The Addicts Excuse

I have walked you to your door and it is dark,
not dusk as in that brown drought summer
when you plucked a wood tick
from my hip and laughed,
rolling it like a swollen white bead
between your fingers before
snapping it with a quick red pop while
smiling with the left side of your mouth
under that needle embroidering new stars.

I never asked any questions then
and the oracle in your eyes spoke
in deep ocean tides that threw out golden
rings of foam, so the yellow dropping sun
would go down smooth
like a shot of liquor poured
between your lips first
then mine.
And it made death
easy.

But tonight I pull the blue throat of my coat tight
above the hard stone under my tongue.
I do not try to smile
as you pass into the warm light
of your living room
turning to me and the dark 

with that same grin
as if you
had just plucked me
from below the chestnut line
at the nape or your neck,
and were rolling my empty head
between your fingers,

giving it a playful squeeze
before you gently shut
the scratched
white door.

Christopher Celestina

Some Beach

Is there, deep in your mind/heart

the rhythm of the waves

so low and slow

it's more felt

than heard.

Some Beech

Is there within you as well

It's leaves held tight

Through darkest, coldest winter's night

To shelter that one thrush

Who overwinters to be the first

Song to herald the spring.

Some bitch

Who licks and suckles her pups

Whose sweetmilk breath could soften

The most cold hearted warrior criminal

Lives in your breast as well

Unacknowledged.

As climate change

Covers the beach beneath the waves

And kills the trees with wild swings

Of rain ,heat and cold

That bitch will give voice to sounds

Would cow a Rebel or a Banshee

Before she rips your heart in two.

Peter Peteet

So.

Well then, 

spring.

Must be answer enough.
No address, or redress just
A thing of varied length
and tension.
Energy stored up and pushing,
   waiting without patience, without a clock or time.
Spring is and thinks not of what was or will,
could be,
but it is not me.

 For I ,yes I -that is the not everything, the not you,
not blossoms or remembered love or half forgotten dreams,
not stories told or names come loose from bodies
burned and scattered in the wind.
This I, much like any eye
is moving while constricting or relaxing
seeking unless dead or drugged;
moving even in sleep, in dreams,
 to drink in light
just enough
to engage the world, admit your gaze,
and not be consumed
yet

When death, that rhythmic lover of us all
comes
I will no virgin be.
Just as a spring is born in heat and has compressions and extensions numbered
but unknown.
So is the Iris of my eye,
sprung from a bulb within my chest,
A thing of springs.
And so perhaps even from that rhythmic lover
I will rise
again.

Peter Peteet

Peter Peteet is 54 years old and lives in Atlanta,Ga.His poetry has been published in Flycatcher.

Mucho Trabajo (Too Much Work)

     Every time I pull up on his arms, his ass sinks deeper to the ground. I say, “Push. Bobby. mas rapido,”  I tell him, “I’m doing all the work here.”  

     

     Bobby has an ankle tucked under each arm pit, but he’s too short, too weak to lift coach’s ass off the lawn. Keys fall out, jingle on the sidewalk, and for some reason I think about my father getting home, the way he throws his keys on an end table like they’re not a ring of janitor’s keys, but the weight of the world that has lifted and now we can finally eat dinner. I look at Bobby.

     

     I whisper loud as I can. I tell him, “ stop ” We both let go and I can hear bobby’s low blubbering. His eyes shine and he whimpers like a small animal. A sprinkler chatters like a machine gun over near the baseball field. The sun is down and the School Grounds are empty. “Man up.” I tell him.

     

     “Coach.” he says. “we’ve killed coach.”

     

     “Get over it.” I say, “ Coach is gone. We got to get rid of this body..”

     

     “But, shouldn’t we just call somebody? If we told the cops what happened?”

     

     “Forget it man. It’s coach and your just some skinny wet-back. What are the cops gonna do?”  

     

     “Nicho,” he says, “Nicho” he  calls my name, and I think I hear my mother’s voice waking me up. I can smell green chilis; they’ve been simmering.  I taste her tortillas, just a little burnt, the way I like it, and my stomach makes a noise louder than the keys. I look around, but nobody’s there.

