Nikki Blak

For Black Girs (Double Sestina)

For black girls
Faces neon
And variations of indigo
Tongues slick w/ slang and blood
You are tha most blessed
But, often times, this is not enough

Tha World does not trust you
Its machines cannot document you beyond
Legs splayed, on back
Cannot calculate tha latitude of your continent,
Lost in vortex
Of White Supremacy's frenetic dance

Your emerald mines and elephant's tusks are not enough,
Slave girls
But tha milk of your breast is blessed
Enough to wet nurse a serpent's child, until he is neon
Your womb, used against you to taint your own blood
And stain white skin indigo

You dance
But tempo and symphony don't move you
You school molecules on how to transform themselves into vortex
Perplex scholars to tha point of psychosis and beyond.
Confound atmosphere and continent.
Sprout magnolia trees from tha small of your back.

You tend a garden of aloe and indigo
Their feathered leaves and spiny stalks, sharp enough
To conjure blood
Mud pie girls
With neon
In their teeth and hands that are blessed

Petition caresses back
to your skin and lead sweat beads in vertical dance
Like precipitation from sky back to continent
It's soil and sea constructed you
Birth pains pushed you beyond
Mother's womb only to be consumed by this vortex

Often you are tha most blessed
Tha most injured, bleeding indigo
From wounds so profound, they blush neon
Severe enough
To be felt by other girls
Who share your blood

Their eyes, a violent vortex
Their mouths, talking back
Legs propelling them beyond
Tha Earth on which they dance
Girls who look like you
All ripped from a shared continent

Landscape where your blood
Has rivered tha deserts and fields and blessed
tha crops, cared for by girls
With locs tha color of indigo
And skin dark enough
To make the white of their eyes glow neon

Face as broad as a continent
Spirals corkscrew from your scalp like ebony vortex
Tha Earth has never known a beauty like you
You can turn your back
And eyes will still dance
Across your surface and beyond

Sky razors itself open and hemorrhages neon
every morning for you, soldiers spill blood
In hopes that it will be enough
to be blessed
with a glimpse of you, clothed in indigo
Afro girls

Lay your body across tha Atlantic's open grave, beyond
This cage of continent
Dance
Careen stubborn knees and heavy hands into blur of vortex
Carry yourself back
To tha place that saved a space for you

Sister with memory enough to neon tha Sphinx pink with graffiti
Black girls with curses and crusted blood under crescent of nail
You hav blessed your babies with nappy hair and indigo skin

Dance your pen beyond margin
To write whut you hav left for them. To recall your continent
Feed yourself to tha ancestral vortex that won't stop calling you back

Ruth Foley

Prayer for the Abandoned

I tell myself there are no accidents,
that every moment there is something driving
us towards another moment we are blind
to at the time. But I don't really know.
And whether that's a comfort or a test
I can't decide. I have learned to hold
onto uncertainties like fragile birds,
their wings rustling in my palms, their voices
muffled almost to nothing. What I want
is simple: take it back. Roll back the road
until it is no longer slick. Un-smash
the car she crumbled in. Return my sister.

Forgive me, God. I didn't know I held
so much resentment. As for my sister,
I guess at what I think of her. She tests
my memory. What I've kept is so mashed
up I can't tell what is what. I don't know
anything, not which part of the road
took her, not if the snow had made her blind,
not if she knew or prayed to you or wanted
to and couldn't. One moment she was driving
then she wasn't. If you gave her voice,
reclaimed her an instant past the accident,
I should be grateful. I am not. A bird,

she lifted, now unbroken, from the road.
That's what I should believe? She was a bird?
And that's redemption? All I've ever known
from that day on is chance, an accident
of timing. I want the timers smashed.
And if you could at least have left her voice,
an echo of her face, I could attest
to something like redemption, a driving
reckoning. Instead, I have no sister,
and no reason. No matter how I want
to, Lord, I cannot find a way to hold
her now. I was too young. I am too blind.

