Issue 19 November 2020 poems
Freesia McKee, Editor
Freesia McKee, Editor
Sean Cho A. Jonathan B. Aibel Lili Bita Craig Cotter Samuel Cross Paul Dickey Joan Kwon Glass Michael Hathaway AE Hines
Holly Iglesias Vicky Iorio Alexis Ivy James Croal Jackson Jennifer Ruth Jackson Holly Jaffe Janine Kelley Lúcia Leão & Angela Narciso Torres
Jennifer Martelli Susan Milchman Simon Perchik Geoffrey Philp Hyam Plutzik Cheryl A. Rice Alison Stone Jorge Tellier Lauren Tivey Leslie Ullman
Peter Vertacnik Michael Walls Amirah Al Wassif Ed Werstein
Holly Iglesias Vicky Iorio Alexis Ivy James Croal Jackson Jennifer Ruth Jackson Holly Jaffe Janine Kelley Lúcia Leão & Angela Narciso Torres
Jennifer Martelli Susan Milchman Simon Perchik Geoffrey Philp Hyam Plutzik Cheryl A. Rice Alison Stone Jorge Tellier Lauren Tivey Leslie Ullman
Peter Vertacnik Michael Walls Amirah Al Wassif Ed Werstein
Sean Cho A. Michigan
News at Willis Tower
Wake up. The prophets are outside
spitting their dead language
on the sidewalk. This world will give us anything
that we want.
Consider the autumn fawn born
white spotted knowing he’ll grow
antlers by spring and there’s a boy running
his fingers over the holy book
written in Aramaic-—you should be terrified.
At birth you’re given a name
and at eighteen they unhitch you
from your bedpost to do whatever you will.
*
Frantically they scrub his blood off the concrete.
A mother gripping her prayer beads is rushed
in to identify the body. Sometimes we don’t
know what’s best.
Sean Cho A. is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Salt Hill, The Portland Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Ploughshares. In the summer of 2019 he was a Mary K. Davis scholarship recipient for the Bear River Writing Conference. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize.
Wake up. The prophets are outside
spitting their dead language
on the sidewalk. This world will give us anything
that we want.
Consider the autumn fawn born
white spotted knowing he’ll grow
antlers by spring and there’s a boy running
his fingers over the holy book
written in Aramaic-—you should be terrified.
At birth you’re given a name
and at eighteen they unhitch you
from your bedpost to do whatever you will.
*
Frantically they scrub his blood off the concrete.
A mother gripping her prayer beads is rushed
in to identify the body. Sometimes we don’t
know what’s best.
Sean Cho A. is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Irvine. His work can be ignored or future-found in Salt Hill, The Portland Review, Hobart, and elsewhere. He is a staff reader for Ploughshares. In the summer of 2019 he was a Mary K. Davis scholarship recipient for the Bear River Writing Conference. Sean’s manuscript Not Bilingual was a finalist for the Write Bloody Publishing Poetry Prize.
Jonathan B. Aibel Concord, MA
Our Firefly
One day when I am not here
to remind you
One day when you are tall,
taller than I ever was
except in your memory, I hope,
you remember this June night
when after bedtime we went out
to the shadowed lawn
while Mama and I watched
the fireflies
you bent down and coaxed
a fairy-light
into your jar where
it flashed and flashed.
Jonathan B. Aibel is a poet who spends his days wrestling software to the ground as an engineer specializing in quality and testing. His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in Ocean State Review, Soundings East, Pangyrus, Sweet Tree Review, Rogue Agent, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He has studied with Lucie Brock-Broido, David Ferry and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Jonathan lives in Concord, MA with his family.
One day when I am not here
to remind you
One day when you are tall,
taller than I ever was
except in your memory, I hope,
you remember this June night
when after bedtime we went out
to the shadowed lawn
while Mama and I watched
the fireflies
you bent down and coaxed
a fairy-light
into your jar where
it flashed and flashed.
Jonathan B. Aibel is a poet who spends his days wrestling software to the ground as an engineer specializing in quality and testing. His poems have been published, or will soon appear, in Ocean State Review, Soundings East, Pangyrus, Sweet Tree Review, Rogue Agent, Main Street Rag, and elsewhere. He has studied with Lucie Brock-Broido, David Ferry and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Jonathan lives in Concord, MA with his family.
Lili Bita 1935-2018
The Whitewashed Bones of Ithaca
Translated from the Greek by Robert Zaller
My arms strive
for your neck
but the revolving door
slams glass in my palms.
The broken vowels
in my throat
stab, turning
like hunted animals.
The stone soldiers
have taken you off
to hang a medallion on your chest.
Nothing will be the same
when you get back.
Hungry bats will be
fastened to the famished limbs
of trees.
The green grass
will lick the sky.
The clay eagle
Will have flown from your desk.
The sheets emit
an icy vapor.
Columns of glaciers
march beneath my spine.
The clock has folded its fingers
like an emperor ending his audience.
I bite the whitewashed
bones of Ithaca
where we made a bed
when all of the journey
still lay before us.
Translated from the Greek by Robert Zaller
My arms strive
for your neck
but the revolving door
slams glass in my palms.
The broken vowels
in my throat
stab, turning
like hunted animals.
The stone soldiers
have taken you off
to hang a medallion on your chest.
Nothing will be the same
when you get back.
Hungry bats will be
fastened to the famished limbs
of trees.
The green grass
will lick the sky.
The clay eagle
Will have flown from your desk.
The sheets emit
an icy vapor.
Columns of glaciers
march beneath my spine.
The clock has folded its fingers
like an emperor ending his audience.
I bite the whitewashed
bones of Ithaca
where we made a bed
when all of the journey
still lay before us.
Kouros
Translated from the Greek by Robert Zaller
Here, in this cradle, this grave
this scooped-out gully shorn of growth
the great body of the kouros lies.
Fruit trees bend over him
their heavy wealth.
The black-hooded horse
turns the yoke of the well
a clock that tells no time.
Falling apples
the dry cough of birds
the percussion of a waterfall
chime the toneless centuries.
His room is simple, unadorned
as befits a young man’s gravity.
Roofless, so that his gaze
adjusts itself to the infinite,
the glitter and size of the abyssal night.
Unclasping your hand,
I climb the stone steps
to where the naked body
lies like a spent athlete
laureled with victory, avid
for still wilder triumph.
The leg is severed
at the knee
I sink my fingers
deep into the cleft
feeling the hard fracture
of the marble
lovingly I sculpt
the perfect body
the massive stiff shoulders
the mound of the pectorals
the hard clump of sex
winnowing away the centuries
that separate us
sucking welts to the surface
like buried fruit.
Dusk falls in the quarry.
The workers leave their tools,
belt their robes, and walk back to Naxos.
The kouros stays alone, unfinished
and in the hovering dark
I come again
to bruise the chastity of stone
with the hunger of my human flesh.
Lili Bita lived through the Nazi occupation of her native island, Zakynthos, the Greek civil war that followed, and much else. The story is in her memoir, Sister of Darkness (Somerset Hall Press). Author, actress, and pianist, she had a career as a leading lady in Greece. The author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and translation, Bita was inducted into the Hellenic Writers’ Association, the oldest and most prestigious literary academy in Greece, in recognition of her lifetime achievement.
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.
Translated from the Greek by Robert Zaller
Here, in this cradle, this grave
this scooped-out gully shorn of growth
the great body of the kouros lies.
Fruit trees bend over him
their heavy wealth.
The black-hooded horse
turns the yoke of the well
a clock that tells no time.
Falling apples
the dry cough of birds
the percussion of a waterfall
chime the toneless centuries.
His room is simple, unadorned
as befits a young man’s gravity.
Roofless, so that his gaze
adjusts itself to the infinite,
the glitter and size of the abyssal night.
Unclasping your hand,
I climb the stone steps
to where the naked body
lies like a spent athlete
laureled with victory, avid
for still wilder triumph.
The leg is severed
at the knee
I sink my fingers
deep into the cleft
feeling the hard fracture
of the marble
lovingly I sculpt
the perfect body
the massive stiff shoulders
the mound of the pectorals
the hard clump of sex
winnowing away the centuries
that separate us
sucking welts to the surface
like buried fruit.
Dusk falls in the quarry.
The workers leave their tools,
belt their robes, and walk back to Naxos.
The kouros stays alone, unfinished
and in the hovering dark
I come again
to bruise the chastity of stone
with the hunger of my human flesh.
Lili Bita lived through the Nazi occupation of her native island, Zakynthos, the Greek civil war that followed, and much else. The story is in her memoir, Sister of Darkness (Somerset Hall Press). Author, actress, and pianist, she had a career as a leading lady in Greece. The author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, memoir, and translation, Bita was inducted into the Hellenic Writers’ Association, the oldest and most prestigious literary academy in Greece, in recognition of her lifetime achievement.
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.
Shane Chergosky Fairfax, VA
Reverse Merman
Last night, I juggled two pearls of flame
as their torches dreamed of horses.
People ghosted along the parapets, strides
hidden inside dark robes. I know everything
they don’t about me. Language, survival.
I could say a clumsy leaf of spines
withers along my back. Below the sun’s blister,
these pectoral fins are dwarf palm branches.
I could say sea scorpion but you wouldn’t
understand the difficult genitals
housed in this crown conch shell.
What metaphor is required to deliver a body
from its anatomy? No one ever asks
for the fish on top with man on the bottom.
No one believed anything was possible
without water and went untouched
by madness. Even now, I hear men crawling
out of the ship’s ribbed belly
into the green air. Someone calls hoist away.
Up goes his net, full of stars and meat.
Shane Chergosky was born in Minnesota where he was raised on stuffed cabbage and heavy metal. His work has appeared in Blue Mountain Review, Arcturus, Frontier Poetry, and a handful of others. He teaches at George Mason University where he is an MFA Candidate in poetry.
Last night, I juggled two pearls of flame
as their torches dreamed of horses.
People ghosted along the parapets, strides
hidden inside dark robes. I know everything
they don’t about me. Language, survival.
I could say a clumsy leaf of spines
withers along my back. Below the sun’s blister,
these pectoral fins are dwarf palm branches.
I could say sea scorpion but you wouldn’t
understand the difficult genitals
housed in this crown conch shell.
What metaphor is required to deliver a body
from its anatomy? No one ever asks
for the fish on top with man on the bottom.
No one believed anything was possible
without water and went untouched
by madness. Even now, I hear men crawling
out of the ship’s ribbed belly
into the green air. Someone calls hoist away.
Up goes his net, full of stars and meat.
Shane Chergosky was born in Minnesota where he was raised on stuffed cabbage and heavy metal. His work has appeared in Blue Mountain Review, Arcturus, Frontier Poetry, and a handful of others. He teaches at George Mason University where he is an MFA Candidate in poetry.
Craig Cotter Pasadena, CA
I'm So Tired
-for John Lennon
Right ear
stays open.
Got it pierced with Alex.
We split a set of earrings.
*
I should stop
writing about
myself
I'm boring my
reader
s.
*
This is not
about
great whacking
piles
of
knowledge
I'm sharing
*
Don't you write
too much
about sex?
Well
it is
a
pretty cool
thing
*
O yeah
I was
gonna stop
writing
about
writing
too.
And
something
else
*
I had
this
really
cool
plan.
*
But
I'm
so
tired
*
It was no more
poems about Alex,
sex, myself
and
poetry
*
How'
s
it
going
?
*
Isn't it
stupid
when
someone's
dying
and
they
write
don't grieve for me
?
If
they feel
grief
for you
haven't
you accomplished something?
*
This
whole idea
that there
are feelings--
I
think
it's un-
sub-
stan-
tiated.
*
I have
a wind-up
Ken
doll
*
Rose
said
we'd
get
together
in
May.
Several
Mays
have
passed.
*
I bought sunscreen,
windshield-wiper fluid,
clear
mailing tape,
tissue,
and
other
equally
interesting
items
*
Hey
dumb-
ass
you
didn't answer my questions.
Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in Caliban Online, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Free State Review, Great Lakes Review, Hawai'i Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Poetry New Zealand & Tampa Review. His fourth book of poems, After Lunch with Frank O'Hara, is available from Chelsea Station Editions. In 2011 his manuscript After Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. www.craigcotter.com
-for John Lennon
Right ear
stays open.
Got it pierced with Alex.
We split a set of earrings.
*
I should stop
writing about
myself
I'm boring my
reader
s.
*
This is not
about
great whacking
piles
of
knowledge
I'm sharing
*
Don't you write
too much
about sex?
Well
it is
a
pretty cool
thing
*
O yeah
I was
gonna stop
writing
about
writing
too.
And
something
else
*
I had
this
really
cool
plan.
