Lent Poem #1

Variations on a Theme by Elizabeth Bishop
joanna vogel

The art of losing isn’t hard to master, only
it is hard – keys and continents
notwithstanding, the spaces left vacant are
firm as bodies, like cement or frozen
chewing gum and I wake each morning with hip-
bone shaped bruises and bits of blood
dripping from fresh scars in the shapes
of teeth and fingernails which I’ve bumped
into during the night-walks. My hands
outstretched, I drop each thorn
that sticks.

Unfold the Menu

In California, moist fish hooks are a rare delicacy.
The other day a man lost his daughter to a halibut.
I laughed with a belly full of cotton
as her pale heels slipped underneath:
boiled potatoes snagged by a sturgeon

The Fisher King thinks his fragments
are puzzle pieces. Each piece a gourmet slab.
The daughters scan the surface,
pick out the darker oceans for feeding.
This piece means a toenail-extension,
means a jittering reality. This piece means
certain destuction and is written in Byzantium heiroglyphics,
thought lost by some. These people are called Liars
and can light only cowardly flames.

Feeling our heels sinking in quicksand
can only be appreciated by those
who hoped to breathe their whole lives.



--Corey, Roberto, & Carlo Rossi

Lent Poem #2: Plagued

by Adam Parrow

Did you know that sunken treasures of
chipped sea glass aren’t visible through a sea of red?

Did you know that band-aids swim in a filling sink like
smooth skinned creatures that rose to plague you?

Did you know that your requests bit at
my face and my ears with buzzing wild fury?

Did you know that gin-drenched heads float on
swarming stings which fly them out the open door?

Did you know that a promise dies on contact when
it is met with remembrances of your lies, which consume it?

Did you know that blood bubbled and boiled inside
my veins as I squeezed my finger to let more of it fester and flow?

Did you know that the dull thump of a heartbeat falls heavy with
aches in my brain, hailing down on my broken crown?

Did you know that the empty boxes were left for
memorials of the ravenous devouring of their fruits?

Did you know that shoelaces act as
treacherous thrushes in the milky dark these nights?

Did you know I wrote on your wall in blood to
protect you like little lambs lost in the night-time silence?

No, you don’t know, because I scrubbed the wall clean,
and when you tell me that you are ok, I try to believe the decree,
through you’ve proven yourself a liar.