Gleam Issue 8
The following poems were selected by the editors
for Issue 8 of Gleam:
Embers, by Rose Mary Boehm
A Year of Death, by Jamey Boelhower
Mustangs at Midnight, by Becky Boling
Focus, by Sarah Carleton
The Edging of Days, by Kate Copeland
Moved, by Kate Copeland
Honey Light by Jane Dougherty
Moods and Changing Weather, by Jane Dougherty
Alternative Endings, by Rob Hardy
Sisyphus, by Rob Hardy
Time was, by Bob McAfee
Last Things, for Berenice, by Dana McCormick
Offerings, by Ann E. Michael
In a Sense, the Fade to Black is Always Slow, by Kathy Peterson
Rochambeau, by Kathy Peterson
Manifesting, by Merril Smith
The Transformation of Color, by Merril Smith
Gaze, by Lisken Van Pelt Dus
Unplanned Journey, by Maggie Van Putten
Circle, by Susan Vespoli
Exiting and Entering, by Susan Vespoli
One-eyed Jacks: Reborn, by Sterling Warner
Unnamed Moments, six or seven years into it, by Thomas Williams
Caught in the Secret Edge of Memory, by Jon Yungkans
How Does It Feel to be Inside and Outside at the Same Time?, by Jon Yungkans
It Was Impossible to Locate Heaven or Hell, by Jon Yungkans
1
Ten leaves in all hues of red are resting on my shawl.
Autumn is still kind, my jeans and blouse sufficient
under the protective branches
of the swaggering Japanese rowan.
2
On the terrace I close my eyes, listen to the song
of the Pacific. Summer stirs and caresses my face—
a sudden breeze reminds me
that nature and I form a fragile friendship.
3
The thrush made her nest in the hawthorn,
a mynah bird on the neighbour’s roof preens itself
and gives us a piece of its mind.
I ask the kids. We think it said: ‘You’re dumb!’
4
I remember the smell of burning flesh and rubber tyres,
the way asphalt bubbles, solid structures burn, and rivers boil
when they embrace white phosphorus.
The escape route narrowed to pure luck.
5
Contemplating the last embers of my fire,
I can see a world of lies, of naked ambition,
of hatred, goodness, and the nobility of kind hearts.
I still bet on love as our only salvation.
1. A squirrel scuttles beneath a tree
with a thin canopy and limbs so
skinny the squirrel doesn’t trust to climb
it. But the tree took root decades ago –
The poor conditions of time had rotted
away its will to grow strong and true, to
become a part of the forest.
2. A poem, in fact just a line from a poem
saved him. He was packing her books,
so many books, into boxes for the library
when he paused. A heavily worn book of
poetry appeared among the hardback murder
mysteries. He sat down, thumbed to the poem,
read that line, and understood the moment.
3. The check engine light glows with
only a mile away from family gathering
for prayer and remembrance. He pounds
his hands against the steering wheel, trying
to keep the tears of frustration from flowing.
Just another moment adding to the weight
of living. He doesn’t want another life lesson.
4. Cages are not always seen or built
with iron and stone. Sometimes there is no
guard or even a lock on the door. We sit on
the cot anyway. The world outside doesn’t
seem that much different than here. So we take
our three meals a day and 20 minutes of exercises.
Passing the years by marking the wall.
5. The Earth’s axis is 23.5 degrees
from being perpendicular. Its orbit
around the sun is skewed, you see
it in the seasons. Our galaxy even sits
60 degrees relative to Earth. No wonder
I find it hard to find my footing
on any given day.
1.
A murmuration of starlings clouds the air with wings.
In tandem, they bank and flow as the currents go.
To us below, they swamp the sky, as if caught
in an invisible net tossed on an airy lake. Up there,
the starlings ignore us—little do we matter
in the large scope of sky and wind—we without
wings, mired in bogs, in concrete, in dirt,
in fields of grass and thatch on this sad Earth.
2.
Vaguely familiar houses populate my dreams—
they emerge like squill in a frosty spring, sprouts
breaking through thawed black earth beneath
bare tree limbs still shivering. Rows and clusters
of lustrous blue crowns unfurl on verdant stems.
I wander this urban landscape in morning’s dew
searching for street signs and buried memories
lost in eyeless rooms and wild gardens of déjà vu.
3.
Trees wear painted white skirts to dance
in the parks of Chapala. Rain won’t come
for months, yet gnarled limbs rise and boughs touch,
twining, alive with bouquets of dark-green leaves
cast like castanets within a dense canopy. Dust
rushes and swirls about the twisted pleats
of their skirts, while thirsty toes dig
into hard-baked earth for deep ancient springs.
