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Click title to open microchap
Cover photo provided by author
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Too Long Since I Ate
You know that certain hungry,
the one where you’re shaking,
not sure you can lift the fork,
thinking maybe you’ll pass out
before your stomach catches up,
gets the message that dinner’s here?
Yeah. That’s just how it feels,
waiting to hear your key in the door.
Mutare per mutationem in me
Baking feels a lot like prayer these days.
— Mary Carroll-Hackett
My prayers take the form of simple things,
little tasks that smell and feel and taste
of hopes that their accomplishment
can make things better for all of us.
A counter with spilled flour,
the glitter of powdered sugar,
the smell of yeast to raise me up.
A sink of hot, soapy water to cleanse
bowls and measuring cups and me.
A sandwich and tea to recharge me.
Prayers to Life, supplications through me,
to allow change to come by changing me.
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The Best Burger in Town
I admit that I don't understand it,
but only three places in my town,
out of the dozens to choose from,
have hot dogs I love sitting down to.
Only two places make gyros
that even my in-laws will praise.
And burgers? This just-one-place,
no matter where I go in my travels,
is what I match others to every time.
It's got to be the lucky combination,
the coming together of the right beef,
the right bun and condiments and cook.
The best you'll honestly ever have,
because a burger isn't just a burger,
just like all lovers aren't alike. Truth.
It's a certain blend of flesh and sweat,
lust's high heat and love's pure passion,
that leaves you wanting just that one.
Civility
Ah, but no, not enough
to fill this minute with great fears,
my love (Ask the Abbess:
Pour us some more tea,
sweet just as the hour
if we were not here,
if we were not
together.).
There must in deed be
shouts, and cries,
and million-manned marching bands
to salute these whitening tears.
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Check, Please
It's not that they parted badly,
that last time for dinner and drinks,
or that either knew it was permanent,
and so deserving of a longer hug.
It's that she was already promised,
and he was running quite late
for the evening flight back home
to a wife and children unmet.
Hi, My Name Is
Tell me about your thirst.
— Mary Carroll-Hackett
This is not the time to raise a glass,
drink deeply from some crystal stream,
find words to toast a different future.
I’d rather speak of gnawing hunger,
the way it undermines my sleep, my hope,
how it never leaves dreams’ table satisfied,
no matter how much or often it gets fed
by masochistic urges to reassemble
things not meant to be that lie undone.
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Lennart Lundh © 2022
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Click title to open microchap
Cover photo: Transient State
By Lennart Lundh
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eine kleine Abend Musik
Spring has arrived and the windows are open,
letting the neighbors’ dogs, an ambulance,
and travelers flying to somewhere come in.
In the basement, great-grandchildren
exclaim at old board games and albums
of family they never met
who we now must remember.
The dishes are quiet again.
She puts polka music on,
convinces her daughter to dance
between the island and the sink.
Their husbands look up,
say hey it’s your deal,
return to their team’s latest loss.
Shuffling feet,
shuffling cards,
interweaving conversations
filled with easy silences.
The fans cheer a homer.
The band plays on.
The clock ticks.
A Song in War and Peace
(“She sang to him, I imagine.”
— Mary Carroll-Hackett)
In the kitchen, fixing lunch,
she sings a certain song,
the one they learned to love
back when they were new.
It doesn’t matter that she can’t
remember all the right words,
that she’s off key just a little.
It matters that she sings of love.
It doesn’t matter that they aren’t
they and he’s not there to hear.
It matters for the weary world
that someone, somewhere sings.
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The Women, Their Children
(after Louis Gallait's "Peace" and "War")
She is not Lange's migrant woman,
though they have the land in common,
hold hard labor's stains on their hands.
Her face is full, bright; her hair fashioned.
The children don't turn from the artist:
The girl wonders at a sprig of flowers;
the boy-child nurses, never going hungry.
There are cattle in the close-by fields,
a newborn lamb and butterfly closer.
Still, despite clear differences, they live,
barring accident or illness. Peace reigns.
The same cannot be said for their sister,
captured in a different place and time.
For her, the distance is smoke and fire,
the foreground wrecked by violence.
A hand reaches for her, stretching
from beneath torn cloth, a used rifle.
