Issue 1 May 2016
Stacie M. Kiner, Editor
Stacie M. Kiner, Editor
Welcome to SoFloPoJo's inaugural issue
Poets in this issue: Leah Kloss Uche Ogbuji Yahia Lababidi Candice Louisa Daquin Susannah W. Simpson Corey Mesler Gabriel Ricard Lyn Lifshin George Wallace Samuel J. Fox Bryan R. Monte Zan Gay Peter Meinke Jim Daniels Michael Trammell Paul David Adkins Jim Boring Robert Klein Engler WT Pfefferle Ptr Kozlowski Steve Klepetar Lucia Leao M.J. Iuppa Brandon Marlon David Lawton
David Chorlton, Still Life With Snow, acrylic on canvas
Leah Kloss
House of Yellow Maples
After Czeslaw Milosz, From a Song on the End of the World
On the day I have to make the calls, neighbors will rise for work, moths will settle and
lift in delphiniums by the kennel fence, boys will shove each other outside the corner
store.
On the day I unlock your back door, traffic lights will shift from amber to red to green,
barn cats and house cats, curled nose in tail, will nap. A teacher will print letters on a
blackboard and wipe chalky fingers on the leg of her pants.
On that day, as I tug open drawers in your dresser, fold blouses and sweaters into boxes
and bags, men will lift boxes onto conveyor belts, wrestle rusted bolts, a woman you
knew will wind strands of hair around brush rollers, someone in white will snap
wrinkles out of wet bedsheets, leaves will fall from one tree, from another.
And when I sit on the edge of your bed, candy box on my knee, the one with a papery
top, brown rabbit pushing a blue wheelbarrow, and poke through layers of buttons,
seed pearls and iridescent, tubular beads, a sound that is part shuffle, part rattle, a
sprinkler will bloom somewhere in town, a sink spout will drip, a woman will test
warmed milk on an upturned wrist, and a deer on its way along the creek will paw at
knuckly roots of a fir tree. It will coax out a fallen apple, snuffle the waxy skin, then
bite, moist pieces falling to dirt from each side of its mouth.
On the day I pull sheets from your bed, bus doors will open, bus doors will close, a priest
will bless wafers, old screen doors will whine.
On that day I'll lift the broom, with its bristles sway-backed and irritable, from its corner
by basement steps and draw it along fissures in red-brown linoleum, and radios will
cough their static, radios will hum their songs, a woman tugging at a window shade will
pause, look past her reflection into greying trees. Sap will do what sap does. I will bend
down as something bright catches my eye.
LEAH KLOSS lives and writes in East Aurora, New York.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uche Ogbuji
Hothouse Grapes
Might I borrow some grapes, my love
Those hothouse grapes, no other sort;
I spied them when he brought them in
Your icebox door still gives report.
I hear they make a xylophone
Rolled down the sawtooth of your back;
I've learned that's how they soothe the star
Tucked in his limo cadillac.
So what's the point of saving them
For cold meat on the moistened dawn?
Let's use them for soirée de luxe
Indulgent spread of grapes and prawn.
I've had the figs and oranges
(Strewn pulp and waste like condom wrap).
I'll sneak those grapes and ask your pardon
Once you verge on after-nap.
UCHE OGBUJI was born in Calabar, Nigeria. He lived in Egypt and England before settling near Boulder, Colorado. A computer engineer and entrepreneur by trade, his chapbook, Ndewo, Colorado, is a Colorado Book Award Winner and a Westword 2015 Award Winner. His poems fuse Igbo culture, European classicism, American Mountain West setting, and Hip-Hop. His poems appeared in the Best New African Poets 2015 .
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahia Lababidi
You’ll Know
You’ll know you’ve finally arrived when
you get to the point where you can leave
life’s bustling marketplace, empty-handed
Smiling easily at merchants as they hawk their wares
of fruit and flesh, pausing here and there to admire
a fine raiment or strain of song, but not for overlong
You’ll know you’ve cleared a hurdle and are home free
when you emerge at the end of that entrancing fair
unperturbed, without bulging pockets or hungry eyes
With absolutely nothing to show for the day’s visit
but a small inner triumph that quietly manifests itself
in steadying stillness and a companionable aloneness.
YAHIA LABABIDI is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently, Balancing Acts: New & Selected Poems (1993-2015) http://www.press53.com/yahia_lababidi.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Candice Louisa Daquin
The Battle of Dark and Light
Reach for light, unscrew bulb
fracturing like butterflies, Kali caught in palm
if day could be extinguished
how would darkness be any different?
You have the ability to turn it back on
treading through midnight with your farm boots
tracking mud onto carpets, willful and wild
its order you want to capture, order to defile
I thought your existence complemented mine
left decisions for tomorrow, captured mice
like effervescent genies they burn themselves out
moth to flame, flame to hand, fire in the house
It was fantasy that brought me here
back where I was a girl, holding the door
bolt and you might slam into a wall, might fall
down stairs or find your way out, to battle
of dark and light
Born in Europe, CANDICE LOUISA DAQUIN now lives in the American Southwest and works as a writer and editor. Her published books of poetry, A jar for the Jarring, The bright Day Has Gone Child and You Are In For The Dark, and Illusions of Existing, illustrate her observations of shifting landscapes and cultures as well as growing into womanhood. In her spare time she is an active campaigner of equality and equal rights for all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susannah W. Simpson
You’ll know you’ve finally arrived when
you get to the point where you can leave
life’s bustling marketplace, empty-handed
Smiling easily at merchants as they hawk their wares
of fruit and flesh, pausing here and there to admire
a fine raiment or strain of song, but not for overlong
You’ll know you’ve cleared a hurdle and are home free
when you emerge at the end of that entrancing fair
unperturbed, without bulging pockets or hungry eyes
With absolutely nothing to show for the day’s visit
but a small inner triumph that quietly manifests itself
in steadying stillness and a companionable aloneness.
YAHIA LABABIDI is the author of six books of poetry and prose, most recently, Balancing Acts: New & Selected Poems (1993-2015) http://www.press53.com/yahia_lababidi.html.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Candice Louisa Daquin
The Battle of Dark and Light
Reach for light, unscrew bulb
fracturing like butterflies, Kali caught in palm
if day could be extinguished
how would darkness be any different?
You have the ability to turn it back on
treading through midnight with your farm boots
tracking mud onto carpets, willful and wild
its order you want to capture, order to defile
I thought your existence complemented mine
left decisions for tomorrow, captured mice
like effervescent genies they burn themselves out
moth to flame, flame to hand, fire in the house
It was fantasy that brought me here
back where I was a girl, holding the door
bolt and you might slam into a wall, might fall
down stairs or find your way out, to battle
of dark and light
Born in Europe, CANDICE LOUISA DAQUIN now lives in the American Southwest and works as a writer and editor. Her published books of poetry, A jar for the Jarring, The bright Day Has Gone Child and You Are In For The Dark, and Illusions of Existing, illustrate her observations of shifting landscapes and cultures as well as growing into womanhood. In her spare time she is an active campaigner of equality and equal rights for all.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Susannah W. Simpson
The Eclectic Rigors of My Spiritual Practice
Just as a redbird flashes
across my path, I long
for an epiphany.
One that erases my nagging
suspicion of Chaos as reigning supreme.
I’d like a favor from faith, a fiery baptism
into an explanation, an eureka!
