by JP Reese

Jigsaw men smoke behind cinder block walls,
assemble the pieces of people they’ve been.
Second-hand voices seep under the door
of the coffee-cup room severing “Al” from “Anon”
—Pain extended from pain embraced.

On this side, new converts speak hushed or hurried,
wet-eyed, or wrung dry. Blank lives assume form
with each word offered here, like “he did” and “he said”
or “I told him to go …”

… While the “he” men all speak of the people they’ve been.

The newly birthed “nons” of us pay off our debt,
count each hour we focus on “me,” “I,” not “he.”
Each survivor exposes a skin pink with scars.
Filtered he-air intrudes as we salve open wounds.

“He said,” Kleenex weeps …
“He did,” Lost begins …

… While the men in the next room chant Me, Me, Me, Me!

We women work puzzles, avoid those with eyes
while the jigsaw men talk of the people they’ve been.

JP Reese has poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction published or forthcoming in many online and print journals. Reese is a poetry editor for THIS Literary Magazine and associate poetry editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact. Reese’s poetry chapbook, Final Notes is being published by Naked Mannekin Press in February 2012. Her published work can be read at Entropy: A Measure of Uncertainty, jpreese.tumblr.com.

*Photo courtesy of IceSabre.

by Charles Harper Webb

A child kneels beside a “dead” bee.
(Stinging black-and-gold soldier,
where’s your buzzing bluster now?)
Jab!—boxing glove in the face, hard.

A woman bends to change the diaper
on her newborn son. Whizz!—
liquid boxing glove in the face, hard!
And before that, when, wife-to-be,

she showed her “diamond” to a friend’s
jeweler brother-in-law. Prump!—
on a spring stashed behind a trap door:
boxing glove in the face, very hard.

The asthmatic sniffs a perfect purple
rose; the fisherman lifts—out
of season, right under a warden’s nose—
a red, green, gold, and silver trout;

the widow spades her spore-filled soil;
the child lowers his head to cuddle
Tuffy the pit bull … Boxing glove
in the face, extremely hard!

This is why the baby howls and bites
the breast. This is why the old ones
rest in wheelchairs, staring into space,
terror on each toothless, smashed-in face.

Charles Harper Webb‘s latest book, Shadow Ball: New & Selected Poems, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2009. What Things Are Made Of, also from Pitt, is forthcoming in 2012. A recipient of grants from the Whiting and Guggenheim foundations, Webb directs Creative Writing at California State University, Long Beach.

*Photo courtesy of KWDesigns.

by Kevin Hearle

      in memory of Kevin Calegari, who died of
                AIDS on February 12, 1995 in San Francisco

                Romanum Pontificem in rebus fidei
                et morum definiendis errare non posse

Our senior year, how did you pick out me
to be your friend? I’m straight. Your Catholic faith
escapes me, and I thought your plan to be
a priest was folly. And I’d all but tell you,

then stop, because there’d been that liberal pope
who’d lived for thirty days in Rome and died
too soon–just long enough to start the joke
that his successor’s name would sanctify

the last two Beatles. And you would have been
a great priest. Catholic and Protestant
you brought your theses to the Vatican
and, glorious, nailed them to St. Peter’s door

in answer to the pope’s encyclical
proclaiming love of men for men was sin.
In Rome, you were the holy criminal.
At home, you were a hero dying young.

And had I known in time, I would have come,
and, unbelieving, I would have elected
to stand in the rain outside the funeral home
to watch for your white smoke, my dear George Ringo.

Kevin Hearle is the author of Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It, and Other Poems. He is also the author, editor, and co-editor of a number of works on California literature, and a visiting scholar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University.

*Photo courtesy of xiquinhosilva.

by D. Nurkse

1
How we loved to create a world.

Out of gray we made the pin-oak leaves
with their saw teeth and odd waxy sheen,
dry and matte to the touch, out of granite
we made the marriage house, and always
we added a flaw which we called fire
or time or the stranger.

2
A drop of water on the lip of a jug,
trembling, trying to hold on
for another second to the idea of sphericity—
that was us, our nakedness.

3
We worked to thwart our happiness
because it was so unexpected;
suffering tasted like our mouths.

4
We had a flagstone path, a pond, four birches,
a dog racing in tight circles, helpless
against the dream of fresh snow.

