In the Absence of Sparrows

By Daniel Johnson

Rockets concuss. Guns rattle off.
Dogs in a public square
feed on dead horses.

I don’t know, Jim, where you are.
When did you last see
birds? The winter sky in Boston

is gray with flu. Newspapers,
senators, friends, even your mom
on Good Morning America—

no one knows where you are.
It’s night, cold and bruised,
where you are. Plastic twine binds

your hands. You wait and pray, pray
and wait, but this is where the picture goes gray.
We don’t know, Jim, where you are.

In the absence of sparrows: a crowd of friends and family gather in Rochester,
New Hampshire to recite the holy rosary.

We keep your picture on the kitchen table, pack of American Spirits,
airplane bottle of Scotch, a copy of Krapp’s Last Tape.

Don’t get me wrong; we expect you back. Skinny, feral,
coffee eyes sunken but alive, you’ve always come back, from Iraq,

Syria, Afghanistan, even Libya after Gaddafi’s forces
captured and held you for 44 days. You tracked time scratching

marks with your zipper on prison walls, scrawling notes on cigarette
boxes, reciting the Koran with other prisoners. Then, you called.

DJ, it’s Jimmy…I’m in New Hampshire, brother! I wanted
to break your fucking nose. We ate lobster rolls, instead,

on a picnic bench by Boston Harbor. You made a quick round
of TV shows, packed your camera and Arabic phrasebook.

You skipped town on a plane to Turkey. We talked once. You said
you’d play it safe. The connection was lost.

In the absence of sparrows: American journalist James Foley disappeared
after being taken captive by armed gunmen near Aleppo, Syria on Thanksgiving Day.

In the absence of sparrows: our house burns blue with news.

Winter solstice, 1991. You turned donuts,
drinking beers, in a snowy public lot next to the lake.
Girls yelped. You cranked the Pixies louder, cut the lights,
and steered Billy’s grandma’s Chrysler onto the Winnipesaukee ice.
The moon flamed bright as a county coroner’s light.
You revved the station wagon’s engine. Billy tied
a yellow ski rope off the hitch, flashed a thumbs up,
and you punched the gas—5, 15, 20, 25 miles per hour—
towing Billy, skating in high-top sneakers,
across the frozen lake. Chill air filled his lungs.
Billy pumped his fist. You torqued the wheel left.
Triumphant, you honked and flashed the lights.
You took a swig of Heineken and wheeled
the wood-paneled station wagon in a wide-arcing turn
to pick up Billy, bloodied but standing. People do reckless things
but your friends dubbed you the High King of Foolish Shit.
The nose of Billy’s grandma’s Chrysler broke the ice.
You jammed it into reverse. Bald tires spinning,
you flung yourself from the car. In seconds, it was gone.
You gave Billy’s grandma a potted mum
and a silver balloon. Standing on her screened-in porch,
you mumbled an apology. What am I supposed to do now?
she asked. What the hell do I do now?

In the absence of sparrows: when falling snow, out the window, looks like radio waves,
your face appears, your baritone laugh.


August 31, 2004

We read Abbie Hoffman, 1968, watched Panther documentaries,
The Weather Underground, and packed our bandanas, first aid kits,
fat markers, maps and signs for New York City. A31, they called it,
a day of direct action, a time to heave ourselves on the gears

of an odious machine. We marched, drumming and chanting, half a million strong,
through the streets of Lower Manhattan. Worst President Ever, A Texas Village
Has Lost Its Idiot. Protestors carried a flotilla of flag-covered coffins.
We hoisted homemade signs and cried out, Whose streets?

Our streets? No justice, no peace! I’d packed sandwiches,
water, mapped restrooms along the parade route, inked
the hotline for Legal Services on your forearm and mine.
You, my wild half brother, packed only a one hitter, notepad, and pen.