Even I can laugh at a joke
well told. Still, I search for a feverish
code to follow, carved tablets to honor,
liturgy to memorize,
even argue with, or find just one believable
luminous being, like the diamond solitaire
of Venus suspended off the tip of a crescent
moon—something to send a prayer to,
perhaps the swell of a Puccini aria,
the communion of kindness between
strangers, or stranger still, spouses.
I worship morning birds in the larch
and the didactic loyalty of our dogs.
On an ordinary evening, a book
falls off the shelf, bookmark in place,
I rush over to see what sign is sent.
SUSANNAH W. SIMPSON’S work has been published in: The North American Review, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, and Xavier Review. Her manuscript: Geography of Love & Exile has been accepted for publication by Cervena Barva Press. She is the founder of WriteRECOVERY which facilitates reflective writing for newly sober addicts and alcoholics.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corey Mesler
Where We Live
Where we live,
the dimensions of it,
the way it leans
into the wind.
The way I am, blank
as a sponge.
I have my nausea
to keep me warm.
In the winter, the
bluest winters,
we calculate the weight
of snow on the
bodies buried beneath
our swings and
sandbox. Where we
live, the dimensions
of it, the way it learns
from the wind. Every
change of weather
seems to us a
new way to pray. I
hold you out. You
hold me closer.
The way we are,
enclosed by the air, the
way we love ourselves.
COREY MESLER has been published in Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published eight novels, four short story collections, and five full-length poetry collections. His new novel, Memphis Movie, is from Counterpoint Press. With his wife he runs a 145 year-old bookstore in Memphis. Visit his website at: https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gabriel Ricard
Where we live,
the dimensions of it,
the way it leans
into the wind.
The way I am, blank
as a sponge.
I have my nausea
to keep me warm.
In the winter, the
bluest winters,
we calculate the weight
of snow on the
bodies buried beneath
our swings and
sandbox. Where we
live, the dimensions
of it, the way it learns
from the wind. Every
change of weather
seems to us a
new way to pray. I
hold you out. You
hold me closer.
The way we are,
enclosed by the air, the
way we love ourselves.
COREY MESLER has been published in Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and Esquire/Narrative. He has published eight novels, four short story collections, and five full-length poetry collections. His new novel, Memphis Movie, is from Counterpoint Press. With his wife he runs a 145 year-old bookstore in Memphis. Visit his website at: https://coreymesler.wordpress.com.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gabriel Ricard
The Sky On Down
We’re leaving the neighborhood this afternoon.
We’re getting away from the street with the boys
and girls who glue someone else’s teeth
to the fire hydrants,
and dream collectively, absolutely
in building a campfire that starts at the church,
and runs all the way to the five-story basement
downtown.
You don’t need a calculator to spell
all the funny words you need to use
to understand how fucked things are around here.
Anyway,
the weather has been pleasant,
creepy as hell the past week,
and I think we’re both going to be rich enough
for the next five, two days,
to get away with pretending we’re not three thousand
and hazardous change from Hollywood.
Just burn right past the luxury condo treehouses
that have the arrogance
to make their way from the sky on down.
We’ll pick up our friends.
We’ll save our heroes from the roller derby
savages in the court of public opinion.
We’ll use addresses for rational safe words,
and commit to new thoughts and cool, consensual
mindfucks for the stories you will write better
than I ever could.
Sorry ahead of time,
you know,
you hope,
you pray,
you discuss with fingers
whose bones wouldn’t survive
an hour in the ocean.
Sorry if I get cranky,
break your heart by complete, selfish accident,
or steal two paragraphs,
nine novels,
or three-and-a-half songs from you.
I don’t think I will.
I think this neighborhood is bigger than therapy,
and that it’s really got me down on myself.
But still,
I should probably be sorry now.
GABRIEL RICARD is a writer, editor, and occasional actor. He is an editor with Kleft Jaw Press, a contributor with Drunk Monkeys, and a contributor with Cultured Vultures. His first book Clouds of Hungry Dogs is available through Amazon.com and Kleft Jaw Press Shop. He lives on Long Island.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lyn Lifshin
Rachel’s Lamb
on top of her tiny grave,
tarnished: Rachel 1968-1972.
As big as the stone, the
lamb overlooks piles of dolls,
teddy bears, balloons, jelly
beans. For years, chocolate
cake since it was Rachel's
favorite. Colored stones, notes
sealed with a kiss. Rachel my dear,
her mother's long letter.
Bubble gum. whistles, hula
hoops and a ballet tutu. On
the way to other graves,
Rachel's was a garden. Other
stones grew moss, tilted.
Thru the 70's and 80's, giraffes
with a bow and sequin
sneakers, a puzzle waiting for
her to finish. Into the 90's
quarters, pennies, glitter, stars.
2000, 2002. Suddenly
2013, only one rose petal.
In 2014 the grave is bare
maybe mother and father
disappeared in a car crash.
And the relatives not
wanting to be left behind followed
or went their own way. The five
year olds who mourned her
and left her chocolate kisses and
barrettes now have their own
five year olds they don't
want to imagine, don't want to
think of not living past five
LYN LIFSHIN has published more than 130 books and chapbooks. Recent books include Ballroom and All the Poets Who Have Touched Me. NYQ books published A Girl Goes into The Woods. The Marilyn Poems was just released from Rubber Boots Press. A DVD of the documentary film: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made Of Glass. Forthcoming: Degas Little Dancer and Winter Poems (Kind of a Hurricane Press). Website: www.lynlifshin.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Wallace
Her Song
her song is not a cruel song but it is not sweet either not in
a syllabic sense no not in every syllable a terrible universe
is locked in her words waiting wanting and hoping to be let
out -- like a small bird like a goat’s foot crazy and shy yes like
a devastation angel a sullen song with wings to take flight
she is blazing passionfruit she is beautiful sterling wings,
stolen diamonds and the rarest bird singing in a sizzling
tree o moses she has got birds in her mouth in her throat
everything about her singing -- you know what I’m talking
about you wouldn’t want to be locked inside her mouth no
she knows what to swallow and what to spit out like this
song she’s singing for example this song with your name
in it she sings it she sings it by the high tracks by the lone
some riverside by the dancing green light of a computer
screen this song with your name in it, blistering with desire
not a cruel song not a refuge song not a mockingbird song
– a melody that strains and strains but cannot get away
GEORGE WALLACE is author of 29 poetry chapbooks, writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, and poet laureate of the 2015 National Beat Poetry Festival. Editor of Poetrybay.com and co-editor of Great Weather for Media. He recently accepted an artist in residency grant to do research on Sappho and other ancient Hellenic poets at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samuel J Fox Three Poems
Postcard 1
I want to say I am enjoying my frivolous journey north. I want to say I am writing while ascending a ski lift. I want to say that the mountains here pierce the sky, break it into loaves of whole wheat. These would all be lies. My compass needle is missing & I simply follow my sadness where it leads: leashed to my wrist. It is indeed snowing; but, I am only pissing in the alley drawing hell with urine, adding a spaded-tail into my shadow. The mountains puncture: however, pines look more like plaque-rotten incisors in the mouth of a snaggle-toothed God. I am writing to inform you my past is catching up to me. I want to come home. Just have to find it where I left it. Somewhere between birth & this breath I hold & can’t wish to release.
