Issue 18 August 2020 part two
Dallas Lee, Al Maginnes, M. Moran, Peter E. Murphy, Dion O'Reilly, Frank Paino, Hilda Raz, Kenneth Rosen, Michael Salcman, Vivian Shipley,
Hilary Sideris, Susan Thorton, Julia Wendell, Robert Zaller, D.E. Zuccone
Hilary Sideris, Susan Thorton, Julia Wendell, Robert Zaller, D.E. Zuccone
Dallas Lee Charlotte NC
Understory
After a reading by Charles Wright
Such an evocative word, never heard until
long after I grew away from North Texas
plains so flat the sun rose over hedges,
set behind steeples, windmills and derricks –
a mesquite-smoked land of blue northers, dry lightning,
hailstorms, tumbleweeds, jackrabbits and doodlebugs,
dust devils, snakes, scorpions and sparrows, mockingbirds
crying preacher-preacher while mantis on sills prayed,
rainbows arcing so near we chased them
on bikes, a muddy lake called Possum Kingdom,
ditches of cattails, and high in every autumn
sky, a vast V of whooping cranes bound
for Port Aransas. How prophetic, then, decades
later in ever-green Florida, to hear the words
understories of our lives read by a poet who
slips away in the winter of life to an un-heated
century-old cabin above a melodious creek, alone
to explore the vaporous geography of memory –
the only forever we ever truly know.
After a reading by Charles Wright
Such an evocative word, never heard until
long after I grew away from North Texas
plains so flat the sun rose over hedges,
set behind steeples, windmills and derricks –
a mesquite-smoked land of blue northers, dry lightning,
hailstorms, tumbleweeds, jackrabbits and doodlebugs,
dust devils, snakes, scorpions and sparrows, mockingbirds
crying preacher-preacher while mantis on sills prayed,
rainbows arcing so near we chased them
on bikes, a muddy lake called Possum Kingdom,
ditches of cattails, and high in every autumn
sky, a vast V of whooping cranes bound
for Port Aransas. How prophetic, then, decades
later in ever-green Florida, to hear the words
understories of our lives read by a poet who
slips away in the winter of life to an un-heated
century-old cabin above a melodious creek, alone
to explore the vaporous geography of memory –
the only forever we ever truly know.
Poor Artist Borrows Studio Space
A shelf of limelight
hydrangea overhangs
a wall of stacked rock
flaked with lichen,
cramping the view
at the only window.
Nose to glass, though,
he sees in the low decay
a shade-blinded rosemary
stretching a limb
through the throng
toward a dime of sunlight
like a beggar’s palm
for alms. Or for healing.
Dallas Lee is a former journalist—primarily The Associated Press and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution—and a retired executive speechwriter (Bank of America). He is the author of The Cotton Patch Evidence, the Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm Experiment (Harper & Row), a book that chronicles events leading to creation of Habitat for Humanity. His poetry has been published by Connotations Press, The Cortland Review, The Boiler Journal, Starry Night Review (SNR), Prometheus Review, Poetry Leaves, and Relief: A Journal Of Art & Faith. He is a native of Graham, Texas, a graduate of Baylor University, and lives in Charlotte NC with his wife Mary Carol.
A shelf of limelight
hydrangea overhangs
a wall of stacked rock
flaked with lichen,
cramping the view
at the only window.
Nose to glass, though,
he sees in the low decay
a shade-blinded rosemary
stretching a limb
through the throng
toward a dime of sunlight
like a beggar’s palm
for alms. Or for healing.
Dallas Lee is a former journalist—primarily The Associated Press and The Atlanta-Journal Constitution—and a retired executive speechwriter (Bank of America). He is the author of The Cotton Patch Evidence, the Story of Clarence Jordan and the Koinonia Farm Experiment (Harper & Row), a book that chronicles events leading to creation of Habitat for Humanity. His poetry has been published by Connotations Press, The Cortland Review, The Boiler Journal, Starry Night Review (SNR), Prometheus Review, Poetry Leaves, and Relief: A Journal Of Art & Faith. He is a native of Graham, Texas, a graduate of Baylor University, and lives in Charlotte NC with his wife Mary Carol.
Al Maginnes Raleigh NC
The Used Record Store Clerk Tells a Story
She told him the only thing her mother loved more
than vodka and God was Conway Twitty,
and did he have any records by Conway in the store. They’d found
her brother’s old stereo in the attic, and it still worked--
the radio sounded all right—and she thought it might
bring mama some peace to hear Conway again.
There was nothing in the sparse country rack,
so he went in the back room where odd stuff and overstock
found a home. Following a fume of recollection,
he thumbed through one crate, then another before
finding Hello Darlin’, a greatest hits collection
and an album of duets with Loretta Lynn.
Because she wanted them for her mom and because
she didn’t seem to have much to spare, he let her have
all three for ten dollars. While she counted
and smoothed bills on the counter, he told her about
a story he’s read: Loretta Lynn and her band were traveling
and somehow, a bottle of vodka came out. They mixed
a few drinks with fruit juice and everyone got
a little tipsy, even Loretta, who rarely took a drink.
At some point they pulled into a truck stop
and there was Conway Twitty’s bus. Conway didn’t hold
with drinking, so the people sent inside for juice
and ice came out saying they’d kept their head down
and looked the other way when Conway went by.
He finished the story, but swallowed what he was going to say.
The woman looked lost between anger and tears.
She thanked him and left, the albums under her arm.
He put on Van Morrison and began sorting albums
the owner bought that morning. He’d forgotten to offer a bag.