*
But
I'm
so
tired
*
It was no more
poems about Alex,
sex, myself
and
poetry
*
How'
s
it
going
?
*
Isn't it
stupid
when
someone's
dying
and
they
write
don't grieve for me
?
If
they feel
grief
for you
haven't
you accomplished something?
*
This
whole idea
that there
are feelings--
I
think
it's un-
sub-
stan-
tiated.
*
I have
a wind-up
Ken
doll
*
Rose
said
we'd
get
together
in
May.
Several
Mays
have
passed.
*
I bought sunscreen,
windshield-wiper fluid,
clear
mailing tape,
tissue,
and
other
equally
interesting
items
*
Hey
dumb-
ass
you
didn't answer my questions.
Craig Cotter was born in 1960 in New York and has lived in California since 1986. His poems have appeared in Caliban Online, California Quarterly, Chiron Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Free State Review, Great Lakes Review, Hawai'i Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Poetry New Zealand & Tampa Review. His fourth book of poems, After Lunch with Frank O'Hara, is available from Chelsea Station Editions. In 2011 his manuscript After Lunch was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. www.craigcotter.com
Samuel Cross Raleigh, NC
In One Hand He Had a Pitchfork
The hogs aren't having any birthdays
over here, they feel the same way I do: ripe
At times I get so hungry I could kill
and clean it up and kill again,
the smell notwithstanding, the fire
always threatening to run away with the help
of the ants and the cats and here comes rain
No one will mind if you sit and pick a bone with us
but if I'm honest: I can't see you
actually in our yard like a lost flamingo
afraid to put your other foot on the ground,
thinking what you know: we have a history
smeared on napkins, traced in chalk, cried into
needlepoint, shattered over tile only to be sopped up
and left at the curb where we have
no dominion, where we are only watching out for
trucks in the shadows of leaning trees,
our fences staked against an unraveling void,
every breath drawn through a punched hole
The life you see is all the trust I could muster
withering in this gummy heat: you're welcome, even if
you've got your own padlocked crawlspace which is
familiar enough with you, I wonder who is not here
to disappear and leave you to your own invention
Me and mine will remain arrested
by the chemical sermon of sunlight
pressing each electron into the other
in service of a kinetic truth
We have one eye, and
we'd like to see you over
to celebrate a second: all we have is yours
right up until it isn't
breathing.
Sam Cross has been a ghost, a louse, an astronaut, and an afterthought. He will not boil an egg. He is not a letterman. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from North Carolina State University in 2007. He cleaned himself up a little after that and found respectable work in a sleep laboratory.
The hogs aren't having any birthdays
over here, they feel the same way I do: ripe
At times I get so hungry I could kill
and clean it up and kill again,
the smell notwithstanding, the fire
always threatening to run away with the help
of the ants and the cats and here comes rain
No one will mind if you sit and pick a bone with us
but if I'm honest: I can't see you
actually in our yard like a lost flamingo
afraid to put your other foot on the ground,
thinking what you know: we have a history
smeared on napkins, traced in chalk, cried into
needlepoint, shattered over tile only to be sopped up
and left at the curb where we have
no dominion, where we are only watching out for
trucks in the shadows of leaning trees,
our fences staked against an unraveling void,
every breath drawn through a punched hole
The life you see is all the trust I could muster
withering in this gummy heat: you're welcome, even if
you've got your own padlocked crawlspace which is
familiar enough with you, I wonder who is not here
to disappear and leave you to your own invention
Me and mine will remain arrested
by the chemical sermon of sunlight
pressing each electron into the other
in service of a kinetic truth
We have one eye, and
we'd like to see you over
to celebrate a second: all we have is yours
right up until it isn't
breathing.
Sam Cross has been a ghost, a louse, an astronaut, and an afterthought. He will not boil an egg. He is not a letterman. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from North Carolina State University in 2007. He cleaned himself up a little after that and found respectable work in a sleep laboratory.
Paul Dickey Omaha, NE 2 poems
Thoreau Flirting with American Literary History in 3rd Hour Botany
I don’t know how I got stuck in Botany
sitting next to Henry David Thoreau.
He’s ugly as sin. And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Sometimes I’d confide in him about my thing
with Ralphie behind the football bleachers,
who was a Junior, but “Henry David” acted
as if he didn’t want anything to do
with civilization. I told him I was
running for sophomore class president,
and he was okay with it, but he himself
totally hated government. Anyway,
I ended up calling him an Anarchist
so you might have thought
that would be the end of that
and he would never speak to me again.
But I think in his heart he knew that white
male paradise shit wasn’t happening
and he was not religious about it.
And I gotta admit one night, he was cute
and said, “Do not be too moral. You cheat
yourself out of much life. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good, be good for something.”
That just may have been what he
and Ralphie found in common
with that Transcendentalist thing
no one could make any sense of,
and so I let him get on with me a bit.
I don’t know how I got stuck in Botany
sitting next to Henry David Thoreau.
He’s ugly as sin. And that wasn’t the worst of it.
Sometimes I’d confide in him about my thing
with Ralphie behind the football bleachers,
who was a Junior, but “Henry David” acted
as if he didn’t want anything to do
with civilization. I told him I was
running for sophomore class president,
and he was okay with it, but he himself
totally hated government. Anyway,
I ended up calling him an Anarchist
so you might have thought
that would be the end of that
and he would never speak to me again.
But I think in his heart he knew that white
male paradise shit wasn’t happening
and he was not religious about it.
And I gotta admit one night, he was cute
and said, “Do not be too moral. You cheat
yourself out of much life. Aim above morality.
Be not simply good, be good for something.”
That just may have been what he
and Ralphie found in common
with that Transcendentalist thing
no one could make any sense of,
and so I let him get on with me a bit.
Consequences of “Careless Love”
I accidentally left a couple of words I should have said in a steamy hotel room in Savannah. I
called back and asked: Can Housekeeping retrieve something and ship it to me exactly as they
find it? I left my passion for our music on a bench outside a century-old auditorium in Nashville.
It must have got wadded up and tossed out with the pizza box we shared that once-in-a-lifetime
night in New Orleans singing with the Delta Jazz Band. I can’t even try to get that back. I don’t
know where I misplaced the twopart composition that we had worked on for months – in
airports, hotels, concert halls – while the snow sang harmony for us in Buffalo, the sun stayed up
all night in Vegas, and the rain snookered us that closing night in Memphis. All I know is that
when the bellhop asked if the limo keys you left with the concierge were those you planned to
quit the tour with and live for, I lied and told him that it was only for the night, I winked, or
maybe a whole weekend if I get lucky. Maybe if the backing vocalists in the farewell concert
tonight hit the right note exactly on time with the trumpet player like they have no clue how to
do, there won’t be a dry eye in the hall.
Paul Dickey won the $5,000 2015 Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. His first full-length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, 32 Poems, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published by Pinyon Publishing in October, 2013. More info is available at the author's new website: http://pauldickey9.wix.com/paul-dickey
I accidentally left a couple of words I should have said in a steamy hotel room in Savannah. I
called back and asked: Can Housekeeping retrieve something and ship it to me exactly as they
find it? I left my passion for our music on a bench outside a century-old auditorium in Nashville.
It must have got wadded up and tossed out with the pizza box we shared that once-in-a-lifetime
night in New Orleans singing with the Delta Jazz Band. I can’t even try to get that back. I don’t
know where I misplaced the twopart composition that we had worked on for months – in
airports, hotels, concert halls – while the snow sang harmony for us in Buffalo, the sun stayed up
all night in Vegas, and the rain snookered us that closing night in Memphis. All I know is that
when the bellhop asked if the limo keys you left with the concierge were those you planned to
quit the tour with and live for, I lied and told him that it was only for the night, I winked, or
maybe a whole weekend if I get lucky. Maybe if the backing vocalists in the farewell concert
tonight hit the right note exactly on time with the trumpet player like they have no clue how to
do, there won’t be a dry eye in the hall.
Paul Dickey won the $5,000 2015 Master Poet award from the Nebraska Arts Council. His first full-length poetry manuscript They Say This is How Death Came Into the World was published by Mayapple Press in January, 2011. His poetry and flash have appeared in Verse Daily, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Southern Poetry Review, Potomac Review, Pleaides, 32 Poems, Bellevue Literary Review, and Crab Orchard Review, among other online and print publications. A second book, Wires Over the Homeplace was published by Pinyon Publishing in October, 2013. More info is available at the author's new website: http://pauldickey9.wix.com/paul-dickey
Joan Kwon Glass New Haven, CT
The Last Time I Prayed
Every night my mother covered me in prayer,
like a blanket never quite long or warm enough.
I pulled it up as far as I could, stretched it until
the ends frayed into Midian desert weeds.
But on the night my sister was born, my father
took her place. He stood at my bedroom door,
said good night in that weary, distracted way
all children come to know from their fathers.
The walls trembled as he heaved down the stairs,
and I knew one day they would crumble.
When it was quiet, I reached for the blanket
but instead found an umbilical cord
and I bit clear through it, gnashing my teeth,
thinking maybe if I ate a prayer
it would finally be enough.
Joan Kwon Glass is a biracial (Korean/Caucasian) second generation American who lives near New Haven, CT. Her poems have recently been published or are upcoming in Rattle, SWWIM, Rogue Agent, Sublunary Review, FEED, Ghost City Review, Literary Mama, Rise Up Review, Vagabond City Lit, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, and others. Her poem “Bathing Scene” was featured on the Saturday Poetry Series: Poetry as it Ought to Be, and her poem “Cartouche,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She tweets @joanpglass.
Every night my mother covered me in prayer,
like a blanket never quite long or warm enough.
I pulled it up as far as I could, stretched it until
the ends frayed into Midian desert weeds.
But on the night my sister was born, my father
took her place. He stood at my bedroom door,
said good night in that weary, distracted way
all children come to know from their fathers.
The walls trembled as he heaved down the stairs,
and I knew one day they would crumble.
When it was quiet, I reached for the blanket
but instead found an umbilical cord
and I bit clear through it, gnashing my teeth,
thinking maybe if I ate a prayer
it would finally be enough.
Joan Kwon Glass is a biracial (Korean/Caucasian) second generation American who lives near New Haven, CT. Her poems have recently been published or are upcoming in Rattle, SWWIM, Rogue Agent, Sublunary Review, FEED, Ghost City Review, Literary Mama, Rise Up Review, Vagabond City Lit, TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism, and others. Her poem “Bathing Scene” was featured on the Saturday Poetry Series: Poetry as it Ought to Be, and her poem “Cartouche,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She tweets @joanpglass.
Michael Hathaway a small town in Kansas 2 poems
See the SoFloPoJo interview with Michael Hathaway in Interviews
clumsy attempt at critical thinking
Is anyone left who doesn’t grasp that
“The Serpent” in the Hebrew creation myth
was symbolic of Adam’s penis;
that the MEN who jotted that archaic story
on papyrus 2000+ years ago
in what became Genesis
placed all the blame on Eve for Adam’s
seducing (or more likely raping) her?
That the most primeval root
of Abrahamic religions
is victim-blaming?
Is anyone left who doesn’t grasp that
“The Serpent” in the Hebrew creation myth
was symbolic of Adam’s penis;
that the MEN who jotted that archaic story
on papyrus 2000+ years ago
in what became Genesis
placed all the blame on Eve for Adam’s
seducing (or more likely raping) her?
That the most primeval root
of Abrahamic religions
is victim-blaming?
Proposed Legislation: Never to Forget
for Milton Meltzer (1915-2009)
Reprinted with permission by the author from Talking to Squirrels and Postmarked
I read on Facebook about some guy
who sucker punched a Nazi at a rally.
The Facebook poster, a fine poet, was distraught,
lamenting the death of free speech.
He whined, “There ought to be a law!”
I agree. In the interest of Public Health,
punching Nazis should be regulated.
It should be against the law
to face punch any Nazi
coyly hiding behind the First Amendment
more than 6,000,000 times.
6,000,001 will be considered excessive force,
punishable to the full extent of the law.
Michael Hathaway lives in a small central Kansas town with a clowder of cats. By day he's the mild-mannered Keeper of History for the county museum, and by night edits the rough and rowdy Chiron Review literary journal, well into its 38th year. He's published several books and chapbooks of poetry, and 300+ poems and stories in journals and anthologies. His latest books are Talking to Squirrels and Postmarked Home: New & Selected Poems 1979-2019, both available from him, or Barnes & Noble. For more information about Chiron Review visit http://www.chironreview.com, or email chironreview2@gmail.com.
for Milton Meltzer (1915-2009)
Reprinted with permission by the author from Talking to Squirrels and Postmarked
I read on Facebook about some guy
who sucker punched a Nazi at a rally.
