ISSUE 21 May 2021
Jennifer Greenberg, Editor
Jennifer Greenberg, Editor
If you are poet, prophet, peace loving artist, tolerant, traditional or anarchistic, haiku or epic, and points in between; if your poems sing, shout, whisper, dance, scratch, tickle, trot or crawl; if you value the humane treatment of every creature and the planet on which we dwell, SoFloPoJo seeks your best work.
Poetry
Matthew James Babcock Michelle Bitting Emma Bolden Laure-Anne Bosselaar Dustin Brookshire Grace Cavalieri Jesse Dionne Beth Gordon Bill Griffin Brian Jacobs Mitch James Alexis V. Jackson David Kirby Susan L. Leary Lúcia Leão & Ruby Murray Brian Lutz Sergio Ortiz Sara Patterson Hilda Raz Kolbe Riney Susannah W. Simpson Kerry Trautman
Matthew James Babcock Idaho
What Is a Flamingo?
after Susan Elizabeth Howe’s “What Is a Grackle?”
Spindly dandies in the pink of youth,
jostling for seats in Drury Lane’s
priciest boxes. Cotton candy for foxes.
Entering through exits, the clueless slue-foot
doofus, a tangle of angles, gangly beatnik
banging bongos. Flamingos lap the hype,
guffaw google-eyed at sitcom stereotypes.
But what flavors! What hues!
Plumage from bubble gum to mango,
from champagne to the dyed hair
of the guy in Oingo Boingo.
All foofaraw and fandango, something daffy
and strawberry taffy in this pencil-necked,
knock-kneed Theater of the Absurd.
Pure gringo, tutti frutti galoot, goofball roommate
who intrudes—oops!—while you’re making out
on the couch, your girlfriend’s tangy
lip gloss, your tongues doing the tango.
Dorkier than storks. Bigger scoop shovels
than spoonbills or herons, jiving on juice
jazzier than Django, a beak like Ringo!
Catch phrases hatch from the Bahamas to Peru--
hoot, chortle, burp and guzzle. Footloose souls
staining the sky over the Congo. Senoritas!
they whistle from rented sports coupes,
toupées askew. Come, speak
to me love’s Lingo Franco! Migrating my way?
The interior’s all plush. Try not to blush.
Matthew James Babcock is an Idahoan. Writer. Breakdancer. Drove to Key West by himself once to see the Hemingway house.
after Susan Elizabeth Howe’s “What Is a Grackle?”
Spindly dandies in the pink of youth,
jostling for seats in Drury Lane’s
priciest boxes. Cotton candy for foxes.
Entering through exits, the clueless slue-foot
doofus, a tangle of angles, gangly beatnik
banging bongos. Flamingos lap the hype,
guffaw google-eyed at sitcom stereotypes.
But what flavors! What hues!
Plumage from bubble gum to mango,
from champagne to the dyed hair
of the guy in Oingo Boingo.
All foofaraw and fandango, something daffy
and strawberry taffy in this pencil-necked,
knock-kneed Theater of the Absurd.
Pure gringo, tutti frutti galoot, goofball roommate
who intrudes—oops!—while you’re making out
on the couch, your girlfriend’s tangy
lip gloss, your tongues doing the tango.
Dorkier than storks. Bigger scoop shovels
than spoonbills or herons, jiving on juice
jazzier than Django, a beak like Ringo!
Catch phrases hatch from the Bahamas to Peru--
hoot, chortle, burp and guzzle. Footloose souls
staining the sky over the Congo. Senoritas!
they whistle from rented sports coupes,
toupées askew. Come, speak
to me love’s Lingo Franco! Migrating my way?
The interior’s all plush. Try not to blush.
Matthew James Babcock is an Idahoan. Writer. Breakdancer. Drove to Key West by himself once to see the Hemingway house.
Michelle Bitting Los Angels, CA
Winter, Lake Arrowhead, CA
What a treat to have the snow come down
and it was good of the ducks
to brave colder currents
waddle over
and squawk at us
This lake never freezes
because too deep
and if your house sits on the shore
you own the water
So the rich build higher
blocking views
of the less lucky
Once the town saved
all the grave markers
from a century prior
recycled them into pilings
a new pier and playground
called Tombstone Park
But no one wanted
to take their kids there
so they changed the name
something less spooky—Well
we know how much
children love to bury stuff
dig it up and pretend
they’ve discovered fire—divinity
gifted that way—Why hide it?
They see what’s what
those tears like
fish glowing silver
your eyes’ phosphorescence
all the watery corridors
letting the shine out
Little ghosts
little lies and stories
twirling on their spindly
axis of made up things
tinkering
among coffins
When you build a tale
taller than your own
haunting comes with the territory
denial dredging death
up and the youth
can smell it
you believing yourself
a cut above the rest
a little godly even
Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize and the Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest. A fourth collection: Broken Kingdom won the 2018 Catamaran Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. In 2021, Recently, She was a finalist in the 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize, as well as the 2019 Sonora Review and New Millennium Flash Prose contests. Michelle is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at LMU and Film Studies at UOAG.
What a treat to have the snow come down
and it was good of the ducks
to brave colder currents
waddle over
and squawk at us
This lake never freezes
because too deep
and if your house sits on the shore
you own the water
So the rich build higher
blocking views
of the less lucky
Once the town saved
all the grave markers
from a century prior
recycled them into pilings
a new pier and playground
called Tombstone Park
But no one wanted
to take their kids there
so they changed the name
something less spooky—Well
we know how much
children love to bury stuff
dig it up and pretend
they’ve discovered fire—divinity
gifted that way—Why hide it?
They see what’s what
those tears like
fish glowing silver
your eyes’ phosphorescence
all the watery corridors
letting the shine out
Little ghosts
little lies and stories
twirling on their spindly
axis of made up things
tinkering
among coffins
When you build a tale
taller than your own
haunting comes with the territory
denial dredging death
up and the youth
can smell it
you believing yourself
a cut above the rest
a little godly even
Michelle Bitting was short-listed for the 2020 Montreal International Poetry Prize, won the 2018 Fischer Poetry Prize and the Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest. A fourth collection: Broken Kingdom won the 2018 Catamaran Prize and was named to Kirkus Reviews’ Best of 2018. In 2021, Recently, She was a finalist in the 2020 Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Prize, as well as the 2019 Sonora Review and New Millennium Flash Prose contests. Michelle is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at LMU and Film Studies at UOAG.
Emma Bolden Alabaster, AL
Collect of the Evening
A hand can’t say if it’s empty or full.
We built a space for time on our wrists
and told ourselves it settled there, sweetly
as a wind in the gauge we use to translate
what it tells us about motion into numbers.
Nestled on the line between each number lies
a nest of infinities. This we teach ourselves
not to acknowledge, which makes us feel less
than a lie. God, when does living begin
to feel like anything less than a lie? A hand
can’t keep track of what the heart says
it has carried. May every nothing be empty
in the way a sheet of glass is when set inside
a windowsill, as the gift that glass gives us:
a way to stand inside and a way to see
outside, a way to dwell in the beauty,
emptied of anything but our watching
until all that light is gold.
Emma Bolden is the author of House Is an Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press), and Maleficae (GenPop Books). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, her work has appeared in such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, and others. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly and an Editor of Screen Door Review. Her memoir, The Tiger and the Cage, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in 2022.
A hand can’t say if it’s empty or full.
We built a space for time on our wrists
and told ourselves it settled there, sweetly
as a wind in the gauge we use to translate
what it tells us about motion into numbers.
Nestled on the line between each number lies
a nest of infinities. This we teach ourselves
not to acknowledge, which makes us feel less
than a lie. God, when does living begin
to feel like anything less than a lie? A hand
can’t keep track of what the heart says
it has carried. May every nothing be empty
in the way a sheet of glass is when set inside
a windowsill, as the gift that glass gives us:
a way to stand inside and a way to see
outside, a way to dwell in the beauty,
emptied of anything but our watching
until all that light is gold.
Emma Bolden is the author of House Is an Enigma (Southeast Missouri State University Press), medi(t)ations (Noctuary Press), and Maleficae (GenPop Books). The recipient of an NEA Fellowship, her work has appeared in such journals as the Mississippi Review, The Rumpus, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, New Madrid, TriQuarterly, Shenandoah, and others. She currently serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief for Tupelo Quarterly and an Editor of Screen Door Review. Her memoir, The Tiger and the Cage, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Press in 2022.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar Santa Barbara, CA
Letter to Frank X. Gaspar
Frank,
I decided to stop reading your new book. For if I don’t, I’ll have read everything you wrote, & have nothing to look forward to as time scrawls its long lines on my walls.
I’m at page 107: All I want to do is sleep/my body is covered with books like scales, you write. It’s a good place to stop. From now on, I’ll read a page a month. It’ll take about four years to reach the end, and you’ll have written more by then. I’ll have done the same. May I still be here then, writing to you at this good table where we sat together before the pandemic. Eleven months of solitude now. Eleven months with no one at this table. No one throwing their heads back in laughter or lifting a glass of wine to health!
I often take walks by the cliffs. I watched a small boy there, yesterday, perched high on his father’s shoulders. He held on to the man’s black curls with both hands, then softly put his cheek on his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, & smiled.