Al Maginnes's eighth collection of poetry, Sleeping Through the Graveyard Shift, was published this spring by Redwing Press. His seventh book, The Next Place, was published in spring of 2017 by Iris Press. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Plume, Lake Effect, Terrina.org, American Journal of Poetry, Tar River Poetry and many other places. He lives in Raleigh NC and has recently retired from teaching.
She told him the only thing her mother loved more
than vodka and God was Conway Twitty,
and did he have any records by Conway in the store. They’d found
her brother’s old stereo in the attic, and it still worked--
the radio sounded all right—and she thought it might
bring mama some peace to hear Conway again.
There was nothing in the sparse country rack,
so he went in the back room where odd stuff and overstock
found a home. Following a fume of recollection,
he thumbed through one crate, then another before
finding Hello Darlin’, a greatest hits collection
and an album of duets with Loretta Lynn.
Because she wanted them for her mom and because
she didn’t seem to have much to spare, he let her have
all three for ten dollars. While she counted
and smoothed bills on the counter, he told her about
a story he’s read: Loretta Lynn and her band were traveling
and somehow, a bottle of vodka came out. They mixed
a few drinks with fruit juice and everyone got
a little tipsy, even Loretta, who rarely took a drink.
At some point they pulled into a truck stop
and there was Conway Twitty’s bus. Conway didn’t hold
with drinking, so the people sent inside for juice
and ice came out saying they’d kept their head down
and looked the other way when Conway went by.
He finished the story, but swallowed what he was going to say.
The woman looked lost between anger and tears.
She thanked him and left, the albums under her arm.
He put on Van Morrison and began sorting albums
the owner bought that morning. He’d forgotten to offer a bag.
Al Maginnes's eighth collection of poetry, Sleeping Through the Graveyard Shift, was published this spring by Redwing Press. His seventh book, The Next Place, was published in spring of 2017 by Iris Press. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Plume, Lake Effect, Terrina.org, American Journal of Poetry, Tar River Poetry and many other places. He lives in Raleigh NC and has recently retired from teaching.
M. Moran San Francisco, CA 2 poems
blue morpho
butterflies
on her hair
wish-granters
shimmering blue
in sunlight
they whisper great secrets
she never sleeps
flies away
unscathed
from the rainstorm
butterflies
on her hair
wish-granters
shimmering blue
in sunlight
they whisper great secrets
she never sleeps
flies away
unscathed
from the rainstorm
Secretos
She whispers
to twilight
channeling
the winds
with
remote control
crows
are
tuning up
for their
morning aria.
M. Moran is a Cuban poet and painter who came to the U.S. in 1970. She lives in San Francisco, CA with her cats, Samantha, Peppers & Tabitha.
She whispers
to twilight
channeling
the winds
with
remote control
crows
are
tuning up
for their
morning aria.
M. Moran is a Cuban poet and painter who came to the U.S. in 1970. She lives in San Francisco, CA with her cats, Samantha, Peppers & Tabitha.
Peter E. Murphy Ventnor, NJ
Serenade
Of course, when it’s all over, Schrödinger’s cat is sacked
and the box shipped to Estonia where it is recast into rebar
to make a concrete bench where Tchaikovsky sits staring
at the sea. He is composing a ballet about a prince
who mistakes one swan’s love for another. Don’t
be fooled by beauty, he’s trying to say, but I disagree.
One fowl embrace is as cold as the next, and a bird
in hand, even on a lark, is worth two on a lake
you can’t paddle on. Besides, white swans are as common
as coal, but the black is as rare as carbon compressed
into diamond and will satisfy every desire, perhaps,
even happiness. And the cat? Don’t worry about the cat.
It has found a position in another box far, far away.
His whiskers fly.
Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a taxi. He is the author of eleven books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. His poems and essays have appeared in The Common, Diode, Guernica, Hippocampus, The Literary Review, The New Welsh Review, Rattle and elsewhere. He is the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University.
Of course, when it’s all over, Schrödinger’s cat is sacked
and the box shipped to Estonia where it is recast into rebar
to make a concrete bench where Tchaikovsky sits staring
at the sea. He is composing a ballet about a prince
who mistakes one swan’s love for another. Don’t
be fooled by beauty, he’s trying to say, but I disagree.
One fowl embrace is as cold as the next, and a bird
in hand, even on a lark, is worth two on a lake
you can’t paddle on. Besides, white swans are as common
as coal, but the black is as rare as carbon compressed
into diamond and will satisfy every desire, perhaps,
even happiness. And the cat? Don’t worry about the cat.
It has found a position in another box far, far away.
His whiskers fly.
Peter E. Murphy was born in Wales and grew up in New York City where he operated heavy equipment, managed a nightclub and drove a taxi. He is the author of eleven books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. His poems and essays have appeared in The Common, Diode, Guernica, Hippocampus, The Literary Review, The New Welsh Review, Rattle and elsewhere. He is the founder of Murphy Writing of Stockton University.
Dion O’Reilly Santa Cruz, CA
Station
Sometimes I wake to the call
of a train, although I know
there is no train.
I think I’m in my old bed
in my childhood house.
House filled with absence
like a friend drove off a cliff
or the neighbor shot the horse.
The shock of loss, everyday
in that house, with its smell
of sour milk. Grit in the wall-to-wall,
fleas, and huge dogs. The bay window light
falling on a rocking chair. Perfect
ranch house blown apart
by bad renovation and neglect.
Now, the rooms are empty
of wailing or song. My old room
is stuffed with a staircase.
