Issue 9 May 2018
Susannah W. Simpson, Editor
Susannah W. Simpson, Editor
Poets in this issue: Kelly Cherry Andrew Glaze /TRANSLATIONS by Tatiana Retivov : Ekaterina Derisheva Iya Kiva Olga Bragina/ Tina Parker Sarah White Michael Hettich Carl Boon Jen Rouse Nicole A. Yurcaba Gregory Byrd Michelle Bitting Freesia McKee Yuan Changming Diane Theil Jennifer Litt Michael Chin Joanne Pagano Weber Bruce Robinson Lucia Leao David Kirby Rebecca Aronson Bruce Weber Alexis Rhone Fancher Sarah Carey Tony Gloeggler Nels Hanson Ricardo Rodriguez Charles Rammelkamp Gregg Shapiro Bruce Lowry David Subacchi
The Ultimate Swipe, collage by Tom Stock
Kelly Cherry 2 poems
Results
Because the man cannot digest the food provided him,
The plate cries.
Because the man cannot walk,
The floor sobs.
Because the man cannot go outside,
The trees weep.
Because the man cannot go outside,
The bushes whisper in hushed voices.
Because the man cannot see the moon from his room,
The sky wails.
Because the man cannot hear music he loves,
His wife sits beside him in silence.
Because the man cannot smell her perfume,
She speaks directly to his heart.
Because his life is nearly over,
His wife tries to comfort him.
Because he is dying,
The lamp flickers and goes out.
Because the man cannot digest the food provided him,
The plate cries.
Because the man cannot walk,
The floor sobs.
Because the man cannot go outside,
The trees weep.
Because the man cannot go outside,
The bushes whisper in hushed voices.
Because the man cannot see the moon from his room,
The sky wails.
Because the man cannot hear music he loves,
His wife sits beside him in silence.
Because the man cannot smell her perfume,
She speaks directly to his heart.
Because his life is nearly over,
His wife tries to comfort him.
Because he is dying,
The lamp flickers and goes out.
An iridescent 3-D dream
An iridescent 3-D dream
skims your sleeping face,
the breeze it wakes brushing your lashes,
their ciliate bark-dark fur.
You turn away but the dream goes on:
sycamores rise from flooding rivers,
passionflowers burst from bricks,
honeysuckle ties you down.
Now the dream goes deeper, down
into the primitive, sexual self,
the self you keep under lock and key.
An iridescent 3-D dream
will do that: leave you naked and punchy,
unprotected against the world,
its probes and isolation cells,
will leave you reeling with black eye
and broken jaw, your confusion
publicly available
via omnipresent surveillance
cameras, and as you struggle
to rearrange your settled life,
your orderly life, you see the old
world anew, its mysterious coverings,
its unfathomable skies,
the lightless depth of your body’s craving
for touch.
Kelly Cherry is the author of 27 books and 11 chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and two translations of classic drama. They include Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Poem, Beholder's Eye: Poems, and Temporium: From the Beginning to After the End (stories). Coming in 2018 are two books: Fault Lines: Poems and Men with Something to Say: Considerations of Male Creativity.
An iridescent 3-D dream
skims your sleeping face,
the breeze it wakes brushing your lashes,
their ciliate bark-dark fur.
You turn away but the dream goes on:
sycamores rise from flooding rivers,
passionflowers burst from bricks,
honeysuckle ties you down.
Now the dream goes deeper, down
into the primitive, sexual self,
the self you keep under lock and key.
An iridescent 3-D dream
will do that: leave you naked and punchy,
unprotected against the world,
its probes and isolation cells,
will leave you reeling with black eye
and broken jaw, your confusion
publicly available
via omnipresent surveillance
cameras, and as you struggle
to rearrange your settled life,
your orderly life, you see the old
world anew, its mysterious coverings,
its unfathomable skies,
the lightless depth of your body’s craving
for touch.
Kelly Cherry is the author of 27 books and 11 chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, and two translations of classic drama. They include Quartet for J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Poem, Beholder's Eye: Poems, and Temporium: From the Beginning to After the End (stories). Coming in 2018 are two books: Fault Lines: Poems and Men with Something to Say: Considerations of Male Creativity.
Andrew Glaze 3 poems
(Andrew Gaze: April 21, 1920-February 7, 2016)
(Andrew Gaze: April 21, 1920-February 7, 2016)
Days of Being Born
The first day of being born is sun,
falling out over garden ash and trees,
bidding farewell to snowdrift,
hiring representations out of the wind.
Advancing into the world with no expectation,
its first walk is random,
un-glittering, not well-advised,
and next it learns spinning, like a Catherine wheel.
It calculates tricks, and subtly spills out its pockets,
of scatter-shots loans.
Its earliest welcome comes streaming,
beginning with only a whisper,
already it’s risen to a well-sprung humming.
And then all at once, as though learning to brood,
it awakens.
Loosed in the enormous, nesting sky,
it rustles a tall order of birds and wings.
The first day of being born is sun,
falling out over garden ash and trees,
bidding farewell to snowdrift,
hiring representations out of the wind.
Advancing into the world with no expectation,
its first walk is random,
un-glittering, not well-advised,
and next it learns spinning, like a Catherine wheel.
