Issue 10 August 2018
Meryl Stratford, Editor
Meryl Stratford, Editor
Poets in this issue: Maggie Smith Michael Hettich Gianna Russo Barbara Hamby Robbi Nester Len Lawson Laura Sobbott Ross Judy Ireland Annik Adey-Babinski Alexis Rhone Fancher Mia Ayumi Malhotra Monalisa Maione Rebecca Talbot Martina Reiz Newberry Clint Margrave Jeff Santosuosso Margie Bloom Kevin Ridgeway Ron Stottlemyer Joe Mills Tara Burke Karen Neuberg Vivian Wagner Iris Jamahl Dunkle Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton /TRANSLATIONS by Katherine E. Young: Inna Kabysh
Florida Storm, photograph by Ann Fuller
Michael Hettich
The Pure Necessity
--Written in response to the art of Anselm Kiefer
...the way the river rises
while we’re sleeping, and floods our bedroom--and carries
our house out into the current, into
the deeps, where the ancient creatures live;
the way we fall asleep together every night
to a moaning train or a cop show; the way we wake up
many years later
to the bird no one has named
knocking its head at our window:
Your memories
live beyond your body, and prove to the trees
there’s really no such thing as dreaming--
just as there might be nothing called wind
if you’re moving inside it.
So take this bone, this human fibula, to gnaw
instead of growing old like an idea does; break
this raw bone, then bury it under your belt
or boil it for years, until someone calls it soup
and you’re free of pretending yourself into another,
and you’re free to climb those secret stairs, up into the clouds--
to explode there like rain,
to make the river rise:
You think yourself raw and find only one answer:
refuse to consider angels wearing coats
of wax or lard, the Great Mother your image
of what is so real it lacks meaning:
The first trees
were prayers he explained to us then, whose leaves
were pressed into oil and charcoal.
They contained a secret knowledge only angels ever spoke:
...flat men on the balcony facing away
into the sun, to accelerate the transformation
that makes nothing solid, but real.
Dear Angels,
I know you as wonder, objects the mind
intuits from its past lives, the touch of a burning
finger, fairytale sunflowers—a massive wall
built of old train ties—sleepers--their bodies
still potent with living oils, a green-dust smell, the lives
those trees lived for centuries, the oxygen they made.
Each time we see them, a spark of ancient flickers,
and each time we see them the breezes come alive
between us, as when we really see
we come alive again
in the pure necessity of mind we call soul
so we can forget it, embarrassed at the word—
and this is what we humans do—attend to our own minds
as a means of forgetting, a letting go
of the big world of rocks and angels and trees,
shapes that sing like magic wands
or sparklers children swirl like halos
around their heads, as the evening settles down
like a huge flock of black birds
we’d thought were extinct—
or maybe that’s just bees buzzing through the flowers,
reminding us always
of honey.
*
In a room of rubble and brittle light,
I suddenly know things I’ll never understand:
each moment is an animal, leaping sunlight
to give us these bodies. You touched me. I opened
a window and was suddenly
lost outside
so I sang as a way of hiding in the words
until my first parents were forgotten, my father
who danced like a breaking wave, my mother
who hung her dresses in a closet and sealed
the closet, painted it as though it were a wall
and walked away. But I was still inside--
and so I understand the rubble we must crawl through
to make the world again, as the moon grows full
above us, and hangs like a blister while we sleep—
a dirty fingernail reflecting dusty light--
as dresses rise up like wings into the darkness
inside us, full of satellites mapping out our landscapes
as though we weren’t real at all, and plotting out our minds.
--for Richard Blanco & John William Bailly
Michael Hettich's most recent book of poems, The Frozen Harbor, won the 2016 David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from red Dragonfly Press as well as a 2017 Florida Book Award (bronze). A new book, Bluer and More Vast: Prose Poems, is forthcoming from Jay Snodgrass's Hysterical Press. He recently moved from Florida to North Carolina.
--Written in response to the art of Anselm Kiefer
...the way the river rises
while we’re sleeping, and floods our bedroom--and carries
our house out into the current, into
the deeps, where the ancient creatures live;
the way we fall asleep together every night
to a moaning train or a cop show; the way we wake up
many years later
to the bird no one has named
knocking its head at our window:
Your memories
live beyond your body, and prove to the trees
there’s really no such thing as dreaming--
just as there might be nothing called wind
if you’re moving inside it.
So take this bone, this human fibula, to gnaw
instead of growing old like an idea does; break
this raw bone, then bury it under your belt
or boil it for years, until someone calls it soup
and you’re free of pretending yourself into another,
and you’re free to climb those secret stairs, up into the clouds--
to explode there like rain,
to make the river rise:
You think yourself raw and find only one answer:
refuse to consider angels wearing coats
of wax or lard, the Great Mother your image
of what is so real it lacks meaning:
The first trees
were prayers he explained to us then, whose leaves
were pressed into oil and charcoal.
They contained a secret knowledge only angels ever spoke:
...flat men on the balcony facing away
into the sun, to accelerate the transformation
that makes nothing solid, but real.
Dear Angels,
I know you as wonder, objects the mind
intuits from its past lives, the touch of a burning
finger, fairytale sunflowers—a massive wall
built of old train ties—sleepers--their bodies
still potent with living oils, a green-dust smell, the lives
those trees lived for centuries, the oxygen they made.
Each time we see them, a spark of ancient flickers,
and each time we see them the breezes come alive
between us, as when we really see
we come alive again
in the pure necessity of mind we call soul
so we can forget it, embarrassed at the word—
and this is what we humans do—attend to our own minds
as a means of forgetting, a letting go
of the big world of rocks and angels and trees,
shapes that sing like magic wands
or sparklers children swirl like halos
around their heads, as the evening settles down
like a huge flock of black birds
we’d thought were extinct—
or maybe that’s just bees buzzing through the flowers,
reminding us always
of honey.
*
In a room of rubble and brittle light,
I suddenly know things I’ll never understand:
each moment is an animal, leaping sunlight
to give us these bodies. You touched me. I opened
a window and was suddenly
lost outside
so I sang as a way of hiding in the words
until my first parents were forgotten, my father
who danced like a breaking wave, my mother
who hung her dresses in a closet and sealed
the closet, painted it as though it were a wall
and walked away. But I was still inside--
and so I understand the rubble we must crawl through
to make the world again, as the moon grows full
above us, and hangs like a blister while we sleep—
a dirty fingernail reflecting dusty light--
as dresses rise up like wings into the darkness
inside us, full of satellites mapping out our landscapes
as though we weren’t real at all, and plotting out our minds.
--for Richard Blanco & John William Bailly
Michael Hettich's most recent book of poems, The Frozen Harbor, won the 2016 David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from red Dragonfly Press as well as a 2017 Florida Book Award (bronze). A new book, Bluer and More Vast: Prose Poems, is forthcoming from Jay Snodgrass's Hysterical Press. He recently moved from Florida to North Carolina.
Laura Sobott Ross
Divorce
The sound of it, a playground swing: mournful or startled, I really can’t decide which. But even
standing at a distance, it feels guttural, like a wail. Creak, I believe, is the not-so-scientific name
for rust aching with momentum, the torque on the chain, the act of pointing your legs skyward
then pulling them in. But it’s the keening I remember, it’s what stops me now on the sidewalk
to listen to the back and forth arc of opposing forces, the child dangling in between.
Laura Sobbott Ross teaches ESOL at Lake Technical College in central Florida and has worked as a writing coach for Lake County Schools. She was recently named as the Poet Laureate for the Lake County Library System. Her poetry appears in Blackbird, Meridian, The Florida Review, and many others. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize 2016, as well as winning the 2017 Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbooks are A Tiny Hunger and My Mississippi, and a third book, The Graffiti of Pompeii, is forthcoming this year.
The sound of it, a playground swing: mournful or startled, I really can’t decide which. But even
standing at a distance, it feels guttural, like a wail. Creak, I believe, is the not-so-scientific name
for rust aching with momentum, the torque on the chain, the act of pointing your legs skyward
then pulling them in. But it’s the keening I remember, it’s what stops me now on the sidewalk
to listen to the back and forth arc of opposing forces, the child dangling in between.
Laura Sobbott Ross teaches ESOL at Lake Technical College in central Florida and has worked as a writing coach for Lake County Schools. She was recently named as the Poet Laureate for the Lake County Library System. Her poetry appears in Blackbird, Meridian, The Florida Review, and many others. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize 2016, as well as winning the 2017 Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbooks are A Tiny Hunger and My Mississippi, and a third book, The Graffiti of Pompeii, is forthcoming this year.
Denise Duhamel & Maureen Seaton
Resurrection Sonnets
"It's not really death if you can return."
John Steppling
My father comes back as a red cardinal.
And my freckled friend, in her last poem,
offers to haunt me after her so-called
untimely death. Why not, I say. Zombies
are scary, but my friend will be more
like Casper. Remember that “friendly ghost?”
Now my mother comes back as a suicide
bomber, complete with trigger and child
welfare services tracking her every move.
My dream book says I am trying to kill
any chance of a long life, choosing
whatever boasts a skull and crossbones--
my bandana, my necklace. My ring tone:
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I spy the Reaper once as I turn blue
from lack of O2. He scythes everything,
including my jeans which he tears at the knee.
A nurse stabs an EpiPen in my thigh,
and I come back as Banksy’s flower bomber
in Jerusalem or Amarillo, my
first stop Publix where I buy carnations
and Mylar balloons to chuck at harassers
who come back as an entire rainforest.
Dream book says: Death in the Afternoon
is trying to make me see I am both
bull and matador, hoof and cape, ole!
Drink three to five of these slowly, it bubbles
and soothes. By nightfall I come back to life.
Nightfall I come back to life—so soothing
the vampire’s kiss seconds before the fangs
sink silky with their myth of immortal life.
Now my cat comes back as a poet, prickly
pear jelly on her toast. See that bicyclist
over there? He was once my caged hamster.
And here is my great grandmother, her re-
fashioned face the face of a manatee.
What about the extinct passenger pigeon?
Can she come back as herself, her species
survive, after all, to upstage texting? Men
feign themselves dead and endure mock funerals.
A new Emerson peeks through the blinds--
all the honking below, God in the exhaust.
It’s exhausting to believe in God.
So many hard won death scenarios.
Andrea Dworkin says God is the ultimate
pornographer—our suffering turns Him on.
But I think he’s a fractal, an evolving
symmetry, and death is impossible,
like squaring a circle. Irrational
numbers like pi promise eternity.
Complex numbers with a zero can be
purely imaginary, like heaven.
I wish I’d learned to play the harp, the angel
sleeves on my gauzy white dress inspiring
politicians to come back as super-
humble heroes and/or Justice Leaguers.
Some beleaguered heroes humbly seek justice
in the afterlife. But what if heaven’s a scam?
Or what if it’s half-finished and it’s our
job to lay the joists and lift the drywall?
The man who installed my kitchen backsplash
died of a heart attack before I could hire
him to fix my soggy walls after Irma.
I wonder if he’ll come back to Florida
as a green (his favorite color) parrot
or a Bismarck palm at Tree World Wholesale.
He better hurry if he plans to make
landfall in our sorrowful sinking state.
Miami, built on landfill, now in hospice,
hears the red dirge of American songbirds.
How many times will we get to try again?
Who will we be when the last sun rises?
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015).
Maureen Seaton has authored numerous poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Fisher (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her awards for poetry include the Lambda Literary, NEA, and Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls(University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, 2018), also garnered a Lammy. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
"It's not really death if you can return."
John Steppling
My father comes back as a red cardinal.
And my freckled friend, in her last poem,
offers to haunt me after her so-called
untimely death. Why not, I say. Zombies
are scary, but my friend will be more
like Casper. Remember that “friendly ghost?”
Now my mother comes back as a suicide
bomber, complete with trigger and child
welfare services tracking her every move.
My dream book says I am trying to kill
any chance of a long life, choosing
whatever boasts a skull and crossbones--
my bandana, my necklace. My ring tone:
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I spy the Reaper once as I turn blue
from lack of O2. He scythes everything,
including my jeans which he tears at the knee.
A nurse stabs an EpiPen in my thigh,
and I come back as Banksy’s flower bomber
in Jerusalem or Amarillo, my
first stop Publix where I buy carnations
and Mylar balloons to chuck at harassers
who come back as an entire rainforest.
Dream book says: Death in the Afternoon
is trying to make me see I am both
bull and matador, hoof and cape, ole!
Drink three to five of these slowly, it bubbles
and soothes. By nightfall I come back to life.
Nightfall I come back to life—so soothing
the vampire’s kiss seconds before the fangs
sink silky with their myth of immortal life.
Now my cat comes back as a poet, prickly
pear jelly on her toast. See that bicyclist
over there? He was once my caged hamster.
And here is my great grandmother, her re-
fashioned face the face of a manatee.
What about the extinct passenger pigeon?
Can she come back as herself, her species
survive, after all, to upstage texting? Men
feign themselves dead and endure mock funerals.
A new Emerson peeks through the blinds--
all the honking below, God in the exhaust.
It’s exhausting to believe in God.
So many hard won death scenarios.
Andrea Dworkin says God is the ultimate
pornographer—our suffering turns Him on.
But I think he’s a fractal, an evolving
symmetry, and death is impossible,
like squaring a circle. Irrational
numbers like pi promise eternity.
Complex numbers with a zero can be
purely imaginary, like heaven.
I wish I’d learned to play the harp, the angel
sleeves on my gauzy white dress inspiring
politicians to come back as super-
humble heroes and/or Justice Leaguers.
Some beleaguered heroes humbly seek justice
in the afterlife. But what if heaven’s a scam?
Or what if it’s half-finished and it’s our
job to lay the joists and lift the drywall?
The man who installed my kitchen backsplash
died of a heart attack before I could hire
him to fix my soggy walls after Irma.
I wonder if he’ll come back to Florida
as a green (his favorite color) parrot
or a Bismarck palm at Tree World Wholesale.
He better hurry if he plans to make
landfall in our sorrowful sinking state.
Miami, built on landfill, now in hospice,
hears the red dirge of American songbirds.
How many times will we get to try again?
Who will we be when the last sun rises?
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015).
Maureen Seaton has authored numerous poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Fisher (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her awards for poetry include the Lambda Literary, NEA, and Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls(University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, 2018), also garnered a Lammy. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
Maggie Smith 2 poems
Secret
What was the teacher’s riddle
my son repeated? What house
is red with no door, no windows?
What is sweet with a five-pointed
secret? I’ve forgotten the question,
but every Rosh Hashanah
after the preschool field trip
to the orchard, Miss Carol
halves an apple for the answer.
Beneath the red varnish,
nestled in the crisp white meat
—the children gasp—a star.
What was the teacher’s riddle
my son repeated? What house
is red with no door, no windows?
What is sweet with a five-pointed
secret? I’ve forgotten the question,
but every Rosh Hashanah
after the preschool field trip
to the orchard, Miss Carol
halves an apple for the answer.
Beneath the red varnish,
nestled in the crisp white meat
—the children gasp—a star.
Avere Grilli per la Testa
The Italian phrase for dreamer,
to have a head full of crickets, fills me
with miniature violins, thorny
legs snagging in the grass
and singing. In Yiddish
I’m a luftmensch, literally air person,
running my sky fingers through
this silver coif of clouds.
I’m light enough for you
to breathe me, clear enough
for you to see a summer field
through me. I can hide my head
at twilight. I can hide my dreams
anywhere, all friction and song.
Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best Poetry Books of 2017. The title poem, “Good Bones,” was called the “Official Poem of 2016” by Public Radio International and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
The Italian phrase for dreamer,
to have a head full of crickets, fills me
with miniature violins, thorny
legs snagging in the grass
and singing. In Yiddish
I’m a luftmensch, literally air person,
running my sky fingers through
this silver coif of clouds.
I’m light enough for you
to breathe me, clear enough
for you to see a summer field
through me. I can hide my head
at twilight. I can hide my dreams
anywhere, all friction and song.
Maggie Smith is the author of Lamp of the Body, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, and Good Bones, named by the Washington Post as one of the Five Best Poetry Books of 2017. The title poem, “Good Bones,” was called the “Official Poem of 2016” by Public Radio International and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, The Believer, The Paris Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere.
Michael Hettich
The Pure Necessity
--Written in response to the art of Anselm Kiefer
...the way the river rises
while we’re sleeping, and floods our bedroom--and carries
our house out into the current, into
the deeps, where the ancient creatures live;
the way we fall asleep together every night
to a moaning train or a cop show; the way we wake up
many years later
to the bird no one has named
knocking its head at our window:
Your memories
live beyond your body, and prove to the trees
there’s really no such thing as dreaming--
just as there might be nothing called wind
if you’re moving inside it.
So take this bone, this human fibula, to gnaw
instead of growing old like an idea does; break
this raw bone, then bury it under your belt
or boil it for years, until someone calls it soup
and you’re free of pretending yourself into another,
and you’re free to climb those secret stairs, up into the clouds--
to explode there like rain,
to make the river rise:
You think yourself raw and find only one answer:
refuse to consider angels wearing coats
of wax or lard, the Great Mother your image
of what is so real it lacks meaning:
The first trees
were prayers he explained to us then, whose leaves
were pressed into oil and charcoal.
They contained a secret knowledge only angels ever spoke:
...flat men on the balcony facing away
into the sun, to accelerate the transformation
that makes nothing solid, but real.
Dear Angels,
I know you as wonder, objects the mind
intuits from its past lives, the touch of a burning
finger, fairytale sunflowers—a massive wall
built of old train ties—sleepers--their bodies
still potent with living oils, a green-dust smell, the lives
those trees lived for centuries, the oxygen they made.