The Facebook poster, a fine poet, was distraught,
lamenting the death of free speech.
He whined, “There ought to be a law!”
I agree. In the interest of Public Health,
punching Nazis should be regulated.
It should be against the law
to face punch any Nazi
coyly hiding behind the First Amendment
more than 6,000,000 times.
6,000,001 will be considered excessive force,
punishable to the full extent of the law.
Michael Hathaway lives in a small central Kansas town with a clowder of cats. By day he's the mild-mannered Keeper of History for the county museum, and by night edits the rough and rowdy Chiron Review literary journal, well into its 38th year. He's published several books and chapbooks of poetry, and 300+ poems and stories in journals and anthologies. His latest books are Talking to Squirrels and Postmarked Home: New & Selected Poems 1979-2019, both available from him, or Barnes & Noble. For more information about Chiron Review visit http://www.chironreview.com, or email chironreview2@gmail.com.
A.E. Hines Portland, OR
Bohemian Rhapsody, 1991.
“Mama, life had just begun.” Queen.
When Freddie Mercury
was sweating out the fever,
fire burning up his blood,
I was twenty-one, still in college,
and dancing in a back alley bar,
a place with no street number,
no name, a place hidden
behind a steel reinforced door
so the bigots of Carolina
wouldn’t send us all up in flames.
The boy pulling me to the floor,
big torch of a man, pulled off his shirt
to brandish his Navy tattoos,
then placed my quaking hand
on the sweaty vault
of muscle and skin that shielded
the bass of his throbbing heart.
Over Mercury’s yell, he spat
the news in my ear, said he had it too,
the fire in his blood,
asked if I cared, asked
if we could both burn up
together.
News we all feared — expected.
Freddie Mercury singing out
the last lines, his voice
vibrating in our chests, his words
pouring out our drunken throats:
we college boys and midshipmen,
we married men, our wives missing us
at home, all of us burning up
together in that back alley bar,
each one sure Beelzebub did indeed
have a devil put aside just for him,
that we’d all be dead by fall,
that nothing anymore
really mattered.
A.E. Hines is a poet living in Portland, Oregon. He is a recent Pushcart nominee and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications including: Potomac Review, California Quarterly, Atlanta Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, I-70 Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and SLAB. twitter: @PoetAEHines, instagram: poet_aehines, web: www.aehines.net
“Mama, life had just begun.” Queen.
When Freddie Mercury
was sweating out the fever,
fire burning up his blood,
I was twenty-one, still in college,
and dancing in a back alley bar,
a place with no street number,
no name, a place hidden
behind a steel reinforced door
so the bigots of Carolina
wouldn’t send us all up in flames.
The boy pulling me to the floor,
big torch of a man, pulled off his shirt
to brandish his Navy tattoos,
then placed my quaking hand
on the sweaty vault
of muscle and skin that shielded
the bass of his throbbing heart.
Over Mercury’s yell, he spat
the news in my ear, said he had it too,
the fire in his blood,
asked if I cared, asked
if we could both burn up
together.
News we all feared — expected.
Freddie Mercury singing out
the last lines, his voice
vibrating in our chests, his words
pouring out our drunken throats:
we college boys and midshipmen,
we married men, our wives missing us
at home, all of us burning up
together in that back alley bar,
each one sure Beelzebub did indeed
have a devil put aside just for him,
that we’d all be dead by fall,
that nothing anymore
really mattered.
A.E. Hines is a poet living in Portland, Oregon. He is a recent Pushcart nominee and his work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications including: Potomac Review, California Quarterly, Atlanta Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Burningword Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, I-70 Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, and SLAB. twitter: @PoetAEHines, instagram: poet_aehines, web: www.aehines.net
Holly Iglesias Miami, FL
Set Store By Your Trifles
I ransack the crannies of my childhood—cupboards, linen closets,
desk drawers, toolboxes, duffel bags, medicine chests, lockers,
pantries—to gather whatnots and doodads for comfort in some
unforeseen future. Many moves have winnowed the loot, each
abandoned house now recalled simply by what was left at the curb
or flung into the sea—warped rackets, wedding rings, baby teeth.
What little remains fits in a box, a candy box my father gave my
mother as consolation for their nights apart, the box that, once
emptied, she stashed in her lingerie drawer, inside it the hankies
her aunts had embroidered, holy cards of Saint Theresa and Saint
Anthony, and her half of a heart-shaped pendant worn on a thin
chain until he came home from the war.
Holly Iglesias is the author of three collections of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—as well as a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and teaches in the University of Miami MFA Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on archival and documentary poetry.
I ransack the crannies of my childhood—cupboards, linen closets,
desk drawers, toolboxes, duffel bags, medicine chests, lockers,
pantries—to gather whatnots and doodads for comfort in some
unforeseen future. Many moves have winnowed the loot, each
abandoned house now recalled simply by what was left at the curb
or flung into the sea—warped rackets, wedding rings, baby teeth.
What little remains fits in a box, a candy box my father gave my
mother as consolation for their nights apart, the box that, once
emptied, she stashed in her lingerie drawer, inside it the hankies
her aunts had embroidered, holy cards of Saint Theresa and Saint
Anthony, and her half of a heart-shaped pendant worn on a thin
chain until he came home from the war.
Holly Iglesias is the author of three collections of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—as well as a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and teaches in the University of Miami MFA Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on archival and documentary poetry.
Vicky Iorio New Symrna Beach, FL
Something White
If you have to replace a white tub
replace the white toilet at the same time,
because no two whites are the same
Mama-advice on the eve of my wedding
that was it; nothing something borrowed,
something blue
I wore the neighborhood white wedding gown. By the time I got it
there were yellow stains under the armpits, multiple trips
to the dry cleaner couldn’t take away the scent of fear
Marital score card: Geri wore it first--
the swell in her belly left a permanent stiff bulge in the crinoline
Laurie’s spiked shoes ripped the delicate hem
She wanted to flee even before she said I do
saw it through, took a military plane back from Guam
leaving Tom to fight alone
My sister was the lucky one,
a trapped bird, she said she never wanted
to open her cage
My mother fought with my father:
she blamed the egg yolk breakfast stains on his white
business shirts for the lack of his promotions
The different colored whites in the bathroom--
Dad too cheap to make it right, made Mom crazy
as she douched Dad out in the off-white tub
The bathroom in my first apartment as man and wife had a rose colored
toilet and tub. I thought of forty years as a sentence,
something I could do
Envisioned myself a crazy housewife
smeared with red lipstick, pancake tits flapping
in a mumu buying pork rinds at 7-Eleven
My husband sprung me early
by dying, like Elvis, on his girlfriend’s
glaring white commode
Vicki Iorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch, Local Gems Press, Not Sorry, Alien Buddha Press and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter, dancinggirlpress and Something Fishy, Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond on line, The Fem Lit Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry. Vicki is currently living in Florida but her heart is in New York.
If you have to replace a white tub
replace the white toilet at the same time,
because no two whites are the same
Mama-advice on the eve of my wedding
that was it; nothing something borrowed,
something blue
I wore the neighborhood white wedding gown. By the time I got it
there were yellow stains under the armpits, multiple trips
to the dry cleaner couldn’t take away the scent of fear
Marital score card: Geri wore it first--
the swell in her belly left a permanent stiff bulge in the crinoline
Laurie’s spiked shoes ripped the delicate hem
She wanted to flee even before she said I do
saw it through, took a military plane back from Guam
leaving Tom to fight alone
My sister was the lucky one,
a trapped bird, she said she never wanted
to open her cage
My mother fought with my father:
she blamed the egg yolk breakfast stains on his white
business shirts for the lack of his promotions
The different colored whites in the bathroom--
Dad too cheap to make it right, made Mom crazy
as she douched Dad out in the off-white tub
The bathroom in my first apartment as man and wife had a rose colored
toilet and tub. I thought of forty years as a sentence,
something I could do
Envisioned myself a crazy housewife
smeared with red lipstick, pancake tits flapping
in a mumu buying pork rinds at 7-Eleven
My husband sprung me early
by dying, like Elvis, on his girlfriend’s
glaring white commode
Vicki Iorio is the author of the poetry collections Poems from the Dirty Couch, Local Gems Press, Not Sorry, Alien Buddha Press and the chapbooks Send Me a Letter, dancinggirlpress and Something Fishy, Finishing Line Press. Her poetry has appeared in numerous print and on-line journals including The Painted Bride Quarterly, Rattle, poets respond on line, The Fem Lit Magazine, and The American Journal of Poetry. Vicki is currently living in Florida but her heart is in New York.
Alexis Ivy Boston, MA 2 poems
At The Masonic Cemetery, New Orleans
The dead seem so rich here, everyone
housed in a mausoleum fenced by iron.
Lake Pontchartrain breathing on every
face, breathing on the painted roses.
It’s one o’clock, the church bell reminds.
There’s a raw flavor in this air. Is it the balm
of the swamp? Is everyone here playing
house on a street named Saint Agnes protected
from floods? Why have a door if you
can’t answer it? A home no one enters,
a home folks visit and look at your house
as if they are looking at you.
Where I’m from we bury our dead in dirt.
We become ground again. That’s what I
stand on. A grave to bless, to salute, to place
a stone on. It’s easier to grasp, to hug,
to lie with. No door to knock on.
I’ve changed my mind about being ashes--
too flimsy, I don’t want to be everywhere.
A place to sleep is under dirt.
The dead seem so rich here, everyone
housed in a mausoleum fenced by iron.
Lake Pontchartrain breathing on every
face, breathing on the painted roses.
It’s one o’clock, the church bell reminds.
There’s a raw flavor in this air. Is it the balm
of the swamp? Is everyone here playing
house on a street named Saint Agnes protected
from floods? Why have a door if you
can’t answer it? A home no one enters,
a home folks visit and look at your house
as if they are looking at you.
Where I’m from we bury our dead in dirt.
We become ground again. That’s what I
stand on. A grave to bless, to salute, to place
a stone on. It’s easier to grasp, to hug,
to lie with. No door to knock on.
I’ve changed my mind about being ashes--
too flimsy, I don’t want to be everywhere.
A place to sleep is under dirt.
Wild Card
I buy decks of cards because I collect
jokers. They aren’t involved in the card
game, or play as the wild card in a game
or they have no stake.
They are goofballs—no good in Vegas,
no good in Go-Fish. They juggle all the suits.
They do anything I want, they can be anything
they need to be. They are magical.
I make the deck worthless by collecting them.
I want their power. But instead
I date them—the losers with no kin
no club, diamond, heart or spade
to his name. So unattached. Such a loner.
All of my men come that way
good looking, full of tricks, full of shit.
I only play the games that don’t play jokers.
I hold onto them to be unsuited,
wild, lucky, the winning hand.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. Her first poetry collection, Romance with Small-Time Crooks was published in 2013 by BlazeVOX [books]. Her second collection, Taking the Homeless Census won the 2018 Editors Prize at Saturnalia Books and is forthcoming in 2020. She is a Street Outreach Advocate working with the homeless and lives in her hometown, Boston.
I buy decks of cards because I collect
jokers. They aren’t involved in the card
game, or play as the wild card in a game
or they have no stake.
They are goofballs—no good in Vegas,
no good in Go-Fish. They juggle all the suits.
They do anything I want, they can be anything
they need to be. They are magical.
I make the deck worthless by collecting them.
I want their power. But instead
I date them—the losers with no kin
no club, diamond, heart or spade
to his name. So unattached. Such a loner.
All of my men come that way
good looking, full of tricks, full of shit.
I only play the games that don’t play jokers.
I hold onto them to be unsuited,
wild, lucky, the winning hand.
Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. Her first poetry collection, Romance with Small-Time Crooks was published in 2013 by BlazeVOX [books]. Her second collection, Taking the Homeless Census won the 2018 Editors Prize at Saturnalia Books and is forthcoming in 2020. She is a Street Outreach Advocate working with the homeless and lives in her hometown, Boston.
James Croal Jackson Pittsburgh, PA
Some Crimson Planet
When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine
Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating
it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient
in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave
at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-
years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.
James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in Sampsonia Way, San Antonio Review, and Pacifica. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) and works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com
When I am lonely,
it helps to not think
of the universe. I imagine
Earth buried in the darkest
cemetery, a headstone
with some space separating
it from the next.
I know there must be a
tenderness quotient
in the cosmos, a rose
on some crimson planet
blooming tall to wave
at me, its petals drifting
aimlessly through
a garden of light-
years. This distance
is more collective
than we know.