4.
My hat is a woven wonder that folds inside a purse.
Its broad brim can save me from freckles and cancer
or curl up to show my roots in southern Indiana.
I do believe I could outfit a pole and line, toss it
into a fast-current river, and catch catfish in its fibers.
Its dark neutral grayness can be pinned down
by wrapping bright scarves around the crown.
In my town, I’m known as that poet with the hat.
5.
There is a wildness in the tamest of us all
that no wall withstands—wild with wings
that won’t succumb to brick, chain, mortar,
nor rule of thumb. There is a sly wildness
that stands aslant, yet bends iron bars, rides
sweating herds of mustangs at midnight, takes
moon-baths on dark bladed grass,
wild things with silk wings of glass.
1.
She kneads bread in a kitchen filled with loaves—
baked ones bumping in pans at her elbow, lump
of dough on a cutting board, orange yolk on a heap of flour.
In a stoneware bowl, a hump rises under a tea towel
pinned with a fly. The woman stares at nothing,
hands pulling and punching through the chaos, hair rising
as if drawn by electricity, while through the open window
men thresh wheat under a sky like a mottled bruise.
2.
When the monks came to town, they clustered
at the front of the room, a hive of maroon robes within
a mass of people sitting at all angles, knees out, filling
every space. I was hemmed in, ready to transcend.
I joined the others in listening to a chant like a rhythmic
snore, the groaning hum vibrating my temples and
massaging my brain, wave after wave wiping all knotted
thoughts away, knocking me into slumber.
3.
Every night she sits on the couch, legs crossed, and casts
a spell of needles and knots. When knit-purl patterns
fall into place, she has good dreams for days. When she finds
an error, she throws herself at the yarn and picks rows loose
then conjures the sequence again, sleeping little till
she’s mesmerized by repeated shapes, mastery
of the craft returning other concerns to the backdrop—
bills, bullets, glaciers, aging bones.
4.
My husband loves old black-and-white photos where
details stay crisp no matter how deep you zoom in—dusty
Manhattan streets with buggies carving ruts, banana docks
crowded with rigging and bowler hats and a single stevedore
in blousy white, Civil War soldiers in casual poses,
the lines on their faces so clear we joke about which friend
they resemble—ordinary scenes but lacking the blurriness
of daily life. A depth of field you could step into.
5.
Watching my friends playing music—heads down,
shoulders pulsing—I feel the snag in my chest unwind
as I put myself in their place, drawing in echoes
of citronella candles, whiskey, and thumping bass.
This is the stream I return to when all others baffle, slipping
into its current like a kayak. In a little while, I’ll place
my fingers just so on the strings, turn down the patter
in my brain and let my instrument sing for me.
1.
Straight, on, without sliding corners; crossing
borders. Not past simple sides, amid the walls.
Moved here, to forget? The big chapel south
faces beams – bravely – might save a daylight.
2.
My eyes will always search a starless window
however right he might be. He smiles back,
shades are fun. Music, in all rooms, a faithful
dawning is enough. I read safe-poetry in bed.
3.
The greys keep together – don’t they? – down
my horizon anyway. He answered the world
is not conclusive. His kind of beautiful. More
and more, I draw to the fiction side of things.
4.
Once, a numb eagle, high among the bluest
California; it chased the chickens and I set
a net. All I ever wanted. Shoulders crumble,
sun left yesterday. I overstay the lost I love.
5.
In this far-away part of Kingston, little lights
in smaller streets. His suit class, a silk shawl.
My hand, he bids, past the steel of trees. The
tall crying landscape. Now, gently, we share.
1.
We went to see the starlings, at the chain pier. I wished your hands,
not – but, you, you talked about turmeric benefits to kidneys. I kept
my eyes on your legs, you ignored. A blue-sky day, the bird ballet.
Sugarfree not what I needed, my comfort coffee cold, a down-cast
flapjack. You drove our car and my mind could not help the flaming
thoughts, not only for the un-photographable sunsets, it was – you,
your way, to commonplace my ground floor city, a beach attached.
2.
TV-shows I like won’t leave anyone alive. The house keeps quiet,
coincidence teams up, in unclear lines, and muddy ditches. I walk
my dog, avoid heaping leaves – wind up meeting you. “Morning”
you texted on Sunday, a plain sailing I trip over. His peers think
clouds will never close in. My other job requires counting wind-
shields, they come for bread, and other clear-cut things. Forecasts
prove a great responsibility, and butterflies crash along a coastline.
