PIVOT, published twice-yearly, is now in its fiftieth year.  Subscription rates are US$20 for one year (2 issues), US$36 for two years (4 issues).   Overseas subscriptions are US$24 for one year (2 issues), and US$44 (4 issues).

Changes
    by Sheldon Flory, former rector of Trinity

It eases me of words, the world of women.
Bold for once to ask and speak the truth,
By women's hands I am re-formed for singing.

Had I a gender-change, without semen's
Jets I still could love:  my sweet tooth
Would crave the sweet world of other women.

Don't prate to me of hormone-changes dimming
My love of women.  I mute, uncouth,
It's a women's kisses give me back my singing.

I am Malinche, not Cortés, though seeming
To be he.  Unmanned, I'd sail, for ruth,
To salty Lesbos all aswarm with women.

O lazulia Aegean, Texcoco's shimmer!
Mother-watered gardens of my youth,
Where women's hands and voices shaped my singing!

To think of women sets my changes ringing:
My eyes dazzle, still swimming.  Sooth!
'Twas woman gave me heart and voice for singing,
Taught me how to wet the eyes of women.

Invitation Only
    Dorothy Stone, with an MFA in theater from Yale, 
    has appeared in many periodicals, including The Formalist,
    The Boston Globe and Raintown Review

Dying is a very private place.
Inner windows and doors shut tight,
shades down
drapes drawn
only the few
allowed in.

"He won't hear you,"
the nurse said gently
when asked to hold the phone to his ear.
"Or if he does, he can't answer.
I've tried," she said.
"Do it anyway," I said.
She did.
"It's me," I said.,
"just saying hello."
"Hello," he said.
"I love you," he said.
"Take care," he said.
"Goodbye," he said.
Dying, a private space.

Intensive care nurses know.
TV monitors shut off when family,
fences down
faces drawn,
hope to be
allowed in.
"We shouldn't intrude," nurses say
when asked why picture vigil ends.
"We weren't invited," they say.
"We're here if needed," they say.
"This time is theirs," they say.
"This space is not ours," they say.
Dying is a very private place.

Gravity
     by Henry George Fischer, former Egyptologlist,
           Metropolitan Museum of Art

It's gravity that most attracts a child
In all the ways of playing with its pull,
compared with that, all other games seem dull;
It's things like swings by which a child's beguiled.

 Too soon there will be graver things to brave:
The woman braving pain when she is gravid,
The man no less obliged to be impavid;
But when they're grayer, as they near the grave,

And gravity inhabits them and weighs,
They may, before they cave into that cavity,
Recall how lightly they regarded gravity,
When they were young, a thing with which one plays,

Drawn down by it, then springing up, or flying,
By turns complying with it, and denying.

Poet The First
       by Tillie Friedenberg

Papa the grocer is my first  poet.
He leans on the counter, writes
between customers, who are few.
Depression days-nobody working,
they buy one egg, half a pound of sugar,
two Camels.  He has plenty of time to write.

He berates God in his poems,
cautions him to keep his distance.
Papa will never trust him again,
not since God permitted
his parents, three brothers, one sister,
aunts, uncles, cousins to be shot
and toppled into unmarked Polish graves.

His is a quiet man, speaks little,
is disillusioned with words,
but writing them is different:
when he reads them aloud,
he is alive, impassioned, he cries.
I fall in love inevitably with poetry.

The Long, Long Night
     by Jack Granath, bookseller in Kansas City
 

Toronto, three A.M., and I am out
In search of my hotel.  The prostitutes
Are thick, an offer every twenty steps:
"Lonely d'night?  Lookin' for a friend?
Wanna see a real good trick I know?"
Few references to sex itself, "a poke,"
One calls it, something sinister in that.
The experts work it with a wordless look
That follows me for half a block, a hand
That flutters to a wayward spray of hair.
And each time, as I pass, the woman freezes,
Etched out in a shoulder-tilted pose
That flashes from a world of magazines.
The artistry, the sheer psychology
Of that!  I never see it, but I know,
Behind me, in my wake, each one revives,
Melts back into existence with a quick,
Deft turn on one high heel and drifts along,
Surveying the effect of her display.
A sidestreet interrupts the walk.  I stop,
Jacklighted by a Lincoln Continental,
passenger window down, part of a woman
Protruding.  This is it, the finished work:
Knees locked, back level, ass up in the air,
She leans into that little square of darkness
And fills it with her promises of pleasure.

At last, I reach my Smart Affordable,
A place that does brisk business in these parts.
The heavy-lidded thing behind the desk
Informs me that my labors are not over,
That I must brave the gauntlet two more times
To park my car in a convenient lot
Four blocks away.  How unremembering--
"Lonely d'night?  Lookin' for a friend?"
I feel as though my face were thick with moss.
I want this night to end.  My rental car,
Redundant in its anonymity,
Takes me lurching with its touchy brakes
Right through the heart of all this invitation
And on to the unlighted lot and stops,
A woman in the way, high-beams upon her.
She's terrified, the weight of her small body
Continuing away into the night,
Even as she turns to show herself,
Squinting in the glare.  Those first few steps,
Her utter lack of grace, of confidence--
All beauty has a hesitancy to it,
All human beauty anyway.  Or maybe
That's as hollow as it sounds.  Who knows
The hungriness, the history, the crash,
The mundane devil lashing her along
From pout to sidelong look to toss of hair,
when all she wants is to get out of here?
If I could just describe the way she moves,
As if to ask a favor, but embarrassed,
Something one could never ask a stranger,
Would I give her, would I bind her wounds?
Impossible that she's been at it long.
Unlikely that she'll last.  But then, I guess,
Once life has burned the human out of her,
This moment will be laughed up to the stars,
Leaving the usual intangibles
To rummage through some screw-up's shambled sleep,
A look of unredeemable distress,
A face existing only in the past.

