Echo Park, 1994

It’s time for me to grow
impatient now, time to worry
I fertilized too hard
or seeded too deep,

time to think
the scarlet sage
and French marigolds,
the peonies and pansies

and phlox I buried
like treasure against
the uncertain future
will never grow for me.

The weeds in my back yard grow
hard and fast as weeds
do, crab grass pushing
its tough blades up against

the stone paving leading
to the compost heap.
I’m always down
on my knees pulling

at the roots, building
burial mounds of limp
green grass, stacking
like cord wood the purple

stalks of the wicked
weeds, sweating,
wiping dirt
from my face.

I was just hoping.

If I planted knowingly
a profusion of color
a wealth of delicate flowers
might also grow for me.

Victoria Pynchon is the founder and editor-in-chief of this journal. Her poetry has been published in Poet Lore, The Ledge, and, Transformation and her short fiction and literary non-fiction in the Southern New Hampshire Literary Journal and Kudzu.  After a twenty-five year commercial litigation career, Victoria now mediates and arbitrates business disputes through Judicate West and her own ADR firm, Settle It Now Dispute Resolution Services.  She shamelessly self-publishes here from time to time but has turned 99.9% of her writing energy over to her new neutral practice.  She blogs obsessively about anything that crosses her mind at the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog.  She has also been fooling around with video poetry on YouTube here.

Two men, suited black
and broad:  Their shoulders
buckle.  Their arms and hands

scissor up then down along
the back of each, slow
as the priest’s blessing hand,

like wounded butterflies
joined in air, one right-,
one left-winged.  Their hands

carve and crush terrain
along the ridge, the bone,
the hump of human time:

the shoulder cracked
by a pitch in ’48,
the Korean bullet,

its knot between ribs,
the hard bend his wife
hammered on him

that day she died.

Greg McBryde‘s poems, essays, and reviews appear in 32 Poems, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Connecticut Review, Folio, Gettysburg Review, Hollins Critic, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.  His work was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2005 and 2006. A former member of the Senior Executive Service at the U.S. Department of Transportation, he practiced law for 30 years and now edits The
Innisfree Poetry Journal, consults on transportation issues, and works as a freelance editor. He was a high school and college wrestler and an Army photographer in the Vietnam War. The father of three and grandfather of four, he lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife Lois, also a writer.

“At the Cemetery” first appeared in Poet Lore

~after Anselm Kiefer‘s painting, “Sulamith,” 1983~

“Once again, reports have surfaced of a holy woman sequestered in the city’s subterranean world of storm drains and tunnels. The location of her heavily guarded sanctum, a haven for hundreds of homeless, is unknown to authorities, who debunk her existence.” –The Underground Weekly, 1999

Mother Shulamite, her ashen hair in shroud,
Dismisses the threats, but those she tends
Make sure she’s never alone. They are
The throwaways found in alleys, bent
Against crack-vents & curled atop gratings:
The Croakers, the Grunts, the Crattles,
Geezers & Floppers, dozens of Loogans,

Bawdies & Scavengers tucked in with
Tipplers & Hooligans, Snarlers & Bumpers,
A flail of a Rager here, a Defrockee there,
A Prophet who once straddled the curbs for
Bands of minstrels stomping their muddy time
For the only Elegante tapping his wooden way
On a dog-headed cane. All finding themselves

Here thanks to her main runners led by Yves
& Catherine & Fournet who brought them to this
Baggage tunnel long dead beneath Park & 72nd.
Brought here for their greatest comfort,
Bundled up for safekeeping far below blizzards
Overhead, together in awe of the woman who
Raises her hands in a hint of blessing,

Enthroned in a lanterned perch of steel fencing
Strung flush with sponge-rubber slabs,
The high-back Cathedra, its armrest removed
To make way for bench slats & struts & hinged
Relies cut into blocks & screwed to stump-wood
To receive & support her sprawling weight beneath
Layers of burlap robes gathered & draped & sewn

To enhance the dignity she wears as lithely
As a princess at a garden party, but the only
Gardens here grow limestone rosettes arranged
By seepage bubbling up along the jagged curves
Of decaying walls enclosing the shallow platform
Where she sits over damp ground kept warm by
The steam pipes that do their hissing only inches

Away, while she intones her prayers of her waking
Hours for those in her care, fondling the rubbed
& knobby beads she reveres, carved from knuckles
Of nuns long dead in the Convent of Lost Emilia.
This evening she has the company of those most
In need, who watch as she watches over them,
Her lips forming the prayers they feel healing

Their sores, bringing them back from the frigid
Gutters of their dreams. Thirty in all, laid out
Before her, the canvas slings of their pallets
Propped above the wet floor, layered with plastic
Sheets wrapped with newspaper batting: a warmth
Unknown on the streets overhead. She rises &
Descends the ramp to the suffering, allowing

The beads of her rosary to drift across each body,
Her own hands emitting light as soft & blue
As that seen in a child’s eye, leaving a halo
Hovering in place above the brow of those touched,
A sound like muted litany flowing from their throats
In praise of the woman moving about them, her
Fingers magnified to splendor, knuckles inexplicably
Flayed, sculpting themselves into rosary beads left
Unstrung, the gasp of prayers as quiet & holy as bone.

Dan Masterson, professor and poet,  was elected to membership in Pen International in 1986. He is a recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and the Bullis, Borestone, and Fels awards. His fifth volume is nearing completion. The Dan Masterson Papers are housed at Syracuse University.