Excerpt from Take Three:2

LUMINOUS CHILD

Susan Aizenberg

The patient will not speak except to say tomato, broom, fire.
Anger appears to be a major issue in this case.
Mother's history reveals
a fascination with certain wrong-way
streets, the rumpled sheets
of backroom cots, an edgy desire
for loss common to compulsive
gamblers. Patient manifests an obsessive
fantasy concerning the dark lakes
of Peru where in dreams
he's a white light, a bullet
plunging deep through water the red sheen
of Beaujolais. He's an infant,
pearly and round, tracing the rapid
downshift of a free fall no mother
can catch. Patient denies
any memory of riding through November
yellows, Dallas, the back
of his mother's bike, sipping air
sweet with lilac, speed
carrying them both through streets
blurred with color, her hair windy
and soft in his face, the familiar arc
of her neck and back between him
and whatever came on. He would like
to confess the theft of his
mother's pearl ring, gift for agirl
whose hair kinked and roiled
like Janis Joplin's in the photograph
on his mother's album, Big Brother
and the Holding Company, like bikers,
his gone father, he thinks. He can no more
explain his need than that luminous child
spiraling through Peruvian dream
waters can explain his, or you, yours.
Me, mine.

IN WINTER

Mark Turpin

These days in winter when the weather breaks for a spell
I return to the job thinking about
children, money, and divorce?

and sweep sliding pools of sawdust and rainwater
off the bloated plywood floor.
The rooms: dripping, dark?

smell of cigarette smoke, fir, and wool
as men splash from room to room in rubber boots and slickers,
nailing up the power cords from the water.

I'm amazed I'm here sometimes, doing this work with these men,
and sometimes expect them to find me out?though they never a
as if I am not where I am supposed to be.

They smile and joke with me, respect me.
Outside the frame of a window I see stumps of three plum trees
that yesterday we cut down with a chain saw?

and where the branches fell into puddles among the hillocks
of mud the water is stained a wine red?
and a shower of pale pink petals rings the dumpster.

When I lived with her, I never thought about my daughter
during the day, while I worked, while she sat in school
among stranger's children. Or if I did

it was with a kind of mustered poignance?
she would be there when I got home. But now, thinking of her,
I remember sitting in wooden chairs,

boredom, anxiety, and guilt swirling in my head,
what I was required to know but didn't
about Asia, mathematics, what someone said.

KATIE CAN'T GO OUT TODAY

Suzanne Qualls

Today I wish that I could learn
some Eastern discipline,
exhaling all my need.
One needs, you know, (I do) — but need
becomes too large for our support:
I fear I'll need so much
I'll force myself to lose.

The little girl across the street
is angering her father:
"Okay, that's it," he says,
"forget it. You don't get to go."
I think she's learning what I'm learning—
something we don't want to know.

I listened to you speak
about the women you have loved,
the ones you've had and lost,
and had and lost again.
For a moment I grew silent,
sobered by the thought
your love had touched you deeply
more often than my own.

Who's counting? It's useless
to compare— and certain folly
to defend this course of thought.

But think I do, relentlessly
in fact, and self-indulge,
and wrack my brain,
and lose, and lose again.

The saints and sages knew the truth—
there's bliss in letting go.
Ah, bliss— now I remember it,
that's where the problem lies.
Remembering is bliss's curse:
it gives, and it denies.

Katie can't go out today,
she disobeyed her father.
She's crying, now— she really hurts—
it's obvious she cares.
She can't go out and pet the cat
that's lying on the stairs.
I'd like to go and comfort her,
and let her comfort me,
to share the stoop and tell her
that tomorrow she can go:

I'll stroke her hair and tell her
she's a pretty little girl.

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