David Jackson

Not Sitting Shiva A Poem by Joan Pond

by

NOT SITTING SHIVA

AJ was whiter than I remembered, and his lips were taut.
I reached over to fix a lock of his hair,
then stopped.
Egad! I’d almost touched a corpse.
I sat beside him, smelling Bubby’s brisket and potato kugel,
thinking of her applesauce and lemon cake.
Then, suddenly,
I started to shake inside.
I should be ashamed,
only thinking of myself.
But AJ always liked food, the gathering of family, and close friends.
This was a time to make amends,
to bury the hatchet, along with the dead.
And as Bubby came from the kitchen with a platter of chicken liver and bow ties,
I swear
I thought I saw AJ smile.

Trust the Breeze Poem by David Michael Jackson

by

Trusting the Breeze
When the breeze settles upon the
buildings
like the cat settles into
the empty box or
basket,
when the dust settles
after floating in the air
or appearing
in the shaft of light
from the window,
when suddenly the odor
of ozone in the air before the
storm
settles into the corners of
the afternoon,
then, and only then,
will I turn the page

– David Michael Jackson

***

Ants Poem by Prasenjit Maiti

by

Ants
——————————————————————————–

Seething in ignominy
teething through honeycombed cells
like years of blessed, prison virginity
tonight was so much like a tangent
to the great aura of life
and so acutely, actually poignant
you would say my dolls are no more,
my teddy bears have all thumped out
and left a great slump to wonder at,
to stare serenely past
at the whiteness shrouds
of all our aged miseries,
widows seeking together places
to enter one another,
to stare at the vast and
vivid stretches
of our vacant shores
to delve down the mysteries and
the walking shadows of our
nothingness
to draw a finger cracking across
our dragging lips, stretches of
heartbreaking, remote nonsense

***

These poems are failures

by

Failure to be erudite,

failure to be clear,

to be sane,

to be worth it.

Failure to be sublime,

to say the right thing,

to do the right thing, to

live.

We live with our failures

and die with them complete.

The great ones count their failures as stepping stones

or so they say.

These poems are failures

stepping carefully on the

stones,

falling in the

water and floating downstream

like leaves.

 

david michael jackson  May 16, 2012   editors@artvilla.com