I stood there, teary & suddenly wildly glad to be moved like that. Before walking on, I looked back at their disappearing silhouettes & thought of your line: Don’t wait for the Angel. Don’t go naming God. Just breathe. It’s enough.
Stay safe, Frank, be well. There are days this quarantine gnaws at my heart.
Is it the same for you?
Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize, and of A New Hunger, selected as an ALA Notable Book. Her new book, These Many Rooms, came out from Four Way Books. The winner of the 2020 James Dickey Poetry Prize, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she is the editor of five anthologies.
Frank,
I decided to stop reading your new book. For if I don’t, I’ll have read everything you wrote, & have nothing to look forward to as time scrawls its long lines on my walls.
I’m at page 107: All I want to do is sleep/my body is covered with books like scales, you write. It’s a good place to stop. From now on, I’ll read a page a month. It’ll take about four years to reach the end, and you’ll have written more by then. I’ll have done the same. May I still be here then, writing to you at this good table where we sat together before the pandemic. Eleven months of solitude now. Eleven months with no one at this table. No one throwing their heads back in laughter or lifting a glass of wine to health!
I often take walks by the cliffs. I watched a small boy there, yesterday, perched high on his father’s shoulders. He held on to the man’s black curls with both hands, then softly put his cheek on his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, & smiled.
I stood there, teary & suddenly wildly glad to be moved like that. Before walking on, I looked back at their disappearing silhouettes & thought of your line: Don’t wait for the Angel. Don’t go naming God. Just breathe. It’s enough.
Stay safe, Frank, be well. There are days this quarantine gnaws at my heart.
Is it the same for you?
Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, winner of the Isabella Gardner Prize, and of A New Hunger, selected as an ALA Notable Book. Her new book, These Many Rooms, came out from Four Way Books. The winner of the 2020 James Dickey Poetry Prize, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she is the editor of five anthologies.
Dustin Brookshire Wilton Manors, FL
To Teri Hatcher With Love
for Geoff
I have it on good authority that Teri Hatcher
started an email to her Desperate Housewives costars with
Listen, you bitches.
My mouth left wide open after hearing this scoop.
Really, I exclaimed.
I saw a copy of the email, a friend verified.
Maybe you should send it to me, I coaxed.
I'm not losing my job, he or she replied.
This was the moment I started to like Terri Hatcher.
I came to peace with her character
on Desperate Housewives, who always annoyed me--
Watch Me Be Cute And Trip Over Air Susan
or I'm Desperate To Get Mike At All Costs Season 1 Susan.
I often wished for Teri's character to be written off,
but then it happened—like an epiphany at the end
of a season. I suddenly loved Teri Hatcher.
I cheered for Susan,
even laughed when she tripped over nothing.
Yes, you want to know
the dirt behind the Listen you bitches email,
but the email is not the point of this poem.
The point is we're capable of doing a 180
when someone else has the balls
or brass ovaries to do what we dream of.
from the chapbook, Love Most Of You Too, forthcoming May 14 2021,- https://www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/love-most-of-you-too Read a SoFloPoJo review of this book here
Dustin Brookshire, a finalist for the 2021 Scotti Merrill Award, is the founder/editor of Limp Wrist and curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, a Zoom-based poetry reading series. He is the author of the chapbooks Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Visit Dustin online at www.dustinbrookshire.com
for Geoff
I have it on good authority that Teri Hatcher
started an email to her Desperate Housewives costars with
Listen, you bitches.
My mouth left wide open after hearing this scoop.
Really, I exclaimed.
I saw a copy of the email, a friend verified.
Maybe you should send it to me, I coaxed.
I'm not losing my job, he or she replied.
This was the moment I started to like Terri Hatcher.
I came to peace with her character
on Desperate Housewives, who always annoyed me--
Watch Me Be Cute And Trip Over Air Susan
or I'm Desperate To Get Mike At All Costs Season 1 Susan.
I often wished for Teri's character to be written off,
but then it happened—like an epiphany at the end
of a season. I suddenly loved Teri Hatcher.
I cheered for Susan,
even laughed when she tripped over nothing.
Yes, you want to know
the dirt behind the Listen you bitches email,
but the email is not the point of this poem.
The point is we're capable of doing a 180
when someone else has the balls
or brass ovaries to do what we dream of.
from the chapbook, Love Most Of You Too, forthcoming May 14 2021,- https://www.smallharborpublishing.com/books/love-most-of-you-too Read a SoFloPoJo review of this book here
Dustin Brookshire, a finalist for the 2021 Scotti Merrill Award, is the founder/editor of Limp Wrist and curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, a Zoom-based poetry reading series. He is the author of the chapbooks Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Visit Dustin online at www.dustinbrookshire.com
Grace Cavalieri Washington, DC
The Birth and Death of It
We knew from the beginning it was a glass factory refracting
fragmented versions of our bodies a hologram
splintered like crystals the sparkle the prism
then came music and then prose or prose first
words like the wind incarnating itself
to the very ends of obsession with
the breaking up of bodies but
always together in mind
with a rhythmic uncertainty silence then speech
the shaping of sound filaments and the experience of tiny blue flowers
in a white teacup this is the language of artists who are
always examining their work
we took advantage of the fact that we were human
with accommodations
butterflies in our pockets and images of butterflies
that could not last we traded in the dark
but the landscapes the dangerous desires
then the joys of sailing
what would we not surrender to get what we wanted
what moon would we not reach what natural mysteries would we not enter
sometimes we sat under a simple tree to be with the sun
and where else was there to sit
other times we had the habit of lighting up the sky red and blue
do not think what I say here matters
it is just that I am trying to tell you that a shared recognition
made us free of the world and we were walking in its water
until we were blind with it
and then what about whiteness and what is pure
and what is its vision and what dissolves into flesh
the impulse to make everything a dream
morning danger noon oranges warmed in the sun
night supper by a flawless lake
now I see the wit and energy of it all
the red carnations the house on the hill
the cemetery with its white teeth I realize it is unnatural
to talk about fallen evening trips or glorious ferry rides
a language of marriage looking for itself over and over
crystalline realities like paintings taking too long to finish
I am only saying there once stood a girl alongside the stream and she entered.
Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate and the author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry and 20 short-form and full-length plays. Her new book of poems is What The Psychic Said, (Goss publications 2019). Her latest play “Quilting The Sun” was produced at the Theater for the New City, NYC in 2019. She founded and produces “the Poet and the Poem” for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 44 years on-air. She holds The Associated Writing Program’s George Garrett Award, plus the Pen-Fiction, the Allen Ginsberg, Bordighera Poetry, and Paterson Poetry awards. Her forthcoming books scheduled for 2021-2022 are Grace-Art: A Pandemic of Color, (Poet’s Choice Press; ) The Secret Life of Madame de Stael (Goss Publications); and New and Collected Poems (The Word Works.)
We knew from the beginning it was a glass factory refracting
fragmented versions of our bodies a hologram
splintered like crystals the sparkle the prism
then came music and then prose or prose first
words like the wind incarnating itself
to the very ends of obsession with
the breaking up of bodies but
always together in mind
with a rhythmic uncertainty silence then speech
the shaping of sound filaments and the experience of tiny blue flowers
in a white teacup this is the language of artists who are
always examining their work
we took advantage of the fact that we were human
with accommodations
butterflies in our pockets and images of butterflies
that could not last we traded in the dark
but the landscapes the dangerous desires
then the joys of sailing
what would we not surrender to get what we wanted
what moon would we not reach what natural mysteries would we not enter
sometimes we sat under a simple tree to be with the sun
and where else was there to sit
other times we had the habit of lighting up the sky red and blue
do not think what I say here matters
it is just that I am trying to tell you that a shared recognition
made us free of the world and we were walking in its water
until we were blind with it
and then what about whiteness and what is pure
and what is its vision and what dissolves into flesh
the impulse to make everything a dream
morning danger noon oranges warmed in the sun
night supper by a flawless lake
now I see the wit and energy of it all
the red carnations the house on the hill
the cemetery with its white teeth I realize it is unnatural
to talk about fallen evening trips or glorious ferry rides
a language of marriage looking for itself over and over
crystalline realities like paintings taking too long to finish
I am only saying there once stood a girl alongside the stream and she entered.
Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth Poet Laureate and the author of 26 books and chapbooks of poetry and 20 short-form and full-length plays. Her new book of poems is What The Psychic Said, (Goss publications 2019). Her latest play “Quilting The Sun” was produced at the Theater for the New City, NYC in 2019. She founded and produces “the Poet and the Poem” for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 44 years on-air. She holds The Associated Writing Program’s George Garrett Award, plus the Pen-Fiction, the Allen Ginsberg, Bordighera Poetry, and Paterson Poetry awards. Her forthcoming books scheduled for 2021-2022 are Grace-Art: A Pandemic of Color, (Poet’s Choice Press; ) The Secret Life of Madame de Stael (Goss Publications); and New and Collected Poems (The Word Works.)
Jessica Dionne Douglasville, GA
The Devil’s in Thickery Creek
And the good times are on display. How much muscadine makes
for a Ball jar of mercy? Every now
and then, there’s a bruising of begonias
crushed by neighbor-kid heels as they creep through the scutch grass at will.
How many mothers stole lipstick from the Bi-Lo? Or produced
a penny from behind the ear? No--
the grease in the skillets keeps jinxing.
No—Friday nights snap rosen
and blinking, under a neon moon.