It calculates tricks, and subtly spills out its pockets,
of scatter-shots loans.
Its earliest welcome comes streaming,
beginning with only a whisper,
already it’s risen to a well-sprung humming.
And then all at once, as though learning to brood,
it awakens.
Loosed in the enormous, nesting sky,
it rustles a tall order of birds and wings.
Hard Times
I thank fortune for hard times,
luck for breaking my granite pride,
fear for making me strong, long enough
to be absurd, careless, and when I think of it—kind.
Also, bless you, goodwill,
you have stayed my friend
despite my surly bleats.
Humility, thou big liar, blest,
come out and take your part!
And get up, oh lecherous goat of a soul!
I want to be tripped on the leg
of the table of trouble,
toasted with the mopped-up wine
of playing a role.
I thank fortune for hard times,
luck for breaking my granite pride,
fear for making me strong, long enough
to be absurd, careless, and when I think of it—kind.
Also, bless you, goodwill,
you have stayed my friend
despite my surly bleats.
Humility, thou big liar, blest,
come out and take your part!
And get up, oh lecherous goat of a soul!
I want to be tripped on the leg
of the table of trouble,
toasted with the mopped-up wine
of playing a role.
PiÑata
What a tangle we are,--
old whiskery God at his bowling alley
setting us up and knocking us about with questions
under the leaky roof of no-one can see.
And here comes that dirty old crone
like a witch, busy at her drudgery work
spinning and whacking the wheels and levers
of the work-a-day world.
So soon as we’re born, we grasp what
we’ve been dropped into, and we try to clamber back.
But we must stay and share the absurdity
with its baffling pot-full of mysteries,
for the universe is mad, as all the poets alive and dead
have already seen, and it’s time to whack the gay piñata
shaped like Batman in blue and green,
to stand in the shower raining down upon us
bonbons and sweets, while underneath
there’s a fundament of deadly poison
bubbling and squeaking,
ready enough to keep us nimble on our feet.
Poems reprinted with permission from Overheard in a Drugstore And Other Poems
ISBN 978-1-60306-399-9
NewSouth Books Montgomery
June 2015
Andrew Glaze was the eleventh Poet Laureate of Alabama. Educated at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Grenoble, Glaze spent 30 years in Manhattan and 14 in Miami before returning to Birmingham, Alabama, where he grew up and as a young man worked as a journalist. He came to national attention in 1966, when his first major volume of poetry was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and declared a “Notable Book” by the National Library Association. A prolific writer, his poems have appeared in scores of books and periodicals, including the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Poetry Magazine. His poem “A Journey” was set to music by composer Ned Rorem and has been recorded by multiple artists.
What a tangle we are,--
old whiskery God at his bowling alley
setting us up and knocking us about with questions
under the leaky roof of no-one can see.
And here comes that dirty old crone
like a witch, busy at her drudgery work
spinning and whacking the wheels and levers
of the work-a-day world.
So soon as we’re born, we grasp what
we’ve been dropped into, and we try to clamber back.
But we must stay and share the absurdity
with its baffling pot-full of mysteries,
for the universe is mad, as all the poets alive and dead
have already seen, and it’s time to whack the gay piñata
shaped like Batman in blue and green,
to stand in the shower raining down upon us
bonbons and sweets, while underneath
there’s a fundament of deadly poison
bubbling and squeaking,
ready enough to keep us nimble on our feet.
Poems reprinted with permission from Overheard in a Drugstore And Other Poems
ISBN 978-1-60306-399-9
NewSouth Books Montgomery
June 2015
Andrew Glaze was the eleventh Poet Laureate of Alabama. Educated at Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Grenoble, Glaze spent 30 years in Manhattan and 14 in Miami before returning to Birmingham, Alabama, where he grew up and as a young man worked as a journalist. He came to national attention in 1966, when his first major volume of poetry was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and declared a “Notable Book” by the National Library Association. A prolific writer, his poems have appeared in scores of books and periodicals, including the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Poetry Magazine. His poem “A Journey” was set to music by composer Ned Rorem and has been recorded by multiple artists.
TRANSLATIONS
These are translated from Russian by Tatiana Retivov, now of the Ukraine. The poets translated are all accomplished younger Russian women, one still in her 20's, the other two in their 30's.
-Mary Jane White, SoFloPoJo translations editor
Ekaterina Derisheva
*
life’s projector
is plugged in thru a USB
the unborn child
searches for parents
grows into an explosion of meaning
hundreds of little we
*
listening
behind the wall of your body
the noise of perception
the illegible signature of the heart
nerves
I put a glass up to the wall:
I am trying to get to know you better
-Mary Jane White, SoFloPoJo translations editor
Ekaterina Derisheva
*
life’s projector
is plugged in thru a USB
the unborn child
searches for parents
grows into an explosion of meaning
hundreds of little we
*
listening
behind the wall of your body
the noise of perception
the illegible signature of the heart
nerves
I put a glass up to the wall:
I am trying to get to know you better
safety pin
a glance pinned
by a safety pin
onto the body of memory
I am already no longer
whereas you are
no longer
whereas you are
whereas you are
*
the moon
a huge mouse
no
wrong
the moon
a mouse
turns the wheel
no
wrong
a mouse
turns the wheel
a mouse
turns the wheel
a mouse
turns the wheel
Ekaterina Derisheva was born in 1994 in Melitopol. In 2014, she graduated from the Zaporozhe National Ukrainian college of Economics and Law, specializing in the development of computer programming. She is currently studying journalism at the Department of Philology of the Kharkov National University where she lives. She has published in the literary journals Literratura, Raduga, Deti Ra, Plavuchiy most, Belskie prostory, and the Soloneba anthologies. She has participated in literary festivals in Belarus and Moldova (2016, 2017), Kievskiye Lavry (2017), and the convention of young writers of Ukraine (2013). Derisheva was long-listed for the Bella prize (2015).
