DOLOROSA by Molly Rose Quinn
(The Chapel at St. Mary’s School for Girls)
where the pillar falls at the edge of morning the teachers
beg us to tug down our skirts they offer their palms
for our gumballs and your god is here to say that beauty
is easy like cutting teeth and your legs and your legs
and yours and I in the pew wish to scrape down
to nothing cuff myself kneel better and what could be
worthier hair voice and loudly I beg for ascendancy
dear classmates your legs in neat rows pray as you do
with fists up and the sun in here bare pray for safety
the teen saint she is the girl to win it all for I beg my
mariology as she sets the way that girl she never once
begged for sparing she begged for death like wine
she begged the best she supplicated she died this dying
begs for me I give it such pleasure and legs and the pew
and the alb and the bread and all other objects beg to be
candles when you are a candle you can beg to be lit
each of you in the pew you beg to be lit I’ll never shine
bigger as we know teenagers beg to be begged and we do
you girls you begged me to hold you begged me to take
what I took you beg bigger and better and for that
you’ll be queens the chimes chime and bells bell
and dear god I know I can be the greatest girl ever
by anointing all alone and being loved the very best
and she says what is so good about anger god killed
my son for himself I suppose and this halo it’s nothing
I asked for and of course she’ll be lying and your legs
and your legs and yours tanned and the best thing all year.
Listen to Molly Rose Quinn’s reading of “Dolorosa” below…
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Henry Darger, Sacred Heart. ©Kiyoko Lerner 2013 / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Click to enlarge.)
Molly Rose Quinn selected Henry Darger’s work to accompany her poem and explains: “The girls of Henry Darger’s epic novel, illustrated here in Sacred Heart and elsewhere, were closely derived from popular media (recall the ‘Coppertone baby’ or ‘Morton Salt girl’). The novel itself, undiscovered until Darger’s death, details the girls’ war against child slavery, neglect, and abuse. They are cartoonishly feminine in appearance, divine in their acts, and pure of moral being. The narrative weaves darkly into Christian mythology and Darger’s childhood experiences. My poem, using Mary as its vessel, hopes to crash together female adolescence and religious fundamentalism, therein the inherent mythologizing, fetishism, zeal, envy, lust. I am drawn to these images for their moralizing, their uncertain deviance, their mystic pity, and the great heart’s wink at the literal.”
Please note: Reproduction, including downloading of Henry Darger’s work, is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
- Published in Featured Poetry, Issue 3
SPA CARE by Xenia Taiga
The spa was located in the hills, behind the town’s famous billboards.
“The farthest spot on known earth,” her husband said, looking over the brochures. “No fast foods for miles.”
Her husband helped her pack, while she stood to the side eating Dorito’s. The afternoon sun shone on her as she got in the car and slammed the door. Her husband waved. When she pulled out of the driveway, he called out to her. “Relax enough, so you can ovulate and then we can get back to business.”
The drive took an hour. The spa was a large white building with the mountain behind, hugging it. On the right side was a pool. On the left side was a room with bay windows overlooking the coast. In the middle, as she pushed through the revolving doors was the entrance and a table set up of fresh organic food and juices.
The women in white coats smiled and their voices sang like angels on acid, welcoming her to an experience that’ll transform her.
“Listen to your body,” they said as they showed her to her room. Her room held large windows that faced the mountain. The pine trees pressed against the glass, bits of sunshine filtered in.
She asked for coffee.
They looked at each other. “Why do you need coffee?”
“Because I’m tired.”
They smiled. “If you’re tired, then go to bed or rest in the sauna or go for a swim in the pool, perhaps.”
As she swam in the hot pool, swimming one lap after another, she could hear the wolves howling. She slept that night, hearing them whimpering and scratching her window.
Early morning, they gathered in the great room, prepping themselves for yoga. While they stretched and cried out to Mother Nature, she asked if anyone else was concerned about the wolves. Did the wolves ever pose a problem?
“Don’t listen to the wolves,” they told her. “Listen to your body.”
“But doesn’t anybody else hear the wolves?” She looked around at the other women in the room. Their eyes closed, deep in thought, deep in breathing; inhaling and exhaling.
The lady stood up and walked to her, placing her hands on her shoulders. “What is it your body’s saying? Listen deeply. What is it your body’s telling you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then on to the dogwood pose, shall we? On the count of three…”
On the third day, she asked for coffee. “Why do you need coffee?”
“I’m tired. I got a headache. It’s a caffeine withdrawal headache. I know it.”
