Mon Oct 31, 2011


Gone Fishing



ospreyfish

This zine has flown.

Don't fret, every single poem published here is still available in our archives.

Thanks for the memories!


Fri Oct 21, 2011


Zürichhorn

Jill Alexander Essbaum

Treppe im Abendlicht, Spätherbst
 
The black vast
of night isn’t yet.
 
You look to the lake.
The light plays
 
its trick. It’s the one
where the woman’s
 
sawn in two,
where she goes into
 
a swoon that intuits
her stint
 
in the sad-house.
And dawn is a lousy
 
dozen hours away.
How many days

will it take to undo
these undue

wreckings? You wrack
your red, wrong
 
worry and sieve
for an answer that lives

but to grieve it
Look, look, look to the lake.

Then leave it.  


Thu Oct 20, 2011


Im Aegert

Jill Alexander Essbaum

At mourning, I’m a laureate.
Cast this head on a brass coin.
I’ll assume a glass crown.

This morning, I wake to inner alarm.
The guess that darkness isn’t all
there is. That there is more,

that the relative next is worse.
Sunrise is glacial. The snow
is chalk. I lilt when I walk,

like a drunk. A reproach of birds
condemns me. Am I game? Don’t
shoot. I pitch from one periphery

to its brother. I am a chill
that can’t be burned away. Not
with sunlight, not with love.

Of course there is something
worse to come. Like: when god
doesn’t answer a prayer. Like:

when god does.


Wed Oct 19, 2011


Rapsfeld

Jill Alexander Essbaum

                        Dietlikon

Morning, I wake to that shuddering
house and I’m urged to follow
a daylight moon. The sky’s attuned.
What’s path is prologue. I’m passed
by a man and his dog. The man bears
bare and rabid teeth. I respond
out of grief and habit alike. Graffiti
mars its barn like a birthmark. A rued,
bidden tension clenches the wind.
And I am in a field of rape again.

And sadness is meant to be had.
The oilseed luster of the heart’s domain.
It is a promise that nobody made. All loss
is fire. It must be obeyed. So the pretty
blond flowers haunt togethers and aparts.
And my backbite is angry as silk, or scars.
Or this jaundiced terrain that used to be ours.


Tue Oct 18, 2011


The Bystander

Jill Alexander Essbaum

You put your hands on her. It is five years ago.
       Five years ago and to all clocks’ alarm and at
an hour unspecified she chimes o fraud, o fraud.
       Then you regard and re-regard her. Then she boards
her plane. Five years ago and nothing of you is
       a good idea. You are a patriot in no
man’s Reich. Non-partisan. Aloof. Precisely beige
       in your neutrality. You won’t step in. You don’t.
It is five years ago. She volunteers a mouth.
       You pull away as if she’s bleeding fire. Retreat
is every army’s arrogance. As if withdrawal
       lacked cowardice. As if surrender wasn’t brave.
This is what she says to you five years ago
       when you with oddly crude aplomb have shrugged her off,
a flak vest you’re longer so invested in
       protecting yourself with, content (if ill-equipped)
to quibble over whether she is Axis or
       allein. Five years of thoughts like drowsy boats you can’t
not steer inside a landlocked ache. Your plan is wet
       with strategy: A sideline’s still a line drawn in
the sand. Five years ago she mails a letter you
       don’t read, but let her think you do. How cruel. You cache
it in a vault beneath the street you’ve cobbled in
       your spleen. It seemed the right response. But you can’t fill
with gold a guilt you don’t think you deserve to feel.
       Five years. You lay your lips to hers, your conscience cold
and white like spiteful stars so long away, or Alps
        that lie if they suggest they are impartial. Part
of every loss is shame. But you—cocksure in ways
       beyond the one— stand by, Bystander. She steps on
her plane. There is no ceremony. She farewells
       but to the air around you and the concept of
your eyes. For you are passive in the present and
       the past. And from your mirror’s black, scratched glass it is
forever those five years ago and your defense
       is achromatic, nameless, vague. Both walls and woes
have ears. And wars have wives. And armories have arms.
       And heart’s a muscle not a bone. It cannot break.
And yet she leaves. And that is that is that. She walks
       alone in woods and kicks at trees pretending each
is you. And calls your empty name. And peers through windows
       with a want that even controversy can’t
console. Five years. A tooth. A wedding band. A middle
       road of last perhaps. Don’t choose a side? That’s still
a choice. Pretend it’s not five years ago, it’s now.
       Her plane is late. You come to her, a white cross swimming
in a red and non-capitulating sea.
       She doesn’t call you devil and you are not damned.
No boxcar is refused. And you are not the man
       who lets her get away. Instead, you beg her: stay.