And I cannot take wing like all the voiceless
earth-bound creatures that came before me, blind
and dumb, about as agile as a smashed
college kid who drank more than she could hold.
I wait to happen, like an accident.
I've never learned to ask for what I want,
or think that I deserved it. That she knew,
that much she might have taught me, my sister.
Desire was as natural as birds
or breath, a fundamental, innate drive.
Did you have them sing to her, God, on that road?
Did you release them as some sort of test?

As if contentment comes in lack of want,
I lie, pretend there aren't any tests,
pretend I don't wait for an accident
to find me when I'm on that stretch of road,
pretend I've gotten over it. I hold
that part the closest, my injuries driven
against my body, even though it's smashed
and useless, beyond help—it is my bird.
And I lose everything, risk going blind—
And I—I call other women sister.
Decided, I allow myself a voice.
This skim of ice I walk pretends to know.

I'm cold this Sunday, Lord. Beside the drive,
a phoebe looked for water, not knowing
the ground's been dry for years. It won't hold
water anymore, even frozen. My voice
frightened her away. She flew down the road,
found a tree, huddled. Perhaps like sisters,
water comes and goes by accident
in winter—sudden thaw. I cracked the blinds
to watch her search. Each patch of lawn tested
solid, frozen. She pecked and pecked, my bird.
A comfort to have such a simple want,
such ignorance of what is easily smashed.

By afternoon, her tracks were filled. The cistern
was covered, the grayed dirty drifts, the smashed-
up snow bank chunks along the unplowed road.
Everything is new and cold. No one wants
to shovel in this wind. Even my voice
has frozen. Maybe I'll find it in a bird
tomorrow. Tell me what the future holds,
Lord, if not more of this. Another test?
Another thing to lose? The things I know
shrinking into nothing? I might be blind
for all the good it does. I might be driven.
I might be the result of accident.

I have no control. Instead, I'm a bird
drawn to inevitable accident,
towards an almost undetected voice,
a specter. The promise of April drives
me through winter. No matter how I want
to steer, I can't. I careen around blind
corners, hug the precipice, hog the road.
I think I can hear her, whispering no.
I think I'll hear her up until I smash
the barrier and fall. I'm a crash test
dummy, bent from the force of a sister.
My body folds; something inside me holds

the consequences of each hit—the blindness,
the scars, the indecisions. I can hold
it all, convince myself it's what I want
or everything I need. Except a sister.
Tell me more about the flight, the drive,
of how the fledglings feel it's time to test
themselves against the air. Speak up—your voice
is fading still. What happens if they smash?
What omnipotent grace feeds accident?
What purpose do I serve? What do I know?
You take the wheel, then. Flip the world the bird.
You chose the destination. Choose the road.

Adjust the rear-view mirror, the seat. Test
the brakes again before we hit the road.
I never do the things I should. The drive
is covered with droppings, the windshield, birds
and berries littering the snow. Oh, sister.
It's getting worse, it's getting dark. I know
the moon will be speaking soon, and what she wants
is terrifying, God—an accident,
a life. I hope you have the power to hold
the fragments you've created once we smash.
I've closed my eyes. Or else I'm going blind.
If you would only speak I'd track your voice,

I'd learn how to believe again. I'd know—
a shadow and a long-lost wisp of voice
might find me then. Hallelujiah, sister!
If I could make myself become a blind
disciple, if being darkened by birds
brings her near, take my eyes. Or let me smash
myself against the rocks. Give me the drive
to take my body to her. Make me whole
by rending. Leave me broken on the road.
The world will chalk it up to accident.
Devise a wretched unbeliever's test.
I'll pass it if you'll tell me what you want.

But this is what I think, Lord: I smash
myself so I can learn the fullness of want,
the limits of my faith. Empty as a bird,
I mark off narrow boundaries to test
my demons out or take them in, go blind
amidst the awe of heaven's accident.
And even then, I have no hope, no sister.
Senseless, I steer myself into the road's
horizon. Sometimes I think we hear a voice,
a calling. Faith, once slipped, could not take hold
again. You gave up on me, Lord. I know.
You are beyond my reach. Yet I'm still driving.

A hymn, an accident, and unnamed drive,
a chosen blindness the abandoned know—
it is a test. It's all I have to hold,
this flighless, foundling bird, this frozen voice.
The things I love lie broken on the road.
What's left? Some ash. A fragment of a sister.