“Don’t listen to your brain. That’s your brain talking. Listen to your body. What is your body telling you?”
“It’s telling me it wants coffee.”
They smiled. “No, it isn’t.”
At the five o’clock spiritual exercise, she stayed in her room. They came into her room, concerned. “I just don’t feel like it,” she said as she filed her nails and cut them into tiny perfect curves.
They gently took the items out of her hands. “Take a rest. Remember why you came here. You came to rest. You’re doing too much. What is your body telling you?”
She asked for a shaver. Her hair was growing back from the last wax and the shaver she brought had already turned rusty. They took the rusty shaver from her, threw it into the bin. “You don’t need to worry about things like that. That is not important. What is important is your body. What is your body saying?”
She sat on her bed’s clean white sheets, watching her nails grow long, curling inward. She watched the short bristled hairs on her legs grow. She gathered the tangled hairs on her head and twisted them up into a messy bun.
That night, it thundered. The wolves howled. The power and lights flicked off. They gave them candles and told them to rest, to call out to Mother Nature and to listen to the body. “What is it that your body is trying to say to you?” they asked, looking into her eyes.
She moved the dresser in front of the door and threw the heavy white candles thick as bricks through the windows. The glass shattered. The rain came in, filling the room. The pine trees tumbled forward, touching her feet.
The mice came, crawling up her body. Sparrows flew in. Together they poked and pecked into her tall matted hair that sat atop her head like a wobbly castle. She laid on the bed and opened her legs. The rabbits wet and white came into her vagina, burrowing and digging to keep warm. The wolves pranced in on tiptoes. They stepped over her body; stepped over the mice, rabbits, sparrows, and came to her neck. They snarled, exposing large teeth. They leaned forward, biting deep into her neck.
The women were outside, pounding on the door: “Listen to your body. What is it telling you? What is your body trying to say to you?”
She closed her eyes and listened.
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ROSA by Anne Germanacos
Just a name
Rosa, a girl in a story, a name I happen to like. She’s a girl with a father who follows her to the ends of the earth as she follows a story, a myth, an incantation.
She is trying to be a virgin and a diplomat, like Gertrude Bell.
She would also like to be a mad heroine, like Isabelle Eberhardt.
Her parents would like her to finish her homework.
Accoutrements
She covets the gypsy’s wide skirt, the nun’s collar, her mother’s braid.
Arrival
She rides up on a horse, plants her bloody hand on the wall of a church, makes her mark.
In the street, she breathes polluted air, lets her father, a man, buy her a drink made of almonds. Says merhaba, says teshekur ederim, turns away from her father. Wants a boy. Wants a penis.
Experiences a moment of 21st century doubt.
The blind doctor
She leans forward in her chair. Can he feel her movement?
She leans, examining him, sees waves break over his gentle face.
She sees him but he can’t see her.
She trusts his x-ray vision, a function of his heart.
Tells him what she wants: a boy, a penis, (a heart).
Naked
Her mother in a braid, her mother in pigtails.
Her brother, a genius or a fool.
They’re all fools.
She twirls in her skirt, her hands tilted toward god.
Naked beneath her skirt, she is breezy.
Questions
What would Gertrude Bell say?
Isabelle Eberhardt, where are you?
*
What does Rosa know about Gertrude Bell?
That she was a highly accomplished virgin, an adventuress, (never an adulteress), a linguist, a diplomat.
Bedouin boys
She’s in the desert, immaculate and alone:
She walks white sand until it’s in her throat and lungs. Coughs sand like granulated sugar, can’t stop rubbing her eyes.
The Bedouin boys appear and dance the depth-negating dunes.
Their bodies are short, wiry, powerful. (She realizes a new incarnation of her own every hour.)
In the almost-cold dawn, they offer her the thinnest version of bread she’s ever eaten, just-baked over hot stones. She takes the bread, aiming for diplomatic distance, can’t help but offer them a glimpse of her eyes, which sparkle.
Her head is covered in yards of white linen.
His heart, his eyes
The blind doctor leans; Rosa watches interest arrive on his face.
His heart is oval-shaped, with honeycomb compartments, each containing a patient, a little like her. She’s young; she lives on the bottom floor. (There’s an old man with a hack who lives above.)
She wants to touch his blind eyes.
Isabelle Eberhardt would do it; Gertrude Bell would not.
Timing
One of these days. In the meantime, bide your time.
(Isabelle Eberhardt is another type of desert woman entirely.)