James Croal Jackson (he/him/his) is a Filipino-American poet. He has a chapbook, The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017), and recent poems in Sampsonia Way, San Antonio Review, and Pacifica. He edits The Mantle Poetry (themantlepoetry.com) and works in film production in Pittsburgh, PA. (jamescroaljackson.com
Jennifer Ruth Jackson Wisconsin
Agony and Mass
There is nothing interesting where you are. My body
builds an empire as a dishonest queen. My body
shudders into oncoming traffic, lights of stop
go form another universe from a useless womb
bleeding black, thick like leeches. Reach
exhausts from such demands, your hands slip,
rocks melt under your touch, turn to dough.
My pale, fat flesh kneaded into shapes it can't sustain,
lying about the pain it can take. Lying for us both.
Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Banshee, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and neurodivergent creatives called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson
There is nothing interesting where you are. My body
builds an empire as a dishonest queen. My body
shudders into oncoming traffic, lights of stop
go form another universe from a useless womb
bleeding black, thick like leeches. Reach
exhausts from such demands, your hands slip,
rocks melt under your touch, turn to dough.
My pale, fat flesh kneaded into shapes it can't sustain,
lying about the pain it can take. Lying for us both.
Jennifer Ruth Jackson is an award-winning poet and fiction writer whose work has appeared in Red Earth Review, Banshee, and more. She runs a blog for disabled and neurodivergent creatives called The Handy, Uncapped Pen from an apartment she shares with her husband. Follow her on Twitter @jenruthjackson
Holly Jaffe Boca Raton, FL 2 poems
The moon whispers, "crazy, is sexy on you.”
The moon understands what it is to have a reputation of causing chaos when full blown
I often think that venturing out late at night, at 3 am
should not be forbidden or frowned upon.
Sanity says, (with its minty breath)
"Listen darling when you can't fall sleep
go down to the kitchen and make yourself a ham sandwich
have a glass of warm milk.”
"Sanity, you are what makes me barmy
with your home remedies, your tedious affirmations and suggestions
that I should remain within the perimeters of my interior and exterior walls.”
Most feel that if you go out into a raven sky
you may be unable to control your outdoor voice
and you will wake the neighbors who struggle
to keep their eyes open as the clock strikes 10-
the neighbors that rise with the rooster-
Who don't want to know what crazy is-
If you go out at 4 am like Serial Killers and thieves,
you may inherit a murderous heart.
You may have the urge to rip off your clothes
and mount anything firm and smooth.
The nosy owl will pass nasty rumors to other creatures of the night
He’ll tell them the hem of your skirt is scented of cherries and semen
and your breath is strong like valerium
The moon knows that I must come out into a space that is miles larger than
my un-manageable imagination.
I cannot fathom what the moon has seen.
The blood baths, the forsaken and the brilliant
pleading, with mangled hearts and brains teetering and uncompliant,
revolving doors of
equations, premonitions and weird nostalgia
entering and exiting, entering and exiting and putting down roots.
And the moon can only watch.
The moon, told me once-
"I am not the cure for what ails you
and I am sorry that I shine so brightly
I will be your God but I am no God
I will be your muse, but remember even when I am a crescent
I am still only round.
And if you are ever brave enough to touch my cratered face
do not be offended if I hurl you back to earth and with no greater knowledge.”
The moon understands what it is to have a reputation of causing chaos when full blown
I often think that venturing out late at night, at 3 am
should not be forbidden or frowned upon.
Sanity says, (with its minty breath)
"Listen darling when you can't fall sleep
go down to the kitchen and make yourself a ham sandwich
have a glass of warm milk.”
"Sanity, you are what makes me barmy
with your home remedies, your tedious affirmations and suggestions
that I should remain within the perimeters of my interior and exterior walls.”
Most feel that if you go out into a raven sky
you may be unable to control your outdoor voice
and you will wake the neighbors who struggle
to keep their eyes open as the clock strikes 10-
the neighbors that rise with the rooster-
Who don't want to know what crazy is-
If you go out at 4 am like Serial Killers and thieves,
you may inherit a murderous heart.
You may have the urge to rip off your clothes
and mount anything firm and smooth.
The nosy owl will pass nasty rumors to other creatures of the night
He’ll tell them the hem of your skirt is scented of cherries and semen
and your breath is strong like valerium
The moon knows that I must come out into a space that is miles larger than
my un-manageable imagination.
I cannot fathom what the moon has seen.
The blood baths, the forsaken and the brilliant
pleading, with mangled hearts and brains teetering and uncompliant,
revolving doors of
equations, premonitions and weird nostalgia
entering and exiting, entering and exiting and putting down roots.
And the moon can only watch.
The moon, told me once-
"I am not the cure for what ails you
and I am sorry that I shine so brightly
I will be your God but I am no God
I will be your muse, but remember even when I am a crescent
I am still only round.
And if you are ever brave enough to touch my cratered face
do not be offended if I hurl you back to earth and with no greater knowledge.”
"So what makes you anxious?" my psychiatrist asks
I reply,
2 good days in a row
Drain pipes
Ronald McDonald and The Burger King
The 3rd wish
Pork Rinds and Tab
Mercurochrome
Velvet Paintings
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The quieting down of a day
A gaggle of girls
The names Billy Bob and Billy Sue
The thin line between paring and pulverizing
Hiccups and nose bleeds
Lake Beds
The slow dance with your daddy
Grown men wearing turned up collars, white sunglasses and no socks
A framed Jesus above the stove
The words, which arm
The death rattle
Corsets and 18th century cutlery
The vulnerability of my wrists when I'm blue
The house with the un kept lawn and curtains drawn
The house with the perfectly manicured lawn, and the curtains drawn
Jaw Breakers and Pop Rocks
Paneled walls and avocado green appliances
Vans with dark tint and the Royal Pine air freshener
Mary Kay makeovers
My appetite for trans fats and diet coke
Pointy shoes and Podiatrists
Tiny Tim
Make shift churches
Raw poultry
Tap water
A Nirvana where one brush stroke can depict a world of understanding.
The Horse Fly and the Old Lady in the Shoe
Turkey Vultures
Japanese Beetles feasting on tender pink petals
The fact that, the Devil is capitalized in the dictionary.
Holly Jaffe was born in the village of Fredonia, NY. Many of her poems reflect the trajectory of a life that began in a small town. She has studied at Jamestown Community College, and Fredonia State University. Her poems have been published in Kleft Jaw Press, Red Fez, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, Virgogray Press and others. She lives with her husband and two dogs in, South Florida.
I reply,
2 good days in a row
Drain pipes
Ronald McDonald and The Burger King
The 3rd wish
Pork Rinds and Tab
Mercurochrome
Velvet Paintings
The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The quieting down of a day
A gaggle of girls
The names Billy Bob and Billy Sue
The thin line between paring and pulverizing
Hiccups and nose bleeds
Lake Beds
The slow dance with your daddy
Grown men wearing turned up collars, white sunglasses and no socks
A framed Jesus above the stove
The words, which arm
The death rattle
Corsets and 18th century cutlery
The vulnerability of my wrists when I'm blue
The house with the un kept lawn and curtains drawn
The house with the perfectly manicured lawn, and the curtains drawn
Jaw Breakers and Pop Rocks
Paneled walls and avocado green appliances
Vans with dark tint and the Royal Pine air freshener
Mary Kay makeovers
My appetite for trans fats and diet coke
Pointy shoes and Podiatrists
Tiny Tim
Make shift churches
Raw poultry
Tap water
A Nirvana where one brush stroke can depict a world of understanding.
The Horse Fly and the Old Lady in the Shoe
Turkey Vultures
Japanese Beetles feasting on tender pink petals
The fact that, the Devil is capitalized in the dictionary.
Holly Jaffe was born in the village of Fredonia, NY. Many of her poems reflect the trajectory of a life that began in a small town. She has studied at Jamestown Community College, and Fredonia State University. Her poems have been published in Kleft Jaw Press, Red Fez, Mad Swirl, Unlikely Stories, Virgogray Press and others. She lives with her husband and two dogs in, South Florida.
Janine Kelley Flagstaff, AZ
Scuba Diving in Key West, 1969
Before memory is sand
And the blue-water of your eyes
Lightens like the starfish on my shelf,
I watercolor that day in Key West
When air is salt, the sun a halo,
And we are seventeen. The tanks
Hang like boulders on our backs.
Masked and finned, we somersault
Backwards from the boat
Descending into blue darkness.
The sea grass waves us on
While the fire coral, fingered
And flecked with red, warns us
As we fall from the earth’s light.
You nudge my shoulder,
Pointing to angel fish, waving
fans of neon cobalt and yellow escorted
By its retinue of scad that skitter
As we float in the sea like foam statues.
We collect shells for a museum: conch,
Abalone, channeled whelk,
Pouching our finds. From the bottom,
I pry loose a reluctant starfish
When you grab my chin and mouth
SHARK. We watch its terrible
Beauty as it sails by like a queen
As the ocean holds its breath and
Air bubbles stagger to the surface.
Ascending, my thigh brushes fire coral.
You kiss the cut and the boat rocks
As we rock, breathless with the sea
Our hands starfish as we sail to shore.
A member of the Gator Sailing Club at the University of Florida, Janine Kelley loves all things ocean. She moved to the Southwest for work and now hikes its canyons with her dog, Gigi. Her writing aired on Poetry Friday at KNAU and won recognition at the Tucson Poetry Festival from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning judges Derek Walcott and Yusef Komunyakaa. An unexpected widow, she is a member of the Academy of American Poets and Sierra Club.
Before memory is sand
And the blue-water of your eyes
Lightens like the starfish on my shelf,
I watercolor that day in Key West
When air is salt, the sun a halo,
And we are seventeen. The tanks
Hang like boulders on our backs.
Masked and finned, we somersault
Backwards from the boat
Descending into blue darkness.
The sea grass waves us on
While the fire coral, fingered
And flecked with red, warns us
As we fall from the earth’s light.
You nudge my shoulder,
Pointing to angel fish, waving
fans of neon cobalt and yellow escorted
By its retinue of scad that skitter
As we float in the sea like foam statues.
We collect shells for a museum: conch,
Abalone, channeled whelk,
Pouching our finds. From the bottom,
I pry loose a reluctant starfish
When you grab my chin and mouth
SHARK. We watch its terrible
Beauty as it sails by like a queen
As the ocean holds its breath and
Air bubbles stagger to the surface.
Ascending, my thigh brushes fire coral.
You kiss the cut and the boat rocks
As we rock, breathless with the sea
Our hands starfish as we sail to shore.
A member of the Gator Sailing Club at the University of Florida, Janine Kelley loves all things ocean. She moved to the Southwest for work and now hikes its canyons with her dog, Gigi. Her writing aired on Poetry Friday at KNAU and won recognition at the Tucson Poetry Festival from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning judges Derek Walcott and Yusef Komunyakaa. An unexpected widow, she is a member of the Academy of American Poets and Sierra Club.
Lúcia Leão & Angela Narciso Torres Boca Raton, FL & Oceanside, CA
Clitoria Ternatea
-a collaborative poem by Lúcia Leão and Angela Narciso Torres
*Note: Commonly known as butterfly pea, Clitoria Ternatea is a plant species belonging to the family Fabaceae. In India, it is revered as a holy flower, used in daily puja rituals. The flowers of this vine were imagined to have the shape of human female genitals, hence the Latin name of the genus "Clitoria," from "clitoris." -from Wikipedia
1/
The woman who stole my flowers
was caught on my camera.
I brought it from the bedroom
when my cat heard her coming
and yawned, in alarm.
Everything happens slowly here,
as do hurricanes in alert.
She had a straw hat, a leash
and a dog by her side
while plucking the butterfly peas
I planted myself
during the spring I mourned.
She doesn’t know that
I was caught in her gaze, hiding behind
the blinds of a beaded-blue light.
Inside it I went to her house, saw her
putting the flowers in a jar
beside the picture of her parents,
a notebook,
a list of things not to buy, never again,
in this new life
or in any other, after that.
The woman wore a white linen dress,
and her hands in their work
reminded me I had to go back home
to water, and water again,
what she had left me.
-Lúcia Leão
2/
Could anyone resist that vivid blue,
indigo of father’s microscope slides
and mother’s favorite housedress,
or that butter-yellow center--
Rorschach of liquid sun
on petals softer than our softest
parts, giving in to my slightest tug?
Before I knew it, I had plucked enough
purple currency for a cup
of butterfly tea. It’s not
my way to take flowers
another has planted. But the sun
burned my nape that morning
and I needed a reminder
the sun can be kind.
Back in the house, I uncurled
my fist. Three seeds fell from
a crumpled pod. I placed them
by your picture, Mother, to remember
the earth gives back what it takes.