Postcard 2
I, aimless sacrilege, spilt breath of God’s lungs, amble toward the radiant noise that light makes above a city. My thumbs have toiled the same work as my heels. I expose them, make my life a neon sign. I become a vulnerable exposé to kestrels, vultures. & still, I am writing you, as a slumped bag of bones curbside, to say I’m sorry. I don’t wish you here. I don’t wish you hear my rattling breath that sounds like wheels on a track. My ribs are held together by burn and air, thermite and wind. I am blown to cities besieged by nightfall: no lullaby, no apology, spares me.
Postcard 3
Eighteen wheelers zip past. Sweat beads upon my lip. Pockets empty as a politician’s heart. Heart spacious as a room lit by a bay window. I am in a college town, ass on a bench, waiting for a bus, watching students who know books and not street names nor what switchblades can teach you. A girl sits next to me. I smell liquor and Chanel. Her face illuminated by her phone. She turns and asks me when the next bus comes. I write to tell you how her freckles were aphids surrounded by rouge. I write to tell you how her tank top strap slipped &, though I didn’t stare, her areola was dark as a budding date. I write to tell you that I made a funny comment, that she laughed & invited me back to her apartment. I will spare you the other details. She asked me where I was going and I wanted to say hell. I didn’t say. She said she was going home. I said I wished I was. She invited me to sleep with her. Nails in back, teeth on shoulders. I’m growing older, but no wiser. She waved as I left: the only person to acknowledge my leaving, my body, my presence. I smiled & simply nodded. I walked into the dawn: a cleft opened, rosy as a wound.
SAMUEL J. FOX holds a B.A. in literature from Western Carolina University. He is published in SLAB, Iodine Poetry Journal, and has work forthcoming in Broad River Review and Anti-Heroin Chic. He lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan R. Monte Three Poems
We’re leaving the neighborhood this afternoon.
We’re getting away from the street with the boys
and girls who glue someone else’s teeth
to the fire hydrants,
and dream collectively, absolutely
in building a campfire that starts at the church,
and runs all the way to the five-story basement
downtown.
You don’t need a calculator to spell
all the funny words you need to use
to understand how fucked things are around here.
Anyway,
the weather has been pleasant,
creepy as hell the past week,
and I think we’re both going to be rich enough
for the next five, two days,
to get away with pretending we’re not three thousand
and hazardous change from Hollywood.
Just burn right past the luxury condo treehouses
that have the arrogance
to make their way from the sky on down.
We’ll pick up our friends.
We’ll save our heroes from the roller derby
savages in the court of public opinion.
We’ll use addresses for rational safe words,
and commit to new thoughts and cool, consensual
mindfucks for the stories you will write better
than I ever could.
Sorry ahead of time,
you know,
you hope,
you pray,
you discuss with fingers
whose bones wouldn’t survive
an hour in the ocean.
Sorry if I get cranky,
break your heart by complete, selfish accident,
or steal two paragraphs,
nine novels,
or three-and-a-half songs from you.
I don’t think I will.
I think this neighborhood is bigger than therapy,
and that it’s really got me down on myself.
But still,
I should probably be sorry now.
GABRIEL RICARD is a writer, editor, and occasional actor. He is an editor with Kleft Jaw Press, a contributor with Drunk Monkeys, and a contributor with Cultured Vultures. His first book Clouds of Hungry Dogs is available through Amazon.com and Kleft Jaw Press Shop. He lives on Long Island.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lyn Lifshin
Rachel’s Lamb
on top of her tiny grave,
tarnished: Rachel 1968-1972.
As big as the stone, the
lamb overlooks piles of dolls,
teddy bears, balloons, jelly
beans. For years, chocolate
cake since it was Rachel's
favorite. Colored stones, notes
sealed with a kiss. Rachel my dear,
her mother's long letter.
Bubble gum. whistles, hula
hoops and a ballet tutu. On
the way to other graves,
Rachel's was a garden. Other
stones grew moss, tilted.
Thru the 70's and 80's, giraffes
with a bow and sequin
sneakers, a puzzle waiting for
her to finish. Into the 90's
quarters, pennies, glitter, stars.
2000, 2002. Suddenly
2013, only one rose petal.
In 2014 the grave is bare
maybe mother and father
disappeared in a car crash.
And the relatives not
wanting to be left behind followed
or went their own way. The five
year olds who mourned her
and left her chocolate kisses and
barrettes now have their own
five year olds they don't
want to imagine, don't want to
think of not living past five
LYN LIFSHIN has published more than 130 books and chapbooks. Recent books include Ballroom and All the Poets Who Have Touched Me. NYQ books published A Girl Goes into The Woods. The Marilyn Poems was just released from Rubber Boots Press. A DVD of the documentary film: Lyn Lifshin: Not Made Of Glass. Forthcoming: Degas Little Dancer and Winter Poems (Kind of a Hurricane Press). Website: www.lynlifshin.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
George Wallace
Her Song
her song is not a cruel song but it is not sweet either not in
a syllabic sense no not in every syllable a terrible universe
is locked in her words waiting wanting and hoping to be let
out -- like a small bird like a goat’s foot crazy and shy yes like
a devastation angel a sullen song with wings to take flight
she is blazing passionfruit she is beautiful sterling wings,
stolen diamonds and the rarest bird singing in a sizzling
tree o moses she has got birds in her mouth in her throat
everything about her singing -- you know what I’m talking
about you wouldn’t want to be locked inside her mouth no
she knows what to swallow and what to spit out like this
song she’s singing for example this song with your name
in it she sings it she sings it by the high tracks by the lone
some riverside by the dancing green light of a computer
screen this song with your name in it, blistering with desire
not a cruel song not a refuge song not a mockingbird song
– a melody that strains and strains but cannot get away
GEORGE WALLACE is author of 29 poetry chapbooks, writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace, and poet laureate of the 2015 National Beat Poetry Festival. Editor of Poetrybay.com and co-editor of Great Weather for Media. He recently accepted an artist in residency grant to do research on Sappho and other ancient Hellenic poets at Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Samuel J Fox Three Poems
Postcard 1
I want to say I am enjoying my frivolous journey north. I want to say I am writing while ascending a ski lift. I want to say that the mountains here pierce the sky, break it into loaves of whole wheat. These would all be lies. My compass needle is missing & I simply follow my sadness where it leads: leashed to my wrist. It is indeed snowing; but, I am only pissing in the alley drawing hell with urine, adding a spaded-tail into my shadow. The mountains puncture: however, pines look more like plaque-rotten incisors in the mouth of a snaggle-toothed God. I am writing to inform you my past is catching up to me. I want to come home. Just have to find it where I left it. Somewhere between birth & this breath I hold & can’t wish to release.
Postcard 2
I, aimless sacrilege, spilt breath of God’s lungs, amble toward the radiant noise that light makes above a city. My thumbs have toiled the same work as my heels. I expose them, make my life a neon sign. I become a vulnerable exposé to kestrels, vultures. & still, I am writing you, as a slumped bag of bones curbside, to say I’m sorry. I don’t wish you here. I don’t wish you hear my rattling breath that sounds like wheels on a track. My ribs are held together by burn and air, thermite and wind. I am blown to cities besieged by nightfall: no lullaby, no apology, spares me.
