Union Weekly ASI - California State University, Long Beach

Illustration by Mariha Lowe

AUNT MARGY’S HAND

by Nicole Street, contributor

I

Her wiggly voice, her shrunken frame,

these I managed. It was her hands

that scared me.

II

She greeted me holding my hands

in her icy palms.

III

Her pale sienna nails were deeply

ridged. They scraped

the egg carton scooping for pills

in psychedelic portions.

IV

Pale translucent skin, blue

night-crawler veins, always shifting

across bone.

V

I could tell the type of trees

in her paintings by the bark:

striped birch, peeling eucalyptus.

How did she remove

the tiny lids

from tubes of oils?

VI

Her sister’s finger mangled

in the wringer. Her own, severed

then sewn.

VII

She pulled a pair of button up shoes

from the cedar chest and handed them to my sister. Keep them, she said.

VIII

Her crooked finger would push

the tip of her cat-eyed glasses,

or miss it altogether.

IX

Sometimes she’d stroke my hands.

She’d say they were so long

and straight and smooth.

X

No two cups were alike and each

had a chip or line of glue.

I’d choose one from the cabinet

and her trembling hands would slowly

bring it down.

XI

I went away. When I came back

she stayed seated, repeated

undecipherable phrases,

her hands resting in her lap.

XII

One day she stopped speaking,

but her nails scratched at her skin

and her hands rubbed each other.

XIII

Her hands taught me

what I know of relevance,

how to weigh

the integrity of skeleton and skin

versus marrow.

CASHMERE

by Nicole Street, contributor

Fuchsia cashmere fits me

and because it is second hand

it goes well with a poet’s budget.

I turn on the faucet and drizzle

soap meant for delicates

while more durable

mothers walk for water

miles from home.

I soak my cashmere sweater

in potable water

to drown hitchhikers

that likely don’t exist

and to cleanse the memory

of its previous owner.

When drying on the line

I notice how the zipper

matches up perfectly,

how each stitch is of equal length

and how the shape tapers in at the waist.

I wonder whose hands held the goat,

dipped the shorn wool into vats,

and who hung the heavy mass

in the sun to dry.

I hear the soft percussion

of the cards, their sharp teeth

pulling the threads out long.

I see a woman seated,

guiding rich fibers into yarn.

I could have passed this sweater

just as a stiletto-heeled shopkeeper

draped it across her arm

to ring at the register

at a cost to cover rent,

but I was spared denying myself

and that ugly human desire

to be the first.

I slide my hands down the sleeves

squeezing the ribbing at the wrists,

lost in the softness that grows

more so with age.

The pilling that floats above the rows

can be sheared away

with little trouble and the loft creates

an insulating layer of warmth,

like grace, easy to forget,

though the disconnect

between myself and the sweater’s many makers

generates waves of fuchsia shame

as if we, the recipients,

in a flood of want for nothing,

have allowed a world of wells to run dry.

ODE TO EJACULATE

by Ingrid Rosales, Union staffer

When all is said and done,

I think I only liked you

because I loved to watch you come.

These words will be the sum

of everything we went through

when all was said and done:

your car, your best friend’s home,

and our friend’s apartment too.

I just loved to watch you come.

And every nerve would thrum

after what we used to do

when all was said and done.

Always speechless, struck dumb;

and yet the encores would ensue:

I loved to watch you come.

You could have been the one,

who knows—but regard this as truth:

when all is said and done,

I just loved to watch you come.

EMPTY GRAVES FOR EMPTY MINDS

by Torie Rivera, contributor

As they open their mouths, they will drown.

Recurring, suppressing, forgetting the will within to truly progress.

I keep my eyes shut in fear of waking, sleep brings relief tonight.

As they open their mouths, they will drown. Choking, dying, finally trying.

Jot down dreams on paper thoughts next to fires of open hearts.

Burn cadavers of yesterday to lift the burdens of today.

Put the needle to the thread, sew up your wounded head.

At dawn we tear down their monuments (the time to wake is new).

When death comes around the bend don’t hang your head. After all these days have passed.

The dreams will forever last in our hearts and hands.

We will not step into these graves that have been dug by dead men of hallowed mind that have drowned in their own lies.

As they open their mouths, they will drown.