-Angela Narciso Torres
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her poems have been published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Harvard Review Online, SWWIM, Gyroscope Review, Chariton Review, among others. Her work is included in the anthology Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing, edited by Richard Blanco, Caridad Moro, Nikki Moustaki and Elisa Albo. The author of two books published in Brazil, she has been living in Florida for twenty-five years.
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry), To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, and Cortland Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she resides in Southern California.
-a collaborative poem by Lúcia Leão and Angela Narciso Torres
*Note: Commonly known as butterfly pea, Clitoria Ternatea is a plant species belonging to the family Fabaceae. In India, it is revered as a holy flower, used in daily puja rituals. The flowers of this vine were imagined to have the shape of human female genitals, hence the Latin name of the genus "Clitoria," from "clitoris." -from Wikipedia
1/
The woman who stole my flowers
was caught on my camera.
I brought it from the bedroom
when my cat heard her coming
and yawned, in alarm.
Everything happens slowly here,
as do hurricanes in alert.
She had a straw hat, a leash
and a dog by her side
while plucking the butterfly peas
I planted myself
during the spring I mourned.
She doesn’t know that
I was caught in her gaze, hiding behind
the blinds of a beaded-blue light.
Inside it I went to her house, saw her
putting the flowers in a jar
beside the picture of her parents,
a notebook,
a list of things not to buy, never again,
in this new life
or in any other, after that.
The woman wore a white linen dress,
and her hands in their work
reminded me I had to go back home
to water, and water again,
what she had left me.
-Lúcia Leão
2/
Could anyone resist that vivid blue,
indigo of father’s microscope slides
and mother’s favorite housedress,
or that butter-yellow center--
Rorschach of liquid sun
on petals softer than our softest
parts, giving in to my slightest tug?
Before I knew it, I had plucked enough
purple currency for a cup
of butterfly tea. It’s not
my way to take flowers
another has planted. But the sun
burned my nape that morning
and I needed a reminder
the sun can be kind.
Back in the house, I uncurled
my fist. Three seeds fell from
a crumpled pod. I placed them
by your picture, Mother, to remember
the earth gives back what it takes.
-Angela Narciso Torres
Lúcia Leão is a translator and a writer originally from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her poems have been published in South Florida Poetry Journal, Harvard Review Online, SWWIM, Gyroscope Review, Chariton Review, among others. Her work is included in the anthology Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment & Healing, edited by Richard Blanco, Caridad Moro, Nikki Moustaki and Elisa Albo. The author of two books published in Brazil, she has been living in Florida for twenty-five years.
Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange (Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry), To the Bone (Sundress Publications, 2020) and What Happens Is Neither (Four Way Books, 2021). Recent work appears in POETRY, Missouri Review, and Cortland Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She serves as a senior and reviews editor for RHINO Poetry. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she resides in Southern California.
Jennifer Martelli Revere, MA
Self-Portrait as the Half-Dead Cherry Tree Outside the Bedroom Window
I’ve re-taken my daughter’s room,
gone back to the time before children,
when I wore an 18-karat rope chain around
my neck to my breastbone and dangled
a gold-plated razor blade, an Italian horn,
a miraculous medal for lost causes, a vial.
What happened is this: I wanted the impossible:
for you, ignorant of my indifference, to love me.
Do you understand this greed? As a child,
my dolls were hybrids: part dog, part cowgirl,
a small devil. I found my father’s baby doll
at my grandma’s, in her back bedroom
off the kitchen with the Befana witch. The doll’s
porcelain skull shattered over its fontanel. Grandma said
not to tell anyone ever about this thing I’d found.
How do we survive sadness? Like a dream, is this only interesting to me?
Last year, the cherry tree blossomed for the first time
in a long while. It had been split and split again by loud bolts
of lightning that cracked the road as well.
Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook, After Bird, was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), The Sycamore Review, and POETRY. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series.
I’ve re-taken my daughter’s room,
gone back to the time before children,
when I wore an 18-karat rope chain around
my neck to my breastbone and dangled
a gold-plated razor blade, an Italian horn,
a miraculous medal for lost causes, a vial.
What happened is this: I wanted the impossible:
for you, ignorant of my indifference, to love me.
Do you understand this greed? As a child,
my dolls were hybrids: part dog, part cowgirl,
a small devil. I found my father’s baby doll
at my grandma’s, in her back bedroom
off the kitchen with the Befana witch. The doll’s
porcelain skull shattered over its fontanel. Grandma said
not to tell anyone ever about this thing I’d found.
How do we survive sadness? Like a dream, is this only interesting to me?
Last year, the cherry tree blossomed for the first time
in a long while. It had been split and split again by loud bolts
of lightning that cracked the road as well.
Jennifer Martelli is the author of My Tarantella (Bordighera Press), awarded an Honorable Mention from the Italian-American Studies Association, selected as a 2019 “Must Read” by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and named as a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. Her chapbook, After Bird, was the winner of the Grey Book Press open reading, 2016. Her work has appeared in Verse Daily, Iron Horse Review (winner, Photo Finish contest), The Sycamore Review, and POETRY. Jennifer Martelli has twice received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council for her poetry. She is co-poetry editor for Mom Egg Review and co-curates the Italian-American Writers Series.
Susan Milchman Minneapolis, MN
Mother, apocalypse
your faceless hands will not work here / your wings will not work here either / every impossible
silence / is an oil spill of scream / i can pretend to be deaf / but i can still hear the blood / that
pulsing uncaged scent / spreading like the silver lust of spring / the map to why my heart beats
for broken things // how metal can reinvent itself through violence / how glass can explode /
fracture into a sheet of roots / & still hold onto the edge / to something resembling a whole //
please show me how to mourn / i don’t have the milk / to feed & water the dead / i am a painted
still life / stretched over borrowed light / beautiful fruit / legs that will not open / you won’t catch
me looking into a mirror / i can’t finger those familiar lines / all those paper bones // there is no
salt here / there is no air here either / just knuckles
& stars
Susan Milchman's poetry has appeared in The Journal, SWWIM, Stirring, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, bramble & thorn (an anthology from Porkbelly Press, 2017), Rust+Moth, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She was a Best of the Net nominee in 2018 and is working on her first poetry collection. Susan lives in Minneapolis by way of Washington, D.C. and holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland. Read additional published work at susanmilchman.com. Instagram @susan.milchman
your faceless hands will not work here / your wings will not work here either / every impossible
silence / is an oil spill of scream / i can pretend to be deaf / but i can still hear the blood / that
pulsing uncaged scent / spreading like the silver lust of spring / the map to why my heart beats
for broken things // how metal can reinvent itself through violence / how glass can explode /
fracture into a sheet of roots / & still hold onto the edge / to something resembling a whole //
please show me how to mourn / i don’t have the milk / to feed & water the dead / i am a painted
still life / stretched over borrowed light / beautiful fruit / legs that will not open / you won’t catch
me looking into a mirror / i can’t finger those familiar lines / all those paper bones // there is no
salt here / there is no air here either / just knuckles
& stars
Susan Milchman's poetry has appeared in The Journal, SWWIM, Stirring, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, bramble & thorn (an anthology from Porkbelly Press, 2017), Rust+Moth, Rogue Agent, and elsewhere. She was a Best of the Net nominee in 2018 and is working on her first poetry collection. Susan lives in Minneapolis by way of Washington, D.C. and holds a degree in Journalism from the University of Maryland. Read additional published work at susanmilchman.com. Instagram @susan.milchman
Simon Perchik East Hampton, NY
*
Without a father or a mother this silence
longs for home the way far-off rocks
come by to soothe you bit by bit and stay
turn your gravestone pointing east
where west should be, round and around
smoothing the Earth for the wind
over and over writing your name in the air
signing away everything –you need this compass
to come back, find the river again
filled without touching your fingers
or the small rock at the top no longer moving
emptied to find you a shore nearby.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
To view one of his interviews please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8
Without a father or a mother this silence
longs for home the way far-off rocks
come by to soothe you bit by bit and stay
turn your gravestone pointing east
where west should be, round and around
smoothing the Earth for the wind
over and over writing your name in the air
signing away everything –you need this compass
to come back, find the river again
filled without touching your fingers
or the small rock at the top no longer moving
emptied to find you a shore nearby.
Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Reflection in a Glass Eye published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2020. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com.
To view one of his interviews please follow this linkhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8
Geoffrey Philp Miami, FL
America 2020
From the Overture to Overtown event in Miami, FL
America, you’ve lost your way.
You’ve believed in your innocence
for so long, you’ve betrayed your promises
on parchment, trapped children in cages,
robbed fatherless children and widows
of their birthright, and while the oceans
churn towards a slow boil, and a virus holds
us hostage in our homes, you’ve allowed gangsters
to prey on families seeking asylum from thugs
in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
And you’d rather die than give up your privilege
to hunt black men you think have become too uppity.
Yet, despite the millions lost in the Maafa,
massacres in East St. Louis, Tulsa, Rosewood,
the destruction of Overtown, and poisoning of Flint,
we are marking stones where our martyrs
have fallen, taking note of your crimes that fester
like scraps of chicken and lamb—desperate offerings
to the saints for justice—littering the steps
of the courthouse in Miami, where a wake
of turkey buzzards returns to their roosts atop
skyscrapers every winter, their wings darkening the skies.
The work of legacy Overtown poets was celebrated through recitations of poems written by W.E.B Dubois, Langston Hughes, and Muhammed Ali – all presented by Geoffrey Philp, the project's Community Poet in Residence, who appeared in all four Festival programs. Geoffrey Philp's also debuted a new poem for the program, entitled “America 2020.”
Check out Geoffrey Philp's websites where he uses the poem and others in workshops:
Author of Garvey's Ghost: https://www.bookfusion.com/books/116198-garvey-s-ghost
Web Site: https://www.geoffreyphilp.com/
Blog: http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/
Born in Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, two collections of short stories, and three children’s books. His poems have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, South Poetry Poetry Journal, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Bearden's Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a recent chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy in an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. He is currently working on a collection of poems, Distant Cousins.
From the Overture to Overtown event in Miami, FL
America, you’ve lost your way.
You’ve believed in your innocence
for so long, you’ve betrayed your promises
on parchment, trapped children in cages,
robbed fatherless children and widows
of their birthright, and while the oceans
churn towards a slow boil, and a virus holds
us hostage in our homes, you’ve allowed gangsters
to prey on families seeking asylum from thugs
in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.
And you’d rather die than give up your privilege
to hunt black men you think have become too uppity.
Yet, despite the millions lost in the Maafa,
massacres in East St. Louis, Tulsa, Rosewood,
the destruction of Overtown, and poisoning of Flint,
we are marking stones where our martyrs
have fallen, taking note of your crimes that fester
like scraps of chicken and lamb—desperate offerings
to the saints for justice—littering the steps
of the courthouse in Miami, where a wake
of turkey buzzards returns to their roosts atop
skyscrapers every winter, their wings darkening the skies.
The work of legacy Overtown poets was celebrated through recitations of poems written by W.E.B Dubois, Langston Hughes, and Muhammed Ali – all presented by Geoffrey Philp, the project's Community Poet in Residence, who appeared in all four Festival programs. Geoffrey Philp's also debuted a new poem for the program, entitled “America 2020.”
Check out Geoffrey Philp's websites where he uses the poem and others in workshops:
Author of Garvey's Ghost: https://www.bookfusion.com/books/116198-garvey-s-ghost
Web Site: https://www.geoffreyphilp.com/
Blog: http://geoffreyphilp.blogspot.com/
Born in Jamaica, Geoffrey Philp is the author of five books of poetry, two novels, two collections of short stories, and three children’s books. His poems have been published in The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse, sx salon, South Poetry Poetry Journal, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Bearden's Odyssey Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden, and Crab Orchard Review. A recipient of the Luminary Award from the Consulate of Jamaica (2015) and a recent chair for the 2019 OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, Philp’s work is featured on The Poetry Rail at The Betsy in an homage to 12 writers that shaped Miami culture. He is currently working on a collection of poems, Distant Cousins.
Hyam Plutzik 2 poems
Reprinted with permission from the Hyam Plutzik estate, this poem is from the forthcoming collection 32 Poems / 32 Poemas, a bilingual collection of poetry edited by George B. Henson. Published and distributed by Suburbano Ediciones.
A Tremor Is Heard in the House of the Dead Man
A tremor is heard in the house of the dead man
And a door opens slowly
Soon after the body is brought to the ground.
He listens to the talk of the mourners,
Sipping the words like a bird at a strange water
Far from home.
He flutters to him who saw the door opening,
Calling in a reedy voice to the merciful God
Who rots the beams and rusts the doors from their hinges.