Postcard 3
Eighteen wheelers zip past. Sweat beads upon my lip. Pockets empty as a politician’s heart. Heart spacious as a room lit by a bay window. I am in a college town, ass on a bench, waiting for a bus, watching students who know books and not street names nor what switchblades can teach you. A girl sits next to me. I smell liquor and Chanel. Her face illuminated by her phone. She turns and asks me when the next bus comes. I write to tell you how her freckles were aphids surrounded by rouge. I write to tell you how her tank top strap slipped &, though I didn’t stare, her areola was dark as a budding date. I write to tell you that I made a funny comment, that she laughed & invited me back to her apartment. I will spare you the other details. She asked me where I was going and I wanted to say hell. I didn’t say. She said she was going home. I said I wished I was. She invited me to sleep with her. Nails in back, teeth on shoulders. I’m growing older, but no wiser. She waved as I left: the only person to acknowledge my leaving, my body, my presence. I smiled & simply nodded. I walked into the dawn: a cleft opened, rosy as a wound.
SAMUEL J. FOX holds a B.A. in literature from Western Carolina University. He is published in SLAB, Iodine Poetry Journal, and has work forthcoming in Broad River Review and Anti-Heroin Chic. He lives in the Piedmont of North Carolina.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan R. Monte Three Poems
First Signs
The buzzing in my feet every morning between bed and the shower
The trips and falls down the stairs on my way out the door
The earplugs I wore outside near playgrounds or on buses, trams or trains
The transport tickets that slipped mysteriously from my grip
The student papers and exams that graded themselves in my filing cabinet
The fourth-year students names I suddenly forgot in the middle of a lecture
The glass of milk exploding out of my hand at lunch
The knife or fork skidding across my plate
The papers and projects I threw away, meaning to keep
The papers and projects I kept, meaning to throw away
The coins I pushed slowly, individually, with numb fingers into coffee machines
The exhaustion that stuck me to the sofa every weekend
The ventilation fan’s whirring I still heard hours after it had stopped
The burning weight of a bed sheet resting on my legs.
Why I Have Fired My Therapists
You told my mother, at a joint session, you didn’t think I was gay.
You put me on Haldol after I felt my father’s passing thousands of miles away.
You wouldn’t give me anything to calm my hands that shook.
You recommended I buy your self-published, anal pleasure book.
You said not to contact my family—they should have been looking for me.
Your answerphone kept interrupting our guided imagery.
You started snoring towards the end of every session.
You advised me to sleep with someone, as you had, to get a university position.
You suggested I steal copy paper from a college that never paid on time.
Your supervisor phoned me, to give you another chance, while you listened
on another line.
You offered to set me up with a patient on a date.
You couldn’t help me with my ill and violent flat mate
You instructed me to stuff a towel in my mouth and shout.
You declared me “cured” when my insurance ran out.
You kept rescheduling and finally didn’t show up.
You shouted, during our last session, for me to shut up.
You kept a revolver in your top drawer next to your pad and pen.
When I fired you, you said I’d be back again.
Today I Forgot
Today I forgot
funnel, protractor and stethoscope
for the pictures
on the speech therapist’s cards.
Not to worry, she said
I still had the vocabulary
of an average man,
no words in English or Dutch
to tell her my IQ
was once 138.
Last year my right leg
first did a dance on its own
shaking me awake
in the middle of the night.
Last holiday I pushed
coins across counters
collected change in
an outstretched palm
to avoid them slipping
through somnolent fingers.
And last month even my sentences
became infected: words missing,
written twice or in the wrong places.
Six medications, one for each year
since the fire first started
after my poem about homophobia
appeared in the liberal Mormon magazine.
And the invisible sunburn in my right foot
lit the tinder for the fire that rose
slowly the next weeks up my legs
flames licking my groin and anus
so that within a month the neurologist’s
pin pricks to my posterior
didn’t make me jump
my ticket to the MRI’s
banging, narrow, hot, white tunnel
my head in a cage, unable to move
my body fed to the magnetic fire
as William Tyndale for his Bible
Jeanne d’ Arc for her male armor
Bruno for his multiplicity of worlds
and I, the faggot heretic,
bound and burning on this plank.
BRYAN R. MONTE is the publisher and editor of Amsterdam Quarterly and leader of its writers’ group. His poetry has been published in Assaracus, Bay Windows, Friends Journal, Irreantum, The James White Review, Poetry Pacific and Sunstone and in the anthology Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. Recently, he completed a chapbook of poems, On the Level, about living with multiple sclerosis. Visit his website at www.amsterdamquarterly.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zan Gay Two Poems
Sometimes Consolation
We hold our breath, as if to stop time
and delay our own funeral cortege
when we read someone’s death notice.
Then we breathe again, grateful we are
not like her in a gated garden with stones.
We may stand at a grave amid secret glee:
the glass of whiskey we will down
with a slab of roast beef at luncheon soon.
More so, we are not under the roses.
Slowly during the day harmony unfolds.
A flock of birds in avian choreography,
the scent of scissored cilantro,
a film from an armchair
about women laughing and eating snails.
Here
Hint of lake wind, fishy
hot and dry from winter’s drought,
a slight breath
on delicates and tees
draped on an old wooden rack,
brevity pronounced
when the clothes stiffen, fragrant
with soap and a gardenia bush,
folded and put away,
a hold on to the Here,
yet there is a hurtling too
day in day out
towards the finish of our afternoons.
ZAN GAY enjoyed art reference library work for many years. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Feminist Studies, Phoebe, Slant, Tigertail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Meinke Two Poems
Ode to Our Checkbooks
Their comforting boredom!
Straight lines and tiny boxes
crabbed lists squinted at through glasses
gray covers smoothed from years
of slipping in pockets
It's what things get reduced to:
numbers flat on our asses
How satisfactory to add
and subtract! to balance
the columns like brooms
wobbling on our chins
as we stagger through tired rooms
showing off for the children
We code the history
of our family here: the fire
mortgages doctors tickets
birthday and anniversary dinners
A numerical chain-gang:
the detritus of desire
And to do this for thirty
forty fifty years
just the two of us together
alone late at night:
such fidelity is not
our common lot
So when we’re gone
though we hoped
for Peace maybe or Love
one can hear whining faintly Pay
to the Order of . . .
It was our job:
We were counted upon
The Last Holiday
…all day under the sun with hoe and hose
taking advantage of the holiday to whip
his garden into shape which he is out of
so when it’s time to watch the fireworks
he begs off Poor old dad closing
his door that evening losing it missing
the show But behind his shut lids shimmer
crinkled streamers of boston fern
sparklers of campanula and carnation
daisy pinwheels and ginger flares:
A pyrotechnical dandelion parachutes
on the black wind! Ans high above them all
spraying like a burst heart
a perfect Rosa Multiflora
its petals dissolving in the patriotic dark
like pink aspirin…
PETER MEINKE (Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, 2009-2015) is now Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s published more than 20 books, including eight in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). His book, The Piano Tuner, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His latest publication (2015) is a children’s book, The Elf Poem, illustrated by his wife, artist Jeanne Clark.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Daniels Three Poems
Jim Daniels Misses His Ten-Cent Tip As He Prepares For An Unpleasant Meeting
I began the day attempting to balance my checkbook
and looking on-line at Property Matches for Jim Daniels.
I wish I could light those matches over a bowl
of hash. I can smell it even now, sweet burn.
I began the day with nostalgia for being stoned
and reading email messages from the Gospel Choir
of Whiners. The matches don’t match my checkbook.
