Zeugma Poets

all works copyrighted

Holly Pettit
Wash, Dry Rub

Lately I’ve been eating at Rothko Café,
face down at the bar, praying
for aspirin and coffee. Bolts

of vermilion stab my eyes,
between my temples rouge and blood contend.
I’m waiting for Rebbe Braun

to enter, cover me with his coat,
divide the deep
and from it form a place to stand.

Loam - sand my palate, dim my saffron,
I don’t need egg yolk.
Don’t give me bacon. Just let me roll

across some gold-flecked desert
old enough to dry my wet humors,
desiccate my wilting, fleshly self.

originally appeared in Pif Magazine

Erin Noteboom-Bow
The Cleaver

my groom the only son
of a Chinese chef

the family cleaver
my bridal gift

a moon of steel
two-handled like a smile

you think a knife cuts luck
but we have different customs
red for weddings:
slipping from silk, the edge opens my hand

Gary Smith
Prophecy

You’ll be coming off three days on the night shift
when you realize there was no sugar
in the bottom of the cup, no bottom
of the cup for that matter. Sometime
after your last 12-step meeting
you’ll know you’ll always walk wounded,
limp home. Those wounds in your hands
won’t heal; they’ll be a sign to all.
You’ll walk around clean,
feeling the hole in your own side,
wondering if this was the glorious
resurrection promised.

Published in The New Pantagruel

Page Nelson
The Fit

You confessed to having been used,
in a sense owned, by many.
Their’s had been an honest, mechanical pleasure,
the way a man turns the bolt of his rifle
again and again, for the slide of the parts,
the tang of oil and metal.
Shining through your sadness was a satisfaction;
you had found something, a grounding, in submission.
And what hurt me wasn’t your history
but the dream and pattern of it,
not what I’d been missing but what, seeing you,
I knew I was part of, the fit of men and women.

Jeri Therault
The Church at Neratov

. . .though I’ve no idea
what this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
it pleases me to stand in silence here.
Philip Larkin, “Church Going”
Within these roof-
less walls under brilliant
sky, I think of vows
and mea culpas, thick
with skin and pew
dirt, the prayerful

stew of voices held
for centuries by stained
glass and the deep
cathedral roof. Ave
Marias, the ox-breath scent
of wanting. The walls

still hold some blistered
trace of farmer
congregations, left-
over clustered angels. The rest

was lost when the roof
burned in 1943. “Was lost” might
not be right. Who knows

the path of pain
and faith, where asking
voices go? Along

this narrow country
road, planted long ago,
sycamores stand in two
straight rows, belted
white and lofty.

Scott Murphy
The Briery

We’ve come to accept this knowledge and move on.
The cat stayed coiled upon himself in the sunlit spot.
The conversations of the geese at altitude
rang softly on the picture window. You. . .
I don’t know what you did. I have taken my collection
of pictures of your freckles and haunches,
and put them aside in my head, filed your skin
and your body under “roses” and “strength.”

Leaving the past is always like this, a break
from dense woods. Dirty and scratched
I find I’m breathing hard. Are your scratches
each small fires? If I write,
I will ask if you’ve caught your breath.