Image by Dawn Estrin

for my mother

When the black-eyed susans begin to bloom
in the backyard, and the moonbeam coreopsis
bursts into tiny stars, I think of the year

I banished yellow from my life. It was the year
I dug up the lantana, when I didn’t plant
narcissus and all the buttery bulbs

but chose white, and a little blue, for the garden
without knowing that I was readying
for two long years of her dying. The next spring

I painted our kitchen, once a lemony gloss, ecru.
I threw out from my closet all the blouses
hinting, from their hangers, of glad canaries.

Beginning that fall I dressed in a dull haze
of beige, toning myself down for the end.
I ignored the incandescence of morning, the amber

of dusk, and leaned to clouds billowed in black.
The week in November she died I loaded the trunk
of my car with flats of pansies, three sacks of bulbs.

I wanted my hands working the dirt, a dark loam
that would spring into jonquils, daffodils—bright
coronas of yellow, and yellow, and yellow.

Susan Laughter Meyers is the author of the full collection Keep and Give Away and the chapbook Lessons in Leaving. Her poetry has also appeared in The Southern Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Subtropics, and numerous other journals and anthologies. A long-time writing instructor, she lives with her husband in rural Givhans, SC. That Year first appeared in The Southern Review, was reprinted in Keep and Give Away, ©2006, University of South Carolina Press, and is reproduced by r.kv.r.y. with permission.

Image by Dawn Estrin

My father’s embrace is tighter
Now that he knows
He is not the only man in my life.
He whispers, Remember when, and, I love you,
As he holds my hand hungry
For a discussion of Bible scriptures
Over breakfast. He pours cups of coffee
I can’t stop
Spilling.

My father’s embrace is firm and warm
Now that he knows. He begs forgiveness
For anything he may have done to make me
Turn to abomination
As he watches my eggs, scrambled
Soft. Yolk runs all over the plate.
A rubber band binds the morning paper.

My father’s embrace tightens. Grits
Stiffen. I hug back
Like a little boy, gripping
To prove his handshake.
Daddy squeezes me close,
But I cannot feel his heartbeat
And he cannot hear mine—
There is too much flesh between us,
Two men in love.

Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award, the Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego.  His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, New England Review, Oxford American, and several other journals and anthologies.  His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the 2009 American Book Award. Like Father is taken from Please by Jericho Brown (New Issues 2008) Copyright © 2008 by Jericho Brown. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from the author.

Image by Dawn Estrin

And I was thinking in the breaking dawn,
my fingers on my father’s precious skin:
so this is what a death is like.

And not just any death, I see that now: the good death
of a good man. How it takes a lifetime
to prepare for such a death.
And a lifetime after for the rest of us, recovering.
Trying not to botch what’s left us of our own.

Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, where her prize-winning debut Weather Eye was published. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Manhattan Review, Southwest Review, Magma, Succour and Wasafiri, among others. She has been commissioned to write poems for the British Film Institute, and her work is included in several anthologies, including Penguin’s Poems for Love and The Forward Book of Poetry 2009. Her latest collection A Fold in the Map is published by Salt. Her next collection, The Tempest Prognosticator, comes out from Salt next year. www.isobeldixon.com And is taken from A Fold in the Map, ©2007, (UK: Salt; SA: Jacana), Reprinted with permission.

Image by Dawn Estrin

We left him sleeping peaceful in the night
but they have tied him down, bony wrists
wrapped in a sheepskin cuff, lashed tightly to the rail.

He was fierce after we left, they say:
shouting, tearing at the drip. Hard to believe it
of this gentle man, but this morning,

unbound for the time we’re there, he cavils,
clawing at the needle in his arm, moaning
and stubborn, baring his teeth at us

when we refuse. I stroke his fettered hand,
his paper forehead, murmur comfort,
courage, anything. He shakes me off, tossing

his head, red-eyed, an angry ram. Ha!
I must remember who I am: his child,
just a child, why do I question him?

So I hold my tongue, but stay. Lift up the cup,
with its candy-striped concertina straw,
to his splintered lip and he, in resignation, sucks.

Yes, we make a meagre congregation, father,
disobedient. The flesh, indeed, is weak.
Still, remembered echoes of his sermons come:

a promised child, the tangled ram, the sheep-clothed son;
last-minute rescues, legacies, and lies.
The promised and the chosen, certain hopes.

How, from these stories are we to be wise?
His word was clear and sure before, but now
his raging, rambling, shakes this listener’s heart.

And yet, to be here, of some small use,
is a kind of peace. Three spoons of food,
oil for his hands, his feet. Then at last,
at last, returning to gentleness, he sleeps.

Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, where her prize-winning debut Weather Eye was published. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Manhattan Review, Southwest Review, Magma, Succour and Wasafiri, among others. She has been commissioned to write poems for the British Film Institute, and her work is included in several anthologies, including Penguin’s Poems for Love and The Forward Book of Poetry 2009. Her latest collection A Fold in the Map is published by Salt. Her next collection, The Tempest Prognosticator, comes out from Salt next year. www.isobeldixon.com Lamb taken from A Fold in the Map, ©2007, (UK: Salt; SA: Jacana), Reprinted with permission.

Image by Dawn Estrin

While I was out-to-lunch,
my wife answered the phone.
It was Dave Barry calling me.

I had been warned she might
run off with a prose writer.
I am a poet with no future.

He promised her
a Stephen King first edition
and a night job at Krispy Kreme.

Now she is living in Miami.
I recognize her in Dave’s new novel,
she’s Pixie, the porno queen.

“A little to the left,”
her one and only line.
I know she wants to come back,

but I canceled my subscription
to the Miami Herald.
It’s as good as a Mexican divorce.

Clinton B. Campbell says: “‘The first books they burn are poetry books; the first people they put in jail are poets.’ This quote is historically true. Why are the lowly poets so important to be imprisoned, as was the case in South America, Russia and most other imperialist nations over the history of writing? I believe it is because poets are the keepers of the truth, and ‘they’ don’t want the truth to be known. As a poet or any writer, it is our responsibility to keep telling the truth knowing the truth has little to do with the facts and little to do with recorded history.” Clint is currently re-reading Nineteen Eighty Four. Even though he is widely published, Clint is probably best known as house-husband for photographer/poet Karen M. Peluso. They live in Beaufort, SC.

Image by Dawn Estrin

I think I get stuck
on almost, its taste sharp & sticking

in my throat, the same as knife, as is.
It is true after all, that you change

your words & form follows. Memory is
a frightening thing, so same as real, & it is

what gets people lost & found: I wake
some nights, my mouth a perfect circle, choking

on you, the fear as real as taste, as fighting
the impulse to either kill you or give in.

Kirsten Hemmy is an artist in Charlotte, NC. She is the founder of Mosaic Literary Center, an organization committed to providing art and writing opportunities to underserved communities. Her work has been the recipient of the Linda Flowers Literary Award and the Academy of American Poets Award. She is an assistant professor of English and the Chair of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Philosophy and Religion at Johnson C. Smith University.