I’m trying to remember it right,
the riotous town of my youth. The fathers
who buried coins in their backyards
watered wishes with whiskey and lye.
I can’t remember the name of the lacey
widow, the one who knew every line dance
and every last name of all the fellas
in Mance Co. I’m counting steeples in my sleep.
Looking at the ladybug on the dashboard
I think God’s little now. He flies gauzy
in sun-glint, and I notice in the rearview that the road
splits purple hills that bend like horns, or maybe a smile.
Jessica Dionne is a poet from North Carolina. She is a PhD student at GSU, and she received her MFA in Poetry from NC State and her MA in Literature from UNCC. She was the runner-up in Meridian's 2021 Editors' Prize, and a finalist in Iron Horse Literary Magazine's 2020 contest, and Narrative's 2019 30 Below contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Raleigh Review, Lucky Jefferson, Iron Horse, Narrative, Stoneboat, SWWIM, Rust + Moth, Banshee (IE), Mascara Literary Review (AU), and JMWW.
And the good times are on display. How much muscadine makes
for a Ball jar of mercy? Every now
and then, there’s a bruising of begonias
crushed by neighbor-kid heels as they creep through the scutch grass at will.
How many mothers stole lipstick from the Bi-Lo? Or produced
a penny from behind the ear? No--
the grease in the skillets keeps jinxing.
No—Friday nights snap rosen
and blinking, under a neon moon.
I’m trying to remember it right,
the riotous town of my youth. The fathers
who buried coins in their backyards
watered wishes with whiskey and lye.
I can’t remember the name of the lacey
widow, the one who knew every line dance
and every last name of all the fellas
in Mance Co. I’m counting steeples in my sleep.
Looking at the ladybug on the dashboard
I think God’s little now. He flies gauzy
in sun-glint, and I notice in the rearview that the road
splits purple hills that bend like horns, or maybe a smile.
Jessica Dionne is a poet from North Carolina. She is a PhD student at GSU, and she received her MFA in Poetry from NC State and her MA in Literature from UNCC. She was the runner-up in Meridian's 2021 Editors' Prize, and a finalist in Iron Horse Literary Magazine's 2020 contest, and Narrative's 2019 30 Below contest. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hunger Mountain, Raleigh Review, Lucky Jefferson, Iron Horse, Narrative, Stoneboat, SWWIM, Rust + Moth, Banshee (IE), Mascara Literary Review (AU), and JMWW.
Beth Gordon Asheville, NC
Séance
1.
I wade in cold spots. Spider webs in blistered sun. Hunters in the woods. Duck calls like kazoos at a birthday party. Candle or candelabra: it’s all flame. Someone is a day older: someone’s heart explodes. Dogs baying at the hatchling scent. Chasing death for sport. Our soundtrack had more blues. More pool tables: sand sculptures of bathtubs & Buicks. His voice lost in the white noise of the universe. I look for him at dusk. Holding vigil at the driveway’s edge.
2.
You drink whiskey & listen to trees, brittle-leafed & unburdened. Tonight I speak to the dead. Irish tunes. Soundtrack of the grief-sodden. We pull this pain out of our bones. Our bones groan with the parting. The creek sleeps. I can hear its dreams. One morning I woke & forgot. The next morning I heard the clamorous return. The bird feeders empty. The birds reborn in a lighthouse by the sea. Winter is walking back to us. When you walk into the room love untangles its song.
3.
All things reverse in winter light: trees silent & bruised. Acorns strike the tin roof & shatter webs & nests. A solitary raven calls from low-slung clouds. Last night, a beetle crawled across the kitchen floor, all shiny black & clumsy. Soft tumbling of ice at midnight. Hard tears of a lost child. But nothing that sings. Nothing that buzzes or roots. My father’s voice rising like smoke for miles. Ghosts asleep in the shallow creek. I find his face: immersed in heaven’s vanishing sound.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother, and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of two chapbooks: Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press) and Particularly Dangerous Situation (Clare Songbird Publishing). Her full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, will be released in July 2021 from Kelsay Books and her chapbook, The Water Cycle, is forthcoming from Variant Literature in November, 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Co-Managing Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram: bethgordonpoet.
1.
I wade in cold spots. Spider webs in blistered sun. Hunters in the woods. Duck calls like kazoos at a birthday party. Candle or candelabra: it’s all flame. Someone is a day older: someone’s heart explodes. Dogs baying at the hatchling scent. Chasing death for sport. Our soundtrack had more blues. More pool tables: sand sculptures of bathtubs & Buicks. His voice lost in the white noise of the universe. I look for him at dusk. Holding vigil at the driveway’s edge.
2.
You drink whiskey & listen to trees, brittle-leafed & unburdened. Tonight I speak to the dead. Irish tunes. Soundtrack of the grief-sodden. We pull this pain out of our bones. Our bones groan with the parting. The creek sleeps. I can hear its dreams. One morning I woke & forgot. The next morning I heard the clamorous return. The bird feeders empty. The birds reborn in a lighthouse by the sea. Winter is walking back to us. When you walk into the room love untangles its song.
3.
All things reverse in winter light: trees silent & bruised. Acorns strike the tin roof & shatter webs & nests. A solitary raven calls from low-slung clouds. Last night, a beetle crawled across the kitchen floor, all shiny black & clumsy. Soft tumbling of ice at midnight. Hard tears of a lost child. But nothing that sings. Nothing that buzzes or roots. My father’s voice rising like smoke for miles. Ghosts asleep in the shallow creek. I find his face: immersed in heaven’s vanishing sound.
Beth Gordon is a poet, mother, and grandmother currently living in Asheville, NC. She is the author of two chapbooks: Morning Walk with Dead Possum, Breakfast and Parallel Universe (Animal Heart Press) and Particularly Dangerous Situation (Clare Songbird Publishing). Her full-length poetry collection, This Small Machine of Prayer, will be released in July 2021 from Kelsay Books and her chapbook, The Water Cycle, is forthcoming from Variant Literature in November, 2021. She is Managing Editor of Feral: A Journal of Poetry and Art, Co-Managing Editor of Animal Heart Press, and Grandma of Femme Salve Books. Twitter and Instagram: bethgordonpoet.
Bill Griffin Elkin, NC
Holding
This is not about dark water that snakes
through pickerel weed & arctic rush, once a perfect
little meadow until the beaver dam,
incisored aspen, paper birch, mud & saplings
layered, woven, every year a few more inches,
twenty generations of beaver;
and this is not about the rock that fell,
feldspar & hornblende massive as her cabin,
fissured from cliffside freeze & thaw
ten thousand years, not about its splash & waves
enfolding arms around the beaver lodge,
lapping at the door, diminishing
to stillness, of rock one single generation;
and finally this is not about the ink that snakes
beneath her ear, across her shoulder,
once sinuous on skin smooth as meadow
now seedblown autumn, dry, diminishing, not about
her great-granddaughter burped after a feeding,
fourth generation reaching up to touch
the rippled green & purple serpent,
watercourse, vein of amethyst that slings
the arm that cradles her; this is about
the flow, the ripples. All about the holding.
Bill Griffin is a retired family doctor in rural North Carolina. Poetry may not have saved his patients (although some have been preserved in verse) but poetry has certainly saved him. Bill’s poems have appeared widely including Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and NC Literary Review. His most recent collection is RIVERSTORY : TREESTORY (The Orchard Street Press 2018). Share his posts of poets, poetry, and photography at GriffinPoetry.com.
This is not about dark water that snakes
through pickerel weed & arctic rush, once a perfect
little meadow until the beaver dam,
incisored aspen, paper birch, mud & saplings
layered, woven, every year a few more inches,
twenty generations of beaver;
and this is not about the rock that fell,
feldspar & hornblende massive as her cabin,
fissured from cliffside freeze & thaw
ten thousand years, not about its splash & waves
enfolding arms around the beaver lodge,
lapping at the door, diminishing
to stillness, of rock one single generation;
and finally this is not about the ink that snakes
beneath her ear, across her shoulder,
once sinuous on skin smooth as meadow
now seedblown autumn, dry, diminishing, not about
her great-granddaughter burped after a feeding,
fourth generation reaching up to touch
the rippled green & purple serpent,
watercourse, vein of amethyst that slings
the arm that cradles her; this is about
the flow, the ripples. All about the holding.
Bill Griffin is a retired family doctor in rural North Carolina. Poetry may not have saved his patients (although some have been preserved in verse) but poetry has certainly saved him. Bill’s poems have appeared widely including Tar River Poetry, Southern Poetry Review, and NC Literary Review. His most recent collection is RIVERSTORY : TREESTORY (The Orchard Street Press 2018). Share his posts of poets, poetry, and photography at GriffinPoetry.com.
Alexis V. Jackson San Diego, CA
Palmar Reflex
Because my father said yes
when he could consent to nothing,
we blame him for his easy ability to lie.
He was eleven, she eighteen, and he still
spreads a hard grin across his cherub cheeks
when he remembers how desirable he has always been.
Never secure in the arms of one lone woman, I imagine he did not
tell his mother because of how it felt
to be touched and in control of the telling,
like all the women he would not tell about his wife, like all
the occasions he did not say he was not terrified of making girl babies
with sieve hearts and strong grips: our tiny fists trying instinctively to contain
him, him doing impulsively what he had practiced, our mothers’
silent congress.
