Photograph by Myles Boisen |
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THE OLIVE TREE
by James Benton per il mio antenato da Lucca, Abdanego It came down to the trees' twisted hands that pulled their sinews up from the land's thin crust. Hands that cut timbers shaped with gouge and mallet, stained with oil and sage, heavy-scented, torn slabs thick with scar, straightened with eye and rasp. He worked alone, this happy genuflection. Steel and branch yielded to some crossed mimic of his want, to his hint of da Vinci straining to the music of spheres, toward a wonderment of generations pressing through the gnarl of his olive hands at work. He asked what lodestone brought him to this soil to show the sun his teeth yellow from olive pressing, his eyes raised like ascension legs bowed by the strain of timbers hauled and mitered to a pure precision, thankful for toil, grateful for endurance, eager for release. His legacy a stout cross standing before pews jointed square as the hands that built them—his vanishing in the seams of my father’s face. KARACHI by James Benton All the dust between your limbless birth And the marketplace has settled in your weave, A bundle of rags left On the street near a door You Bowl of coins: you Loose-wrapped wad, you Cotton shard. You Kicked from the road, the sweat On a donkey’s hide, you Burnt bed of woven rope lit by Amber ropes of light. The dye bakes from bright red to gray, Yellow brocade bleeds to burnt gray. The husk of the sun rouses even this Living bag of laundry someone Carries daily to the street when Morning is coolest and foot traffic highest Past the chipped bowl. We Leave you to your verbless life, Those flint eyes blinking From behind their mask of rags, you torso— Collecting the day beside a bowl of coins. PROOF OF GHOSTS by James Benton hair at first a ring of light the scrawl of fingers pressed inside my eyes the scent of vanilla mixed with your ginger they are not your eyes or bones but suspend a pale predecessor's frame some dallied youth recombinant for an hour throwing dice from a cup against your firm scroll version  James Benton, Photograph by Randall Benton James Benton lives in Eastern Oregon with his wife of 35 years. He received his BA from Eastern Oregon University, and his MA in creative writing at Cal State Sacramento, where he received four Dominic J. Bazzanella Literary awards for his writing. Poetry, short fiction, memoir, and reviews have appeared in cold-drill, Oregon East, Calaveras Station, Convergence, Raintown Review, Word Riot, Ragazine.cc, Flatmancrooked, Poetry Now, Rattle and is forthcoming in New York Quarterly. He also serves as a senior editor for noir fiction at Mixer Publishing. |
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