3.
Timeless turbulence-thinking seems to fall in with blue mountains
who hold me, tight. My rental spills down freeways (speed ways),
I fly right through trees, past redwood manors, one palazzo. Seen
from afar. On other days, I follow risky clouds, higher than ships.
Mostly, I need rivers over seas, I tried the North, for sidewrecks.
The mist over ridges I truthfully (usually) evaded. The wine tasted
hilly. I move fast, eat cod with knife and fork, in front of the dark.
4.
My day, so far, features photos at the Hammer, green layers in my
bag, for once. Lee Miller hid her dresses in the attic, her pretence
second nature. I found coincidence-connections at the lower deck,
but it rained. Facts select the scared. I hunt a bad mood, confused
writing with reading words. I took a milk-drink, and cocoa, from
the gas station, again. I am weird respecting foods, my secret self
awares me. In public: a comedian, testing joy, speaking Spanish.
5.
Seeing, that we always ate late, vowed lying is vile – I seem to not
escape my world of meaning, a seriousness in life. I greed to solve
a dream, eat drizzle lime. Need a car down lines of coast. I want to
be the unlovable poet, swindling love out on a ride. Unsentimental
ways. You and I overblew the wind, teared our mouths – weakened
the lungs. So, towers crashed, pelicans resettle: I flew from el rio to
mar, sin whirlwind-roads. The eyes latched, I am moved by honesty.
1
Black is the tongue of the storm,
full of dead things, driven.
Shadows whisper to the ranks of women,
trudging through mud and darkness,
but they stop their ears, look to the light.
2
Water splashes in the sun,
silver and gold, reflecting visions of luxury,
opulence in some eastern paradise,
discreet servants, faint fountain music,
silk-screening the silent poverty of the desert.
3
The ship is here again
in the mist. It rolls at anchor
between the arms of the bay,
rocked by a soft wind and moonlight.
Does is bring death in its cargo or escape?
4
She left a rose by my head
to watch over my sleep.
Red it was in the dark,
but the dawn showed it to be pink
as a child’s cheek.
5
Love is the colour of honey,
tastes as sweet, liquid amber.
I wear it, a cloak threaded with bee-song,
broad enough to enfold my world,
so broad I will never see its end.
1
Show death as it is, I shout,
not with soaring strings and soft focus,
make-up immaculate and diamonds of tears
in smiling eyes. Trudge it out,
with a single string lament beneath a leaden sky.
2
In the misty field, horse shapes move, grazing
bare paddocks, fence demarcating the limits
for creatures born to gallop wide open spaces,
and the reassuring donkeys murmur comfort,
at least there will be no snow.
3
I heard her whisper to the man beside her,
that colour makes her look like a corpse,
and I almost turned and grinned, with my teeth
stained from eating all the wrong things
to say, I’ve seen the list. You’re next.
4
When they were going out, she used to cook
to impress him, put all of her passion
into creating meals he would love.
Now they’re married, she cooks with despair,
knowing he only comes home to eat.
5
Here, on a day of too warm and raining gold
of mimosa leaves, a baby struggles to pull
a wooden zebra over tree-root obstacles,
a small beacon of wonderment and sanity,
beneath a sky still full of mystery.
1.
Late January, the sap is running.
Crews have trimmed all the boulevard trees.
Now the maples stand around weeping.
So they busied themselves around the tomb
of Hector, breaker of horses.
2.
Again and again he tries the trick,
flipping the board under his feet, coming down
on pavement while the board rolls away
down the alley, past the dumpsters,
past the No Skateboarding sign.
3.
Coming from opposite directions,
we both braked suddenly for the rabbit,
then smiled across the distance
between us, briefly bound together
in someone else’s survival.
4.
After all those years of babies crying,
teenage boys home late and slamming doors,
there’s only the whine of the old dog
when she’s fallen out of bed
and can’t find her way back in the dark.
5.
I found a bumblebee staggering
half-dead across the basement floor.
Now she suns herself in unmown grass,
dusty and golden like some small treasure
unearthed from a pharoah’s tomb.
1.
Dense fog as we drove into town.
Where there should have been nothing
but cornfields, there was nothing.
As if God had created Olin, and wasn’t sure
what to do with the rest of Iowa.
No sign of life, except for the cars
parked outside the funeral home.
Did you see the sign as we entered town?
Come for a visit, stay for a lifetime.
2.
Dream skimmed from the surface
of my shallow sleep by the neighbor’s
motion-sensitive light filling
the bedroom with a lunar glow.
2 a.m. Silent except for the boiler
whispering heat into the pipes.