My sister’s room, impossible
to enter through its stuck sliding door.
Our mother lives alone now—
one mother in eighteen rooms—
mostly sleeping open-mouthed,
tipped in a chair.
And although I can’t love her
for making me crawl through
gauntlets of whips and slapping,
to emerge, each time
like a wet purple infant,
I feel her alone
in her strange dream of mastiffs
following her through endless rooms,
and I’m the lonely one,
listening to the ghost whistle
of a train leaving
for somewhere else.
Dion O’Reilly's first book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her work appears in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been nominated for several Pushcarts and been shortlisted for a variety of prizes. Most recently her poem “Eyes Wide Sockets With No Lights” was the runner- up winner of The Charles Bukowski Poetry Prize.”
She is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which produces podcasts and events, and she teaches ongoing workshops on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Sometimes I wake to the call
of a train, although I know
there is no train.
I think I’m in my old bed
in my childhood house.
House filled with absence
like a friend drove off a cliff
or the neighbor shot the horse.
The shock of loss, everyday
in that house, with its smell
of sour milk. Grit in the wall-to-wall,
fleas, and huge dogs. The bay window light
falling on a rocking chair. Perfect
ranch house blown apart
by bad renovation and neglect.
Now, the rooms are empty
of wailing or song. My old room
is stuffed with a staircase.
My sister’s room, impossible
to enter through its stuck sliding door.
Our mother lives alone now—
one mother in eighteen rooms—
mostly sleeping open-mouthed,
tipped in a chair.
And although I can’t love her
for making me crawl through
gauntlets of whips and slapping,
to emerge, each time
like a wet purple infant,
I feel her alone
in her strange dream of mastiffs
following her through endless rooms,
and I’m the lonely one,
listening to the ghost whistle
of a train leaving
for somewhere else.
Dion O’Reilly's first book, Ghost Dogs, was published in February 2020 by Terrapin Books. Her work appears in Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Narrative, The New Ohio Review, The Massachusetts Review, New Letters, Sugar House Review, Rattle, The Sun, and other literary journals and anthologies. Her poetry has been nominated for several Pushcarts and been shortlisted for a variety of prizes. Most recently her poem “Eyes Wide Sockets With No Lights” was the runner- up winner of The Charles Bukowski Poetry Prize.”
She is a member of The Hive Poetry Collective, which produces podcasts and events, and she teaches ongoing workshops on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
Frank Paino Cleveland, OH
Read Deborah Denicola's review of Paino's new collection, Obscura here
To Lucifer
And you, most beautiful of all god’s
angels, formed from the first rib
of sunlight to break the black
breathlessness of space--
what are we to make of your falling
like a star out of heaven,
crushed under the heel of Michael,
the heel of Mary, and made to twist
along on your shingled belly
as if you were less than the dirt
we toss out of our gardens
because it is too heavy
with its freight of clay--
as if it can be blamed for being
what it is, as if the seed of rebellion
had not been planted
behind your amber eyes as, later,
the shame of nakedness would be
gleaned from the flesh of an apple.
The first sin was neither pride nor
disobedience, but the gift
of agency, which granted us choice--
and so you chose, who were our first light.
"To Lucifer" is reprinted from Obscura, copyright © 2020 by Frank Paino, by permission of Orison Books. www.orisonbooks.com
Frank Paino’s first two volumes of poetry were published by Cleveland State University Press, The Rapture of Matter 1991 and Out of Eden 1997. He has received a number of awards for his work, including a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize, and The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature. His poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Catamaran, The Gettysburg’s Review, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, among others.
And you, most beautiful of all god’s
angels, formed from the first rib
of sunlight to break the black
breathlessness of space--
what are we to make of your falling
like a star out of heaven,
crushed under the heel of Michael,
the heel of Mary, and made to twist
along on your shingled belly
as if you were less than the dirt
we toss out of our gardens
because it is too heavy
with its freight of clay--
as if it can be blamed for being
what it is, as if the seed of rebellion
had not been planted
behind your amber eyes as, later,
the shame of nakedness would be
gleaned from the flesh of an apple.
The first sin was neither pride nor
disobedience, but the gift
of agency, which granted us choice--
and so you chose, who were our first light.
"To Lucifer" is reprinted from Obscura, copyright © 2020 by Frank Paino, by permission of Orison Books. www.orisonbooks.com
Frank Paino’s first two volumes of poetry were published by Cleveland State University Press, The Rapture of Matter 1991 and Out of Eden 1997. He has received a number of awards for his work, including a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, a Pushcart Prize, and The Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature. His poems have appeared in Antioch Review, Catamaran, The Gettysburg’s Review, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, among others.
Hilda Raz Placitas, NM
Hilda Raz on YouTube reading from and discussing her new collection List & Story
Passing at a Distance
Thirteenth Day
Cold out the window and flash GREEN
the first hummingbird of the season
The claret cup cactus always in bloom
when they come, but not this year cold
Snow fell all day on the desert and cold air
suffused the rooms. We’re looking for disease,
The garage packed with mail and packages
to kill the virus before we present our lungs
For their new home inspection. Hummers,
yes, birds in ball gowns or jeweled britches
Just when we ought to despair but haven’t
yet, in spite of cracked skulls and broken hands
Yes, here at my study window is another one,
a female, dun colored but flitting nevertheless
Who looks in for the scarlet feeder and sees only
a human at work, wearing a cast on her right hand
Alive sure but so what. Beloved goes to work
on the sugar water on the stove and enters the garage
Where pestilence waits. He like the bird is fearless
for the feeders, spring comfort. Sustenance
Nothing yet in bloom, though the Claret Cups swell
their blossoms. The cat flirts. If we all fall, let us
Something will flourish, another pink super moon
crack the sky with a will to shine. Let it happen.