a glance pinned
by a safety pin
onto the body of memory
I am already no longer
whereas you are
no longer
whereas you are
whereas you are
*
the moon
a huge mouse
no
wrong
the moon
a mouse
turns the wheel
no
wrong
a mouse
turns the wheel
a mouse
turns the wheel
a mouse
turns the wheel
Ekaterina Derisheva was born in 1994 in Melitopol. In 2014, she graduated from the Zaporozhe National Ukrainian college of Economics and Law, specializing in the development of computer programming. She is currently studying journalism at the Department of Philology of the Kharkov National University where she lives. She has published in the literary journals Literratura, Raduga, Deti Ra, Plavuchiy most, Belskie prostory, and the Soloneba anthologies. She has participated in literary festivals in Belarus and Moldova (2016, 2017), Kievskiye Lavry (2017), and the convention of young writers of Ukraine (2013). Derisheva was long-listed for the Bella prize (2015).
Iya Kiva
kind people ask
how are things in Donetsk
what reports are there from the field
are you in touch with anyone there
thank you I say I am very touched
by your interest in the dear people from Donetsk
one of my parents’ classmate’s husband
committed suicide
right in the middle of a family celebration
went into the bathroom and never returned.
the husband of one of my classmates
dumped her with a little daughter
ran off to Western Europe
forgave everyone owes nothing
no homeland no alimony
my girlfriend’s husband
lost his arm 30 meters from home
went out to buy bread this breadwinner
drinks a lot hates everyone
a friend of mine’s son
was killed at a tramway stop
17 years old never loved
never even kissed anyone
and as the Voice of America reports
as of 20 December 2017
the situation in Donbass, unfortunately, has not improved.
***
listen look how this cruel May
attacks the invisible Czech army from the air
the entire city is sown with gregor samsas corpses
with the folds of their dresses helplessly flung open
the people fear them and stomp stomp
they who had insisted they loved alphonse mukha
they were probably lying
they were probably always lying
***
the boy next door does not want to be noticed
he covers his face with a sky blue t-shirt
assumes visibility in his head
walks without a head
blue green
not alike at all
flashing in front of trees
color colorlessness
the whiteness of hair mistaken for clouds
for a box with poplar down
but what about motion
the air that molds the form of the small boy
won’t fill the kerchiefs of the old ladies on benches
nor the alcoholics’ bags by the store
playing hide-and-seek with imaginary friends
an introvert always has the chance to hide
in himself
but what does one do with imaginary enemies
where does one hide from imaginary enemies
war never faileth, hopeth all things, endureth all things
***
my heart goes thump
and is silent for long
beating first in amphibrach
then in dactylic
a waltz ladies and gentlemen
oh no ladies and gentlemen
it seems to be a tango
and everyone is dancing it
irregular verse
irregular rhythm
well at least a regular cycle
almost no sleep at all
my head tried to figure it out
then gave up
my dreams packed up
and went to live with my mother
on the pillow near by
at the other end of the room
not far it seems
but can’t see hell
I ask what am I dreaming
again about the sea
dreams of the sea as all water are a bad omen
for all the women of our maternal line
if it’s not too dirty then it’s so-so
in any case expect sorrow
again the sea
it’s quiet
you plan to swim in it
and tell me you’re scared
why am I afraid
at first there is nothing
the sea is calm
suddenly you see the fish
they are predatory
there are many of them
I am afraid because
the predatory fish
are looking for me
and one of them will jump up onto the shore
next to you but can’t reach up to bite
out of her emerges a green girl
very pretty or what not even dreamt in a nightmare
a girl-statue
flexible as a mermaid
how wonderful that it’s you sleeping instead of me
Iya Kiva was born in 1984 in Donetsk. She graduated from the Philology Department of the Donetsk National University. Since 2014, Kiva has lived in Kiev, where she works as a translator, editor, and journalist. Her poetry, reviews, and translations have been published in the following literary journals: Studiya, Slovo\Word, Neva, Raduga, Plavuchiy most, Novaya real’nost’, Novaya iunost’, Kreshchatik, Novy Mir, Beliy voron, Oktyabr’, Emigrantskaya Lira, Interpoezziya,” as well as in the internet publications: Literratura, Soloneba, Polutona and others. Her poetry has been translated into Lithuanian, Polish, and English. She was the laureate of the Konstantin Romanov International Youth Competition in St. Petersburg (2013, 2014), the International Festival of Literature and Culture Slavic Traditions (2013), the Yuriy Kaplan Literary Contest (2013), the International Poetry Festival Emigrantskaya Lyra (2016), and the winner of the All-Ukrainian Poetry Competition Malakhite Rhinoceros: (2014). She was also long listed for the literary competitions Bella (2014) and Debut (2015). Most recently she translated Maria Galina’s novel, Avtochtony into Ukrainian (2016).