Laura Hope-Gill

Canada


They call the land of the silver birch.
I call the land of the northern lake
That braces me. I paddle my canoe,
calling out, heart to throat, to loon
with the pearline neck. I don’t deserve
its reply today. I’ve come but not returned.

The land knows when I return.
My body peels itself off like birch
Bark, white paper marked, I deserve
To lose only if my touch the lake
Stills and my call resounds the loon
Into an answer back to my canoe

Which moves only as I deserve.
A girl learns how to work a canoe
Sooner than she learns the loon
Call. She learns the texture of birch.
She learns the surfaces of the lake
And of her body, and how to return

To both of them like she deserves
It, like it’s a good thing not to canoe
Too deeply into oneself, that darker lake
The darker stars shine in, a moon’s return
Back and forth like talk, white as birch
Upon the black, like spots along the loon’s

Back, if I dare to speak of the loon,
Its 250 million years of life. If I deserve
To approach it with words frail as birch
In a language tongued by too many canoes
Lapped against its shore. I can’t voice return

To something that immense afloat on a lake
Vast enough the moon tides it, its own loon
Call silent in its depth. Some summers I return
Hesitantly. I receive from it only what I deserve.
They teach us all to kneel in the canoe,
It's the posture of setting fire to the naked birch.

I never return to Canada without the lake
Within me turning birch white or the loon’s
Silence. I try to deserve the hold of my canoe.

But the red cedar canoe, the life I deserve
Has no loon. It is not frost-bitten by birch
Along the lake-shore. It has no return.

I fear I have left too many places. Birch,
Elm, oak, maple don’t become canoes.
Only what is practiced in the craft deserves
Its greatest use, to elevate and at last return
To its source in silence which the loon’s
Call breaks open like the moon shatters the lake

My paddle strikes. Alone I unloon the lake.
Give me time. I’ll even argue with the return
Of ice that caught under it the dog like a canoe.
Speak about a capsized world, see the birch
Winter keeps leaving. What I don’t deserve
I destroy. It’s simple like acid rain kills loons.

Precambrian Shield does not remember loon.
Or me. It is changeless in a lifetime, unlike the birch,
Gone from a photograph by summer’s return.
The ice that made it has weakened back to lake.
It is disdainful. I feel it scrape my body, my canoe.
Under northern lights, it breathes, deserve, deserve.

Deserve cross bow cut, draw, feather. Deserve
White-tailed deer, deserve marsh, cold lake,
Deserve the light green and silver leaves of birch,
Deserve that call into those bones, that loon
Which cannot bear its own weight on land. Return
What doesn’t deserve to yourself, stay in your canoe.

Some people say it welcomes them. They canoe
Sitting up. On the seat! They switch sides. Loons
Dive deep under them and hide, holding all lake
And breath within them. Only who deserves
To see them, does. Loon birth is only seen by birch,
Hatching, hatching from its own bark. People return

Every year here. They build and they return
To land the land knows they don’t deserve.
I return and my skin breathes in the oil of loon
Feathers. In my dreams I paddle my red canoe
And lie low within, watch a bear lick up a lake.
Canada teaches its girls how to sit silent as birch.

Janet Holmes

Double Sestina on My Education

What I’ve learned: that people who have children
prefer I not compare them to my dog;
that aging means it’s futile to be vain
(so best to meet your lover in the dark);
that all I need to write is lots of paper;
that all I need is time if I’m to write;
the dog is at his happiest in the snow
(provided he can warm up by the fire);
that, more and more, I wear my mother’s face
and hate the mirror; that I was wise to marry
a better cook than I; that I should leave
well enough alone. One turning left

is three successive turnings to the right
(“turn, turn, turn”); if the dog is left
alone at home, he’s trained to use the paper
(so line the bathroom floor before you leave).
The white bread is less good for you than dark
and weirdly . . . fluffy. “Better far to marry
than to burn,” writes Paul, which made a vein
pop out (endearingly) on Mother’s face
before my wedding, as the pastor dogged
us—we’re too secular—about hell-fire
and what religion we might raise our children
(yikes!) in. How could we, still kids, know?