Hilda Raz is the editor of the endowed poetry series from the University of New Mexico Press and poetry editor of BOSQUE and ABQinPrint. LIST & STORY, her fourteenth book, has just been published by Steven J. Austin University Press.
Thirteenth Day
Cold out the window and flash GREEN
the first hummingbird of the season
The claret cup cactus always in bloom
when they come, but not this year cold
Snow fell all day on the desert and cold air
suffused the rooms. We’re looking for disease,
The garage packed with mail and packages
to kill the virus before we present our lungs
For their new home inspection. Hummers,
yes, birds in ball gowns or jeweled britches
Just when we ought to despair but haven’t
yet, in spite of cracked skulls and broken hands
Yes, here at my study window is another one,
a female, dun colored but flitting nevertheless
Who looks in for the scarlet feeder and sees only
a human at work, wearing a cast on her right hand
Alive sure but so what. Beloved goes to work
on the sugar water on the stove and enters the garage
Where pestilence waits. He like the bird is fearless
for the feeders, spring comfort. Sustenance
Nothing yet in bloom, though the Claret Cups swell
their blossoms. The cat flirts. If we all fall, let us
Something will flourish, another pink super moon
crack the sky with a will to shine. Let it happen.
Hilda Raz is the editor of the endowed poetry series from the University of New Mexico Press and poetry editor of BOSQUE and ABQinPrint. LIST & STORY, her fourteenth book, has just been published by Steven J. Austin University Press.
Kenneth Rosen Portland, ME
Anti-Iliad
There’s much to be said,
For and by, civilized luxury.
The fall of Troy was not
Necessarily a triumph
For the good guys. Poor
Helen, enslaved again
By that whining, slimy,
Garlic-chewing king
Of pirates and peasants,
Menelaus, a turnip built
Like a pear, small head,
Small whatever, Helen
Murmuring as she fed
Her salad of drugs
To company, Where there's
Dope there's hope. Paris,
Who killed the great
Achilles, was dead.
Kenneth Rosen lives in Portland, Maine. He has published 10 collections of poems, most recently Gomorrah and during a Fulbright in Cyprus, Homo Politico and the duel volume, Cyprus’s Bad Period with The Passport You Ask For, by Turkish-American poet, Adan Adam Onart.
There’s much to be said,
For and by, civilized luxury.
The fall of Troy was not
Necessarily a triumph
For the good guys. Poor
Helen, enslaved again
By that whining, slimy,
Garlic-chewing king
Of pirates and peasants,
Menelaus, a turnip built
Like a pear, small head,
Small whatever, Helen
Murmuring as she fed
Her salad of drugs
To company, Where there's
Dope there's hope. Paris,
Who killed the great
Achilles, was dead.
Kenneth Rosen lives in Portland, Maine. He has published 10 collections of poems, most recently Gomorrah and during a Fulbright in Cyprus, Homo Politico and the duel volume, Cyprus’s Bad Period with The Passport You Ask For, by Turkish-American poet, Adan Adam Onart.
Michael Salcman Baltimore, MD
See SoFloPoJo's review by Robert Cooperman of Michael Salcman's new book Shades & Graces in Reviews
Clement Greenberg, Living in My Head Rent Free
Before and after the single evening we spent together
touring a solo show in the Fuller Building gallery on 57th
and one or two years before he died
he lived in my head for decades rent free
like a field mouse come in off the street during cold weather.
That evening, at a young artist’s opening,
we first sat in the back office, me in front of the desk
staring at his cane and sneaking a look at his old face,
its mouth twisted by years of New York Yiddish,
waiting for the artist to clear her friends and students away
so that she, dressed like a dominatrix in black jodhpurs
and boots, might do a walk-around with Clem and me.
We’d already inspected her work by ourselves
in the otherwise empty front room and noticed
the way she painted herself in a bell-shaped gown
like the infanta Margaret Theresa in Velázquez
whether attending a ball or surrounded by animals in a forest,
a sort of weak-tea Surrealism with glowing eyes from the Forties,
how she left the grey pentimenti of her under-drawing visible
like the more mysterious paintings of David Salle or Degas.
Clem told me he’d gladly promote a realist if only he could find one
as good as Velázquez or Vermeer but was stuck
with abstract giants like Pollock, Mondrian and Newman,
and because he hated kitsch. We waited thirty minutes more
and he was getting tired. At his request I swam into her crowd
of supporters and tried to rouse her from their adulation and cups
of cheap red wine without much effect even when I said:
you don’t understand, Mr. Greenberg—Clement Greenberg--
wants to walk around and discuss your work with you!
She couldn’t be bothered and I knew why,
he’d already spent thirty years as the most hated man in the art world,
he believed in Kant and Hegel and Marx and I believed in him
and his theory. I returned to my seat in front of his desk
and fearfully gave him the news. He wasn’t surprised.
After he left I made my escape and closing the door heard the walls
screaming you don’t understand Michael, it’s all kitsch today.
Michael Salcman, poet, physician and art historian, has poems in Arts & Letters, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore and Solstice. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises, 2007), The Enemy of Good is Better (Orchises, 2011), Poetry in Medicine, (Persea Books, 2015), A Prague Spring, Before & After (2016), winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press, and Shades & Graces, from Spuyten Duyvil (2020), winner of the inaugural Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize.