I try to make you
a lone bird or a lone dog
or a lone Shango
or a lone Abraham, but I
always come back to this–you,
a lone boy–stupid and afraid;
us–your lone country
divided into regions
of ameliorated pleasure,
reflecting your best lies,
closed palmed and wailing,
living only in allegiance
to your ungodly confessions.
Because my father said yes
when he could consent to nothing,
we blame him for his easy ability to lie.
He was eleven, she eighteen, and he still
spreads a hard grin across his cherub cheeks
when he remembers how desirable he has always been.
Never secure in the arms of one lone woman, I imagine he did not
tell his mother because of how it felt
to be touched and in control of the telling,
like all the women he would not tell about his wife, like all
the occasions he did not say he was not terrified of making girl babies
with sieve hearts and strong grips: our tiny fists trying instinctively to contain
him, him doing impulsively what he had practiced, our mothers’
silent congress.
I try to make you
a lone bird or a lone dog
or a lone Shango
or a lone Abraham, but I
always come back to this–you,
a lone boy–stupid and afraid;
us–your lone country
divided into regions
of ameliorated pleasure,
reflecting your best lies,
closed palmed and wailing,
living only in allegiance
to your ungodly confessions.
Black Woman Writer , Alexis V. Jackson and Columbia University MFA (2018) lives and lectures in San Diego, CA. Jackson’s forthcoming debut collection, “My Sisters’ Country” (Fall 2021) was selected by Erica Hunt as second-place winner of Kore Press Institute’s 2019 Poetry Prize. Jackson has served as a reader for several publications, and her work has appeared in 805 Lit + Art Magazine and will appear in Jubilat's forthcoming Winter 2020 publication. Jackson lives in San Diego, California with her husband.
Brian Jacobs Pasadena, CA
India 1995
I never wanted a home
nor a Lotus Sutra
I am not a lotus eater
a home
is a place
to hang
history
floating
in etymological
soundfacts
a privilege
that is created
by language
illusions
*
a’rose
by his unfeign’d
love
midst
the red spittle
betel nut
spittoons
Ganga heat
and Sadhu celibacies
we crammed
two of us
into one theater seat
to doom loop view
Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!
*
Indian flower’d garlands
lotus jasmine Ragamala
orange heavily
hung my welcome’d neck
is this my funeral
sewn in scented mala
pollinated bead mantras
un god’d in which I gallow
*
while pilgrimaging Mathura Road
the yet built Taj Yamuna Expressway
workers clang above
and on lane side
amongst the chai wallis
and
to shit
I held on
to ox horn
squatting
next to the pink pigs
in the open
*
Gandhian Harijan spinner
khadi home spun
against clothe’d
colonial intention
*
Vimal means clean in Hindi
locked me in his chamber
the women sleep downstairs
and shit with the nightshade’d pigs
a coercive polemic cataclysm
him entering my rectum
war paint confetti’d melancholia
strained against my butt cheeks
I scour in plastic rickshaw wash buckets
this is how I get clean
his name was Vimal
*
Raj Ghat
where Gandhi ash heap lay
meeting
the 14th Dalai Lama
encased by machine guns
and guttural sutras
I whispered a knife
as my palms
balanced
in his third eye
reflected
on China’s plateau
of self
immolation
while sanctifying
me
Brian L. Jacobs resides with his husband in California, has been teaching English thirty years and is working on his PhD. Brian was the assistant to Poet Allen Ginsberg while earning his MFA. During that time he walked half way around the world while on a peace pilgrimage. Brian is also a three time Fulbright Scholar, a NEH grant recipient and renewed poet.
I never wanted a home
nor a Lotus Sutra
I am not a lotus eater
a home
is a place
to hang
history
floating
in etymological
soundfacts
a privilege
that is created
by language
illusions
*
a’rose
by his unfeign’d
love
midst
the red spittle
betel nut
spittoons
Ganga heat
and Sadhu celibacies
we crammed
two of us
into one theater seat
to doom loop view
Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!
*
Indian flower’d garlands
lotus jasmine Ragamala
orange heavily
hung my welcome’d neck
is this my funeral
sewn in scented mala
pollinated bead mantras
un god’d in which I gallow
*
while pilgrimaging Mathura Road
the yet built Taj Yamuna Expressway
workers clang above
and on lane side
amongst the chai wallis
and
to shit
I held on
to ox horn
squatting
next to the pink pigs
in the open
*
Gandhian Harijan spinner
khadi home spun
against clothe’d
colonial intention
*
Vimal means clean in Hindi
locked me in his chamber
the women sleep downstairs
and shit with the nightshade’d pigs
a coercive polemic cataclysm
him entering my rectum
war paint confetti’d melancholia
strained against my butt cheeks
I scour in plastic rickshaw wash buckets
this is how I get clean
his name was Vimal
*
Raj Ghat
where Gandhi ash heap lay
meeting
the 14th Dalai Lama
encased by machine guns
and guttural sutras
I whispered a knife
as my palms
balanced
in his third eye
reflected
on China’s plateau
of self
immolation
while sanctifying
me
Brian L. Jacobs resides with his husband in California, has been teaching English thirty years and is working on his PhD. Brian was the assistant to Poet Allen Ginsberg while earning his MFA. During that time he walked half way around the world while on a peace pilgrimage. Brian is also a three time Fulbright Scholar, a NEH grant recipient and renewed poet.
Mitch James Mentor, OH
Visitation on the Weekends
1
My father
a man on shale shore
weaving his fly rod like a wand toward the rolling spine of the river
line whipping like a toad’s tongue at prey
I watched from a Coleman cooler
as he stepped out further
the white river plumage
whorling in a crooked V around his thighs
arm whipping
hand threading line
and the bugs
above his head
how they flittered in their cloud
like smoke against the sun
2
The smell of the vinyl bench seat
decades and detritus reheated
and the rattle of cans from the cooler
in the truck bed
and the way the air stretches
through the sliding window
to play with my hair
and lure me to sleep
if not for the occasional spit of gravel against wheel wells
the country burm
that rural rumble strip
My father never jerks the truck back to center
but weaves it smoothly
like recasting a line
3
Trout in a row
offal on newspaper
slits along light bellies in long frowns
citrus on the air
my father’s Gojoed hands grappling
I can feel the grit
his fingers writhing
as if trying to escape the palm
He rinses
and dries his hands
then flicks a finger
That is all
and a beer tab snaps
like an aged socket
4
The trout is tender
cooked down with beer and butter
and I wonder if I eat enough
will my body sway too
like water
as I struggle to stand
at a stove
Will I need a wall to pass from room to room
Will I piss in a dresser drawer in the middle of the night
Will my breath smell like nails
while repeating “I love you”
As if they’re apologies
How much trout in beer
must I eat
to turn on the shower and cry
5
Light from the TV
reshapes itself against the dark walls
like a cell trying to split
and I lie across my father’s legs
skin warm
his hand on my shoulder
and I smell orange and trout
my eye lids like tombstones
On the screen
just through my lashes
I see a tank barrel bark fire
and a plume of earth erupt
as if the planet coughed
and soldiers bend their backs
and scatter like ants
cradling rifles like infants
I am at peace
floating on the tide of that day
6
A beer cracks
light
still writhing across the walls
He pets my head
and my eyes close again.
Mitch James was born and raised in Central Illinois, where he received a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Eastern Illinois University. He received a Master’s in Literature and a Ph.D. in Composition from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Mitch is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Literature at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH and is the Managing Editor at Great Lakes Review.
1
My father
a man on shale shore
weaving his fly rod like a wand toward the rolling spine of the river
line whipping like a toad’s tongue at prey
I watched from a Coleman cooler
as he stepped out further
the white river plumage
whorling in a crooked V around his thighs
arm whipping
hand threading line
and the bugs
above his head
how they flittered in their cloud
like smoke against the sun
2
The smell of the vinyl bench seat
decades and detritus reheated
and the rattle of cans from the cooler
in the truck bed
and the way the air stretches
through the sliding window
to play with my hair
and lure me to sleep
if not for the occasional spit of gravel against wheel wells
the country burm
that rural rumble strip
My father never jerks the truck back to center
but weaves it smoothly
like recasting a line
3
Trout in a row
offal on newspaper
slits along light bellies in long frowns
citrus on the air
my father’s Gojoed hands grappling
I can feel the grit
his fingers writhing
as if trying to escape the palm
He rinses
and dries his hands
then flicks a finger
That is all
and a beer tab snaps
like an aged socket
4
The trout is tender
cooked down with beer and butter
and I wonder if I eat enough
will my body sway too
like water
as I struggle to stand
at a stove
Will I need a wall to pass from room to room
Will I piss in a dresser drawer in the middle of the night
Will my breath smell like nails
while repeating “I love you”
As if they’re apologies
How much trout in beer
must I eat
to turn on the shower and cry
5
Light from the TV
reshapes itself against the dark walls
like a cell trying to split
and I lie across my father’s legs
skin warm
his hand on my shoulder
and I smell orange and trout
my eye lids like tombstones
On the screen
just through my lashes
I see a tank barrel bark fire
and a plume of earth erupt
as if the planet coughed
and soldiers bend their backs
and scatter like ants
cradling rifles like infants
I am at peace
floating on the tide of that day
6
A beer cracks
light
still writhing across the walls
He pets my head
and my eyes close again.