The grave lies north.
He darts through an open window and flies southward
Toward some hovering dots on a white cloud.
A butterfly comes to the open window,
Enters—(How strange!
I’ll drive it away. Do not hurt it.)—
And blunders back to the garden.
The voices ebb and resume.
The clock ticks.
Father.
Un temblor se oye en la casa del muerto
Un temblor se oye en la casa del muerto.
Y una puerta se abre lentamente
Poco después de haber dejado el cuerpo en la tierra.
Escucha la charla de los dolientes,
Sorbiendo las palabras como un pájaro en un agua rara
Lejos de hogar.
Aletea hacia el que vio la puerta abrirse,
Invocando con una voz aflautado al Dios misericordioso
Quien pudre las vigas y oxida las puertas de sus goznes.
La tumba yace hacia el norte.
Se lanza por una ventana abierta y vuela hacia el sur.
Hacia algunos puntos flotando en una nube blanca.
Una mariposa llega a la ventana abierta,
Entra—(¡Qué raro!
Lo ahuyentaré. Que no lo hagas daño).—
Y vuelve torpemente al jardín.
Las voces bajan y se reanudan.
El reloj hace tic.
Padre.
Traducido por Layla Benitez-James
A Tremor Is Heard in the House of the Dead Man
A tremor is heard in the house of the dead man
And a door opens slowly
Soon after the body is brought to the ground.
He listens to the talk of the mourners,
Sipping the words like a bird at a strange water
Far from home.
He flutters to him who saw the door opening,
Calling in a reedy voice to the merciful God
Who rots the beams and rusts the doors from their hinges.
The grave lies north.
He darts through an open window and flies southward
Toward some hovering dots on a white cloud.
A butterfly comes to the open window,
Enters—(How strange!
I’ll drive it away. Do not hurt it.)—
And blunders back to the garden.
The voices ebb and resume.
The clock ticks.
Father.
Un temblor se oye en la casa del muerto
Un temblor se oye en la casa del muerto.
Y una puerta se abre lentamente
Poco después de haber dejado el cuerpo en la tierra.
Escucha la charla de los dolientes,
Sorbiendo las palabras como un pájaro en un agua rara
Lejos de hogar.
Aletea hacia el que vio la puerta abrirse,
Invocando con una voz aflautado al Dios misericordioso
Quien pudre las vigas y oxida las puertas de sus goznes.
La tumba yace hacia el norte.
Se lanza por una ventana abierta y vuela hacia el sur.
Hacia algunos puntos flotando en una nube blanca.
Una mariposa llega a la ventana abierta,
Entra—(¡Qué raro!
Lo ahuyentaré. Que no lo hagas daño).—
Y vuelve torpemente al jardín.
Las voces bajan y se reanudan.
El reloj hace tic.
Padre.
Traducido por Layla Benitez-James
To My Daughter
Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road,
And those who love you will be few but stronger.
Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various,
But do not fear them: they are unimportant.
You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas
The great betrayals are impersonal
(Though many would be Judas, having the will
And the capacity, but few the courage).
You must learn soon, soon, that even love
Can be no shield against the abstract demons:
Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain,
The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.
The messengers, of faces and names known
Or of forms familiar, are innocent.
A mi hija
Setenta siete traidores bloquearán el camino
Y quienes tea man seran pocos pero mas Fuertes.
Setenta siete traidores, hábiles y variadas,
Pero no les temas: no tienen importancia.
Has de aprender pronto, pronto que a pesar de Judas
Las grandes traiciones son impersonales.
(Aunque muchos pretendían ser Judas, con la voluntad
Y la capacidad, pero pocos con la valentía).
Has de aprender pronto, pronto que aun el amor
No puede servir como escudo contra los demonios abstractos.
El tiempo, el frío y el fuego, y la ley del dolor,
La ley de las cosas cayendo, y la ley del olvido.
Los mensajeros de rostros y nombres conocidos
O de formas familiares, son inocentes.
Translated by Jonathan Rose
Hyam Plutzik, who spoke only Yiddish and Russian at home, did not learn English until he went to a one-room schoolhouse in Connecticut. He went on to Trinity College and Yale University, and taught for sixteen years in the English department of the University of Rochester before his untimely death, at 50, in 1962. He was a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his three collections: Aspects of Proteus, Apples from Shinar, and Horatio.
Seventy-seven betrayers will stand by the road,
And those who love you will be few but stronger.
Seventy-seven betrayers, skilful and various,
But do not fear them: they are unimportant.
You must learn soon, soon, that despite Judas
The great betrayals are impersonal
(Though many would be Judas, having the will
And the capacity, but few the courage).
You must learn soon, soon, that even love
Can be no shield against the abstract demons:
Time, cold and fire, and the law of pain,
The law of things falling, and the law of forgetting.
The messengers, of faces and names known
Or of forms familiar, are innocent.
A mi hija
Setenta siete traidores bloquearán el camino
Y quienes tea man seran pocos pero mas Fuertes.
Setenta siete traidores, hábiles y variadas,
Pero no les temas: no tienen importancia.
Has de aprender pronto, pronto que a pesar de Judas
Las grandes traiciones son impersonales.
(Aunque muchos pretendían ser Judas, con la voluntad
Y la capacidad, pero pocos con la valentía).
Has de aprender pronto, pronto que aun el amor
No puede servir como escudo contra los demonios abstractos.
El tiempo, el frío y el fuego, y la ley del dolor,
La ley de las cosas cayendo, y la ley del olvido.
Los mensajeros de rostros y nombres conocidos
O de formas familiares, son inocentes.
Translated by Jonathan Rose
Hyam Plutzik, who spoke only Yiddish and Russian at home, did not learn English until he went to a one-room schoolhouse in Connecticut. He went on to Trinity College and Yale University, and taught for sixteen years in the English department of the University of Rochester before his untimely death, at 50, in 1962. He was a three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his three collections: Aspects of Proteus, Apples from Shinar, and Horatio.
Cheryl Rice New York's Hudson Valley
Peaches
Margaret Mitchell’s typewriter rests in a glass coffin
somewhere on Peach Street,
waiting for Scarlet to return thundering
from the keys, green velvet bull to
knock down the latest patriarchy.
My journal is closed, the travelogue I intended
on the long train ride to Atlanta
lost in the curtain of kudzu
trembling outside, this silver crescent
a kind of thunder, too, manmade, intermittent
on rails spiked with memory.
You a new Southerner, you of the careful mapping,
which one of us could have planned for this
rain of peaches across an otherwise sensible city,
Coca-Cola and its three-hundred affiliate flavors
dancing across a museum,
CNN and its single eye learning to see,
you and I navigating the bus system,
a better way to scout out the territory,
having already conquered upstate New York,
certain isolated monuments out West.
Your husband a kind star orbiting our path,
we browse the underground mall on foot,
by sunlight, Warner Brothers of no interest to you,
but you indulge my fascination
with Tweety Bird nail polish,
ragged clumps of glitter
clinging to the bottle’s insides,
wily bird’s baby eyes intact.
Odd, makeshift museum on the outskirts
holds cardboard cutouts,
movie posters remembering the greatest film on earth,
still running somewhere in town,
but like the film, nothing here is real,
not Scarlet’s red dress;
not a forced confession by a timid husband
whose moustache and bad breath
did all the talking; not the first, the third,
the twentieth editions of the longest
story ever told (tho the book includes a
husband and child too inconvenient
for MGM’s script).
The city isn’t real either,
beige streets named for variations on a favorite fruit,
north, south, northwest peaches
that my tongue, my throat will not tolerate.
I am resistant to that flesh’s pulpy sex,
sticky juice that delicately stains all it touches.
I have outgrown cola too, tho I am always up
for a well-fried chicken, eschewing the
cellophane wrapped bagel Amtrak tries
to pass off on my return trip home
as some sort of meal.
Cheryl A. Rice’s poems have appeared in Home Planet News, Rye Whiskey Review, Up The River, and Misfit Magazine, among others. Recent chapbooks include Until the Words Came (2019: Post Traumatic Press), coauthored with Guy Reed, and Love’s Compass (2019: Kung Fu Treachery Press). Her blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/. Rice lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Margaret Mitchell’s typewriter rests in a glass coffin
somewhere on Peach Street,
waiting for Scarlet to return thundering
from the keys, green velvet bull to
knock down the latest patriarchy.
My journal is closed, the travelogue I intended
on the long train ride to Atlanta
lost in the curtain of kudzu
trembling outside, this silver crescent
a kind of thunder, too, manmade, intermittent
on rails spiked with memory.
You a new Southerner, you of the careful mapping,
which one of us could have planned for this
rain of peaches across an otherwise sensible city,
Coca-Cola and its three-hundred affiliate flavors
dancing across a museum,
CNN and its single eye learning to see,
you and I navigating the bus system,
a better way to scout out the territory,
having already conquered upstate New York,
certain isolated monuments out West.
Your husband a kind star orbiting our path,
we browse the underground mall on foot,
by sunlight, Warner Brothers of no interest to you,
but you indulge my fascination
with Tweety Bird nail polish,
ragged clumps of glitter
clinging to the bottle’s insides,
wily bird’s baby eyes intact.
Odd, makeshift museum on the outskirts
holds cardboard cutouts,
movie posters remembering the greatest film on earth,
still running somewhere in town,
but like the film, nothing here is real,
not Scarlet’s red dress;
not a forced confession by a timid husband
whose moustache and bad breath
did all the talking; not the first, the third,
the twentieth editions of the longest
story ever told (tho the book includes a
husband and child too inconvenient
for MGM’s script).
The city isn’t real either,
beige streets named for variations on a favorite fruit,
north, south, northwest peaches
that my tongue, my throat will not tolerate.
I am resistant to that flesh’s pulpy sex,
sticky juice that delicately stains all it touches.
I have outgrown cola too, tho I am always up
for a well-fried chicken, eschewing the
cellophane wrapped bagel Amtrak tries
to pass off on my return trip home
as some sort of meal.
Cheryl A. Rice’s poems have appeared in Home Planet News, Rye Whiskey Review, Up The River, and Misfit Magazine, among others. Recent chapbooks include Until the Words Came (2019: Post Traumatic Press), coauthored with Guy Reed, and Love’s Compass (2019: Kung Fu Treachery Press). Her blog is at: http://flyingmonkeyprods.blogspot.com/. Rice lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
Alison Stone Nyack, NY
Time Pantoum
Time will pass, will you?
our teacher asked if we clock watched,
oblivious to the lesson.
Fidgeting, yearning to be elsewhere.
Our teacher said if we clock watched,
didn’t learn, our futures would shrink.
We fidgeted, yearning to be elsewhere.
What did books know that we didn’t?
We didn’t learn our futures would shrink
until we graduated, married disappointment.
What did books know that we didn’t?
That dreams were smoke and forever only for songs?
Until we graduated, married disappointment,
we kissed like kisses could save us.
That dream was smoke, forever only for songs.
Lines on our faces deepened.
We kissed like kisses could save us
under magnolias older than we’d ever be.
Lines on our faces deepened.
Our bones hungered for earth.
Under magnolias older than we’d ever be,
we kissed, oblivious to the lesson.
Our bones hungered for earth.
Time would pass, and so would we.
Alison Stone has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org www.stonetarot.com. YouTube – Alison Stone Poetry.
Time will pass, will you?
our teacher asked if we clock watched,
oblivious to the lesson.
Fidgeting, yearning to be elsewhere.
Our teacher said if we clock watched,
didn’t learn, our futures would shrink.
We fidgeted, yearning to be elsewhere.
What did books know that we didn’t?
We didn’t learn our futures would shrink
until we graduated, married disappointment.
What did books know that we didn’t?
That dreams were smoke and forever only for songs?
Until we graduated, married disappointment,
we kissed like kisses could save us.
That dream was smoke, forever only for songs.
Lines on our faces deepened.
We kissed like kisses could save us
under magnolias older than we’d ever be.
Lines on our faces deepened.
Our bones hungered for earth.
Under magnolias older than we’d ever be,
we kissed, oblivious to the lesson.
Our bones hungered for earth.
Time would pass, and so would we.
Alison Stone has published seven full-length collections, Zombies at the Disco (Jacar Press, 2020), Caught in the Myth (NYQ Books, 2019), Dazzle (Jacar Press, 2017), Masterplan, a book of collaborative poems with Eric Greinke (Presa Press, 2018), Ordinary Magic, (NYQ Books, 2016), Dangerous Enough (Presa Press 2014), and They Sing at Midnight, which won the 2003 Many Mountains Moving Poetry Award; as well as three chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Barrow Street, Poet Lore, and many other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded Poetry’s Frederick Bock Prize and New York Quarterly’s Madeline Sadin Award. She was Writer in Residence at LitSpace St. Pete. She is also a painter and the creator of The Stone Tarot. A licensed psychotherapist, she has private practices in NYC and Nyack. www.stonepoetry.org www.stonetarot.com. YouTube – Alison Stone Poetry.
