A Psychological Asana

For today, or maybe even an hour, or no
longer than the time it takes to read this poem,
put aside “profession” as another word for
“persona.” Stick your naked hand in the chamber
pot of your identity and swish around
the contents, though they be old. It’s okay
to be afraid, to be thoroughly aghast. Note
what sticks and what repulses. You’ll have time
to scrub the sludge off at the end. Do not retreat
to the injustices of childhood. Do not splash
around like this is a game. Reach to the bottom,
stretch into the cold until you’ve made contact
with what lies down below. You may need to be
elbow-deep in order to press your hand down flat.
Once that’s done, let the contents settle. See
if you can withdraw your arm without rippling
the surface. Watch the muck drip from your fingers,
plink, plink, plunk. Take a breath: what stinks is
what’s ripe as well as what’s rotten. Shake hands
with the very next person you meet as if to say…

To Be or Not to Be on Ganymede

Exist at an outpost or risk the black hole,
this is the choice which lies before us,
whether we consign ourselves to staying on
the biggest moon in the solar system
or rocket ourselves into the vast unknown –
phasers and light sabers blazing – even as
we recognize our post-colonialist fervor comes
with a human bias. To analgize, to coma,
to nothing less than less then less unless…

The unconscious is a poor escape from pain
for the body was built for pain as much
as pleasure; the mind, for emotion, not logic
alone; the seventh sense goes undiscussed.
To disappear, to close one’s eyes; to close
one’s eyes and ears, to hibernate the soul
in a slumber inundated by images and urges
engineered by machines that fall outside
control. What dreams may come? And will
they be ours or will we foolishly think so?

We’re the idea made flesh in a flash, eternity
atrophied, the Sufi grain of sand (or salt?)
by way of Andromeda and the Small
Magellanic Cloud. With blue pills, sexbots,
and misapplied data from HAL, the system
has failed us. Immeasurably. Our purported
progress has been stripped of love, and law
as a merciful thing. Where are the stars
not destined for oblivion? Why do we giggle
at the cyborg clown in a bromide codpiece?
Or is this a case of the chronic hiccup?

Origination: Unknown.

Afterwards

Indubitably, there’s an afterlife outside remembering,
nostalgia, and the prayer. There are other dimensions
and forthcoming forms of existence as sure as
there are other religions. You may not find yours.
No need to rush. You’ll find out what’s what.
You’ll see what’s coming as soon as it’s done.

The Hollow Vessel

So this is what? A regulated rising to reveals
already shown? A triple-checked subsistence,
an unchecked poisoned power, a cushioned seat
that boosts one off the floor but fails to break
down nonbiodegradable remains that feed
the fire and the flood? So this is home?
Because the radiator clanks out the ice-cold breath?
Because the central air cools prison walls?
Because the keys most valued are ones which are strictly
meant to unlock doors to realms hitherto half-known?
What good’s a safe deposit box which cannot
hold what can’t be written down or cut? Where
is the key that unlocks lives in houses made of glass?

A literary grantee of the Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation and Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators, Drew Pisarra is the author of “Infinity Standing Up” (2019) and “Periodic Boyfriends,” two collections of homoerotic sonnets published by Capturing Fire Press. Additionally, he was a participating poet at A Gathering of the Tribes two-day reading marathon at The Whitney Biennial 2022: Quiet As It’s Kept and has had his poems published everywhere from “Food & Wine” magazine’s website to “Analog” sci-fi magazine.

Image: Beinahegut, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dangers

I am sitting under the tree
my great-grandparents planted,
together, the day he went to war.

Strangers own this house now and were
nonplussed or moved by my request
to spend some time here. The tree is an oak,

not big by oak standards; only
a century has passed since they fought
the war to end wars, and a century

is but an oak’s childhood.
It is a stately tree, planted near
no other, and has grown tall

and broad. My great-grandmother was seven
months pregnant that day
with my grandmother.

There is a picture, taken
by a neighbor, an old sepia
photograph. A man in uniform,

his young bride, her hands on her
stomach, his arm around her, the seedling
in the middle. Their last

day together. He sailed for
France. A month later
she died in childbirth.

Glimmerings

The candle flame is real.
I know I am real because it burns me.

Sometimes I cry myself to sleep
with the lights on,
but I am not afraid of the dark.

One night we sat around the bonfire in the Oregon desert.
Too close was too hot; too cold, too far away.
That night I learned about love.

I came to Phoenix because my life was over.
I chose it for its name,
a place for a new start.

I placed my palm on the plexiglass,
inches from the tyger in the Baltimore zoo.
I felt no heat.

Here on the edge of twilight
I stand half in, half out of day.
My left foot is the sunset’s child.

I sleep in a room filled with red light
from the vacancy sign outside my window.
Even eyelids cannot keep it at bay.

I often see the light at the end of the tunnel
just as I am learning to love the dark.

See how sunlight gleams off the dome
of the corn-filled silo?

When I was a boy, I wished on the first star.
I do not remember if I stopped wishing when I found you,
or when you were gone.

Marc A. Drexler grew up in Iowa, and has lived in Maryland or DC since graduating from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1981 with a degree in mathematics. He believes strongly in non-hierarchical organizational structures in which everyone is equal. He worked for fourteen years at the Maryland Food Collective, and is currently a member of the Earth Collective, the group of roughly 8 billion people who make all the decisions on how we interact with our planet. He has been a Community Teaching Assistant with the on-line Coursera class Modern & Contemporary American Poetry (ModPo). He writes poetry to express with words what cannot be said with words. Locally, Marc has had a poem selected as a Split This Rock Poem of the Week and appeared in the Maryland Writers Association’s 2020 Poetry Contest anthology Maryland in Poetry. Since the beginning of the pandemic he has been exploring the hiking paths and neighborhoods in and around the parts of Seneca Creek State Park near his home in Gaithersburg. He is more satisfied by routes which complete a loop rather than retracing the outward path in return.

