UNTIL THE SICKNESS CAME AMONG US

by Penelope Scambly Schott

"Knee" by Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), February-June 1886: chalk on paper, 10.2 cm x 13.6 cm. Credit: Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

We hadn’t really understood

the lunatic loneliness of skin.

Now, it’s the careful withholding

of the over-eager hand,

the lack of the comforting pat

on a friend’s shoulder,

no quick notifying tap

against a stranger’s sleeve,

no glad hug of greeting

or clinging hug of goodbye

Now we need to caress

the hand-smoothed bannister,

the weave of the couch,

bumps on the pickling cucumber,

the rough skin of our elbows,

or the childlike folds

of our own getting-old knees.

Penelope Scambly Schott is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. Her newest book is On Dufur Hill, poems about the cycle of the year in a small wheat-growing town.

RAW STUFF

by Carolyn Gregory



Their guns become their dolls,
each with a girl's name on it
and carved tattoo
they caress and polish
like vintage cars

With summer on their hands
and nothing playing at the movies
after the slasher film goes
the way of its bloody machete,

they train on tin cans
popping off little soldiers
on a fence,
steady as she comes
before antlers and coyotes follow --
no time for sentiment

Back with their kill,
they puff up chests and strut
as they continue
making men out of raw stuff,
rifle in a backpack,
Glock in a leather pocket.


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, in 2012. She has been working on a series about the history of guns in America for several years now.