I wish I could light those checks like a--
no, I’ve got no nostalgia for crack,
the chemical burn of the soul. I’m off
by 90 cents, the amount I collected from customers
each week on my paper route. Some let me keep
the dime, some didn’t. No apparent rhyme
or treason to it. I thought all poems rhymed
back then and only sissies and brainiacs understood
or cared about it. I wish I could endorse my checks
with poems instead of Jim Daniels. I wish
for more checks that need endorsing.
I heat up coffee in the microwave,
not drinking it fast enough to keep it hot,
burning it bitter in the magic machine. I loved
that simple job: pickup and delivery,
the controlled wild tossing of paper
onto porch. It’s time to head in to the office
for another concert by the Whiners. I still love
The Clash. They pulled my hair out by the roots
without apology. They didn’t whine. And you
could dance to their controlled wild tossing
and the next morning wake to the buzz
of loss in your ears, glorious human loss.
You hear me, Jim Daniels?
Annual Check-Up
I met with the retirement doctor today,
salt splattered on my jeans from Planet February.
He had on his flamenco shirt and his haircut
from Risk University. He shook my hand
and my hand shook. I looked around
for a more difficult target, but the office
was invisible except for the complimentary
beverages and candy. The minty lifesaver roiled
in my belly. Dissolving is an abstract concept
until you’re just a puddle. This guy’s
in his thirties, and he knows everything
just like I did. The retirement doctor
took x-rays of my copies and helped me
put my coat on. What happened in between,
eaten away by salt just doing its job.
My file turned into a series of equal signs
tracked across the page as I drove away.
He told me some jokes about dying
that I will not tell today.
Yield, Detroit
His car flipped up against Yield
at the corner of Eight Mile and Ryan,
metal post angled into the stuck
speedometer’s needle next to
the Welcome to Detroit sign.
Yield remained just so
for the next eternity while the rest of us
started buckling seatbelts.
He’d been on his way to pick me up.
The hard rain of Safe-T-Glass sprayed
a twelve-pack and a nickel bag.
We’d have driven the endless grid,
searching to get lost, or just find
a decent song on the radio.
The thing is: he lived, wheel-chairing
somewhere even now. Nobody complained
about the bent sign, or else Detroit was too busy
changing the “Welcome To” sign yet again,
searching for the right slogan to capture
the aesthetic of factory life, the mildly upbeat tone
of it could be worse.
Perhaps the vocabulary of apology
never emerged from the caves
of our sullen classrooms. Or maybe it’s just me,
disappointed that he lived. I’d wanted to comfort
crying girls then fuck them later.
I want to erase that.
No one turned down our street unless they lived there,
squeezed between Bronco Lanes and Pioneer Metals.
His mother called to ask me to visit Bob--
Bob Stanley—I did go, the once. That’s all I can say
without my crib sheet of excuses. Thirty-three years ago.
Here today in the Heights, where olde-style signs
adorn the flat, wide streets, I flip the phone book’s
thin pages searching for a verse on salvation.
The metal spike, the lance of that bent sign.
How did I lose him? He couldn’t have gone
far. I who ditched him. I who erase nothing.
JIM DANIELS’ next book of poems, Rowing Inland, will be published by Wayne State University Press in 2017. Other collections include Apology to the Moon (BatCat Press), Birth Marks, (BOA Editions), and Eight Mile High, stories, (Michigan State University Press). He is also the writer/producer of short films. Born in Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Trammell
Drunk Explicates Ashbery (& himself)
. . . Ashbery avoids narcissism by multiplying and confusing the perspective; it is [about] the movement of consciousness rather than the narrow concerns of self. . . .
--Paul Hoover in Postmodern American Poetry.
I punched John Ashbery just outside
the Cozy Bar in downtown Athens, Georgia,
socked him because I can write
just like he does
but better. Who the fuck knows
why Ashbery was in Athens, and who the fuck
cares? He was probably giving a poetry
reading on a campus green or
preening in the cold eye
of a convex mirror. I’m calling you from Cozy’s
to let you know that I’m telling you
this not because I’m jealous but simply
because you deserve to know. You know
me too well to get me
on this. (Your machine’s tape groans.) I’m not green
with anything. You were supposed to see
my seriousness as attractive, like
the pull of a rust-green kid’s magnet on bottle caps.
We’re unattached, but you’ll never forget
I’ve kicked John Ashbery’s ass for you.
You get me. We’re the glue
for two inseparable shades of green.
But hey,
please pick me up from this crummy bar
and drag me out of Athens, please.
MICHAEL TRAMMELL is editor-in-chief of Apalachee Review and has served as President of Gulf Coast Association of Writing Teachers. His work has appeared in: New Letters and The Chattahoochee Review. Yellow-Jacket Press recently published his book Our Keen Blue House. He and wife, writer Mary Jane Ryals, teach writing, literature, and business for Florida State University's Valencia, Spain and London, England programs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul David Adkins
Patrice Lumumba, First President of The Congo, Plays a Version of Simon Says
Lumumba Says, Raise your hands.
Raise your hands
above your bloody head.
Lumumba Says, Tie them with this rope.
Tie them tight, so tight
his fingers tingle.
Lumumba Says, Slam him on the truck bed and guard him.
Start the engine. Gun it,
then watch the prisoner jerk and jolt.
Lumumba Says, Drive him to a jail.
Secure the door with a fist-sized padlock.
Surround him with Mobuto’s gorillas.
He’s that
dangerous.
Lumumba Says, Lock and Load!
Lumumba Says, Feed my sheep.
Lumumba Says, I knew this all would happen.
And it did.
PAUL DAVID ADKINS grew up in South Florida and now lives in New York, where he works as a counselor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Boring
The buzzing in my feet every morning between bed and the shower
The trips and falls down the stairs on my way out the door
The earplugs I wore outside near playgrounds or on buses, trams or trains
The transport tickets that slipped mysteriously from my grip
The student papers and exams that graded themselves in my filing cabinet
The fourth-year students names I suddenly forgot in the middle of a lecture
The glass of milk exploding out of my hand at lunch
The knife or fork skidding across my plate
The papers and projects I threw away, meaning to keep
The papers and projects I kept, meaning to throw away
The coins I pushed slowly, individually, with numb fingers into coffee machines
The exhaustion that stuck me to the sofa every weekend
The ventilation fan’s whirring I still heard hours after it had stopped
The burning weight of a bed sheet resting on my legs.
Why I Have Fired My Therapists
You told my mother, at a joint session, you didn’t think I was gay.
You put me on Haldol after I felt my father’s passing thousands of miles away.
You wouldn’t give me anything to calm my hands that shook.
You recommended I buy your self-published, anal pleasure book.
You said not to contact my family—they should have been looking for me.
Your answerphone kept interrupting our guided imagery.
You started snoring towards the end of every session.
You advised me to sleep with someone, as you had, to get a university position.
You suggested I steal copy paper from a college that never paid on time.
Your supervisor phoned me, to give you another chance, while you listened
on another line.
You offered to set me up with a patient on a date.
You couldn’t help me with my ill and violent flat mate
You instructed me to stuff a towel in my mouth and shout.
You declared me “cured” when my insurance ran out.
You kept rescheduling and finally didn’t show up.
You shouted, during our last session, for me to shut up.
You kept a revolver in your top drawer next to your pad and pen.
When I fired you, you said I’d be back again.
Today I Forgot
Today I forgot
funnel, protractor and stethoscope
for the pictures
on the speech therapist’s cards.