Her notes:
Forgive my violent emotional weather!
If I’d travelled dressed as a man!
The land and I are one; one with the land.
Call me ……
Does the body answer to the soul?
That hero is long dead, but I’ve read the book.
Not sure I fully understand about soul, but bliss, I do.
I would not convert to Islam.
I do not have six languages at the tip of my tongue.
Refuse to go back to your civilization.
Is this confusion or wisdom, Dad?
This good horse, these camels.
Her life now, as I read it, is finished, closed. But her life as she wrote it is unfinished.
Let me have my unfinished life.
Freak or trouble-maker?
Where are the Bedouin boys?
Truth: layered
The blind therapist creates a gaze through modulation of voice . Without the distraction of sight, he tends not to be deceived.
His theory of truth: that it’s layered. He has a range of stylized sounds that act as his eyes and offer solace or neutrality.
Rosa, speaking:
Parker Williams, a boy in the ring.
I’ve caught a live bird in the hand.
Have you ever been to the Sahara? Walked a desert? Ridden a camel? Known anyone who’s worn a veil, died old, still a virgin?
Are these the wrong kinds of questions to be asking?
*
(What do you see?)
What is a genius?
He is silent.
All-seeing brilliance?
Rosa hides her smile behind her hand, unnecessarily.
She sees orange and red, the greens and yellows of fall harvest pumpkins: something from her childhood, intruding.
Her doctor can’t see. Does that mean he has no brilliance?
–Where are you now?
Like a window, he always knows when to ask.
Rosa wishes she were a doorman, but without having to open and close.
She wants to travel across the desert on a camel.
Her father could come and retrieve her, if he dared.
Her mother and brother would stay home, banned.
She watches the blind doctor navigate the glass of water; she watches the level of the liquid against clear glass.
She shifts in her chair, pretzels her legs beneath her.
She covets the bull’s-eye of genius but would be satisfied to look behind the doctor’s eyes, to see what he sees.
Would she trade her allegiance to the idea of Gertrude Bell for the talents of a Macedonian firewalker? Will she ever lose her virginity? (Is it negotiable?)
She has a friend who eats only white things.
She is unpoked, buttoned-up, all-one. A miserable donut (no hole). Without being punctured, how can she know her center?
His ears
When certain cars pass in the street, he is forced to lean in toward the patient and focus more intently to catch what is being said.
He is all ears.
The pores of the walls open, listening.
The layers of sound divide—he zeroes in on the layer that speaks to his heart: endless longing.
He leans forward, retreats, collects the room’s sounds in a basket in his head. The sounds run through, leave gold.
The child is running against time, her legs are tied to the moon’s shadow.
Someone presses hard on a horn. It floods the room.
*
She dreams she sees him on the street, walking quickly, with a stick.
She runs and catches him just as he turns into his building: Hi!
He knows her voice, turns toward it.
She leans toward his face, finds his hands on her eyes.
She fills his cups with tears.
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PERSONAL AD #1 (Pairs Only Matter In Poker) by Michael Schmeltzer
After C.D. Wright
I wear garish makeup and make faces in the mirror.
Which reminds me…do you want to hear
my favorite joke?
Two clowns walk into a bar:
one with a sad face, the makeup frown
thick and chalky as a hotdog bun; the other
no face whatsoever.
There never was a happy face.
Let me start over.
There are two expressions we carry like dumbbells
to balance ourselves in public.
People are often
two-faced and falling flat
on both of them. If you look carefully
I always lean to the left.
I love honesty
the way a lazy-eyed child loves playing pirate.
How far sunk do you think
a treasure must be
before we call it buried?
What about desires?
For reasons unknown I often find trouble.
My ex-lover phoned me
after an absence of six weeks, drunk and high on meth.
He always called it “Tina” or “Crystal”
as if a drug could wear jewels
or flaunt a slinky dress.
He added lime to his beer and dubbed it a cocktail.
Ever hear of heterochromia?
For a sucker like me it means exotic.
Plus, he was handsome. He had one
hazel and one blue eye.
They were both beautiful
but I never knew which color to trust.
My problem is whatsoever my right eye sees
my left ignores
so he got away with a lot.
His eyes glittered like Vegas
when all I needed was Branson.
By the end there was nothing left to gamble.
All I wanted then
was to slip a penny over each eye
and watch the world bury him.
