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I stepped outside
to pick tomatoes after the rain
barefoot, shirtless, end of summer

Filling my hands with basil
twisting plump tomatoes
from their wiry green vines,
I juggled them carefully
on the way back to the house,
feet soaked from the wet grass

I came back inside
And New Orleans was underwater
Mississippi, I guess, floated
about a mile in the other direction
from what I could tell
from the TV

I set the tomatoes down on the counter
turned them over in my hands
wiped off the dirt and wet leaves
from the ripe skins... Read more

This
is a political
poem
where moose — bull and cow —
frolic
like downwardly mobile
young adults who have
abandoned
their cultural inhibitions,
acting like everyday
is Xmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Ramadan,
not considering the consequences
of spring thaw,
mud up to their bulbous knees
or
where maples shed
leaves like rapturous nudists
only to huddle
hidden all winter
under surplus blankets of snow
waiting meekly
for the sap to finally run,
sluicing toward pancakes
and Town Meeting.

after Lawrence Ferlinghetti

New Year’s Eve, waiting for the ball to drop
     again. Waiting for the dancing
to begin, the band to wail like it has no choice.
     It has no choice.

I’m waiting for the woman in red shoes to move
     her sinuous self my way
and smile. I’m waiting for the stores to close.
     I’m waiting for America
to grow weary of money and move on. I’m waiting
     for one of the football guys... Read more

Click here to see the whole story.

"Homesick" appears in the center spread of the 12.19.07 issue of Seven Days. It looks fantastic in print, so pick up a copy.

"Homesick" was written and drawn by Joseph Lambert, a student at the amazingly cool Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction.

Once there was a houseful of noisy girls,
their squabbling and hair-washing,
stumbling cockeyed up the stairs at night.
They’d catch him standing at the top,
one hand holding up his pajamas,
the other waving the alarm clock,
incontrovertible evidence of their crime.
Do you have any idea what time it is,
he’d ask rhetorically. And they’d stifle giggles
behind each other’s backs.

Now they’re scattered to other countries
busy with their jobs and children,
their unhappiness. If time was money
he’d be on the pig’s back these days... Read more

Wild tom yesterday at the far
edge of woods
cautiously measuring potential

snatching bugs from leaves
of cinnamon and interrupted ferns.

Today under the bird feeder
still alone among the dross
of sunflower seeds.

I imagine him
the Judas of turkeys,
outcast and made brave
by his hunger

or the Magdalene of turkeys
shunned
for being most
what the others need.

On days he's desperate for a new song
he'll buy a sack of CDs, rip one

open in the car, slide it into the player —
and almost immediately see the fool

again, the one whose mother sang to him
so softly while she nursed him his first day

out of the womb, whose father had a band
and more 78s than anybody

in town, the fool who suddenly understood
his own galactic insignificance

and glimpsed the prison of his ignorance
hearing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel"

at Kay Barnett's thirteenth birthday party,
fool who nearly wrecked his car pulling off... Read more

After bugging me for years, my right hand finally decided to kill me. It wrapped around my neck like a python while I slept, then slowly started to strangle me. I woke up coughing uncontrollably, unable to breathe. My left hand had to fight to pry it off. I sat on all 10 of my bickering digits and used my big toe to dial 911.... Read more

Yellow leaves light up the evening with their yellow prayer
which I fold into the thin dress of myself.
Late autumn being the attar of least resistance,
as I am made of this falling and that rising.
As I am turned by the turning.

Here the scenery means souls travel in packs.
And here the scenery reveals a certain illumination
that is grosgrained into me — directions for sleeping and dreaming.
A faith so simple it gently anoints my feet.
A faith so clean it scrubs everything into a pure blankness.

I dreamt of God for seven days.
Seven nights and days, expanding... Read more

The garden has ignited.
It's feverish. Even the white clematis
flutters with sun,

and the red lilies and coral bells
burn back at it. Windblown petals
of cardinals flash

across the buttery primroses:
a good year for gardens.
Everything shines.

I write this standing at my window.
I don't go down into the garden.
From here I see everything

at once, all the flowers trapped
in color, in their showy, slow
ignition - petal, pistil, leaf and stamen

separating off. Perhaps
there is a way
out of such fiery

gorgeousness. It must
be wearing. Even at night... Read more