Outside Office Hours
a taxi carries this evening
into a routine where midnight sleeps
between banker's hours
and the taxman raids the uninsured
light lies across the sidewalk
path back to the late-night reader
who crawls over thumbed pages
to pinpoint a street intersection
my fingers walk into the map
stake claim on sidewalk and light-stand
I suck exhaust smoke into lungs
and await improved exchange rates
when the moon rises over the building
my office shifts into a holding pattern
computer-wired, hours graphed
explicit to the last percentage
with a mismanagement that watches
only the movement of hands
--Joanna M. Weston Reprinted with permission from Pemmican, an online magazine of poetry
Rainmaker
Daddy promised rain.
Each time he brought in turtles, always
conjured, stirred memories, brought help.
Said, somewhere in memory, wherein rain swells,
Se mu and Se lu ally, o he reh, nay hah,
Kichwa, Cherokee, Mohawk, Oendat still unite
through the Mother of the world-ourselves.
Somewhere in rain, World's woes relinquish, float downstream
in muddles, undercurrent, overflow, ebb, eddy, wash clean-
clay or tin gutters in red-yellow Sun.
Gutters spilling rain into buckets,
into trenches dug around our caliche yard,
like World War II, Dad's Ring of Fire
fieldwork,
for the infantry,
in rain.
Quenching his dry cotton memory,
Dustbowl's crazymaking drought dread.
Rain was always there,
hovering high, waiting for soothing song
to heal sunbaked soil, eroding.
Somewhere in dreams clatter turtle shells
turning World back inside herself
Cherokee, Creek recall memory, memory, memory-
back into ourselves-
raining.
Raining, here on Orinoco, here where Mariche Palm hammock
wrap Warao dreamtime, recollect Seminole sleeping ‘neath
chickee, like palafito, stilted thatched overhang where hammocks wing
night air over fluting crickets loud as the amaranth Caracas traffic,
maestoso as Florida amaranth still rising full.
Still there is rain.
Every river-rain, every creek, swamp, delta, pond, ocean-rain.
Rain holds memory, dreamtime, all that was, will be-
Turtled under canopies from Atlantic to Caribbean Blues,
hulling all the loss, all the beauty, all that was:
Carolina Parakeets killed for their empathy.
Passenger Pigeons murdered for nourishing Native life.
Venezuelan oily birds extinct now for Conquistador war lights.
Canaries, still suffering souls for coal, for fossil fueling tides.
Above, below, rain returns Realtime, now here,
empathy, nourishment, light, life-
Causer, taker of winged, splayer, separator of souls, washout-
even rain can't help you.
But a human of the earth, place, time-memory-
takes a turtle-
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Daddy called for rain
Like we all always do.
Always do.
Like we will always do.
Always do.
--Allison Hedge Coke
Imitation #31
(after John Berryman)
Still the snows falls every bastard one of them.
Knuckles rubbéd raw by frozen air,
cracks in his body,
drive Henry mad, remind him of "charcoal
nudity." Sing Federico, he remembers, it's
5 o'clock, knife the bastard, split his nose
with a cane, lay him out, ball-less, on
the hood of that 1961 Dodge Polara.
He's done. Is this
clotted or frozen, this red? Chew, swallow,
spit. Henry goes through his dinner like
tiny slips of monogrammed papers with
imperious instructions: get me this, get me that.
I am I shall I will, Henry said as he
took out the the trash
for the last time. Dog-eared Lorca pocketed,
Henry walked off a bridge. Resting, snow
silently covered his crazy-man beard.
--Joel Wendland
Erasure
Ernesto, wandering aimlessly in the desert,
dreamed of water.
Radwan, preparing to die, listened closely
to his instructions.
Abhinav, boarding a train for Kashmir, worried
about the border crossing.
Sabra, sitting in the outdoor café, gazed curiously
at a car pulling up to the curb.
Umeko, falling asleep on the subway, dropped
her book on the floor.
Rashida, holding her arms above her head, screamed
as mud-brick walls imploded.
Eshe, lying in an infirmary cot,
was too weak to even speak.
-- Jim Benz From Pemmican, an online magazine of poetry. Used with permission.
On the Katrina Coast
Ring! It's 5 am in Renaissance Park, USA
Time for a change year -- 2008
Time to get up
catch the bus to the Westin Hotel
-- that bus has been discontinued
You won't be leaving your post Katrina compound today
to go by the armed Blackwater security guard
out of the barbed wire.
I know I don't know you, this is not my place, not
my story
Working over at the Riverside Restaurant, your cousin
not there anymore got $14.00 an hour before the storm,
but after
They knocked all the African Americans down to $10.00 and then
fired them and brought in the Central Americans for $8.00 and
then they fired them and now the Brazilians get
$6.00. Fired Sacked Canned Let go
Over by the statue of General Lee, (He's 60 feet tall)
Travel there in your head, you can put yourself on the block.
Bosses come in on the bus.
Who'll work for $5.00 and hour? they say. Nobody jumps.
Who'll work for $5.50? A big group steps up.
Who'll work for $6? Still more come forward.
Who'll work for $7? The rest step up, but
some will be left behind and only half
will be paid anything.
The rest will be deported before payday.
That bus still runs.
There used to be laws for fair labor, against discrimination
but the government let them lapse after the levees --
to heal the state of emergency. Feel the love?
What next?
Prison labor at $5.25 an hour?
Labor does this to itself, some people tell me.
But it's a nation of laws and not of women.
NOW THEY'RE TAKING BACK YOUR FORMALDEHYDE CAN
IN A CAMP THE WATER GAVE YOU.
it's five times a safe level, they say
used to delouse imports
and embalm corpses -- so why's it here?
Why are you here? When are they coming?
Not working?
But today you cough and cough
and your baby kicks and kick s AND
YOU get one more day in the FEMA Trailer
in Renaissance Park where the only thing reborn
is injustice.
--Mary Franke From Blue Collar Review