kind people ask
how are things in Donetsk
what reports are there from the field
are you in touch with anyone there
thank you I say I am very touched
by your interest in the dear people from Donetsk
one of my parents’ classmate’s husband
committed suicide
right in the middle of a family celebration
went into the bathroom and never returned.
the husband of one of my classmates
dumped her with a little daughter
ran off to Western Europe
forgave everyone owes nothing
no homeland no alimony
my girlfriend’s husband
lost his arm 30 meters from home
went out to buy bread this breadwinner
drinks a lot hates everyone
a friend of mine’s son
was killed at a tramway stop
17 years old never loved
never even kissed anyone
and as the Voice of America reports
as of 20 December 2017
the situation in Donbass, unfortunately, has not improved.
***
listen look how this cruel May
attacks the invisible Czech army from the air
the entire city is sown with gregor samsas corpses
with the folds of their dresses helplessly flung open
the people fear them and stomp stomp
they who had insisted they loved alphonse mukha
they were probably lying
they were probably always lying
***
the boy next door does not want to be noticed
he covers his face with a sky blue t-shirt
assumes visibility in his head
walks without a head
blue green
not alike at all
flashing in front of trees
color colorlessness
the whiteness of hair mistaken for clouds
for a box with poplar down
but what about motion
the air that molds the form of the small boy
won’t fill the kerchiefs of the old ladies on benches
nor the alcoholics’ bags by the store
playing hide-and-seek with imaginary friends
an introvert always has the chance to hide
in himself
but what does one do with imaginary enemies
where does one hide from imaginary enemies
war never faileth, hopeth all things, endureth all things
***
my heart goes thump
and is silent for long
beating first in amphibrach
then in dactylic
a waltz ladies and gentlemen
oh no ladies and gentlemen
it seems to be a tango
and everyone is dancing it
irregular verse
irregular rhythm
well at least a regular cycle
almost no sleep at all
my head tried to figure it out
then gave up
my dreams packed up
and went to live with my mother
on the pillow near by
at the other end of the room
not far it seems
but can’t see hell
I ask what am I dreaming
again about the sea
dreams of the sea as all water are a bad omen
for all the women of our maternal line
if it’s not too dirty then it’s so-so
in any case expect sorrow
again the sea
it’s quiet
you plan to swim in it
and tell me you’re scared
why am I afraid
at first there is nothing
the sea is calm
suddenly you see the fish
they are predatory
there are many of them
I am afraid because
the predatory fish
are looking for me
and one of them will jump up onto the shore
next to you but can’t reach up to bite
out of her emerges a green girl
very pretty or what not even dreamt in a nightmare
a girl-statue
flexible as a mermaid
how wonderful that it’s you sleeping instead of me
Iya Kiva was born in 1984 in Donetsk. She graduated from the Philology Department of the Donetsk National University. Since 2014, Kiva has lived in Kiev, where she works as a translator, editor, and journalist. Her poetry, reviews, and translations have been published in the following literary journals: Studiya, Slovo\Word, Neva, Raduga, Plavuchiy most, Novaya real’nost’, Novaya iunost’, Kreshchatik, Novy Mir, Beliy voron, Oktyabr’, Emigrantskaya Lira, Interpoezziya,” as well as in the internet publications: Literratura, Soloneba, Polutona and others. Her poetry has been translated into Lithuanian, Polish, and English. She was the laureate of the Konstantin Romanov International Youth Competition in St. Petersburg (2013, 2014), the International Festival of Literature and Culture Slavic Traditions (2013), the Yuriy Kaplan Literary Contest (2013), the International Poetry Festival Emigrantskaya Lyra (2016), and the winner of the All-Ukrainian Poetry Competition Malakhite Rhinoceros: (2014). She was also long listed for the literary competitions Bella (2014) and Debut (2015). Most recently she translated Maria Galina’s novel, Avtochtony into Ukrainian (2016).
Olga Bragina
* * *
we sit on a bench drinking champagne
and discussing Shopenhauer
how he disliked women and envied hussars
I ask why did he envy hussars he was so smart
you say because they had origins
a bag lady approaches us begging for money
you offer her champagne
she refuses saying she doesn’t drink
I can only guess why Shopenhauer disliked women
other than that according to him women have crooked legs
and also they yak and yak about what one doesn’t want to hear
or else are quiet at the wrong time
undisputedly love is dumber than philosophy
love is dumber than bag ladies’ champagne and passers-by
and now that definitions have ended one can be quiet at the wrong time
we sit on a bench discussing absent friends the weather in Kharkiv
apparent unlove and its possible parallels
Olga Bragina is a poet, prose writer and translator. She was born in Kiev in 1982. She graduated from the Translation Department of the Kiev National Univesity of Linguistics. Bragina is the author of two books: Applications (2011) and Namedropping (2012). She has published in a variety of literary journals, namely Vozdukh, Interpoezziya, Polutona, Novaya Yunost', Volga, Zinziver, Deti Ra, and others. Recently she translated John High's book of poems, Vanishing Acts into Russian, which will be published in Kiev.
