can

I will tell you of the deer dying in the yard and starved pullets
that wander in circles in the snow &

how I need to find the place they scattered my father’s bones &
to hear my mother’s final words.

If I ever can,

I will tell you again of my need to caress my first wife &
not be thinking, “Would Gloria take me back as I was?”

When I remember,

I might tell you volumes of lies that disguise faces & florid afternoons with wine &
sesame cakes & visits from ... but

chances are slim & the train will leave soon & before I go
I wish you well &

warn you of the blizzard that will come in the night (as it will) &
the family that eroded as some do &

the marriage that was doomed & the evil that kids do
to one another &

if you remember to tell this story as it was told,

I will send you a letter with a number & a key & when you find what you are looking for

maybe you will remember me.

—Roger Aplon
from Free Lunch, issue #32

The Heroine Has She Lived

Her lover’s been transformed by years.
He’s dark-skinned now, and wears
green scrubs. She can’t remember where
she left the other, the one she swore

she’d die to marry, as the third act
turned sour. This one lifts her
with a lover’s voice more than brute
force, so she sits upright in the chair

and takes her gruel, this bland fare
blended beige like decades. And that other,
blended no doubt into soil and air
she can’t remember. Was it somewhere

before the final scene, she put memory
away, as not being worth the grief?

—Taylor Graham
from Free Lunch, issue #33

Another Statistic

After a few days on non-consummation
their vows seemed like wasted dreams.

Damn! his manhood had been mostly
washed away by drugs and nasty sex.

Then, when he was downsized at work, he felt
that he was getting smaller daily, inch-by-inch.

So quicker than the Ali Shuffle he took up boxing,
designating wife as punching bag,

while she became a skillful pitcher of their dishes,
frying pans, and pointed silverware.

When she couldn’t take it anymore,
she vanished like a slick magician’s trick—

then miraculously reappeared as a divorce decree
delivered by a process server.

(He agreed to sign after some gangsta-ly
persuasion by her Herculean sons.)

At a party afterwards she proclaimed her
maiden name again, like a winning lottery ticket.

—Don Ryan
from Free Lunch, issue #34

Killing My Mother

My grandmother didn’t want
any more children. So she took
these long, green pills
which were supposed to poison
the fetus. She had done it
six times before and it always worked.
A few days after taking a series of pills—
one in the morning, one with lunch,
two before dinner—her uterus contracted
and she delivered lumps of flesh and bone.
Lumps that looked like fists.

There was a spot by the barn
where she buried them. Then she went
back to cleaning and feeding the kids
she already had.

It’s just the way things were back then,
says my mother almost without resentment,
but I simply wouldn’t die. She didn’t die
even though the left side of her heart
turned out to be smaller than the right.
Even though at the base of her left ventricle
lies a thin scar from a heart attack
she suffered in the womb. Even though
because of it she has never been able to run
or lift heavy objects. Still. The pills came
at her like bullets and she dodged them all,
getting away with only a scratch.
You’ve been difficult to get rid of
even before birth, I say, trying to cut
the tension. My mother forces a smile.
And here’s the kicker, she says,
the pills actually made your grandmother ill.
She foamed at the mouth and had seizures.
She became so fragile she had to stay in bed
until I was ready to come out.

And I bet early that Tuesday morning
when my mother was ready to come out
and my grandmother’s second mouth
in a primal scream gave birth to her,
all the tiny fists by the barn slowly unclenched
and applauded.

—Yasbel Fernandez-Acuna
from Free Lunch, issue #35

Intermezzo

In her youth my grandmother, as Chandler’s
Marlowe might quip, was worth a stare;
she was trouble. A fever of hips and lips.
She knew the steps to the tarantella.

My grandfather, off the ship,
pursued her like a one-man gypsy caravan.
From Ellis Island to Chicago,
he followed the girl with the cocked eyebrow.

If the Mafia squired their wives
to the opera—Saturday nights, the Gennas
had twelve seats at the Auditorium
Opera House—then that’s where he took

Sophia. She wore hats. She wore veils.
They went dancing, and he pulled odd jobs
to pay the bills. That’s what you did.
Whatever it took. Fruit peddler. Day laborer.

A man learned the moves. A woman looked
him over. Six months, a year at most.
Then the delicatessen days were over.
He’d bought the package, and she

was overdue. The tambourine drops.
The hard wood floor. A long pause—five, ten,
twenty-five years—the last of the children gone,
the shoes stretched a whole size larger,

the woman in the mirror, hair turning,
looks back, just once, over her shoulder;
down a long, narrow hall, a ghostly figure sweeps
in a three-step, twirls, disappears.

—Priscilla Atkins
from Free Lunch, issue #36

Heart’s Forest

When I looked again, everything made of wood
in that simple room—the table, chairs, the floor itself—
was opening. I could see into the darkness of the grain

and begin to find my way among those involutions
kept secret for so long. Beneath this quickening,
like the surface of lake waters scarred by the wind,

some hidden element was rising, changing to sacrifice
for flame unseen, fire still to come. There were those
in my youth who knew all manner of trees and wood,

who could stroke the bark and know the grain beneath,
what lay below the skin – whether the plank would be
close-grained or open. From one fledgling tree to the next

they might go, searching through ironwood and maple,
butternut and acacia, puzzling out the shadows
of dowels, barrel staves, and dulcimers enfolded

among the leaves. So it is now. I look through books,
or back through events or the tangle of past years,
and find no pattern – yet still I know the sudden freeze

of wood, in a strange room, or a passageway floored
with quartersawn oak. There is this subtle movement
where the grain comes together, and when it unfolds,

showing itself, revealing something that is indemnified
from all transiency, all change. Texture that was once,
that is now, and that will be again, in the smoke’s rising.

—Jared Carter
from Free Lunch, issue #38