Before and after the single evening we spent together
touring a solo show in the Fuller Building gallery on 57th
and one or two years before he died
he lived in my head for decades rent free
like a field mouse come in off the street during cold weather.
That evening, at a young artist’s opening,
we first sat in the back office, me in front of the desk
staring at his cane and sneaking a look at his old face,
its mouth twisted by years of New York Yiddish,
waiting for the artist to clear her friends and students away
so that she, dressed like a dominatrix in black jodhpurs
and boots, might do a walk-around with Clem and me.
We’d already inspected her work by ourselves
in the otherwise empty front room and noticed
the way she painted herself in a bell-shaped gown
like the infanta Margaret Theresa in Velázquez
whether attending a ball or surrounded by animals in a forest,
a sort of weak-tea Surrealism with glowing eyes from the Forties,
how she left the grey pentimenti of her under-drawing visible
like the more mysterious paintings of David Salle or Degas.
Clem told me he’d gladly promote a realist if only he could find one
as good as Velázquez or Vermeer but was stuck
with abstract giants like Pollock, Mondrian and Newman,
and because he hated kitsch. We waited thirty minutes more
and he was getting tired. At his request I swam into her crowd
of supporters and tried to rouse her from their adulation and cups
of cheap red wine without much effect even when I said:
you don’t understand, Mr. Greenberg—Clement Greenberg--
wants to walk around and discuss your work with you!
She couldn’t be bothered and I knew why,
he’d already spent thirty years as the most hated man in the art world,
he believed in Kant and Hegel and Marx and I believed in him
and his theory. I returned to my seat in front of his desk
and fearfully gave him the news. He wasn’t surprised.
After he left I made my escape and closing the door heard the walls
screaming you don’t understand Michael, it’s all kitsch today.
Michael Salcman, poet, physician and art historian, has poems in Arts & Letters, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore and Solstice. Books include The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises, 2007), The Enemy of Good is Better (Orchises, 2011), Poetry in Medicine, (Persea Books, 2015), A Prague Spring, Before & After (2016), winner of the 2015 Sinclair Poetry Prize from Evening Street Press, and Shades & Graces, from Spuyten Duyvil (2020), winner of the inaugural Daniel Hoffman Legacy Book Prize.
Vivian Shipley 2 poems
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, -- that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
No, it’s not October, 1820, with typhus
ravaging Naples, Italy. Yet I’m like John Keats
quarantined in the harbor for ten days
on the Maria Crowther. It’s March 2020.
Sheltering-in- place to avoid the Coronavirus,
I’m stir crazy, unlike Keats, who filled blank
days writing a memoir of his youth, being
bullied for his “lack of inches.” Mindful
of keeping myself in a six food bubble, I’m
tramping Connecticut’s Hammonasset Beach.
Incapable of creating the smooth pentameter
of “Ode to a Nightingale", I’ll settle for a hooded
warbler even though I know the odds of spotting
one in a 900-acre patchwork of shore, marsh,
and meadow. In winter, there’s no time for beauty
for me. I’m afraid of falling, look down,
not up at the sun stringing white Christmas lights
on iced branches. But, it’s March. I finally lift
my head, check off purple martin, osprey,
red-winged blackbird even a brown thrasher--
rufous brown, speckled breast, yellow eye.
I do shiver hearing Debussy’s Clair de Lune,
starting on the 2nd beat of three creating
a balance between joy and beauty, but
for the life of me, I can’t understand Debussy’s
use of harmony that doesn’t seem to have
any function. I can make a case for flowering,
color that catches my eye—it keeps me
from uprooting a vine. Gold flashes my path.
Seeing the hooded warbler’s moss green
wings, fanned white tail feathers, luminescent
yellow body and face, perfect tailored black
hood like a cormorant in Long Island Sound,
Cezanne would say, Color is the place where
our brain and the universe meet. But, this
is New England, not France. Robert Frost
has the last word as the warbler flies away:
Nothing gold can stay.
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
No, it’s not October, 1820, with typhus
ravaging Naples, Italy. Yet I’m like John Keats
quarantined in the harbor for ten days
on the Maria Crowther. It’s March 2020.
Sheltering-in- place to avoid the Coronavirus,
I’m stir crazy, unlike Keats, who filled blank
days writing a memoir of his youth, being
bullied for his “lack of inches.” Mindful
of keeping myself in a six food bubble, I’m
tramping Connecticut’s Hammonasset Beach.
Incapable of creating the smooth pentameter
of “Ode to a Nightingale", I’ll settle for a hooded
warbler even though I know the odds of spotting
one in a 900-acre patchwork of shore, marsh,
and meadow. In winter, there’s no time for beauty
for me. I’m afraid of falling, look down,
not up at the sun stringing white Christmas lights
on iced branches. But, it’s March. I finally lift
my head, check off purple martin, osprey,
red-winged blackbird even a brown thrasher--
rufous brown, speckled breast, yellow eye.
I do shiver hearing Debussy’s Clair de Lune,
starting on the 2nd beat of three creating
a balance between joy and beauty, but
for the life of me, I can’t understand Debussy’s
use of harmony that doesn’t seem to have
any function. I can make a case for flowering,
color that catches my eye—it keeps me
from uprooting a vine. Gold flashes my path.
