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NOON 19

NOON: journal of the short poemISSUE 19October 2021

HOMELESS THOUGHTA last truck parked on standing water,surface run-off, gusted leavesdrowned in overflowing drain pools:nothing’s only good or bad,think what you will, and nothing unalloyedfor thought here in its homelessness It follows beaten paths through woodsyearning to be somewhere,to be somewhere else.

BURIED COUNTRYThen, daily, on these built-up pavements,over cracked, root-buckled flagsI try to glimpse, as from a ridgeline,the landscape’s reconfigured views,well-hidden, buried country,country before us and beyondthis parenthesis, still open,its minute slice of time.Peter Robinson

THE SEALSometimes I dig at memory,because I have to keepan ice-hole open.Sometimes an unexpected wordslides down and throughlike a harpoon.

OPENINGSWho can say where the door is,swinging on unseen hinges at a touchinto a room, unguessed, behind the wall?So the sun’s arc shifts out of cloudand the near, never noticed hillburns like a lover’s breast.

FORECASTA floater, scarcely seenin the planktonic free-for-all –white medusa hooked aroundits drop of grit – eddies with spore,bacterium, virus and mite through thisocean of air. One flake, but on the wheelmy hands stiffen for skid. Already in yourblood, your generous O positive, onesloughed cell drifts, perhaps, uponthe tide, twisted instructionscoded for ice.Kristin Camitta Zimet

searching forthe perfect wordI playwith the ink leftin the barrel of my pen

QUARTER HOURSIt’s like an argument in an unmade bed. The confrontationcomes out of nowhere and escalates rapidly. This morning’sbird alarms bring us to the window. A clash between scrubjays and their darker cousins the Steller’s jays. It’s loud andraucous, a ruckus, voices embedded in the tree bark likeshrapnel for these duff shakers. All this bravado for leftoverpeanuts put out by our neighbor. Each troupe is adamant thatthey are the rightful beneficiaries of this plenty. Who gets tofatten their stashes, their survival caches? Winter is measuredin quarter hours. We look for assurances and lose the pillowwords. Things are made and then unmade. Drawn to the jay’sharangue, a flyby of warblers recalibrates the mob.

sleepless nightdarkness shows meits finest regalia

lust an abbreviation of skinCherie Hunter Day

THE END IS THE BEGINNING IS THE ENDWe fell into something resembling loveat a tacky seaside resort. Shouldn’t we fall outof something resembling loveat a tacky seaside resort?

TINA SAYSBefore I sleep with youI need to look through your walletand check your sock drawer.You can watch – I just need to be surethat you are who you say you are.David Romanda

from THE GIRLFRIENDSThe girlfriends make bad jewelry and need rides to the dentist.The girlfriends smell amazing and know words before they arethings.The girlfriends exchange looks and return gifts.The girlfriends sway in cars like dashboard saints.They hug with their hands.I breathe in the charcoal filter;I breathe out the origin of cloudslike Polaroids in a stranger’s estate.The girlfriends are former.They have become wives.They rise from deck chairs,precarious, precious, eternal, consigned.

ODE TO OUR FORE MOTHERSI’m looking at this electric billand I don’t even know what I have donewith all that supposedlight.Merridawn Duckler

In a quiet moment,she announcesin full voiceher arrivalat the precipiceof leavingher beautiful mind

Pluck from your vocabulary the word ‘journey’ before I threatento sit still foreverSheila E. Murphy

PROCRASTINATIONfor Anton YakovlevI’ve written only one sestina,but every word in it is ‘blah’,the title being ‘Intestina’.I’ve written only one sestina;I’ll write another pro crastina,or triolet today, uh-huh!I’ve written only one sestina,but every word in it is ‘blah’.

YEAR ENDBefore closing up the library on the last day of the terrible year,he wrote in the work binder for the cleaning crew that night,‘Please remove the cobwebs on the brick window ledge in thestairwell between the first floor and lower level. Thank you.’John J. Trause

RECTIFICATIONWe will not make love: we have to record the sounds the ratsmake while gnawing the skyscraper’s heart.