Tatiana Retivov was born in New York to Russian émigré parents. She studied English and French literature at the University of Montana, where she received her B.A. In 1981, she received an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan. Tatiana has lived in Ukraine for over 20 years, she initially arrived here as an interpreter for an American company. Since arriving here, she has also engaged in literary translation and writing. Currently Tatiana is the curator of an art and literature salon in Kiev. She has also established a publishing house, www.kayalapublishing.com that publishes prose, poetry, and non-fiction in Ukraine.
* * *
we sit on a bench drinking champagne
and discussing Shopenhauer
how he disliked women and envied hussars
I ask why did he envy hussars he was so smart
you say because they had origins
a bag lady approaches us begging for money
you offer her champagne
she refuses saying she doesn’t drink
I can only guess why Shopenhauer disliked women
other than that according to him women have crooked legs
and also they yak and yak about what one doesn’t want to hear
or else are quiet at the wrong time
undisputedly love is dumber than philosophy
love is dumber than bag ladies’ champagne and passers-by
and now that definitions have ended one can be quiet at the wrong time
we sit on a bench discussing absent friends the weather in Kharkiv
apparent unlove and its possible parallels
Olga Bragina is a poet, prose writer and translator. She was born in Kiev in 1982. She graduated from the Translation Department of the Kiev National Univesity of Linguistics. Bragina is the author of two books: Applications (2011) and Namedropping (2012). She has published in a variety of literary journals, namely Vozdukh, Interpoezziya, Polutona, Novaya Yunost', Volga, Zinziver, Deti Ra, and others. Recently she translated John High's book of poems, Vanishing Acts into Russian, which will be published in Kiev.
Tatiana Retivov was born in New York to Russian émigré parents. She studied English and French literature at the University of Montana, where she received her B.A. In 1981, she received an M.A. in Slavic Languages and Literature from the University of Michigan. Tatiana has lived in Ukraine for over 20 years, she initially arrived here as an interpreter for an American company. Since arriving here, she has also engaged in literary translation and writing. Currently Tatiana is the curator of an art and literature salon in Kiev. She has also established a publishing house, www.kayalapublishing.com that publishes prose, poetry, and non-fiction in Ukraine.
Tina Parker 2 poems
Pleas for Admission
Will you take my mother
She is widowed, violent, vulgar, she eats too much and chaws tobacco
Will you take my daughter
She is wild, incoherent, frolicsome, and restless
Will you take my wife
She travels all the time, takes no interest in her home, and she fights like a wildcat
when tried to be controlled
Will you take my mother
She is widowed, violent, vulgar, she eats too much and chaws tobacco
Will you take my daughter
She is wild, incoherent, frolicsome, and restless
Will you take my wife
She travels all the time, takes no interest in her home, and she fights like a wildcat
when tried to be controlled
Answered Letters
I
Dear Sir
Your daughter
Your wife
Your mother
Has not improved any
II
Dear Sir
She has much to try her temper
In our opinion
She is yet
very insane
III
Dear Sir
She is right troublesome
and at times excited
We do not know whether or not she will ever improve
Neither do we promise
a cure
Tina Parker is the author of the poetry collection Mother May I and poetry chapbook Another Offering. To learn more about her work, visit www.tina-parker.org.
I
Dear Sir
Your daughter
Your wife
Your mother
Has not improved any
II
Dear Sir
She has much to try her temper
In our opinion
She is yet
very insane
III
Dear Sir
She is right troublesome
and at times excited
We do not know whether or not she will ever improve
Neither do we promise
a cure
Tina Parker is the author of the poetry collection Mother May I and poetry chapbook Another Offering. To learn more about her work, visit www.tina-parker.org.
Sarah White 4 poems
If I missed her
and wanted to see her
I’d scroll down the years
backwards, past the morning
when my brother called and said:
The dreaded mother’s gone.
words I understood,
coming from her son.
If I wanted to see her,
I would wear a hat
over my straight, white hair
and pale, square face, features
I share with her. I’d look
into the mirror.
There she’d be, reflected
in multiples, adorned
for a party where
she’d soon be nattering
away about her children:
Just think! She wants to be
a professor! (that was me)--
He knows all the picky ins and outs
of bookkeeping !
That was my brother--
accountant, banker, engineer--
who phoned me so cheerfully
saying he was finally
getting something he’d always wanted:
his moment on Earth as an orphan.
and wanted to see her
I’d scroll down the years
backwards, past the morning
when my brother called and said:
The dreaded mother’s gone.
words I understood,
coming from her son.
If I wanted to see her,
I would wear a hat
over my straight, white hair
and pale, square face, features
I share with her. I’d look
into the mirror.
There she’d be, reflected
in multiples, adorned
for a party where
she’d soon be nattering
away about her children:
Just think! She wants to be
a professor! (that was me)--
He knows all the picky ins and outs
of bookkeeping !
That was my brother--
accountant, banker, engineer--
who phoned me so cheerfully
saying he was finally
getting something he’d always wanted:
his moment on Earth as an orphan.
She Says She’s At Sea
Did you ever have an old woman
sit in an empty living room,
waiting for someone to come
with a ride to the Home?