When the parade snaked past the New York Public Library,
we peeled off to confront 20 cops in riot gear blocking entry
with batons drawn. We took position on the library steps.
Stone-still, inches from police, we held our signs

stamped with a student gagged by padlock and chain.
I could feel breath on my neck. We narrowly escaped arrest,
then streamed toward the Garden, a ragtag troop of 200.
We evaded barricades. Cut down alleys. At Herald Square, only

blocks from the Republican Convention, cops on mopeds
cut us off. They rolled out a bright orange snow fence,
hundreds of yard long, then zip cuffed us, one by one.
I called Ebele. You called your brother, set to be married in just three days.

His best man, you were headed to jail. “I’ll be there Friday for the golf outing,”
you vowed, a cop cutting your phone call short. They took you first.
Threw you on a city bus headed to Pier 14 on the Hudson,
a giant garage stinking of axel grease and gasoline. Stepping off the bus,

I scanned hundreds of faces staring through chain link, newly erected
and topped with concertina wire. I couldn’t find you. I can’t. They transferred me,
in soapy light, to the Tombs, Manhattan’s city jail, and freed me after 24 hours
to wander the streets. I peered in Chinese restaurants, seedy Canal Street bars,

called your cell phone from a payphone, trekked to Yago’s apartment
in Spanish Harlem, eager to crack beers, to begin weaving the story
we would always tell. You were not there. Waiting outside the Tombs,
I missed my flight home. Waiting, I smoked your cigarettes on the fire escape.

They held you and held you. You are missing still. I want to hold you. Beauty
is in the streets, my brother. Beauty is in the streets.

In the absence of sparrows: trash fires, a call to prayer. Dusk.
Rockets whistling, plastic bags taking flight.

In the absence of sparrows: all of a sudden, you appear. Standing before a cinder block
wall, you’re holding a video camera with a boom mic and wearing a bulletproof
vest.

In the absence of sparrows: the front page story says you’ve been missing since
November 22, 2012. Everything else it doesn’t say.

In the absence of sparrows: you simply wandered off, past the Sunoco, pockets stuffed.
The door to your apartment is open still—

Navigating in the Dark

By Erik Campbell

Papua, Indonesia

In this mining town in Papua the electricity
Has a habit of giving up at night, and this

Is a miracle of modern stasis, a secular Shabbat,
Reminding us of what is expendable, of how so few

Of us ever truly experience the dark. We are amazed,
My wife and I, with the heavy darkness

Of the no moon jungle, insect sounds lacerating
All illusions of silent places. “It’s so absolute,”

My wife says, and I like to think she means
More than the darkness; the naked places

Of ourselves we dress in sunlight, lamps,
And recorded music like antithetical

Blanche DeBois’s fearing a different sort
Of scrutiny. “We could pretend it’s 1940,”

I say, “put a Jack Benny tape on the short wave
And drink coffee, light candles.” She suggests

A walk outside instead, where there are dozens
Of others already out on paths bounded by jungle,

Stepping small and laughing loudly through various
Uncertainties; flashlights as eyes, ears like animals’.

Soon we are trying only to remember not to disappear
Altogether; everything is so absolutely, so darkly possible.

Evening Walk as the School Year Starts

By Sydney Lea

When was the last lobotomy, I wonder?
Too late for Carl at least, whom it’s all but hopeless
to think of as a whipsaw of hateful passion
that would if it could have torn up his mother and father,
mild as they are; but that’s how old villagers say
Carl acted before he was cut. Their smiles are rueful.
They shake their heads, subtle. A raven, unsubtle,
grates from a hemlock as Carl steps into sight.

His wave’s familiar: he jerks and drops one palm.
How old must he be? He’s ageless. His eyes are empty—
the operation. He turns now: ninety degrees,
then ninety again like a sentry, the other way.
He turns the same on each warm evening, retreating
past the house of our mutual neighbor, who will not speak
to Carl’s father, for reasons likely beyond recall.
It seems a shame not to edit grievances.

