Blindsight
 
A blind man walks an obstacle course
without bumping into a thing
 
they call it blindsight
when the brain interprets
what the eye doesn’t know it sees
 
like telescopes picking up light specks from space
or computers processing data for years
unattended except by spiders
 
who if they could read would know that at 11:47 am
a new planet was discovered
moving away from Earth at great speed
 
covered in things that look like cities


* Vanessa Gebbie is author of Words from a Glass Bubble and contributing editor to Short Circuit, a Guide to the Art of the Short Story (both Salt Publishing). www.vanessagebbie.com 

Tourist Season

we’d sit by the lake and he’d tell me stories
of the places he’d been, with convoluted names like
“Nebraska” and “Mississippi”
the difference in the way one pronounces “Kansas”
and “Arkansas.” The people in his stories
were as exotic as the places they lived—men
who cut sheet metal into animal silhouettes
bent spades into birdhouses and
turned old train cars into hotels.
I wanted to badly to be with him in Colorado
to stand in the exact spot where four state lines met
to take a small rubber raft over rocks and dangerous rapids
and survive it all. He kept saying, Next time, next time, I promise.
Next time.”

I waited by the lake for him to come and get me
waited with my suitcase packed, ready to leave
visions of Indianapolis burning holes in my brain
but he never came back to get me, never took me away.


* Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies and Walking Twin Cities.

The Mother*

The woman who gave birth to me said
Stop playing around, you’re worse than the cat

So she took a bat and hit me
Over the head and kicked me
With her legs and fists
And threw a knife in the air

But only to warn me
Never to behave that way again

Days passed and years as well
Small wounds do still ache and swell
So she took the world and slipped me
Some pills, matches and lit me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Gay Piano

My little thumb numb crawling up your bum
I want you to make me pop pop popular

Manoeuvre my tongue through your lung
Like an anchor not down to your knees
But nearer to your peen
The stirring sound of delicate pubes testickled

Where I would not close an eye
Not sleep a wink but play you
Like the gay piano you are
Pinky pink all numb crawling up yours


* Bio(degradable):
A Child was born the day her mother left their family home in anger, threatening to move back to grandma’s house, leaving her and her father standing on the porch. Staring fearfully, she turned to her daddy and asked: “Do you know how to cook?”

* The Mother was first published in Poetry Showcase online.

A bit of topical comment here by regular IS&T contributor Jonathan Pinnock – most people in the UK who watched last week's Question Time of BBC TV will recognise who this poem is about...

Oxygen

Give him the oxygen of publicity:
watch him hyperventilate.
Give him more than he can breathe:
watch his fat face grow.
See his body gorge and bloat,
then watch as he explodes.

All it takes
is a little prick.

Zombie Vision
 
A tv is simply, for those who doubt
paralysis in a little black box
a magic frame that teases and unlocks
the world in all its sonambulant charms
electronic pulse that baits and cajoles
and holds you fast in malevolent arms.

Insistant pull of of those ebony holes
unaware of sinister gravity
eyes filled up with sin and depravity
sucking the mind through the tip of a straw
filling the brain up with static and snow
with no escape from the grip of its draw.

Our saviors to battle, sinners who know
depths of addiction, the fight to get clean
from rot and the pablum that fills the screen.
Big Brother watches, marks checks on a page,
the counting of souls for final descent,
the vanquished are lost in the disengage.

And those who are fooled know not what is meant
by the hand that reaches and cries its shame
imprisoned inside this infernal flame
that inhibits all sense of the world outside
and punishes those who would dare break out;
a zombie was born, once the body died.


* Rose Morales is a poet and writer from Miami, Florida. You can see more of her work at www.Myspace.com/kinderkitty

In Unison

I am trying to imagine us – you and me, in unison.

We fit together like two puzzle pieces, your jutting edge slides perfectly into my negative space. But I fear the remaining bits will never interlock. Our pictures are too different. (Me, a random weed in your urban landscape. You, the iPhone in my otherwise bucolic bliss.)

Even my fertile imagination cannot quite envision a realistic circumstance that would lead us to the possibility of shared environments. That spot where our pictures could mingle, where divergent histories don’t clash and the clutter of our respective baggage slips beyond relevancy.

And if, by some miracle, we found ourselves alone and unfettered, I’m still unsure you would hear the songs in my breath. Or after I’d leaned into your chest and let your fingers roam my geographies, that we would follow through and take or be taken.  Not when there is so much to lose. And no certainty of what might be gained.

Yet, I keep imagining us. You and me, in unison.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Proxy

Kiss her,
and when you do
will your eyes close as your tongue presses past those lips,
and though it is impossible,
will you taste me?