Outside, half-shadowed in the snow,
a single rabbit, looking as if she
had just come down from the moon.
3.
Tucked in among the upturned roots
of yet another wind-felled tree,
cottonwood or shallow-rooted maple:
a nest of dry grass, the color of earth,
that some bird, rejecting the branches
of trees still standing all around,
chose to build among the roots,
as if to say, this is how we must adapt
to a world turned upside-down.
4.
Insert a stanza of rain, of shoes
lined up by the back door.
I want to practice being spontaneous,
but my pockets are full of lists.
The rocks, the moss on the rocks,
the water’s fractured sunlight—
how can I capture it all on Instagram?
Somewhere, in a tree or on a wire,
there’s a bird that sounds like haiku.
5.
In the current state of the world,
what is there to do but do
as the dung beetle does, and dance—
dance atop this sphere of dung,
dance to the stars of the Milky Way,
dance until you find direction,
then set out in a straight line, rolling
that ball of dung until you come
to the place where you want it to be.
1.
We are sitting in the bed of my pearl gray Ford pickup,
watching the perseids meteor shower. This is August of ’62.
We lie on a Navajo blanket on our backs, our arms arcing
to the trajectories of tiny spits of light racing above our heads
heading over the lake mirrored on moonshine below. I rise to toss
a stone skipping on the surface like it was a million miles away. We
are there for hours but the subject of the child never comes up.
2.
The mirror stares blankly, no reading its satin eye. The wallpaper
curls its nose in anticipation. The ceiling looks down with an indifferent
frown while I make my entrance. Atop the old oak dresser, the cat cranes
his neck, killingly curious. My sad clock feels alarm – shadows
leap and listen as the uncertain lightbulb sways, spraying glints of glimmer
and hints of winter in a syncopated glistening glissade. The cat holds
the heights as cats will do, but not to be outdone, I hold the depths.
3.
My father, forever in the driveway washing his new blue Ford Fairlane –
now parked in front of the garage, my father, shirtless, pridefully
hosing off the last sudsy remnants, tossing me the key to park the car
in the garage, my father looking fit for a man of fifty, and fifty is his
reality in my memory, until I am eighty, six years older than he was
when the cancer took him, not going down softly, the man who had once
had his tonsils removed with no painkillers, cursing the life now leaving.
4.
She calls me in the early morning, heading down to the creek, the Caney Fork,
swollen in the Spring, now knee-deep and drought-laden, here and there a dam
of fallen logs and branches, caulked and sealed with mud and leaves, resolute.
We take our saw and loppers down to the edge, wade on in till the water overtakes
our boot tops. Oh so cold, but soon our feet are numb as we begin unwinding
the debris, sawing and cutting, determined, throwing or dragging every piece above
the high-water mark. For two days we continue until the creek is clear. Our hearts sing.
5.
I was nine when David Simmons died. He had beaver buck teeth and
pineapple hair sprouting in all directions. My grandmother was visiting us.
She told me that as long as I could stand on one leg, strong and balanced,
I would not die. Maasai warriors, standing guard over their cattle, often stood
on one leg, as did water birds waiting for prey. Seventy-one years later, whenever
I feel in danger of dying, I find myself standing on one leg, Maasai warrior
scanning the bush for lions, blue heron waiting in the shallow water.
1. Candle smooth waxy melt,
bee labor last summer
built cells on cells which
we collapsed together in molds
Cire, I would say to you of the
satisfying heft heady linden smell
2. The kitten tongues of the lake
at my feet under the moon
lick away the gritty sand
undermining everything
my body balance and faith
until my bare toes hang in space
3. From the ninth floor window, late:
just out of the streetlight
one saw a quick knifing,
rain sliding down bricks
blood in a murky slick
silent footsteps racing away
4. Flower blossom tea
untouched petits fours
white winter sunset bleak
and wrapped around us silence
enfolding silence before
we open out in Vespers
5. You know I never go barefoot
I’m afraid of heights
but I wasn’t always so
a year in the convent then
a century to go, licking
moonbeams on the stone floor
1.
Shotweed and mouse-ear chicory—
late January’s small clusters.
I lie on the frozen mud like
a singular castaway, unstable constellation,
waiting for equinox two months off
in a location long obscured by clouds.
2.
Hooves ring the trails with chanting
until earth and stone subside under
the wide course upheld by air currents,
incantations made possible through
blessings, prayers, maybe pleas—
wind horses waving and flying.
3.
