|
Summer 2007
Caroline Albert
Donna Dixon
Shara Faskowitz
Adrian Heathcote
Stephen Mead
Michelle Morgan
Spring 2007
Featured Artist:Jennifer Balkan
|
|
Malaika King Albrecht
Lit
Sometimes, driving home, I ride
the thin needle in red to see
if I'll run out. In the back yard,
as big as a doghouse, razor
wire glints on brick walls.
What does it keep out?
Summer, during the trash strike,
the garbage creates
its own food chain back there,
and, thin as shadows, we gather
in the basement to play music.
Scraps of carpet hang
on cement walls, trapping sound
and heat. My skin shines.
The air's too hot to breathe.
Not wanting ice water, I think,
"I'm on fire; roll with it."
Through the smoke, my friends
seem covered with salt, reflecting
light as jewels, in the dangling
swing of a single bulb.
Kneel
Riding the streetcar into the Quarter’s bottleneck,
we pass the haunted house where you work
as the chainsaw man, a job you'd do for free.
This humid night unlocks the dogs and a look
from you that makes me eat gravel. At the levee,
drunk, we step into the river, disturbing our reflections
which are dark as sleep. Here, the Mississippi
bends a final time before spilling into ocean.
Reflections of already gone stars swim the surface.
I hear receding laughter of people walking Bourbon.
Standing in the space between stars, we wade farther
down the slant of cement into deeper water.
A riverboat’s wake washes my skinned knees.
 |
Malaika King Albrecht’s poems have recently been or are forthcoming in Kakalak: an Anthology of Carolina Poets, 4am, Hiss Quarterly Review, The Bedside Guide to No Tell Motel - Second Floor and Poetry Southeast Shampoo, Three Lights Gallery and other online and print magazines. and She has taught creative writing to sexual abuse survivors and to addicts and alcoholics in therapy groups and also volunteers teaching poetry in schools. She currently lives in North Carolina. |
|
|