Image: Davidbena, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Altar-ed oath 

March
The muscularity of your siloed silhouette laid itself on my shadowy desk one day,
with white open palm on my tan arm—as if your body was fashioned as pulley
elevating me, with robotic release of self and selflessness, to an outline of us. Now
your hand is a response to my hand; opening or closing instinctively on demand
like a Venus flytrap fluttering in newfound domesticity, tamed, by the soothing squelch
of steadfast soles on oak floor in the am and your tangerine peals of laughter in the pm
—banquet of sound of tip taps of laptops and hip hop on our background box—provoked
me to see beauty even in the day-old residue of your blessed brewed tea. And so,
having unbuckled two habits to tailor them to cohabit, I take your hand and wear it
on my heart (lace sleeve), enduringly and endearingly, with vows as forever fashion.

May

But when fashion is forever and the wearer transient, the fashion is fashioned
into something once inhabited. It’s not forever, but still in time.

You become the fading smell left behind in our silver silk sheets,
the yellow sweat stains on the underarms of your white cotton vest,
the tear in your threadbare socks, farewell tears on your four eyes,
and a belt you fancied around your throat far more than your waist.

I now style myself from the absence of yourself,
as a lone figure of mourning in timeless black—
black lace tights you can’t peel off, a dress that hugs,
and wrinkled knee-high boots that walk your wake.

The ring re-designs itself from occupier of the fourth finger
of your left hand to a platinum pendulum pacifying my neck.

My hands do not grope each other in prayer.
I can’t feel, touch nor see your familiar form.
But I will your physical strength to my mind
as a muscle memory of us and dad walk me down the pews,
through the tearful covid masked hues, to the lilied podium
where – as keeper of your memory, planner of a wedding
that wasn’t and a funeral that was – I say I do (love and let go).

Technificance

Let’s live behind the curtains?
Only out, we go, with the trash
to carton cappuccino Amazon seas
and back to our 600 sq ft of terra firma.
Cool off, take a deep dive
into communal pool of data – navigate the high
seas of the internet and Zoom the borderless –
then mount two screens side-by-side and squint
go(o)ggleyed into new-fangled binoculars.

Geo-block the deck, put on headsets
It’s time to stow the masses
and get metaverse passes.

Don’t peak behind the curtains—
Inside, you stay, to mull their müll.
Mutti says architecture of sky is freed of 80,000 kg flying furniture,
minimalism suits sky best, with stretches of white-on-white, flecks of blue
we no longer imbue our hue into the apertures of the CO2 ceiling,
the horizon is now a flat image and the clouds only exist in Azure,
vitamin D is procured from selfie stars low in light terabyte,
but the sun is yet to set on the trending filters of day.

Best believe. And lungs will feel
the ambition of Paris deal
and rewind to cheerful green.

Draw the curtains.
Shutter the shops.
Ground the sky.
Draft in the supertankers, store the oily glut.
Haul the trucks, stockpile the corporeal guts.
Put on your sea legs, don construction masks,
pause with ease of war fought for headscarf.
Tiananmen, Tahrir, Taksim – our stolperstein
is killer without face, killer of public space,
incubator of net states.

Duckduckgo – we query –
how to inject an economy
of wanton abandon, of institutionalised trust out of stock,
highly leveraged with no herd immunity to herd mentality
that s[t]imulates liquidity by capitalising inequality?

When the upward curve flattens and gets its margin call
the big reveal is the world template built behind the wall.

The long smell

It’s summer and gas leak particles root
to the bottom note of the foggy bottom
and rise from the recesses of the mind,
through the ubiquitous AC and blunt humidity,
the wharf’s salty catch of the day, the mall’s crisp cut green.
It’s the subversive stillness of a seductive summer
sauntering off the sidewalk and sideways to me.

I saved the season’s last inhale for the night I met you.
I was led by the nose to get dressed up that day, in fragrant
white notes, bouquets of black, and morello-stained lips.
A fierce foraging through scraps of unrecycled outfits.

First sight gave hope to second sight.
Of a future no longer dressed with mind,
but undressed by heart; con gusto, bil-qalb.
I exhaled and inhaled, remembering to breathe,
as we became passenger to playful palms that
interlaced the other and took off, thereafter.

Holding hands led in airplane mode for a while—frequently,
then moderately. Exclusively and almost always unapologetically.
To single-handedly block the white noise of external distraction that
saps romantic energy like mental open tabs and paused dating apps.
But we weren’t in low power mode. We were on high frequency.

Senses, of which we have 5, are heightened when one is on standby.
We were in active listening mode to each other’s tender touch.
My skin had sprouted olfactory sensibilities set off by you.
Your smell was a fragrant flashback to something I simply knew.
Your touch was like gaining something never thought lost –
Nostalgia – lived like it’s a verb in the present tense, nostalging.

Love was on the nose, but you couldn’t smell it.
So senses, of which you had 4, became just 3.
Without smell, you lost sight of us and I lost your touch.
Mediterranean Tense is what you began to make of me
because future tense is what I hoped to make of you.

I sniffed for love until past tense is what became of us.

Kristina Miggiani writes: I am a Maltese lawyer and poet, working in the area of financial integrity. I currently work at the IMF and in my free time I ardently journal, write poetry, and practice yoga. I have won some national poetry and story slam competitions, but the process of writing is the best reward. I have been writing poetry since I was 10 years old—as a hobby that helped me find my voice and guiding me to my career as a lawyer.

Image by Unstable.atom – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78183214