Dreaming, I scale barren cliffs
then clamber into a hot air balloon,
fly above the Rockies to my own
blunt astonishment: I have a lifetime
fear of heights, but here the fractal
mountains steer me toward a calm.
4.
Inside my body somewhere
perhaps beneath my ribs’ cartilage
or sliding through heart’s ventricles
with a whir like wind against feathers
through my esophagus, my breath—
nighthawk’s cry settles before dawn.
5.
In the greenhouse fernery’s stone grotto
under its turn-of-the-century glass
and moss-green terrarium atmosphere
beside a stone statue of Buddha
someone has placed like an offering
a paperclip, a plastic skewer, a penny.
-1-
So much the betterment for staying under
wraps. We need no strategy to carry change.
Merchants swipe the stripe or tap the wireless
icon. An injured finger might impair their grip.
-2-
Rim of glass meets lip of mouth: liquid
exchange between containers. Something bitter
pours into an olio of juices. The body is a blur
of sloshing and wishing it had fewer needs.
-3-
Glasses do less and less to repair diminished vision.
Small change to a prescription isn’t cost-effective.
Not knowing where the wind will take them
do the leaves resist or welcome their severance?
-4-
Something is better and something else is worse.
I’m bleeding and cannot see the cut. At thirty
the dots to seventy jump around like beans.
By the time they turn to jelly I stick close to home.
-5-
One more self-sustaining move has it in for my
dwelling. From possibility to daily snare where
pines are moaning: had she known to open
without knocking she might not have died alone.
-1-
Why church bells; this is not a holiday
or Sunday. There are no saints marching in.
There are probably prodigals but none
so famous as to be rung home, rejoiced:
I-told-you-so echoing in steady tones.
-2-
You said you’d return as a Roseate Spoonbill
and here you are, six years later, on my dock,
true to your word. I understand now, the allure
of taking someone’s Word and attaching
revelatory meaning to sheer coincidence.
-3-
Lighting the fresh goji and rose blood orange
candle, a pleasant scent arises in the jar. More
to be done to cause the air to claim its power,
release an alchemized inhalant in the room
clearing stagnant sorrow exhaled by survivors.
-4-
Ocean, the friend who’s always there, yet
inaccessible, who loves to hear the sound
of her own voice, silvery and sonorous. Deep
thinker to her bedrock where we start again
measuring the tides, proving our connection.
-5-
Evenings move like starfish, the slowest creatures
in the world. I waste days, almost paralyzed by
how few days remain. My heart and mind agree
to disagree on which is best at burying
the unbearable. We can’t tell who’s speaking.
1.
Handmaidens of the queen,
pollen-dusted, eyes searching for violet
see what we cannot, flowers wide-eyed
in the sun, waiting for their kisses.
2.
The golden seagrass bleached to grey and white,
shadows upon shadows on the night-dark sand.
The moon swims atop the waves, and dolphins rise
to dive through her silver face.
3.
Monoliths, monuments, markers of time in stone,
watchers of the past, predictors of the future. Vast
sculptures of ancient kings and gods—worn by sand–
their makers gone. Ghosts hover, power crackles in the air
4.
Venus points without her arms in the fortress turned
museum. The click-clack of heels, the cameras flash,
at her still perky breasts. She seems to turn for her admirers
Mona Lisa placed in the basement, smiles.
5.
We follow the rabbit through the gate.
The meadow is stelliferous. The small white flowers
dot the green like stars. We stand alone in this verdant Milky Way,
walk home covered in stardust. Our clasped hands hold galaxies.
1.
What is recalled? The deoxidized surface before rust,
the tree bare of silver-green lichen on its bark–
Earth at its creation, swirling sun-stirred clouds of dust and gas,
a collision of giant rock, birthing the moon?
2.
The Lenape roamed here, returned yearly, like the sparkling silver shad
to the pebbly shallows of the Delaware. Now bleached bones of wood rest
atop the beached stones, travelers through miles
and time. Witnesses to changes, log canoes to steel hulls.
3.
Scientists say perhaps there was once life on ancient Mars. They
find a massive black hole in the shimmering Milky Way. The galaxy,
red and black and white—like a newspaper. Fold and unfold.
There’s a new headline highlighted. Turn the page.
4.
The morning moon is now winter breath
hanging in the sky, the scent of last night’s
dinner still in the air, a remembered perfume.
My own little cat a faint melody, barely heard.
5.
Finally, there is always and ever blue.
I taste it in sky and river—icy mint and
sun-ripe berry. It is star-song calling from the dawn
of time. It is you, your eyes, turned green, like Earth—home.
1.
The most searing moment
in the visit to the prison
the one where the friends
didn’t dare to lock eyes
or acknowledge each other.
