Category: Uncategorized

Performed by Val Cole

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POEM:

Justice,
before you rule,
Please hear me—
not as counsel,
but as one who has stood in that midnight kitchen
through her words,
through her trembling hands,
fighting for Pêpê’s best interest—
a child the law claims to protect,

yet leaves trembling.
It is not enough
when his hand explodes against her mother’s face,
the sound sharp as a rifle crack,
making the glass in its frame shiver.
It is not enough
when her cheek blooms red,
then fades too fast for the lens to catch.

Pêpê—her mother’s pet name,
whispered like a shield.
At night she lies rigid in her bed,
listening to her mother’s muffled whimpering,
each sob a small surrender.
She learns too early that comfort is dangerous,
that silence is armour.
I hear her in the pauses her mother cannot fill,
in the way fear wraps itself around every word.

She is six.
Only six—
and already her eyes know how to measure a room,
track his every move,
clutch her mother’s skirt as though it’s the only thing
anchoring her to safety.
She memorises the path to the door,
ready to run before she’s learned to ride a bike.

Do you know what it is
to argue a case with your throat closing?
To know that “best interest of the child”
is not a theory,
not a balance sheet,
but a warm bed free from dread—
and still watch the law lean to “access”
and “parental rights”
as if they outweigh
a child’s right to breathe without fear?

He does not feed her.
He does not clothe her.
He does not keep her warm.
Yet he claims the right to hold her,
to call it love,
to shape her into a silence that will last her life.

The mother is shamed as bitter if she speaks,
while he—
who punched a hole beside her face—
walks away smiling.
And Pêpê learns to fold herself into small spaces,
to call fear normal,
to believe this is what families are.

Justice—
I see her years from now,
laughing in a sunlit kitchen,
her footsteps light,
her nights free from dread.
Your choice can make that real.

You are not deaf
to her small voice asking:

“Do I have to go?”

Your gavel can crush—
or shield.

Choose her.

Carve a future
where Pêpê wakes to mornings of peace,
where only her cereal crunches.

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R.
I sit in my bed in the topmost section of NYC. My mom puts a latke in oil below, sizzling it like a thousand mating cicadas. We light candles. My knees show a second too long and I put them away. Jane gets back with a buttload of books in a bag, the jacket of the team she handles tossed on clavicle like a white sheet on cold nose. No signs of exhale. Clothes smell of oil and I get back to the house, and the white attacks again, some angel sitting on the deck of the next house and the second next and the cement is full of stones that push galaxies into digit pads. I count each angel – 1 6 5 multiply 2 12 10. I know that now which is cool because I didn’t when I left with the sun and I won’t when Anden leaves to the side of the sea in which women don’t show a knee. We should have put a diamond on the issue, but the oil gets in each nook of the bibliothèque as he so helpfully tells me. Each classmate smells my Chanukah. I will meet His dad soon, and I hope He gets the time to visit. The sitting lady in the shadow says He will when His kid comes home post-college. That’s you, yeah? You came back?

O.
Anden is in a land that ends in “ia” and I sit at Hunter. They teach me the art – cucumbers are safe, cake is a danger. Jane’s daughters swear in striped bikinis, flirt, run, and bite at ankles. Mama is under a sheet at the lecture hall dais, a frying pan at the ready. I incubate. The heat is pressing, bursting the blister-urgent matter. Static crackling, and a plane has crashed again. AIR RAID THIS IS what it has been since they left, and chemistry calls hither, a wee-uh marker scritch and a circle and an “I” lying sideways. I reach up and grab the shelf by my bed, the cabinet bursting with red and white, the skirt wrapped tight hiding clink, clink, clink – the three nickels in my bag prepare themselves as chips, trading and getting a ticket, at the ready, Sacha wrestling Ken Davitian is truly a wild ride. Putzes swingin, they seem meshugana like the mints I give a granddaughter each time we light candles as a unit. I can’t believe they let this in a theatre. Wishing He was here in the seat with me, cracking sillies, making laughter, creamy and bright. Wishing He was visiting, sitting by my bed, buckling my backless dress, pulling tubes in my hand, rubbery dj deep in Carnegie Hall, making music. Still playing the strings, yeah? Please keep at it.