     

     “Let’s try rolling him.” I tell Bobby, then I pick up the keys and we start rolling coach’s dead body to the cafeteria. 

     

     Bobby pops the window. We get coaches body inside. I know there is nobody here. The cooks clean this place and leave early. Enrique is still cleaning the girls locker. I know his routine; there’s time. It’s just me, bobby and coach. A small light on the dish washer guides us through the heavy pots and the stacks of plastic trays. It’s still warm near the machine, The steel sink sparkles and smells like bleach. 

     

     “Be careful man. Don’t knock anything over.” I tell him.

     

     “Now what?” Bobby says and I can smell his sweat.

    

     “The knives are over there.”  I point him to the cutlery. “Get me a big serrated one.”  He bumps into a empty stock pot, A deep gong vibrates through the kitchen and into the empty lunch room; my heart stops.

     

     Bobby’s eyes go wide. He grabs a knife. We wait for footsteps. Nothing happens. Then, he looks relieved and asks me how I know so much about this place.

     

     “I work here,”  I tell him. I think about how long we’ve known each other, but he doesn’t know shit about who I am; how I work lunch while he’s clowning at the pic-nic tables.  

     

     Bobby hands me a bread knife. “bigger.” I tell him. “There’s a carving knife in that rack near the ovens.” 

     

     He hands me the knife.

     

     I get the scullery aprons, the plastic caps and yellow gloves. The cap crinkles then smoothes as I stretch it on. We don’t talk, and you can just hear the knife sawing through bone.” Hold on to his arm.” I tell him.

     

     He throws up

     

     “Pull tight, so I can work the knife in.” I tell him.

     

     “This is fucked up.”

     

     “Yeah right.” I agree,  “like we have a choice?  Like what happened didn’t happen and I am not holding Coach’s arm.”

 

     

     The same arm that grabbed Bobby, and Bobby’s mouth was pushed into the metal so hard that his screams sounded hollow and tin. When I first heard it, I thought some kid was stuck in a locker. I figured that I was just going to break up some foolish prank. Then I rounded the corner and saw coach with his pants down and bobby bent into the locker and shit just happened.

     ‘It isn’t what you think.” coach said.

     

     I didn’t say anything. He pulled his pants up and turned towards me. I heard keys jingle, and loose change. I saw that big arm, and his hand. Then, I felt the heft of those books: the biology and chemistry I had been so hopefully struggling through; they now felt heavy and dangerous. My back pack swung and coach was tumbling and there was a flicker at the end of bobby’s hand like a needle. like he was sewing something into coach’s shirt, but it was a small knife and I wanted to stop it, but when I grabbed bobby’s hand it trembled empty, and the knife was now in my hand and coach’s face  was close and open; not pain, but wide and silent like he couldn’t believe that everything could pass so easily away. 

    

     There is just the three of us in scullery now -- Bobby, me and the dead guy.

     

     I put coach’s arm in the garbage disposal. His hand is sticking out of the sink like a drowning man. I flip the switch and the hand turns slowly as it sinks into the machine. “I’ve cleaned up worse.” I lie. But it is true that I have made things disappear.

    

     “What if they find out?” Bobby asks me.

     

     I can feel the keys poking . They’re heavy and my pants feel different with their weight.

     

     “No body. No crime.” I tell him, “There’s a mop and bucket in the janitor’s closet. The bleach is underneath the stairs.”

Armando Stiletto

Reticence -- A Love Poem

I need a brick to fill the empty face

your cunt left in my wall. The place

is falling apart. I haven’t slept in years.

I’ll fill the gap and paint the fence in crap

set house plants on it; topiary

sculpted to Ulysses. A pageant

of nic-nacs,  When

you return,

you will follow crumbs.

I’ve ripped up all my best

tee-shirts. Written dumb

haikus on em, tied

love notes like prayer flags

Hung bow-ties high and

lived among the elderberries

I’ll walk the town in house coats

wear slippers, slip bawdy notes

slip my toes in sloppy places, 

place your face in every mirror I find

I’ve broken.