Each time we see them, a spark of ancient flickers,
and each time we see them the breezes come alive
between us, as when we really see
we come alive again
in the pure necessity of mind we call soul
so we can forget it, embarrassed at the word—
and this is what we humans do—attend to our own minds
as a means of forgetting, a letting go
of the big world of rocks and angels and trees,
shapes that sing like magic wands
or sparklers children swirl like halos
around their heads, as the evening settles down
like a huge flock of black birds
we’d thought were extinct—
or maybe that’s just bees buzzing through the flowers,
reminding us always
of honey.
*
In a room of rubble and brittle light,
I suddenly know things I’ll never understand:
each moment is an animal, leaping sunlight
to give us these bodies. You touched me. I opened
a window and was suddenly
lost outside
so I sang as a way of hiding in the words
until my first parents were forgotten, my father
who danced like a breaking wave, my mother
who hung her dresses in a closet and sealed
the closet, painted it as though it were a wall
and walked away. But I was still inside--
and so I understand the rubble we must crawl through
to make the world again, as the moon grows full
above us, and hangs like a blister while we sleep—
a dirty fingernail reflecting dusty light--
as dresses rise up like wings into the darkness
inside us, full of satellites mapping out our landscapes
as though we weren’t real at all, and plotting out our minds.
--for Richard Blanco & John William Bailly
Michael Hettich's most recent book of poems, The Frozen Harbor, won the 2016 David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from red Dragonfly Press as well as a 2017 Florida Book Award (bronze). A new book, Bluer and More Vast: Prose Poems, is forthcoming from Jay Snodgrass's Hysterical Press. He recently moved from Florida to North Carolina.
--Written in response to the art of Anselm Kiefer
...the way the river rises
while we’re sleeping, and floods our bedroom--and carries
our house out into the current, into
the deeps, where the ancient creatures live;
the way we fall asleep together every night
to a moaning train or a cop show; the way we wake up
many years later
to the bird no one has named
knocking its head at our window:
Your memories
live beyond your body, and prove to the trees
there’s really no such thing as dreaming--
just as there might be nothing called wind
if you’re moving inside it.
So take this bone, this human fibula, to gnaw
instead of growing old like an idea does; break
this raw bone, then bury it under your belt
or boil it for years, until someone calls it soup
and you’re free of pretending yourself into another,
and you’re free to climb those secret stairs, up into the clouds--
to explode there like rain,
to make the river rise:
You think yourself raw and find only one answer:
refuse to consider angels wearing coats
of wax or lard, the Great Mother your image
of what is so real it lacks meaning:
The first trees
were prayers he explained to us then, whose leaves
were pressed into oil and charcoal.
They contained a secret knowledge only angels ever spoke:
...flat men on the balcony facing away
into the sun, to accelerate the transformation
that makes nothing solid, but real.
Dear Angels,
I know you as wonder, objects the mind
intuits from its past lives, the touch of a burning
finger, fairytale sunflowers—a massive wall
built of old train ties—sleepers--their bodies
still potent with living oils, a green-dust smell, the lives
those trees lived for centuries, the oxygen they made.
Each time we see them, a spark of ancient flickers,
and each time we see them the breezes come alive
between us, as when we really see
we come alive again
in the pure necessity of mind we call soul
so we can forget it, embarrassed at the word—
and this is what we humans do—attend to our own minds
as a means of forgetting, a letting go
of the big world of rocks and angels and trees,
shapes that sing like magic wands
or sparklers children swirl like halos
around their heads, as the evening settles down
like a huge flock of black birds
we’d thought were extinct—
or maybe that’s just bees buzzing through the flowers,
reminding us always
of honey.
*
In a room of rubble and brittle light,
I suddenly know things I’ll never understand:
each moment is an animal, leaping sunlight
to give us these bodies. You touched me. I opened
a window and was suddenly
lost outside
so I sang as a way of hiding in the words
until my first parents were forgotten, my father
who danced like a breaking wave, my mother
who hung her dresses in a closet and sealed
the closet, painted it as though it were a wall
and walked away. But I was still inside--
and so I understand the rubble we must crawl through
to make the world again, as the moon grows full
above us, and hangs like a blister while we sleep—
a dirty fingernail reflecting dusty light--
as dresses rise up like wings into the darkness
inside us, full of satellites mapping out our landscapes
as though we weren’t real at all, and plotting out our minds.
--for Richard Blanco & John William Bailly
Michael Hettich's most recent book of poems, The Frozen Harbor, won the 2016 David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from red Dragonfly Press as well as a 2017 Florida Book Award (bronze). A new book, Bluer and More Vast: Prose Poems, is forthcoming from Jay Snodgrass's Hysterical Press. He recently moved from Florida to North Carolina.
Gianna Russo
The Right Dress
I grab the hand of my sorrow
and walk into Westshore Mall.
The light is fake and flood-like,
a white-silver current sluicing through
the Food Court down to Macy’s, past
the makeup counter, up the escalator to Better Dresses.
What do you wear to your mother’s funeral?
Black, gray, black-and-white, the mannequins nod.
I only have an hour to find no shimmer or flirt or décolletage
or lace. There are business casuals and empires and sheaths.
It’s the wrong occasion for mark-downs; I need something exact.
But in the dressing room, only weariness stares from the mirror
until I sit in my old bra and underwear on
the little corner shelf under the security camera.
I might see her in Better Dresses,
holding out a hanger with something
pretty enough for death. Or is she holding
out a flame? Is the rack of ugly dresses just one long silver
boat and am I trying on ways to launch it into the vastness
of this day? Yes, fingering these dresses,
we are lighting the pyre together, until
I make the choice that will push her
toward the western light spreading out there
in the parking lot, gold-rose and dove-gray.
Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books), winner of a Florida Book Awards bronze medal, and two chapbooks, including one based on the art work of Vermeer, The Companion of Joy (Green Rabbit Press). Russo is founding editor of YellowJacket Press, (www.yellowjacketpress.org ), Florida’s publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems in Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Apalachee Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, and Karamu.
I grab the hand of my sorrow
and walk into Westshore Mall.
The light is fake and flood-like,
a white-silver current sluicing through
the Food Court down to Macy’s, past
the makeup counter, up the escalator to Better Dresses.
What do you wear to your mother’s funeral?
Black, gray, black-and-white, the mannequins nod.
I only have an hour to find no shimmer or flirt or décolletage
or lace. There are business casuals and empires and sheaths.
It’s the wrong occasion for mark-downs; I need something exact.
But in the dressing room, only weariness stares from the mirror
until I sit in my old bra and underwear on
the little corner shelf under the security camera.
I might see her in Better Dresses,
holding out a hanger with something
pretty enough for death. Or is she holding
out a flame? Is the rack of ugly dresses just one long silver
boat and am I trying on ways to launch it into the vastness
of this day? Yes, fingering these dresses,
we are lighting the pyre together, until
I make the choice that will push her
toward the western light spreading out there
in the parking lot, gold-rose and dove-gray.
Gianna Russo is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Moonflower (Kitsune Books), winner of a Florida Book Awards bronze medal, and two chapbooks, including one based on the art work of Vermeer, The Companion of Joy (Green Rabbit Press). Russo is founding editor of YellowJacket Press, (www.yellowjacketpress.org ), Florida’s publisher of poetry chapbook manuscripts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has published poems in Ekphrasis, Crab Orchard Review, Apalachee Review, Florida Review, Florida Humanities Council Forum, and Karamu.
Barbara Hamby 3 poems
Nu Nu Ode
Sitting on the toilet with her tutu around her feet,
Scarlett says, "Grandma, do you have a Nu Nu?"
"What's a Nu Nu?" I ask, and she gets one of those
four-year-old sneers on her face," A vagina."
"Sure, I have a Nu Nu. All girls have Nu Nus,"
but later I think, that's not true anymore,
if it ever was, and I think of watching Fellini's Satyricon
as a college student and seeing the hermaphrodite,
something that had never come up in the Baptist Sunday Schools
I attended from birth to age eighteen,
and though you know there's more to it than they are telling you,
nothing quite prepares you for the beautiful creature
with breasts and a penis, which my mother referred to as a wee-wee
while the nu-nu was a pookie, as in "Wash your pookie,"
and when I met a girl in my yoga class in college
whose nickname was Pookie, I had to push down the giggles
into the depths of my kundalini in order to push up into a back bend,
and there were so many things I learned in college,
such as Rembrandt buying one of the last shipments of paper
before Japan closed its ports in 1635, and the second law
of thermodynamics, which thrilled me, because the world
seemed to be moving toward chaos, and Keats
writing to his brothers about negative capability
which was a perfect complement to entropy,
though I've never thought of them in that way until this moment,
which is deep in August, the tree frogs singing
their Hallelujah chorus into the night where owls hunt
and raccoons are hit by speeding teenagers
on their way home from jobs at pizza joints or dates
with girls as befuddled by the world as they are
but driving fast, not knowing where they might end up.
Sitting on the toilet with her tutu around her feet,
Scarlett says, "Grandma, do you have a Nu Nu?"
"What's a Nu Nu?" I ask, and she gets one of those
four-year-old sneers on her face," A vagina."
"Sure, I have a Nu Nu. All girls have Nu Nus,"
but later I think, that's not true anymore,
if it ever was, and I think of watching Fellini's Satyricon
as a college student and seeing the hermaphrodite,
something that had never come up in the Baptist Sunday Schools
I attended from birth to age eighteen,
and though you know there's more to it than they are telling you,
nothing quite prepares you for the beautiful creature
with breasts and a penis, which my mother referred to as a wee-wee
while the nu-nu was a pookie, as in "Wash your pookie,"
and when I met a girl in my yoga class in college
whose nickname was Pookie, I had to push down the giggles
into the depths of my kundalini in order to push up into a back bend,
and there were so many things I learned in college,
such as Rembrandt buying one of the last shipments of paper
before Japan closed its ports in 1635, and the second law
of thermodynamics, which thrilled me, because the world
seemed to be moving toward chaos, and Keats
writing to his brothers about negative capability
which was a perfect complement to entropy,
though I've never thought of them in that way until this moment,
which is deep in August, the tree frogs singing
their Hallelujah chorus into the night where owls hunt
and raccoons are hit by speeding teenagers
on their way home from jobs at pizza joints or dates
with girls as befuddled by the world as they are
but driving fast, not knowing where they might end up.
Ode to the Dogs of Valparaiso
O dogs of Valparaiso, where do you get your sense of purpose
as you escort us through the streets of your city,
not looking for snacks, but happy to eat them, a sausage here,
a sandwich half there, you are the guardians of our fun
and part of it, too, walking with us from the hotel to the bar
where we will watch a soccer match and talk poetry
with my beautiful translators Katherine, Susanna, Constanza,
Rosario, and Nestor, too, while eating delicious
little crustaceans in olive oil, but stopping first to listen
to the blind man playing the blues on the plaza,
young people kissing and older people holding hands
and remembering being young and wanting to be loved
but not knowing what love was until it hit you like a bus
on a mountain road loaded with suitcases, trunks,
baskets full of carrots, chickens, and goats, your plans
nothing in the storm passion welling up in you
like a hurricane off the Pacific. O dogs, you know
about love and the blues, living on the street
dodging cars, rooting through trashcans behind restaurants,
sleeping curled up next to each other
on these chilly May nights while you wait for us
and walk us back to the hotel as we laugh
and talk and pet your mangy heads. The next day
after we visit Neruda’s house in the hills
above the city, see his wife’s tiny shoes in the closet,
your brothers escort us as we gaze at murals
of men and women who are four stories high, snakes curled
around corners, and when we sit on the steps
that say We Are Not Hippies We are Happies, with Sebastian,
Bruno, Felipe and the girls for a photo, you sit there, too,
smiling and saying “cheese,” barking at the other dogs
who try to muscle in on our caravan and even snarl
a little as quiet Elizabeth takes me aside and says,
“I translated ‘Vex Me,’" and when we board
the funicular we stand outside and say goodbye to you
knowing we will be picked up by your brothers
and sisters as we walk by the ocean. O dogs of Valparaiso,
you are so open hearted, not like the packs of dogs
who roam Moscow, snarling at other dogs and people, too,
though you are scruffy and probably have fleas,
but you are poets of the streets, courteous but watching
and you are the police, too, not wanting to bark
but coming between us and anyone who might deflate
our day, because you know that this world
is all we have, and though the fog may roll off the Pacific,
it will fade in the sunshine, and another day
with all its surprises both good and bad, celebrations
and betrayals, our atoms discharging their motion
in this world with so many countries, and Chile
like the braid of a beautiful woman down the back
of South America, a continent between two oceans
made from the same atoms that make the sky.
O dogs of Valparaiso, where do you get your sense of purpose
as you escort us through the streets of your city,
not looking for snacks, but happy to eat them, a sausage here,
a sandwich half there, you are the guardians of our fun
and part of it, too, walking with us from the hotel to the bar
where we will watch a soccer match and talk poetry
with my beautiful translators Katherine, Susanna, Constanza,
Rosario, and Nestor, too, while eating delicious
little crustaceans in olive oil, but stopping first to listen
to the blind man playing the blues on the plaza,
young people kissing and older people holding hands
and remembering being young and wanting to be loved
but not knowing what love was until it hit you like a bus
on a mountain road loaded with suitcases, trunks,
baskets full of carrots, chickens, and goats, your plans
nothing in the storm passion welling up in you
like a hurricane off the Pacific. O dogs, you know
about love and the blues, living on the street
dodging cars, rooting through trashcans behind restaurants,
sleeping curled up next to each other
on these chilly May nights while you wait for us
and walk us back to the hotel as we laugh
and talk and pet your mangy heads. The next day
after we visit Neruda’s house in the hills
above the city, see his wife’s tiny shoes in the closet,
your brothers escort us as we gaze at murals
of men and women who are four stories high, snakes curled
around corners, and when we sit on the steps
that say We Are Not Hippies We are Happies, with Sebastian,
Bruno, Felipe and the girls for a photo, you sit there, too,
smiling and saying “cheese,” barking at the other dogs
who try to muscle in on our caravan and even snarl
a little as quiet Elizabeth takes me aside and says,
“I translated ‘Vex Me,’" and when we board
the funicular we stand outside and say goodbye to you
knowing we will be picked up by your brothers
and sisters as we walk by the ocean. O dogs of Valparaiso,
you are so open hearted, not like the packs of dogs
who roam Moscow, snarling at other dogs and people, too,
though you are scruffy and probably have fleas,
but you are poets of the streets, courteous but watching
and you are the police, too, not wanting to bark
but coming between us and anyone who might deflate
our day, because you know that this world
is all we have, and though the fog may roll off the Pacific,
it will fade in the sunshine, and another day
with all its surprises both good and bad, celebrations
and betrayals, our atoms discharging their motion
in this world with so many countries, and Chile
like the braid of a beautiful woman down the back
of South America, a continent between two oceans
made from the same atoms that make the sky.
Ode to Drawing Donatello’s David Again
I’m back in the Bargello drawing Donatello’s bronze David,
and something’s happened in the last six years,
probably hundreds of more hours putting pen to paper,
so my line is not as quavery, and I am happy
to spend an hour or so in this beautiful room with a marble
David also by Donatello and they’ve moved
Verrocchio’s bronze David from upstairs, and when my husband
is in the room that’s another David, but he’s restless
and away he goes, so it’s just me and my David
until a Spanish woman stops me with an anguished face
and asks if David is a boy or girl, and I say, “Senora,”
and point at his penis, but this doesn’t solve her problem,
and she says But he’s so feminine, and I can’t help but agree,
because he has a soft chest and a flowery hat
but there’s Goliath’s head underneath his foot and that big sword
he’s leaning on, but I’ve got a drawing to finish,
and the senora gives up but soon a cavalcade of fidgety men
walks up with their wives or their guides or books
that tell them this is something to look at, and I hear a parade
of sneers, snickers, hoots, and see some world-class squirming,
and a woman and man get into a heated argument over my guy,
and I think wouldn’t Donatello be out of his mind
with joy that after almost five hundred years he’s raising
a ruckus, making men and women squirm with his bronze boy,
and little did I know when I first saw this statue in an art history class
how much in love I would fall, how I would know every detail,
the ribbon and flowers on his hat, the crook of his elbow, his hand
grasping the vicious sword, the jut of Goliath’s nose,
his helmet, the blood and tendons oozing from his severed neck,
David’s tresses cascading over his shoulders, but how can you
know when you first see someone how every breath he takes
will perfume your day, and every moment you spend apart
will be a knife in your heart, but how can we know anything
in the beginning, except that first kiss how it melted
the carapace you'd spent years constructing out of books and irony
and stray pieces of metal you found on the side of the road.
Barbara Hamby is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Bird Odyssey (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.
I’m back in the Bargello drawing Donatello’s bronze David,
and something’s happened in the last six years,
probably hundreds of more hours putting pen to paper,
so my line is not as quavery, and I am happy
to spend an hour or so in this beautiful room with a marble
David also by Donatello and they’ve moved
Verrocchio’s bronze David from upstairs, and when my husband
is in the room that’s another David, but he’s restless
and away he goes, so it’s just me and my David
until a Spanish woman stops me with an anguished face
and asks if David is a boy or girl, and I say, “Senora,”
and point at his penis, but this doesn’t solve her problem,
and she says But he’s so feminine, and I can’t help but agree,
because he has a soft chest and a flowery hat
but there’s Goliath’s head underneath his foot and that big sword
he’s leaning on, but I’ve got a drawing to finish,
and the senora gives up but soon a cavalcade of fidgety men
walks up with their wives or their guides or books
that tell them this is something to look at, and I hear a parade
of sneers, snickers, hoots, and see some world-class squirming,
and a woman and man get into a heated argument over my guy,
and I think wouldn’t Donatello be out of his mind
with joy that after almost five hundred years he’s raising
a ruckus, making men and women squirm with his bronze boy,
and little did I know when I first saw this statue in an art history class
how much in love I would fall, how I would know every detail,
the ribbon and flowers on his hat, the crook of his elbow, his hand
grasping the vicious sword, the jut of Goliath’s nose,
his helmet, the blood and tendons oozing from his severed neck,
David’s tresses cascading over his shoulders, but how can you
know when you first see someone how every breath he takes
will perfume your day, and every moment you spend apart
will be a knife in your heart, but how can we know anything
in the beginning, except that first kiss how it melted
the carapace you'd spent years constructing out of books and irony
and stray pieces of metal you found on the side of the road.
