Adelaide Literary Magazine No.7, Volume Two, June 2017

Dealer Revista Adelaide

Flying Lessons

I'm fast, neat. Anyone can take off.
My table's never wrong. Push in the throƩle,
My hands are always clean. She'll climb all alone,
You know exactly Provided you hold it
Where you stand: Straight and level.
Either you're in or out. A few Ɵmes up,
BeƩer than anywhere else Once you get the hang
In the world. Of the pitch, roll, and yaw,
I work windowless You'll be able to stall
In a tux At will,
Without sun, without Ɵme, Cut a figure eight,
Nor with the heart Do a chandelle, even
Of the Ɵde. Spin your belly to the sun.
Once my mind is set But not anyone can land.
Nothing distracts me: I mean land:
The old ladies pulling off the slots, Where the sweet spot
The equanimity of screams: win or lose, Meets a fast ball,
The synthesized eternal rock. When the dancer
I deal. Just dances…
I read 'em. To land you got to feel physics,
I've only wept Quarks in the heart.
Once in my life. You have to have a taste
Never again. For planetary moƟon,
Know the very quality
Of air by the nose.
To land you need
To possess
The disappointment
And the requirement ingrained
Of returning home.

Christopher in his own words:

I've had poems published in literary magazines, as well as a volume of poems, A Summer of Monkey
Poems, Cummington Press, 1996. Recently I was invited to contribute to an homage to Harry Duncan,
celebrated fine press book publisher: "Playing Catch" appeared in All Along the Fence, Gibraltar EdiƟons,
2016. Also, I earned a PhD in Philosophy from CUNY Grad. Center and have had essays published in
professional philosophy journals. On a personal note I'm lucky to live among those I care for and who
care for me...and then there's Charlie Parker, my pet bird.

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Adelaide Magazine

FEED FLOWERS By Mark Taksa

Feed Flowers Travels With A Rusty Buddy

Wind, if it woke, might scrape a leaf AŌer your engine repairs burned our vacaƟon cash,
against the planks. Flowers wilt in the pot. my son and I loaded a lighter load of weeds
A departed wind pushed the watering can, dry, into your trunk. I had gone down to the garage
to its side. Dry wood shows through porch paint. to whisper, as if you were an army buddy I could trust,

Long waiƟng for the call of a shadow I would keep you healthy, if you kept traveling
over the grass, your ear works to detect the hint unƟl the boy went back to school. That summer
of a step. Wind sleeps. The dog, eyes wide, our family skipped the gardens of kings for apricots and
searches your telling the planks that the wind azaleas
we planted. We journeyed by gazing at tourist posters.
has not scraped a leaf, and so, you do not fill
the pot and feed flowers… If the shadow You jangled, as we traveled from our smooth street
did show, you would protest the pitch to a path speckled by broken boƩles and concrete shards.
of the porch creak. AŌer rain, the desert The gate keeper—too busy gazing at your long,
yellow fin of metal made in the old way
shows cacƟ with thorns a person
might squeeze for less cuƫng but reliable pain. so it would weather and linger at any age—
To be a gentle garden, forget the wind, the shadows. did not hear your engine gurgle like a coffee grinder.
Expect like a dog, eager for the never heard. She waved us to the hill of ripped upholstery,
rusty pistons, and ruptured Ɵres. I wondered

if it was your last journey to the dump…
I kept my promise to change your oil. Your bumper
fades out of our driveway and around the corner,
as you carry the boy to his first date.

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Revista Adelaide

Loud Listening

The keƩle was heavy in my wife’s arms
when she was liƩle and her mother led her
to the faucet and told her there would always be water
and vegetables in the garden. They gathered,
chopped, boiled, and merged food.

During our first conversaƟons, UncluƩered
my wife heard me ooze memories clamped shut
like a scream in my shoes. She cooked meals It is as if a bomb has blasted the museum
more tasty than any I had chewed. into a dessert and shaƩered the plumbing,
My memories loudened her listening. and I am cramped by a crowd
elbowing to gulp the only water flowing,
She had never taken talk and wine with a man
who, when a boy, drank from a dry glass which is framed paint. In the clutch of the clothes
under a dry faucet in a freezing room with a dry toilet, of the gawkers, I cannot dream into the paint,
and whose mother slapped him while he squaƩed cannot keep the bird flying. My wife
on a document she claimed was proof praises the painter for brushing oil
of her inheritance. The toilet was dry.
into water and pulls me out of the clutch.
Her hiƫng hand sore, my mother stuck We leave into wide sun. I taste
her thumb into a lid holding our last ketchup ice cream in cones that giggling kids
and drew a smudge she called a copy hold at the entrance of a liƩle visited museum,
of a lake someone would give her.
which is the arƟst’s kitchen. No one walks
She shouted at her foot to carry her to the water between me and his utensils. No one cuts
before the other mothers to stole her legacy. quiet with the click of a camera.
I carried a pot to tables, to cabinets, to all No one crowds. Unclutched,
the room's corners—searching for water to quiet
the shouƟng… In the home my wife loves
to build, there is always listening.

I see a water lever the arƟst pumped.
The nicked and blackened pot was
in the painter’s hand. I imagine the wings
of the painted bird fluƩering and rising.

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Adelaide Magazine

Trends

Bored with speaking among unnoƟced trees
to unseen people, I buried my cache of secrets
of stock trends I lied would uncork
the wine of wealth as long as forests grew.

I bought a donut factory, got rich and fat,
posiƟoned myself at a mirror as if all there was of me
was my thin head. Lugging donuts out of the factory,
I entered the path of a sweaƟng runner
with a high stride. She glared, then rushed off,
as if my fat would cling on her dainty ankles.

Flowing with the cadence of her legs, her hair
was long in my longing to be her towel.
I concluded she would love me,
if I contrived to be again an unseen man.
I dropped the donuts into a box
for free books, ate squash and apples.

When the weather was for high strides
and I had forgoƩen sugar, I went back to the path
where the runner and I had reconnoitered. I got sunburned
and impaƟent with paƟence… No trend lasts.

About the Author:
Mark Taksa’s poems are appearing in Main Street Rag, Slant, and Trajectory, He is the author of ten
chapbooks. The InvenƟon of Love (March Street Press), Love Among The AnƟquarians (Pudding
House), The Torah At The End Of The Train (first place in the 2009 PoeƟca Magazine chapbook con-
test), are the most recent.

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