Not to worry, she said
I still had the vocabulary
of an average man,
no words in English or Dutch
to tell her my IQ
was once 138.
Last year my right leg
first did a dance on its own
shaking me awake
in the middle of the night.
Last holiday I pushed
coins across counters
collected change in
an outstretched palm
to avoid them slipping
through somnolent fingers.
And last month even my sentences
became infected: words missing,
written twice or in the wrong places.
Six medications, one for each year
since the fire first started
after my poem about homophobia
appeared in the liberal Mormon magazine.
And the invisible sunburn in my right foot
lit the tinder for the fire that rose
slowly the next weeks up my legs
flames licking my groin and anus
so that within a month the neurologist’s
pin pricks to my posterior
didn’t make me jump
my ticket to the MRI’s
banging, narrow, hot, white tunnel
my head in a cage, unable to move
my body fed to the magnetic fire
as William Tyndale for his Bible
Jeanne d’ Arc for her male armor
Bruno for his multiplicity of worlds
and I, the faggot heretic,
bound and burning on this plank.
BRYAN R. MONTE is the publisher and editor of Amsterdam Quarterly and leader of its writers’ group. His poetry has been published in Assaracus, Bay Windows, Friends Journal, Irreantum, The James White Review, Poetry Pacific and Sunstone and in the anthology Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. Recently, he completed a chapbook of poems, On the Level, about living with multiple sclerosis. Visit his website at www.amsterdamquarterly.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zan Gay Two Poems
Sometimes Consolation
We hold our breath, as if to stop time
and delay our own funeral cortege
when we read someone’s death notice.
Then we breathe again, grateful we are
not like her in a gated garden with stones.
We may stand at a grave amid secret glee:
the glass of whiskey we will down
with a slab of roast beef at luncheon soon.
More so, we are not under the roses.
Slowly during the day harmony unfolds.
A flock of birds in avian choreography,
the scent of scissored cilantro,
a film from an armchair
about women laughing and eating snails.
Here
Hint of lake wind, fishy
hot and dry from winter’s drought,
a slight breath
on delicates and tees
draped on an old wooden rack,
brevity pronounced
when the clothes stiffen, fragrant
with soap and a gardenia bush,
folded and put away,
a hold on to the Here,
yet there is a hurtling too
day in day out
towards the finish of our afternoons.
ZAN GAY enjoyed art reference library work for many years. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Feminist Studies, Phoebe, Slant, Tigertail.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Meinke Two Poems
Ode to Our Checkbooks
Their comforting boredom!
Straight lines and tiny boxes
crabbed lists squinted at through glasses
gray covers smoothed from years
of slipping in pockets
It's what things get reduced to:
numbers flat on our asses
How satisfactory to add
and subtract! to balance
the columns like brooms
wobbling on our chins
as we stagger through tired rooms
showing off for the children
We code the history
of our family here: the fire
mortgages doctors tickets
birthday and anniversary dinners
A numerical chain-gang:
the detritus of desire
And to do this for thirty
forty fifty years
just the two of us together
alone late at night:
such fidelity is not
our common lot
So when we’re gone
though we hoped
for Peace maybe or Love
one can hear whining faintly Pay
to the Order of . . .
It was our job:
We were counted upon
The Last Holiday
…all day under the sun with hoe and hose
taking advantage of the holiday to whip
his garden into shape which he is out of
so when it’s time to watch the fireworks
he begs off Poor old dad closing
his door that evening losing it missing
the show But behind his shut lids shimmer
crinkled streamers of boston fern
sparklers of campanula and carnation
daisy pinwheels and ginger flares:
A pyrotechnical dandelion parachutes
on the black wind! Ans high above them all
spraying like a burst heart
a perfect Rosa Multiflora
its petals dissolving in the patriotic dark
like pink aspirin…
PETER MEINKE (Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, 2009-2015) is now Poet Laureate of Florida. He’s published more than 20 books, including eight in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, most recently Lucky Bones (2014). His book, The Piano Tuner, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. His latest publication (2015) is a children’s book, The Elf Poem, illustrated by his wife, artist Jeanne Clark.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Daniels Three Poems
Jim Daniels Misses His Ten-Cent Tip As He Prepares For An Unpleasant Meeting
I began the day attempting to balance my checkbook
and looking on-line at Property Matches for Jim Daniels.
I wish I could light those matches over a bowl
of hash. I can smell it even now, sweet burn.
I began the day with nostalgia for being stoned
and reading email messages from the Gospel Choir
of Whiners. The matches don’t match my checkbook.
I wish I could light those checks like a--
no, I’ve got no nostalgia for crack,
the chemical burn of the soul. I’m off
by 90 cents, the amount I collected from customers
each week on my paper route. Some let me keep
the dime, some didn’t. No apparent rhyme
or treason to it. I thought all poems rhymed
back then and only sissies and brainiacs understood
or cared about it. I wish I could endorse my checks
with poems instead of Jim Daniels. I wish
for more checks that need endorsing.
I heat up coffee in the microwave,
not drinking it fast enough to keep it hot,
burning it bitter in the magic machine. I loved
that simple job: pickup and delivery,
the controlled wild tossing of paper
onto porch. It’s time to head in to the office
for another concert by the Whiners. I still love
The Clash. They pulled my hair out by the roots
without apology. They didn’t whine. And you
could dance to their controlled wild tossing
and the next morning wake to the buzz
of loss in your ears, glorious human loss.
You hear me, Jim Daniels?
Annual Check-Up
I met with the retirement doctor today,
salt splattered on my jeans from Planet February.
He had on his flamenco shirt and his haircut
from Risk University. He shook my hand
and my hand shook. I looked around
for a more difficult target, but the office
was invisible except for the complimentary
beverages and candy. The minty lifesaver roiled
in my belly. Dissolving is an abstract concept
until you’re just a puddle. This guy’s
in his thirties, and he knows everything
just like I did. The retirement doctor
took x-rays of my copies and helped me
put my coat on. What happened in between,
eaten away by salt just doing its job.
My file turned into a series of equal signs
tracked across the page as I drove away.
He told me some jokes about dying
that I will not tell today.
Yield, Detroit
His car flipped up against Yield
at the corner of Eight Mile and Ryan,
metal post angled into the stuck
speedometer’s needle next to
the Welcome to Detroit sign.
Yield remained just so
for the next eternity while the rest of us
started buckling seatbelts.
He’d been on his way to pick me up.
The hard rain of Safe-T-Glass sprayed
a twelve-pack and a nickel bag.
We’d have driven the endless grid,
searching to get lost, or just find
a decent song on the radio.
The thing is: he lived, wheel-chairing
somewhere even now. Nobody complained
about the bent sign, or else Detroit was too busy
changing the “Welcome To” sign yet again,
searching for the right slogan to capture
the aesthetic of factory life, the mildly upbeat tone
of it could be worse.
Perhaps the vocabulary of apology
never emerged from the caves
of our sullen classrooms. Or maybe it’s just me,
disappointed that he lived. I’d wanted to comfort
crying girls then fuck them later.
I want to erase that.
No one turned down our street unless they lived there,
squeezed between Bronco Lanes and Pioneer Metals.
His mother called to ask me to visit Bob--
Bob Stanley—I did go, the once. That’s all I can say
without my crib sheet of excuses. Thirty-three years ago.
Here today in the Heights, where olde-style signs
adorn the flat, wide streets, I flip the phone book’s
thin pages searching for a verse on salvation.