2.
Violets vie with dandelions
outside my office window.
My husband calls the first
precious, the second weeds.
Together, they sing to me.
3.
I’m learning a new language.
E rewires to something
akin to A. Double L falls
between the cracks of my
expectations, unmappable.
4.
Every morning, a school bus
rumbles up our street
to pick up the neighbor’s
autistic daughter, her coat
the same bright yellow.
5.
When my mother died
one tear fell from her eye,
a lacrima mortis, while daylilies
dropped their petals onto
a table in her line of sight.
1. Donated tables wobble, couches sag.
Drinks flow. Open mic night – nervous or bold,
a new generation of poets speaks.
2. My life feels like a weed-choked lake
yet the water clears as it tumbles over the falls –
overcoming all obstacles, it runs to the sea.
3. The letter is in a plain white envelope,
address printed with care in childish capitals,
my little sister, growing up without me.
4. These are the things we need to hear:
Dreamtime stories of Creation, Earth and Stars
ancient truths, past, present, future combined.
5. Magpies carol, awaken me at dawn.
Wind chimes sway in a gentle breeze.
Alone, I long for his singing in the shower.
1.
On the shore, turtles perform salutes-to-the-sun.
Geese, ducks, a white crane, and four black swans water-glide.
Molly tosses bread and calls, hello mama duck, as we move
around the pond ringed with trees. I surround one with my arms,
a tall strong trunk that seems to hug me back.
2.
Wintry day of clouds like mood rings.
Alfred-Hitchcock bleak with a murmuration of grackles,
wiry checkmarks circling and perched. Backdropped by dark
gray smokestack clouds and horizontal white slashes,
zigzagged as if cut with pinking shears.
3.
Starbucks French roast in a round red cup.
A kitchen clock ticks. The heater whirs, clicks, and stops.
I squeeze ointment from a tube, slather it onto the burnt skin
of my face and it settles. Hot prickled layer of flesh that cools,
regenerates, rejuvenates, and miraculously heals.
4.
To roll down grassy hills, you must become one
with the dizziness, the smell of fresh-cut lawn,
the damp dirt, the dried flecks on clothes, a bit of itch.
To end up in a slightly different position than you’d planned,
like, not straight down but at an angle.
5.
Near the two-year anniversary of my son’s death by cop,
we go to a play about Michael Brown’s 2014 murder
in Ferguson. One tall actress in Doc Martens plays all the parts.
As we exit the theater, my date circles me with his arm,
asks, are you okay? I inhale, exhale. I am.
1.
The lawsuit is over. Pick up your grief journals
from the lawyer’s office. Stop to hike North Mountain.
Drink in long-legged jackrabbits, laughing quails, saguaros,
mountain bikers, lone walkers, and then no one. Where
is the trail back to the visitor center? Phone has no signal.
Sky is empty except for the gauzy ghost
of last night’s full moon.
2.
Go west on Northern to drive your granddaughter
home to her dad’s. Go past horses, strip malls, palm trees
overgrown into Cousin Itts. Out of the blue, she starts to sing
“Closing Time” by Semisonic: Every new beginning comes
from some other beginning’s end. I have no idea
where she learned it. She has perfect pitch,
which she did not inherit from me.
3.
The cop who shot my son is at my front door
saying he’s sorry. Everything is dark as if in shadow.
I say, don’t apologize to me, apologize to Adam,
so, he walks down the hall and Adam opens a door,
and in other dreams, Adam is ethereal, but this time
he is crying, and the cop is crying and they lean
toward each other and merge. I jolt awake.
4.
At the farm, there are pigs, goats, roosters,
and a flamboyant male turkey who gobbles in response
to Molly’s gobbling, like they know each other.
I’d barely noticed the female, but today she is lying
on the ground, Molly pointing, what’s the male turkey
doing to the female? as he climbs on top of her.
I sigh, answer, He’s just being a turkey.
5.
At the coffee shop, we sit across a table to try gazing,
my idea. My date asks, aren’t you scared?
I say, no. His eyes shine deep brown; mine blue,
although he’ll think they’re gray. Eyebrows wiggle
and mouth corners tilt up. We sit for two minutes amidst coffee smell,
clink of ice, funny socks, postcards, and potholders that say Fuck.
There is a feeling of entering. We try not to blink.
1. Together
Licking my lover’s pierced earlobe
like a greasy plate, my tongue
examines every corner, imagines
the flavor of Wedgewood floral
designs, relating well-guarded secrets
as scented candles flicker & incense
color cracks—perfume muted light—
amid our midnight tom foolery
arching necks, closing eyes, caressing bodies
exuding salty sweat, tasting unholy.