Seeing the hooded warbler’s moss green
wings, fanned white tail feathers, luminescent
yellow body and face, perfect tailored black
hood like a cormorant in Long Island Sound,
Cezanne would say, Color is the place where
our brain and the universe meet. But, this
is New England, not France. Robert Frost
has the last word as the warbler flies away:
Nothing gold can stay.
Arrivederci, Rome
Malagrotta landfill unfit to treat waste, clotting
streets, garbage is a smorgasbord for gulls,
Laurus Michahellis, crowning trash bins. A tourist,
seeking raucous ritual? Watch gulls circle, drones
above Palatine Hill at sundown. Offer pizza crust,
a sign of submission, your sandwich will be snatched.
Looking for a YouTube post? On a rooftop outside
the Vatican, watch gulls dive bomb purple zucchetto
capping holy skulls. Click Rome’s Facebook page,
May, 2017: a seagull perches over the Forum
in triumph. Like the former symbol of Rome,
the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus,
the gull has mythic origins, too. In 1971, an injured
female Tuscan island gull was shoeboxed to Rome’s
zoo, sheltered in the seal pool. Spring time, she
lured a wild male, built a nest of garbage. And the rest,
well, it’s history! The Vatican added delicacies.
On Sunday’s January, 2015 prayer for peace
in Ukraine, Pope Francis refused traveler pigeons,
insisting on symbols of innocence to flank him
in his Apostolic Palace window: two white doves
for children to hold and release while the Pope
wished everyone his customary buon pranzo,
good lunch. Descending like angels from Heaven,
a seagull and a hooded crow as a side kick, following
their God given instinct of natural selection, obeyed.
Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor, Vivian Shipley teaches at SCSU. She was awarded a 2020-21 COA Artist’s Fellowship for Poetry. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, her 12th book, An Archaeology of Days, was published by Negative Capability Press in 2019 and was named The 2020-21 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. The Poet (SLU) and Perennial (Negative Capability Press, Mobile, AL) were published in 2015. All of Your Messages Have Been Erased, (2010. SLU) won 2011 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement.
Malagrotta landfill unfit to treat waste, clotting
streets, garbage is a smorgasbord for gulls,
Laurus Michahellis, crowning trash bins. A tourist,
seeking raucous ritual? Watch gulls circle, drones
above Palatine Hill at sundown. Offer pizza crust,
a sign of submission, your sandwich will be snatched.
Looking for a YouTube post? On a rooftop outside
the Vatican, watch gulls dive bomb purple zucchetto
capping holy skulls. Click Rome’s Facebook page,
May, 2017: a seagull perches over the Forum
in triumph. Like the former symbol of Rome,
the she-wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus,
the gull has mythic origins, too. In 1971, an injured
female Tuscan island gull was shoeboxed to Rome’s
zoo, sheltered in the seal pool. Spring time, she
lured a wild male, built a nest of garbage. And the rest,
well, it’s history! The Vatican added delicacies.
On Sunday’s January, 2015 prayer for peace
in Ukraine, Pope Francis refused traveler pigeons,
insisting on symbols of innocence to flank him
in his Apostolic Palace window: two white doves
for children to hold and release while the Pope
wished everyone his customary buon pranzo,
good lunch. Descending like angels from Heaven,
a seagull and a hooded crow as a side kick, following
their God given instinct of natural selection, obeyed.
Connecticut State University Distinguished Professor, Vivian Shipley teaches at SCSU. She was awarded a 2020-21 COA Artist’s Fellowship for Poetry. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, her 12th book, An Archaeology of Days, was published by Negative Capability Press in 2019 and was named The 2020-21 Paterson Poetry Prize Finalist. The Poet (SLU) and Perennial (Negative Capability Press, Mobile, AL) were published in 2015. All of Your Messages Have Been Erased, (2010. SLU) won 2011 Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement.
Hilary Sideris Brooklyn, NY 2 poems
Stages of Grief & Spring
On Zoom somebody says
I’m sad. In every window
a head nods. Masks bloom
in Prospect Park – white, pink,
blue, yellow, black. We’re in
a pre-grief state. Pathmark’s
sold out of Uncle Luigi’s
low-fat. Seeking direct light,
steady heat, we sway six
feet apart – denial, anger,
bargaining – our tight
green buds trembling.
On Zoom somebody says
I’m sad. In every window
a head nods. Masks bloom
in Prospect Park – white, pink,
blue, yellow, black. We’re in
a pre-grief state. Pathmark’s
sold out of Uncle Luigi’s
low-fat. Seeking direct light,
steady heat, we sway six
feet apart – denial, anger,
bargaining – our tight
green buds trembling.
El Derecho de Vivir en Paz
No cannon will destroy
the furrow of your rice paddy,
goes an online translation
of his hit – Uncle Ho, our
song is fire of love, pure
as a dovecoat dove, oil from
an olive grove. Pinochet
sent a squad for Victor Lidio
Jara Martinez, whose belief
in peace pissed Nixon off.
They crushed his hands under
their M1 butts. “Now let’s
hear you play,” they told their
captive stadium crowd.
Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Room, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019). She works as a professional developer for The City University of New York and lives in Brooklyn.
No cannon will destroy
the furrow of your rice paddy,
goes an online translation
of his hit – Uncle Ho, our
song is fire of love, pure
as a dovecoat dove, oil from
an olive grove. Pinochet
sent a squad for Victor Lidio
Jara Martinez, whose belief
in peace pissed Nixon off.
They crushed his hands under
their M1 butts. “Now let’s
hear you play,” they told their
captive stadium crowd.