Jorge Teillier Chile (born in Lautaro in 1935, died in Viña del Mar in 1996.
Para Habla Con Los Muertos
Para hablar con los muertos
hay que elegir palabras
que ellos reconozcan tan facilmente
como sus manos
reconocian el pelaje de sus perros en la oscuridad.
Palabras claras y tranquilas
como el agua del torrente domesticada en la copa
o las sillas ordenadas por la madre
después que se han ido los invitados.
Palabras que la noche acoja
como los pantanos a los fuegos fatuos.
Para hablar con los muertos
hay que saber esperar:
ellos son miedosos
como los primeros pasos de un niño.
Pero si tenemos paciencia
un dia nos responderán
con una hoja de álamo atrapada por un espejo roto,
con una llama de súbito reanimada en la chimenea
con un regreso oscuro de pájaros
frente a la mirada de una muchacha
que aguarda inmóvil en un umbral.
To Talk With the Dead
translated by Holly Iglesias
To talk with the dead
you must choose words
they’d recognize as easily
as their hands recognize
their dog’s coat in the dark.
Words calm and clear
as the torrent tamed in the cup
or the chairs the mother puts back
after the guests have gone.
Words that the night might welcome
like the marsh welcomes a will-o’-the-wisp.
To talk with the dead
you must know how to wait;
they are fearful
like a child’s first steps.
But if you’re patient,
one day they will reply--
with a poplar leaf caught in a broken mirror,
a flame suddenly revived in the hearth,
the dark return of birds
passing a girl who waits, gazing
and still, in the doorway.
Jorge Teillier (Chile, 1935-1996) was one of the most influential Chilean poets of the 20th century and began his literary career as part of the literary group Trilce, which introduced poesía lárica (poetry of the hearth, or of a lost time). He also wrote essays, short stories and journalism, and traveled widely. He was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Prize and Premio Alerce, and his work has been translated into many languages. His poetry collections include For Angels and Sparrows, Trains of the Night and Other Poems, The Memory Tree, Secret Poems, Deaths and Wonders, Letters for Queens of Other Springs, andPoems from the Land of Never-more.
Holly Iglesias is the author of three collections of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—as well as a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and teaches in the University of Miami MFA Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on archival and documentary poetry.
Para hablar con los muertos
hay que elegir palabras
que ellos reconozcan tan facilmente
como sus manos
reconocian el pelaje de sus perros en la oscuridad.
Palabras claras y tranquilas
como el agua del torrente domesticada en la copa
o las sillas ordenadas por la madre
después que se han ido los invitados.
Palabras que la noche acoja
como los pantanos a los fuegos fatuos.
Para hablar con los muertos
hay que saber esperar:
ellos son miedosos
como los primeros pasos de un niño.
Pero si tenemos paciencia
un dia nos responderán
con una hoja de álamo atrapada por un espejo roto,
con una llama de súbito reanimada en la chimenea
con un regreso oscuro de pájaros
frente a la mirada de una muchacha
que aguarda inmóvil en un umbral.
To Talk With the Dead
translated by Holly Iglesias
To talk with the dead
you must choose words
they’d recognize as easily
as their hands recognize
their dog’s coat in the dark.
Words calm and clear
as the torrent tamed in the cup
or the chairs the mother puts back
after the guests have gone.
Words that the night might welcome
like the marsh welcomes a will-o’-the-wisp.
To talk with the dead
you must know how to wait;
they are fearful
like a child’s first steps.
But if you’re patient,
one day they will reply--
with a poplar leaf caught in a broken mirror,
a flame suddenly revived in the hearth,
the dark return of birds
passing a girl who waits, gazing
and still, in the doorway.
Jorge Teillier (Chile, 1935-1996) was one of the most influential Chilean poets of the 20th century and began his literary career as part of the literary group Trilce, which introduced poesía lárica (poetry of the hearth, or of a lost time). He also wrote essays, short stories and journalism, and traveled widely. He was awarded the Gabriela Mistral Prize and Premio Alerce, and his work has been translated into many languages. His poetry collections include For Angels and Sparrows, Trains of the Night and Other Poems, The Memory Tree, Secret Poems, Deaths and Wonders, Letters for Queens of Other Springs, andPoems from the Land of Never-more.
Holly Iglesias is the author of three collections of poetry— Sleeping Things, Angles of Approach, and Souvenirs of a Shrunken World—as well as a critical work, Boxing Inside the Box: Women’s Prose Poetry. She has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Edward Albee Foundation, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and teaches in the University of Miami MFA Program in Creative Writing, with a focus on archival and documentary poetry.
Lauren Tivey St. Augustine, FL
Sassy Susie
Duval County, Florida, 1927
Jaunty in a drop-waist chemise, T-straps, and cloche, chrome-plated heater snug in a garter against her caramel thigh, Zora fleeing Jacksonville to rove solo through sun-smacked Jim Crow country in a two-seater Nash coupe she’d dubbed Sassy Susie, the faithful three-cylinder puttering, looking like a top hat on spoked wheels, but still she could build up a speed, spit pistachio shells doing 50 mph down a dirt road, and they’d whip off like a shot, and then the dust cloud of her skid to a jook on the outskirts of a town, a whoop out the door, her swinging hip strut announcing Look out, boys, I’m here! giddy drunk on moonshine and handsome men and roiling Blues, then back to Susie to snooze alone in the front seat, cicadas humming her to sleep, a vault of constellations spinning overhead, and she just knows the KKK’s out there hunting for blood, and the fuzz, too, but goddammit, there’s work to do in the morning, stories to collect, songs to record, roads to roll, and her own fine car to get her wherever she wants to be.
Note: Sassy Susie: As an undergraduate scholar of Barnard College, and student of famed anthropologist Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston completed fieldwork in the American South during the late 1920s. She was further supported in this endeavor by a $200/mo. stipend from her patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, and her car (“Sassy Susie”) was purchased with her patron’s funds.
Lauren Tivey is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday, which was the winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2019; The Breakdown Atlas & Other Poems; Her Blood Runs Through Me; and Dance of the Fire Horse. Tivey is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2016, 2019), and her work has appeared in Connotation Press, The Coachella Review, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College, in St. Augustine, Florida.
Duval County, Florida, 1927
Jaunty in a drop-waist chemise, T-straps, and cloche, chrome-plated heater snug in a garter against her caramel thigh, Zora fleeing Jacksonville to rove solo through sun-smacked Jim Crow country in a two-seater Nash coupe she’d dubbed Sassy Susie, the faithful three-cylinder puttering, looking like a top hat on spoked wheels, but still she could build up a speed, spit pistachio shells doing 50 mph down a dirt road, and they’d whip off like a shot, and then the dust cloud of her skid to a jook on the outskirts of a town, a whoop out the door, her swinging hip strut announcing Look out, boys, I’m here! giddy drunk on moonshine and handsome men and roiling Blues, then back to Susie to snooze alone in the front seat, cicadas humming her to sleep, a vault of constellations spinning overhead, and she just knows the KKK’s out there hunting for blood, and the fuzz, too, but goddammit, there’s work to do in the morning, stories to collect, songs to record, roads to roll, and her own fine car to get her wherever she wants to be.
Note: Sassy Susie: As an undergraduate scholar of Barnard College, and student of famed anthropologist Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston completed fieldwork in the American South during the late 1920s. She was further supported in this endeavor by a $200/mo. stipend from her patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason, and her car (“Sassy Susie”) was purchased with her patron’s funds.
Lauren Tivey is the author of four chapbooks, most recently Moroccan Holiday, which was the winner of The Poetry Box Chapbook Prize 2019; The Breakdown Atlas & Other Poems; Her Blood Runs Through Me; and Dance of the Fire Horse. Tivey is a Pushcart Prize nominee (2016, 2019), and her work has appeared in Connotation Press, The Coachella Review, and Split Lip Magazine, among dozens of other publications. She teaches English and Creative Writing at Flagler College, in St. Augustine, Florida.
Leslie Ullman Taos, NM 2 poems
In 1975 composer Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt created a list of 110 Oblique Strategies which they produced as a deck of cards, one strategy per card. The project arose from the discovery that they approached their art in remarkably similar ways. For Eno, who survives Schmidt and has continued to give interviews on the subject as well as compose a significant body of innovative ambient music, the Strategies evolved from situations of “panic” when he felt creatively stuck in the middle of limited and expensive studio time. These situations, he recalled, “tended to make me quickly forget that there were…tangential ways of attacking a problem that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach.” The Strategies were designed to encourage lateral thinking—to help artists break through barriers via such tangential routes and take themselves by surprise.
Is the tuning appropriate?
Attenuated A before the Maestro
steps out—the note unfolds, golden wing,
from a single bow-stroke to waken
woodwind and brass, gut-string and ivory--
pulling the stream of notes into its furl
where, after ritual dissonance
and waverings, they swirl into one thread,
a timbre redolent of plush and polish--
tasteful—calibrated—marking
a modest release of anticipation.
It’s matinee day at Symphony Hall
where most of the regulars are over 85.
Propped by investments, children who visit
when they can, and résuméd caregivers, they
bob over canes and folding walkers,
late to their seats, their skin translucent,
hair thinned to auras, invisible except when
someone impatient wants to pass. Easy
to forget they were once quick, graceful,
eyes clear and backs straight—and beautiful
to someone or many. Some faced bullets and flames,
watched the slaughter of friends and didn’t
back down. Some bore heartbreak on their shoulders
until love or hope could find its way again
and again—and what does it mean to
raise a family? To lift and keep it aloft
when resolve wavers, when a middle child
steals from the neighbors or leaves home
and never looks back, when a first spouse
shuts down the future for a time, when savings
are gambled away—what grit, to forgive
and forgive, and then forgive the body
as it fails. Each patron has bathed and dressed
and left safe space for this moment
when the Concertmaster offers the first
burnished note of the afternoon. It’s matinee day
at Symphony Hall, where most of the regulars
are breakable. May the music treat them gently.
Do nothing for as long as possible
I stare at the keyboard and find myself
drifting to the construction site nearby--
jackhammers and drills in layered
symphonics, excavators dumping soil
from prehistoric jaws, crane releasing a stream
of cement that must be directed quick
while it’s wet, rapid-fire Spanish as workers
spread foundation and lay pipe—it’s a noisy
mess out there. A work of engineering
whose grid-work will yield a high-
end market lit softly with track lights, heat
and refrigeration purring through ducts, shelves
stocked with shine and color, a cornucopia
unimaginable to most of the world.
These men know circuit and sewer.
Leverage and switch. The gears of costly
mammoths that dig and dump and lift.
If our cities were razed, lands stripped
and food made scarce, they’d be
the new elite. Tonight they will wash
another day of labor from their bodies
and sit down to dinner without wondering,
as I do most of the time, while hours slip
seamlessly as though through vents
going who-knows-where, what it means
to have done enough.
Leslie Ullman is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The You That All Along Has Housed You, and a hybrid collection of craft essays and writing exercises, Library of Small Happiness. She taught for many years at University of Texas-El Paso and still teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she also teaches skiing in the winters at Taos Ski Valley.
I stare at the keyboard and find myself
drifting to the construction site nearby--
jackhammers and drills in layered
symphonics, excavators dumping soil
from prehistoric jaws, crane releasing a stream
of cement that must be directed quick
while it’s wet, rapid-fire Spanish as workers
spread foundation and lay pipe—it’s a noisy
mess out there. A work of engineering
whose grid-work will yield a high-
end market lit softly with track lights, heat
and refrigeration purring through ducts, shelves
stocked with shine and color, a cornucopia
unimaginable to most of the world.
These men know circuit and sewer.
Leverage and switch. The gears of costly
mammoths that dig and dump and lift.
If our cities were razed, lands stripped
and food made scarce, they’d be
the new elite. Tonight they will wash
another day of labor from their bodies
and sit down to dinner without wondering,
as I do most of the time, while hours slip
seamlessly as though through vents
going who-knows-where, what it means
to have done enough.
Leslie Ullman is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently The You That All Along Has Housed You, and a hybrid collection of craft essays and writing exercises, Library of Small Happiness. She taught for many years at University of Texas-El Paso and still teaches in the low-residency MFA Program at Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she also teaches skiing in the winters at Taos Ski Valley.
