Lisa Rogal
SEPTEMBER
Sometimes you’re beautiful I
miss you you fast talking fox
fast tail of summer
see you pass
me by in the glass of the discount candy
store that now sells liquor
when I was a kid I went to the back
of Junction Pharmacy
where they still sold brown paper
bags filled with glass bottles and sat
on the cracked stools
spun in all directions to have a coke
float with my dad & on
the way out he said
“Can I get a packa reds
son” (if the cashier was a kid
“sir” if he wasn’t)
then he’d tuck the red
& white rectangle
in the cuff of his acid
washed jeans so he
could ride his skinny
bike home — me on back
at first & later on my own —
through alleyways up to Frick
Park & down again
to the house where I assume
I wash up for dinner
but sometimes we walk
to Ryan’s Pub & he orders
a scotch with water — let’s me discover
credit cards coins toothpicks
loose pills in his leather jacket pockets
smell like smoke & cool
water — obsession — one of those —
a burger with cheese for me
& him “pastrami on rye, darlin” — to the waitress —
“boss” — to the waiter.
In September the weather’s still
nice enough for bikes & coke
floats & walks
but soon it’s over
summer’s tail a whip
a real stinger
“just be
cool”
Dad says
when we do something
a little wrong — “this is only
technically illegal”
& I — the great
rule follower —
hesitate
“Oh arrest me, come arrest me — ”
he yells waving
his dark arms
until I have
to walk away
to shut him up.
September yellows everything
yellow the color he chose
to meditate on
for a thousand years
forever under a yellowing
oak in Homewood
Cemetery where
deer eat the grass he’s grown
all fall unknowingly
or knowingly — unthinkingly
unblinkingly indifferently or differently
the days before Death come
are sucked into Death’s orbit
a brilliant bomb
strokes of light glisten
in one last gulp of life
“I’d rather burn
out, honey — need that kick
in the chest” but —
when Death’s so near
licking your ear
don’t ya’ just wilt
under Her awful stare.
SHIPS BY CATHERINE MURPHY
I have a scarf like this. It belonged to my grandmother. She was rich. Silk and cashmere. Handmedowns that never die. I make things about myself — that’s rich. Maybe that’s why she won’t return my calls — I set a boundary around her chickens it was a fence. The ships carried people poor and rich. Poor in spirit. Rich in resource. They were plundered for their bodies and their land. Their minerals ran black rivers down the spine — the rich ones shuddered at the touch of pure resource. They left their chicks and kitchens — animals waiting for the feed. It’s gray and looming on the ocean — liner in the loamy sea — bodies waft — a funeral of waves. Could be they float forever. My grandmother went in a wall with her nice clothes. She didn’t want to keep. She was afraid to die. Her red hair olive skin went with — she was a Jew. Her mother a secret goy who ran away with a Jewish boy. No one knows who she was — but she was rich and from Virginia. So many bodies gone black in the water. Ships ships ships full of shit. Full of immigrants like my grandmother’s father who came from Portugal — going back and back of course because he couldn’t come from Portugal — they sent him away and none of them even spoke a language he could remember. He was tall and dapper. He made money somehow. No one told me how. So my grandmother was rich. And I am a little rich too. I have a house and garden and a box of silk scarves. They might cover my face for pain or pleasure. The power of the powerful is not real power — she showed me her secret power. Real local power. A crockpot full of it. Muscle and gyre. The richness of the ocean — its salt and crab — its bitter kiss.
Lisa Rogal is a poet and teacher living in Brooklyn, NY. She is the author of la belle indifference (Cuneiform Press), Feed Me Weird Things (Ugly Duckling Presse), Morning Ritual (United Artists Books), and The New Realities (Third Floor Apartment Press). Her writing has most recently appeared in Copenhagen and Hurricane Review. She is co-editor of Long News Poetry & Poetics.