Did she say I’m at sea,
I’m thirsty, Is there a little tea?
Had cups and spoons
been cleared from the drawers,
hidden in one of the movers’ cartons?
Was it you who’d packed everything?
Had you forgotten that out on a raft
she’d be thirsty. Was it thirty
years ago that you closed the cartons?
Could you not have left one mug
unwrapped, and a bag of tea
on a string? She must have been wondering
whether the Home was the one
she had seen. How many years after
was it over? It must have been in her room
at the Home. Was she alone?
Do you suppose her mind,
once it was out of her body, got caught
in a shadowy eddy, then blown
to shore for anyone to find
in the sand?--
Did you ever have an old woman
sit in an empty living room,
waiting for someone to come
with a ride to the Home?
Did she say I’m at sea,
I’m thirsty, Is there a little tea?
Had cups and spoons
been cleared from the drawers,
hidden in one of the movers’ cartons?
Was it you who’d packed everything?
Had you forgotten that out on a raft
she’d be thirsty. Was it thirty
years ago that you closed the cartons?
Could you not have left one mug
unwrapped, and a bag of tea
on a string? She must have been wondering
whether the Home was the one
she had seen. How many years after
was it over? It must have been in her room
at the Home. Was she alone?
Do you suppose her mind,
once it was out of her body, got caught
in a shadowy eddy, then blown
to shore for anyone to find
in the sand?--
A Shade of Love
Half a century has passed
since a man
abandoned me to marry
the woman he preferred.
Observers at the time
said “he ruined her life.
It was a shame.”
Last night in a dream,
a familiar man returned
from somewhere, alone.
He said he’d always
loved me. I said I’d always
loved him. We told one another
we should stay together.
The warm, youthful
person in the dream
did not resemble the one
who long ago deserted me.
He, in actuality,
has, poor man, grown lame
and forgetful.
Nor, last night, was I
as I am in waking life--
a moody woman of eighty.
But it was I who dreamed
and woke with the feeling
of relief and renewal
a prisoner might know
when the judge bangs her gavel
and decrees: “The fines
have been paid.
You’re free to go.”
Half a century has passed
since a man
abandoned me to marry
the woman he preferred.
Observers at the time
said “he ruined her life.
It was a shame.”
Last night in a dream,
a familiar man returned
from somewhere, alone.
He said he’d always
loved me. I said I’d always
loved him. We told one another
we should stay together.
The warm, youthful
person in the dream
did not resemble the one
who long ago deserted me.
He, in actuality,
has, poor man, grown lame
and forgetful.
Nor, last night, was I
as I am in waking life--
a moody woman of eighty.
But it was I who dreamed
and woke with the feeling
of relief and renewal
a prisoner might know
when the judge bangs her gavel
and decrees: “The fines
have been paid.
You’re free to go.”
The Strangest Thing in the World is the Most Natural
to stand in the house of a friend and think
she won’t open or close the cabinets, answer
the phone, or pull a book from the shelf again,
think some place may exist where she’s still
herself, though looking for her in this small
Vermont town you find only shadow, then to travel
late in the evening back to the city on the train
as, beside the track, the Hudson River flows
so all is black except on the far shore where a few
lamps light patches of deep water, yet to like
staring out at the dark, aware that a river is there full
of salt, slippery weeds, and creatures asleep.
Sarah White's most recent poetry collections include The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2015). Wars Don't Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015), and the latest, also available from Deerbrook, To one who bends my time. (2018). She lives in New York City and divides her time between poetry and painting.
to stand in the house of a friend and think
she won’t open or close the cabinets, answer
the phone, or pull a book from the shelf again,
think some place may exist where she’s still
herself, though looking for her in this small
Vermont town you find only shadow, then to travel
late in the evening back to the city on the train
as, beside the track, the Hudson River flows
so all is black except on the far shore where a few
lamps light patches of deep water, yet to like
staring out at the dark, aware that a river is there full
of salt, slippery weeds, and creatures asleep.
Sarah White's most recent poetry collections include The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2015). Wars Don't Happen Anymore (Deerbrook Editions, 2015), and the latest, also available from Deerbrook, To one who bends my time. (2018). She lives in New York City and divides her time between poetry and painting.
Michael Hettich 2 poems
The Animals
The mouse inside my guts is just a mouse, and an ordinary one at that. I could say I love
him, despite myself, for his sleek fur and the way he sniffs at the seeds and secrets deep in
there, where I don’t even realize I’ve hidden them, which will grow now into sunflowers or
flowering bushes inside me, since by nudging and chewing he’s dislodged them from their
dormancy. The sunflowers may even grow larger than my body, which scares me a bit, to
be honest. And they’ll attract bees and small birds, and they’ll sway in the sun until,
nodding, they’ll drop whatever is left of their seeds. And what kinds of birds are they, after
all, that eat those seeds? How far do they migrate; what songs do they sing?
When I was a child we owned a boa constrictor that needed to be fed only once a month.
He ate rats and mice my mother collected from the cancer research institute downtown. These
rodents had been shot full of toxic chemicals, cut open and sewed up like the patched jeans
we wore then, and most of them could barely walk. My mom would place them gently in
the terrarium, where they’d stand shaking or tottering aimlessly around—until the snake
got them into his mouth. Still alive when he swallowed them, their tails moved like
conductor’s batons beating spastic time to a music we couldn’t hear, until they were just a
lump in that silky-rope body.