Barbara Hamby is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Bird Odyssey (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University.
Robbi Nester
The Harem Speaks
In response to Picasso's lithograph, Le Vieux Roi
He imagines that his clothing,
thick with embroidery,
effort of our invisible sisters,
the royal seamstresses,
invests him with power,
but we know that underneath
all the work of our hands,
he is scarcely more substantial than smoke,
his withered white thighs,
and the limp herring
resting between them.
The crown tips sideways on his disorderly hair
like an abandoned crow's nest.
In contrast, we stand
naked before him,
one of us almost featureless.
The other holding her face before her,
a mask she cannot drop.
We share a cloud of hair.
But this as well is an illusion.
Inside us swells the seed of power.
We wax as he wanes,
his belly great only
with foul air.
Now it is the artist's brush,
his pencil, that rises.
The king is done with such acts.
He can only gaze at our firm flesh,
our splendor.
We bide our time.
Robbi Nester is the author of three books of poetry, a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012) and two collections, A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014) and Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017). She is editor of two anthologies: The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014) and an Ekphrastic e-book, Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees--a celebration of the photographs of Beth Moon (accessible at http://www.poemeleon.org/over-the-moon-birds-beasts-and). She has a third collection of poems, Narrow Bridge, released by Main Street Rag sometime later this year
In response to Picasso's lithograph, Le Vieux Roi
He imagines that his clothing,
thick with embroidery,
effort of our invisible sisters,
the royal seamstresses,
invests him with power,
but we know that underneath
all the work of our hands,
he is scarcely more substantial than smoke,
his withered white thighs,
and the limp herring
resting between them.
The crown tips sideways on his disorderly hair
like an abandoned crow's nest.
In contrast, we stand
naked before him,
one of us almost featureless.
The other holding her face before her,
a mask she cannot drop.
We share a cloud of hair.
But this as well is an illusion.
Inside us swells the seed of power.
We wax as he wanes,
his belly great only
with foul air.
Now it is the artist's brush,
his pencil, that rises.
The king is done with such acts.
He can only gaze at our firm flesh,
our splendor.
We bide our time.
Robbi Nester is the author of three books of poetry, a chapbook, Balance (White Violet, 2012) and two collections, A Likely Story (Moon Tide, 2014) and Other-Wise (Kelsay, 2017). She is editor of two anthologies: The Liberal Media Made Me Do It! (Nine Toes, 2014) and an Ekphrastic e-book, Over the Moon: Birds, Beasts, and Trees--a celebration of the photographs of Beth Moon (accessible at http://www.poemeleon.org/over-the-moon-birds-beasts-and). She has a third collection of poems, Narrow Bridge, released by Main Street Rag sometime later this year
Len Lawson 2 poems
Spell Check Does Not Recognize the Word Microaggression
My blackness balances demographic statistics or at least
protrudes through them like a blackhead through
the skin and if it is not seen then the oil of the skin would
be rough to the touch and unsightly to the eyes
I am needed to smooth out pathogens like a fever or an allergy
that no one desires yet the body craves healing
the way American Airlines needs passengers of all colors but
this seems not to be a priority worthy of a corporate email
about inclusion and tolerance at least not when I attempted
to check my bag at their kiosk before boarding
and after I asked for help the employee screamed aloud
Why! Did you break my machine! to which I replied equally obnoxiously
No, lady! I didn’t break anything! She probably thought I would acquiesce
to her attempt at humor but I remained stoic through her tutorial
at the idea that no other boarders received a drill sergeant’s rhetoric
When I finally boarded the flight a white gentleman attempted
to recline his seat into my lap and with my blackest politeness
I asked him to adjust the seat up requiring three roaring requests that
he ignored to the audience of the entire plane including
each of three white flight attendants who hoped it would
blow over and why should they care with only three
black souls on the plane to New England with the loud one
finally getting what he wanted anyway which was the audacity to require
sufficient personal space as did every silent passenger who now affirmed
every fear they had for angry black people but I’m still kind of bent about it
so when they email their courtesy survey I refuse to become
another percentage point of ill-treated, disgruntled, marginalized passengers
I will reply with one word and if they have trouble understanding it
then I will invite them to adjust the seats of their minds in the upright
position and observe the squiggly red line under that very word
My blackness balances demographic statistics or at least
protrudes through them like a blackhead through
the skin and if it is not seen then the oil of the skin would
be rough to the touch and unsightly to the eyes
I am needed to smooth out pathogens like a fever or an allergy
that no one desires yet the body craves healing
the way American Airlines needs passengers of all colors but
this seems not to be a priority worthy of a corporate email
about inclusion and tolerance at least not when I attempted
to check my bag at their kiosk before boarding
and after I asked for help the employee screamed aloud
Why! Did you break my machine! to which I replied equally obnoxiously
No, lady! I didn’t break anything! She probably thought I would acquiesce
to her attempt at humor but I remained stoic through her tutorial
at the idea that no other boarders received a drill sergeant’s rhetoric
When I finally boarded the flight a white gentleman attempted
to recline his seat into my lap and with my blackest politeness
I asked him to adjust the seat up requiring three roaring requests that
he ignored to the audience of the entire plane including
each of three white flight attendants who hoped it would
blow over and why should they care with only three
black souls on the plane to New England with the loud one
finally getting what he wanted anyway which was the audacity to require
sufficient personal space as did every silent passenger who now affirmed
every fear they had for angry black people but I’m still kind of bent about it
so when they email their courtesy survey I refuse to become
another percentage point of ill-treated, disgruntled, marginalized passengers
I will reply with one word and if they have trouble understanding it
then I will invite them to adjust the seats of their minds in the upright
position and observe the squiggly red line under that very word
Hymn to the Tiki God
for Charlottesville
You revisited them at a Pentecost not prophesied
In a small college town in Virginia where hundreds of
The sons of your former believers gathered not in your name
But in the names of themselves above every other name
They blazed your bamboo torches to rekindle what was left
Of the light you brought to the masses from a hemisphere away
Without painted faces and tribal masks
They waged war on the idolatry in equality for all men
They hoisted your symbol of peace and tranquility to
Invoke hate and sameness in the face of the god of the Other
And you from the golden calf throne their fathers created now ask
Where are your Hawaiian shirts & your fruity mixed drinks
& your hula skirts & your tribal dances
Where are my sirens who entranced you to my islands
By their Tiki torch serpents they waved your incense of fire
Ignominiously in the face of a god who bears the same
Could their white privilege not have procured
The Olympic torch itself or could they not have
Implored Prometheus a second time to risk his eternity
We implore you to quench their hate and spew its ashes across the sea
Let the smoke rise to your throne for a sweet fragrance
where you can rest in perpetual peace from being summoned again
Len Lawson is the author of the debut poetry collection Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). He is a Ph.D. student in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He won the 2016 Jasper Magazine Artist of the Year Award for Literary Arts and was named among Ten South Carolina Poets to Watch by Richland County Library in 2018. He is a Callaloo Fellow and received a residency from Vermont Studio Center. His poems have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Verse Daily, [PANK], Winter Tangerine Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Lawson is a Poetry Reader & Book Reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly. He currently teaches English at the University of South Carolina Sumter.
for Charlottesville
You revisited them at a Pentecost not prophesied
In a small college town in Virginia where hundreds of
The sons of your former believers gathered not in your name
But in the names of themselves above every other name
They blazed your bamboo torches to rekindle what was left
Of the light you brought to the masses from a hemisphere away
Without painted faces and tribal masks
They waged war on the idolatry in equality for all men
They hoisted your symbol of peace and tranquility to
Invoke hate and sameness in the face of the god of the Other
And you from the golden calf throne their fathers created now ask
Where are your Hawaiian shirts & your fruity mixed drinks
& your hula skirts & your tribal dances
Where are my sirens who entranced you to my islands
By their Tiki torch serpents they waved your incense of fire
Ignominiously in the face of a god who bears the same
Could their white privilege not have procured
The Olympic torch itself or could they not have
Implored Prometheus a second time to risk his eternity
We implore you to quench their hate and spew its ashes across the sea
Let the smoke rise to your throne for a sweet fragrance
where you can rest in perpetual peace from being summoned again
Len Lawson is the author of the debut poetry collection Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). He is a Ph.D. student in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He won the 2016 Jasper Magazine Artist of the Year Award for Literary Arts and was named among Ten South Carolina Poets to Watch by Richland County Library in 2018. He is a Callaloo Fellow and received a residency from Vermont Studio Center. His poems have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Verse Daily, [PANK], Winter Tangerine Review, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Lawson is a Poetry Reader & Book Reviewer for Up the Staircase Quarterly. He currently teaches English at the University of South Carolina Sumter.
Laura Sobbott Ross 2 poems
Migration
Abraham was the son
of migrant workers, here only
long enough to pick the blueberries,
sweet corn, beans and tangelos.
The seasons, a scorch
beneath a wide sky, busy and tangled
with currents. Night, a compass of stars.
His writing was perfect
and by that I don’t mean
scaled to a point on a rubric,
or his own fourth-grade cursive
corralled between red margin lines.
In English, say it in English,
was something I never had to remind him to do.
How could they sleep at night, he wondered,
with all those oranges pining
sweet and spherical on their stems,
momentum locked in porous skin.
Abraham’s face was as pure as a monk’s.
His dark eyes, large behind his glasses,
were full of light. Like the fractured aquas
of the swimming pools where the shouts
of American children echoed across the valley
of an industry so green it slid like a mirror
across the sink holes.
His own family’s laundry drying over a hedge of juniper.
Sandhill cranes, Abraham noted, must have flown in
from a prehistoric era, ancient as magnolia blossoms.
And the robins, he wrote; suddenly, well,
they were everywhere—
shaken out of wool sleeves into the orchards,
the pastures, and the slow mappings of shadow
beneath the live oak trees. The whistled-out marrow
of their small bones still cold and carrying the wind.
Abraham was the son
of migrant workers, here only
long enough to pick the blueberries,
sweet corn, beans and tangelos.
The seasons, a scorch
beneath a wide sky, busy and tangled
with currents. Night, a compass of stars.
His writing was perfect
and by that I don’t mean
scaled to a point on a rubric,
or his own fourth-grade cursive
corralled between red margin lines.
In English, say it in English,
was something I never had to remind him to do.
How could they sleep at night, he wondered,
with all those oranges pining
sweet and spherical on their stems,
momentum locked in porous skin.
Abraham’s face was as pure as a monk’s.
His dark eyes, large behind his glasses,
were full of light. Like the fractured aquas
of the swimming pools where the shouts
of American children echoed across the valley
of an industry so green it slid like a mirror
across the sink holes.
His own family’s laundry drying over a hedge of juniper.
Sandhill cranes, Abraham noted, must have flown in
from a prehistoric era, ancient as magnolia blossoms.
And the robins, he wrote; suddenly, well,
they were everywhere—
shaken out of wool sleeves into the orchards,
the pastures, and the slow mappings of shadow
beneath the live oak trees. The whistled-out marrow
of their small bones still cold and carrying the wind.
Divorce
The sound of it, a playground swing: mournful or startled, I really can’t decide which. But even
standing at a distance, it feels guttural, like a wail. Creak, I believe, is the not-so-scientific name
for rust aching with momentum, the torque on the chain, the act of pointing your legs skyward
then pulling them in. But it’s the keening I remember, it’s what stops me now on the sidewalk
to listen to the back and forth arc of opposing forces, the child dangling in between.
Laura Sobbott Ross teaches ESOL at Lake Technical College in central Florida and has worked as a writing coach for Lake County Schools. She was recently named as the Poet Laureate for the Lake County Library System. Her poetry appears in Blackbird, Meridian, The Florida Review, and many others. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize 2016, as well as winning the 2017 Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbooks are A Tiny Hunger and My Mississippi, and a third book, The Graffiti of Pompeii, is forthcoming this year.
The sound of it, a playground swing: mournful or startled, I really can’t decide which. But even
standing at a distance, it feels guttural, like a wail. Creak, I believe, is the not-so-scientific name
for rust aching with momentum, the torque on the chain, the act of pointing your legs skyward
then pulling them in. But it’s the keening I remember, it’s what stops me now on the sidewalk
to listen to the back and forth arc of opposing forces, the child dangling in between.
Laura Sobbott Ross teaches ESOL at Lake Technical College in central Florida and has worked as a writing coach for Lake County Schools. She was recently named as the Poet Laureate for the Lake County Library System. Her poetry appears in Blackbird, Meridian, The Florida Review, and many others. She was a finalist for the Art & Letters Poetry Prize 2016, as well as winning the 2017 Southern Humanities Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poetry chapbooks are A Tiny Hunger and My Mississippi, and a third book, The Graffiti of Pompeii, is forthcoming this year.
Judy Ireland 2 poems
America
America made me hand over my heart in third grade.
America filled my Weekly Reader with brave stories.
America flew a flag in front of Black Hawk Elementary.
America leaned on the light pole at the corner and waited.
America walked me home. America took me for a ride.
America told me to wise up. Life is not all bookmobiles and drive-in theatres.
America’s chiseled jaw grew a five o’clock shadow.
America had the steering wheel in one hand, a can of beer in the other.
America shook an unfiltered cigarette from a half-full pack.
America asked me how old I was. America told me to shut up.
America tore down my old school. America gave away free TVs.
America barely remembers me or the other third-grade girls.
America takes rifles and six packs into the woods, and lots of ammunition.
America comes out of the trees, a bloody deer on the hood of its Ford F 650.
America still has my heart in an old tackle box full of hooks and fishing lures.
But America doesn’t know it because America no longer sees me.
America made me hand over my heart in third grade.
America filled my Weekly Reader with brave stories.
America flew a flag in front of Black Hawk Elementary.
America leaned on the light pole at the corner and waited.
America walked me home. America took me for a ride.
America told me to wise up. Life is not all bookmobiles and drive-in theatres.
America’s chiseled jaw grew a five o’clock shadow.
America had the steering wheel in one hand, a can of beer in the other.
America shook an unfiltered cigarette from a half-full pack.
America asked me how old I was. America told me to shut up.
America tore down my old school. America gave away free TVs.
America barely remembers me or the other third-grade girls.
America takes rifles and six packs into the woods, and lots of ammunition.
America comes out of the trees, a bloody deer on the hood of its Ford F 650.
America still has my heart in an old tackle box full of hooks and fishing lures.
But America doesn’t know it because America no longer sees me.
A Long Time Coming Out Poem
There was an article entitled, “After Last Night, Am I a Lesbian?”
in the June 1970 issue of True Story.
I didn’t get to read it then because the magazine was hidden
under my grandmother’s mattress, along with several other issues.
I didn’t know it existed.
I saw a vintage copy yesterday, listed for $12.99 on eBay,
but it’s too late for me now. Too late even then.
Whatever I could have learned was already my secret.
My science teacher’s mannish French heels and tweed
pencil skirts had already done their thing, unbeknownst to her,
and I was down for the count.
Lots of things stay hidden, though. It’s no secret
that the biggest lies we tell, are unspoken. The space between
the box spring and the mattress gets bigger and bigger.
Your spine begins to arch, and pretty soon you can’t sleep
because of some woman or another.
Some nights, I used to be afraid my pillow would rise
and my secrets would start falling out onto the floor,
pages lying wide open. And eventually, they did.
Judy Ireland’s poetry benefits from the barefaced authenticity of the Midwest's working class culture, and the lush excesses of South Florida. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Hotel Amerika, and other journals, as well as in the Best Indie Lit New England anthology. Her book, Cement Shoes, won the 2013 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and was published in 2014 by Evening Street Press. She currently serves as Executive Director of the DePorres Place Adult Literacy Center in West Palm Beach, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.
There was an article entitled, “After Last Night, Am I a Lesbian?”
in the June 1970 issue of True Story.
I didn’t get to read it then because the magazine was hidden
under my grandmother’s mattress, along with several other issues.
I didn’t know it existed.
I saw a vintage copy yesterday, listed for $12.99 on eBay,
but it’s too late for me now. Too late even then.
Whatever I could have learned was already my secret.
My science teacher’s mannish French heels and tweed
pencil skirts had already done their thing, unbeknownst to her,
and I was down for the count.
Lots of things stay hidden, though. It’s no secret
that the biggest lies we tell, are unspoken. The space between
the box spring and the mattress gets bigger and bigger.
Your spine begins to arch, and pretty soon you can’t sleep
because of some woman or another.
Some nights, I used to be afraid my pillow would rise
and my secrets would start falling out onto the floor,
pages lying wide open. And eventually, they did.
Judy Ireland’s poetry benefits from the barefaced authenticity of the Midwest's working class culture, and the lush excesses of South Florida. Her poems have appeared in Calyx, Saranac Review, Eclipse, Cold Mountain, Hotel Amerika, and other journals, as well as in the Best Indie Lit New England anthology. Her book, Cement Shoes, won the 2013 Sinclair Poetry Prize, and was published in 2014 by Evening Street Press. She currently serves as Executive Director of the DePorres Place Adult Literacy Center in West Palm Beach, and teaches at Palm Beach State College.