2. Purdy Creek
Northwest white polars lean
like elderly people attempting
to stand upright when muddy currents
clutch waterlogged trunks and pull
feeble legs asunder like flagpoles
planted in insubstantial soil, defying
enduring flash floods while marine otters
back float, bouncing off impediments
like brightly lit pin balls joyriding
the river’s surge, carrying them to the sea.
3. Out. Out Damn Spot
A collection of Shakespeare’s Complete Works
lined the top of my bookshelf, dragon bookends
embraced the leather bound, goldleaf texts;
although rescued from a massive pile of rubble
following an apartment fire; I sliced open my arm
lifting charred beams off their covers and bled nonstop.
I tossed volume after volume in cardboard boxes
baptizing each book in blood that cascaded from my
wound like a red-rapid waterfall, leaving magenta stains
on texts that made Lady Macbeth’s hands appear pale.
4. Sundown
Power couple eagles soar
like synchronized figure skate
dancers pushing though ice clouds
gliding across the grey marble skyline
disappearing over mountain crests
on the horizon; auburn feathers
blend into magenta rays piercing through
streaks of palm ash cumulonimbus
painting western sunsets
with rainbow pigment brushstrokes.
5. Silhouettes
Stale tobacco permeates the old tavern
like spectres of couples sitting alone,
dropping pick-up lines, lighting cigarettes;
spirits of yesterday’s practices and tomorrow’s
nightmares screen themselves in shadow shrouds
whisper secret indiscretions, declare fidelity to time,
place, and contexts—moments irretrievable amid
invisible smoke rings circling, crowning, anointing
heads like the sun’s halo during an eclipse, silence
reaffirming erstwhile lovers’ commitment.
1. Girl
Guns & Roses, black text in a white circle on a black t-shirt where a single red rose thorns
through the top. Flouncy blue jean skirt
ruffles as the door opens. Patchouli and sandalwood dance in the breeze. Summer heat
blast swarms in, the flash in your eyes hotter,
words hotter still. The newest idiot at the shop, drunk, had slurred out nicknames for
the girls next door.
First I’d ever seen you. In three months, a ring.
2. Home
I been whisking brooms, squishing mops, flapping rugs, scrunching paper towels and
squeegeeing windows since early, meeting the sun.
Their jaws drop as the Formica gleams. They threaten to stay. Their kids in socks
whoosh across lemon-scented linoleum a few last times.
They look for missing pencil lines scritching growth marks into door frames. I say
no charge, mumble
something about old friends. I can’t recall when he and I spoke last.
3. Cat
The thunk, squeak, and creaking of the wooden slats beneath my feet at the aging but
pristine vet’s office under the railroad tracks
reminds me of the home we used to live in, especially when you would twist open the
blinds every summer Saturday and the light
showcased the dust sparkles flickering through the warmth evenly spaced across the
back of the sofa
where that cat snored, before his final yowl.
4. Son
I pissed my pants, he knew, from the warmth on the nape of his neck. When he asked, I
only mumbled a low, soft yeah.
He grumbled about already losing an hour to the sinking sun traveling eastbound to the
reunion. My bladder had found it. Oh, to be
four again, ferried about by parents, free to pee on necks and trees, headed to food I
didn’t make and still won’t eat.
I call Mom, weekly.
5. Onomatopoeia
I don’t know what word other couples choose, but that one is ours, for no other reason
than we decided that night and it seemed right.
We had just finished The Notebook where yet another Alzheimer’s patient rediscovers
their lost love, again.
You told me with wet cheeks we needed a word, for when I reached this stage, or when
we met in heaven,
but I don’t want to go. I’d rather stay. Here. With you.
1
A sapling doubles as doorman, grows and greets
at a threshold in an azure-blue stone wall.
A beach takes the place of the living room.
Water laps softer than a television.
Sailboats tack, distant, their spinnakers white clouds.
Much as I love the sand, I wish for water,
to be wind and take a twilight Jesus stroll.
2
Classmates jump on the giant red balloon that had
followed the boy down slate-grey Paris streets. Leave
it totally flat, bright as a fresh blood stain.
I squirm in the plywood auditorium
seat, a shadow of the befriended, sad boy
I was watching on screen, part of a school treat.
Scarlet maple leaves crackle on the way home.
3
A brick warehouse hangs upside-down through droplets.
The L.A. skyline dissolves into rust clouds.
