Issue 12 – Poetry

Michelle Kubilis
Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned

They say that whiskey
is Devil’s juice,
but that night, I mistook
it for holy water.

By the end,
I was crucified and nailed
to the couch,
like a sweaty rag doll.

There was a time
we loved suitcases. Our young bodies
hiked in whatever city
had a train station. No thought
of fatigue, obstreperous bowels
or a bad knee.

But now the plane has landed,
and we shuffle through long lines
that never existed before. We hoist
luggage from the merry-go-round.
For the first time in all our journeys,
we are glad to return. We admit this
with some reluctance, shoulders aching
from hauling overstuffed bags.

Our house is unfashionable,
modest, the yard speckled
with weeds, the furniture
ghosted with a thin layer
of dust, sighing and settling.

We have slept in attic apartments
in Rome, up a hundred steps in Florence,
mosquitoes humming in our ears
all night from the Arno. We have seen
the Tiber, the Pope, and a tower
that leans but never falls.

But here at home,
dandelions breathe puffballs
in the brightening wind,
the plumbing works,
our brains relax into
a blunt Anglo-Saxon tongue,
and a coffee pot waits.

Francesca Brenner
We Drive Toward the Fire

We drive toward the fire
chugging Coors
my beard flecked with drought-dust
sweat drying salt-crust
by your exposed bra
brotherly love rockin’ from 90.5 FM
like blowback through our open windows

Toward the crack in the windshield
you point, green nails
chewed to the pink,
the yellow film of smoke-fire
spreading over the empty sky
blood seeping over the eye of the sun

You state the central valley
was once an ocean
that if we had to we could ditch the car
and last a week without water
staunch and prophetic, like you graduated
middle school

I flick my eyes off the road
the sun’s forecast miraging
the watering hole we never reach
your black enamel hair
snapping like a salute
like Shit, officer, I was not speeding
while she was giving me head

Once, tired of hearing the
fan belt of your last word
I used my knife
just below your clavicle
to convince you of my point
it sealed in a glossy lump of skin
you tattooed around it
the scar a shooting star
night with lightning and driving rain
called it your wedding announcement

When I don’t hate you I love you
shackle myself to that blue vein
in your neck. God’s country
a swampy sea I lick and
want over and over again

This is how we’ve made it
without killing each other
like a rigor mortis joke
like the ten dollars we
buried with our partner
six feet under
out in the middle of Desert Hell
a hundred miles back
the rest of his share soon
our waterfront property
stretched out on the horizon
of Crescent City

I hear you two are “trying.”
Was it a shock to hear that babies
come easier to those
who do not care so much?

Don’t you just dread that word
“barren,” a medieval curse begging
modern science for a cure,
lingering like a plague.

You will begin to understand
the idea of gambling
at the casino for reproduction.
You will spend time at the slots.

Hold your breath,
pull the handle down.
Cross your fingers,
open your legs,
spend your savings.

It becomes an obsession,
dreadful to stop just before a win.

I remember the clinic:
they laid me out and tried
to find a royal flush in my ovaries,
my womb withholding what my heart desired.

I developed luck-enhancing rites.
Have you stood on your head
after lovemaking yet?
Consulted a palm reader?

At the slots, younger players stand next to you,
thinking only of the body’s sweet desires,
drinking, laughing, and showing no respect.
They don’t want the jackpots they so easily win
and you may have the luck to redeem.