Colleen Little

Grief

For my father William

One day you called me

on the phone

and asked about the swallows-

you were angry at their

unending dialogue,

engaged in their own noise,

a reminder that life continues

when hers did not-

In the afternoon of certain summers

your heart broke

watching the careful building of each shelter,

of mud, twig, a stray straw

floating.

The moment she died-

an empty house

the ricochet of their flight

interrupting your melancholy.

You were ready to destroy those nests,

those birds-

the living.

When I told you

the swallows held a secret,

imperishable stars

hanging as stones,

gone,

but not gone,

a small mercy-

all those moments of naming

the loss,

dissolved.

 š

This is How We Continue

There are quivers

of the body within-

there is a story

of soil

and despair

of every woman

everywhere.

Demeter in her longing-

searches

happy endings might not exist.

There is still the autumn to consider

the falling noise

footsteps that crunch

the acorns gather

and winter will deaden

the coruscated land

It will be a hard season-

survive if you can

there is a broken country

inside.

She bends

toward the earth

holding up the sky

replants the world all over again.

Stefano Cagnato

Kimberly Grabowski

Only the Skin Can Hold

I don’t watch, because if I do I might run.

The needle bites into my thigh, spitting ink,

too much ink for my skin to hold.

He pauses for a moment to wipe it away.

It whirs back to life, humming permanent

because that’s its job, the memory of pain.

I tell them nothing is as comparative as pain,

It’s one of those words whose intentions run

through a scale, from shivering to permanent.

It leaves behind a residue, charcoal ink

you can almost reach,  just far enough away

to remain something you carry, but never hold.

The first layer is shrinking, trying to hold

itself together, unwilling to let go of pain.

The darkest parts are beginning to peel away,

the parts they warned me might run,

slowly letting go of their share of the ink

to leave their shadow there, permanent.

I’m least afraid of the things that are permanent,

that wrap their arms around you and hold

onto the places you’ve marked with ink.

They sit with you at night, drinking pain

and wiping it up with napkins whose colors run.

I’m most afraid of things that get up and walk away.

You might come back different after being away.

We are fools to think that skin is permanent,

and it isn’t change from which we run.

We’re impatient to sit with the phone on hold,

any sign of constancy reminds us of pain.

We leave our blood, but it doesn’t stick like ink.

There’s a layer of me only touched by ink,

you can’t lick your thumb and wipe it away.

I want people to look at my skin and see pain,

know that I’ve claimed part of me as permanent.

I’ll admit, it’s nice to have a hand to hold,

but the more I let go, the faster I can run.

I’ve learned that the pain isn’t in the ink,

the stain that runs with and never away.

Permanent is a word only the skin can hold.

Kimberly Grabowski grew up in the middle of a cornfield in rural Schoolcraft, Michigan.  She is currently pursuing an English major with an emphasis in creative writing at Kalamazoo College.  She believes the world is best viewed from the back of a horse.