Hilary Sideris has recently published poems in The American Journal of Poetry, Bellevue Literary Review, Free State Review, Gravel, The Lake, Main Street Rag, Rhino, Room, Salamander, and Southern Poetry Review. She is the author of Most Likely to Die (Poets Wear Prada 2014), The Inclination to Make Waves (Big Wonderful 2016), Un Amore Veloce (Kelsay 2019) and The Silent B (Dos Madres 2019). She works as a professional developer for The City University of New York and lives in Brooklyn.
Susan Thornton Binghamton, NY
When I Invited the Weather Inside
March came first and blew the curtains all awry
but I expected that.
April and May came in next. They brought
gentle rain and soft winds. They sat primly
on the good sofa and arranged their flowered skirts
with soft hands.
We drank tea together and everything went well.
June brought brides and grooms,
July some thunderstorms but some glorious sun.
August arrived with regret because the last month of summer
and so hot I really couldn't breathe up here on
the second floor.
September blessed cool, and October amazing
light in the yellow leaves he tracked in on
the bottoms of his black boots
November sullen and difficult, like an
abusive husband and December dark
and bitter cold. The promised solstice on the
22nd was scant comfort and January blew
open the door with an icy blast saying
WTF woman are you mad as he froze the
pipes, shattered the windows, and snow
crawled over the bed linen.
I didn't see February come in at all as
January finished me off as it does so
many of our elderly.
Susan Thornton’s memoir, On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner, was published in 2000 by Carroll & Graf, New York. Poems have appeared in Paintbrush Journal, The Denver Quarterly, Rats Ass Review (2015, 2016, 2017, 2020) and SoFloPoJo (2018) and have been anthologized in Love and Ensuing Madness (2016) and So Ugly a Time (2017), both published by Rats Ass Review. Stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 and Flash Fiction Annual (2017).
March came first and blew the curtains all awry
but I expected that.
April and May came in next. They brought
gentle rain and soft winds. They sat primly
on the good sofa and arranged their flowered skirts
with soft hands.
We drank tea together and everything went well.
June brought brides and grooms,
July some thunderstorms but some glorious sun.
August arrived with regret because the last month of summer
and so hot I really couldn't breathe up here on
the second floor.
September blessed cool, and October amazing
light in the yellow leaves he tracked in on
the bottoms of his black boots
November sullen and difficult, like an
abusive husband and December dark
and bitter cold. The promised solstice on the
22nd was scant comfort and January blew
open the door with an icy blast saying
WTF woman are you mad as he froze the
pipes, shattered the windows, and snow
crawled over the bed linen.
I didn't see February come in at all as
January finished me off as it does so
many of our elderly.
Susan Thornton’s memoir, On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner, was published in 2000 by Carroll & Graf, New York. Poems have appeared in Paintbrush Journal, The Denver Quarterly, Rats Ass Review (2015, 2016, 2017, 2020) and SoFloPoJo (2018) and have been anthologized in Love and Ensuing Madness (2016) and So Ugly a Time (2017), both published by Rats Ass Review. Stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2016 and Flash Fiction Annual (2017).
Julia Wendell Aiken, SC
It Came to Nothing,
all those horseshoes hammered
upright, umbrellas tightly closed
in their stands, ladders
carefully walked around,
4-leaf clover in one pocket,
a rabbit’s foot nestling in the other.
You’re still asleep
and I’m here, watching
the old pot that won’t boil,
knocking on wood
when I brag about my one good eye.
I promise you I’ve crossed
my fingers one too many times
for all those little lies
and the big ones, too,
when I was young and still lived in your house,
quickly throwing a pinch of salt
over my shoulder when I’d been clumsy
in your kitchen.
I confess, I got it from you,
and you got it from yours
who also panicked in the presence of coal
cats. What did we possibly think
we’d be shielded from?
I still walk up the stairs backwards
on the last day of the month.
I wear gloves and hold my breath
when I reposition mirrors,
and never, ever step on a sidewalk’s crack.
And if bad luck comes in threes--
mother, daughter, granddaughter--
nothing will save me
from not passing this on to my daughter.
Julia Wendell's memoir, Come to the X, has just been published by Galileo Press. Her fifth full-length poetry collection, Take This Spoon, appeared in 2014 from Main Street Rag Press. She lives in South Carolina and is a three-day event rider.
all those horseshoes hammered
upright, umbrellas tightly closed
in their stands, ladders
carefully walked around,
4-leaf clover in one pocket,
a rabbit’s foot nestling in the other.
You’re still asleep
and I’m here, watching
the old pot that won’t boil,
knocking on wood
when I brag about my one good eye.
I promise you I’ve crossed
my fingers one too many times
for all those little lies
and the big ones, too,
when I was young and still lived in your house,
quickly throwing a pinch of salt
over my shoulder when I’d been clumsy
in your kitchen.
I confess, I got it from you,
and you got it from yours
who also panicked in the presence of coal
cats. What did we possibly think
we’d be shielded from?
I still walk up the stairs backwards
on the last day of the month.
I wear gloves and hold my breath
when I reposition mirrors,
and never, ever step on a sidewalk’s crack.
And if bad luck comes in threes--
mother, daughter, granddaughter--
nothing will save me
from not passing this on to my daughter.
Julia Wendell's memoir, Come to the X, has just been published by Galileo Press. Her fifth full-length poetry collection, Take This Spoon, appeared in 2014 from Main Street Rag Press. She lives in South Carolina and is a three-day event rider.
Robert Zaller Bala Cynwyd, PA 2 poems
Stealing Figs
It’s early August
a few years ago.
You are still alive.