That was my first marriage. I learned: marry
for companionship and don’t get snowed
by prose style—that’s going to the dark
side. I’ve learned: that my not having children
caused me to lose friends; that autumn leaves
are best appreciated through a bonfire;
you can’t always believe what’s in the paper;
your best friend really is your little dog;
if you must pass, at least pass on the left;
the virtues claimed for products for your face
are optimistic, if not lies downright;
since one must die, one should not live in vain.

I keep on learning there’s no true, sure-fire
way to get paid what you’re worth (in vain
I update my c.v.). I learned: don’t leave
the job you’re fed-up with unless the right
position comes along; that one’s grandchildren
(even step-) are fun to know; I’ve faced
the fact that I can’t sing; that after dark
I really shouldn’t drive; I paint my left
hand’s nails fine but wreck the right’s. In snow
storms, make a path and potty for the dog
but leave the sidewalks ‘til it’s over; “merry
gentlemen” are mostly drunks; paper

covers rock and rock breaks (let’s face
it) scissors; scissors slice a swath through paper:
these methods ought not just be used by children,
I’ve learned, because they work. The real Mary
Poppins (in the books) was scary. (“Write
it! Like disaster.”) And love is a dog
from hell, sometimes. And you shouldn’t leave
your chewed gum on the bedpost. Making snow
angels makes the snowstorm worth it. “Vain
gaiety, vain battle” . . . something’s left
from all that memorizing . . . “because a fire
was in my head” . . . “and raging in the dark.”

I’ve learned that you can teach an old dog
to comfort cancer patients in their darkened
rooms; that you must go through every rite
of passage; that your irons in the fire
keep you solvent if you didn’t marry
your wealthy suitor; that being the oldest left
of your bloodline makes you wish for children
(for a moment), though you think it’s vain
to think of pedigrees of humans. Paper
snowflakes made by children surpass snow,
because they carry something. In a phase
of rough creative ferment, take a leave.

You’ll know you’re getting somewhere when they’re left
speechless when they’ve read it. Don’t believe
the negative, but question it, and marry
your emotions to your intellect. Face
the music; hold your own feet to the fire;
learn what all the other poets know,
and more; write what no one else can write.
What I’ve learned: some poets want to paper
rejections on their walls—such a dark
view of this whole enterprise! Be vain:
reject rejection; don’t let those vibes dog
your next . . . Oh, God, enough. You guys aren’t children,

you’ve been around the block and won’t be snowed
by commonplaces. Now the mood has chilled! Wring
out my old clichés, and I’ll go fire
the muse who has me sniffing like a dog
around the same old subjects. Let me face
my education in another vein.
I had no mentors, but went on my merry
way through school alone and in the dark
(too shy to ask for help); I had to leave
because the funds ran out. I joined the paper
as a typesetter. When the editor left
I got the job: the time & place were right.



In grad school I was told that I was vain
to think my work was publishable, and right
before I finished, had to clamber—face
to face with a professor who had left
me no choice but running—like a dog
out a ground floor window. (In the paper
some years later, I learned he had been fired
for raping students elsewhere. He would leave
most girls alone but seek out “damaged children”
he thought would not resist.) In the dark
I took off my high heels, jumped in the snow,
then asked him for my shoes back. He’d marry

yet another student. Next: the paper
I wrote for up and folded. Asked to marry
(twice) I stayed divorced and got two dogs.
Moved to Minnesota, where the snow
on moving day fell ‘til the car I’d left
at U-Haul when I took their truck that dark
morning disappeared in drifts. To face
a life alone, I bought a house. Children,
family, seemed something I’d no right
to dream about. My education: leave
it be. I worked a corporate job in vain.
Made plans in vain. No way to light a fire

under something meant to curse the dark!
Guess what: I didn’t have to light the fire.
It gets lit. Every bit of wisdom left
to me says learning teaches you the vane
is pointing forward. So-called genius knows
it’s what you do with what you got that leaves
them thinking Yes!, instead of “That old dog
needs newer tricks.” One day I found the right
lover, partner, best friend, man to marry.
It didn’t matter that there’d be no children;
there’d be grandkids. There’d be love. (And paper-
training puppies!) We married in the face