The metal spike, the lance of that bent sign.
How did I lose him? He couldn’t have gone
far. I who ditched him. I who erase nothing.
JIM DANIELS’ next book of poems, Rowing Inland, will be published by Wayne State University Press in 2017. Other collections include Apology to the Moon (BatCat Press), Birth Marks, (BOA Editions), and Eight Mile High, stories, (Michigan State University Press). He is also the writer/producer of short films. Born in Detroit, Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker University Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Trammell
Drunk Explicates Ashbery (& himself)
. . . Ashbery avoids narcissism by multiplying and confusing the perspective; it is [about] the movement of consciousness rather than the narrow concerns of self. . . .
--Paul Hoover in Postmodern American Poetry.
I punched John Ashbery just outside
the Cozy Bar in downtown Athens, Georgia,
socked him because I can write
just like he does
but better. Who the fuck knows
why Ashbery was in Athens, and who the fuck
cares? He was probably giving a poetry
reading on a campus green or
preening in the cold eye
of a convex mirror. I’m calling you from Cozy’s
to let you know that I’m telling you
this not because I’m jealous but simply
because you deserve to know. You know
me too well to get me
on this. (Your machine’s tape groans.) I’m not green
with anything. You were supposed to see
my seriousness as attractive, like
the pull of a rust-green kid’s magnet on bottle caps.
We’re unattached, but you’ll never forget
I’ve kicked John Ashbery’s ass for you.
You get me. We’re the glue
for two inseparable shades of green.
But hey,
please pick me up from this crummy bar
and drag me out of Athens, please.
MICHAEL TRAMMELL is editor-in-chief of Apalachee Review and has served as President of Gulf Coast Association of Writing Teachers. His work has appeared in: New Letters and The Chattahoochee Review. Yellow-Jacket Press recently published his book Our Keen Blue House. He and wife, writer Mary Jane Ryals, teach writing, literature, and business for Florida State University's Valencia, Spain and London, England programs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paul David Adkins
Patrice Lumumba, First President of The Congo, Plays a Version of Simon Says
Lumumba Says, Raise your hands.
Raise your hands
above your bloody head.
Lumumba Says, Tie them with this rope.
Tie them tight, so tight
his fingers tingle.
Lumumba Says, Slam him on the truck bed and guard him.
Start the engine. Gun it,
then watch the prisoner jerk and jolt.
Lumumba Says, Drive him to a jail.
Secure the door with a fist-sized padlock.
Surround him with Mobuto’s gorillas.
He’s that
dangerous.
Lumumba Says, Lock and Load!
Lumumba Says, Feed my sheep.
Lumumba Says, I knew this all would happen.
And it did.
PAUL DAVID ADKINS grew up in South Florida and now lives in New York, where he works as a counselor.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Boring
Objets Braque
Objects do not exist Braque said except
in the rapport they have with each other
or with me.
Squadrons of dragonflies
roused from their meditations
escort the old man walking.
Bone-white, crushed and gleaming shells
the skull of the earth exposed
glare beneath footfall and noonday sun.
Now see the rapport of seamless things –
a turtle stretches, wobbles with vertigo and subsides
a cubist butterfly shudders in an ecstasy of sunlight.
JIM BORING’S stories and poetry have appeared in many journals, anthologies and online venues. His book-length poem, Condo, (Lit Pot Press), examines aging and loss in a South Florida retirement community. He is co-author of The Horse Adjutant: A Boy’s Life in the Holocaust (Shooster Publishing), and author of Scraps, a novel in manuscript.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Klein Engler Three Poems
Les Nympheas (The Water Lilies) at the Musee De L’orangeruie in Paris
when I first saw the walls
of blue and green I did not
know if I was swimming or
flying if I would fall or drown
and so this was like love for
me like the blue wash that fell
from the high window glass
across my arm while we
visit Chartres and he walks
ahead alone to the altar
back at the hotel it rains all
night and he gets up from
the too near beds and locks
the bathroom door how can
someone be so close yet so
far away how can I be needful
I would have another life
a life free from floating and
falling where I knew who I
was but that seems impossible
so many years later I see a
video about Monet’s waterlilies
yes I was there and so was he
and we were one flesh once
and he is gone but the video
draws me in and if I look away
he could be at the desk and
my ageless desire still has
its grip and once again I fly
and fall and know not which
Tractatus Logicus
looking across to the purple hills
in Iowa as the bruised day
fades he thinks of Wittgenstein
he knew what we can never say
poetry is impossible words fail
yet we do go on as if the sound
I miss you means something
spoken to the ear underground
so he writes persistent poems
with rhymes polished so thin
like stilettos from Florence
you never feel the blade go in
Kansas City Shuffle
it was the painter Caravaggio who made us see
how holy John the Baptist could maybe be
a beauty boy hustler from the streets of Florence
with all his pouting lips and false forbearance
don’t believe me? the life-size painting hangs
in Kansas City a lot of bucks for the bang
and why not? after all a hustler and a prophet
promise joy to come unlike a poison goblet
set on the Doge’s table for suspect royalty
how many Florins was it? five? ten for loyalty?
the same pose tomorrow a servant will call
in the meantime boy just let the drapery fall
ROBERT KLEIN ENGLER lives in Omaha, Nebraska and sometimes New Orleans. He holds advanced degrees from the University of Illinois in Urbana and The University of Chicago Divinity School. His long poem, The Accomplishment of Metaphor and the Necessity of Suffering, is published by Headwaters Press, Medusa, New York, 2004. He has received an Illinois Arts Council award for his Three Poems for Kabbalah.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WT Pfefferle
for Elizabeth Dodd
Grasses
Fireweed creeps
across the plains
giving life to
desolate, sheered
buttes and mesas.
Bisons still
live here,
and ranchers burn
fields each season
in time mannered
traditions.
At night,
wind moves grasses,
in delicate dance
to remind me of
you and
those things that
remain hidden
even from us,
even from this height.
