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| RETURNING TO WORK | ||
| You write, you give birth, you struggle, you write again. Every fifteen minutes someone says Mommy? Yes dear. Mommy? Mommy? Yes dear, as Ishtar stares at you from her low gate like you're an animal, a breeder, like you're locked inside a mortal asylum of pedophiles, visa bills, parking lots, fashion malls. Her dark hair is fresh as new-dug earth. Her blue silk slips down a shoulder. She doesn't remember that you've seen her before, seen that anklet of poets' teeth, that hesitation. What you'd forgotten is her eyes, how dark her eyes are, full of river water and death, your death and the others. The phone rings. |
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| AN EVENING AT THE TENNIS CLUB | ||
| I am at a Halloween party. There are no paintings on the walls, only mirrors. Super heroes and angels roam the halls eating candy. A mad scientist entertains the guests in one corner. At dinner, the guests talk about real estate, business deals. No one talks about art. I decide immediately on an interesting social death. After my assassination is complete I stroll outside with my hands in my pockets, smoke a cigarette, write a poem, cut my hair, wonder when the century's going to catch up to itself. Walking around in the future is like being a ghost. Except there's nothing yet to haunt but the dreams of student architects and the wooden blocks in the hands of toddlers. | ||
| AFTERNOONS AT HOME | ||
| A big black fly veering like a tiny jet roars in through the open front door, lands on a new palm frond unfolding from its pot in the corner. August, month of war, is ticking. Black messenger, take this poem on your little back to the sandy battlefields. I will wait with an amnesiac's glory for September's certain light, for November's invading winds, gusts that break limbs, shred flags, and in the abandoned marinas confuse the tall masts into rocking and clanking, keening against the phantom braiding their throats. |
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| CONTRIBUTOR | ||
| Elizabeth Myhr has published work in Alaska Quarterly Review and many other journals and currently serves as poetry editor for The Raven Chronicles. She received an Artist Trust Gap Grant and serves from time to time as a writer-in-residence at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington. She has an undergraduate degree in literature from The Evergreen State College and lives in Seattle with her husband and son. |