The girl cries for her mother's gaze;
the baby, prone, will never hunger again.
The woman's pale skin and slack jaw
suggest what her bloodied breast shows.
May her soul know peace again.
Honey, I'm Home
Merry Christmas reads the paper
sign above a door in Long Beach,
where a soldier and waiting wife hug.
Or maybe it's Easter near Bremen or
Loy Krathong in a suburb of Bangkok,
Mawlin or Yom Kippur: Rebirth. Again.
There'll be time later for bills, repairs,
starting a job to pay both and more.
For healing or scratching at wounds.
Now begin the sweet, sweet hours,
the trip across the borderland of war
and what we elect to call peace.
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Town Square, Morning
This is the wall where they lined up
the civilians, what it looks like now,
generations later, years of cleaning and
painting and advertising posters for films
and bath soaps and circuses later.
In the picture from then I count thirty-one
people turned to face the cold bricks,
although there may be a few more obscured
by the closeness of the row.
They stand erect, arms raised high as if
these weren't adults and children, real
as the foggy air they breathe, but cartoon
creations ready to take flight.
There is trash, once prized possessions
and important papers, between them and
the off-camera soldiers, left after pockets
and purses were emptied.
A moment from now, the guns will be fired,
but I didn't give the order or squeeze
a trigger, and so am free of guilt.
I simply stood by silently.
Three Poems
If
(each day is)
love and peace,
then this
(as any other gift):
A part.
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Lennart Lundh © 2022
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Click title to download PDF microchap
Cover photo by author
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after Mexico (1934),
a photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson
Dime, she wanted, lo que recuerdas de Mexico,
whatever your heart recalls
about that first night, about afterwards,
the sound of water lapping shore
through the open window, our bodies
entangled like seaweed at spring tide,
our breaths at last no louder than
walking the shore hand-in-hand
through infinite fog. Dime algo,
everything you've never said out loud.
If I had my way
I'd look over your shoulder in the morning,
see the Sun start to rise, rejoice while
wanting the moment to freeze, just as happy
if the light never quite off the ground.
No place special needed to go beyond here,
even if our future is broader than most.
And if clouds hide the dawn, can we
still be fools enough to try?
Look how gently the rain can fall.
Like a broken cup, your golden hair
is arrayed across my arm. You could be all
the good things taken from me, waiting for me
to try and catch them back from the thunder
in my head. I have to try:
The sun you offer me has been quite kind.
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Break Free
Sometimes I sense ghosts here.
If there is fog on the roads,
the radio serves as well
as headlights to disperse it.
I fly past deer
and groundhogs eating at the edge,
hold my breath
long
beyond dead skunks.
Sometimes I find spirits here.
Coming down towards San Diego,
I break free of coastal foothills
and the smell of ocean
lifts
me from my seat to
soar in the breakers,
bury in the sand with the donax,
dovetail peace & love.
Infinite Nesting Dolls
Let me be your matryoshkas,
hand carved by the hours,
each costume, face, expression
unique to the unrepeated moment
that the brush is dipped and stroked.
With the years, with changes,
you can open one, another,
to see what new things wait.
My heart makes you this promise:
You will always be surprised.
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Having
Having walked along the beach ‘til midnight
and finding myself still unsure,
I wrote you.
Desk lamp shadowed,
I skipped words along pearl pages
and wondered where we came from.
Did love pass over in the night
like a seagull crying,
too far inland to be real?
Having written you
and finding myself still unsure,
I walked along the beach ‘til dawn.
Half-moon shadowed,
I skipped shells along the tidal ponds
and wondered where the seagulls flew.
Did one pass over in the dawn
like the love we share,
too far inland to be real?
For a Thousand Years
(for George and Joanne)
I’d known you for a thousand years,
ever since the early times
when summer months were long,
and yet I only saw you as a friend:
Growing up with me in Jersey City,
seeing New York on weekends.
Now I’ve run for city blocks,
ridden subway trains and
come up short of breath:
To be in Washington Square
and love you on the wet grass
of a Sunday afternoon.
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Lennart Lundh © 2021
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Lennart Lundh is a poet, photographer, short-fictionist, and historian. His work has appeared internationally since 1965.