THE HOEMy father had a favorite hoe. Before each planting, weedingor harvesting he would beat the edges of its blade with ahammer. He would beat it for quite some time with a vigorone could easily mistake for affection. It had a smaller androunder blade and a shorter handle than the other hoes. Forme it always felt delicate, almost fragile. If he happened to spyany of us using it he always became enraged. My fathernamed it Erzsi. My mother’s name is Erzsi.Réka Nyitrai

the beat of the fontanel when we’re gonePatrick Sweeney

A STORY BY ISAAC BABELI read my pop a storywith a lot of russian street namesmost of which I stumbled overand I laughed.he sat on the edge of the bedhis hands quietly folded ashe listened.that was quite a mouthful, he said.

the cat is in the cat hospital. the wind is loud. the tree is a wildthing and threatens the window. there’s no place like home.there’s no place like home. there’s no place like home.

without you I need to translate every thought to words. notthat there weren’t always words between us but those were.song. this now allows no lilt. just prose.prose. fine. I can do that.I’m trying to get used to this. its not like death.Ditta Baron Hoeber

THE OLD PSALM TUNEAt the office we were asked: cremation or burial? I hidmy bandaged hand, burned already by an oven. I wondered,does the mind remain cognizant, do eyes look out and see theattendant mourners, and does one cross over, and then will Isee Fess Parker but wish for mother?

REGRETSAll clubs and parties are renounced. We seldom leavethe house. The old bricks often bear the prints of fingers thatshaped them. We had a small situation this a.m. with ourcoffee pot but it is fine. The sound of the wind through a mask– an open mouth.Dennis Barone

CONCERNING ANGELSThey are terrible with their unused teeth. Sharp, small like achild’s. Their new skin, navel-less bellies.Of halos I am uncertain. Perhaps they shimmer in theirmagnitude, but the idea of wings is ridiculous andunnecessary. They are light enough to be carried on the leastof things. Merely the breath of God, emerging from His lipsthin and improbable.When we meet them in our trailers and used bookstores theybring only proof of our neglect. They make evident ourunclean teeth, our petty shifting, the horrible movements ofour tongues.They are full and we are not. They give no place to enter. Theforce of their voice is such as to not admit another tongue intheir mouths. Their lips when parted lead nowhere.

CONCERNING FIREThere are men and there are men on fire. If they are different,it is only accidentally so.Michael Stewart

shaving mirrorhow to slough offwhat’s inside

water fight to war to fightJohn Hawkhead

so let’s have my kalashnikov talk to your dictionary

a thousand years of fingers quietly groping the afterlifeMarcus Liljedahl

UNTITLEDGargoyles spit rainwateron the trumpeting angel –stone faced.Mary McCormack

the emergentchriston second lockdownMarilyn Ashbaugh

from THE LOCKDOWN ELEGIESAll elegies are writtenbefore the end.A lot before the endin some cases.*In the intervals between lockdownswe sharpened our profilesand accumulated our strap-on facesso that now only the most careful algorithmsrecognize usonly the most careful mouths.*

I was speaking in tonguesmany tonguesso many mouths in meI was shakingstanding there with my arms upraisedaquiver with the spiritI wanted tendernessat the last minuteone more time*The air has gotten too thickfor my lungs.It was full of syllables.*Oh noshe saidoh no.Oh noI saidtoo.Monty Reid

co(i)mmunityMeik Blöttenberger

for the disasterthey closed the domainstarling dance

abuse the barn hides in fogAdrian Bouter

Mid-morning deluge:the asphalt like an anvil.Water smears trafficlights, umbrellas, as I pullover for shadows to pass.M. Cynthia Cheung

giving directions –the driver’sneck tattooRoberta Beary

so the passenger trainfreighted with and and andand

hands big as truck stops, the bare-knuckle branches,summer swallowed whole, those wolvesof ice

FROM THE PEOPLE WITH ENORMOUS WINGSThe old lady struggles, leaving shuffle marksin the snow. No shopping bag,so maybe it’s churchand maybe not. Perhaps she isout for a walk, because she can,and the night is spare, and she isundiminished and harder than bone.Keith Polette

ONE FOOT OUT OF BED, HE SPEAKSOne foot out of bed, he speaks for the first timein three days: ‘I have to see about a boat.’The chair moves when you sit on it.No, it’s moving by itself.