Annik Adey-Babinski
Lineage
I grow my hair this year.
And for my mother,
I wear it up.
She believes I look lovely
with my hair off my neck
and swept back from my face.
She believes her coworkers
are speaking about her
in meetings.
Her client escaped a bad marriage
and my mother suspects he might
find her, even in Canada.
My mother wonders about
the Masons in her neighborhood.
They are cursing her garden.
She thinks she is physically ill
but it is only her mind.
The black magic is her own.
It was always cute:
her worries about alligators
and sexual predators.
Her warnings about
pot-induced schizophrenia,
and the addicts in the family.
Now it tastes different.
Its own inverse reflection.
The way a hamburger
uncooks itself in your mouth.
Annik Adey-Babinski grew up in Ottawa, Canada. Her first book of poetry, OKAY COOL NO SMOKING LOVE PONY, was published by The Word Works, Washington, DC. A reading of this and other of her poems also appears in our Florida Center for the Book Video Page.
I grow my hair this year.
And for my mother,
I wear it up.
She believes I look lovely
with my hair off my neck
and swept back from my face.
She believes her coworkers
are speaking about her
in meetings.
Her client escaped a bad marriage
and my mother suspects he might
find her, even in Canada.
My mother wonders about
the Masons in her neighborhood.
They are cursing her garden.
She thinks she is physically ill
but it is only her mind.
The black magic is her own.
It was always cute:
her worries about alligators
and sexual predators.
Her warnings about
pot-induced schizophrenia,
and the addicts in the family.
Now it tastes different.
Its own inverse reflection.
The way a hamburger
uncooks itself in your mouth.
Annik Adey-Babinski grew up in Ottawa, Canada. Her first book of poetry, OKAY COOL NO SMOKING LOVE PONY, was published by The Word Works, Washington, DC. A reading of this and other of her poems also appears in our Florida Center for the Book Video Page.
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Casual Cruelty (a Sister Poem)
1. My sister’s ex eyes me at the party. I’ve always wanted to nail her, I hear him say.
I knew that.
When I ask if she minds, my sister shrugs. I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy.
I take it for consent.
2. In bed, 4 a.m., my neighbor’s car alarm goes off like clockwork.
You want me to key her ride? the ex asks.
We take a stroll on the San Pedro pier, inspect the faded eateries. They’re
tearing it all down, he claims. This is the year he’s investing in restaurants.
3. The ex nails eviction notices to the rotting wood façades.
'Mr. Results', he calls himself. He plans on making a killing.
I ask my sister why they broke up. He’s got a big cock, I say. Nice teeth. And an endgame.
You don’t know him like I do, she says.
4. I’ve always thought you were the prettier one, the ex flirts over dinner.
Does my sister know about us? I ask.
He shakes his head. I’ll tell her if you want me to.
Part of me wants him to.
5. When I ask 'Mr. Results' what he’s looking for, he looks right through me.
Tell me what I’m doing wrong? I beg.
He says he despises weakness. When he doesn’t call,
I tell myself he’s busy buying restaurants.
6. You really are the more attractive one, he says before he dumps me.
Don’t tell my sister, I say at last.
Showing mercy goes against the grain, don’t you think?
He flashes that toothy grin.
7. When he throws me on the bed for auld lang syne, I grit my teeth.
Really, I mean it. Don’t tell her! But he picks up the phone.
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
1. My sister’s ex eyes me at the party. I’ve always wanted to nail her, I hear him say.
I knew that.
When I ask if she minds, my sister shrugs. I wouldn’t wish him on my worst enemy.
I take it for consent.
2. In bed, 4 a.m., my neighbor’s car alarm goes off like clockwork.
You want me to key her ride? the ex asks.
We take a stroll on the San Pedro pier, inspect the faded eateries. They’re
tearing it all down, he claims. This is the year he’s investing in restaurants.
3. The ex nails eviction notices to the rotting wood façades.
'Mr. Results', he calls himself. He plans on making a killing.
I ask my sister why they broke up. He’s got a big cock, I say. Nice teeth. And an endgame.
You don’t know him like I do, she says.
4. I’ve always thought you were the prettier one, the ex flirts over dinner.
Does my sister know about us? I ask.
He shakes his head. I’ll tell her if you want me to.
Part of me wants him to.
5. When I ask 'Mr. Results' what he’s looking for, he looks right through me.
Tell me what I’m doing wrong? I beg.
He says he despises weakness. When he doesn’t call,
I tell myself he’s busy buying restaurants.
6. You really are the more attractive one, he says before he dumps me.
Don’t tell my sister, I say at last.
Showing mercy goes against the grain, don’t you think?
He flashes that toothy grin.
7. When he throws me on the bed for auld lang syne, I grit my teeth.
Really, I mean it. Don’t tell her! But he picks up the phone.
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
Mia Ayumi Malhotra
How to Catch a Wolf
In some versions: cake. A bottle of wine. In others,
soup. In all versions, the girl’s surprise. What teeth!
What eyes! What we choose not to see: burned clothes,
blood, teeth bottled in the back room. Not every story
has its huntsman. Tell me, what’s the price of innocence?
And who’s to blame? The mother? for sending her laden
with soft, bready confections, just the sort a creature
might crave? Pastry, yeast—for shame. Don’t under-
estimate the glint of an eye, dirty pelt pressed to pillow.
The marking, the malady. And the girl, sent to meet
her fate. The threads we spin, the ties that bind.
Mother to child, granny to wolf--What ears, what eyes!
Who wouldn’t choose the lie? Everything as it appears.
In some versions, a hat; in others, a hood. In all, a bed,
two bodies. One furred, one bare—tousling in the dark.
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Isako Isako (forthcoming September 2018), winner of the 2017 Alice James Award. She received her MFA from the University of Washington and is a Kundiman and VONA/Voices Fellow. Her poems have appeared in The Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more at: miamalhotra.com
In some versions: cake. A bottle of wine. In others,
soup. In all versions, the girl’s surprise. What teeth!
What eyes! What we choose not to see: burned clothes,
blood, teeth bottled in the back room. Not every story
has its huntsman. Tell me, what’s the price of innocence?
And who’s to blame? The mother? for sending her laden
with soft, bready confections, just the sort a creature
might crave? Pastry, yeast—for shame. Don’t under-
estimate the glint of an eye, dirty pelt pressed to pillow.
The marking, the malady. And the girl, sent to meet
her fate. The threads we spin, the ties that bind.
Mother to child, granny to wolf--What ears, what eyes!
Who wouldn’t choose the lie? Everything as it appears.
In some versions, a hat; in others, a hood. In all, a bed,
two bodies. One furred, one bare—tousling in the dark.
Mia Ayumi Malhotra is the author of Isako Isako (forthcoming September 2018), winner of the 2017 Alice James Award. She received her MFA from the University of Washington and is a Kundiman and VONA/Voices Fellow. Her poems have appeared in The Greensboro Review, Indiana Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more at: miamalhotra.com
Monalisa Maione
The Snake
You can analyze the snake in this verse,
but there isn’t much to say about
this cold-blooded reptile
that hasn’t already been said.
This snake is no metaphor,
though it’s easy to imagine it is
because it shows up in a poem
where all manner of meanings
hide behind every line and serif on a page.
It’s easy to think this snake is
hiding some deeper clue or
a buried meaning after so many literary
Low-blows, from the very beginning of time.
It won’t help my case to tell you
that this snake lives in my garden,
but, where else would a snake live?
I’m not sure anyone can understand
a snake, so, it’s an easy animal
to pin a crime on. Even a very great crime.
Maybe, the greatest crime ever.
One rumor says
it can kill me with a single strike,
but, I don’t even know if that’s true.
Someone said it once, and now,
the animal is stuck with a
bad reputation on its head.
And that head is resting just in front of my tire.
I’ve heard that where there’s one snake,
there’s a whole nest, and that the young
are more dangerous than their parents,
but, I can’t remember if that was about real snakes
or metaphorical ones.
Now, this snake is casually unfurling itself
and it’s magnificent rattle on the hot asphalt near the
the dog’s dish and the sidewalk chalk, and,
I could spend all day analyzing it.
I weigh my options, and slip my car into gear.
Monalisa Maione is a two-time Pushcart nominated feminist poet living between California and Paris. Her work considers the nature of power and control of institutions, both political and sociological, on individuals and the natural world. She lives with a brain injury, which informs her life and work in difficult, beautiful and mysterious ways. Poetry is her constant, but, elusive companion.
You can analyze the snake in this verse,
but there isn’t much to say about
this cold-blooded reptile
that hasn’t already been said.
This snake is no metaphor,
though it’s easy to imagine it is
because it shows up in a poem
where all manner of meanings
hide behind every line and serif on a page.
It’s easy to think this snake is
hiding some deeper clue or
a buried meaning after so many literary
Low-blows, from the very beginning of time.
It won’t help my case to tell you
that this snake lives in my garden,
but, where else would a snake live?
I’m not sure anyone can understand
a snake, so, it’s an easy animal
to pin a crime on. Even a very great crime.
Maybe, the greatest crime ever.
One rumor says
it can kill me with a single strike,
but, I don’t even know if that’s true.
Someone said it once, and now,
the animal is stuck with a
bad reputation on its head.
And that head is resting just in front of my tire.
I’ve heard that where there’s one snake,
there’s a whole nest, and that the young
are more dangerous than their parents,
but, I can’t remember if that was about real snakes
or metaphorical ones.
Now, this snake is casually unfurling itself
and it’s magnificent rattle on the hot asphalt near the
the dog’s dish and the sidewalk chalk, and,
I could spend all day analyzing it.
I weigh my options, and slip my car into gear.
Monalisa Maione is a two-time Pushcart nominated feminist poet living between California and Paris. Her work considers the nature of power and control of institutions, both political and sociological, on individuals and the natural world. She lives with a brain injury, which informs her life and work in difficult, beautiful and mysterious ways. Poetry is her constant, but, elusive companion.
Rebecca Talbot 2 poems
Anhinga
Soaked to the pinfeathers
Cold beneath the giddy sunshine
You unfold arms like a shredded
lounge chair
Can you hear them creaking, bone to bone
as hour by hour your feathers beg the sun
Does it ache
Is there peace in warmth and light and being
something in the world with outstretched wings
Soaked to the pinfeathers
Cold beneath the giddy sunshine
You unfold arms like a shredded
lounge chair
Can you hear them creaking, bone to bone
as hour by hour your feathers beg the sun
Does it ache
Is there peace in warmth and light and being
something in the world with outstretched wings
Certainty
“By subcutaneous injection of a solution of a strongly
florescent compound, it could be determined
whether the individual still had a functioning
circulation of the blood.”
-Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive
Do not trust
the doctor's ear trumpet, peeled eyelid
or fingers at the wrist’s cool skin
Do not wire
your hands to pipe organs, an octave
resounding when you bloom or bloat
Do not retire
beneath loam, carving pine
with fingernails
First bring me your dogs, living
or dead. I will flood their veins
And we will know
If your languid collies, your rigid
hounds turn yellow in a flash, their eyes
glow green as sunlit moss, we’ve proved
their lively blood continues to
cascade
Then bring me to your father’s vigil, or bare
your wife’s bleached thigh. Hand
me your blue infant, your silent son.
Come here.
Rebecca Talbot lives and writes in Jupiter, Florida. She is a graduate of Roosevelt University’s MFA program, and her work has appeared in Contrary, Necessary Fiction, and other magazines.
“By subcutaneous injection of a solution of a strongly
florescent compound, it could be determined
whether the individual still had a functioning
circulation of the blood.”
-Jan Bondeson, Buried Alive
Do not trust
the doctor's ear trumpet, peeled eyelid
or fingers at the wrist’s cool skin
Do not wire
your hands to pipe organs, an octave
resounding when you bloom or bloat
Do not retire
beneath loam, carving pine
with fingernails
First bring me your dogs, living
or dead. I will flood their veins
And we will know
If your languid collies, your rigid
hounds turn yellow in a flash, their eyes
glow green as sunlit moss, we’ve proved
their lively blood continues to
cascade
Then bring me to your father’s vigil, or bare
your wife’s bleached thigh. Hand
me your blue infant, your silent son.
Come here.
Rebecca Talbot lives and writes in Jupiter, Florida. She is a graduate of Roosevelt University’s MFA program, and her work has appeared in Contrary, Necessary Fiction, and other magazines.
Martina Reisz Newberry
The Astonishing Benefits of Chamomile Tea
You must know that you are
a figment of my imagination.
I dreamed you up from stories
and comic strips and a couple
of bumper stickers I saw on
a 1988 Mustang in your
driveway once upon a time.
You thought your sweet eyes
and magical tongue
were real, yes? You thought
that your hair, dark and over
one shoulder as you slept
(smelling of chamomile
and sweet grass) was as real
as bread, as physical as
candle wax. No, I created you
during those minutes of doubt and
self-flagellation that filled my life.
I embraced you instead of guilt,
fucked you instead of fear,
moved under you instead of quilts.
Dear Phantom, I have nothing
but gratitude for you. Your entrance
and exit have steadied me,
taken me from being some
mad farmwife to driving
the same miles others do.
Spirit, we sit so calmly under
our separate skies. No one would
ever guess the depth of ashes
our volcano created.
Fire, no ice…
Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent books are Never Completely Awake (Deerbrook Editions) and Take The Long Way Home (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of Where It Goes (Deerbrook Editions), Learning By Rote (Deerbrook Editions) and Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). Her work appears in Adelaide, Anti-chic Heroine, Blue Nib, Boomer Literature, Beautiful Losers, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Illuminations Magazine, and others. Newberry lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
You must know that you are
a figment of my imagination.
I dreamed you up from stories
and comic strips and a couple
of bumper stickers I saw on
a 1988 Mustang in your
driveway once upon a time.
You thought your sweet eyes
and magical tongue
were real, yes? You thought
that your hair, dark and over
one shoulder as you slept
(smelling of chamomile
and sweet grass) was as real
as bread, as physical as
candle wax. No, I created you
during those minutes of doubt and
self-flagellation that filled my life.
I embraced you instead of guilt,
fucked you instead of fear,
moved under you instead of quilts.
Dear Phantom, I have nothing
but gratitude for you. Your entrance
and exit have steadied me,
taken me from being some
mad farmwife to driving
the same miles others do.
Spirit, we sit so calmly under
our separate skies. No one would
ever guess the depth of ashes
our volcano created.
Fire, no ice…
Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent books are Never Completely Awake (Deerbrook Editions) and Take The Long Way Home (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of Where It Goes (Deerbrook Editions), Learning By Rote (Deerbrook Editions) and Running Like A Woman With Her Hair On Fire: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). Her work appears in Adelaide, Anti-chic Heroine, Blue Nib, Boomer Literature, Beautiful Losers, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Illuminations Magazine, and others. Newberry lives in Los Angeles with her husband.
Clint Margrave
At Hillhurst and Franklin
I offer my socks
because your feet hurt in your new boots.
How stupid, you say,
that you didn’t wear any.
We lean against the window
of the public library
on this cool May night.
I almost topple over
untying my shoes,
as you quickly
unzip your boots.
Our white shins glow
in the exchange.
Loud as our laughter.
Even if your feet still hurt
and you say
it was all for nothing.
Except it wasn’t.
Clint Margrave is the author of Salute the Wreckage (2016) and The Early Death of Men (2012), both published by NYQ Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, New York Quarterly, The Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Cimarron Review, Verse Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, Word Riot, and Ambit (UK), among others. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
I offer my socks
because your feet hurt in your new boots.
How stupid, you say,
that you didn’t wear any.
We lean against the window
of the public library
on this cool May night.
I almost topple over
untying my shoes,
as you quickly
unzip your boots.
Our white shins glow
in the exchange.
Loud as our laughter.
Even if your feet still hurt
and you say
it was all for nothing.
Except it wasn’t.
Clint Margrave is the author of Salute the Wreckage (2016) and The Early Death of Men (2012), both published by NYQ Books. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, New York Quarterly, The Writer’s Almanac, Rattle, Cimarron Review, Verse Daily, The American Journal of Poetry, Word Riot, and Ambit (UK), among others. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
Jeff Santosuosso 2 poems
Hearts
for Ash
They play a lot of cards, these women.
Hearts, mostly, a few other scattered games.
They wear a lot of orange, these women.
All orange, in fact, with undershirts and laceless shoes.
Time passes the same as in cardless places
where men and women wear many colors
where shoes have laces and grommets,
where people use doors leading outdoors.
Some here sweat, some shake, some grind their teeth,
missing something they had besides freedom.
Most of the shakes subside, as do the yearnings.
Most will make it, you can usually tell.
They braid each others’ hair, tell stories
of men, women, and children, talk of when.
When is the subject. When.
When it was. When it will be.
When they may never wear orange again,
wear heels, when cribbage will favor hearts
when when is that old when,
when that when was, not will be
when cards come off the top of the deck
when they can use a closet
not just for their memories.
for Ash
They play a lot of cards, these women.
Hearts, mostly, a few other scattered games.
They wear a lot of orange, these women.
All orange, in fact, with undershirts and laceless shoes.
Time passes the same as in cardless places
where men and women wear many colors
where shoes have laces and grommets,
where people use doors leading outdoors.
Some here sweat, some shake, some grind their teeth,
missing something they had besides freedom.
Most of the shakes subside, as do the yearnings.
Most will make it, you can usually tell.
They braid each others’ hair, tell stories
of men, women, and children, talk of when.
When is the subject. When.
When it was. When it will be.
When they may never wear orange again,
wear heels, when cribbage will favor hearts
when when is that old when,
when that when was, not will be
when cards come off the top of the deck
when they can use a closet
not just for their memories.