Mitch James was born and raised in Central Illinois, where he received a BA in English with a minor in Creative Writing from Eastern Illinois University. He received a Master’s in Literature and a Ph.D. in Composition from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Mitch is an Assistant Professor of Composition and Literature at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, OH and is the Managing Editor at Great Lakes Review.
David Kirby Tallahassee, FL
I Learn Everything I Need to Know About Life From The Dirty Dozen
Today’s music is as alien to me as my music
was to my parents, to the dad who shouted
“Turn that thing down!” and the mom who said,
“Can’t you just play something pretty?”
But when my student tells me she’s performing live
on the campus radio station and would I listen in,
of course I say yes, but not before turning on
the television so I can at least watch a movie
during what will surely be a solid hour
of something that sounds more like a person pounding
on a keyboard with their elbows and yowling about their feelings
than anything that I or anyone else would call music,
though the only movie on TV at the moment is The Dirty Dozen,
and not even the original Dirty Dozen or even
its sequel, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (bet it took them
a long time to come up with that title, huh?), but the third
and last in the series, The Dirty Dozen: Fatal Mission,
starring Heather Thomas as Lieutenant Carol Campbell,
the only female member of this Dirty Dozen
or either of the two that preceded it, as well as former
lightweight boxing champ Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini
as Private Tom Ricketts, who is first seen
brawling outside an English pub and is for that reason
recruited for this elite group of murderous soldiers
whose name says it all. I mean, they’re not the Dandy
Dozen, right? Dapper Dozen, Debonair Dozen . . .
no, sir, these guys are dirty and proud of it. The plot
involves the squelching of twelve top Nazis who are trying
to organize a Fourth Reich. Theirs is not the easiest job
in the world, as you might imagine, but the Double Dees
keep banging away at it, just shooting and stabbing
and strangling like nobody’s business. The course
of true espionage never did run smooth. But as English
stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell said some years ago,
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure
without losing your enthusiasm,” and, boy, are
the Dirty Dozen ever enthusiastic, not to mention
alternately courageous, jokey, and stoic, depending on
which of those qualities is required for the task at hand.
By now the fate of Western Democracy seems pretty well
assured, so I mute the movie and turn on the radio,
and there’s my student doing her songs, and I’m listening
to her sing and play as I watch the Dirty Dozen silently
blow up bridges and interrogate prisoners and try to
ferret out the traitor in their midst, because there’s always
a traitor, isn’t there, but it isn’t long before I start
listening to my student’s music more intently and thinking,
not “this is really good” or “this is better than I thought
it would be” but “she has a lot more range
than you’d think from looking at her” and “listen
to how her voice swells into a roar and then falls
back to a purr again” and “repeating that phrase
makes a lot of sense” and “this is better than I thought
it would be” and then “this is really good.”
The music taught me, you may say, the way anything new
teaches itself to old ears, the way a rock thrower like Robert
Browning taught readers to understand his jarring rhythms
by putting his poems in front of them again and again,
and, after Browning, T. S. Eliot, whose abrupt switches
in location and time baffled readers until they didn’t.
When he was still a boxer, Boom Boom Mancini fought
Duk Koo Kim, who suffered a subdural hematoma and died
four days after the fight. Kim’s mother committed suicide
three months after her son’s death, and a year later,
the referee who called the bout took his own life as well.
Boom Boom sank into a depression which was worsened
when people asked him if he was the boxer who had
killed Duk Koo Kim. No, he’d say, no! I didn’t kill
anybody: it was an accident, it happened in the course
of a fight, you never know what’s going to happen.
By the end of my student’s show, I am in love with
her music and not a little in love with my student herself.
Good for her. She put in the hours. So did I. Over time,
everything makes sense, which is why wisdom
is often imparted in threes. Practice, practice, practice.
Holy, holy, holy. Location, location, location—yadda,
yadda, yadda. Finally I turn the movie off since
I’ve seen it twice already and know how it comes out.
The GIs find the traitor—of course they do—though
I’m not saying who it is. And they complete their mission,
which is why this poem is in English and not German,
though in the end, only seven of the original
squad members survive. Remember, this is the third
Dirty Dozen movie, each with its own Dirty Dozen,
each different from all the others. Each dirty, though.
David Kirby's collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement of London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” His latest poetry collection is More Than This. He teaches English at Florida State University.
Today’s music is as alien to me as my music
was to my parents, to the dad who shouted
“Turn that thing down!” and the mom who said,
“Can’t you just play something pretty?”
But when my student tells me she’s performing live
on the campus radio station and would I listen in,
of course I say yes, but not before turning on
the television so I can at least watch a movie
during what will surely be a solid hour
of something that sounds more like a person pounding
on a keyboard with their elbows and yowling about their feelings
than anything that I or anyone else would call music,
though the only movie on TV at the moment is The Dirty Dozen,
and not even the original Dirty Dozen or even
its sequel, The Dirty Dozen: Next Mission (bet it took them
a long time to come up with that title, huh?), but the third
and last in the series, The Dirty Dozen: Fatal Mission,
starring Heather Thomas as Lieutenant Carol Campbell,
the only female member of this Dirty Dozen
or either of the two that preceded it, as well as former
lightweight boxing champ Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini
as Private Tom Ricketts, who is first seen
brawling outside an English pub and is for that reason
recruited for this elite group of murderous soldiers
whose name says it all. I mean, they’re not the Dandy
Dozen, right? Dapper Dozen, Debonair Dozen . . .
no, sir, these guys are dirty and proud of it. The plot
involves the squelching of twelve top Nazis who are trying
to organize a Fourth Reich. Theirs is not the easiest job
in the world, as you might imagine, but the Double Dees
keep banging away at it, just shooting and stabbing
and strangling like nobody’s business. The course
of true espionage never did run smooth. But as English
stage actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell said some years ago,
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure
without losing your enthusiasm,” and, boy, are
the Dirty Dozen ever enthusiastic, not to mention
alternately courageous, jokey, and stoic, depending on
which of those qualities is required for the task at hand.
By now the fate of Western Democracy seems pretty well
assured, so I mute the movie and turn on the radio,
and there’s my student doing her songs, and I’m listening
to her sing and play as I watch the Dirty Dozen silently
blow up bridges and interrogate prisoners and try to
ferret out the traitor in their midst, because there’s always
a traitor, isn’t there, but it isn’t long before I start
listening to my student’s music more intently and thinking,
not “this is really good” or “this is better than I thought
it would be” but “she has a lot more range
than you’d think from looking at her” and “listen
to how her voice swells into a roar and then falls
back to a purr again” and “repeating that phrase
makes a lot of sense” and “this is better than I thought
it would be” and then “this is really good.”
The music taught me, you may say, the way anything new
teaches itself to old ears, the way a rock thrower like Robert
Browning taught readers to understand his jarring rhythms
by putting his poems in front of them again and again,
and, after Browning, T. S. Eliot, whose abrupt switches
in location and time baffled readers until they didn’t.
When he was still a boxer, Boom Boom Mancini fought
Duk Koo Kim, who suffered a subdural hematoma and died
four days after the fight. Kim’s mother committed suicide
three months after her son’s death, and a year later,
the referee who called the bout took his own life as well.
Boom Boom sank into a depression which was worsened
when people asked him if he was the boxer who had
killed Duk Koo Kim. No, he’d say, no! I didn’t kill
anybody: it was an accident, it happened in the course
of a fight, you never know what’s going to happen.
By the end of my student’s show, I am in love with
her music and not a little in love with my student herself.
Good for her. She put in the hours. So did I. Over time,
everything makes sense, which is why wisdom
is often imparted in threes. Practice, practice, practice.
Holy, holy, holy. Location, location, location—yadda,
yadda, yadda. Finally I turn the movie off since
I’ve seen it twice already and know how it comes out.
The GIs find the traitor—of course they do—though
I’m not saying who it is. And they complete their mission,
which is why this poem is in English and not German,
though in the end, only seven of the original
squad members survive. Remember, this is the third
Dirty Dozen movie, each with its own Dirty Dozen,
each different from all the others. Each dirty, though.
David Kirby's collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poems was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is the author of Little Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplement of London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” His latest poetry collection is More Than This. He teaches English at Florida State University.
The follwing piece is a continuation of a writing relationship between Lúcia Leão & Ruby Murphy
Lúcia Leão & Ruby Hansen Murray Boca Raton, FL & Cathlamet, WA
The way
the stars
fell
corresponded
not
to a pattern of events
in the spring sky
not
to a capture by eyes
green, eyes, green eyes, green.
The way
the stars
fell
silvery and small
*
* * *
after a party
a red tablecloth shaken
in the laundry
- confetti -
after everyone
was captured in bed, sheets
white, sheets, white sheets, white.
The way the stars stay on the floor
not removed
by vacuum or broom
not stepped on
not cleaned up
not released
not lost.
It tells something
about
this house.
the stars
fell
corresponded
not
to a pattern of events
in the spring sky
not
to a capture by eyes
green, eyes, green eyes, green.
The way
the stars
fell
silvery and small
*
* * *
after a party
a red tablecloth shaken
in the laundry
- confetti -
after everyone
was captured in bed, sheets
white, sheets, white sheets, white.
The way the stars stay on the floor
not removed
by vacuum or broom
not stepped on
not cleaned up
not released
not lost.
