Cover Art: "The Lawless River" by Krista C. Graham, acrylic
​Last Offering
​A bowl of ramen was the final meal
my father wouldn’t eat. Our tenant brought
it up to him, hot bowl of  murky broth
and surly noodles curling on themselves,
a tangle ragged as the wrenching breaths
his failing lungs and heart endured. He sent
Carlos away, refused all offered help
that would have sent him to the hospital
or brought an ambulance to save his life.
I don’t know why my father wouldn’t let
another save his life. Was gratitude
too much for him? Or did he truly think
his body’d played another trick on him,
another false alarm like all the times
his insulin got out of whack, his blood
sugar out of control? He’d come right back
to us after those scares, his body weak
but soon restored after some sugared drink,
the shaking stilled, the tilting earth set right.
Who ever knows which breath will be the last?
I knew I’d made it home too late. I’m left
now with this clammy bowl, its broth all dried,
its noodles far too brittle for my touch.
If only he had sipped this nourishment.
If only I had offered it to him.
Writing While Dead
​When I died, I sat down and wrote this poem
about how good it felt to be finally dead, know
I never had to pay another bill again—no more

bloodsucking utility companies filching cash
from my bank account, no more bank account,
ATMs, no more mortgage bills or property taxes

from the county. No more county!—only this
wide spacious enormous county called death.
I really like it, especially this “writing while

dead,” AKA “WWD,” requiring no ink, no paper,
words appearing in air as spoken, carved
into sky, no eraser needed, just a puff of breath

from my dead lips, but not really breath, more
like vapor, an ether with no human parallel,
eternal and yearning. Writing while dead

means you’ll never worry about your mother
or dog reading it—after all, you’re dead, 
and they won’t look to the sky expecting

to find your invisible poetry there—all
they see are the declarations the stars make,
those lonely demarcations. So you—I--

can write whatever, say whatever, 
can make a flowerpot a dagger, winter coat
a feather, a sewing machine a spy glass.

No autobiography to writing while dead,
so I can be murderous and nasty, twisting 
enemies in rhymes and syllables, comforted

by mortal words in immortal sounds,
afterlife resounding in my sainted ears.
The Trouble With Eyes
is not how they see the world,
all its slimy coldnesses and baudy
manufactured hues, but how,
having grown inured to blood and flesh
on sidewalks, they no longer register
finest pitches of horror, terror, no longer
aghast at pictures of exploded capitals,
soaked bandages. Think of irises,
how they bristle at unexpected glare,
blinking on, blinking off, think of the
nervous panic of lids that cannot stop
fluttering. Center of focus, of light
and power, blind spot and optic nerve,
they are pupil, cornea, lens—worlds
within worlds, and still we cannot hold
all that we need to see—clapboard
coffins, bone fragments, family photos
torn by the impact of a blast we swear
we never saw coming. How many times
have I looked at you and not seen
this scar or that bruise, the history
we share revealed each morning?
I’d like to say I’ve seen it all, eye
to eye, eyes wide open and honest,
but I would be lying—I can’t even
tell you what my own eyes see--
mud brown, fringed by the filigree
of long lashes, can’t even tell
what hues persist three feet from here.
And when they’re gone, who will name
those colors for me, tell me when
they will return, shades exact as memory?
 
                                                after Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Proposal on a Plate: Orango Island, Guinea-Bissa
Orango's inhabitants developed a number of distinct matrimonial traditions which are unique with respect to the role played by women.[3] Marriage is formally proposed by women — their choice of spouse is made public to the groom-to-be and the rest of the community by an offer of a dish of specially prepared fish, marinated in red palm oil.[1]
--Wikipedia
On Orango, a woman is not refused.
No man says no to that desire,
grooms-to-be fed the ancient recipe,
dish of fish steeped in red palm oil.
 
No man says no to her desire, grooms-to-be
trembling as they taste the aromatic meal,
fish marinated in red palm oil.
To marriage they cannot say no,
 
trembling as they savor each aromatic bite.
Their brides set out for the white sand beaches
—to marriage they cannot say no--
to raise grass-covered huts for homes.
 
Their brides set out for the ocean’s beaches--
four months to build, weave grass to roofs,
grass-covered huts they raise for life,
from driftwood and mud-pink bricks.
 
Four months to build, weave grass to roofs.
But now the world is upside down--
driftwood and mud-pink bricks
don’t keep young men from foreign ways.
 
Now the world is upside down.
The elders still want men to wait,
to hold themselves from foreign ways,
the ways of tourists, money, oil.
 
The elders say young men must wait
to be fed the ancient recipe, that dish,
reject the ways of tourists, money, oil.
Return, they say, to Orango, where women aren’t refused.

“Is Your Pool Baby Safe?"
 -question, pool fencing advertisement
​
In answer to your question: I don’t know.
Will your product secure me from mutant
marauding babies shouldering rifles, their
 
camouflage diapers sagging as they stagger
towards my pool, M-16s taller than they
are? I’ve heard tales of unprovoked baby
 
attacks, massive bouncing armies in baby
pink or pale blue training pants, battalions
nursery-bent on revenge for the pain
 
of living they now know so intimately:
teething, crying, the hungers that rattle them
into angry, gape-mouth cries no lullaby
 
can assuage. Seems to me it’ll take much
more than a fence to protect me
from their pre-verbal retaliations,
 
something far more forceful than the Pill
or a carton of extra-strength Trojans.
Maybe I’ll just trash this pool, drain
 
its sickly blue and fill it with cement instead,
or with soil for the country’s largest
planter, or with feathers—downy hazy
 
onslaught of white. Maybe a trampoline
instead of a pool. Maybe, instead
of new babies, this empty womb.
ALLISON JOSEPH is part of the Creative Writing faculty at Southern Illinois University, proudly in Carbondale, Illinois, where she serves as Editor and Poetry Editor of Crab Orchard Review,  moderator of the Creative Writers Oppourtunities List, and Director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writer's program for teem writers.

Her books and chapbooks include Mercurial (Mayapple Press), What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press), In Every Seam (University of Pittsburgh), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech), Imitation  of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father's Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (Imaginary Friend Press), Multitudes (Word Tech Communications), The Purpose of Hands (Glass Lyre Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), and Double Identity (Singing Bone Press). Allison Joseph is the literary partner and wife of Jon Tribble.
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