Poetry
Malaria, Egon H. E. Lass
Cindy Childres
Summer School
Today I caught a plagiarist in summer schooland wondered if failing him was worth the effort,
while you, my archaeologist friend,
watched a bright green lizard
turn brown on a bamboo trunk
as he chased fruit flies
and saw spider-wasp ensured her lineage
in the paralyzed arachnid.
My brother gave a presentation about airline costs
and rising oil prices to a roomful of GE executives
using a power point program
and citing how it is everyone’s fault
and yet no one’s.
My Grandmother never thought she’d live
to be 80, so she spent the last 30 years
preparing to die;
she bought groceries by the week.
Her 80th birthday in July was the biggest hurdle;
Will I live to see it?
She thought mailing invitations in May
while the pancreatic stent thwarted her cancer.
The lizard–subsisting on flies he cheats to catch–
will die by winter, poor plagiarist,
and in April the spider-wasps will hatch
ready to stew another brood.
To my brother, this means that god is a capitalist,
but you see what’s hidden between the seasons.
How the trees are alive when leafless,
how civilization stirs 100 feet under the dirt,
while I breathe limbo like my Grandmother–
never certain of the season
or its meaning.
____________________________
More poetry from Issue 11
____________________________
Poetry Selections from Past Issues
Daniel John: MiddenJosh Cook: I See Rissa in Doodles and Fingernails
Jonathan Ponder: Villanelle for the San Bernardino Valley
Randy Boone: Seven Various Powders from a Distant Asian Land
Jonathan Barrett: Bones, Singing Gods, and the Felt Meadows
John Marvin: An Electric Galleria of Earthly Delights
Stephen Pyle: On the duties of being carbon
Brad Maxfield: Easter In Guayaquil
Randy Koch: Metamorphosis
C. Rohrbacher: Dreamers Are Gluttons
Sean Lause: Lynndie England is the daughter we always wanted
P. J. Stanskas: A Scientific Analysis of the Jerry Springer Phenomenon in Popular Television Culture
David Musgrove: Fucking Death Without a Condom
Alba Cruz-Hacker: Dissident Verses
Maureen A. Sherbondy: Froth
Kenneth DiMaggio: Poem #1 From The Book Of The Fearless Age Of The American Automobile
Emily Scudder: Cremations
Virgil Suarez: Doña Inez Remembers the Ravages of Hurricane Flora
Barbara Duffey: On the Occasion of My Sister’s Fall from Her Horse
Kevin Roddy: La Desaparecida
James Grinwis: Greenland Frost Camel
Abraham Burickson: Paper House for a Better Thief
William Doreski: The Gnostics Were Right
Roibeard Ui-Neill: Spurious Pursuits
Alexander Chertok: Snowfall, Route 81, December
Elizabeth Hopp: Gaza
E. R. Carlin: Back County Queen
Chris Crittenden: Desert
Mary Copeland: Peaches
Jonathan Sismesmal: The Insect’s Valuable Touch
Michael Gregg Michaud: How to Be a Gay Literary Icon
Penny Perry: Polliwogs
Jonathan Ponder: Time Flowering Among Rocks
Lyn Stefenhagens: The Contortionist
Neil Gabriel Kozlowicz: Working Produce
Bob Carlton: Creation: Yet Another Version
Nicole Lynskey: Regrets
Nancy Berg: Cocooning
Randy Boone: T-Shirt
Michael McManus: Born Again
Todd Raboy: Revolution
Richard Autio: untitled
Askold Skalaski: Busting and Booming in Bratislava
Danielle Meitle: The Third Garden
Max Berkovitz: A Chicago Day, Long Ago
Charles D. Moskus: Night Drive
Tom Edison: Pragmatic Magic
A. Razor: San Bernardino
Anne Babson: California
Doug Shy: Upon Don Agustin's Leaving Durango, Mexico 1894
P.J. Stanskas: Advice to a Friend on the Edge of Divorce
Jessica Fox: Going Down on the English Language
Lori Davis: How to Relax While Making Love
Shoshauna Shy: An -, without; + orexis, appetite
Jessica Maich: Stars as Slipper
B.Z. Niditch: Missing Person
Rachel Squires Bloom: Exercise Bike
Jonathan Levant: What Was That Cover Letter For?
Robert Schuler: Sufi Music
Andrew Bode-Lang: Our Hard-Scrabble Life on The Land
Naomi Ruth Lowinsky: At the Center for Breast Imaging
Nancy A. Henry: Men I’ve Dated in Random Order