| THE PEOPLE WHO VANISH by Ryan Havely The People Who VanishYou wear the wind around you like a favorite shawl. I try to hold you against me and you go to ashes. You leave like a storm, tie your hair with ribbons like rivers like ribbons. Others have gone this way. The self-proclaimed matador who called himself Gazania fell through a puddle and vanished. The old women say he was dreamed by a sick child or the widow whose lover wandered up the blue ridge toward Phoenix Mountain one dawn and never wandered back. His hat came bobbing down Cranberry Creek later that summer. The old women say a widow can build a man out of dreams. She left too, the widow. A pack of dogs watched her float, sleeping, into the foggy moon not long after Gazania slipped through that crack in his reflection. Most people say dogs lie but the old women know a late mist held the widow like a girdle that night and before she was gone she fluttered in the wind like a cattail. Your eyes bare a luster of going, and this is not a place where the people refuse to go. Maybe you jump into a kiss of smoke and scatter, or you dream a copper hill rich in Spanish Poppy and wake there. How you go is your business, just as the wind that takes you is the wind’s business and the hard shadows you leave behind like oil stains offer their empty to the others who follow you away. Chicken LittleCan you imagine a world more sad more penetrated or irate more whole and unforgotten Anything you say before sunset is true rain falls in straight lines and the drops never touch if they touched the sky’d fall with them if the sky falls you’ll wake up afraid if you’re afraid you’ll hurt yourself and others if you hurt yourself and others the seas won’t churn if the seas don’t churn math won’t work if math won’t work the numbers can’t match and if the numbers can’t match the sky might fall and if the sky falls we’ll all be afraid again and if we’re afraid we’ll send men with no beards as far as we can send them and we’ll tell them to draw lines on the earth and waitto rise like suns from holes in the mud and run like rivers toward guns We’ll tell them they can’t be afraid because we’re not afraid and the sky hasn’t fallen and the numbers check out Isn’t It Was Love?Imagine it’s about you, this poem, any poem you like. Ask me to write you a poem, and I’m finished. I wrote it when I wrote this poem, now, then, back right now when I’m wrote, when I writing with you docked like a canoe, tied to a tree on a sandbar in my imagination. Ask what is not about you, what thought could be, what thinking would even matter were you not its seed, and I will tell you nothing. Seppuku in the KitchenFirst, cut a green pepper, red pepper, and onion into long, thin strips, and set aside. Some snowflakes melt before they find ground, yet each is no less a snowflake than the pebble in your sock is less a stone than the granite slab on the riverbed— rainbow trout resting an inch above in the never-ending water that dreams of stillness. The trout find peace in high currents, find stillness in hurried streams. Next, peel and dice two large cloves of garlic and chop a nice handful of cilantro. Put your skillet over medium-high heat. Do not blame the nightmare for your terror. The nightmare’s job is to frighten, as the song’s job is to tempt, as the autumn-red oak leaf’s job is to castle windsweptly downward and skirt along the ground, farther from home with each gust. Coat pan with oil and add peppers, onions, and the chicken you marinated overnight while the red moon lingered in your window like a grifter so when you wanted to see out you only saw your face on the moon, your vapid eyes at the bottoms of bloodshot craters, boot-prints stamped into your skin. Stir frequently. When chicken is cooked through, add garlic and one-third cilantro to hot pan, turn off heat and stir. Next, kneel and insert blade into abdomen just left of navel and cut toward right until overcome with pain. Finally, pull blade upward, cut until blade hits moon and recite your death poem. If you’ve nothing to say, the moon says nothing, so wash your hands and start again. If each word of your breath rhymes with the moon, it will sit like a jester in your window. Go with him. Listen to his stories, laugh at his jokes. Serve with tortillas. About the Author:  Ryan Havely earned his B.A. in English from Ohio University and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Minnesota State. He worked as a college professor for a decade before moving into marketing. His work is found in such magazines as Pebble Lake Review, Ampersand, Midwestern Gothic, and Main Street Rag, among others. |