W.T. PFEFFERLE is the author of My Coolest Shirt (Word Works 2015), The Meager Life and Modest Times of Pop Thorndale (NFSPS Press 2007), and Poets on Place (Utah State University Press 2005). His poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Confrontation, Connecticut Review, Cortland Review, Cottonwood Magazine, Gargoyle, Georgetown Review, Greensboro Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Indiana Review.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ptr Kozlowski
Money Burns
money://burns/burns a hole/burns/a hole in my pocket/burns/
money://burns a hole in my problems/burns/spending/burns a hole in depression/burns/
because it burns with potential/and it burns with random acts/
with-anonymity-and-whimsy and-it/ burns/
you got power in your-work-place/sure_of_course_you_do/thereisprobably-some
inastriponthe-floor beneath_your_desk/YouFeelEmpowered in_A_Relationship/
well-you-know-how-that-can-go_and_you_hedge_your_bets/
but you got Power-In-Your-Pocket and it /burnS/
It bUrns with inSPIRation/fluid drEAms of liberAtion/RockEt Science In Syncopation/
i don'T even have any MoneY BUT/ I recogniZe the sMell and It/ burNs/
So it burns-the-unsuspecting every Hour_Of_The_Week/
it burns Masters_Of_the_universe/the,bold,besides,the,meek/
It can burn LIKE pretty candles/or_like ForestFireInfernoes/burn_like SunshineOnTheFlowers/
melanoma.on.the.beach/iT burns Like AcidRainThat MAkes-the-grape-vines-SHrivel /BURNed/
MONEY//bURNS the ass of mY RIvals/BURNS/as they buRn-with-jEAlous-Raging/
in their envy of My-Money-Spending-Burns/monEY/can burn thE Sound of a Name/
or a Story Into people's Minds/MOney/has Burned-a-lot-of RULEbooks In_Its_Time/
MONEY<<Burns A Lot More Than Your Pockets>>BURNS
It Burns Down Through The Floor/and what you THOUGHT were foundDAtions/
Like A China SYNdrome CHain reACTion MELTdown BURNS/ MONEY/
\CAN-ACTUALLY\TIME\TRAVEL\ If You think-about-it\If-we-can spEND-it-before-we-Get-IT\
I've GOT a NUMBER in the SYSTEM/GOT my Clicking little Cards/
that I Can SHUFFle with And DEAL with/I'VE G-t MAGNETIC STRIPS/
I GOT EMBEDDED_CHIPS/I've G'T/NEARFIELDCOMMUNICATION/
./ I'VE-GOT-A-WALLOP-IN-MY-WALLET-AND-IT /burns
PTR KOZLOWSKI has been a taxi driver, deliveryman, poet and printer, singer-songwriter and guitarist. He draws upon his experience bringing a musical perspective to the spoken word. He's been published in Hobo Jungle and Stained Sheets, in anthologies of Brownstone Poets and Great Weather for Media; and performed at Bowery Poetry Club and ABC No Rio, among other New York area readings.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Klepetar
Glass and Fire
Soon the time will come round again
for bending with the wind, for finding
white stones by river’s edge. By then
all roads will return to glass and fire.
Someone startles as I pass her on the track,
face twisted in surprise and fear, though
I mean no harm. It’s how we live now,
shadows of our neighbors grown menacing
and long. Our dogs growl in expectation.
I found you digging by the fence, fiercely,
as if you meant to find a treasure there,
a leather bag brimming with coins. I loved
how you showed no embarrassment or surprise,
only a kind of eager concentration, so when
yellow metal rains through your hands,
all passersby will know who struck the vein,
gathered a harvest, a new kind of water waiting
for a channel dug down to another indifferent sea.
STEVE KLEPETAR’S work has appeared in nine countries, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Antiphon, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His most recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both published by Flutter Press.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucia Leao
Soon the time will come round again
for bending with the wind, for finding
white stones by river’s edge. By then
all roads will return to glass and fire.
Someone startles as I pass her on the track,
face twisted in surprise and fear, though
I mean no harm. It’s how we live now,
shadows of our neighbors grown menacing
and long. Our dogs growl in expectation.
I found you digging by the fence, fiercely,
as if you meant to find a treasure there,
a leather bag brimming with coins. I loved
how you showed no embarrassment or surprise,
only a kind of eager concentration, so when
yellow metal rains through your hands,
all passersby will know who struck the vein,
gathered a harvest, a new kind of water waiting
for a channel dug down to another indifferent sea.
STEVE KLEPETAR’S work has appeared in nine countries, in such journals as Boston Literary Magazine, Deep Water, Antiphon, Red River Review, Snakeskin, Ygdrasil, and many others. Several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His most recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems, both published by Flutter Press.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lucia Leao
Suggestion
for a boyfriend,
a recovering alcoholic:
I would spread a cold
sweet almond-flavor liqueur
on the parts of the body available
to his mouth and hands,
with a generous amount left
for the parts that only intimately
we share.
without him suspecting it.
the taste would not awaken his addiction.
it would be a guerrilla-like act of passion instead.
this is not meant to keep anybody a prisoner,
but to burst a certain repression of the senses.
there is no meaning to love, when it is done.
this is something else,
as if with the same language
we would speak another one.
LUCIA LEAO is a Brazilian translator and writer who has been living in Florida for 23 years. Her poems have been published in Chariton Review, on the website of CAB Community/Kahini and on Brazilian websites dedicated to poetry.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
M.J. Iuppa
Looking into the Distance
In the middle of nowhere, that’s where I am
beyond half my life, sitting on the riprap’s
warning to go no further:
What claims me isn’t
Ontario’s indiscernible shift of pebbles, nor
the loon’s heart-breaking ecology, trembling--
like an apple tree in bloom, full of milky
breath & promise— lost on a whim
that’s said to be sacrifice.
I well up at the thought of this, wishing
fate to take its turn & show me a language
that everyone grasps.
M.J. IUPPA has recent work in: Poppy Road Review, Black Poppy Review, Digging to the Roots, 2015 Calendar, Ealain, Poetry Pacific Review, Grey Sparrow Press: Snow Jewel Anthology, 100 Word Story, Avocet, Eunoia Review, Festival Writer, Silver Birch Press: Where I Live Anthology, and A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brandon Marlon
Hope
It is that minimal sustenance,
growing wild in the clefts of rocks,
encouraging survival despite all,
a guardrail keeping us from the gorge.
Fused with confidence it becomes faith,
a trusting and wizened belief,
like a cliff-side fortress overhanging a chasm,
sheltering those reverential and humble.
Even alone it remains a unique phenomenon,
full of rare meaning and power,
without which we are lost,
overwhelmed then overcome.
Yet with its seed we somehow endure,
buoyed upon the sea of our troubles,
nourished by its defiant flare,
knowing it as the handsel of success.
BRANDON MARLON is a writer from Ottawa, Canada. He received his B.A. in Drama and English from the University of Toronto and his M.A. in English from the University of Victoria. His poetry was awarded the Harry Hoyt Lacey Prize in Poetry (Fall 2015), and has been published in Canada, U.S.A., England, Ireland, Spain, Greece, Romania, Israel, India, and many other countries. www.brandonmarlon.com.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Lawton
All That Authenticity May Be Getting Old
It was under the influence
Of a GE soft white moon
Luminescing a scrolling curtain
Of crochet cloud
That I arrived
At an evening in November
The branches of brilliant
Yellow leaves
Were gathering up armfuls
Of potent autumn air
And scrubbing themselves
Down with it
My mother would’ve said
That it was balmy weather
For this time of year
While conversely
The wounds of the crucified Christ
Were anointed by a weeping Magdalene
With a cooly soothing herbal balm
And a street musician on alto sax
Played Misty
And I thought of Errol Garner
Moaning softly at the piano
With a chestful of cancer
I had just turned the corner
And found the skin I had shed
So many years ago
I hadn’t wanted to change
But a crueler moon
Burnt it off my back
I took it in my hands
And read it like a book
Writ in a form of braille
For the emotionally crippled
I read the part where
The one and only only one
Who had walked out on my world
Came back to propose that
She could be like Rilke’s wife
Had been, only for me
Do things to help me
In my solitude
But I reminded her
Rilke was the one
Who had left his wife
For the sake of the great work
I could not be The Poet aching
In his howling alpine tower
I had to write the poems
That would cast me as unreal
In my faith
As this shimmering world
Which refused to believe
That winter would come.
DAVID LAWTON is author of a poetry collection Sharp Blue Stream (Three Rooms Press), and is an editor for greatweatherforMEDIA and one of the hosts of its Spoken Word Sunday venue at Parkside Lounge in NYC. He has work in Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books) and the 2015 Brevitas Anthology of the Short Poem. He has work forthcoming in From Somewhere to Nowhere: The End of the American Dream (Automedia).