It tells something
about
this house.
The Way the Stars Fell
𐓷𐓘𐓻𐓘𐓻𐓟 came down from the 𐓨𐓣𐓤𐓘𐓤'𐓟.
Osages came down from the stars to the red oak tree.
We drive thirty-five miles upriver
along the Columbia
for groceries.
Robins, starlings bathe
in a puddle on the bench
blasted from the rocky cliff
the Chinook call Cathlamet.
At Nassa Point, kingfishers
ki-gta-ka are notes on a staff,
two separate power lines,
pilings a bass clef.
Sportsmen’s boats
water striders 𐓲𐓟𐓸𐓪𐓬𐓟 𐓩𐓣.
Two buzzards sail
three stories up a basalt ridge
slow moving lava
weathered ruddy.
𐓨𐓣𐓤𐓘𐓤'𐓟 𐓣𐓵𐓘𐓵𐓟 𐓩𐓣͘𐓤𐓯𐓟?
Did you see the stars?
From the marina,
space trash
a meteor shower.
Lúcia Leão is a s 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.
Ruby Hansen Murray is an award-winning columnist for the Osage News. She won the Montana Nonfiction Prize and is a fellow of Ragdale, Hedgebrook, Fishtrap and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Under the Sun, Yellow Medicine Review, The Massachusetts Review, Cirque, Allotment Stories, Moss, High Desert Journal, Exquisite Vessel: Shapes of Native Nonfiction, Native: Voices, Indigenous American Poetry, World Literature Today, CutBank, and The Rumpus. A citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots, she lives in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com
Ruby Hansen Murray is an award-winning columnist for the Osage News. She won the Montana Nonfiction Prize and is a fellow of Ragdale, Hedgebrook, Fishtrap and the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Under the Sun, Yellow Medicine Review, The Massachusetts Review, Cirque, Allotment Stories, Moss, High Desert Journal, Exquisite Vessel: Shapes of Native Nonfiction, Native: Voices, Indigenous American Poetry, World Literature Today, CutBank, and The Rumpus. A citizen of the Osage Nation with West Indian roots, she lives in the lower Columbia River estuary. www.rubyhansenmurray.com
Susan L. Leary Miami, FL
The Language of Women
Before I am blood, heartbeat, or bone, I begin as language. As rude message snaked through a mezzanine of sky. A man speaks for no reason other than his own & the words lodge themselves inside the stray womb of a woman. This is no miracle. My mother, your mother can be any sheep from the flock. A wolf howls & Mary is the chosen one. A wolf howls & in the back of a woman’s mind, not even Mary can avoid the advances of God. & so every woman is a girl. Young girl. Servant girl. A girl who knows what lives inside a man’s mouth can be more barbarous than sex. Because it is the girl who must now explain herself. Pregnant. Accident. Because what else could I do? Young girl, she could be my sister ovaling the sweep of me in her arms. Young girl, she tells the story of a different wolf. Girl wolf. Mother wolf. A wolf that out of love, desire, or destruction once fed upon an entire forest. The froth of tulips dusting her snout & moss lining her belly. That there be nothing more to scavenge. No women & no sheep. All around her, fresh blood. Men, in their desperation, fallen to the knees having cut their own tongues from their throats. This is the miracle. A girl who refuses to neither hear nor spare the false speech of false gods. Snakes her own language through sky. Saying, Child, you are beautiful. Child, you are mine.
Susan L. Leary’s poetry has been published in such places as Arcturus (Chicago Review of Books), The Christian Century, and Whale Road Review. She is the author of Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021) and the chapbook, This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), which was a finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and a semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. She teaches at the University of Miami, where she is also enrolled in the MFA program in Creative Writing.
Before I am blood, heartbeat, or bone, I begin as language. As rude message snaked through a mezzanine of sky. A man speaks for no reason other than his own & the words lodge themselves inside the stray womb of a woman. This is no miracle. My mother, your mother can be any sheep from the flock. A wolf howls & Mary is the chosen one. A wolf howls & in the back of a woman’s mind, not even Mary can avoid the advances of God. & so every woman is a girl. Young girl. Servant girl. A girl who knows what lives inside a man’s mouth can be more barbarous than sex. Because it is the girl who must now explain herself. Pregnant. Accident. Because what else could I do? Young girl, she could be my sister ovaling the sweep of me in her arms. Young girl, she tells the story of a different wolf. Girl wolf. Mother wolf. A wolf that out of love, desire, or destruction once fed upon an entire forest. The froth of tulips dusting her snout & moss lining her belly. That there be nothing more to scavenge. No women & no sheep. All around her, fresh blood. Men, in their desperation, fallen to the knees having cut their own tongues from their throats. This is the miracle. A girl who refuses to neither hear nor spare the false speech of false gods. Snakes her own language through sky. Saying, Child, you are beautiful. Child, you are mine.
Susan L. Leary’s poetry has been published in such places as Arcturus (Chicago Review of Books), The Christian Century, and Whale Road Review. She is the author of Contraband Paradise (Main Street Rag, 2021) and the chapbook, This Girl, Your Disciple (Finishing Line Press, 2019), which was a finalist for The Heartland Review Press Chapbook Prize and a semi-finalist for the Elyse Wolf Prize. She teaches at the University of Miami, where she is also enrolled in the MFA program in Creative Writing.
Brian Lutz Warrington, PA
An Album of the Day
Dusk. The bent-
winged birds
black before
a watercolor sun.
An Easter evening:
pastels, the last
broadcast of lilies
before they turn
their trumpets
down. The creek
dies & is reborn,
lives & dies
a hundred times
on the rocks
like an ancient god.
By the simulating
lake I mistake
the dragonfly
for pagan sprite,
wings like cracked glass,
it treads the air,
a dangerous swimmer.
Nights like these, the geese
make their imperfect v,
one side longer,
like the finger
& thumb I hold
up to them.
The grass has grown
gold as an old
map, the clouds
white & simple as
undeveloped
photographs, but
this is yesterday
isn’t it? We don’t
have photographs
anymore. Everything’s
high-definition.
We aren’t infested
with dead & living
gods, & coming
summer, thunderstorms
& barbeque
is a much rite
as the old sacrifices.
Every then haunts
& hurts our sour
nows. The lake
water ripples &
breaks the sky.
A snake has slid
from its darkened
hole and even now
hisses & eases
its sigmoid way
straight at me
& I step back
into the beautiful
night. The sky
warm as a bath,
& in the east
a purple twilight
is beginning
as if the dark gauze
of stars is caught
on the fingertips
of far-off pines.
& if the Earth
ticks, now,
too quick, it’ll tear
the coming night.
Brian Lutz is an Associate Professor at the Delaware Valley University where he has taught since 2006. His poetry has been published in journals including Slate, The Louisville Review, Potomac Review, Poetry East, Crab Orchard Review and Cimarron Review. Brian lives in Warrington, Pennsylvania with his wife, two kids and three cats.
Dusk. The bent-
winged birds
black before
a watercolor sun.
An Easter evening:
pastels, the last
broadcast of lilies
before they turn
their trumpets
down. The creek
dies & is reborn,
lives & dies
a hundred times
on the rocks
like an ancient god.
By the simulating
lake I mistake
the dragonfly
for pagan sprite,
wings like cracked glass,
it treads the air,
a dangerous swimmer.
Nights like these, the geese
make their imperfect v,
one side longer,
like the finger
& thumb I hold
up to them.
The grass has grown
gold as an old
map, the clouds
white & simple as
undeveloped
photographs, but
this is yesterday
isn’t it? We don’t
have photographs
anymore. Everything’s
high-definition.
We aren’t infested
with dead & living
gods, & coming
summer, thunderstorms
& barbeque
is a much rite
as the old sacrifices.
Every then haunts
& hurts our sour
nows. The lake
water ripples &
breaks the sky.
A snake has slid
from its darkened
hole and even now
hisses & eases
its sigmoid way
straight at me
& I step back
into the beautiful
night. The sky
warm as a bath,
& in the east
a purple twilight
is beginning
as if the dark gauze
of stars is caught
on the fingertips
of far-off pines.
& if the Earth
ticks, now,
too quick, it’ll tear
the coming night.
Brian Lutz is an Associate Professor at the Delaware Valley University where he has taught since 2006. His poetry has been published in journals including Slate, The Louisville Review, Potomac Review, Poetry East, Crab Orchard Review and Cimarron Review. Brian lives in Warrington, Pennsylvania with his wife, two kids and three cats.
Sergio Ortiz Santurce, Puerto Rico, where the largest concentration of Puerto Rican blacks were living in the 19th and 20th century
The Noise
You understood the docks, places
where salt is a blind lady seated on my lap,
where small teeth gnaw quicksands
of what's been forgotten,
where old anchors and barges
oxidized by seagull droppings,
corrosive tumult of peace and despair,
intertwine in the old fashioned way of the ocean,
seascape that surrounded
us without knowing how far
from our imagination
our most intimate arguments travel.
There's a sky full of vessels, visible in my tears,
where your gaze runs out of breath
trying to reach me.
A worn-out eternity fondled by the dead
softened by complaints of the sick.
The afternoon sinks like a ship
belonging to everyone.
You've seen delirious mates,
wind-music blown through their yardarms,
felt the gale halt between the folds of my sails,
discovered oblivion on my nape.