The figs are ripe again.
I rise from our siesta.
The heat’s tempered,
the shadows begin
their crawl toward night.
I take the broken road
and walk deep
into the country
past the pines and cypress
and the great hospital
on the hill.
Dogs bark
behind their fences
but the fig trees
lean out their new wealth.
I fill my pockets
each green succulence
swelling them
like an adolescent’s balls.
It is dark when I get home.
I spread the haul for you
and you pounce on it
as eager as Eve
for the fruit of a forbidden tree
aflush with pleasure.
Your eyes are the first stars
of the night
and I am proud as any Adam.
It’s early August
a few years ago.
You are still alive.
The figs are ripe again.
I rise from our siesta.
The heat’s tempered,
the shadows begin
their crawl toward night.
I take the broken road
and walk deep
into the country
past the pines and cypress
and the great hospital
on the hill.
Dogs bark
behind their fences
but the fig trees
lean out their new wealth.
I fill my pockets
each green succulence
swelling them
like an adolescent’s balls.
It is dark when I get home.
I spread the haul for you
and you pounce on it
as eager as Eve
for the fruit of a forbidden tree
aflush with pleasure.
Your eyes are the first stars
of the night
and I am proud as any Adam.
Cold Fire
The cold fire
of a winter sunset
ice floes adrift
in a frigid heaven
the sun a slow galleon
sinking between a cleft of cloud:
all this perishing glory
going soundless
as color on a stretched canvas
as fluid as ripped silk
as precious as a Chinese jar
as final as night.
Cold fire is what the world
comes to, when you and I
have left it and the lips of night
open for other lovers
to spend their light
and flesh another day.
It was beautiful in ours though
we gave it the heat of our bodies
and if you search your darkness
deep enough you will still
feel its glow.
Robert Zaller is the author of numerous books of history, criticism, translation (in collaboration with Lili Bita), and verse. He is Drexel Distinguished University Professor of History Emeritus. His most recent publications are The Atom To Be Split: New and Selected Essays on Robinson Jeffers, and The Dresden Zoo.
The cold fire
of a winter sunset
ice floes adrift
in a frigid heaven
the sun a slow galleon
sinking between a cleft of cloud:
all this perishing glory
going soundless
as color on a stretched canvas
as fluid as ripped silk
as precious as a Chinese jar
as final as night.
Cold fire is what the world
comes to, when you and I
have left it and the lips of night
open for other lovers
to spend their light
and flesh another day.
It was beautiful in ours though
we gave it the heat of our bodies
and if you search your darkness
deep enough you will still
feel its glow.
Robert Zaller is the author of numerous books of history, criticism, translation (in collaboration with Lili Bita), and verse. He is Drexel Distinguished University Professor of History Emeritus. His most recent publications are The Atom To Be Split: New and Selected Essays on Robinson Jeffers, and The Dresden Zoo.
D. E. Zuccone Houston, TX
A Plane Broken by Beauty
Awakened by the scent of chlorine in a Hampton Inn I sat down to pee
but found myself looking in a dark mirror framing me in the doorway,
black translucence suspended over indigo with undertones of mercury
lamps in the parking lot. Who I see is mostly memory. I stare at a me,
a shadow fascinated with edges of passage. I may be Georgia O’Keeffe
obsessed by a black square in Abiquiu that opened into her last studio---
the rooms where work found completion by renegotiating old spaces,
bare, easier to sweep as empty floors. By turns her walls came painted
apricot and amaranth, rooster blood mixed in sand, almonds husked at
twilight, an albumen print, cataract in reverie, cherry blossoms reflected
on a cheek. Color, sliced by four lines surrounding what stays until form
surrenders form. Rectangles of desert that define beauty, or her heaven
after the body eases its ache. I return to my strange bed, recollecting
blue rain on desert sage, soft edges of the pool floating at my window.
D E Zuccone has published poems in Borderlands, Water Stone, International Review of Poetry, Southern Indiana Review, Schuylkill Review, Hurricane Review, Big River, Apalachee Review, and other journals. His work has been anthologized from Round Top, Taos Artists, Words& Art, Mutabulis Press, and Big Poetry Review. A volume of poetry Vanishes will be released by 3A:Taos Press, Winter 2020 .
Awakened by the scent of chlorine in a Hampton Inn I sat down to pee
but found myself looking in a dark mirror framing me in the doorway,
black translucence suspended over indigo with undertones of mercury
lamps in the parking lot. Who I see is mostly memory. I stare at a me,
a shadow fascinated with edges of passage. I may be Georgia O’Keeffe
obsessed by a black square in Abiquiu that opened into her last studio---
the rooms where work found completion by renegotiating old spaces,
bare, easier to sweep as empty floors. By turns her walls came painted
apricot and amaranth, rooster blood mixed in sand, almonds husked at
twilight, an albumen print, cataract in reverie, cherry blossoms reflected
on a cheek. Color, sliced by four lines surrounding what stays until form
surrenders form. Rectangles of desert that define beauty, or her heaven
after the body eases its ache. I return to my strange bed, recollecting
blue rain on desert sage, soft edges of the pool floating at my window.
D E Zuccone has published poems in Borderlands, Water Stone, International Review of Poetry, Southern Indiana Review, Schuylkill Review, Hurricane Review, Big River, Apalachee Review, and other journals. His work has been anthologized from Round Top, Taos Artists, Words& Art, Mutabulis Press, and Big Poetry Review. A volume of poetry Vanishes will be released by 3A:Taos Press, Winter 2020 .