Dotted Line Dotted Line

Poetry Winter 2013    fiction    all issues

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Alysse Kathleen McCanna
Pentimento
& other poems

Peter Nash
Shooting Star
& other poems

Katherine Smith
House of Cards
& other poems

David Sloan
On the Rocks
& other poems

Alexandra Smyth
Exoskeleton Blues
& other poems

John Glowney
The Bus Stop Outside Ajax Bail Bonds
& other poems

Andrea Jurjević O’Rourke
It Was a Large Wardrobe...
& other poems

Lisa DeSiro
Babel Tree
& other poems

Michael Fleming
Reptiles
& other poems

Michael Berkowitz
As regards the tattoo on your wrist
& other poems

Michael Brokos
Landscape without Rest
& other poems

Michael H. Lythgoe
Orpheus In Asheville
& other poems

John Wentworth
morning people
& other poems

Christopher Jelley
Double Exposure
& other poems

Catherine Dierker
dinner party
& other poems

William Doreski
Hate the Sinner, Not the Sin
& other poems

Robert Barasch
Loons
& other poems

Rande Mack
bear
& other poems

Susan Marie Powers
Red Bird
& other poems

Anne Graue
Sky
& other poems

Mariah Blankenship
Tub Restoration
& other poems

Paul R. Davis
Landscape
& other poems

Philip Jackey
Garage drinking after 1989
& other poems

Karen Hoy
A Naturalist in New York
& other poems

Gary Sokolow
Underworld Goddess
& other poems

Michal Mechlovitz
The Early
& other poems

Henry Graziano
Last Apple
& other poems

Stephanie L. Harper
Unvoiced
& other poems

Roger Desy
anhinga
& other poems

R. G. Evans
Hangoverman
& other poems

Frederick L. Shiels
Driving Past the Oliver House
& other poems

Richard Sime
Berry Eater
& other poems

Jennifer Popoli
Generations in a wine dark sea
& other poems

Michal Mechlovitz

The Early

Wind, sharp, dis-

          tilled, washrag gray, hissing

     at the shutters, a big

                    body with a small


voice, its over-

             tones smashing the early buds, their cracked

     faces, their violent,

          lolling needles for

                    tongues puncture


December. False

          intimacy, the chill

               pushes their wide mouths open

          and brittle. There was


                              a night when the heat

          was broken and the windows

     stuck- we couldn’t

                    close them, and you

                  brought me cold blossoms

     that we kept in the bedroom, cold

                    blossoms that we kept in the bedroom.



Lumen

She wore a whisper

of a dress


an old pattern, but

transparent

like a cerebral daydream

of modesty


and when I opened

the shutter

of the bedroom in which

she danced


the exposure

of her legs

was the ambient light, and

my camera

the buffer

between us


as she held

spilling threads

in her thumbnails

the details

were phantoms

of ugliness between the non

living frames until


the hem

of her skirts

became wet

with acid

and in lavender

pixels she fell

away


“You are

really beautiful . . .

Do you think

you’re really beautiful?”



Horrible Aubade

With cupped hands

you search behind my collarbone,

dipping a crackling song under

the ladder of ribcage.


I come three times this way.


Undraped, I shuffle

off my pigment. The cut

shine that swabs my smile

with disinfectant,

I have no augmentation now

for laughter, no

aloe to chew

on for it’s healing

properties, and we fold

into a night slice.


We use specialized shadows of our voices.


There is a hum about this skin

lit room deeper than my radio wires

are used to picking up.

Daemons of melodies singe the walls

at the crooked corners,

                       floor to ceiling.


               It is the alcohol

swab, the antiseptic, time

capsule of pain, that we dig up

in stale backyards


I wake before you,

count my pigments, shuffle

them again

and fold the clothes from off the floor.



Mi querido, I will sing you
to sleep each night


Hidden behind your negative space,

what do you find in her glowing hand?

A tone of white not from this century and

a foreign crease in the paper of his skyscape


What do you find in her glowing hand

that cradled all her misplaced children?

A foreign crease in the paper of his skyscape

folded over by wind, and a bottle of tequila


And what was the cradle for those misplaced children?

Those tiresome winged ones that cried and knew no comfort?

The folds in the wind and tequila sighed lullabies

that invoked nightmares worse than not sleeping at all


And those tired monsters never did learn comfort

but knew the geometry of a perfect sized grave

and how to measure the weight of a nightmare too heavy

before any of those winged ones learned to sing


The geometry of a perfect sized grave is

a tone of white not from this century and

before those droopy eyed winged ones learned to sing

they were hidden behind your negative space



Quick to Dark

                              The thinnest

                                             line is the blood


               line and I taste


                                          it on your tongue.


     Darkness is in the repetition

                    of paint


                                     strokes, in seagulls

                          scraping

                               the top


                                           of Brooklyn, with their crying, empty


     gullets, I could

          

                  blacken your eyes with

                      my hair, I could



                                                                      lap up

                                                             the ocean really


                                           quickly. I’m



     sorry I keep swiping at your eyes. The tapping noise


                                                       was nothing, just

                                                                                 a child

                                                  on the beach beating two bones


          together. I’d dispute it


     if you wanted, see, I       love you          and I’m desperate

                                                        to know



                                                           where your lines break.


Michal Mechlovitz is a Brooklyn-based classical singer. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory, Michal served as Editor and President of the Boston Conservatory’s literary publication, The Garden. She has returned to her native Brooklyn to further her singing and writing pursuits. She loves sundresses and iced coffee.

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