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Spring 2008
VanBuren's picks:
Antonia Clark
Brad Johnson
Dale McLain
Roger Pfingston
Richard Rippon
John Anderson
Cristina Baptista
Cynthia Brackett-Vincent
Michael Brownstein
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
Alison Eastley
Brent Fisk
David Fraser
Krikor der Hohannesian
Amy MacLennan
Lisa Markowitz
Damon McLaughlin
Micki Myers
Roger Pfingston
Heather Schimel
Rachel Stewart
Lafayette Wattles
Matt Alberhasky
Margaret Fieland
Robert Johnson
Willie Smith
Alex Nodopaka
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Patrick Carrington
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Lisa Markowitz
Spring 2008
Air Thoughts
In the spirit of The Know, my brain says 'try a plane.'
Good thing I’m already in flight, suspended in a thick,
Gray cloud.
Strange memories come out from behind the upright seat
And locked tray-table—how my father would scare me
Into getting clean.
'Lisa, if you don’t take a bath, tomatoes will grow out
Of your butt,' and I believed. It’s not that I was four,
But full of faith.
From this height the cities are a great grid, flattened
Christmas ornaments glown and glued in yellows
And blues, a singed canyon.
Up here there is little responsibility; still I think
Of the long green vine, how going to the bathroom
Would have been hard.
What might have happened had I gone dirty for a day?
Would there have been a garden filled to the fences
With tooshie tomatoes?
Would I have been deemed the water girl, keeper
Of my own disobedience, skipped rope and watered
The po-po plants?
I would ask my dad about God, and he’d say,
'That one’s on you, kid.' Was it sky and stars,
Or was up above a project
Like the dollhouse he started when I was a girl
And let sit in his man-cave for twenty years
To collect basement dust?
He’s since taken to it again, asked me about the color
Of the roof and walls. I know he wants me to have
A more practical house,
But for now this will do. Miniature hardwood floors
And lighting fixtures, tiny toilets, dog and front porch,
A tiny world ripe for the taking.
Lisa Markowitz received an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her work has been published in Colorado Review, Interim and JMWW, and she is very accomplished when it comes to walking on stilts and making sock puppets.
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