Bob Putnam

Helix

Last night’s rental bed was 

wider than an ocean, my 

wife stranded by a hot flash

way over on the other side. I

woke up half past midnight

wanting comfort but was spurned by

climate change.

I walk sidewalks.

I am growing 

more invisible

with each step. I

wander 

food-less hearts of cities, 

groceries gathered 

to busier avenues. What

do you eat when

you are homeless?

Where do you go for food? 

No wonder

we are alcoholic

in this town were food stamps

trade at two for one. 

The liquor store

on Stone Street sells 

MD 20/20 for

two ninety nine.

This asphalt is

not as comfortable as

the Holiday Inn. Wide,

still warm, I roll

across the center line

drunk with dreams of being young. I

reach to find we are together, still

connected though the rest 

has come unwound.

Bob Putnam

The Brink

     A tall, thin, sinewy man, in over-sized blues, came into my city jail office, and said, “Do you know anything about relieving suffering, Mr. Felix Tadcaster?” He read my nameplate. I was a social worker helping inmates about to be released get federal disability, a job, reconciliation with family and friends who had shunned them, working out the bumps and gouges acquired inside jail and outside in the greater imprisonment

we all daily face.

    He had a nasty jagged scar on his cheek, his jailhouse haircut streaked red, jumpy fingers tapping the desk.

    “My white mama named me Ahab,” he said. “I know what you college educated, professional types think. Not that one, the other one, evil Ahab in the Bible.”

    “Is that your problem, you think you’re here not because of your possession convic-tion, but because your mama laid that name on you?”

    He stood up, pulled me across the desk, my head, neck, and shoulders on his side, then put me in a chokehold, the crook of his elbow squeezing my trachea. I could not breathe. My arms flapped like dying salmons, and I began losing consciousness, a world turned dark. Suddenly, he released me. He walked me back behind the desk and slowly I regained my breath. “But I can’t stop the suffering,” he added.

    “You could’ve killed me. I could charge you attempted murder. You’d do big prison time.” His eyes bore through me.

    “I could get you shanked, you know.” I had been threatened twice but never placed in a chokehold. “You won’t, I’m getting released tomorrow. How about having a drink with me to make amends?”

    “I never have contact with ex-inmates outside of here.”

    “Don’t worry. I can introduce you to a fine woman.”

    Divorced four years ago, my ex, Judith, now in law school studying criminal law, seeing me hopelessly holding her back, my confidence with women at an all-time low, my social life consisting of microbrews and HBO, coming to work with hangovers, friends hers, not mine, never contacted me which isolated me more, my salary nowhere commensurate with my potential. I got anti-depression pills from a psychiatrist I saw. I once took pills and drank bourbon but failed to kill myself. Why not take a chance with Ahab. Nothing to lose except my life. 

   

    “Tomorrow’s Saturday. Where would we meet?”

    “What’s your address?”

    “How about a drinking hole. I make it a rule never to give my address to anyone connected to his place, CO’s and even the warden.” I stood up, he too from the other side of the desk, and then he walked to my side and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close to him, and whispered, “I’ll bring a sweetheart we could share if you’re game.” I took his offer up.

    He came just after I finished my lunch. Dressed in khaki cargo pants, a red and green sport shirt, and wearing an Indiana Jones fedora, he stood outside the door alone. I saw no sweetheart.

    “No sweetheart?” I asked. Just then, a car pulled up, and though he partially blocked my view, a woman approached the house. He moved aside and Judith strode confidently up the walk, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt with her university’s name running across her chest.

    “Hi, Felix,” she said as she stepped inside followed by Ahab. She saw my expression, how my mouth hung open like a grotesque gargoyle. I was positive it could not ward off evil.

    We sat around the living room, she seated in her favorite rocker, and Ahab sat down on the big couch two cushions away from me.

    “How’s law school,” I blurted. “Aren’t there enough criminal lawyers?”

