Four Poems By E. B. Bein

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Throw pillow

is for arm mostly

also crick

& other bones,

for center & corner

a gap where feeds

slip & go dark

throw pillow is for dreaming

deeply & without booms,

for propping &

frotting, for cat

& window with street maples in red

& cat again,

throw pillow is for

blue jays when not screaming

& mouth when screaming,

for placing & re-

placing, throw pillow is for

I've forgotten

how to want to have sex

ever since dad called it

a "genocide" with air quotes

throw pillow sits

on the couch of my representative

skimmed off my gross,

sent over in boots

& if drones had couches, throw

pillow is for when dad shouted

but Hamas & your grandmother &

you don't know

what you're talking about

throw pillow

is for throwing,

for picking up

& placing over

the mouth

after calling your representative

again, deformed by springs

& the gritty weight of rubble,

bones in bags, throw pillow

is for contemplating what we sent

& didn't

for never, for river

throw pillow is small

like your Jewish grandmother,

her throw pillow with bluejays on it

for squeezing & looking away

throw pillow

is for your grandmother,

her little glass frog

on the window sill

catching the light

The first time I touched a gun (and cried) was in my dream

The hallways of my old high school are weirdly echoey.

There is a Whole Foods in the B Wing now

& the cafeteria has become a sort of bazaar

of unhearable, but everything will be okay because

English is next & my favorite teacher is back!

the one whose obit was in the Herald,

who first brought me to Woolf & Forster’s salon,

& when I finally take my old seat

in the back right corner of room C14, believe it

when I say she has grown a sheriff’s moustache,

yeah, & it quivers as she snatches as holster

right out of the short story

 we read for homework & she passes it around

(don’t worry, there is no NRA in my dream

so there won’t be any shooting) & just

as my hand recoils

from the cold black chamber

there she stands

before me—not the myth

 not the ghost—the human

    tall as all get-out

who kept her blood

in the swollen green rivers

of her hands,

who wrote every comment

in pencil, who I never got to thank

 & I welter

       wrap the wet arms

           of gratitude

around her boney shoulders

for everything she said

about what they said

& what I’m saying,

 all of it scrawled in a margin—my hall pass to

    The Dialogue

    where time shimmers

              & anything is erasable

How to sit on a park bench

Correct. The game is better upside-down

with our goonlegs hooked over the back

and our goonheads hanging off the seat

and the point guard releasing

the court from his Air Jordans, the ball

pulling the Earth to it, hoop rising

like a fish to bait—who would test relativity

in public but you? My physics major. I salute you

right into the grass, kiss you with blood

fully rushed as the bus rolls down,

Crocs and Oxfords lend weight, the bouncing wheels

suspending the street our whole life

made different again. Remember

the canoe at dawn, how it buoyed

the pink and black lake up on its hull

or sunset, how we caught the red

cliff edge of Kalalau with our sit bones,

matching sandals dangling toward the sky

blue sea, or at night, the crook of my knees

the pedestal that frees you

to give your love I balance

the swirl of sheets, the whole galaxy

on my back.

Whale-watching

for Chen

Spout

is a sigh, a kettle

drum hit once

is breathing out cloud

from a migratory nose

a thought bubble, is

the hemoglobin load

the deep red

before the first word

is a humped back

full, rounded ridge

turning down

and down

Flukes

are a whoop, a wave

a bring-me-

a-tale-or-two

the close

of a sleeper’s

bedroom door

a letter licked, sealed

sent

Slick

still water

heel cooler

a hold—

a vestigial pelvis

a ghost party

a shut tome

with a bookmark peeking out

Breach

the rent,

shattered out

danced up monolith

staggering

nerve-lightning

run crackling

to every fingertip

let me give you

what can’t be given,

blubber feather

suspended

before our starboard eyes

About the Author

Eben E. B. Bein (they) is a biology-teacher-turned-climate-justice-educator, activist, and multi-disciplinary artist. They were a 2022 Fellow for the Writing By Writers workshop and winner of the 2022 Writers Rising Up “Winter Variations” poetry contest. Their poems can be found in the likes of PINCH, Nimrod Journal, New Ohio Review, three anthologies or in their chapbook Character Flaws (Fauxmoir lit 2023) which explores judgment in intimate relationships. They currently live on Pawtucket land (Arlington, MA) in a house they co-bought with their husband and poet friends, where they are completing their first full-length collection about parent-child conflict, healing, and love.