Target
The forefinger is blown upon to evaporate sweat,
wraps around the trigger.
The eye takes aim, first at the target,
then down the sight.
The lower three fingers clutch slightly more
and relax.
The forefinger pulls,
the trigger yielding and drawing back against the tension.
The hammer falls.
The firing pin ignites primer then powder,
which explodes within the chamber.
Nowhere else to go, the bullet releases from the shell
spiraling along the rifling,
exploding from the barrel.
Precisely balanced, tightly rotating
at 1200 feet per second,
it reaches its target unannounced.
The bullet cuts her inward, slicing a spherical hole,
some skin flying off.
The projectile stops there as she absorbs the impact
lurches forward then falls back.
Blood flows from the wound.
Powder sprays and falls
as smoke rises, wafts and dissipates,
unmistakable in its odor.
The forefinger releases as the trigger spring
returns it to its resting place,
wiped dry and clean.
Jeff Santosuosso is a business consultant and poet living in Pensacola, FL. He is Editor-in-Chief of panoplyzine.com, an online journal of poetry and short prose. His chap book, Body of Water, is forthcoming from Clare’s Songbirds Press. Jeff’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in San Pedro River Review, The Lake (UK), Red Fez, Stories of Music, Vol. 2, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, Texas Poetry Calendar, Avocet, First Literary Review – East, and other online and print publications.
The forefinger is blown upon to evaporate sweat,
wraps around the trigger.
The eye takes aim, first at the target,
then down the sight.
The lower three fingers clutch slightly more
and relax.
The forefinger pulls,
the trigger yielding and drawing back against the tension.
The hammer falls.
The firing pin ignites primer then powder,
which explodes within the chamber.
Nowhere else to go, the bullet releases from the shell
spiraling along the rifling,
exploding from the barrel.
Precisely balanced, tightly rotating
at 1200 feet per second,
it reaches its target unannounced.
The bullet cuts her inward, slicing a spherical hole,
some skin flying off.
The projectile stops there as she absorbs the impact
lurches forward then falls back.
Blood flows from the wound.
Powder sprays and falls
as smoke rises, wafts and dissipates,
unmistakable in its odor.
The forefinger releases as the trigger spring
returns it to its resting place,
wiped dry and clean.
Jeff Santosuosso is a business consultant and poet living in Pensacola, FL. He is Editor-in-Chief of panoplyzine.com, an online journal of poetry and short prose. His chap book, Body of Water, is forthcoming from Clare’s Songbirds Press. Jeff’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in San Pedro River Review, The Lake (UK), Red Fez, Stories of Music, Vol. 2, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, Texas Poetry Calendar, Avocet, First Literary Review – East, and other online and print publications.
Margie Bloom
His Suitcase
My big brother carries around
his old brown suitcase,
the one whose cracks & folds moan
low cello sounds.
There are rocks inside.
His back, neck, arms carry the weight.
This suitcase has a clear pane,
he can see right through it.
Things inside slide around.
a black balloon glides by
a swollen knee
bagged platelets
someone else’s bone-marrow
a shaking rattle of inchoate words
Michael carries his case around
just as long as he can.
Then he puts that load down.
O God, he leaves that suitcase
somewhere around.
Margie Bloom has worked as a registered nurse, a massage therapist, and a learning center administrator. Her translation of Apollinaire’s “The Stabbed Dove and the Water Fountain” is in Meade Magazine, and her work also appears in the Magnolia Review and Salamander. She currently resides in Boynton Beach, Florida.
My big brother carries around
his old brown suitcase,
the one whose cracks & folds moan
low cello sounds.
There are rocks inside.
His back, neck, arms carry the weight.
This suitcase has a clear pane,
he can see right through it.
Things inside slide around.
a black balloon glides by
a swollen knee
bagged platelets
someone else’s bone-marrow
a shaking rattle of inchoate words
Michael carries his case around
just as long as he can.
Then he puts that load down.
O God, he leaves that suitcase
somewhere around.
Margie Bloom has worked as a registered nurse, a massage therapist, and a learning center administrator. Her translation of Apollinaire’s “The Stabbed Dove and the Water Fountain” is in Meade Magazine, and her work also appears in the Magnolia Review and Salamander. She currently resides in Boynton Beach, Florida.
Kevin Ridgeway
Heavy Construction
they drill holes underground
the wooden skeleton and cinder block
spine of a new city hall
it's predecessor a stained, beaten
old fortress of secrets and high rise dreams
to purge downtown of grey scum
murals cast shadows on sleeping bums
fresh water promises of attractive people
keeping off the grass and making copper
wishes in water fountains sprung from
blue prints of a world that wants to bury
all of its ugliness alive.
Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, recent work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, The Cape Rock, Up the River, KYSO Flash, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Misfit Magazine, Suisun Valley Review and Cultural Weekly. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, including On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press, 2014). His latest book is A Ludicrous Split (alongside poems by Gabriel Ricard, Alien Buddha Press, 2018).
they drill holes underground
the wooden skeleton and cinder block
spine of a new city hall
it's predecessor a stained, beaten
old fortress of secrets and high rise dreams
to purge downtown of grey scum
murals cast shadows on sleeping bums
fresh water promises of attractive people
keeping off the grass and making copper
wishes in water fountains sprung from
blue prints of a world that wants to bury
all of its ugliness alive.
Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, CA. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, recent work of his has appeared or is forthcoming in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Plainsongs, The Cape Rock, Up the River, KYSO Flash, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Misfit Magazine, Suisun Valley Review and Cultural Weekly. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, including On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press, 2014). His latest book is A Ludicrous Split (alongside poems by Gabriel Ricard, Alien Buddha Press, 2018).
Ron Stottlemyer
Sentences
The evening bus stutters off
with the twilight, leaving the stillness
to settle things.
Book spread across his chest,
he slumps in the wing-back chair,
looks at roots twisted across his hands.
She stands at the sink drying dishes,
listening to her dead mother,
the towel moving slowly.
Minutes flutter the last few pages
of the day. Loose from the words
that held them, neighbors' voices float
lightly over backyard fences.
Moonless, starless, night comes back
with the story nobody understands.
Ron Stottlemyer lives in Helena, Mt. After a long career of college teaching, he is returning to writing poetry. Recently, he has published in The Alabama Literary Review, The Sow's Ear, Streetlight, The American Journal of Poetry, Stirring, and West Texas Literary Review.
The evening bus stutters off
with the twilight, leaving the stillness
to settle things.
Book spread across his chest,
he slumps in the wing-back chair,
looks at roots twisted across his hands.
She stands at the sink drying dishes,
listening to her dead mother,
the towel moving slowly.
Minutes flutter the last few pages
of the day. Loose from the words
that held them, neighbors' voices float
lightly over backyard fences.
Moonless, starless, night comes back
with the story nobody understands.
Ron Stottlemyer lives in Helena, Mt. After a long career of college teaching, he is returning to writing poetry. Recently, he has published in The Alabama Literary Review, The Sow's Ear, Streetlight, The American Journal of Poetry, Stirring, and West Texas Literary Review.
Joe Mills
What We Got from Gong Meditation
My daughter and I sign up for gong meditation.
Nervously. Unsure what we are getting into.
Others come into the room, lie down, and
start deep breathing. We try not to giggle.
She keeps talking to me. I keep shushing her.
After a brief explanation, the drummer starts
hitting cymbals and gongs and instruments.
I lose a sense of time, a sense of my body.
I float away. I have visions. That’s what I want
to be able to say. It’s what I want to happen,
but it doesn’t. I keep thinking about my body,
thinking of obligations, thinking of poems,
wondering what my daughter is thinking.
Even if it’s nothing, at least she is quiet
for an hour. And I feel an unbearable sense
of failure. Of shallowness. Afterwards
people share their experiences, how they lost
their sense of space, how they saw colors
and rain. I don’t say anything. Afterwards
my daughter hugs me and starts talking again,
and I think this is what I love about her,
this willingness to go somewhere new,
even nowhere at all, and come back, excited.
Lately, we’ve needed a gong to separate us,
like fighters in a ring, so it’s nice to remember
how much we like one another’s company.
“How was it?” someone asks us as we leave.
“Weird,” my daughter says, “weird, but fun.”
A resident of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Joe Mills teaches at the UNC School of the Arts. He has published six collections of poetry with Press 53.
My daughter and I sign up for gong meditation.
Nervously. Unsure what we are getting into.
Others come into the room, lie down, and
start deep breathing. We try not to giggle.
She keeps talking to me. I keep shushing her.
After a brief explanation, the drummer starts
hitting cymbals and gongs and instruments.
I lose a sense of time, a sense of my body.
I float away. I have visions. That’s what I want
to be able to say. It’s what I want to happen,
but it doesn’t. I keep thinking about my body,
thinking of obligations, thinking of poems,
wondering what my daughter is thinking.
Even if it’s nothing, at least she is quiet
for an hour. And I feel an unbearable sense
of failure. Of shallowness. Afterwards
people share their experiences, how they lost
their sense of space, how they saw colors
and rain. I don’t say anything. Afterwards
my daughter hugs me and starts talking again,
and I think this is what I love about her,
this willingness to go somewhere new,
even nowhere at all, and come back, excited.
Lately, we’ve needed a gong to separate us,
like fighters in a ring, so it’s nice to remember
how much we like one another’s company.
“How was it?” someone asks us as we leave.
“Weird,” my daughter says, “weird, but fun.”
A resident of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Joe Mills teaches at the UNC School of the Arts. He has published six collections of poetry with Press 53.
Tara Burke 2 poems
Praise Song
last night at dusk while I was at work and the dogs were chasing mice barking at horses it must
have scurried by the fence or under the old brown farm truck and no one saw it happen then my
lover drove them home and the car filled with a smell like chemical pesticide gasoline and I
came home to find her close to tears scrubbing the smelliest one for the third time in the tub
sniffing her fur trying to figure it out what could it be she asked her eyes are burning what did
they get into did someone spray their fields tonight then her mother texted to say she saw a skunk
scurrying around the horse corral and oh how we laughed phones in our hands ready to call
poison control so back to the tub we went for the right combination of peroxide baking soda dish
soap essential oil oh praise that skunk who sprayed all four dogs who lifted its tail and let loose
its defense against their hungry jaws and oh hell praise too the smell lingering for weeks in their
shiny coats the smell stuck to our tub our couch our sheets yes praise all the stench that won’t
wash out praise the small dark crevices we sniff toward like hungry animals on the hunt for what
we can’t see
last night at dusk while I was at work and the dogs were chasing mice barking at horses it must
have scurried by the fence or under the old brown farm truck and no one saw it happen then my
lover drove them home and the car filled with a smell like chemical pesticide gasoline and I
came home to find her close to tears scrubbing the smelliest one for the third time in the tub
sniffing her fur trying to figure it out what could it be she asked her eyes are burning what did
they get into did someone spray their fields tonight then her mother texted to say she saw a skunk
scurrying around the horse corral and oh how we laughed phones in our hands ready to call
poison control so back to the tub we went for the right combination of peroxide baking soda dish
soap essential oil oh praise that skunk who sprayed all four dogs who lifted its tail and let loose
its defense against their hungry jaws and oh hell praise too the smell lingering for weeks in their
shiny coats the smell stuck to our tub our couch our sheets yes praise all the stench that won’t
wash out praise the small dark crevices we sniff toward like hungry animals on the hunt for what
we can’t see
Before/After
before
I was just a hungry girl
in love with a woman
without a heart
in a fort
made from couch cushions
and old sheets
I hung streamers there
and wrote poems
in the home that was nothing
but a bunker
she was with me but we
were nothing
after
I am something
like a serpent
who can’t quite
shed her skin
it trails behind me
still attached
I slither through
these rough-floored days
I wiggle
I writhe
I trust in yet
I mean
it’s coming off
off despite the pain
Tara Shea Burke is a queer poet from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She served as poetry editor and co-creator for several small literary journals, and is a guest editor and board member for Sinister Wisdom, a Multicultural Lesbian Literature and Arts Journal. Her chapbook Let the Body Beg was published in 2014, and recent poems can be found in Adrienne, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Minola Review, Whale Road Review, and forthcoming from Glass: A Poetry Journal, Rogue Agent, and Yes, Poetry. She has taught in Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. www.tarasheaburke.com
before
I was just a hungry girl
in love with a woman
without a heart
in a fort
made from couch cushions
and old sheets
I hung streamers there
and wrote poems
in the home that was nothing
but a bunker
she was with me but we
were nothing
after
I am something
like a serpent
who can’t quite
shed her skin
it trails behind me
still attached
I slither through
these rough-floored days
I wiggle
I writhe
I trust in yet
I mean
it’s coming off
off despite the pain
Tara Shea Burke is a queer poet from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She served as poetry editor and co-creator for several small literary journals, and is a guest editor and board member for Sinister Wisdom, a Multicultural Lesbian Literature and Arts Journal. Her chapbook Let the Body Beg was published in 2014, and recent poems can be found in Adrienne, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Minola Review, Whale Road Review, and forthcoming from Glass: A Poetry Journal, Rogue Agent, and Yes, Poetry. She has taught in Virginia, New Mexico, and Colorado. www.tarasheaburke.com
Karen Neuberg 2 poems
Stretched Around
I remember myself
opening to receive another time waving at the threshold, quick to understand waiting might be a
glimpse. Calmness settled me until my head filled the ever-changing, amazing, lovely next. I
opened my pale, waited through density with ease, shine, and chrome. I could carry my voice
stretched around flame,
stretched around my daily, aflame with shine and chrome. I opened my pale to attach stars until
my head filled with searching to find moon fragments quivering upon water, answers ever-
changing. I love the girl I used to be, wild, rummaging to understand meaning,
determination in my arms. Holding all reflected,
I remember myself.
(an erasure forward and backwards of my chapbook Myself Taking Stage)
I remember myself
opening to receive another time waving at the threshold, quick to understand waiting might be a
glimpse. Calmness settled me until my head filled the ever-changing, amazing, lovely next. I
opened my pale, waited through density with ease, shine, and chrome. I could carry my voice
stretched around flame,
stretched around my daily, aflame with shine and chrome. I opened my pale to attach stars until
my head filled with searching to find moon fragments quivering upon water, answers ever-
changing. I love the girl I used to be, wild, rummaging to understand meaning,
determination in my arms. Holding all reflected,
I remember myself.
(an erasure forward and backwards of my chapbook Myself Taking Stage)
Summer Light
I dream of the light
in our summer rooms
and the way the rooms called us
to their cupped palms, light emanating
into a quiet that kept me
wanting. I dream I knew then
words that could have taken us
into things as I wanted them.
But, I couldn’t even envision what that was,
I didn’t have the words,
only an abundance of summer light
gently enfolding us, so together--
yet so separate, so private.
Karen Neuberg’s poems and collages appear in numerous journals including 805, Canary, Epigraph Magazine, and Verse Daily. Her latest chapbook is the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
I dream of the light
in our summer rooms
and the way the rooms called us
to their cupped palms, light emanating
into a quiet that kept me
wanting. I dream I knew then
words that could have taken us
into things as I wanted them.
But, I couldn’t even envision what that was,
I didn’t have the words,
only an abundance of summer light
gently enfolding us, so together--
yet so separate, so private.
Karen Neuberg’s poems and collages appear in numerous journals including 805, Canary, Epigraph Magazine, and Verse Daily. Her latest chapbook is the elephants are asking (Glass Lyre Press, 2018). She lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Vivian Wagner 5 poems
Treasure Island
God’s sitting by a beach
bonfire this morning,
smoking a cigarette and
wearing his Carhartt
jacket, because it’s cold
in Florida, goddammit.
If he wanted this kind
of cold he’d have stayed
in Michigan, but whatever.
It’s sunny. At least
the day’s got that
going for it.
God’s sitting by a beach
bonfire this morning,
smoking a cigarette and
wearing his Carhartt
jacket, because it’s cold
in Florida, goddammit.
If he wanted this kind
of cold he’d have stayed
in Michigan, but whatever.
It’s sunny. At least
the day’s got that
going for it.
Déjà
I walked into a knotty-wooded
beach house bedroom
I'd been in before.
I’d seen the seahorse
on the wall, the sun,
and I had a faint
memory of the man,
though I didn’t know
him, didn’t know anything
of this moment beyond
its existence,
its particular cast
of bright-lit shadows,
its promise to return.
I walked into a knotty-wooded
beach house bedroom
I'd been in before.
I’d seen the seahorse
on the wall, the sun,
and I had a faint
memory of the man,
though I didn’t know
him, didn’t know anything
of this moment beyond
its existence,
its particular cast
of bright-lit shadows,
its promise to return.
Matrix
It’s from Latin, according to my copy of The New Illustrated Webster’s Dictionary and The
saurus (1992): womb, breeding animal, mater, matris, mother: that which contains and gives
shape or form to anything, intercellular substance, the formation of cells from which a structure
grows. “Welcome to the matrix,” says someone commenting on a story about an episode of a
1950s Western show, Trackdown, featuring a charlatan named Trump who promises townspeople
that he’ll build a wall to protect them from an impending apocalypse. The enveloping fire will
come at midnight, he says, and only I can protect you. And, watching the YouTube clip, I start to
wonder if the commenter’s right, if we’re living out something that's already happened, that’s
happening still, that’s in our very cells.
It’s from Latin, according to my copy of The New Illustrated Webster’s Dictionary and The
saurus (1992): womb, breeding animal, mater, matris, mother: that which contains and gives
shape or form to anything, intercellular substance, the formation of cells from which a structure
grows. “Welcome to the matrix,” says someone commenting on a story about an episode of a
1950s Western show, Trackdown, featuring a charlatan named Trump who promises townspeople
that he’ll build a wall to protect them from an impending apocalypse. The enveloping fire will
come at midnight, he says, and only I can protect you. And, watching the YouTube clip, I start to
wonder if the commenter’s right, if we’re living out something that's already happened, that’s
happening still, that’s in our very cells.
