h o m e........

p a s t   i s s u e s....

s u b m i s s i o n s....

l i n k s

STEVE HEALEY

GREEN SHOES

If you’re looking for my knees, 
they can be found halfway up my legs. 
They are not pretty. They resemble 
piggy banks that have been broken 
and glued back together several times. 
Yet they are useful. When I walk, 
they allow my tibias to swing 
slightly ahead of me into the future. 
My feet take turns landing
on a new piece of ground up ahead. 
My feet are wearing green shoes, 
and when I walk, the grass grows. 
I watch how effective the grass is 
at growing, except that I’m a liar,
in fact the grass is dying. 
It has not rained for weeks 
and the grass is now a brown mat. 
I think about the other crimes 
I could commit. I could kick 
a hole in a pony and take all 
the gold doubloons that fall out. 
Sometimes I walk to that place 
where the cop stands in front 
of the yellow tape and say, 
what happened, officer? 
The cop says something but 
all I can hear is a child crying.
It sounds like coins hitting the street. 
That’s when I know it’s time 
to escape. My knees go into action.
I’m walking again. I’m wearing 
the ghosts of green cows on my feet,
and they make all the difference.

GLOBAL CAPITALISM

I would have said it in fewer words 
if there were fewer things 
coming to my pie hole 
asking to be included. 
“No” is one word I could 
have said more often. No, 
this tea party cannot accommodate you, 
elephant. I’ve already invited turkey, 
bee, fish, wolf, and platypus, 
and my igloo is about to burst. 
Yet what I said kept growing, 
the facts of my ice world 
grew more fluid. In fact, 
it started to rain, I started to smell 
wet bodies, and what made me human 
grew an elephantine desire. 
Finally, no more family secrets, 
except how we were all conceived
and what began at conception 
beyond the desire to add
to the conversation without 
sounding stupid or dead. 
Is that such a crime? Well, 
no need for apologies. I too 
have invested unwisely in the future. 
There will be plenty of pain 
for those who can afford it.

ANIMALS AMONG US

Night is when we say it’s night. 
It’s night and we’re in the backyard. 
In the backyard we gaze at the slug. 
We say the slug slimes the chard. 
On a large leaf of chard it makes 
a slimy path. We say the path is errant, 
like a song getting lost. We say day 
is already lost, or night took the colors 
of day and poured them onto Asia. 
The slug is like a small shiny elephant 
without legs, longing for Asia. 
Night cannot include day, we say. 
That's the law, the final black 
that comes after dusk. We say night 
cannot love everything. If the slug 
loves an elephant and penetrates it, 
we say the crow is excluded. 
The crow eats trash in the alley 
and talks a black speech about not 
being loved. We say only the future 
loves the crow flying into late summer. 
Sometimes August is there, and there
is meat rotting in the heat, meat that 
loves the crow. There is the memory 
of animals who were recently alive, 
a hot sky, lightning without thunder, 
and now. Now is a life we live 
now, benighted in the backyard, 
forgetting that birds exist, because 
now there are crickets clashing 
in the dying grass. August of 
re-enacting famous Civil War battles, 
August of forgetting the pain 
of benighted heroes. It's the easiest thing 
in the world to live during the time 
of dying crickets, unless you are 
another animal feeling excluded 
from the massacre. We say this is how 
they chirr in the dark, we say August 
is dedicated to the proposition 
that all lawns are created, now 
we are engaged in a great cricket war, 
testing whether that nation, or any nation, 
can long endure accumulating dew. 
Those who are hurt will be nursed 
by their own ghosts. The slug will be 
removed from the hole in the elephant 
and placed once again on the chard, 
to enjoy a slow pleasant death. 
We say the chard will be good for dinner, 
sautéed in a little white wine.