Overdose
     by Max Gutman

'Tis not through envy of thy happy l ot,
But being too happy in thine happiness
 -John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"

Too happy in thine happiness, I must
Breathe deeply as I struggle to adjust
To your precipitately rising star.
'Twould be a shame should my emotion mar
Your moment.  I'm so happy I could bust.

Although it may look strange to you, I trust
You understand this look is not disgust,
But an excess of joy.  I glow.  I'm far
   Too happy

To want to see you sniggered at and cussed,
Or mauled by rabid Dobermans, to lust
For the dull thud of you beneath my car.
This day is pink champagne and caviar.
It's perfect--very nearly so; I'm just
   Too happy

Into The Country Of The Gadarenes
   by A.M. Juster, poet and translator

Arthritic fingers of the olive trees
Accuse the sun of ancient injuries.

The shallows harden to an ochre crust
While bony cattle huddle in the dust.

The wretched one who tears his flesh resumes
His bellowing from somewhere in the tombs.

The sky assumes a tyrant's glare.  Despite
Our lust for rain, we fear the eerie night.

Dogs whimper softly.  An unearthly dawn
Ignites some whispers that the dead will yawn.

We spot a boat; pigs and children squeal.
We bicker over whether it is real.

A striking figure stands beside the sail.
His patchwork crew appears a little pale.

A crowd surrounds him as he steps ashore
But no one fears his coming anymore.

With all the noise, I cannot be exact
About what happened when the wretch attacked.

The visitor, from what my friends could tell,
Dazed his attacker with some kind of spell.

After berating unseen demons, he
Commanded them to set their hostage free.

We trembled as he spoke.  He made a sign
And charged the demons to inhabit swine.

Immediately nearby pigs began
To froth and moan; the wretch became a man.

The pigs escaped; no one could make them stop.
The swineherds muttered, but then let it drop.
 

5. The World's Policeman
       by Donald Boyle, from "Police Reports."  For the rest, see Pivot 51

To speak environmentally, no doubt
 That we could mimic every thug
Twittering weirdly underneath a bridge
 Or in a parking lot, blissed, snug
Next to a van, directing breezes, proud
 Of making someone's day complete,
Whisking off reminders of the ditch,
 Too busy to be sad or hate.

There's time to read books, recommended guides,
 Pamphlets, manifestos, screeds;
But I prefer biographies if they snoop,
 Just a little, into kids'
Mix of compassion for reptilian brides
 And unashamed bored cruelty.
Most chroniclers forget to use the loupe
 And miss a hidden Romany.

A secret moral organ -- or machine --
 Processes undeveloped thought,
Stamps, cuts, addresses, paints, binds, posts, loads, ships,
 Until -- voilà! -- not is, but ought.
If color follows function, is it green
 In tartan weave of no one's fault?
Or gray, like sausage rolls and paper clips --
 Bureaucratic, rarely bold?

The pet orangutan spits seeds, its bath
 A show, its dinnertime a series;
Haircuts unnaturally intrude, and skin
 Flaunts the hue of week-old berries
That never hit a napkin; happy breath
 Eructs, and no one tuts or blushes.
The influence of putty on the grin
 He'd spatter back, by instinct cautious.

Nothing is more actual than what
 Rolls on and on above, behind;
How irritating when an usher breaks
 Inside frames, anxious to remind
The passive fan, the gross unlettered hoot
 To drop the candy missiles, clear
The aisles, settle in tight while something speaks
 Undramatically near.

Locutions rattle few with buzzing chords
 And paspes worthy of a masque;
Repeatedly poking your stubborn neck,
 They dare impose a Whitmanesque
Vista, chummy, telegraphing words
 That never drum you off to sleep
Quietly.  When you waffle as you break
 Your word again, for leadership,

The shareholders' good health, a touch of hair,
 You can pretend your hand was forced.
How many mediated speakers plopped
 Into the library and lost
Their audience, who scattered for the door
 When overkill of propaganda
Gilt a sad story?  Casaus, who topped
 Outrageous lists, is no one's mentor.

There is a universal alibi
 For every twisted mourned misstep
And inappropriate regretted parry:
 "Something made a prudent stop
Impossible -- someone else -- but not I."
 A mute, unknown, aggressive crank
Scrawled QUOD NON FECERUNT BARBARI
 Upon Bernini's playful trunk.
 

Thank you for visiting the PIVOT home page.  To subscribe to PIVOT,  send a check or money order made out to Pivot, Inc. to:
 

Liz Holly
Managing Editor
Pivot
505 Court Street 4N
Brooklyn, NY 11231