Peter Vertacnik Saginaw, MI
Home Movies
What did you find,
those years behind
the camera’s lens,
hidden from friends
and family,
no memory
left uncropped?
The filming stopped,
why do I climb,
alone each time,
to the darkness of
this room above
my own loved ones:
a wife, two sons
you never met?
What will I get
from trying to
discover who
you really were,
departed blur?
Behind drawn drapes
I search these tapes.
Their bland narration
of each vacation
and grainy hue
has outlived you--
who wouldn’t relent
until an event
was captured by
your restless eye.
Peter Vertacnik's poems and translations have appeared previously (or are forthcoming) in Alabama Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Green Briar Review, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Poet Lore, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Water~Stone Review, among others. Website: https://www.petervertacnik.com
What did you find,
those years behind
the camera’s lens,
hidden from friends
and family,
no memory
left uncropped?
The filming stopped,
why do I climb,
alone each time,
to the darkness of
this room above
my own loved ones:
a wife, two sons
you never met?
What will I get
from trying to
discover who
you really were,
departed blur?
Behind drawn drapes
I search these tapes.
Their bland narration
of each vacation
and grainy hue
has outlived you--
who wouldn’t relent
until an event
was captured by
your restless eye.
Peter Vertacnik's poems and translations have appeared previously (or are forthcoming) in Alabama Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Green Briar Review, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, Poet Lore, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Water~Stone Review, among others. Website: https://www.petervertacnik.com
Michael Walls Atlanta, GA 2 poems
Baking Banana Nut Bread
for John Robert Lewis (1940 – 2020)
a good day to bake banana nut bread 3 overripe bananas John Lewis (that boy from Troy)
crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge the last time 1 tsp salt 1000 covid deaths a day 1 tsp
cinnamon U.S leads the world in covid deaths 1 tsp vanilla highest unemployment since
Great Depression 1 tsp baking soda Congress can’t pass a relief bill 1 tbsp butter for
American workers 1 tbsp canola oil Mary got covid at dentist appointment ¾ cup walnut
pieces Trump keeps saying hydroxychloroquine cures covid 19 pre-heat oven to 325
doctors say it won’t and it’s dangerous to take 1 cup whole wheat flour Jimmy got covid in
the hospital ½ cup white flour hospitals running out of beds ½ cup white sugar Black
Lives Matter ½ cup brown sugar Russia interfering in election to help Trump grease pan
with butter Trump criticizes mail-in voting melt remaining butter, mix in canola oil claims
it will cause election fraud mash bananas threatens to delay election beat egg post
office being sabotaged to suppress the vote combine banana, sugar, egg, butter/canola,
mail delivery getting slower blend together postal workers say it’s new work policies
blend flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, cinnamon Trump admits slower mail means more rejected
Democrat ballots blend with a whisker Conscience of Congress gone add ½ cup of
walnuts (save the rest for the top) anti-racism protests in Portland stir until well blended in
one bowl Trump sent federal agents to Portland spoon everything into baking pan they
detained, beat, tear-gassed peaceful protesters sprinkle walnuts on top Trump threatens he
won’t step down if he loses turn off TV news, turn on E Street Radio Bruce sings “ain’t no
sin to be glad you’re alive” pan’s in the oven “gonna spit in the face of those badlands”
forgot vanilla what this country needs now tastes pretty damn good some good trouble
Rest in Power, John Lewis
for John Robert Lewis (1940 – 2020)
a good day to bake banana nut bread 3 overripe bananas John Lewis (that boy from Troy)
crossed Edmund Pettus Bridge the last time 1 tsp salt 1000 covid deaths a day 1 tsp
cinnamon U.S leads the world in covid deaths 1 tsp vanilla highest unemployment since
Great Depression 1 tsp baking soda Congress can’t pass a relief bill 1 tbsp butter for
American workers 1 tbsp canola oil Mary got covid at dentist appointment ¾ cup walnut
pieces Trump keeps saying hydroxychloroquine cures covid 19 pre-heat oven to 325
doctors say it won’t and it’s dangerous to take 1 cup whole wheat flour Jimmy got covid in
the hospital ½ cup white flour hospitals running out of beds ½ cup white sugar Black
Lives Matter ½ cup brown sugar Russia interfering in election to help Trump grease pan
with butter Trump criticizes mail-in voting melt remaining butter, mix in canola oil claims
it will cause election fraud mash bananas threatens to delay election beat egg post
office being sabotaged to suppress the vote combine banana, sugar, egg, butter/canola,
mail delivery getting slower blend together postal workers say it’s new work policies
blend flour, baking soda, sugar, salt, cinnamon Trump admits slower mail means more rejected
Democrat ballots blend with a whisker Conscience of Congress gone add ½ cup of
walnuts (save the rest for the top) anti-racism protests in Portland stir until well blended in
one bowl Trump sent federal agents to Portland spoon everything into baking pan they
detained, beat, tear-gassed peaceful protesters sprinkle walnuts on top Trump threatens he
won’t step down if he loses turn off TV news, turn on E Street Radio Bruce sings “ain’t no
sin to be glad you’re alive” pan’s in the oven “gonna spit in the face of those badlands”
forgot vanilla what this country needs now tastes pretty damn good some good trouble
Rest in Power, John Lewis
Erythromelalgia
high rates of depression, suicide neurovascular
disorder affects only 1.3 people per 100,000
no known cure few doctors ever see it fewer treat it
Falcons, patrolling the sky with swoops and dives are gone. So too,
bumble bees that buzzed a tired tangle of jasmine vines that
bloomed in January—long before the arrival of bumble bees.
symptoms: redness, swelling, pain, pins and needles affects feet,
hands triggers: temperature above 70 degrees stress
exercise flares may last minutes hours days weeks
Feet dangle down the side of the pool, reach deep for cooler water
to shut down fire in my feet, a respite from air conditioning.
All that’s left at the pool: me, a lost towel, the last whiff of sunscreen.
in summer: can’t wear shoes can’t go out just quick
early morning dashes to CVS, Kroger, Home Depot
in winter: layers over short sleeves cotton never
wool backpack to carry sandals stow layers
removed in heated buildings
in between: a couple of weeks in spring and fall making
believe a wayward body has come home
A pair of mourning doves I see each day light on a rail atop a retaining
wall. A few moments, the doves flutter to a feeder, immerse themselves
in sunflower seeds. A cardinal takes their place on the rail.
always cold life centers around avoiding flares
people don’t visit people who live in cold houses
Redbird perches tall in regal beauty, regales himself with songs,
preens, then darts to a limb near the doves. They quickly depart.
Dusk gathers. I’m left wondering: Where do they all go? Do the
bumble bees ever want to ask me where the blossoms went? Do the
birds notice their admirer? Imagine details of my life, as I do theirs?
isolation melancholy loneliness
The cardinal hops to the feeder, snatches a few fast bites, flies away.
Michael Walls is a retired labor lawyer who lives in Atlanta. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including The South Carolina Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poet Lore, Poetry East, ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies Literature and Environment) and Atlanta Review. He is the author of the chapbook, The Blues Singer (The Frank Cat Press, 2003) and the full-length collection, Stacking Winter Wood (Kelsay Book / Aldrich Press, 2017).A year and half ago, after months of tests from specialist after specialist, I was diagnosed with Erythromelalgia. Should you choose to publish the poem '"Erythromelalgia", feel free to include that information in my bio.
high rates of depression, suicide neurovascular
disorder affects only 1.3 people per 100,000
no known cure few doctors ever see it fewer treat it
Falcons, patrolling the sky with swoops and dives are gone. So too,
bumble bees that buzzed a tired tangle of jasmine vines that
bloomed in January—long before the arrival of bumble bees.
symptoms: redness, swelling, pain, pins and needles affects feet,
hands triggers: temperature above 70 degrees stress
exercise flares may last minutes hours days weeks
Feet dangle down the side of the pool, reach deep for cooler water
to shut down fire in my feet, a respite from air conditioning.
All that’s left at the pool: me, a lost towel, the last whiff of sunscreen.
in summer: can’t wear shoes can’t go out just quick
early morning dashes to CVS, Kroger, Home Depot
in winter: layers over short sleeves cotton never
wool backpack to carry sandals stow layers
removed in heated buildings
in between: a couple of weeks in spring and fall making
believe a wayward body has come home
A pair of mourning doves I see each day light on a rail atop a retaining
wall. A few moments, the doves flutter to a feeder, immerse themselves
in sunflower seeds. A cardinal takes their place on the rail.
always cold life centers around avoiding flares
people don’t visit people who live in cold houses
Redbird perches tall in regal beauty, regales himself with songs,
preens, then darts to a limb near the doves. They quickly depart.
Dusk gathers. I’m left wondering: Where do they all go? Do the
bumble bees ever want to ask me where the blossoms went? Do the
birds notice their admirer? Imagine details of my life, as I do theirs?
isolation melancholy loneliness
The cardinal hops to the feeder, snatches a few fast bites, flies away.
Michael Walls is a retired labor lawyer who lives in Atlanta. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals including The South Carolina Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Poet Lore, Poetry East, ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies Literature and Environment) and Atlanta Review. He is the author of the chapbook, The Blues Singer (The Frank Cat Press, 2003) and the full-length collection, Stacking Winter Wood (Kelsay Book / Aldrich Press, 2017).A year and half ago, after months of tests from specialist after specialist, I was diagnosed with Erythromelalgia. Should you choose to publish the poem '"Erythromelalgia", feel free to include that information in my bio.
Amirah Al Wassif Zarqa, damietta government, Egypt
How our rooster taught me love?
My father picked me up with one hand
Even I could touch God's throne.
I laughed so hard.
I laughed until I lost my voice.
I call my father Mr.rooster
He isn't a real rooster
And of course I am not a little hen
Our identities prove that
Yes,we are human.
In our Arabian Nights,
The rooster has a prominent place
He is a storyteller
Just like my father.
As a little kid,
My mother hung me
In her ears like a star.
Shiny ones.
She taught me how to weave
A fairy tale around
The waist of the universe
We were playing drums
During baking bread
Our dusty faces before
Our stove.
The birds pecking our napes
Many delicious stories
Float through our bodies
I am a verse hovering over the air
My mother's scent enfolds
The horizon
Our rooster start telling us
How the ancient Queens and kings
Revealed the secret of embalming.
We are in love with braiding
Our grandmother's hair
Me, my father and my mother
Fighting against the pain
We dissolve our salty tears
In a glass of sugar and wine
My father picked me up with one hand
Even I could touch God's throne.
I laughed so hard.
I laughed until I lost my voice.
I call my father Mr.rooster
He isn't a real rooster
And of course I am not a little hen
Our identities prove that
Yes,we are human.
In our Arabian Nights,
The rooster has a prominent place
He is a storyteller
Just like my father.
As a little kid,
My mother hung me
In her ears like a star.
Shiny ones.
She taught me how to weave
A fairy tale around
The waist of the universe
We were playing drums
During baking bread
Our dusty faces before
Our stove.
The birds pecking our napes
Many delicious stories
Float through our bodies
I am a verse hovering over the air
My mother's scent enfolds
The horizon
Our rooster start telling us
How the ancient Queens and kings
Revealed the secret of embalming.
We are in love with braiding
Our grandmother's hair
Me, my father and my mother
Fighting against the pain
We dissolve our salty tears
In a glass of sugar and wine
Ed Werstein Milwaukee, WI
You are not imagining it: we’re all having intense corona virus dreams.
—Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2020
No one told them the world had ended. - Mark Doty
Cicadas
It was cicadas he was talking about.
No one had told them we were gone,
as if they sang just for us.
I dreamed of an earth a million years ago.
Maybe it was a million years from now.
In any case, there were cicadas
and the cicadas were singing.
Ed Werstein, Milwaukee, is the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets East Region VP. His poetry has been published in Rosebud, Stoneboat, Red Cedar, Gyroscope Review and dozens of other journals. In 2018 he received the Lorine Niedecker Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, judged by Nickole Brown. He has three books of poetry available: edwerstein.com
—Los Angeles Times, April 7, 2020
No one told them the world had ended. - Mark Doty
Cicadas
It was cicadas he was talking about.
No one had told them we were gone,
as if they sang just for us.
I dreamed of an earth a million years ago.
Maybe it was a million years from now.
In any case, there were cicadas
and the cicadas were singing.
Ed Werstein, Milwaukee, is the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets East Region VP. His poetry has been published in Rosebud, Stoneboat, Red Cedar, Gyroscope Review and dozens of other journals. In 2018 he received the Lorine Niedecker Prize from the Council for Wisconsin Writers, judged by Nickole Brown. He has three books of poetry available: edwerstein.com