The Semaphore Anthology

by Joy Ann Jones

There’s a little grey snake most cunningly faced,
It’s only as long as a tailgunner’s song
only as thick as a Semtex stick
but it bites to the raw with a jaguar’s jaw
then tucks its head down and keeps drilling.

Sometimes it slithers outside on warm fingers
disarming observers with its plastic display.
Others the poison tongue drips out and lingers
soaks through the lace in a green disarray
to the sponge in the core
that echo’d reservoir
the little grey snake’s slowly filling.

by Brian Miller

There is an art to drowning

If you tie yourself to an anchor
better make it tight, chain upon chain
          the body will fight     for

dying is not natural
          before its time

Liquid inhalation in-
          fills, tiding out images
of what once was, compressed
into short films, flickering light
           & shadow
      skipping here or there along
           the time line -

bar nights with friends, first kisses
      faces of intimates like sirens
            seducing you back to breathe
      fresh air, fresh air

Panic : Thrash : Spasm : Inhale
      un-
       con-
scIo-
      us

Death is meant to be permanent
      but then again, it is

A covenant renewed daily
      when my first breath gutters out
      bubbles dancing to surface like stars
      in the depths of your lips,

i find life.

by Valerie Valdes

The face of the girl on the bus. The smell of ripe peaches
rotting on wet grass. Asphalt shredding skin
on a knee fallen from a wobbling bicycle.
Products on random aisles in the supermarket.
Pages of math problems. Waffles for breakfast
three years ago Sunday. Every person
who ever passed you on the street stepping aside
to make room for your baby’s first laugh, the feel
of a tiny hand clutching your finger, the weight
of a new life cradled quietly in your arms,
its memory blank as a white flag of surrender.

by Jenne’ R. Andrews

As the skull come forward
As the ghost ship
Of the cranium, floating
In its newborn ferocity, forces through,
We are in no doubt; the helm
Of death and the helm of life
Are the same, each craving light.
        - Tess Gallagher, Dear Ghosts

And I never knew the small ghost-ship
Of your skull or felt its hardening
High up, in the sanctuary of my ribs

I needed to be emptied of you
As palest sanguine water, or some
Common effluvium, quickly
Before I could conjure your eyes
For there to be no remnant
Even, of what you might have been
To me and I to you

And although I was weeping
When the scalpels were prepared
on the blank blue sky of paper cloth
And the doctor shook his head
I gave the thumbs up

And as I faded, you were swept from me.

I woke, still and forlorn to myself
Like driftwood
A nurse peered around the corner
Like an owl
A glass of water in her hand

Are you awake?
No, I said.
I am the sea.

She checked the line of salt water
Into my veins
Have you made me a mermaid
I asked her
Am I in the deeps

And then I remembered
My pentothal dream
I was a dolphin, calving
In the gloom and depths of coral
You fighting your way from me

Both of us heaving ourselves
To the surface
Your mouth relentlessly searching
Nose bumping along my belly
Then you locking on
Lashing your tail in jubilation.

This is what I missed
When I told the rose I could not
Let it bloom

Tearing its dark red petals loose
One by one
Until the baby-skull of its hip
Radiated a hungry light
From the middle of the flower.

by Patricia Caspers

When Death is all grown up at last
you’ll find her clothes in swimming pools,
some threads unraveled, returned to spools,
night colors bleached, bone buttons lost.

Don’t call her name or dare to ask
if she’s the thief who stole your cool.
When Death is all grown up at last
you’ll find her smoke in billiard halls,

sweet-scented shawls misplaced in cabs.
Don’t look her up in address books
or send a box of licorice pearls.
She’ll not forgive your curdled past
when Death is all grown up at last.