I never took much pleasure in that snake, or in watching the rats disappear there—or in
any of the other exotic pets my mother collected, tortoises which moved so rarely we only
knew they’d died when we smelled them rotting, piranhas which banged against their tanks
when we walked by, yearning to take a nice bite of our faces. I wasn’t even that fond of
dogs in those days—they seemed always to get hit by cars or to disappear into the
neighborhood somewhere, and my parents would ask me to go out on my bike and search
for them, in the chilly dusk. I’d ride up and down the streets calling “Tippy!” calling
“Otis!” without luck. And when I returned we’d have dinner, by candlelight, while the
hamsters in the kitchen ran on their wheels, which made a halfhearted creaking music, like
an old door being opened and closed, over and over, to let nothing in or out.
The mouse inside my guts is just a mouse, and an ordinary one at that. I could say I love
him, despite myself, for his sleek fur and the way he sniffs at the seeds and secrets deep in
there, where I don’t even realize I’ve hidden them, which will grow now into sunflowers or
flowering bushes inside me, since by nudging and chewing he’s dislodged them from their
dormancy. The sunflowers may even grow larger than my body, which scares me a bit, to
be honest. And they’ll attract bees and small birds, and they’ll sway in the sun until,
nodding, they’ll drop whatever is left of their seeds. And what kinds of birds are they, after
all, that eat those seeds? How far do they migrate; what songs do they sing?
When I was a child we owned a boa constrictor that needed to be fed only once a month.
He ate rats and mice my mother collected from the cancer research institute downtown. These
rodents had been shot full of toxic chemicals, cut open and sewed up like the patched jeans
we wore then, and most of them could barely walk. My mom would place them gently in
the terrarium, where they’d stand shaking or tottering aimlessly around—until the snake
got them into his mouth. Still alive when he swallowed them, their tails moved like
conductor’s batons beating spastic time to a music we couldn’t hear, until they were just a
lump in that silky-rope body.
I never took much pleasure in that snake, or in watching the rats disappear there—or in
any of the other exotic pets my mother collected, tortoises which moved so rarely we only
knew they’d died when we smelled them rotting, piranhas which banged against their tanks
when we walked by, yearning to take a nice bite of our faces. I wasn’t even that fond of
dogs in those days—they seemed always to get hit by cars or to disappear into the
neighborhood somewhere, and my parents would ask me to go out on my bike and search
for them, in the chilly dusk. I’d ride up and down the streets calling “Tippy!” calling
“Otis!” without luck. And when I returned we’d have dinner, by candlelight, while the
hamsters in the kitchen ran on their wheels, which made a halfhearted creaking music, like
an old door being opened and closed, over and over, to let nothing in or out.
The Mushrooms
Perhaps the best way to live beyond our human span is to become a mushroom in the
woods, to push gently through leaf-rot and damp soil and stand there for a few days, then
pull back into the darkness, where the moon feels like a blanket and the rivers below you
keep running in their night-world so pure it might seem they’re not actually there. Your
nerve-roots will spread then for many acres, reaching down below the rivulets and tree
roots and empty spaces that are full of never-breathed air, and you’ll come up again, next
year perhaps, to taste another moon. The wind across the bay that sweeps into your face
now is full of tiny flecks of skin and dandruff, and it smells like seaweed. The pelicans leap
from their breeze-cliffs in the sky and you wish you could live in another person’s mind for
an hour or a day since only then might you credit yourself with whatever you already know.
There are doors marked “door” and doors that look like air. We emptied our whole house
onto the front lawn and sold off our possessions, everything, including our snapshots and
diaries. Then we walked around the empty house naked for a while, until we were able to
move away to this place, where we live in other names, displaying different talents. My past
is not the past, but still it holds the truth: My mother played the violin in her upstairs
apartment until she was heard by the deaf man next door, who put on his soft gloves to
touch her. They sang in languages they couldn’t understand and sailed around the world
while I listened and learned how to dance without moving. Just as you knocked, my
darling, on the back door, with a basket of mushrooms and a story of foxes and a small
stream so cold it could change a person into light. The mushrooms were poison you said as
you held one up and passed it into my hand, but we could safely slip them under our
pillows, to dream on the cusp of forever.
Michael Hettich's most recent book, The Frozen Harbor, won the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from Red Dragonfly Press and a Bronze Medal in Poetry in the 2018 Florida Book Awards. Other books include Systems of Vanishing (U of Tampa, 2014), The Animals Beyond Us (New Rivers Press, 2011), and Like Happiness (Anhinga, 2010). He lives in Miami.
Perhaps the best way to live beyond our human span is to become a mushroom in the
woods, to push gently through leaf-rot and damp soil and stand there for a few days, then
pull back into the darkness, where the moon feels like a blanket and the rivers below you
keep running in their night-world so pure it might seem they’re not actually there. Your
nerve-roots will spread then for many acres, reaching down below the rivulets and tree
roots and empty spaces that are full of never-breathed air, and you’ll come up again, next
year perhaps, to taste another moon. The wind across the bay that sweeps into your face
now is full of tiny flecks of skin and dandruff, and it smells like seaweed. The pelicans leap
from their breeze-cliffs in the sky and you wish you could live in another person’s mind for
an hour or a day since only then might you credit yourself with whatever you already know.
