LETTER TO A LOST FRIEND - RICHARD SHELTON

War, trade, religious debts to discharge, these are mostly the reasons

for men’s distant journeyings: but you take pleasure in distant journeys

without reason.                                                               – St.-John Perse

we do not realize what we want

until we learn

what we are willing to give up for it

and you did God knows you did

when swimming was no longer possible

you learned to sink you learned

to live at the bottom of the sea

now tell me of the chambers where you sleep

tell me it does not matter

lie if you must

is your bed luminous is it festooned

with seaweed do all your narrow windows

open onto water

is the tide kind to you

forgive me if I do not understand

last night a stranger asked me what

gives you most pleasure and before I thought

I answered her revenge

PARTY - Andrea Gibson

I was 13 the first time

I drank so much the bugs stopped.

A high school party

at Chrissy Olden’s house,

a senior, whose mom worked overnights

at the truck stop and embarrassed the customers

by not being embarrassed to lose

a solid 10 minutes

rambling over the register

about who wrote what in her yearbook

in 1971.

I was sitting in the middle

of the living room

on a corduroy couch

telling Katie Mathews,

the only other 8th grader there,

something about the temperature of music.

Somewhere there was a DJ

holding his finger under the faucet

of the party.

Every few minutes

I’d be handed a bottle of something

that razored my tonsils all the way down.

If someone had told me

it was nail polish remover

I would have believed them

but I would not have stopped drinking

the red off of my heart.

Do you remember

the first time you knew you

were absolutely safe?

I stumbled into the bathroom

and locked the door behind me

so I could smile as wide as I had to

without anybody knowing I had to.

The mirror was caked with Aqua Net.

There was enough hair in the sink

to mistake the drain for a pet.

The last person who had vomited

in the toilet had missed the toilet.

A year prior, just before my grandfather

swallowed the worm of his life,

he leaned his yellow face into my terrified eyes

and made me promise to Never

go near the bottle.

Nobody had to tell me

that booze was a terrible way to die.

But this was a party,

and I was person for the very first time.

You won’t know what I mean

unless you’ve been there too.

The bugs drowned till morning.

Say what you want about addiction.

I pulled the hair out of the drain with my hands.

I took it home.

I gave it a name.

Bad Habits - Richard Shelton

how could I leave you behind

old friends

since I am going nowhere

here is good and there is evil

and again I fall like a drunk

between two stools

of all the things I have

I cherish most

what no one else would want

At the Restaurant - Stephen Dunn

Six people are too many people

and a public place the wrong place

for what you're thinking--

stop this now.

Who do you think you are?

The duck à l'orange is spectacular,

the flan the best in town.

But there among your friends

is the unspoken, as ever,

chatter and gaiety its familiar song.

And there's your chronic emptiness

spiraling upward in search of words

you'll dare not say

without irony.

You should have stayed at home.

It's part of the social contract

to seem to be where your body is,

and you've been elsewhere like this,

for Christ's sake, countless times;

behave, feign.

Certainly you believe a part of decency

is to overlook, to let pass?

Praise the Caesar salad. Praise Susan's

black dress, Paul's promotion and raise.

Inexcusable, the slaughter in this world.

Insufficient, the merely decent man.

Untitled - Chris Mc Geown

Mental illnesses

Are constellations

Of the mind–

Most people won’t

See them

Unless you point

Them out.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE - Richard Shelton

                                                      For Michael Hogan

on December nights

when the rain we needed months ago

is still far off and the wind

gropes through the desert

in search of any tree to hold it

those who live here all year round

listen to the irresistible

voice of loneliness

and want only to be left alone

local knowledge is to live in a place

and know the place

however barren

some kinds of damage

provide their own defense

and we who stay in the ruins

are secure against enemies and friends

if you should see one of us

in the distance as your caravan passes

and if he is ragged and gesturing

do not be mistaken

he is not gesturing for rescue

he is shouting go away