Track 29

The old lady in the corner sings
adamant today.
“I once was lost.”

She screeches, she howls, she demands.
Words mangled but familiar.
My ears strain to understand
the last of her voice.

Her eyes
can’t recognize me anymore.
Her once-sharp teeth have been
offered into trash cans
one by one:
at her home, in hospitals,
the last, finally, here.

I touch her arm and
she stops mid-verse,
opens her mouth in communion.
I offer chocolate pudding,
most drooled wasted but
a little transubstantiated
into a smile
holy as a bombed-out church.
“Some good.”
She smacks her cracked lips,
lifts a finger, pointing
where she thinks I am.
“But now I’m found.”

My mind finds her, too,
wandering in the ruins.
If she can put together
a two-word sentence,
maybe this is a day to float words.

I try to capture her eyes,
remember that they took those away, too.
As a substitute, I touch her hand and she pauses.

“Momma, you sing
loud as God himself
storming from an empty sky
when you have earned a rest.”

“Why, Momma, why?”

Her mouth gets that snapping turtle look
I remember from long shadowed days
when I was shaped into a man by her songs.
“I sing because it makes me happy.”

She wanders away somewhere far,
finds what she is searching for,
snaps back.
“And because other people need to hear me,
whether they know it
or not.”

Exhausted from the effort, her useless eyes shutter,
her head falls,
her chest catches.

I hold my breath
until I hear hers.

I stand to leave her in peace.
But the drooping weary head shakes one more time,
thunders without lifting,
“Pardon me boy,
“Is that the Chattanooga Choo-Choo?”

I touch her shoulder
and follow her down the track.

By Michael Guillebeau

A Poem in Pink

In shades of pink, beauty does reside,
A color we adore, yet sometimes deride.
For when we glimpse its captivating sight,
Awe and wonder satisfy our hearts with delight.

But muse, dear soul, is pink akin to a woman?
In its myriad shades, a parallel is summoned.
Just as women, diverse in their grace,
Pink too boasts a spectrum, a captivating embrace.

Yet, in audacious pink, a daring display,
Society’s whispers may come to play.
For like a woman, bold and unafraid,
Critics may scoff, their words dismayed.

A man adorned in a pink suit, oh how they cheer,
“Confidence personified,” they declare, clear.
But a woman in pink, a different fable unfolds,
Her confidence questioned; assumptions take hold.

Oh, pink, a hue so cherished, so adored,
Yet boldness in its glory, often ignored.
Like a woman, whose strength is slighted,
Pink’s vibrant allure, sometimes unwanted.

Celebrate, both woman and pink,
Embracing their beauty, in every distinct link.
For in their uniqueness, a symphony does play,
A testament to strength, in their own special way.

By Kelly Thiirah

Upstream

That is where the Baiji have gone. That
is where I am going. And upstream
is where I will let my guilt run dry,
the thick oil of being

suffused into the atmosphere. Thousands
emerge from the mouths of villages,
heads tilted upwards, voices lifted,
the search for the blue sky begun again

and this time I am not sure
it will end again. The lines in my palms
are streaked black with earth as I look
for the stars underneath our feet,

the primordial left below
immediate horizon after first sunrise—I
wonder if the first settlers along
the Yangtze river traced their palm lines,

thinking of the future, in the same
sunlight we now search for night under. Did
they predict the Baiji’s migration
patterns? Perhaps they’d have known where

they are now, would be able to tell us if
they have really gone upstream—I
put my forehead against the cracked soil,
thinking of its dampness, and ask it to

awaken the old stars. My breath
does not condense in the air as it once did.
And it is empty, despite the thousand voices
reaching through to the sky, just as hands

bearing clothes, children, sickles carefully
sail through the undercurrent, sheathed
in a static, murmuring gray—I
wonder if the earth can read the future from

my palm lines and from
my mouth arises a nothingness—I
wonder if it knows—and I
pray to know how much longer I will

have to run until I see the Baiji
again.

By Vanessa Y. Niu

meat and bones

       tie me into neat little stacks,

            meat that slid off the bone

    gathered at              my feet  

                           heaving breaths absconding 

  from exposed muscle.                  i’ve always thought 

                skeletons         held more truth than skin.

mine is soaked in perfumes,         lotions & potions

                        covered in tight binds,

            baggy cloths                carefully layered over        a form 

                        who has done nothing but grieve

                                                            but i’ll illusion myself to match 

      the destiny       contained within the worms 

                                                                   of my brain.

                                 when will i 

fix the body that isn’t mine.                            i’ve cocooned it 

                                                every day,                              done what

                    came desperately to me at night with my eyes open,

                                    in daylight with my eyes closed. 

and still i see what you see. 

            take the rotten flesh from the 

                                                  steaming 

                                                pile of soul 

                                                                        tie it up,

                   and toss it as               far                 from your mind

     as i am,                                                                         from you. 

By Rith Scott