October 8-14, 2001: Jendi Reiter and Bess Kemp

Bio (auto)

I am an editor and ex-lawyer living in NYC with my husband and too many books  My work has appeared in such publications as Poetry, The New Criterion, and Best American Poetry 1990 Check out my website at www.jendireiter.com

The following work is Copyright © 2001, and owned by Jendi Reiter and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

St Andrew’s Retreat House Predation wasn’t our invention, unless in Eden the chosen apple changed all things bestial Burnished rooster, red against the grey dead- wood thicket, crowed all day alone trumpeting the same proud crying ritual of war or mating while the black hens tiptoed like nuns behind the kitchens where sisters, vowed to silence, bowed their heads over stewed chicken dinner The weathered plaster holy mother was chained to a tree for security against thieves and gravity The cock crowed for the third or twenty-third time and no one said a word (published in U.S Catholic) Chuang Tzu’s Dream All this morning I dreamed I was awake and then awoke to find I’d been sleeping, time and again The world we know is a butterfly’s dream yet Nature squanders millions of golden wings in a single tempest And in another dark dream, I was searching for a book of deeds in an official hall near demolition — such a place as taunts me with a familiarity just beyond reach, like the knowledge of how to awaken when I know I’m dreaming — but only moths spiraled upwards from each cast-off chest I could not read them, and yet I knew their tissue-paper wings bore all that could be written away into the opaque air Ah, in the vacuum of space the earth is suspended like an audience’s disbelief To any eyes out there it might appear to rest on nothing, to descend from nothing but a dark infinity curved like the rare arc of a well-lived life Yet, like an insomniac’s eyes, this curve cannot stay closed: the boundaries of space perhaps forever fly faster and faster apart from its unknown center A cloud of butterfly planets flung forth by Nature into perishing ice, flame or forest We struggle in a dream uncompleted and wake, we imagine, only because some greater mind (at least for now) sustains the world’s illusion (published in The Saint Ann’s Review) A Talent for Sadness Some women would remember the rain pelting the cobblestones of a French city without consequences, like the skitter of fingernails across a lover’s back in the unfamiliar iron bed, the narrow mattress stripped clear of memory, white as dawn All those times when daring to do a thing meant more than the very feeling Others would picture the steam afterwards rising from shared cups of bitter chocolate, how it left curls of mist like soft locks of hair on the windows closed against winter These women would hold themselves, later, rubbing their arms as if before a fire, wrapped in the sweet regret of evaporated warmth And there are others, not to be forgotten, who already know what they could learn from the taste and tangle of pure bodies, the aching places salt-slippery as Chinese mushrooms, rubbed skinless like crushed red berries The roses in the drained bottle are already bowing, bending, it seems, under a thin shaft of light, red petals edged with a brown craquelure, like tendrils of hair, around the folded center Such last women travel, or don’t travel Night turns into day, each time There may be a warm head on the pillow beside them, on a separate pillow No one can stop them from dying with their secret: Life’s all about knowing the kind of loss you have a talent for (published in Cider Press Review)

Bess Kemp
bkemp@napanet.net

Bio (auto)

Bess is a California resident and editor of the on-line poetry magazine Some Words Poetry http://www.somewords.winisp.net/ Her poetry has appeared in PSH, Ariga, Medicinal Purposes, (this) Poetry Site, Thunder Sandwich, Disquieting Muses among many others, and is scheduled to next appear in The Poetry Repair Shop and No Alibis

The following work is Copyright © 2001, and owned by Richard Ellis and may not be distributed or reprinted in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

The Man at 7-11 the man at 7-11 wears a turban and speaks with a very thick accent .looks down and away when they buy their cigarettes .knows they don’t trust him and think he is one of THEM .has lived here for many years and is grateful to be in America .will go home to find “sand-nigger” spray painted on his driveway . NYC the blackened skyline is weeping ash and rain for sorrows too numerous to count it all begins and ends in the clouds too high to see to ground close enough to the sun to melt like candy but the taste will never be sweet She Gets Smaller he comes in angry again her face makes the perfect target for release she is surprised but not shocked this is life with its black eyes cut lips broken bones she has learned not to cry he gets angrier she has learned not to leave he will find her she has learned to be very afraid and she better show it or he will think she is defiant she has learned to live in hell and not complain she hasn’t yet learned how to disappear