ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

FIVE POEMS
by Debbie Benson


ON HUNGER

Having less is having this   Is having less of me there is    (And more of me    To lessening
The only place while anything    A lesson isn't everything)

In a letter to Shannon   Gone around Phnom Penh   I tell her you keep going
places made up of spellings   I say this winter is hungry with a deep shiver   She asks
if I'm taking care of her friend me   I say I do it indirectly   By care-taking reciprocating
full-time people   Men and women having haven't yet stopped    Not just me not dead
just yet    Oh, us!

At a party in February in goldish clothes   Noelle notices   We're all almost twenty-five
years old   She says I think my friends are disappearing  Cold from a leaky window
climbs my skin   Then climbs right in   Pressure   Art or    Bad ideas rush like water



ON MISSINGNESS
for Emily Murray, last seen 11-3-00

If it were better            Missingness would be mssingness      As it is it's more
Eleven heavy letters   And not a single smarter dress            To let me know
Something clever        Might become of this                             As a whole

Everyone wants Emily to come home               Or come back from the dead
Emily if you get a hold of this poem, run           They read your diary when you left
Fuck 'em

A decision clothed in
Last seen in
Things that don't matter like
Clothes, a black tank top, hair
Understandable wear
A desire to go



OWNERSHIP INNUENDOES

I. A Day

Two taxis compete   Who gets to get me   The insides and outsides
of me   Climb inside one   The driver's smile beams
splinters   He says Thank You For Choosing Me   I answer too
cheerfully   I think a while about ownership   Diaries definitely aren't
About what happens

On the plane to Akron-Canton   The girl next to me has
my arm   Gripped by hers   Wound around it   Like a pipe cleaner
As though living was just   Hers plus mine   The way math puts things
in parentheses   And things outside   But I don't mind   She is afraid
to fly   She is my age   Her Dad died two weeks ago   But He Was 70, So
She wears two different colors of lipstick & a jewel glued between her
eyebrows   She is a nursing student & a phone sex operator   We are
instant friends   The man behind us is a boring drawing   He mouths
You And Your Friend & wiggles his eyebrows   We bump our foreheads
together   Giggle carbonatedly & hug a lot

I suddenly want to go someplace   Not a place though   It doesn't even
matter that we are on an airplane   I am inside me inside
an airplane inside the next thing outside of that

During Thanksgiving dinner   David & I bicker for two hours   In front
of guests   About what movie to see   He says I am being closed-
minded   But he won't see anything tonight   Except Arnold Schwarzenegger


II. A Day

The important thing today is that Amber has Band-Aids all over her face
From a dog   It doesn't matter that she is five years old   I hate dating
things   The hug she gave me was brand-new and that's all   I tire of time
& everybody having   To catch it   High-fly ball, or the flu   Like a   Her airy
blonde hair is hooked with a plastic claw   To hang to the side   And bounce
when she walks   It's got some of her in it   Today I heard a large shredding
sound   I looked at Mom   There were two pale yellow heaps   She said
the phone book broke   There are so many reasons


III. A Day

No one thinks I should be in the dark   With Nick   But I know
about the cherry coffee table   He made for his brother   And the way
he secures what he doesn't want to think about   On the walls of some
steely heaven   With his hammers




INVOLUNTARY, OUT

All those oxygens, I can't believe it, no matter   What I hear I think air's so empty
A current of it is different   Get things going you'll see a skin, the tube it's in   I nod,
in a bursting mood I believe in propelling   I do it too   When I can't not, blank falling
from life




ON STAYING COLLECTED FOR SAYING GOODBYE

Zelda says   Your life is charmed   When I ask what   She means she says lucky
In the middle of it I think   What she really means is it's unusual   To be lucky
or have part in an incident   In which I have luck in a life

With likelihood up to no good   Going differently there than there
I'm surprised I'm surprised I notice the people I see   Have similarities   To me
More lately universal mes   Or a version of it, disparities just a braintop of particulars
I could list them

Still, a woman on the newscast is from Triangle and agrees   With my assessment
on threes   I ought to be ashamed, I used to be   And I know it   And I used to be
three, three in retrospect, three having had that   Now just three notwithstanding
that I'm not   I admit I believe we each have a different roster of problems
Like about my adding, and no control over infinite things   Including Shannon,
about to perform a secret baptism   For a separate bedmate's sleeping halo
I also have Maggie, afraid of the wind   No one else on earth I know is   I have
all of in me going   Considering everything   Still in me's one thing   Unmistakably
something   Good   Or Better for gather ourselves   and scatter