Conversation with the War
Are you still going on,
in some desert somewhere?
Yes, always.
What is your name these days?
I don’t remember, but
“war” will do.
Do you need any money?
Yes, always.
Are people dying?
I don’t like to talk about that.
But yes.
When will you end?
When the birds fly
home to their nests.
Are you lying?
Yes, always.
Are you still going on,
in some desert somewhere?
Yes, always.
What is your name these days?
I don’t remember, but
“war” will do.
Do you need any money?
Yes, always.
Are people dying?
I don’t like to talk about that.
But yes.
When will you end?
When the birds fly
home to their nests.
Are you lying?
Yes, always.
Wild Things
In the morning, after an insomniac night,
I walk with my dog out along the alley,
watching a squirrel carrying a sweet gum pod,
a rabbit sitting still as stone in the grass,
a leaf blowing in the last of winter’s wind.
The woods here are small, but wilderness
enough, with twisting vines and
branches budding into forgiveness.
Here I find myself, on a journey through
a world creating itself, breathing air just made.
Vivian Wagner Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she teaches English at Muskingum University. She's the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), The Village (Aldrich Press-Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).
In the morning, after an insomniac night,
I walk with my dog out along the alley,
watching a squirrel carrying a sweet gum pod,
a rabbit sitting still as stone in the grass,
a leaf blowing in the last of winter’s wind.
The woods here are small, but wilderness
enough, with twisting vines and
branches budding into forgiveness.
Here I find myself, on a journey through
a world creating itself, breathing air just made.
Vivian Wagner Vivian Wagner lives in New Concord, Ohio, where she teaches English at Muskingum University. She's the author of Fiddle: One Woman, Four Strings, and 8,000 Miles of Music (Citadel-Kensington), The Village (Aldrich Press-Kelsay Books), Making (Origami Poems Project), and Curiosities (Unsolicited Press).
Iris Jamahl Dunkle 3 poems
History of the Indian Wars as Seen from the 1980s
Have you seen the one where the handsome white man comes to the prairie (shiny brass buttons,
blue wool coat with no holes) and tames a wild wolf, a girl gone feral? The sun is always shining;
skies press down blue. How his white teeth glint as he turns the arm of the coffee grinder for his
new native friends (not the face-painted, weapon yielding Pawnee) a softer, gentler tribe who have
put aside his mission (the white pickled egg of a lie he has swallowed as to why he is there) to befriend
him. If you listen closely, you can feel the sound of 10,000 wagons rolling toward them. Over that knoll,
where the camera never pans, eight skinned buffalo rot in the hot sun. The flies are gathering. They will
cloud and rise.
Under a five month beard
the truth quivers
like a caged animal.
Have you seen the one where the handsome white man comes to the prairie (shiny brass buttons,
blue wool coat with no holes) and tames a wild wolf, a girl gone feral? The sun is always shining;
skies press down blue. How his white teeth glint as he turns the arm of the coffee grinder for his
new native friends (not the face-painted, weapon yielding Pawnee) a softer, gentler tribe who have
put aside his mission (the white pickled egg of a lie he has swallowed as to why he is there) to befriend
him. If you listen closely, you can feel the sound of 10,000 wagons rolling toward them. Over that knoll,
where the camera never pans, eight skinned buffalo rot in the hot sun. The flies are gathering. They will
cloud and rise.
Under a five month beard
the truth quivers
like a caged animal.
Field Guide to the Lost Species of California
It’s the small ones that disappear first:
lavender butterflies that once freckled
the greasewood brush, delicate thistles whose ghosts
still sting. Then, we lost what we can gather
with our hands: the kangaroo rat, the white split tail.
Hardly even a meal in that tiny body, but we were hungry
for the dull stare of an empty lake void of any life.
We are the algae that comes, after. The green idea
of want and need. Then, when we settled down
into Missions and tilled the land, and what we conquered
were human bodies: sweat, cornmeal and tallow.
Alta, California, established in 1769, a machine of labor
swallowing everything in its path: aelo usque centrum
“from the sky to the center of the earth”.
It’s the small ones that disappear first:
lavender butterflies that once freckled
the greasewood brush, delicate thistles whose ghosts
still sting. Then, we lost what we can gather
with our hands: the kangaroo rat, the white split tail.
Hardly even a meal in that tiny body, but we were hungry
for the dull stare of an empty lake void of any life.
We are the algae that comes, after. The green idea
of want and need. Then, when we settled down
into Missions and tilled the land, and what we conquered
were human bodies: sweat, cornmeal and tallow.
Alta, California, established in 1769, a machine of labor
swallowing everything in its path: aelo usque centrum
“from the sky to the center of the earth”.
The House [with] Happy Walls
“sometimes empty brackets signify a tear or a worn place.”
from Debths by Susan Howe
Between the rafters weight of old oak sunken
to the depth of memory purple blue.
[It took her twenty years to complete the house.]
Stones carried stacked cells form a new creature
hybrid /hydra Medusa freed from her cave
[When a woman raises her head to meet your eyes, she becomes a monster.]
Each window lead lined Fire and all its possible
stories of erasure shut out.
[She was trying to find a secret passage between the life she once had and ]
Valley settled onto golden haunches
Sun rolled up and down blue powdered sky
[And the life where she’d found herself shipwrecked caught a tide.]
Fountain in dining room floor speaking water.
White dishes once belonging to Robert Lewis Stevenson
bought from the woman with the tattooed face.
[Somehow in the revision they forgot her desk].
Calabashes cover each light fixture to dim the light.
Tapia cloth curtains rustle their stories in the window seats.
[Walls rose. Song birds gathering in the scrub oaks and bays.]
Her voice still strobes sunlight pushing through reach of trees each day.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Interrupted Geographies, is her third collection of poetry. It was featured as the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. Her other books include: Gold Passage (2013) and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air (2015). Her work has been published in San Francisco Chronicle, Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, Women’s Studies and Chicago Quarterly Review. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.
“sometimes empty brackets signify a tear or a worn place.”
from Debths by Susan Howe
Between the rafters weight of old oak sunken
to the depth of memory purple blue.
[It took her twenty years to complete the house.]
Stones carried stacked cells form a new creature
hybrid /hydra Medusa freed from her cave
[When a woman raises her head to meet your eyes, she becomes a monster.]
Each window lead lined Fire and all its possible
stories of erasure shut out.
[She was trying to find a secret passage between the life she once had and ]
Valley settled onto golden haunches
Sun rolled up and down blue powdered sky
[And the life where she’d found herself shipwrecked caught a tide.]
Fountain in dining room floor speaking water.
White dishes once belonging to Robert Lewis Stevenson
bought from the woman with the tattooed face.
[Somehow in the revision they forgot her desk].
Calabashes cover each light fixture to dim the light.
Tapia cloth curtains rustle their stories in the window seats.
[Walls rose. Song birds gathering in the scrub oaks and bays.]
Her voice still strobes sunlight pushing through reach of trees each day.
Iris Jamahl Dunkle was the 2017-2018 Poet Laureate of Sonoma County, CA. Interrupted Geographies, is her third collection of poetry. It was featured as the Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. Her other books include: Gold Passage (2013) and There’s a Ghost in this Machine of Air (2015). Her work has been published in San Francisco Chronicle, Fence, Calyx, Catamaran, Poet’s Market 2013, Women’s Studies and Chicago Quarterly Review. Dunkle teaches at Napa Valley College and is the Poetry Director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.
Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton 3 collaborations
Resurrection Sonnets
"It's not really death if you can return."
John Steppling
My father comes back as a red cardinal.
And my freckled friend, in her last poem,
offers to haunt me after her so-called
untimely death. Why not, I say. Zombies
are scary, but my friend will be more
like Casper. Remember that “friendly ghost?”
Now my mother comes back as a suicide
bomber, complete with trigger and child
welfare services tracking her every move.
My dream book says I am trying to kill
any chance of a long life, choosing
whatever boasts a skull and crossbones--
my bandana, my necklace. My ring tone:
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I spy the Reaper once as I turn blue
from lack of O2. He scythes everything,
including my jeans which he tears at the knee.
A nurse stabs an EpiPen in my thigh,
and I come back as Banksy’s flower bomber
in Jerusalem or Amarillo, my
first stop Publix where I buy carnations
and Mylar balloons to chuck at harassers
who come back as an entire rainforest.
Dream book says: Death in the Afternoon
is trying to make me see I am both
bull and matador, hoof and cape, ole!
Drink three to five of these slowly, it bubbles
and soothes. By nightfall I come back to life.
Nightfall I come back to life—so soothing
the vampire’s kiss seconds before the fangs
sink silky with their myth of immortal life.
Now my cat comes back as a poet, prickly
pear jelly on her toast. See that bicyclist
over there? He was once my caged hamster.
And here is my great grandmother, her re-
fashioned face the face of a manatee.
What about the extinct passenger pigeon?
Can she come back as herself, her species
survive, after all, to upstage texting? Men
feign themselves dead and endure mock funerals.
A new Emerson peeks through the blinds--
all the honking below, God in the exhaust.
It’s exhausting to believe in God.
So many hard won death scenarios.
Andrea Dworkin says God is the ultimate
pornographer—our suffering turns Him on.
But I think he’s a fractal, an evolving
symmetry, and death is impossible,
like squaring a circle. Irrational
numbers like pi promise eternity.
Complex numbers with a zero can be
purely imaginary, like heaven.
I wish I’d learned to play the harp, the angel
sleeves on my gauzy white dress inspiring
politicians to come back as super-
humble heroes and/or Justice Leaguers.
Some beleaguered heroes humbly seek justice
in the afterlife. But what if heaven’s a scam?
Or what if it’s half-finished and it’s our
job to lay the joists and lift the drywall?
The man who installed my kitchen backsplash
died of a heart attack before I could hire
him to fix my soggy walls after Irma.
I wonder if he’ll come back to Florida
as a green (his favorite color) parrot
or a Bismarck palm at Tree World Wholesale.
He better hurry if he plans to make
landfall in our sorrowful sinking state.
Miami, built on landfill, now in hospice,
hears the red dirge of American songbirds.
How many times will we get to try again?
Who will we be when the last sun rises?
"It's not really death if you can return."
John Steppling
My father comes back as a red cardinal.
And my freckled friend, in her last poem,
offers to haunt me after her so-called
untimely death. Why not, I say. Zombies
are scary, but my friend will be more
like Casper. Remember that “friendly ghost?”
Now my mother comes back as a suicide
bomber, complete with trigger and child
welfare services tracking her every move.
My dream book says I am trying to kill
any chance of a long life, choosing
whatever boasts a skull and crossbones--
my bandana, my necklace. My ring tone:
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper.”
I spy the Reaper once as I turn blue
from lack of O2. He scythes everything,
including my jeans which he tears at the knee.
A nurse stabs an EpiPen in my thigh,
and I come back as Banksy’s flower bomber
in Jerusalem or Amarillo, my
first stop Publix where I buy carnations
and Mylar balloons to chuck at harassers
who come back as an entire rainforest.
Dream book says: Death in the Afternoon
is trying to make me see I am both
bull and matador, hoof and cape, ole!
Drink three to five of these slowly, it bubbles
and soothes. By nightfall I come back to life.
Nightfall I come back to life—so soothing
the vampire’s kiss seconds before the fangs
sink silky with their myth of immortal life.
Now my cat comes back as a poet, prickly
pear jelly on her toast. See that bicyclist
over there? He was once my caged hamster.
And here is my great grandmother, her re-
fashioned face the face of a manatee.
What about the extinct passenger pigeon?
Can she come back as herself, her species
survive, after all, to upstage texting? Men
feign themselves dead and endure mock funerals.
A new Emerson peeks through the blinds--
all the honking below, God in the exhaust.
It’s exhausting to believe in God.
So many hard won death scenarios.
Andrea Dworkin says God is the ultimate
pornographer—our suffering turns Him on.
But I think he’s a fractal, an evolving
symmetry, and death is impossible,
like squaring a circle. Irrational
numbers like pi promise eternity.
Complex numbers with a zero can be
purely imaginary, like heaven.
I wish I’d learned to play the harp, the angel
sleeves on my gauzy white dress inspiring
politicians to come back as super-
humble heroes and/or Justice Leaguers.
Some beleaguered heroes humbly seek justice
in the afterlife. But what if heaven’s a scam?
Or what if it’s half-finished and it’s our
job to lay the joists and lift the drywall?
The man who installed my kitchen backsplash
died of a heart attack before I could hire
him to fix my soggy walls after Irma.
I wonder if he’ll come back to Florida
as a green (his favorite color) parrot
or a Bismarck palm at Tree World Wholesale.
He better hurry if he plans to make
landfall in our sorrowful sinking state.
Miami, built on landfill, now in hospice,
hears the red dirge of American songbirds.
How many times will we get to try again?
Who will we be when the last sun rises?
Howl
for America, after AG
America! I’m with you in “Allergy Valley” (PA)
where my husband locks me out of the apartment and I’m so angry I throw
a lawn chair at the door
I’m with you in Aurora (CO)
where my oncologist and I go outside to view the eclipse
I’m with you in the Bronx
where I get into trouble performing a poem about racism and the patriarchy
I’m with you in the Berkshires
where I step out a movie theater to see a bear and her cub on the sidewalk
I’m with you in Cleveland
where Tamir holds a toy gun and is killed with a real one
I’m with you in Croton-on-Hudson
where I find Hansberry’s grave in the pouring rain
I’m with you in Dollywood
where I have my picture taken with Dolly’s cousin who looks just like
I imagine Dolly would if she hadn’t had plastic surgery
I’m with you in Denny’s
where Julie and I contemplate ordering from the “baconalia” menu (i.e.
a caramel sundae topped with bacon)
I’m with you on the East Side (Lower)
where I sleep in a loft bed with a desk and typewriter underneath,
and wake to shower in a stall in the kitchen
I’m with you on Eubank Blvd. (ABQ)
where six lanes of traffic come to a complete stop for a scared Chihuahua
I’m with you on Fullerton (CHI)
where Our Lady of the Underpass appears below I-95 and Tanya Saracho
writes a play about her
I’m with you in Flint
where toxic water flows from the faucet
I’m with you in the Grand Hyatt Hotel (NYC)
where Richard McDonald is served the ceremonial 50 billionth McDonald’s
hamburger in 1984
I’m with you in Greenwich Village (NYC)
where I buy my first vibrator at the Pink Pussycat Boutique
I’m with you in Harvey
where a hawk seeks refuge in William Bruso’s cab and nine trillion gallons
of rain fall on Houston
I’m with you in Harvey
where a disturbing creature (a fangtooth snake-eel?) washes up on a beach in
Texas City
I’m with you in Irma
where I spy you with my enormous eye (September 6, 2017)
I’m with you in Irma
where I evacuate with John and Cindy, where we wait in gas lines one hundred
cars long, where we are not sure we’ll have homes to which we can return
(September 9, 2017)
I’m with you in Jensen Beach (FL)
where I find a dead baby loggerhead and bury it deep in the sand
I’m with you in Jersey
where Ginsberg is born and so am I
I'm with you in Kansas City (both Kansas and Missouri)
where I break my vegetarian diet with BBQ twice
I’m with you in Kivalina (AK)
where the city is melting
I'm with you in LA
where I eat a fig off a tree
I’m with you in Lincoln Square (CHI)
where Cobalt gives me my first tattoo and hers: a 3-hour sunflower
I’m with you in Mingo Park (OH)
where I listen to Prince on my iPod
I’m with you in Memphis
where Martin Luther King is shot in the Lorraine Hotel as ducks roam the lobby
of the Peabody
I’m with you in Nebraska
where Malcolm X is born, and where the largest porch swing in the world holds
twenty-five Nebraskans
I’m with you in Newport
where tourists visit the mansions and Cliff Walk
I’m with you in Oklahoma
where the earth is red
I’m with you in Orange County
where all good Republicans go to die—or so thinks Ronald Reagan
I’m with you in the Panhandle
where meth labs flourish and sometimes explode
I’m with you in Providence
where I buy medical marijuana for my mother
I’m with you in Quest Diagnostics
where I get my blood work done year after year
I’m with you in Queens
where I write this line: “Only Olive owned ostentatious orgasms;
the puerile position of pomp belonged to Popeye.”