Tomorrow that red Schwinn with training wheels
must find a way to pedal itself.

5
World like a child who learned to walk
beyond our outstretched hands.

D. Nurkse is the author of 10 books of poetry, including The Fall, Burnt Island, The Border Kingdom, and the forthcoming A Night In Brooklyn, all from Knopf. He received a 2009 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

*Photo courtesy of wintersoul1.

by Sarah Rothbard

We’re closing the books on 2011 at Zócalo,
So a year-end poem seemed apropos.
We might have gone Roger-Angell-style,
Marching the year’s guests in single file,
Rhyming Steven Brill and Brad Cloepfil, Dakin Sloss and Andrew Ross,
But what to do with Evgeny Morozov? We might be at a loss.
So we’ll simply salute the year’s passing—by no means completely—
With unmetered verse that rhymes somewhat neatly.
Here’s the news that riveted, the stories we remember,
The things we kept talking about even in December.

It was a banner year for protests but not for marriages or dictators,
Almost as unsuccessful? State and national legislators.
The uprisings in the Middle East spread like a conflagration,
“The 99 percent” became Wall Street’s occupation.
A march in London grew into days of riots and violence,
In Russia civil society may at last have broken its silence.
Like the wives of Henry the Eighth, autocrats were deleted:
Qaddafi, Kim Jong-Il, Mubarrak—killed, died, unseated.
(But not before we got the goods on Muammar’s second son,
Saif Qaddafi, who learned at LSE how government should run …)

Meanwhile in the U.S., our government was stalling,
Debt, taxes, federal funding; Congressional approval ratings were falling.
Things in California were pretty much the same—too many
Problems left unsolved, and pinching every penny.
But people still threw parties as Kate and Will headed to the altar,
While every major celebrity couple headed closer to a no-faulter.
The big shock came from Kardashian and Humphries,
And the other stars’ divorce papers seemed to come monthly:
Arnold and Maria, Kobe and Vanessa, Ashton and Demi—
The Twitter-verse kept reeling with J-Lo and Marc Anthony.

The marriage of nations on the Continent didn’t go much better,
The eurozone became a union of creditor and debtor.
Bankruptcy hit closer to home when the Dodgers went under—
And how could we forget the McCourts, another marriage torn asunder?
There was good news, too, amidst the doom and gloom,
For one weekend L.A. was traffic-free, though the worst had been assumed,
That false alarm on the 405 that we all deemed “Carmageddon”?
It wasn’t until Obamajam that the freeways truly turned leaden.
A decade-long manhunt closed with the death of Osama,
The rapture scheduled for May 21st wasn’t worth the drama.

The war in Iraq ended, to Baghdad we bid farewell,
A conclusion came at last for “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
Not all endings were happy; some died too soon,
Steve Jobs and his brilliance, Amy Winehouse and her croon.
Gabrielle Giffords survived Tucson; was destruction Japan’s fate?
We couldn’t turn our eyes away from scandal at Penn State.
Los Angeles felt schadenfreude from earthquakes on the east coast,
Til the Santa Anas arrived in force to deliver a riposte.
The Republican race’s ups and downs have been well-documented
(Including by our own T.A. Frank—Herman Cain’s exit much-lamented.)

As the world spun round its axis, Zócalo was busier than ever before,
Hosting 50 events, publishing a web magazine, launching a think tank, and more.
Julian Bond came wearing seersucker; Wim Wenders in Converse,
Jane McGonigal promoted gaming; Guillermo del Toro laughed and cursed.
In Phoenix and Fresno and New York City, we made our debuts.
When Perez Hilton recommended “How Doctors Die,” we knew we’d broken through.
Jennifer Ferro took us to her neighborhood, Brenda Yancor told her Mormon story,
Constantino Diaz-Duran embarked on a mission for cross-country glory.
We teamed up with ASU, mourned the closing of Rocket Video,
Joined the Pacific Standard Time excitement, shed some light on Mexico.

Stay tuned for more to come, 2012’s looking splendid,
And thanks for looking back with us on the year that’s ended.

Sarah Rothbard is managing & books editor of Zócalo Public Square.