Allow your desire to rest.
I'll set the clouds on fire,
lacerate the sun with my straight razor
part company with time. I'm saving my abysses,
to scamper away from the cold,
my ridiculous collection of antiquated scores.
Bebopping waves make us forget,
young and old double-dutching
love's sacred fire on the bed.
Sergio A. Ortiz is a retired English literature professor and bilingual gay poet. His recent credits include Spanish audio poems in GATO MALO Editing, an important Spanish Caribbean publication, Maleta Ilegal, a South American journal, Indolent Books, HIV HERE AND NOW, Communicators League, Rats Ass Review, Spillwords and several other journals and anthologies.
You understood the docks, places
where salt is a blind lady seated on my lap,
where small teeth gnaw quicksands
of what's been forgotten,
where old anchors and barges
oxidized by seagull droppings,
corrosive tumult of peace and despair,
intertwine in the old fashioned way of the ocean,
seascape that surrounded
us without knowing how far
from our imagination
our most intimate arguments travel.
There's a sky full of vessels, visible in my tears,
where your gaze runs out of breath
trying to reach me.
A worn-out eternity fondled by the dead
softened by complaints of the sick.
The afternoon sinks like a ship
belonging to everyone.
You've seen delirious mates,
wind-music blown through their yardarms,
felt the gale halt between the folds of my sails,
discovered oblivion on my nape.
Allow your desire to rest.
I'll set the clouds on fire,
lacerate the sun with my straight razor
part company with time. I'm saving my abysses,
to scamper away from the cold,
my ridiculous collection of antiquated scores.
Bebopping waves make us forget,
young and old double-dutching
love's sacred fire on the bed.
Sergio A. Ortiz is a retired English literature professor and bilingual gay poet. His recent credits include Spanish audio poems in GATO MALO Editing, an important Spanish Caribbean publication, Maleta Ilegal, a South American journal, Indolent Books, HIV HERE AND NOW, Communicators League, Rats Ass Review, Spillwords and several other journals and anthologies.
Sara Patterson Toronto, Canada
The Committee of Public Safety
i.
In flammable cornfield you paw me into position saying,
Napoleon loved Josephine Napoleon said he’d kill himself
for Josephine I’ll kill myself for you I’ve no heart
to point out Napoleon declared he’d kill himself for Désirée too
heady August days you announce us soulmates and get rooftop drunk
hymnal skin burning on shingles these things aren’t meant to touch
a wine filled water bottle in hand you preach, Josephine didn’t deserve Napoleon
Josephine didn’t understand love how we understand love
watch me carve your name into my arm,
you show me your dad’s hunting knife.
ii.
Paris is claustrophobic cats in heat crawling over each other
Napoleon’s writing: come back to me or I’ll not move when a carriage come
see head beneath hooves cracked pomegranate smashed grape entrails
dogs howling over dead masters’ strawberry necks
summer brings men of virtue declaring terror as love of country
Josephine gets a letter a day dream-girling her
incomparable sweetness grace personified are you vexed why have you not
come to me you’re a vixen I love you you hurt me write me don’t write me I
give you a thousand kisses I give you none who do you see who do you talk
to I hate them I envy them you are my life
She reads them aloud to friends and laughs.
iii.
You build worlds full of us and redwood forests cacti seaweed filled
beaches kaleidoscoping you clutch my arm crowing
call me Napoleon call me Caesar I’ll be your Cleopatra who do you love
Sulla Cromwell Robespierre who did they love I’ll be them I’ll be whoever
they loved since you’re them are you Napoleon or Josephine am I
Josephine or Napoleon
Napoleon’s pulse was hard to find fingering mine you anger
we don’t match you wanted us so much to match telling me
You’re Marius the Roman you’ve always been better suited to cold marble
than me
you weep that I cannot love you because I am Rome then copy out
Napoleon’s letters to Josephine leave them between my bed sheets
I sleep without removing them.
iv.
Crossing Hannibalian Alps Napoleon writes to Josephine
Soul of my life, write me else I shall not exist.
Josephine confides to a friend He frightens me
when he says it’s love.
v.
It’s night when you call to say you’re dying will continue to die
if I won’t love you you’ll keep dying keep calling keep carving names into
arms I ask where you are: bathroom floor with the marble sweet and cold
like you I love you I love you I love you I’ll not move from here until you love
me--
Sara Patterson resides in Toronto, Ontario but grew up in Florida and California. Their work has appeared in publications such as YES Poetry, Minola Review, Plenitude Magazine, Sinking City Review, and Humber Literary Review (forthcoming). Sara was long-listed for the 2020 PRISM Jacob Zilber short fiction prize.
i.
In flammable cornfield you paw me into position saying,
Napoleon loved Josephine Napoleon said he’d kill himself
for Josephine I’ll kill myself for you I’ve no heart
to point out Napoleon declared he’d kill himself for Désirée too
heady August days you announce us soulmates and get rooftop drunk
hymnal skin burning on shingles these things aren’t meant to touch
a wine filled water bottle in hand you preach, Josephine didn’t deserve Napoleon
Josephine didn’t understand love how we understand love
watch me carve your name into my arm,
you show me your dad’s hunting knife.
ii.
Paris is claustrophobic cats in heat crawling over each other
Napoleon’s writing: come back to me or I’ll not move when a carriage come
see head beneath hooves cracked pomegranate smashed grape entrails
dogs howling over dead masters’ strawberry necks
summer brings men of virtue declaring terror as love of country
Josephine gets a letter a day dream-girling her
incomparable sweetness grace personified are you vexed why have you not
come to me you’re a vixen I love you you hurt me write me don’t write me I
give you a thousand kisses I give you none who do you see who do you talk
to I hate them I envy them you are my life
She reads them aloud to friends and laughs.
iii.
You build worlds full of us and redwood forests cacti seaweed filled
beaches kaleidoscoping you clutch my arm crowing
call me Napoleon call me Caesar I’ll be your Cleopatra who do you love
Sulla Cromwell Robespierre who did they love I’ll be them I’ll be whoever
they loved since you’re them are you Napoleon or Josephine am I
Josephine or Napoleon
Napoleon’s pulse was hard to find fingering mine you anger
we don’t match you wanted us so much to match telling me
You’re Marius the Roman you’ve always been better suited to cold marble
than me
you weep that I cannot love you because I am Rome then copy out
Napoleon’s letters to Josephine leave them between my bed sheets
I sleep without removing them.
iv.
Crossing Hannibalian Alps Napoleon writes to Josephine
Soul of my life, write me else I shall not exist.
Josephine confides to a friend He frightens me
when he says it’s love.
v.
It’s night when you call to say you’re dying will continue to die
if I won’t love you you’ll keep dying keep calling keep carving names into
arms I ask where you are: bathroom floor with the marble sweet and cold
like you I love you I love you I love you I’ll not move from here until you love
me--
Sara Patterson resides in Toronto, Ontario but grew up in Florida and California. Their work has appeared in publications such as YES Poetry, Minola Review, Plenitude Magazine, Sinking City Review, and Humber Literary Review (forthcoming). Sara was long-listed for the 2020 PRISM Jacob Zilber short fiction prize.
Hilda Raz Placitas, NM
Eastman School of Music
— for John Link
The maple metronome with its tight brass key
and sliding weight clicked back and forth.
I struck the piano, sometimes in time,
sounds in my fingers.
Light from the hallways’ converted gaslights
followed from carved door to door
as I walked to find Mr. Diamond in Room 12
cardboard score under my arm, for lessons.
The door to his studio swung open
on the marble floor as I pushed hard.
The marble was highly polished and my shoes,
Mary Janes, always slipped on entering.
His ladder-back chairs were open in back
to hold glittery cards as reward, in Theory.
I remember chill in the endless corridors
the high glassed-in roof, brilliant cacophony
of instruments playing all at once, always
overlapping, shattering, resolving.
He was a great man, I was a child
no will or practice. His lessons failed.
But he played. I sit listening now, an old woman
shaped by his presence, light on his piano,
his fingers moving, music stuttering then forte
without spaces, filling that room in memory.
Hilda Raz has fourteen books, the most recent, published in April 2021, is LETTER FROM A PLACE I’VE NEVER BEEN: COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS from the University of Nebraska Press, edited by Kwame Dawes with an introduction by John Kinsella. She lives in Placitas, New Mexico where she is the editor of the poetry series from the University of New Mexico Press.
— for John Link
The maple metronome with its tight brass key
and sliding weight clicked back and forth.
I struck the piano, sometimes in time,
sounds in my fingers.
Light from the hallways’ converted gaslights
followed from carved door to door
as I walked to find Mr. Diamond in Room 12
cardboard score under my arm, for lessons.
The door to his studio swung open
on the marble floor as I pushed hard.
The marble was highly polished and my shoes,
Mary Janes, always slipped on entering.
His ladder-back chairs were open in back
to hold glittery cards as reward, in Theory.
I remember chill in the endless corridors
the high glassed-in roof, brilliant cacophony
of instruments playing all at once, always
overlapping, shattering, resolving.
He was a great man, I was a child
no will or practice. His lessons failed.
But he played. I sit listening now, an old woman
shaped by his presence, light on his piano,
his fingers moving, music stuttering then forte
without spaces, filling that room in memory.