S.
My hand dormant on the piano key. I roll through a lifetime teaching piano hand after piano hand better than mine how to make more money than me. He will follow, riding the raging bull downtown. Nothing but pride there, but He can’t know that. He wouldn’t try anymore. I pull tube out of hand, put cottage on whole wheat, hold Pearl hand to evacuate, can’t on own and don’t know why. Why not Him and a hand without the nail paint of a whore and a face I don’t know when I clamp an eye. Tight lid, tighter image, rope tied around hand holding it down, rope around hip, around ilium. To be free on the TV, to be free like ball bouncing back and forth, too far for knowing. NOT A DRILL, the radio will chant. The end ending now, ending a day, ending what? Not knowing. Granddaughter too tall to marry – day will end alone. Not a drill. One chance to find a man worth Juliet Garon half of Him, one chance to make a career out of chemical line and cello and radio announcing. One chance to end that career and make a great-child, the top beautiful thing I ever did. He put me on the farm, where I once took a walk down to the apple tree that nothing fell far from and a bench popped up underneath. Bench moved when I got tired, bench out of Bronx apartment known well by my bone, bench marked by graffiti of punk kid, take me off of the bench. Can He come tomorrow and take me out, out like a light or a dog walker?

S.
The wall of my room felt different today – a trance falling gently into me time and time again, the golden green of the TV bouncing back and forth between men and an ocean. Nixon did a cameo on Laugh-In, too, according to the front and back page of my book. When will He come? Maybe next week? Maybe the day before today? Maybe when Jane will pick up the phone and finally decid to turn the rotary, make the effort of a pencil to not chip her nail, tell me about having a daughter and another one on the way. About the price to create two, a war in a bathtub, a jelly in a pan, a wiggle in and a worm out. He’ll come back, right? After the quarter. After the nickel thrown between a finger and a thumb (they’re different according to Jane Goodall, that tall hippie) and flip onto the edge of a palm and the wine given to a woman. I wonder when I can eat gefilte again with the fancy fork. Granddaughter coming next week according to Pearl. Pearl will put the cream on the bread wrong again. Tube in hand full of brown, angel come back, cement deep in thumb pad, deep in vein. Recline, recline, recline, and revel in a day of reclination, recognition, and reckoning. Do you get it?

ROSS!
He came today. He made it. Told me I’d see Jane soon. Wife said she’d protect him while I wasn’t there. Told me granddaughter was taking chemistry, grandson was playing classical music. He told me past tense is for idiots and they all think Borat is a riot. Told me Anden is waiting somewhere in Romania, and He is waiting somewhere in New York. Told me He’d be there soon. He told me He’d hold my hands. Played piano on the radio. Held my hands. Said I could talk to you and see how I felt.

I feel alright, honey. I feel just alright.

The expiration date stuck to the soul

The sheer size of reality hit

Emotions trapped underneath

The frozen lake

Fear dug deep into the ocean floor

The anger reaching the Hulk’s explosion

Tears of joy, tears of fear

The destination grew closer

The journey came to an end. Box in car,

Chest in church. Box in ground.

They say I should’ve left sooner.
Should’ve known better.
Should’ve read the signs.

But they don’t know how I love
full force,
all in,
even when it hurt.

I stayed in that job long after it stopped seeing me.
Poured into people holding only empty hands.
Tried to fix what was never mine to heal.

And when it all fell apart,
they called it weakness.
I called it shame.

But I see it now …….that wasn’t weakness.
That was love.
That was loyalty.
That was the kind of bravery
they don’t write about in leadership books.

The kind of brave
that doesn’t need applause
only the quiet truth
that I showed up.
That I stayed.
That I tried.

And maybe I stayed too long.
But damn…
I stayed with heart.
I stayed when it was hard.
I stayed while I was breaking.