A matter of gold sunset and perspective
veiled in a scarf of pink and salmon stripes
from a Star Trek episode. An alien,
Companion, entered a dying woman
to hold the hand of a man and walk with him.
4
Purple door with a cobalt-blue keyhole cover
pushed in at the bottom of the hole, pulled
at the top, as if the key had failed to
expose what was kept in the dark. No sign of
a knob. Paint peeling away, showing faded
red and apricot, hints of wood grain, weather
blending layers while also eroding them.
5
“There’s a dog loose in the wood,” Fiver said,
and collies run past the budding fig tree, bright
green, between fuchsia bougainvillea and
dark green persimmon, across my back lawn. Dogs
which let themselves out to play, dead for decades.
Collies can be smart like that, smiling when caught
under a pewter sky, a storm rolling in.
1Title taken from the poem “Ephemerality” by Maggie Van Patten, which appeared in Gleam, Volume Five.
1
The photo of peeling paint is a dragonfly wing,
light blue with navy blue veins, set to take flight
it’s a morning sky with night coursing through it,
a cityscape caught in an angel’s eye and ear.
People as lines, with pinpoints of laughs and sobs
which flow midnight blue, a gurgling current
into which the angel adds its crystal tears.
2
I’m seven, sealed in a Gallo Spaňada
wine bottle—pitcher-shaped green glass, handle to
pour or toss the empty out to sea—on a
Pacific blue couch that’s the outgoing tide.
Mom and my great-grandmother chat. Their words rush,
water. A jet flies over, its metallic
scrape the bottle’s black screw-cap when it turns.
3
White sailboat beneath a bridge’s silhouette.
A shadow whose span I walked from end to end,
counting rivets in orange metal towers,
noticing its brown age spots, rust in myself.
Suspension cables sang in icy noon wind.
My bones hummed along as if they knew the tune,
had been pulled through dies, been formed from white-hot steel.
4
Nine-year-old girl became a bird, flew with her
baby sister held tight. Flew when her mom threw them
out of the nest, from their car speeding out
of hell on the freeway. Speeding from a blood
trail. Dad face down. Floor sopping from mom stabbing and
stabbing. The girls flew like birds and landed hard,
and mom wrapped that nest, their car, around a tree.
5
I walk sand dune peaks from shadow to bright despair.
They stretch past the vermillion, setting sun,
a tide of sand. The moon alchemizes it
into silver waves. These become a door—chipped
creme and lime paint, tarnished brass knob—which opens
to the full moon in a window. A crow
watches this moon, transfixed, from the outside ledge.
2Title taken from the poem “The Bunglaows” by John Ashbery, from the collection The Double-Dream of Spring.
It Was Impossible to Locate Heaven or Hell3
after artwork by Meikel S. Church
By Jon Yungkans
BACK TO TOP >>
1 Forbidden
The halved ruby grapefruit of a broken heart is the blue-blood
of happiness, chromium albatross astride a ’56 Chevy Bel-Air.
Goodyear winged sandals. Tankful of Pegasus from Mobil Oil.
2 For as Far as I Can See
Black umbrella gets sun off a person’s back. Allows the storm
an open field for its dry, rustling wave, while wind keeps itself
taciturn, me endearingly close. Silent company can be the best.
3 Dead Oceans
One night, René Magritte and the Bay of Biscay walk into a bar.
The bay has a showgirl’s legs. How else can it amble to shore?
Magritte has arrows in his back, his black bowler immaculate.
4 Exposed
Aptly misnamed, life bleeds white and whimpers into the road,
Blacktop soaks hemoglobin and tears with equal fervor. Blue
Monday. Sure, it’s a song but it’s also a blue-white reckoning
5 For Those Who Think It Still Exists
Keep walking. Water turns bronze, becomes firm and unrolls.
Water and air turn black at night because they hold everything.
Night swallows concrete, asphalt, offers up the moon in respite.
3Title taken from the poem “The Desolate Beauty Parlor on Beach Avenue” by John Ashbery, in his collection Can You Hear, Bird.
Ready to write your own cadralor?
About Us
Gleam is a journal wholly devoted to the new poetic form, the cadralor, created by Gleam’s founding co-editors, Lori Howe and Christopher Cadra. The cadralor consists of five short, unrelated, highly-visual stanzas.
Get In Touch
If you are interested in submitting your own cadralor poem or if you have questions, you can reach out to our Gleam email. We look forward to hearing from you!
Meet the Editors
The cadralor was co-created by:
• Lori Howe, Editor in Chief
• Christopher Cadra, Senior Editor
Gleam: Journal of the Cadralor 