Art Escapes from All Directions
Rachel Orzoff
Your toes can point or be on pointe
Your ankles strengthen a twisting body
Your calves can kick your pottery wheel
Your knees keep your cello from tumbling down
Your stomach tests each gastronomic invention
Your torso’s a hanger for each garment stitched
Your arms hold brushes and tubas and tools
Your hands touch keys of letters or notes
Artists’ work may be out of their control
She’s sure she’s a poet, finds art in her photograph
He takes pride as a flautist, then gasps in surprise
at the story he tells on the dance floor
Spinning magic in photos and visions,
in sounds and words,
in fiber and finery,
in ideas and individuation
That is art, from toe to head
Dream Vision
Merle Tovian
You walked alone:
Lush grasses swept sandaled feet
You peered at images in sun-shaded trees
Listened to bird chatter, bug hum
Chose, inhaled, tasted mint
Blinked away dust, mist
Searched shadows for lost feelings
Sighed
Turn! Turn to find me
Watching you, wanting you
Desire unfulfilled as you walk on
Superman
William Carey
A cape is hinted only by the wide nappy taped under his chin.
Dad’s so Clark Kent, in unassuming khakis and grey Velcro tennies.
No one suspects his powers.
He sees X-rays to hearts of matters, childlike – Superboy at six.
He speaks a fractured patois straight out of Krypton.
He’s compassionate and sensitive beyond human scope
in empowering dementia. He’s all hope,
other-worldly positive and cheery in challenging
Obstacle (ordinary stair) or Villain (errant caregiver).
His flights shoot above mortal clouds like bullets,
Chicago to Pittsburgh to South Bend to Dublin,
wherever whimsy jets through his mind unfettered,
flitting through his life scenes at sound-barrier-breaking speed.
His prime power, though, is indestructibility.
He slip-slides for the umpteenth time from recliner to hard floor,
and flies from den without cane out back door,
searching for Jimmy or Lois or homier voices.
He careens off the stoop to crash-land on bush and stone wall.
Serene in paramedics’ care and ER,
this fallen hero without fail survives danger upon danger,
magic armor shedding threats to old flesh
and impenetrable memory.
His handgrip, iron like Superman’s resolve to save the planet,
belies the flaccid mental grasp.
We count on him to cure us of conceit and other frailties,
while he with no sense of failure, loss, or sin
is near to God, naïve, as any man ever has been.
Alt(ernative) Poem
Jacqueline Nicole Harris
Today I sit alone
writing poetry in a café,
my right hand cramping,
only pausing to sip my coffee
and shake off the pain.
I am
a piece of modern antiquity,
an antisocial monolith,
in my Ramones T-shirt,
scratching this poem onto paper
in cursive ink while
thinking of a promise
I made myself in the middle
of my anxious youth.
I promised myself
I would never change.
I would keep my rebel attitude
and rage against any machine
this ever-dying society
would throw my way.
I promised myself
I would always be
the exception to every rule,
and never let anyone’s
ideas, thoughts or false provocations
hinder me.
I promised myself
I would enjoy the journey of life,
embrace every sound, sensation, and sight
that the closed quarters of my neighborhood hid from me.
Every day
I write to remember.
I write in cursive.
My right hand is spotted with pen ink.
Knowing my truth, I mentally embrace myself with
the middle finger of my left hand up, waving it in the face of society –
all while gathering dust in a bookstore café.