JimDoss

The cattle are lowing
but there's no baby in the manger. Christmas day
dawns cold and bright without a star to follow
or Wise Men who come trudging over the whitened

hills. All I see are the swaying backsides of Guernseys,
tails flicking flies out of habit. They waddle
like old ladies answering the call of church bells
weary from lugging oversized purses

filled with life's necessary nothings.
They stare in wide-eyed astonishment
that I've left the warmth of the house, presents
unopened under the tree as the others snore

snugly in their beds. The suck-suck sound
of my rubber boots in the mud draws them
closer. I lead them one by one into the stalls,
smear antiseptic on the udders, attach

the metal fingers. Liquid rushes through tubing
as the gentle massage begins and the collection tank
fills. I listen to the vacuum motor's whir,
unthinkingly replace one cow with another.

If there's a Messiah born on this day,
surely he would be here, nestled dryly
in the loft, adored by his teenage parents,
who have fled their own Caesars and Herods,

I want to rise from this damp straw
with its smells of dung, urine and sour milk
to behold the radiance of his face,
the peaceful reassurance that miracles await.

But I'm afraid all I'd find is two scared children
holding a screaming baby, the bloody
afterbirth matted in the hay, a beat-up
Volkswagen hidden behind a clump of evergreens,

and their eyes begging the blessing of my silence.
As the last udder is emptied, a halo
of light descends from the loft window
to circle my thorn-crowned head, and it is finished.

Archipenko's Standing Concave: 1925

It could be Broadway or Times Square at night,
the doughboys forgotten as the stock market rises,
model Ts flood the roads and speakeasies lurk
around every corner selling good times
spiked with bathtub gin, jazz, and dancing. She could be
a flapper just stepped out of the bath,
looking forward to a night out, gazing at herself
in the mirror as she powders her body to an unnatural white,
styles her hair in the Dutch Boy, picks out dress and beads.
A woman like this doesn't need a man, but enjoys
their admiration, like ornaments that decorate
her life, wealthy nothings to fill a knickknack self.
And here she is, her silver slenderness
before our eyes in the museum gallery, unconscious
of our presence as she towels off, unable to hear
the buses dieseling by, or the protesters outside
chanting to stop the killings in yet another war.
Totally self-absorbed, how her beauty reflects
in upon itself. She wants us to forget
everything happening in the world, renounce
our allegiance to today, step back in time to when
she was a model in the artist's studio
trying to pick up a few extra bucks, and his knife
carved the concave splendor of her thighs,
shaped her breasts milkless and tight,
rounded a small belly above the hairless V,
and war in their minds was a dim memory
of victory in foreign lands, a liberation.

Jim Doss, co-editor of Loch Raven Review, was born and raised in Lynchburg, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His work has appeared in Poetry East, Words-Myth, Poems Niedergasse, and other publications. He is currently working on translating the complete writings of Georg Trakl, which can be found here . He earns his living as a software engineer, and lives with his wife and three children in Maryland.

"Standing Concave" by Alexander Archipenko

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