Hilda Raz has fourteen books, the most recent, published in April 2021, is LETTER FROM A PLACE I’VE NEVER BEEN: COLLECTED AND NEW POEMS from the University of Nebraska Press, edited by Kwame Dawes with an introduction by John Kinsella. She lives in Placitas, New Mexico where she is the editor of the poetry series from the University of New Mexico Press.
Kolbe Riney Tucson, AZ
lunate
There is
a small bone
in the wrist named
for the moon,
some smooth
and polished stone
ground
in the lapidary
of the mouth,
that reminds me
of your hand
braceleting mine
in ring
and thumb,
pulling me
uphill
that night
to rest
on wave-broke
quartz stones
or else
wash of snow,
up to my knees
in breathing surf,
a fumbled kiss there,
and this sensation
of flickering,
but not
out of existence,
more
between worlds,
like the rinse
of salt.
Kolbe Riney is a queer poet and student based out of Tucson, Arizona. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Camas Magazine, the West Trade Review, Panoply, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and others.
There is
a small bone
in the wrist named
for the moon,
some smooth
and polished stone
ground
in the lapidary
of the mouth,
that reminds me
of your hand
braceleting mine
in ring
and thumb,
pulling me
uphill
that night
to rest
on wave-broke
quartz stones
or else
wash of snow,
up to my knees
in breathing surf,
a fumbled kiss there,
and this sensation
of flickering,
but not
out of existence,
more
between worlds,
like the rinse
of salt.
Kolbe Riney is a queer poet and student based out of Tucson, Arizona. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Camas Magazine, the West Trade Review, Panoply, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and others.
Susannah W. Simpson West Palm Beach, FL 3 poems
I Watch Westerns
Because they remind me of my father, not because he was a cowboy,
I don’t think he ever rode a horse, but he did love low-slung,
unbridled fast cars. He never wore fancy stitched boots but I know
he loved the smell of good leather shoes and the tang of shoe polish
as he buffed. He didn’t ever wear a cowboy hat, but when his tweed
burglar cap got wet with Sierra snow, the smell of wool evaporated
off the radiator as it dried. I watch Westerns, because mountain passes,
dry gulches, redwoods, and scrub pine are the language of my father’s
people. Pioneer stew cooked up on a wood stove, beach oysters plucked
from Olympia’s Puget Sound. Santa Barbara, Seattle, Sacramento, San Jose.
His mother’s garden perfumed by lemon groves and her kitchen, redolent,
coffee grounds’ thick aroma drifting from a white enameled saucepan
Because they remind me of my father, not because he was a cowboy,
I don’t think he ever rode a horse, but he did love low-slung,
unbridled fast cars. He never wore fancy stitched boots but I know
he loved the smell of good leather shoes and the tang of shoe polish
as he buffed. He didn’t ever wear a cowboy hat, but when his tweed
burglar cap got wet with Sierra snow, the smell of wool evaporated
off the radiator as it dried. I watch Westerns, because mountain passes,
dry gulches, redwoods, and scrub pine are the language of my father’s
people. Pioneer stew cooked up on a wood stove, beach oysters plucked
from Olympia’s Puget Sound. Santa Barbara, Seattle, Sacramento, San Jose.
His mother’s garden perfumed by lemon groves and her kitchen, redolent,
coffee grounds’ thick aroma drifting from a white enameled saucepan
What Does It Taste Like?
Like shadows thrown by a second full moon,
and faint hint of vein inside an old woman’s wrist.
It tastes of the shore’s edge at dawn and horizon’s curve
at dusk. It tastes like her lover’s Dublin eyes,
hues of civilizations repeat in a mirror, a mirror,
a mirror. It tastes like sea glass buffed, buffeted
by oceans’ floors, tastes like fresh snowfall,
a skating costume glitter on the hills, it tastes like
the hidden luster of an abalone and hint of sky
in a hen’s fresh egg.
Like shadows thrown by a second full moon,
and faint hint of vein inside an old woman’s wrist.
It tastes of the shore’s edge at dawn and horizon’s curve
at dusk. It tastes like her lover’s Dublin eyes,
hues of civilizations repeat in a mirror, a mirror,
a mirror. It tastes like sea glass buffed, buffeted
by oceans’ floors, tastes like fresh snowfall,
a skating costume glitter on the hills, it tastes like
the hidden luster of an abalone and hint of sky
in a hen’s fresh egg.
Mother Wind
Silver Compass in hand, I
face south. Arms, branches raised.
I petition her November wind gusts
to sweep clean those images
of Steve, a Louisiana attorney,
who beat his naked, pregnant wife
with a belt while she cowered
in the shower, their children watching.
I implore You, Wind, wipe away
the face of my lover who robbed
my sister, killed my dog, then died
with a needle in his arm. I ask You,
please move those memories
of a boy’s amputated left leg, heavy
in an OR garbage bag, or a covered box
carried to the morgue, fetus still warm.
Breezes, I ask you to silence
the sound of a father’s cries
heard through the hospital walls
“Pamela. No! Pamela,”
And especially Wind, please erase
the weight of releasing my father’s
wrists, his swollen hands from restraints
as we turned off the last machine.
Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in: The North American Review, Potomac, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, Xavier Review among others, her book: Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2016. She is a hospice nurse and the Founder & Co-Director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches Reading Seriesand a forner Associate Editor of South Florida Poetry Journal.
Silver Compass in hand, I
face south. Arms, branches raised.
I petition her November wind gusts
to sweep clean those images
of Steve, a Louisiana attorney,
who beat his naked, pregnant wife
with a belt while she cowered
in the shower, their children watching.
I implore You, Wind, wipe away
the face of my lover who robbed
my sister, killed my dog, then died
with a needle in his arm. I ask You,
please move those memories
of a boy’s amputated left leg, heavy
in an OR garbage bag, or a covered box
carried to the morgue, fetus still warm.
Breezes, I ask you to silence
the sound of a father’s cries
heard through the hospital walls
“Pamela. No! Pamela,”
And especially Wind, please erase
the weight of releasing my father’s
wrists, his swollen hands from restraints
as we turned off the last machine.
Susannah W. Simpson’s work has been published in: The North American Review, Potomac, The Wisconsin Review, South Carolina Review, POET, Nimrod International, Poet Lore, Salamander, Sequestrum, Xavier Review among others, her book: Geography of Love & Exile was published by Cervena Barva Press in 2016. She is a hospice nurse and the Founder & Co-Director of the Performance Poets of the Palm Beaches Reading Seriesand a forner Associate Editor of South Florida Poetry Journal.
Kerry Trautman Findlay, OH
Trying On Mom’s Dresses
My nine-year-old body added little more
than the hanger. Layers, pleats, tiered
ruffles didn’t make me feel what I’d hoped.
Blanket-y cloaks, slipcovers choked
in dust. Her forty-year-old body did not
thrive in them like I had hoped. Jewelry box
drawers slip open velveteen cubicles.
Baubles to fit each chamber. I didn’t know
how many strings of her beads
I needed hanging from my neck to feel
weighted enough. Why a whole dresser
drawer for just slips? I can’t pinpoint when
I last saw her wear a dress. The elastic
of the black half-slip has gone slack
like gummy scraps of a popped balloon.
There are bangles and dangly earrings whose
shapes fit no compartment. My forty-year-old
body does little anymore
for dresses. Done with women’s work. Wasted
bleeding, nipples drained. Too light to donate
blood. Fingernails split brittle before
they’re long enough to paint. There
comes and end to the wearing of gowns.
Nothing to fill. There comes
a closing of velvet-lined drawers,
a dulling of satin and facets.
Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan, currently living in Findlay. She is a founder/admin for ToledoPoet.com, and a poetry editor for Red Fez. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals such as Slippery Elm, Free State Review, Paper & Ink, Midwestern Gothic, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Alimentum. Her poetry books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) and To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020.)
My nine-year-old body added little more
than the hanger. Layers, pleats, tiered
ruffles didn’t make me feel what I’d hoped.
Blanket-y cloaks, slipcovers choked
in dust. Her forty-year-old body did not
thrive in them like I had hoped. Jewelry box
drawers slip open velveteen cubicles.
Baubles to fit each chamber. I didn’t know
how many strings of her beads
I needed hanging from my neck to feel
weighted enough. Why a whole dresser
drawer for just slips? I can’t pinpoint when
I last saw her wear a dress. The elastic
of the black half-slip has gone slack
like gummy scraps of a popped balloon.
There are bangles and dangly earrings whose
shapes fit no compartment. My forty-year-old
body does little anymore
for dresses. Done with women’s work. Wasted
bleeding, nipples drained. Too light to donate
blood. Fingernails split brittle before
they’re long enough to paint. There
comes and end to the wearing of gowns.
Nothing to fill. There comes
a closing of velvet-lined drawers,
a dulling of satin and facets.
Kerry Trautman is a lifelong Ohioan, currently living in Findlay. She is a founder/admin for ToledoPoet.com, and a poetry editor for Red Fez. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and journals such as Slippery Elm, Free State Review, Paper & Ink, Midwestern Gothic, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Alimentum. Her poetry books are Things That Come in Boxes (King Craft Press 2012,) To Have Hoped (Finishing Line Press 2015,) Artifacts (NightBallet Press 2017,) and To be Nonchalantly Alive (Kelsay Books 2020.)