*Photo courtesy of irene.

by Marc Malandra

Why are our lives so full of things
that didn’t happen? We carry
phantom luggage of journeys
we never took, leave futures
packaged behind us in the past,
awkward gifts we give ourselves.
We dare not date them definitely,
but we feel them waiting for us,
counting out the days on our calendar,
waiting for a holiday that never comes.
Not even the present is definite,
yet we plan and plan while
our steps carry us elsewhere.
Shadow calendar, more nebulous
than a figure of stars, less practical
than an almanac of planting times,
road map of days that evade the actual.

Marc Malandra’s work has appeared in nearly 30 different venues, including Ascent, Caveat Lector, Flyway, Orange Coast Review, Poetry Northwest, and South Florida Poetry Review. He teaches American literature at Biola University in La Mirada, California.

*Photo courtesy of Road Fun.

by Chris Davidson

Bright morning wakes me through
A drapeless window. Away from kids

And wife for the weekend, the bed
Is quiet, the room unpressurized,

The house airy. I miss my life
As it is even for this short time

But this short time is a gift.
On the phone, I love you to each

Of the three. No faces to register.
Words like mortars flying out

At a target obscured by a ridge
May or may not hit the target.

You must trust the coordinates, trust
Experience and expertise.

Chris Davidson is Assistant Professor of English at Biola University, where he directs the Biola composition program and writing center. He holds a B.A. from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and an M.F.A. from UC Irvine. His poems have been published in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Caesura, Cimarron Review, CRATE, Dust Up, and Orange Coast Review.

*Photo courtesy of sj_sanders.

by Barbara Cully

Where birds
listen intently
a garden gate stands amid a plain triganomaly.

          the oldest living life forms are chaparral

Note the house the agave Americana lives next to
stands two stories high, its stalk grazing the roof.
After the plant blooms it dies.

          the oldest living life forms are chaparral
          the oldest living life forms are chaparral
          the oldest living life forms are chaparral
          the oldest living life forms are chaparral
          the oldest living life forms are chaparral
          the oldest living life forms are chaparral

Where birds—
picture intently
a century plant in bloom every 25 years or so.
The way they reproduce, shoot, you can have lots in your yard.

Looking right down into it—its center writ large at night in half light or porch light
reconstructs the universal symbol of being under water or overwhelmed.
The well is dry? (Yes, quite. Thank you.)

The place where the swirl of a Cyclops or cyclone
         ends in a maelstrom of some vegetative persona vilified.

     Where birds
listen intently
the octopus [what got her] captured her
(listen)
its eye is telling
as much as the tiger’s.

Healthy century plant, the shoot begins:

         ·growing taller by day,
         ·a close up of the stalk,
         ·a hawk resting in the century plant,
         ·filling out,
         ·blooming,
         ·close up of the stamen,
         ·then a torch-like bloom with a rain mark in the next frame
         ·the gardener appears,
         ·the stalk is cut & the body removed.

Next day,
we find the rhizome offstring rosette emerged
while the mother stood dying by behind the casita.

(When?)
That fall when no one came to the casa & the sea lavender when—went
on & on.

You know,
that place where the ocean waves roll ’n furl
& ice plant mounds in pickled firms & flurs

in the sand just there—
A god’s hand
(fibrous)
(mountains and rivers),
how dry it is.

Barbara Cully is the author of two poetry collections from Penguin Books: Desire Reclining (2003) and The New Intimacy (1997) and two collections from Kore Press: Shoreline Series (1997) and That Place Where (2011). A new collection, Under the Hours is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in May 2012 and Cully Selected Poems forthcoming in May 2013.

*Photo courtesy of dugspr.

by Barbara Cully

Half a woman, really, off a balcony

          in the early December of another hemisphere.

Danced or frozen

amid a well-placed healthy skepticism:

The letter “P”

Where birds listen intently, [how dry it is].

Where spines, hair, lead, sand

and shellac–l’American rails,

a garden gate, stamps amid a plain

triganomally. That place where…

we, banished to be certain–but

bound to be people

again soon.

–after the mixed media work “Garden Gate” by Kyle Johnson

Barbara Cully is the author of two poetry collections from Penguin Books: Desire Reclining (2003) and The New Intimacy (1997) and two collections from Kore Press: Shoreline Series (1997) and That Place Where (2011). A new collection, Under the Hours is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in May 2012 and Cully Selected Poems forthcoming in May 2013.

*Photo courtesy of withrow.