Breadcrumb #254

STELLA PADNOS-SHEA

Now.
And now.
And now.
The smile for you, my child.
We were outside building a man.
A man of snowfall, a man of weather, he was real and not real,
unable to be predicted with Doppler and Skyfall 2000 and sonogram.
We rolled the snow to make a jolly body
to the soundtrack of your cascade of laughter.
And as we did, a couple walked by,
she said “hello,” like her joy was blowing bubbles.
They were happy, my child, dressed in colors of earth and sky.
And I saw myself with a man not your father, they were holding hands, sweetheart,
thick as thieves, they didn’t wear lies on their faces
or tucked in their limbs like tumors.
Your mother and father, we who made you from unstable weather,
you the only child of two lost parents,
we hoard untruths, rolling dirt and urban excess
into the budding snowman, though he looks so pure with bridal white sheen
and shower. You are so little, Miri, white and unharmed by the world,
like this snowman.
I saw myself with another man, we hold hands, and we want to.
But sometimes the lies make us whole, make us who we are, rummaging
in the soil for sticks and stones for arms and eyes.
Somewhere we are carpenters.
Sometimes you are my snowchild, Miri, crafting you out of luck,
whatever scraps we find in the stuck soil.
I want you to see me hold a man’s hand,
I want you to see an accurate smile on my face in a grown-up home.
Snow melts, faces change like weather.
I want you to see one more version of who I am,
my hand tucked where I want it,
into somewhere warm and unpredictable,
another man’s hand.

• • •

Breadcrumb #253

KEITH HOERNER

Disease

Dis ease
It seeps beyond your body
Into our shared lives
Makingsimplethingsdifficult                     

We are in a     
Lo   n    g       go   o    d     b      y       e
Embrace
I want to hold you, push you away

Arguments
Your tongue liquid in your mouth
You convinced you said “mortgage”
Me convinced you said “month”

Communication
Copulation
Caring
Down the commode

We are in a     
Lo   n    g       go   o    d     b      y       e
Embrace
I want to take your disease, dis ease, and swallow it

It
Eats
You

Instead

• • •

Breadcrumb #252

MONICA LEWIS

When I imagine my liver, I imagine a little black worm with a wide open mouth. When I remember my life with you, it looks just the same.

These days, I buy pig snouts for my dog and let her eat them in bed. Sometimes I give her ice, even though it's been swimming in gin and I wonder how she never gets sick. The ice doesn't last as long as the pig snouts and not nearly as long as the pizzles. A pizzle is a bull's penis that's been stretched and twisted then dehydrated. It looks more like a girl's french-braid than an organ that once pulsed.

The night I realized I was too good for you, I funneled full-fat mayonnaise into my mouth using potato chips as a scoop. I drank eight beers instead of chilled liquor and seltzer. 

I think things don't dry up, shrink-shriveling, then die. What feels like emptiness is in fact excess and what feels like excess is maybe also emptiness. We get our fill of the other, expanding until exploding back into nothing and then, come morning, find ourselves woken and desiccate, again.

• • •

Breadcrumb #251

GERARD SARNAT

Job’s job
Description:
Blessed was
The only word
This mousy
Devout apostle
Could come up
With to describe
How living felt
Until one day
Her younger brother takes his own
And older sis crosses off the same
As our cat gets lymphoma, a ratling
Newborn appears not to be thriving
Plus unseen untold cousins manifest
Hematologic symptoms
Which did follow
Some photos I took
Before snapping
A hip bone that
 Triggers disabling
Lumbo-sacral
Spinal stenosis. 
Although born
Jewish, moi --
Who now bleeds
Atheism – can’t
Seem to figure
Out ways to make
Goddamn shape
Poems look like
My Star of David.

• • •