Five Poems by Five Authors
Dee Doyle • judi
goldberg • leslie hoffman
Ingrid Kincaid • Dixie
Lewis
from Remembering Our Future
PenHouseInk, Volume 3
ISBN 1-931002-32-0
PenHouseInk Press, 2004
Dee Doyle
NEW
I tried to be happy while burning winds
eroded my dwelling
Sands of living scoured my secret places
I called myself secure
Restlessly I wandered down patterned roads
did not falter
but my eyes were dulled
by the sameness of ground in years
As I trudged this beaten way
a fresh chill from distant
mountains
called me to attention
my heart soared with the mockingbird’s song
I opened
found brilliant unblighted sun
spreading out new horizons
I no longer hide in my windblown ruins
judi goldberg
waiting for a bus
i.
I drew the line finally at the pee thing, the nurse
in her blues telling me now honey
it’ll just be a few minutes before I put a catheter in you can wait
and then she disappeared, me
lying on my back on the gurney
waiting for them to take me to surgery and I believed her
at first, and then terrified
lying there trussed
waiting for the lot of them to come pick my brain no idea
how it would turn out, I thought, this is crazy
wasting time now waiting to pee lulled
into thinking I’d asked permission as if I were senseless.
ii.
Saying I’m going to pee now I got off the
gurney
dragging the IV pole behind me
and the otherwise disinterested sentries
unsure of my sovereignty
waited for the nod before escorting me
as if I were a prisoner on the gate.
iii.
Intending to recapture the momentum
she came running, the nurse in her blues
mewling, now honey,
as if I were waiting for a bus in a storm
without an umbrella
just because my mother had said, now honey
it’s too windy
to rain.
leslie hoffman
San Francisco Beat
Broadway at Columbus
Chinatown fades into
little Italy, blessed by
Saint Francis of Assisi
omne ignotum
Chianti and Brad
at Ristorante Franchino
photos of young mama and
papa hang on the walls
buon appetito
City Lights, across the alley
Vesuvio Café where
50’s Beats spouted prose
while pissing in the john
cool man
Ginsberg’s Howl banned
Burroughs was Junkie
pre Condor and Carol Doda
Kerouac lived On the Road
the Beat bible
In that flicker between
when The Gate glows sienna
and neon lights Broadway
young poets of North Beach
hear the rhythm of the Beats
Ingrid Kincaid
Remembering My Future
Hot like summer
Like years ago
In Redding
Dad and I went swimming
The shape of his pacemaker
Visible
A silver dollar
A gamble
Just beneath the puckered skin
Just below the left collarbone
I remember his strong carpenter muscles
Tanned arms
I beat him in a foot race
Once when I was ten
And a half
I think
Before the surgery left a railroad track
Right up the middle
We stayed close in the pool
So he could hear me
Treading water
We planned a trip he’d like to take this August
We planted a garden
Dixie Lewis
Strands and Shreds
strands and shreds
twisting gray and black
turning to ribbons of dark red
swirl
buoyant with fluid memories, solitude
mixing loneliness gives way to death
leaving behind pieces of memory
moving
toward an age
I have barely come to
but have known all my life