I used to rush to be grateful for the shame,
like forgiving it fast enough
would stop the sting.

But I don’t have to be grateful
for betrayal,
for staying too long,
for breaking my own heart
just to keep the peace.

I only have to understand it.
See what it showed me.

Because shame didn’t destroy me
it revealed me.
It peeled me open,
forced me to sit with myself,
made me ask the hard questions.

And when I finally let myself be vulnerable,
I realized what I’d been carrying
all along…
wasn’t weakness,
wasn’t failure,
just shame
shame I never had words for.

And naming it?
That was the beginning of healing.
That’s when I started seeing myself clearly.
That’s when brave began.

Each time I answered honestly,
I became a little braver
not because I wanted to be,
but because I had to be.

That’s the thing about shame:
If you let it,
it will teach you who you are beneath it all.

And that person?
She’s not broken.
She’s not too much.
She’s not a fool.

She’s the bravest woman I know.
And now…
I finally see her.

His feathered wings of wanton sin,
soaking etchings of desire—
rippling ’round her rose-coloured bodice,
blazing spring fire.

All consumed until winter fell,
she binds him to her beating heart—
his limbs cloaked in her cold death,
entwined, forever. No longer apart.

She denies him spring again,
her feathered wings unfurl and fly,
waiting for summer swells of heat,
he is torn apart in the sky.

—

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Genres – Desire, Passion, Love, Toxicity, Relaitonships, Freedom, Conflict, Loss, Escape.

Honey pools fill as light spills across her gaze,
catching in the quiet fire of her eyes,
where the world softens,
every step she takes
feels like a laugh
threaded through warm breeze.

After a hike, she grins
tongue lolling, chest heaving,
the kind of smile
that stitches the dirt
and
leaves into memory.

Little toes dusted with red speckles,
white as clouds edged with fire,
tap the earth
Sounding off tiny drums,
marking her passage
through sunlight, soil,
And streams.

Riding home,
she leans into the passenger seat,
sunlight glinting across
her honey eyes,
lazy warmth painting
her gaze
like molten gold pooling in quiet streams.

She tilts her head, stretches, sighs
And grins
a soft reminder that joy
Is found everywhere she
Goes

Are all our paths pre-destined,
or joined by chance alone?

Are we confined in the arrow of time,
or just bound on its flow?

Romance aside, I’m certain—
Strong in my belief,
fate is just a construct,
of evolution’s biology

Yet if I take Pascal’s wager,
and death conceals a twist,

I’ll find the place
you say exists,
and meet you on the drift.

Damn she love explorin’
Took me to another borin’
Museum in Florence
Italian martyrs,
Saints like Lawrence,

Naked white men statues,
I stare in abhorrence.
My eyes start bleeding,
I need visual insurance.

Regulate your business
Like Elizabeth Warren,
Stocks soarin,
“Baby are you
Dow
Dow
Dow
Dow
Dowwww?”

Why you cannoli look
Pasta me?
Penne for your thoughts.
Gelato Gestapo after me.

And “Signore una camicia”
Per favore,
Cover up, bro.

“Keep your eyes up here, dear.”
She looks
Down
Even
Harder.

Signore una camicia!
Sir a shirt,
Skirt,
Anything,

“Dead Italians STILL flirt.”

I don’t know how much to mix
worn hardwood floors and chipping linoleum
every grease you imagine mingling
bacon hitting the griddle
engine in the hands
two generations of what children find
wood paneled corners
pitted with age and attention left elsewhere
bones of the tired couches
and the tired bones upon them
mixing dander and decades
a litany of long dead dogs
that loved the motor-oiled hand that fed it
vinegar and hard boiled eggs and
blue
its smell as much as its feel
I swear it had a scent in the yard
under the shrub that took swatches of skin
repayment for the years of holding nothing
in return for these
blossoming trees
oak over the deck and pine
Douglas Fir from the one Christmas
in the 70s when he was just a father
a few years from grand
when it refused to die