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Wendy E. Braun – This Existence

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Goodnight to the Army of Mice

By: Wendy E. Braun

The Starlings moved into the kitchen wall over a month ago, and I couldn’t help feeling like they belonged there, my apartment a testament to what would have been, been careful not to wake them when brewing breakfast. I had felt that way about the mice until I opened the cabinet last Sunday and found an army of mice or evidence of the stench of them. The Starlings can stay, but as in all good tales…

I laid out bricks of poison the way the government hands out welfare checks and minimal benefits. We all die with full bellies in the end and are angry for the expense of cleaning up the waste.

In my twenties I cried when my roommate trapped a mouse, its small grey paws glued to a tray like tar on a desert road. Black eyes wide, rounded ears white lined with pink veins, sound pulsing through the fragile frame. She caught me trying to apply grease to its paws and promptly placed it into a plastic bag to ensure the last breath. You see, she had gone after it with an umbrella, which I could never understand, or why it was the problem when the roaches had been the ones to spoil the fruit in the basket, and it was the Bronx, and we were still young.

Yesterday my neighbor scored a raccoon with marshmallow bait, and now its law to end it all owned land equaling a general lack of relocation. Somewhere inside my walls, the mice are dying, and raccoons with bellies full of sweets rot, and thank god for the Starlings wings, and pray that the landlord doesn’t care as he cares little for the mice. But save me from the dreams where the stinkbugs cover my eyes and my mouth, because they are the only ones that I know how to get out, and don’t we just want to get out, all of us out.

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Armageddon

By: Wendy E. Braun

He said,
“I wanted to see the end of the world.”
And I said,
“You can’t, because it hasn’t happened yet.”
He said,
“Don’t be smart.”

And I thought about that–
and then the stars,
and the way light travels
through the universe,
even when they have
lost their glow,
and then how
it all ends,
and when we end,
and if we do
it won’t be over
because
we will
still be
light
traveling
and matter–
floating.

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Millions of Moons

By: Wendy E. Braun

Watching,
tracking the patterns,
thoughts like moons
aligning in orbits

Something to be
had in
watching
silently.

Again, yes there it is
the collapsing of
one thought
into another like
dying planets dwarfed.

So many stars,
and millions of moons.

3

By: Wendy E. Braun

If on a winter’s night a traveler, like you
should come along and wake me from my slumber
or cause one greater then I had hoped
I will slam the door so promptly that it
will bump spring into being,
as to dissolve the “if” into
non-existence, so that he
who travels finds himself on
a train practicing dharma with a bum,
but not a bum but rather another
traveling man with wisdom
and desire for an open road
that extends out and into something
so other, something quite other than this
— then this and so on to the roads of Albuquerque
where the running spirits of the Pueblos dance
in the dreams of the cabbies whose cost is too high.

0

Reflections About Living, A Translation

By: Wendy E. Braun

*This following poem is a work that originated from a translation, in which I compounded my drafts of the original translations into a single poem. The original poem, About Living, was written in Turkish by Nazim Hikmet.

This world will have grown cold,
will have stopped,
among the stars,
between the stars,
just and only a star,
like the others,
one of the smallest
in the sea of blue velvet,
just a golden glimmer,
a shimmer,
a speck I mean,
I mean this, this that is our universe.

This world will grow cold one day,
will stop one day,
turning into a glacier,
a heap of ice even,
or a cloud, dead
not even empty like a walnut
dipped into darkness,
rounded and boundless,
it will roll into
the deep density of infinite space.

Already you must mourn
the pangs from where
the pain is drawn,
you must feel the pit
swell of sorrow, already
you must love this world
so much
if you are to say
“I have lived.”

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When Ash was Falling in Dawson City

By: Wendy E. Braun

I.
When the burning began
along the Yukon
and we had to wash the boat,

“Dust and only dust” she said,
as the ash fell like snow
and the forest continued to burn.