It’s some awful stink nearby that draws the raven,
but the rest of the world seems fixed on the morbid too:
a squirrel keeps pouring spruce cones down at me;
a gall-blighted butternut groans; the broadleafs wilt;
there’s a pair of toads at my feet that wheels have flattened
side by side, like cartoon icons of failure;
mosquitoes strafe me, a mammoth dragonfly—
one of the season’s last—attacks a moth

so close to me I can hear the fatal click.
The other day a son went off to college.
His mother and I are quietly beside ourselves.
We embrace each other harder now, and vow,
as one vows, to love our children harder too.
Though I hum to distract myself, the raven dives
loud as gunfire through brush to its mess. I jump,
but Carl doesn’t seem to hear. I watch him limp

to his family’s drive—then again that sure right angle.
Like him, our family finds a virtue in order:
we rise at six to eat our breakfasts together,
then make a certain sandwich for one of the girls,
a certain one for the other; we leave at seven;
we gather the girls promptly at end of school.
Carl opens his door and shuts it—click—behind him.
It’s after Labor Day, it’s end-of-summer,

it’s another season upon us. Now he scolds me,
that squirrel on his branch, his store of weapons gone.
Why me, dumb brute? I haven’t done anything wrong,
I’ve got no grievance with him—not with anyone really.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
The wishing star is not enough to light
the space around me while this bit of hymn from my schooldays
plays, while daytime’s creatures crawl to cover,

and night ones, having no choice, confront the night.

Almost like the blues

By Leonard Cohen

I saw some people starving There was murder, there was rape Their villages were burning They
were trying to escape I couldn’t meet their glances I was staring at my shoes It was acid, it was tragic It was almost like the blues

I have to die a little Between each murderous thought And when I’m finished thinking I have to die a lot There’s torture and there’s killing There’s all my bad reviews The war, the children missing Lord, it’s almost like the blues

I let my heart get frozen To keep away the rot My father said I’m chosen My mother said I’m not I listened to their story Of the Gypsies and the Jews It was good, it wasn’t boring It was almost like the blues

There is no G-d in heaven And there is no Hell below So says the great professor Of all there is to know But I’ve had the invitation That a sinner can’t refuse And it’s almost like salvation It’s almost like the blues

This poem was originally published in The New Yorker

To Be Of Use

By Marge Piercy

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

Hiking in Truro, Massachusetts

By Margaret Phillips
 
The Mayflower Saints may
have walked in this place
where I am walking
where I don’t know how to ask
the leaves or pines in the sandy ground
what happened here then
not study paragraph by paragraph but word
by word talk to someone who knew
those minutes in those days
yet here beside the spotted wintergreen
it just so happens I’m the only one
to hear my questions
I want to talk to the Wampanoag teacher
behind the black cherry bushes
to ask him
to tell about the stolen
corn the stolen seed corn stored
that year at Corn Hill
at what was to be known as
Corn Hill
as in the scene of the crime
where the seed corn was stolen from
it just so happens that I
have experience
fifteen hundred miles away
from this silent path — experience in Indiana with my grandfather’s
side business of selling seed corn
and with his small profit
buys his own seed
to grow corn to make silage
to feed his dairy cows
to keep his hundred and sixty acres
acres heavy with rocks that rise up
with the frost line each spring
to break the plow point
to freeze the hay rake gears in fall —
it just so happens that broken gear teeth
broken plow points are just the emergency
seed corn money can meet to feed
the hungry finances of a hundred and sixty acres
so it will not starve
it just so happens starving —
ask Bradford and his hungry men —
is only the stuff of time and place
In Indiana in my grandfather’s milk house
next to the cooling room is a smaller room
and behind the pasteurizer a windowsill
and on the windowsill a pasteboard box
and in the box large arrowheads
for deer
and smaller ones called
bird points and squirrel points
that rise up every spring in the clay
first cut turned over by the plow
my grandfather’s plow brings up an arrowhead
some young Potawattamee dropped
flint chipped and knapped long ago
in the nearby hamlet by his family’s lodge
if I could turn and bend agilely down
out of time out of place
I could catch the arrowhead he
dropped silently in the leaves could offer it back to him
and ask if he knew about the stolen corn
fifteen hundred miles away
it just so happens that the corn in Corn Hill
kept Bradford and his party
and the hungry enterprise alive
this boon needed to feed the babies
but stolen away from other babies
not in dire need but their children
shouldered out by the children
of the saved babies and
the Potawattamee boy who could not see
that his woods would give way to corn or clover
it just so happens eaten by cows not buffalo cows
but milk cows whose milk passes through
the pasteurizer in front of the door
to the windowed room with a pasteboard box
of arrow points in the windowsill if I could just stop
I could see my grandfather drop
his found arrowhead into his pocket I could take it
and reach out to hand it to the Wampanoag teacher
who speaks about disappearance
of seed corn an accompaniment to the just surviving
explorers to the sagging finances
of a small farm in Indiana or
on a path in Truro where
it just so happens lies
Corn Hill.