THE TABLE WHERE HE ATECarry the box between you;it contains empty space.Take your time, there’s no hurry.Staircase. A case full of stairs.

ROOMshe refuses to leave the room, any roomno, I’m all rightthey encouraged herat first now it’s too late a batteredfish in the toilet, sandwicheshidden in the biscuit tinjust a bit of custard, thanks

LONG TALL SALLY‘You know the Beatles, “Long Tall Sally”that I played in the car?’ I said.‘They recorded that in a single take.’‘Is there anyone else you can tell that to?’ she said.Cliff Yates

chilly reception –a bowl of grapesperfumes the room

stationary clouds the librarian checks us in

insomnia the blue fly at the heartof everythingSandra Simpson

dusty millerscircle the yard lightnight fourof your comaPearl Pirie

years between pagesa plane ticket tomy father’s funeral

sunrise lacking an odorthe same color pilleach dayGary Hotham

MAY MORNINGa small kyu-kyu-sha –a white ambulance in full bray –edges its tiresthrough silent streetsat no morethan ten kilometresper hour –a dry-swallowed pill

LEARNING CURVETwenty years nowsince our purebred Siamese,blind, and with acute diabetes,passed. I’m remembering howmy father ministered her daily shotby needle – how she used to purr,having quickly learned what was good for her,in all the ways that I have not.C.E.J. Simons

despite what Sumerian summer sunsets this dream

some future me in the cicada swing band micro-measuresDavid Boyer

from SONIMALS (work in progress)an ant and an antelope elope along a long slow slopea frugal eagle ogles the guttered bagle, but is it legal?what harm the charm of a farmer’s market to a marmot whosegot karma?a populist opossum opposes my apparent political apathya Saxon ox walks among rocks in its orthodox socksJim Kacian

The colors of those birds in no other words.

If this isn’t what it could bewhat it could be might be this.

TWILIGHT OF THE METAPHYSICIANSWe don’t know the language we’re in we don’t knowthe picture we’re in we don’t know the play we’re inwe don’t know the song we’re in we don’t even knowthe poem we’re in but the gray-haired locksmiththere at the rusty wrought iron gates of the cemeterysetting his watch to the splendorous birdsongcoming up from the weeping willows along the banksof the winding river below has heard it all before.Mark Terrill

I STOODI stood in a river like a branchthrown there by a storm that hadravaged forests, a snagaround which languagebeyond my comprehension flowedexcept for my ownwords sticking to melike leaves, telling meI was a tree.

WEARYI’ve grown weary of poemswhose words apologize for being words,for being static to the fox’s contrapuntal yip,mere shadow to the pebbledcolors peeling awayfrom the river stone to shine trout.The fox will lie down in its den.The trout will return to shadowand stone will bury its own.

UNACCOUNTABLESome days like are like people –the word, that is, whenyou wonderas you hadn’t until just nowwhat that ‘o’ is doing there,days you riseand before you knowanything,find yourself outwalking, unaccountablyalive among others whodon’t look surprised.Peter Yovu

Edited by Philip RowlandCover image by Dave ReadPublished by Noon Press, Tokyonoonpoetry.comISSN 2188-2967

in the planktonic free-for-all – white medusa hooked around its drop of grit – eddies with spore, bacterium, virus and mite through this ocean of air. One flake, but on the wheel my hands stiffen for skid. Already in your blood, your generous O positive, one sloughed cell drifts, pe