of those who wished us ill, who gave us leave
to make “a late mistake,” and could not face
our happiness. My education’s no
transcript printed on official paper.
It’s no advanced degree; I’m not that vain.
It never did encompass having children
or making lots of money. It was left
to me to do what I do well; to marry
my dear man; to be a small defier
of conformity; to find the right
poets to bring out an anti-dark
literary moment. Here’s a dog

we raised. No children, just a dog.
In vain we fought to keep the night sky dark.
I now recycle paper and I write
on snow-white screens in pixels. I see fire
in the eyes and face of him I married.
I’m not about to leave. I haven’t left.

Wendy Webb

NARCISSUS OF GRASMERE (twin sestina)

I cannot think of anything to write
and soon I will be getting in a state
of such undress that I won't dare go out,
until I've done my knitting - made it all -
to this fine pattern's balance and design.
A straitjacket at this time of night? Oh, no!

And now I've got a headache, for I know
that now I cannot sleep until I write
an absolute phantasmical design,
to Goth me to the graveyard in a state.
So when I go to bed, the creaking hall
will keep me tossing, turning all albout

my bed, a couch potato, or a lout,
as duvet drifts - to fall - like freezing snow.
This is my Scrooge in chains: I will see all
before brain cells can rest and know all's right
with the whole world and with my mental state.
As if a poet brain's a flawed design,

to aim for full perfection of design,
while partners flick the switch and turn lights out
before the need to rage into this state.
They simply need to rest and so say, No.
What is that demon, or that deadly sprite?
I think he will creak later in the hall.

No modern poet needs to write it all,
for every wit or poem or design
has been recorded in its nacred rite
beneath a sun or moon to open out;
until the scallop shell's revealed. We know
the purest Botticelli's virgin state.

I fear to palindrome this pure estate;
to tart The Birth of Venus for them all.
Perhaps, after a sleep, I will then know
the life she lived? What painter could design
his blissful Venus: middle-aged and stout.
She should die young, to paint perfection's rite.

I know that I will sleep in blissful state,
so right will dream the ending of it all.
For this design will fold - like sheep - about...


My brain's resigned to counting them all out,
though morning's bright, befuddled, held in thrall
to snowed up sleep and headache's mean estate.

Fair Venus dreamed me large through ageing's right,
until a Botticelli laughed it out:
how his sweet darling wandered, by design,
to search the wide earth; find her Eros, know
her Psyche loved by man - not one, but all -
until her lovely body's pregnant state

fled, like her infant Joy, to heaven's estate.
Then all her nacred shell, spread wide. We know
that teenage brides will live to scream and shout,
face credit crunch, inflation, spreading right
to loss of Paradise (by male design);
for Milton saw the core of Eve's fast fall

when she gazed in the stream and saw it all:
the beauty of the female form, so right.
And then she gazed on Adam. Now we know
just Michelangelo could contemplate
such beauty in the male (not yet grown stout).
So Venus saw her feminine design

and wandered all of earth to redesign
the jar or potion: keeping her estate
forever fair and worth true love by right;
until she came to England's garden. All
the clouds and mountains moved, like falling snow
in her reflected beauty; all about.

Then Wordsworth stamped her image, wore her out
with tourist sites she hoped would never spoil.
She sat beside that pool (its breezeless state):
and gazed upon the scallop shell's design.
The splashing seagull barely paused her rite
to gaze and gaze forever and we know

her breasts and curves and hills and dells; yet no
Narcissus will look far for male design,
when she can play with flowers, birds and all
that ageless female beauty all around.
So Venus aged into the sweetest state
and lived forever in men's eyes - by right.

Dominque Lowell

He was an asshole.
With the angry thrashing fists of all my years
I threw myself in his wake and offered
him anything, all of it, whatever he might desire.
I dangled myself there like a scarf waiting
to adorn him

and his train wreck. Him
telling me "you're either an asshole
or a prick", me trying to pick one while waiting,
straining for footsteps as the stairs groaned the years
of quiet servitude they humbly gave. He fed on desire.
His brilliant audacity the communion he offered.