Listen to Michael Schmeltzer’s reading below…
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THE SUPERINTENDENT by Justin Bigos
The air as still as bathwater, no breeze
from Sheepshead, we carry clear plastic bags
of empty bottles and cans, blue plastic bags
of plastic bottles and milk jugs, we squeeze
flattened boxes into open boxes, then tie
it all in twine – but do we cover it
in tarp in case it rains? He says, Forget-
about-it, just like on TV. (I’d died
a little when he asked me for my help
after mumbling something about the blacks
and Jews, this man who once refused to attack
his neighbors in Croatia, then fled that hell
– I’ve heard it said – with three-thousand cash
inside his socks.) And next we do the trash.
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DEVIL DANCER’S DAUGHTER by Laura Sheahen
What does your father do
Dance
Where in the jungle
The jungle
When
In the night
With feathers sharp feathers
To what sound
The beat from the heart of my mother
extracted
Where are the flames from
The devil
Where is the dance from
The devil
And the red mask from
The devil I hate the devil
And the knife moon from
The devil
Why is he dancing
To cure me
Listen to Laura Sheahen’s reading of “Devil Dancer’s Daughter” below…
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Gate Mudaliyar A.C.G.S. Amarasekara, The Devil Dancer’s Daughter. (Oil on canvas)
Laura Sheahen composed this poem in response to The Devil Dancer’s Daughter, a painting by the Sri Lankan artist Gate Mudaliyar A.C.G.S. Amarasekara (b. 1883 – d. 1983). The painting is housed in the National Art Gallery of Sri Lanka and is reproduced here with permission.
AFTER SAMSON BURNS HER FAMILY’S HOUSE AND GRAIN-FIELDS by William Kelley Woolfitt
Two ruined bodies, galena-black, tar-black,
charred flakes of cloth, countenances gone.
No ears, or eyes, or lips. Father, sister, offered
to a god, fat and gorged, that I deplore;
hands folded at the breastbone, as if fire
was a balm that soothed, gave them repose;
no hair to dress, no skin to wash and stroke.
Old moon when I sleep, when I rise, no cave
where it can roost, vacant haze, thread of shine,
me in the starless night,
interlunar, the night through all my joints
and bones diffused, the scorched kernels I gnaw
from the stalk, burrows where I hide, water
seeping from stone, the fox that licks my hand.
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Susan Worsham, “Drowned Persimmons.” (Photograph)
William Kelley Woolfitt chose Susan Worsham’s original photograph to accompany his poem. The poet explains: “‘After Samson Burns…’ reflects my interest in the stories of unnamed figures in historical and sacred texts, such as the sister of Samson’s wife who was offered to him as a consolation prize in the Book of Judges. I see in Worsham’s photograph several echoes of elements in my poem, including fruit(fulness) spoiled, the color black, and water seeping from stone.”
ANTIPHON FOR THE OFFICE OF THE DEAD by William Kelley Woolfitt
a powder box and swans-down puff
her limp stocking, a green satin fan
spangled with dragonflies, curling-tongs
small muslin bags, a pumice stone
bits of skin, cut-glass bottles, cuticle
knife, a darner, nail powder, sealing wax
spirals of her hair, glove buttoner
orangewood stick, gauze balls, shoe lift
velvet brush, rabbit’s foot, pots of rouge
lip salve, cold cream plumbed by her
tired fingers, silver trays of hatpins
hairpins, safety pins, to hold, to prick
foxtail scarf with chain, scrimshaw
manicure box with sweet pea vines
carved in the whale-bone lid, hand-mirror
holding her breath, a smudged cloud
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Aaron Blum, “Bittersweet.” (Photograph)
William Kelley Woolfitt chose this original photograph by Aaron Blum to accompany his poem. The poet explains: “I gave this poem its current title after reading Traci Brimhall’s wonderful ‘Dirge for the Idol.’ I had imagined an altar-like dressing-table laden with the dead parts of humans and other animals; naming the poem ‘Antiphon for the Office of the Dead’ was my way of naming that table a place of commemoration and lament. I see another kind of altar in Aaron Blum’s photograph ‘Bittersweet,’ a suggestion of mourning and mending, with a lamp that may burn for the lost and the quilt-like table runner that may gather pieces of the old and put them together again.”
