May 2015 Poetry

WEATHER CHANGE

for Terry Harvey

 

 

Wind slithers through oleander leaves like

 

schools of silver salmon ghosts, the iced relics of steelhead

 

fins, silver lining a rainbow trout’s cheeks.

 

Sky chills even hidden scars, and the voices of birds

 

are far away water trickling over a granite ledge.

 

 

 

Call out the colors of air, sweet,

 

filling the dusky lungs of a brother

 

in the last veteran’s hospice bed, air

 

for the lungs of women in Kabul who secretly perm

 

the hair of other women in their homes

 

while husbands cloister, click beads

 

and tongues at the backs of their tight throats, ignoring

 

the slight tilt of words said by wives

 

whose bodies are smothered

 

by centuries  of swaddling cloths,

 

by the slavery of veils.  Call sweet air.

 

 

 

 

Air for the premature baby across town

 

whose lungs are smaller than moth wings

 

struggling for flight in a neo-natal unit,  air

 

for the homeless man wandering

 

paved drives in our foothills community

 

still asleep.  Where am I, he wonders

 

as he staggers under a backpack

 

so grimy that Its history has no color

 

other than char.  Air

 

for the pit bull snoring

 

in a treeless barrio yard, chained

 

to a stake broiling in desert sun

 

while a teen dealer bags meth

 

in his mother’s bathroom.

 

 

 

Air for the kid whose hands close

 

on the first baseball of his life, for the proton

 

in the eye of the observer that changes

 

what a woman sees as love halfway

 

across the globe.  Air for all of us,

 

breathing sky’s

 

luminous unbiased mind,

 

the way quietly, it says goodbye.  Lives.

 

 

–Pam Uschuk

Pam Uschuk is a human rights activist whose books include Crazy Love (American Book Award), Finding Peaches in the Desert (Tucson/Pima Literature Award) and Blood Flower. Editor-In-Chief of Cutthroat, A Journal of the Arts, Uschuk occasionally teaches poetry workshops for the University of Arizona Poetry Center.

 

Zócalo invites poets with Tucson connections to submit up to three original, previously unpublished (including online) poems, any style, 40 line limit per poem.  Our only criterion is excellence. No online submissions.  Simultaneous submissions ok if you notify ASAP of acceptance elsewhere. Please include the following contact information on each page of your manuscript: mailing address, phone number, and email address. All manuscripts must be typed and accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE). Ms won’t be returned. Zócalo has first North American rights; author may re-publish with acknowledgment to Zócalo.  Payment is a one year subscription. Address submissions to Zócalo, Poetry, P.O. Box 1171, Tucson, AZ 85702.  The poetry editor is Jefferson Carter.

 

Category: Poetry