I’m with you in Riverdale
where I live in a studio with my daughter and my lover builds a loft for her
and we all feel rich
I’m with you in Revere Beach (MA)
where my boyfriend tells me he is gay and I try to convince him he’s not
I’m with you in Seattle
where I ride the “Great Wheel” with Jay and Kristine
I’m with you in St. Louis
where my sister leaves their Christianity for her own
I’m with you in Tucson
where I learn to make sun tea
I’m with you in TGIF
where my Cobb salad is so huge my friend from England is sure it is for the
whole table to share
I’m with you in Utah
where I contemplate a leap from the Tower of Babel
I’m with you in Uxbridge (MA)
where, at the Southwick Zoo, my sister is accosted by a goat who puts his
hooves on her tiny shoulders when she freezes, afraid to feed him a paper cup
of goat food
I’m with you in Venice (FL)
where the sand is black from crushed bones of the Pleistocene
I’m with you in Venice (CA)
where Tom gets sober and rides across country on his putt putt motorcycle
and we fly down the West Side Highway at midnight
I’m with you Woonsocket
where I spend a summer working in the Coby Glass factory making Christmas
ornaments
I’m with you in Wrigleyville
where I watch a Cubs game from a beloved poet’s porch
I’m with you in the XXX movie theater the Roxy
where my friend sells tickets, where I only go as far as the lobby to return the
sweater I borrowed
I’m with you in Xanadu (the American movie)
where we eat popcorn as Olivia Newton John transforms into an ‘80’s
Terpsichore, one of the nine muses, on rollerskates
I’m with you in Yellowstone
where bear where moose where wolverine and lynx
I’m with you in Youngstown
where, in a hotel halfway between Chicago and New York, we hear
the Rodney King verdict and cry ourselves to sleep
I’m with you in Zion National Park
where the name, Mukuntuweap, is changed in 1918 because the NPS
thinks visitors won’t visit the park if they can’t pronounce it
I’m with you in the Zuni Pueblo (NM)
where the world is divided into six directions: north, west, south, east, above,
and below
for America, after AG
America! I’m with you in “Allergy Valley” (PA)
where my husband locks me out of the apartment and I’m so angry I throw
a lawn chair at the door
I’m with you in Aurora (CO)
where my oncologist and I go outside to view the eclipse
I’m with you in the Bronx
where I get into trouble performing a poem about racism and the patriarchy
I’m with you in the Berkshires
where I step out a movie theater to see a bear and her cub on the sidewalk
I’m with you in Cleveland
where Tamir holds a toy gun and is killed with a real one
I’m with you in Croton-on-Hudson
where I find Hansberry’s grave in the pouring rain
I’m with you in Dollywood
where I have my picture taken with Dolly’s cousin who looks just like
I imagine Dolly would if she hadn’t had plastic surgery
I’m with you in Denny’s
where Julie and I contemplate ordering from the “baconalia” menu (i.e.
a caramel sundae topped with bacon)
I’m with you on the East Side (Lower)
where I sleep in a loft bed with a desk and typewriter underneath,
and wake to shower in a stall in the kitchen
I’m with you on Eubank Blvd. (ABQ)
where six lanes of traffic come to a complete stop for a scared Chihuahua
I’m with you on Fullerton (CHI)
where Our Lady of the Underpass appears below I-95 and Tanya Saracho
writes a play about her
I’m with you in Flint
where toxic water flows from the faucet
I’m with you in the Grand Hyatt Hotel (NYC)
where Richard McDonald is served the ceremonial 50 billionth McDonald’s
hamburger in 1984
I’m with you in Greenwich Village (NYC)
where I buy my first vibrator at the Pink Pussycat Boutique
I’m with you in Harvey
where a hawk seeks refuge in William Bruso’s cab and nine trillion gallons
of rain fall on Houston
I’m with you in Harvey
where a disturbing creature (a fangtooth snake-eel?) washes up on a beach in
Texas City
I’m with you in Irma
where I spy you with my enormous eye (September 6, 2017)
I’m with you in Irma
where I evacuate with John and Cindy, where we wait in gas lines one hundred
cars long, where we are not sure we’ll have homes to which we can return
(September 9, 2017)
I’m with you in Jensen Beach (FL)
where I find a dead baby loggerhead and bury it deep in the sand
I’m with you in Jersey
where Ginsberg is born and so am I
I'm with you in Kansas City (both Kansas and Missouri)
where I break my vegetarian diet with BBQ twice
I’m with you in Kivalina (AK)
where the city is melting
I'm with you in LA
where I eat a fig off a tree
I’m with you in Lincoln Square (CHI)
where Cobalt gives me my first tattoo and hers: a 3-hour sunflower
I’m with you in Mingo Park (OH)
where I listen to Prince on my iPod
I’m with you in Memphis
where Martin Luther King is shot in the Lorraine Hotel as ducks roam the lobby
of the Peabody
I’m with you in Nebraska
where Malcolm X is born, and where the largest porch swing in the world holds
twenty-five Nebraskans
I’m with you in Newport
where tourists visit the mansions and Cliff Walk
I’m with you in Oklahoma
where the earth is red
I’m with you in Orange County
where all good Republicans go to die—or so thinks Ronald Reagan
I’m with you in the Panhandle
where meth labs flourish and sometimes explode
I’m with you in Providence
where I buy medical marijuana for my mother
I’m with you in Quest Diagnostics
where I get my blood work done year after year
I’m with you in Queens
where I write this line: “Only Olive owned ostentatious orgasms;
the puerile position of pomp belonged to Popeye.”
I’m with you in Riverdale
where I live in a studio with my daughter and my lover builds a loft for her
and we all feel rich
I’m with you in Revere Beach (MA)
where my boyfriend tells me he is gay and I try to convince him he’s not
I’m with you in Seattle
where I ride the “Great Wheel” with Jay and Kristine
I’m with you in St. Louis
where my sister leaves their Christianity for her own
I’m with you in Tucson
where I learn to make sun tea
I’m with you in TGIF
where my Cobb salad is so huge my friend from England is sure it is for the
whole table to share
I’m with you in Utah
where I contemplate a leap from the Tower of Babel
I’m with you in Uxbridge (MA)
where, at the Southwick Zoo, my sister is accosted by a goat who puts his
hooves on her tiny shoulders when she freezes, afraid to feed him a paper cup
of goat food
I’m with you in Venice (FL)
where the sand is black from crushed bones of the Pleistocene
I’m with you in Venice (CA)
where Tom gets sober and rides across country on his putt putt motorcycle
and we fly down the West Side Highway at midnight
I’m with you Woonsocket
where I spend a summer working in the Coby Glass factory making Christmas
ornaments
I’m with you in Wrigleyville
where I watch a Cubs game from a beloved poet’s porch
I’m with you in the XXX movie theater the Roxy
where my friend sells tickets, where I only go as far as the lobby to return the
sweater I borrowed
I’m with you in Xanadu (the American movie)
where we eat popcorn as Olivia Newton John transforms into an ‘80’s
Terpsichore, one of the nine muses, on rollerskates
I’m with you in Yellowstone
where bear where moose where wolverine and lynx
I’m with you in Youngstown
where, in a hotel halfway between Chicago and New York, we hear
the Rodney King verdict and cry ourselves to sleep
I’m with you in Zion National Park
where the name, Mukuntuweap, is changed in 1918 because the NPS
thinks visitors won’t visit the park if they can’t pronounce it
I’m with you in the Zuni Pueblo (NM)
where the world is divided into six directions: north, west, south, east, above,
and below
Stages Sestina
Many of the “stages” of the dying described in the book have been subsequently simplified and publicly caricatured beyond recognition.
—Elizabeth Kübler Ross
Although a fat kid, I was in denial
that each sweet bite of cake soothed my anger.
Plus, who would listen to a weakly bargaining
7-year-old with an almost sacred depression
and love of the sacraments? Accepting
the host, I swallowed Christ, the altar a stage
for saints and martyrs in gruesome stages
of self-sacrifice and earthly denial,
like fasting. I wanted pancakes, acceptance
on the playground where my doppelgänger
flitted and flew among the less depressed
with their free and easy flare for making bargains—
trading seeded grapes for an orange. Bargaining
with God was harder. Death always upstaged
depression, although at seven, depression
resembled gruesome fairy tales where Denial
and Projection arm-wrestled for Danger--
poor granny eaten by the wolf. I accepted
her feral fate and my own hooded acceptance
propelled me further through the forest, bargaining
not for eternal life, but for a life where strangers
weren’t always going to take me hostage
or, if they did manage to paw me, I’d not deny
the bold innocence of a girl child pressed
like a flower in a book. Depression
is “anger turned inward” say shrinks who accept
so much more than we’re willing to reveal. Denial
may be a river in Egypt, but a smart bargain
hunter will kayak down River Styx, upstaging
others newly dead, handing Charon her groupon. Anger
expressed isn’t the only way for a species to endanger
itself. We could stuff the gall down, repress
each slight like an understudy seething backstage
as the star bows, all that clapping an acceptance
or a slap. Of all the stages of death, bargaining
seems most likely to fail, whereas denial
can whisk you away in a stage-coach, an accepted
vehicle for escaping depression. Sly bargainers,
don’t be too pissed off when your passport says denied.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015).
Maureen Seaton has authored numerous poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Fisher (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her awards for poetry include the Lambda Literary, NEA, and Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls(University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, 2018), also garnered a Lammy. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
Many of the “stages” of the dying described in the book have been subsequently simplified and publicly caricatured beyond recognition.
—Elizabeth Kübler Ross
Although a fat kid, I was in denial
that each sweet bite of cake soothed my anger.
Plus, who would listen to a weakly bargaining
7-year-old with an almost sacred depression
and love of the sacraments? Accepting
the host, I swallowed Christ, the altar a stage
for saints and martyrs in gruesome stages
of self-sacrifice and earthly denial,
like fasting. I wanted pancakes, acceptance
on the playground where my doppelgänger
flitted and flew among the less depressed
with their free and easy flare for making bargains—
trading seeded grapes for an orange. Bargaining
with God was harder. Death always upstaged
depression, although at seven, depression
resembled gruesome fairy tales where Denial
and Projection arm-wrestled for Danger--
poor granny eaten by the wolf. I accepted
her feral fate and my own hooded acceptance
propelled me further through the forest, bargaining
not for eternal life, but for a life where strangers
weren’t always going to take me hostage
or, if they did manage to paw me, I’d not deny
the bold innocence of a girl child pressed
like a flower in a book. Depression
is “anger turned inward” say shrinks who accept
so much more than we’re willing to reveal. Denial
may be a river in Egypt, but a smart bargain
hunter will kayak down River Styx, upstaging
others newly dead, handing Charon her groupon. Anger
expressed isn’t the only way for a species to endanger
itself. We could stuff the gall down, repress
each slight like an understudy seething backstage
as the star bows, all that clapping an acceptance
or a slap. Of all the stages of death, bargaining
seems most likely to fail, whereas denial
can whisk you away in a stage-coach, an accepted
vehicle for escaping depression. Sly bargainers,
don’t be too pissed off when your passport says denied.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Scald (Pittsburgh, 2017). Blowout (Pittsburgh, 2013) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She and Maureen Seaton have co-authored four collections, the most recent of which is CAPRICE (Collaborations: Collected, Uncollected, and New) (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2015).
Maureen Seaton has authored numerous poetry collections, both solo and collaborative—most recently, Fisher (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Her awards for poetry include the Lambda Literary, NEA, and Pushcart. Her memoir, Sex Talks to Girls(University of Wisconsin Press, 2010, 2018), also garnered a Lammy. She is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Miami.
Inna Kabysh
Translator’s Note for “Children’s Resurrection Day” by Inna Kabysh
by Katherine E. Young
In a 2004 review, literary critic and poet Kirill Ankudinov describes Russian poet Inna Kabysh first and foremost as a metaphysical poet: “The core, the essence of her metaphysics is found in several simple words: children, pain, love, home, God. In precisely that order. And no other.” No poem by Kabysh better fits that description than “Children’s Resurrection Day,” which is part of the forthcoming Blue Birds and Red Horses (Toad Press, summer 2018), the first collection of Kabysh’s narrative poems to appear in English translation. The poem’s subject matter is an emotional (and literary) minefield: a young child arrives at an unspecified Soviet institution that over the course of the poem reveals itself to be an orphanage for the souls of aborted children (abortion was the only means of birth control widely available to women during much of the Soviet period). And not just any orphanage: the word “Hell” is inscribed on the building, and the children are at one point told to “Abandon all clothes, ye who enter here.” In short, we are in Dante’s Inferno experiencing hell through the eyes of a child. A lesser poet would have run screaming from the room, but Kabysh, who explicitly evokes Dante in much of her work, simply rolls up her sleeves. Even in hell, the child narrator’s world revolves around burnt kasha, a stale bublik (a dense, chewy round baked from dough that somewhat resembles a bagel), a stray cat, and a mysterious janitor who doesn’t care much for authority, let alone cleaning. The poem turns on the fact that the Russian word for “Sunday” (воскресенье) differs from the word for “resurrection” (воскресение) by just one letter and is itself sometimes used to mean “resurrection.” And what constitutes resurrection in this universe? For the children in this poem, resurrection takes place in the aptly named Children’s World, the premier Moscow shopping destination for all things child-related during the Soviet era. In the poem, the real-life Children’s World is evoked not as a symbol of consumerism, but of Soviet reverence for the kind of happy childhood that was so elusive during the turbulent twentieth century. Children, pain, love, home, God: few poets get even one of these right, and even fewer get all of them right. Inna Kabysh is a poet to savor; this poem is one of her gems.
Children’s Resurrection Day
“I don’t want to go into that inferno,” I cried,
but the lady in white said,
“Well, I never!”—not a person, but a Ukrainian,
and you can never understand these Ukies,
though all their words are like ours,
and she led me into a big room
where there were many little beds,
and it was rest time.
Though no one was really resting in peace
because as soon as the lady in white left,
they said in a whisper from the neighboring bed
that afternoon snack here was always bubliki
and that no one would pick us up at night,
not because it was a boarding school,
but because we’d been killed--
and that at night I’d sleep here again
and that we should be friends,
it was necessary to live somehow
if you’d been killed
because the janitor Fyodorov said
Resurrection Day was coming soon.
And when we went out to play after snack,
we found a bublik on the porch--
and, though it was very hard,
we hid it in a pocket,
but later decided to hide it better
so it couldn’t be found by the director,
who leaned out the window
and shouted at the janitor Fyodorov
to nail up the missing letter “o”
in the word “Hello!” by the entrance door
because inspectors would come,
and this didn’t look like a children’s institution,
but the devil knows what.
And the janitor Fyodorov swept the fallen leaves by the porch
and grumbled that he didn’t need to nail anything,
it was autumn, anyway,
and that “o” had vanished into thin air,
though all the time it was rolling around underfoot….
And we went into the far corner of the yard
where a cat lived in a pipe,
and the cat’s bowl was so empty
that we gave her our bublik,
but she didn’t take it--
she sniffed it and didn’t take it,
and we thought it would be better to keep it for ourselves anyway
and buried it by the fence.
And when we came back
and walked through the corridor near the director’s office,
we heard her saying on the phone
that that Fyodorov should be fired
“because he’s become utterly insolent
and, not only that, he doesn’t do his job
and also demands Sundays off
and, really, it’s been explained to him in plain Russian
that Sunday is Parents’ Day, yes,
but our cohort are victims of abortion--
if we had Parents’ Day here on Sunday,
no one would come for them anyway--
we work without a day off and,
yes, of course, I simply have no other choice
besides the gates,
and I’ll lock them up
so no Fyodorov can open them!”
Choking with insult
and smearing the tears with our fists,
we flew to the janitor’s lodge
and right away cried
that we knew why the director had cancelled
the day off:
her husband had left her--
who wanted to go home to an empty apartment?--
and now there wouldn’t be any Resurrection Day
because the director had the key!
And the janitor Fyodorov listened to us
and said calmly
that she should sleep with her key,
if she had no one else to sleep with,
and that we should come back after lights out.
And we ran to the dining room
where, like always, it smelled of slightly burned kasha
and then to the changing room,
over the entrance to which, we knew,
was written:
“Abandon all clothes, ye who enter here”
and though we didn’t know what was meant by “ye,”
we left our clothes there
and darted under the blankets
because the director stood in the doorway with the key.
And when the director fell asleep with the key,
we crawled out and tiptoed down to the janitor’s lodge.
“Is it okay that we’re naked?” we asked,
and the janitor Fyodorov answered that it was okay
because Resurrection Day was very near
and, if not by means of a key, then by digging,
and he took a big spade
and gave us metal dustpans--
and we went out into the yard.
And there the janitor Fyodorov remarked
that though Resurrection Day was near,
it wouldn’t be a bad thing to take a few provisions,
and we cried that we had provisions
and ran to the fence,
and the janitor Fyodorov followed us,
and when we dug up our bublik,
he said, aha, in that case
we’d let this mark the start
and began to dig.
And the cat looked at us from the pipe,
and her eyes burned like two flashlights.
But soon it became entirely dark,
apparently the cat had gone to sleep,
and the janitor Fyodorov said
that we shouldn’t be frightened,
but should repeat after him:
“We form a line that’s long and true,
we’re looking for the bird of blue,
pam-para-pam,
pam-para-pam”
and dug further.
And we repeated:
“Pam-para-pam,
pam-para-pam”
and weren’t afraid.
And then he hit the shovel on something made of iron,
opened a lid above his head
and, pulling himself up by his hands, crawled out--
and pulled us out.
The blue birds,
rose-colored elephants,
and red horses looked at us tenderly.
The sun shone.
And the janitor Fyodorov said that this was Children’s World
and we could take all we wanted.
And we took the most beautiful doll
and the biggest car.
We sat the doll in the car
and gave her our bublik.
And the doll sat in the car,
nibbling the bublik and smiling.
And we pulled the car by its rope
and no one got upset
because, as the janitor Fyodorov explained,
it was Resurrection Day,
and Resurrection Day is no parental Sunday,
but a day when children meet their own
childhood
because Resurrection Day
isn’t when you meet others,
it’s when you meet yourself.
Детское воскресение
– Не хочу в это пекло идти,—заплакала я,
а тётенька в белом сказала,
что это ж надо, не человек, а уже хохол,
и что у этих хохлов никогда ничего не поймёшь,
хотя все слова у них вроде наших,
и повела меня в большую комнату,
где стояло много маленьких кроватей
и был мёртвый час.
Но не такой уж он был и мёртвый,
потому что, как только тётенька в белом ушла,
из соседней кровати шёпотом сказали,
что на полдник здесь всегда бублики,
а вечером нас не заберут:
не потому, что это пятидневка,
а потому, что нас убили,
и чтобы вечером я опять ложилась сюда,
и давай будем дружить,
надо же как-то жить,
если тебя убили,
потому что дворник Фёдоров говорит,
что скоро воскресение.