    She smiled, her eyebrows raised as she rocked methodically, comfortably, and said, “Ask Ahab.” He turned towards me, and said, “She and I were partners in martial arts classes,” he said, unsnapped a pocket, and reached in.

    “Jude taught me all the chokeholds,” he said and pulled out a perforated spoon.

    “More to education than practicing law,” she said, cracking her knuckles, a habit I hated.

    He held the spoon close to his face. “She gifted me this antique absinthe spoon.”

    “It looks like you’re behind bars,” I said, hoping my comment passed as humor. He relaxed, his face placid, lips loosening, giving the scar clarity. He pulled a bottle out from is backpack. “I think of everything.”

    “What did you mean, ‘Ask Ahab’”? She drank absinthe after Ahab took a few sips and then passed it back to her. She sipped the green spirit.

    “I was his attorney. He paid me with money earned selling high potency Cannabis sativa.” She rose, offering me my first absinthe, and I drank a large gulp. Its dreamy hold overcame me. I thought Ahab and Judith my muses, I, great poet of the Western world.

    “Why are you telling me this, Jude? Attorney/client relationships are privileged.” I wanted absinthe to wrap me up in its kindness. Ahab drank some more, laid back, not in a stupor, but with keen eyes and tranquil face, listening to his iPod. Judith sat between us on the cushion nearest me.

    “Ahab told me he had you in a death grip. He killed a man that way.” She lowered her voice, not so Ahab could not hear, but let her words sink distinctly into my consciousness, as if life depended on every syllable. He flexed his muscles to the beat.

“He brings them to the brink, now.”

    “You too?” She answered yes. “What’s the point?” I asked.

    “Uses prompto facit,” she said.

    “Latin doesn’t impress me, truth does.” 

    “Practice makes perfect. Truth is the brink,” she said.

     She took three glasses from the kitchen, came back, and poured the remainder of absinthe equally into each glass. Ahab sipped his, Judith her, I mine. Ahab put the iPod in his pant pocket, Judith took the glass from his hand, placed hers and his on the low table before us, then my glass. She pulled me up from the couch and walked me to the middle

of the room. She stood in front of me, kissed me on the lips, then bye-bye waved.

    Ahab put his right arm around the front of my neck, squeezed hard, then put his left arm between the back of my neck and aside his head, finger-locking his grip with both hands and pushed my head down until I began to lose breath.

    “The rear naked choke, wonderful,” she said. 

    Why? I asked myself, sensing my purple face, breath nearly extinguished.

    Ahab abruptly released his hold and I slid onto the carpet.

    Hacking, phlegm gagged me, I dry heaved. Judith set me upright and opened a window.

    “Good, Ahab. Next time, I’ll be the choker.”  

     “No harm, no foul, Tadcaster.” Ahab gave me a bottle of water he stashed in the pack.

“H two O, oxygen will bring you back. Friends?” He reached down and shook my twitching hand. Rain pattered the windowpane. I smelled and sucked in ozone on the bushes and when the rain stopped I inhaled the street’s and the concrete driveway’s ozone. Optimism began flowing.

    “Next time?” I wanted answers. She stared at me and I could not decipher her expression. Its placebo effect emptied my heart just as it had the day she left me. A dose of nothing swirled inside me. I wanted them to leave, I wanted to be alone, I wanted to quit my small jailhouse office, I wanted to move far away. I wanted out. Ahab pantomimed a chokehold, the air my head and neck. Judith struck poses, moving her

arms, hands, legs and feet like a skilled master must. Each grunt signified another pose, another thrust, all the while her eyes tracked mine.

    “Another match, Jude.” He could have asked her ( “Another match, Jude?” ) but he made a statement.                                                                           

    “The leg triangle choke coming up,” Judith said. I thought I would die.

    When I recovered and breathed air in the backyard, she asked, “Are you OK?” Ahab towered over me. Sweat poured down my face.

    “I’m next,” Ahab stated. “It’s the gator roll choke, Felix. Game, Felix?”

    No, I was not. The brink offered no choice.  

George Sparling