The sublime he called it. Offered
in the curve of a spoon. Him
first. Always. The perfect mix for you my hearts desire.
Tapping the needle, tap tap tap. Fuck you asshole
I'm buying my own damn needle. My own years
of breathless seamless waiting.

It wasn't news I was or wasn't waiting
for, that without a how or why offered
he had been dead now for years.
Dead in jail, no mourning of him,
coroners report said "undetermined causes", just another asshole
in L.A. County. Was it sublime? Your hearts desire?

Was it sublime? The desire
innate in the rage that lay waiting
for just such an over-privileged asshole.
A Hollywood boy who bit every hand ever offered
to him. Hands that were tired of bailing him
out year after year.

His audacity was brilliant. But after a few years
it stopped being cute. He knew that. He knew desire
must always leave you dangling. No one needed to tell him
that. He lived deep in the waiting.
This was what he settled for and all he offered.
Prick or asshole.

too many and too few the years of waiting
the raging desire offered
him just another asshole

Scott Beal

Happy Birthday, Who Died?


Problems you don't want solved
but pose anyway: why make the bed
trim and smooth as a boiled egg
each morning to shell and crumple it that night?
Deep down are we decent? Wanna bet?
Who died and made you the dad?

One prefers to think one's a dad
without a death, that though we've solved
few riddles it's a fair bet
you can fall unarmed into bed,
do your best to make someone's night
and voila! an egg

becomes more than an egg.
Though you're certain your dad
never gave your mom a night
so sullied, that they alone solved
the no-muss no-fuss miracle of life with clean bed
and hands—and though you can bet

your ass that no punk's penis will abet
your daughter someday to whip her egg
into a grandwhelp – the mangling of a bed
is violence enough for every other dad-
to-be. You're absolved.
Conscience, call it a night

but just don't call it that night
when your squeeze was on leave and you bet
you could get away with what'd hurt her most—you solved
the odds and broke the eggs
and fixed an omelet not much like what your dad
would carry at times to your mother's bed,

then you cleaned the mess and freshened the bed
where you'd meet your returned love with a chaste g'night.
Who died and made me the dad
is that bad-lunged lummox I was, who'd bet
his life on one spin, and the next would cradle those stakes like eggs.
That man was a problem I solved

and buried far from our conjugal bed. (Wanna bet?)
He had a bad night. He was a bad egg.
And when the missus said I was a dad, he dissolved—

on this point my conscience and I stand resolved
despite recurrent boil and slither that breed
doubt. I'll find the sort of plot he'd hatch
unfolding over the course of my morning,
some fib compounding into a knot I dread
to see unraveled. I'm an amnesiac Green Beret

of familial subterfuge—where'd I learn this cabaret
of feints? I'm a compound that can't be resolved
into Jekyll and Hyde, Westley and the Dread
Pirate Roberts. A new breed
of binary star, one gravity eating another. Ha! Good morning,
kids! Happy New Year! Time for us to hatch

into those better selves we promised. To pry the hatch
and extract the old ghouls from our domes. A fat raspberry
to Mr. Outgoing President. Bring on the pulse of morning
to drum out this pulse of maneuvering. Resolved:
if you want sea monkeys I will breed
sea monkeys. If you have dared

to cross my orders you won't have to dread
a word-whip cracked to hatch
the back of your mind with welts. I'll breed
all the sea monkeys you could want, let you bury
me in sea monkeys. Resolved:
I'll pack fruit and cookies in your lunch each morning,

keep my slate and hangover to myself each morning,
throw you love more open than dads have often dared.
Is this me talking, or that liar I resolved
out of the picture? Is he my escape hatch?
Do resolutions give us something to betray
besides each other? If this year rolls out a new breed

of lie detectors we'll be ready with a new breed
of lies. The sleepless, bloody morning
I heard the first bray
of my daughter, what seized me was more than dread
or joy. I'd hatch
to find my yolk had resolved

into no recognizable breed, and if I dared
to jump out of that morning (down the hatch!)
there'd be no choice who to save or bury, whatever I resolved.