А когда после полдника мы пошли гулять,
то нашли на крыльце бублик, --
и, хотя он был очень твёрдый,
мы спрятали его в карман,
но потом решили спрятать подальше,
чтобы не нашла заведующая,
которая высунулась из окна
и закричала дворнику Фёдорову,
чтобы он прибил отлетевшую букву «С»
в слове «САД» у входной двери,
а то придут проверяющие,
а у нас не детское учреждение,
а чёрт знает что…
А дворник Фёдоров мёл у крыльца облетевшие листья
и ворчал, что чего его прибивать,
всё равно осень,
и что эта буква как сквозь землю провалилась,
хотя всё время валялась под ногами…
А мы пошли в дальний угол двора,
где в трубе жила кошка,
и миска у кошки была такая пустая,
что мы дали ей наш бублик,
но она не стала:
понюхала и не стала,
и мы подумали, что нам же лучше,
и закопали его у забора.
А когда мы вернулись
и проходили по коридору мимо кабинета заведующей,
мы услышали, как она говорит по телефону,
что этого Фёдорова надо уволить,
потому что он совсем обнаглел
и мало того что не исполняет своих обязанностей,
так ещё требует воскресенья,
а ведь ему русским языком было сказано,
что воскресенье—родительский день,
а наш контингент—жертвы аборта:
если здесь и устроить воскресенье,
за ними всё равно никто не придёт, --
что мы работаем без выходных
и что да, конечно, у меня просто нет другого выхода,
кроме ворот,
и я их запру на замок,
так что никакой Фёдоров не откроет…
Задыхаясь от обиды
и размазывая слёзы кулаками,
мы влетели в дворницкую
и с порога закричали,
что мы-то знаем, почему заведующая отменила
выходной:
от неё муж ушел, --
кому ж охота идти в пустую квартиру, --
и что теперь воскресения не будет,
потому что ключ у заведующей…
А дворник Фёдоров выслушал нас
и спокойно сказал,
что пусть она спит со своим ключом,
если ей больше не с кем,
а чтобы мы приходили после отбоя.
И мы побежали в столовую,
где, как всегда, пахло подгоревшей кашей,
а потом в раздевалку,
над входом в которую, мы знали,
было написано:
оставь одежду всяк, --
и, хотя мы не знали, что такое «всяк»,
мы оставили,
потому что в дверях стояла заведующая с ключом,
и шмыгнули под одеяло.
А когда заведующая с ключом заснула,
вылезли и на цыпочках пошли в дворницкую.
– Ничего, что мы без ничего?—спросили мы,
а дворник Фёдоров сказал, что нормально,
потому что воскресение совсем близко
и что не ключом, так копаньем,
и взял большую лопату,
а нам выдал совки, --
и мы вышли во двор.
И тут дворник Фёдоров заметил,
что хоть оно и близко,
не мешало бы захватить какие-нибудь харчи,
и мы закричали, что у нас есть харчи,
и побежали к забору,
а дворник Фёдоров пошёл за нами,
и когда мы откопали наш бублик,
сказал, что ага, и раз так,
то пусть здесь и будет «старт»,
и стал копать.
А кошка смотрела на нас из трубы,
и её глаза горели, как два фонарика.
Но скоро стало совсем темно,
видно, кошка ушла спать,
и дворник Фёдоров сказал,
чтобы мы не боялись,
а повторяли за ним:
Мы длинной вереницей
идём за синей птицей,
пам-пара-пам,
пам-пара-пам, --
и копал дальше.
И мы повторяли:
Пам-пара-пам,
пам-пара-пам, --
и не боялись.
А потом он ударил лопатой во что-то железное,
открыл над головой крышку
и, подтянувшись на руках, вылез --
и вытащил нас.
Синие птицы,
розовые слоны
и красные кони смотрели на нас как на родных.
Сияло солнце.
И дворник Фёдоров сказал, что это Детский Мир
и мы можем взять всё что хотим.
И мы взяли самую красивую куклу
и самую большую машину.
Мы посадили куклу в машину
и дали ей наш бублик.
И кукла сидела в машине,
грызла бублик и улыбалась.
А мы везли машину за веревочку
и никому не мешали,
потому что, как объяснил дворник Федоров,
это было воскресение
и что воскресение вовсе не родительский день,
а день, когда дети встречаются со своим детством,
потому что воскресение --
это не когда каждый встречается с другим,
а когда каждый встречается с собой.
Inna Kabysh is the author of seven collections of poetry. She was born in Moscow in 1963. Her first collection, Lichnye trudnosti, was awarded the 1996 Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Fund; she has also won the 2005 Anton Delwig Prize; the 2014 Moskovsky schet Prize; the 2016 Anna Akhmatova Prize; and the 2016 Deti Ra Prize. Her poetry appears in Tupelo Quarterly, Trafika Europe, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Subtropics, and others.
Poet and translator Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards, and two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Subtropics, and others. Young is also the translator of Farewell, Aylis by Azerbaijani political prisoner Akram Aylisli and Two Poems by Inna Kabysh. Young was named a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow and currently serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia. http://katherine-young-poet.com/
by Katherine E. Young
In a 2004 review, literary critic and poet Kirill Ankudinov describes Russian poet Inna Kabysh first and foremost as a metaphysical poet: “The core, the essence of her metaphysics is found in several simple words: children, pain, love, home, God. In precisely that order. And no other.” No poem by Kabysh better fits that description than “Children’s Resurrection Day,” which is part of the forthcoming Blue Birds and Red Horses (Toad Press, summer 2018), the first collection of Kabysh’s narrative poems to appear in English translation. The poem’s subject matter is an emotional (and literary) minefield: a young child arrives at an unspecified Soviet institution that over the course of the poem reveals itself to be an orphanage for the souls of aborted children (abortion was the only means of birth control widely available to women during much of the Soviet period). And not just any orphanage: the word “Hell” is inscribed on the building, and the children are at one point told to “Abandon all clothes, ye who enter here.” In short, we are in Dante’s Inferno experiencing hell through the eyes of a child. A lesser poet would have run screaming from the room, but Kabysh, who explicitly evokes Dante in much of her work, simply rolls up her sleeves. Even in hell, the child narrator’s world revolves around burnt kasha, a stale bublik (a dense, chewy round baked from dough that somewhat resembles a bagel), a stray cat, and a mysterious janitor who doesn’t care much for authority, let alone cleaning. The poem turns on the fact that the Russian word for “Sunday” (воскресенье) differs from the word for “resurrection” (воскресение) by just one letter and is itself sometimes used to mean “resurrection.” And what constitutes resurrection in this universe? For the children in this poem, resurrection takes place in the aptly named Children’s World, the premier Moscow shopping destination for all things child-related during the Soviet era. In the poem, the real-life Children’s World is evoked not as a symbol of consumerism, but of Soviet reverence for the kind of happy childhood that was so elusive during the turbulent twentieth century. Children, pain, love, home, God: few poets get even one of these right, and even fewer get all of them right. Inna Kabysh is a poet to savor; this poem is one of her gems.
Children’s Resurrection Day
“I don’t want to go into that inferno,” I cried,
but the lady in white said,
“Well, I never!”—not a person, but a Ukrainian,
and you can never understand these Ukies,
though all their words are like ours,
and she led me into a big room
where there were many little beds,
and it was rest time.
Though no one was really resting in peace
because as soon as the lady in white left,
they said in a whisper from the neighboring bed
that afternoon snack here was always bubliki
and that no one would pick us up at night,
not because it was a boarding school,
but because we’d been killed--
and that at night I’d sleep here again
and that we should be friends,
it was necessary to live somehow
if you’d been killed
because the janitor Fyodorov said
Resurrection Day was coming soon.
And when we went out to play after snack,
we found a bublik on the porch--
and, though it was very hard,
we hid it in a pocket,
but later decided to hide it better
so it couldn’t be found by the director,
who leaned out the window
and shouted at the janitor Fyodorov
to nail up the missing letter “o”
in the word “Hello!” by the entrance door
because inspectors would come,
and this didn’t look like a children’s institution,
but the devil knows what.
And the janitor Fyodorov swept the fallen leaves by the porch
and grumbled that he didn’t need to nail anything,
it was autumn, anyway,
and that “o” had vanished into thin air,
though all the time it was rolling around underfoot….
And we went into the far corner of the yard
where a cat lived in a pipe,
and the cat’s bowl was so empty
that we gave her our bublik,
but she didn’t take it--
she sniffed it and didn’t take it,
and we thought it would be better to keep it for ourselves anyway
and buried it by the fence.
And when we came back
and walked through the corridor near the director’s office,
we heard her saying on the phone
that that Fyodorov should be fired
“because he’s become utterly insolent
and, not only that, he doesn’t do his job
and also demands Sundays off
and, really, it’s been explained to him in plain Russian
that Sunday is Parents’ Day, yes,
but our cohort are victims of abortion--
if we had Parents’ Day here on Sunday,
no one would come for them anyway--
we work without a day off and,
yes, of course, I simply have no other choice
besides the gates,
and I’ll lock them up
so no Fyodorov can open them!”
Choking with insult
and smearing the tears with our fists,
we flew to the janitor’s lodge
and right away cried
that we knew why the director had cancelled
the day off:
her husband had left her--
who wanted to go home to an empty apartment?--
and now there wouldn’t be any Resurrection Day
because the director had the key!
And the janitor Fyodorov listened to us
and said calmly
that she should sleep with her key,
if she had no one else to sleep with,
and that we should come back after lights out.
And we ran to the dining room
where, like always, it smelled of slightly burned kasha
and then to the changing room,
over the entrance to which, we knew,
was written:
“Abandon all clothes, ye who enter here”
and though we didn’t know what was meant by “ye,”
we left our clothes there
and darted under the blankets
because the director stood in the doorway with the key.
And when the director fell asleep with the key,
we crawled out and tiptoed down to the janitor’s lodge.
“Is it okay that we’re naked?” we asked,
and the janitor Fyodorov answered that it was okay
because Resurrection Day was very near
and, if not by means of a key, then by digging,
and he took a big spade
and gave us metal dustpans--
and we went out into the yard.
And there the janitor Fyodorov remarked
that though Resurrection Day was near,
it wouldn’t be a bad thing to take a few provisions,
and we cried that we had provisions
and ran to the fence,
and the janitor Fyodorov followed us,
and when we dug up our bublik,
he said, aha, in that case
we’d let this mark the start
and began to dig.
And the cat looked at us from the pipe,
and her eyes burned like two flashlights.
But soon it became entirely dark,
apparently the cat had gone to sleep,
and the janitor Fyodorov said
that we shouldn’t be frightened,
but should repeat after him:
“We form a line that’s long and true,
we’re looking for the bird of blue,
pam-para-pam,
pam-para-pam”
and dug further.
And we repeated:
“Pam-para-pam,
pam-para-pam”
and weren’t afraid.
And then he hit the shovel on something made of iron,
opened a lid above his head
and, pulling himself up by his hands, crawled out--
and pulled us out.
The blue birds,
rose-colored elephants,
and red horses looked at us tenderly.
The sun shone.
And the janitor Fyodorov said that this was Children’s World
and we could take all we wanted.
And we took the most beautiful doll
and the biggest car.
We sat the doll in the car
and gave her our bublik.
And the doll sat in the car,
nibbling the bublik and smiling.
And we pulled the car by its rope
and no one got upset
because, as the janitor Fyodorov explained,
it was Resurrection Day,
and Resurrection Day is no parental Sunday,
but a day when children meet their own
childhood
because Resurrection Day
isn’t when you meet others,
it’s when you meet yourself.
Детское воскресение
– Не хочу в это пекло идти,—заплакала я,
а тётенька в белом сказала,
что это ж надо, не человек, а уже хохол,
и что у этих хохлов никогда ничего не поймёшь,
хотя все слова у них вроде наших,
и повела меня в большую комнату,
где стояло много маленьких кроватей
и был мёртвый час.
Но не такой уж он был и мёртвый,
потому что, как только тётенька в белом ушла,
из соседней кровати шёпотом сказали,
что на полдник здесь всегда бублики,
а вечером нас не заберут:
не потому, что это пятидневка,
а потому, что нас убили,
и чтобы вечером я опять ложилась сюда,
и давай будем дружить,
надо же как-то жить,
если тебя убили,
потому что дворник Фёдоров говорит,
что скоро воскресение.
А когда после полдника мы пошли гулять,
то нашли на крыльце бублик, --
и, хотя он был очень твёрдый,
мы спрятали его в карман,
но потом решили спрятать подальше,
чтобы не нашла заведующая,
которая высунулась из окна
и закричала дворнику Фёдорову,
чтобы он прибил отлетевшую букву «С»
в слове «САД» у входной двери,
а то придут проверяющие,
а у нас не детское учреждение,
а чёрт знает что…
А дворник Фёдоров мёл у крыльца облетевшие листья
и ворчал, что чего его прибивать,
всё равно осень,
и что эта буква как сквозь землю провалилась,
хотя всё время валялась под ногами…
А мы пошли в дальний угол двора,
где в трубе жила кошка,
и миска у кошки была такая пустая,
что мы дали ей наш бублик,
но она не стала:
понюхала и не стала,
и мы подумали, что нам же лучше,
и закопали его у забора.
А когда мы вернулись
и проходили по коридору мимо кабинета заведующей,
мы услышали, как она говорит по телефону,
что этого Фёдорова надо уволить,
потому что он совсем обнаглел
и мало того что не исполняет своих обязанностей,
так ещё требует воскресенья,
а ведь ему русским языком было сказано,
что воскресенье—родительский день,
а наш контингент—жертвы аборта:
если здесь и устроить воскресенье,
за ними всё равно никто не придёт, --
что мы работаем без выходных
и что да, конечно, у меня просто нет другого выхода,
кроме ворот,
и я их запру на замок,
так что никакой Фёдоров не откроет…
Задыхаясь от обиды
и размазывая слёзы кулаками,
мы влетели в дворницкую
и с порога закричали,
что мы-то знаем, почему заведующая отменила
выходной:
от неё муж ушел, --
кому ж охота идти в пустую квартиру, --
и что теперь воскресения не будет,
потому что ключ у заведующей…
А дворник Фёдоров выслушал нас
и спокойно сказал,
что пусть она спит со своим ключом,
если ей больше не с кем,
а чтобы мы приходили после отбоя.
И мы побежали в столовую,
где, как всегда, пахло подгоревшей кашей,
а потом в раздевалку,
над входом в которую, мы знали,
было написано:
оставь одежду всяк, --
и, хотя мы не знали, что такое «всяк»,
мы оставили,
потому что в дверях стояла заведующая с ключом,
и шмыгнули под одеяло.
А когда заведующая с ключом заснула,
вылезли и на цыпочках пошли в дворницкую.
– Ничего, что мы без ничего?—спросили мы,
а дворник Фёдоров сказал, что нормально,
потому что воскресение совсем близко
и что не ключом, так копаньем,
и взял большую лопату,
а нам выдал совки, --
и мы вышли во двор.
И тут дворник Фёдоров заметил,
что хоть оно и близко,
не мешало бы захватить какие-нибудь харчи,
и мы закричали, что у нас есть харчи,
и побежали к забору,
а дворник Фёдоров пошёл за нами,
и когда мы откопали наш бублик,
сказал, что ага, и раз так,
то пусть здесь и будет «старт»,
и стал копать.
А кошка смотрела на нас из трубы,
и её глаза горели, как два фонарика.
Но скоро стало совсем темно,
видно, кошка ушла спать,
и дворник Фёдоров сказал,
чтобы мы не боялись,
а повторяли за ним:
Мы длинной вереницей
идём за синей птицей,
пам-пара-пам,
пам-пара-пам, --
и копал дальше.
И мы повторяли:
Пам-пара-пам,
пам-пара-пам, --
и не боялись.
А потом он ударил лопатой во что-то железное,
открыл над головой крышку
и, подтянувшись на руках, вылез --
и вытащил нас.
Синие птицы,
розовые слоны
и красные кони смотрели на нас как на родных.
Сияло солнце.
И дворник Фёдоров сказал, что это Детский Мир
и мы можем взять всё что хотим.
И мы взяли самую красивую куклу
и самую большую машину.
Мы посадили куклу в машину
и дали ей наш бублик.
И кукла сидела в машине,
грызла бублик и улыбалась.
А мы везли машину за веревочку
и никому не мешали,
потому что, как объяснил дворник Федоров,
это было воскресение
и что воскресение вовсе не родительский день,
а день, когда дети встречаются со своим детством,
потому что воскресение --
это не когда каждый встречается с другим,
а когда каждый встречается с собой.
Inna Kabysh is the author of seven collections of poetry. She was born in Moscow in 1963. Her first collection, Lichnye trudnosti, was awarded the 1996 Pushkin Prize of the Alfred Toepfer Fund; she has also won the 2005 Anton Delwig Prize; the 2014 Moskovsky schet Prize; the 2016 Anna Akhmatova Prize; and the 2016 Deti Ra Prize. Her poetry appears in Tupelo Quarterly, Trafika Europe, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Subtropics, and others.
Poet and translator Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards, and two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Subtropics, and others. Young is also the translator of Farewell, Aylis by Azerbaijani political prisoner Akram Aylisli and Two Poems by Inna Kabysh. Young was named a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow and currently serves as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia. http://katherine-young-poet.com/
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Reviewers: Freesia McKee and Michael Hettich
Managing Editor & C0-Publisher
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Founder & Co-Publisher
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Reviewers: Freesia McKee and Michael Hettich
Managing Editor & C0-Publisher
Michael Mackin O'Mara
[email protected]
Founder & Co-Publisher
Lenny DellaRocca
[email protected]