This was the 2014 winning poem selected by the Cape Cod Cultural Center.  

The Saga Of Market Basket: A Poem

By Carl Stevens

This is the tale of an awful schism
that rocked the cradle of capitalism:
a story of hatred, anger and greed;
a story of loyalty, envy and need;
a tree of contention with bad family roots; a room full of men who were counting their loot; a ship of a store that was tempest tossed; thousands of workers who just loved their boss.

Two cousins they were: Artie T, Artie S; their contention exploded in a terrible mess.
Artie S, full of the blaze that burns enmity, got control of the board and expelled Artie T!
But the workers rebelled, with their voices and feet; they walked off the job, and walked on the street.
Their paychecks were captive, but their hearts were free, as they yelled and they yelled:
 “Bring back Artie T!”

Market Basket shelves were empty and bare, and customers, loyal, just were not there.
Because of this determined insurrection, spider webs formed in the produce section.
Cereal, peaches, you just couldn’t get it; looking for bacon? granola? forget it!
Customers chose their side by just leavin'; parking lots were as empty as the stands in Cleveland.
The DeMoulas proud name limped on a bad leg.
You can’t piece together a broken egg.

This was for real; these workers weren’t fakin’, and the board was gored with a mess of their makin’.
For more than a month it went on that way when finally, just before Labor Day, the board said “enough, you win, we’ll go.”
And Artie T was again the C.E.O.

The shelves will be full, customers will return, and through it all, I think, we have something to learn:
a boss can be more than a name on the door.
He can be heart, and soul, and something more.
When he respects workers, they don’t walk away.
Maybe that’s the message this Labor Day.

If You Get There Before I Do

By Dick Allen

Air out the linens, unlatch the shutters on the eastern side,
and maybe find that deck of Bicycle cards
lost near the sofa. Or maybe walk around
and look out the back windows first.
I hear the view's magnificent: old silent pines
leading down to the lakeside, layer upon layer
of magnificent light. Should you be hungry,
I'm sorry but there's no Chinese takeout,
only a General Store. You passed it coming in,
but you probably didn't notice its one weary gas pump
along with all those Esso cans from decades ago.
If you're somewhat confused, think Vermont,
that state where people are folded into the mountains
like berries in batter. . . . What I'd like when I get there
is a few hundred years to sit around and concentrate
on one thing at a time. I'd start with radiators
and work my way up to Meister Eckhart,
or why do so few people turn their lives around, so many
take small steps into what they never do,
the first weeks, the first lessons,
until they choose something other,
beginning and beginning their lives,
so never knowing what it's like to risk
last minute failure. . . .I'd save blue for last. Klein blue,
or the blue of Crater Lake on an early June morning.
That would take decades. . . .Don't forget
to sway the fence gate back and forth a few times
just for its creaky sound. When you swing in the tire swing
make sure your socks are off. You've forgotten, I expect,
the feeling of feet brushing the tops of sunflowers:
In Vermont, I once met a ski bum on a summer break
who had followed the snows for seven years and planned
on at least seven more. We're here for the enjoyment of it, he said,
to salaam into joy. . . .I expect you'll find
Bibles scattered everywhere, or Talmuds, or Qur'ans,
as well as little snippets of gospel music, chants,
old Advent calendars with their paper doors still open.
You might pay them some heed. Don't be alarmed
when what's familiar starts fading, as gradually
you lose your bearings,
your body seems to turn opaque and then transparent,
until finally it's invisible--what old age rehearses us for
and vacations in the limbo of the Middle West.
Take it easy, take it slow. When you think I'm on my way,
the long middle passage done,
fill the pantry with cereal, curry, and blue and white boxes of macaroni, place the
checkerboard set, or chess if you insist,
out on the flat-topped stump beneath the porch's shadow,
pour some lemonade into the tallest glass you can find in the cupboard,
then drum your fingers, practice lifting your eyebrows,
until you tell them all--the skeptics, the bigots, blind neighbors,
those damn-with-faint-praise critics on their hobbyhorses--
that I'm allowed,
and if there's a place for me that love has kept protected,
I'll be coming, I'll be coming too.