* Rebecca Gaffron is a sometimes writer, sometimes procrastinator and hopes she will be forgiven for both. She can be found at www.rebeccawriting.wordpress.com

It was a strange plaster on his finger
 
It was a strange plaster on his finger. A tangle of rough, dangling white threads, snagged into play by blunt scissors. The pink of the strip, false and fleshy toned but ever so different to flesh. Curling now. Giving over into white corners, grey with fluff.
 
“I had an accident with the glass”.
 
He was seated before her. Waiting for her. He had been waiting for her for days. And finally that night the glass in him had broken. The glass in his hand had become him. Charging it to the floor he dashed his hand into the pieces. But as nobody else was there to comfort him. He had tried to comfort himself. And the hot tears of lonely comfort were his.
 
Twelve hours later there she stood, like a delicate and beautiful little owl, looking at the dark purple mark on the duvet, where he had painted a trail for her eyes. The illustrator at work on his masterpiece of misery. He knew how to lead her to him. That she would touch his hand. Hold it. He would feel her press the cut. Feel him wincing. Desperate for her fingers to feel his. To find his pain. Read it in his face as she burrowed deep beneath the plaster. His first dressing. Limp. Tattered scarecrow. Would breathe neglect and hasten her to him. Treading through the glass she made a shocking face and his eyes filled wide into downtrodden black.
 
In those first few hours, there again was the music he liked. He told her that it was the choice of American college students but that he didn't mind that. He liked it anyway. This music lived the days and nights of his pain. Danced his pain. And the even skip of it trilled away in the background like a blind songbird oblivious to his weakening. Even the shattering glass had only silenced that trilling for a moment. The notes lay in the pieces of glass on the floor with the dawn and the daylight as he held his gaze fast to the door through which she was going to walk. Through which she did walk. Walk into the ten minutes after which he was going to tell her that he had smashed the glass on purpose.

 
* Helen Pletts is a regular IS&T contributor. She was born in the UK but now lives in Prague in the Czech Republic, where she teaches creative writing.

SWEPT AWAY
 

You're barefoot
in that fluttering rag of a dress
beside the slick bank of river,
 
your eyes lowered,
anticipating
your spell to hunker me down,
 
wind sifting through the woods
extinguishing heat of summer,
perking hairs on the back of my arms,
 
I'm in slow motion,
whispers in my ears
from every part of my past,
beware...  beware...
 
so much pushing and tugging,
I spear my way through,
 
as you planned...
I fall over your waterfall.


* Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to write, listen to his music, and dance late into the night.  He was born in Virginia.

Living and Dying Organically
 
Our rural General Store caters for
alternative life-stylers
vegos and vegans
stocks much organic produce.
 
Today, my wife purchased
a slender package of bacon
which bore the proud legend:
 
NZ Free Farmed
no crates
no cages
no pens
no growth hormones
 
All very admirable
and I hope the pig involved
caught those nuances


* John Irvine is a regular IS&T contributor from New Zealand

Kiss

your kiss
as ephemeral as
a phone call

ends in an agony
of disconnection

perhaps I didn’t
get your message
or perhaps I did

I’ll leave my mouth
off the hook
in case you try again

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Pictures of War

pictures of war
some black and white
others hand tinted or coloured
are in this weeks exhibition
at the open eye gallery

the echoing rooms
hold the pictures in
neat rows
silent pictures of
explosions
tired soldiers
burning buildings
dead bodies

I stifle an inappropriate yawn
as I make notes

a voice in the next gallery
dribbles out onto the landing
where I catch
the last drop
"Why did he make her eye's so blue"
it said

when I eventually went in
the room was empty

on the facing wall
one picture hung alone
a picture of a girl
I think
a starving child
with wide starring
hand-coloured blue eyes
that followed and accusing me
of bringing death and war,
famine and disease
there was no one in the gallery
but I spoke
"Why did He make her eye's so blue"
the words spew out across the picture,
slosh off the walls
break over the architrave
and flow across the floor
where they collect in pools

Her eyes were startling
I make a note of it for the review


* Jim Bennett lives near Liverpool in the UK and is the author of numerous books, including books for children, books of poetry and many technical titles on transport and examinations.  He is also managing editor of www.poetrykit.org  His most recent publication is a poetry collection called The Man Who Tried To Hug Clouds Bluechrome Publishing 2004 (2nd edition 2005).  His next collection LARKHILL is due to be published by Searl Publishing in October 2009. Jim teaches Creative Writing online for Poetry Kit and at the University of Liverpool and tours throughout the year giving readings and performances of his work.