LOOKING THROUGH A TELESCOPE AT THE MOON ON THE DAY NEIL ARMSTRONG DIED
by Raena Shirali
we locate apollo’s landing site on a map that shows
there are two sides to everything
& one is always dark, maria,
unfathomable ocean. the dome above is cracked
& only a sliver of seven-o-clock sky peeks
down. how dizzying: these fickle attempts
to track my lover’s swells, swift black shifts
like a night sky peeling. we are determined
to find armstrong’s footing—
all expectation & no satisfaction; all wax,
no wane. & yes, we drift in cycles
i don’t keep track of anymore.
on the wooden viewing platform,
the cincinnati observatory employee tells me
the moon in this lens is reversed,
so i see east where i should see waning curve.
even if things were right-side-up,
our wrongs don’t follow laws,
or adhere to astronomy. in the end,
nothing negates, & what is bright is too much here.
i cannot find the grounding crater.
the selenic overwhelms
& i clutch the eyepiece, a teetering drunk
unsteady even with my heels off, my lover
smiling up at me from the ground.
did you find apollo? he asks
& i think, o, what a tease you are,
moon: a contradiction, a lie of light
& dark. your surface reeking of gunpowder,
your tendency to decompose liquid.
Listen to Raena Shirali’s reading of “looking through a telescope…” below…
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DOLOROSA by Molly Rose Quinn
(The Chapel at St. Mary’s School for Girls)
where the pillar falls at the edge of morning the teachers
beg us to tug down our skirts they offer their palms
for our gumballs and your god is here to say that beauty
is easy like cutting teeth and your legs and your legs
and yours and I in the pew wish to scrape down
to nothing cuff myself kneel better and what could be
worthier hair voice and loudly I beg for ascendancy
dear classmates your legs in neat rows pray as you do
with fists up and the sun in here bare pray for safety
the teen saint she is the girl to win it all for I beg my
mariology as she sets the way that girl she never once
begged for sparing she begged for death like wine
she begged the best she supplicated she died this dying
begs for me I give it such pleasure and legs and the pew
and the alb and the bread and all other objects beg to be
candles when you are a candle you can beg to be lit
each of you in the pew you beg to be lit I’ll never shine
bigger as we know teenagers beg to be begged and we do
you girls you begged me to hold you begged me to take
what I took you beg bigger and better and for that
you’ll be queens the chimes chime and bells bell
and dear god I know I can be the greatest girl ever
by anointing all alone and being loved the very best
and she says what is so good about anger god killed
my son for himself I suppose and this halo it’s nothing
I asked for and of course she’ll be lying and your legs
and your legs and yours tanned and the best thing all year.
Listen to Molly Rose Quinn’s reading of “Dolorosa” below…
Back to Table of Contents
Henry Darger, Sacred Heart. ©Kiyoko Lerner 2013 / Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York. (Click to enlarge.)
Molly Rose Quinn selected Henry Darger’s work to accompany her poem and explains: “The girls of Henry Darger’s epic novel, illustrated here in Sacred Heart and elsewhere, were closely derived from popular media (recall the ‘Coppertone baby’ or ‘Morton Salt girl’). The novel itself, undiscovered until Darger’s death, details the girls’ war against child slavery, neglect, and abuse. They are cartoonishly feminine in appearance, divine in their acts, and pure of moral being. The narrative weaves darkly into Christian mythology and Darger’s childhood experiences. My poem, using Mary as its vessel, hopes to crash together female adolescence and religious fundamentalism, therein the inherent mythologizing, fetishism, zeal, envy, lust. I am drawn to these images for their moralizing, their uncertain deviance, their mystic pity, and the great heart’s wink at the literal.”
Please note: Reproduction, including downloading of Henry Darger’s work, is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
THE SAW by James Allen Hall
Galeria Hermandad, Toledo
A hand made this, hammered flat a hot length of iron,
cut one side jagged, a row of teeth. The criminal
would be hoisted up, tied inverted, the saw
at his scrotum. The act required two men
before and aft, their breath ragged, flesh straining
through flesh, a saw coming for his eyes. Once
he followed a plainclothes soldier home. Kissed him
open-eyed. Saw the night shredded down to morning.
Saw what was approaching, was breaking in the door
even now: in the closet, a row of uniforms,
legs halved by hanging. The wrack the maiden
the noose the saw. Sierra. I’ll never say it right.
We are standing in Toledo, in dry museum light.
I’m pressing my hands against the stained glass
of the wrong century. In a cathedral down the street,
a row of white pointed pontiff hats, preserved
behind glass, eyeing my wrists. Last night I was suspect,
legs spread. And you, soldier, tied them wide.
I leave my hand in yours and follow you home,
the way I’ve always done, wanting to be wrong
about why you won’t touch the rest of me,
why there’s something that loves me cut apart.
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