Bookface

By Aaron Tieger 

Your profile pic gives me pangs
in old places. It’s different
when it’s psychic. Here today your
bikini like twin
suns reflecting black
back – I don’t know
what I’m thinking but aren’t
we in Scorpio
yet? Friendcull,
photopang, ride
that old whip you
made me recall some dreams, if you knew
I was writing this you’d freak

Aaron Tieger's poems have appeared in many small press magazines and books. His newest book, Chaos Flowers, is forthcoming from Skysill Press. Formerly the publisher of Carve Poems and Petrichord Books, he has recently launched the online poetry space Throg Sludge. He works as a mental health counselor and lives in Cambridge, MA.

Door

By Mairead Byrne

When you left
it was as if
one wall of the house
was taken down.

I walked out
through that large door
into the carnival
world.

childish gambino is a white rapper

By Childish Gambino

i wanna be a white rapper.
i wanna be so white i'm the biggest rapper of all time.
i wanna be so white i can have a number one song with cursing and parents are fine with it.
i wanna be so white and so big i get eat dinner with the koch brothers.
i hope I’m so big and white i can go to clippers games and it not be a statement.
i hope I’m so white they let my friend out of jail sooner.
i hope I’m so big and white my cousin wasn’t shot and stabbed twice in the neck twice last month.
i wanna be so big. so white.
i wanna be so big and and so white that white dads feel comfortable sending their daughters,
who are home for the summer from Stanford, to my show.
and after the performance they come hang with me on my bus and we smoke and then we fuck to young dro
and she holds my face in her hands and her eyes roll back in her head.
then she goes home and her dad says “how was the show?” and she says “it was fun. they had lasers.”
i hope i become so big and and so white that G-Eazy will say “damn, this nigga is white” and everyone will agree and nod.
i want to be so big and white that people are scared. “what if this spreads?
what if everyone starts to get big and white? what if this works for everyone and everyone can experience this whiteness and this bigness?”
i hope i become too big and too white.
but i am just a black male.
i am a nigga

This poem was originally published as a series of tweets. 

Look out

By Ian House

For now the city's at peace. The sniper's rifle
is upright between his knees, his hands
are soothed by the barrel and he's posted
in an armchair at a crossroads
among dangling balconies, torn-off dresses,
jagged whisky bottles, sandbags, dolls
and listens to vanished disco tunes.
Coffee is a memory he tastes and smells.
He knows, he knows, the cafes will re-fill
with statesmen, poets, astronomers, good-time girls;
there will be public worship, evening strolls,
bookshops, bakeries, banana splits
and table scraps that can be left for dogs.

slant

By Claudio Roberto Veale
i lift up words 
and place them 
holding each thinness
each flat square
thinking nothing
of meaning
and everything 
of intent.

Claudio Roberto Veale lives with his family in South Texas.