Issue 13: Alec Hershmann
Letter of Allowance
What do you mean bathtub?
Wasn’t there always Niagra,
a hair drifting in a canyon,
the slab-lights sheer upon
one another in tectonic air,
great gullies of breath
through highfalutin mountains
and dreadlocks of stone?
This letter makes one fewer
on her head, like a needle-exchange
between conifers, a single floret
in the round caption of
a cruciferous vegetable.
I, botanical. I, table.
I, paper-square for mouth.
A Holiday
My hand glances brief
denominations of flesh
in a crowded room
weaving toward exit
where speakers wrap us
a dance receding
from back to chest
slowly on its tilt
honey spread by amplitude
my throat a muzzy stem
of red I rub
the stranger’s palm
against the snow-light
I can see myself turning
my back on the window
the after-glance
like foam between waves
to leave the season
its liabilities
on the one hand a balcony
strung by lights
and on the other
a door repeats itself
into a river dimly
a ripple of geese
traversing a thermal
to make the letter
they approximate
the fingers flocking
my heart
they curl in welcome
In Due Time
I felt my teeth take root. Thank you
hardened on a sorry look.
They used plaster,
and a face-shaped cup
into which—sullen—a few ripples
responded. I shimmered there
in filth, a pair of gray hands on my hips,
pursed lips; my see-saw seeing saw
I meant business
and played nonchalant,
like a squatter said: “Oh, you live here?”
And so the mask fit sloppily.
I’m a shade I was thinking then said, “I’m a shade,”
ruining the mouth and tasting the plaster.
That’s okay though, according to the wetnesses
that predispose a cheek to slime
or a rock to moss.
Price Check
The fabric mountain looms on
a field of button mushrooms.
There is a new notion of burning,
a new notion of mole check, too.
To approach the warden makes you
a child, and gold scrolls end
in a fringe all down the exit hall.
Our friend Moss. Look at him here,
and timid, a steam merchant
playing it cool, while in my pocket,
a dollar gets converted into cinders.
I reach for the broom, and gratefully,
for without piecemeal, the lost
teeth are graves surrounding
a fiefdom of the dentures.
When I wrote this, I had to nurse
a sear in my pettiest finger,
with ice, intermittently, and so
the periods come essentially at
the points of exclamation.
Alec Hershman lives in St. Louis where he teaches at Stevens—the Institute of Business and Art. He has received awards from the Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts, The Jentel Foundation, The St. Louis Regional Arts Commission, and The Institute for Sustainable Living, Art, and Natural Design. His work appears in various literary magazines and online at alechershmanpoetry.com.
