STILL-LIFE WITH MAN

Today your mouth is a sepal scar,
your face, smooth peach
because you went and shaved it,
knowing I might comment,
knowing I might hold it
in my hands and tell you.
Yes, I like your presence.

I am afraid a still-life
is all I have to say.

I read about Cézanne last night
and dreamt about his apples,
the way their skin reflects the light,
a bowl of little moons. You do that,
you who made the bed,
the coffee while I wrote this.
Each pear becomes an ampersand
when you walk in the room.

Lissa Warren holds a B.S. in English Education from Miami University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Bennington College. Her poetry has appeared in such publications as Quarterly West, Oxford Magazine, Black Warrior Review, and Verse. She has worked in the publicity department of several prestigious Boston publishing houses including David R. Godine, Houghton Mifflin, and Perseus Publishing, and is currently Senior Director of Publicity at Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Her own book, The Savvy Author’s Guide to Book Publicity, was published by Carroll and Graf in 2004

italy defeated equador
in world cup soccer today

with each goal
collective cries of evviva  resounded
from our rose limestone acropolis’
trattorias & gelatrias

jupiter & venus
aligned over lush fragrant
hills of tuscany tonight & I
after nine years of abstinence
perhaps you can tell
drank two bottles of vino rosso

tomorrow
I will climb mt subasio
kneel down in his shaded grotto &
begin

Thomas Stein was born in CT. He received his Masters degree from Boston College and has spent much of his life living and traveling abroad. He is currently an assistant professor of English at Bismarck State College in North Dakota.

When the Rains Came Down

The first shower usually stutters, is uncertain.  This time
it unbuckled its load.   The skies are clear this morning.
I can see Jenin to the east, and the monastery
on Mount Tabor.   The rains have tamed the place
softened my olive tree that was dusty and aging,
polished begonias and added height to radishes
planted from seed.

I count cyclamens forcing through,  ferns
stretching in the shade. The garden seems bigger now.
Scorched patches have come alive.
Lavender, just planted, trembles.  Oregano
is in the air today, and mint.  Olives spin
from the tree,
black and ripe.

I want you to know about this morning.
For months the earth has twisted
from the sun.   The crust opens now,
trusts again, accepts.
This I would tell you also:
The rain’s intrusion heals,
can bring dry bones back.

Rochelle Mass was born in Winnipeg, Canada, grew up in Vancouver,
Canada and moved with her husband and daughters to Kibbutz Beit HaShita, in the
Jezreel Valley of Israel in 1973.  Today they live in a small community on the
western flank of the Gilboa mountains where they cure and press their olives and
harvest lemons and figs.  Ms. Mass works as a translator and editor.  Ms. Mass’ most
recent poetry collection is The Startled Land, Wind River Press, 2003.  Her work has
been nominated for the Pushcart prize, shortlisted by the B.B.C. for Middle East Stories
and shortlisted again by the BBC for a Radio Play.  She won first and second prize in
the Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.  She has been widely published and we
are grateful to have her among our contributors.

You Can’t Switch Moods

You can’t switch moods
you’ve got to stay put
remain at attention.
A hamsin has struck today: drives sand in, confiscates air.
No matter how far you move from the center
you get sucked in.

There’s no signal.  Suddenly bands of heat drop like party streamers.
Gardens shrink from the hostility, space cowers.

As if it has no history, the hamsin comes at you
isn’t attached to yesterday, doesn’t know
where you were before.  No questions asked.
It spins you into yourself, cracks your faith
that anything else can happen.
Your plans are delayed. Energy withers, it is so dry.

Not a hurricane, nor a tornado so what’s a person to do?
You feel expelled from your own yard
pressed up behind shutters.
Isn’t shaped like spring, doesn’t sprawl like summer,
The last days remain a blur, the only evidence
dust on every table.

Finally, the Gilboa mountain
fills the sky again
with pine trees and pocked boulders.
Reminds me of its contour.
The horizon has returned
the hamsin gone.

Rochelle Mass was born in Winnipeg, Canada, grew up in Vancouver,
Canada and moved with her husband and daughters to Kibbutz Beit HaShita, in the
Jezreel Valley of Israel in 1973.  Today they live in a small community on the
western flank of the Gilboa mountains where they cure and press their olives and
harvest lemons and figs.  Ms. Mass works as a translator and editor.  Ms. Mass’ most
recent poetry collection is The Startled Land, Wind River Press, 2003.  Her work has
been nominated for the Pushcart prize, shortlisted by the B.B.C. for Middle East Stories
and shortlisted again by the BBC for a Radio Play.  She won first and second prize in
the Reuben Rose Poetry Competition.  She has been widely published and we
are grateful to have her among our contributors.

Purple Toothbrush

      after Gluck

I like watching you brush your teeth
with your teeth in your hands. Your hands are
my favorite part of you, the part that
self-consciously covers your mouth when you

smile without your teeth. If you brushed
your teeth more often when they were still
in your head, you might still have them today.
That head should give some thought to the way

you have been doing things all of your life,
like squeezing that tube of toothpaste from
the top down, night after night, when you should have been
pinching it upward from the crimp, avoiding

waste. Watching you now in the bathroom with your
purple toothbrush in one hand, your teeth in the other,
a perfectly good tube of toothpaste in the wastebasket,
I think you are an ugly toothless wasteful thing

and I wish you would just hurry up and die
because I know when you are gone I will finally
start loving you properly, fully and completely,
and probably not before.

Paul Hostovsky has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Free Lunch, New
Delta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Visions International, Nebo, Slant, FRiGG, Driftwood, Heartlodge, Rock & Sling, ByLine and others. He works in Boston as an Interpreter for the Deaf.

Greenhouse

My Aunt Ellie lived in a green-
house. This was in Irvington
New Jersey. A Jew alone
is a Jew in danger, her husband
said. Their daughter, my cousin,
wanted to go where she wanted
to go. They said it was a big
mistake. In a greenhouse you
cultivate certain delicate
non-indigenous plants. The house
was green and my cousin fell
deeply in love with a black man.
When she married him her father
sat shiva for her, meaning that
he mourned her for dead. But
she was only living over in East
Orange. She had two beautiful
daughters who never knew
their grandfather on their mother’s
side. Because she was dead to him
until the day he died. That was the day
we all went over to Aunt Ellie’s house
where she was sitting shiva. We met
my cousin’s husband Toe, for the first time,
and their two daughters, Leah and Aleesha.
And we opened all the windows in
the greenhouse on that day, for outside
it was a beautiful spring day and we
broke out the expensive delicate china
from Germany which they kept locked up
in a glass breakfront in the hall.

 
Paul Hostovsky has new poems appearing or forthcoming in Free Lunch, New
Delta Review, Bryant Literary Review, Visions International, Nebo, Slant, FRiGG, Driftwood, Heartlodge, Rock & Sling, ByLine and others. He works in Boston as an Interpreter for the Deaf.