II.
Perhaps, when only dust remains
we’ll find the bones
of the mastodons, and a tusk

But for now the forest falls
around four bare feet, and a pair of extra shoes
hers and mine without direction.


*”Dust and only dust” belongs to my dear poet friend, Candace Butler

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Lingering Fingers

By: Wendy E. Braun

If you were a copper penny,
I’d imprint you on my skin
between two fingers,
your face and your back.

If you were the receipt,
crumpled into my coat pocket,
I’d smooth out your edges,
etching thoughts into the margins of your white space.

If you were a letter in an envelope,
or engraved on a rotting stump,
I’d investigate your lines and the effects
of times decay and hold you to my breast.

If I were my ugly sweater and you loved me,
with all of the faded colors from the thrift store sun,
I’d gladly shed it, or assume the form of a coveted thread,
tie me around that blessed finger and forget me knot.

1

Clear Vision for a Quarter

Image

I never wear them, the weight of the frames on the bridge of my nose leaves a deep blue indent that refuses to reconstruct itself into a normal skin tone for, at the very least, 25 minutes. When I think of the cost, even with the family and friends discount, the clarity of the view is still flawed by the wickedly hipster-esque brown arches that capture the clarity.

If clarity could be constructed for a quarter what would the world look like?

It appears (all puns intended) that the term “urban renewal” is blanketing the country like a circus on steroids. Wrecking balls swing like the knife throwing traipse artists, while cannon ball girls stand proudly against the rubble. But it isn’t the bricks and mortar that lies in heaps waiting to be carted away, it is the people, trash people, because we treat them like trash, ignore them like trash, like a problem that is so discardable.

We build, we renovate and look down from our newly remodeled pedestals and pounder such a meek existence. We assume that our facades are more real and full constructed, that we’ve made better choices, so we bow our heads and thank providence for our affluence.

But what in life is truly “choice?”

Often when I think about the many unexpected events that occur daily, I realize that it is not my choices, but how I choose to respond to life’s occurrences that creates a larger impact on my personal experience and how others experience me. We are all familiar with the aspects of call and response, and yet we assume that we have been the first to create the call. What I would like to propose is that the call was made thousands, if not millions of years ago, and that we will forever be in response to it. In this we release some aspects of control, gain humility, and hopefully become more accountable for our actions.

I’ll give you a quarter, and you’ll respond.

Yesterday, I found myself waiting on the back of a motorcycle, at an extremely busy intersection. There was a man standing on the corner with a sign, because he was hungry. We spoke for a while, he asked for a smoke, but I don’t, so I couldn’t help. Later, I went to an event where food and drinks were passed through forgetful hands. Of the many stories that were shared that night not one was as sincere or as true that of the man who stands on the corner waiting for a light, some change, and some food.

If change is to occur let it be distributed equally and with awareness.

I’d like to setup a stand, like the one I had as a child, pushing pink lemonade on a dead end street. I’d have two jars, one for renewal and one for healing. But perhaps, I would need a scale so that I could be sure that what was given was equal in measure.

I often wonder how it is that we can renew buildings, so much money for stone, but where is the money to heal the heart and the people who need it the most?

5

Stolen Line

By: Wendy E. Braun

I was walking by the pond on my way to town.

Mind you, it was not some lovely Midwestern pond,

with willow trees, and frogs resting in the muddied grasses.
I know nothing of ponds like that, that is

outside of stories that belong to people

who never mind waiting for the breeze,

or so I’m told.

No, I know of ponds, and rivers and oceans

that can only be cleansed through memories,
memories comprised of lost shoes

and double dog dares, and uneven ground

and salvaged railroad ties meant to buffer a spill.

This pond is stitched with memory,

as I walk by and think what a strange quality
to attribute to water, but still each thread has its
boundary or is one, the eye its channel.

So this pond, which is hardly more than a puddle
is wrapped up with my father fighting a flood
from the neighbor’s yard, and a railroad tie

trying to protect my new swing set from the onset,
while grandpa just laughs and I sail my toy boat.

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