There are doors marked “door” and doors that look like air. We emptied our whole house
onto the front lawn and sold off our possessions, everything, including our snapshots and
diaries. Then we walked around the empty house naked for a while, until we were able to
move away to this place, where we live in other names, displaying different talents. My past
is not the past, but still it holds the truth: My mother played the violin in her upstairs
apartment until she was heard by the deaf man next door, who put on his soft gloves to
touch her. They sang in languages they couldn’t understand and sailed around the world
while I listened and learned how to dance without moving. Just as you knocked, my
darling, on the back door, with a basket of mushrooms and a story of foxes and a small
stream so cold it could change a person into light. The mushrooms were poison you said as
you held one up and passed it into my hand, but we could safely slip them under our
pillows, to dream on the cusp of forever.
Michael Hettich's most recent book, The Frozen Harbor, won the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize from Red Dragonfly Press and a Bronze Medal in Poetry in the 2018 Florida Book Awards. Other books include Systems of Vanishing (U of Tampa, 2014), The Animals Beyond Us (New Rivers Press, 2011), and Like Happiness (Anhinga, 2010). He lives in Miami.
Carl Boon
The Mantis Shrimp
I ask myself where terrible ends
and beautiful begins. I think of the girl
I sat behind on the bus last summer--
every one of her fingernails
painted a different color. Moreover,
her bottom lip was blue,
her top lip yellow, and while she talked
on the phone to her mother in Manisa
the words came out green. Nonetheless
I found ways to figure her out; I was not
nonplussed. I studied her in the heat
when the bus stopped at Bursa
and we all got out, some to smoke cigarettes
and some to eat the local sweet
called kestane şekeri, chestnuts
with a syrupy glaze. I followed her
through the cafeteria to the bookshop
where she bought Chekhov in translation
and the July 11th issue of People Magazine.
Away from the sun, I saw her eyes were green,
her hair purple, and her t-shirt said
“Love Is Me.” Over a bad Turkish hamburger
I remembered the fifth-grade,
Phil Siegferth’s fateful azure eyes,
and the book report I did on the mantis shrimp.
Just eleven, I was scared
by what I couldn’t understand.
All those colors had to mean poison,
the eyeshadow the high school girls wore
at the mall and Mary Magdalene’s
robes in the pictures they scraped away
from our Sunday School books.
Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, recently The Maine Review and The Hawaii Review. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.
I ask myself where terrible ends
and beautiful begins. I think of the girl
I sat behind on the bus last summer--
every one of her fingernails
painted a different color. Moreover,
her bottom lip was blue,
her top lip yellow, and while she talked
on the phone to her mother in Manisa
the words came out green. Nonetheless
I found ways to figure her out; I was not
nonplussed. I studied her in the heat
when the bus stopped at Bursa
and we all got out, some to smoke cigarettes
and some to eat the local sweet
called kestane şekeri, chestnuts
with a syrupy glaze. I followed her
through the cafeteria to the bookshop
where she bought Chekhov in translation
and the July 11th issue of People Magazine.
Away from the sun, I saw her eyes were green,
her hair purple, and her t-shirt said
“Love Is Me.” Over a bad Turkish hamburger
I remembered the fifth-grade,
Phil Siegferth’s fateful azure eyes,
and the book report I did on the mantis shrimp.
Just eleven, I was scared
by what I couldn’t understand.
All those colors had to mean poison,
the eyeshadow the high school girls wore
at the mall and Mary Magdalene’s
robes in the pictures they scraped away
from our Sunday School books.
Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems appear in dozens of magazines, recently The Maine Review and The Hawaii Review. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.
Jen Rouse 2 poems
Approaching
And so she flew in
with the loveliest cake,
a bird-shaped head,
scarlet as a hummingbird's
throat. Bird humming happily. She
has made the thickest
most luscious cake like
a low-throated song,
nectar of orange
blossoms --and she licked
my fingers.
No,
I licked my fingers. Hers.
Why haven't you come
through the waves
in so long? She should have
smelled like orange
blossoms and honey.
How she flew in
with the cake and her
delicious arms
were gasping
branches, honey-sapped,
with small scarlet
nonpareils. "Gertrude
Stein," she hummed like
a tiny bird, "she baked
this birthday cake for you."
This cake. One cake.
Will you offer it
to the birds?
And so she flew in
with the loveliest cake,
a bird-shaped head,
scarlet as a hummingbird's
throat. Bird humming happily. She
has made the thickest
most luscious cake like
a low-throated song,
nectar of orange
blossoms --and she licked
my fingers.
No,
I licked my fingers. Hers.
Why haven't you come
through the waves
in so long? She should have
smelled like orange
blossoms and honey.
How she flew in
with the cake and her
delicious arms
were gasping
branches, honey-sapped,
with small scarlet
nonpareils. "Gertrude
Stein," she hummed like
a tiny bird, "she baked
this birthday cake for you."
This cake. One cake.
Will you offer it
to the birds?
It Happened that Way
And when they came for her
in matching suits of blue--
waves darkening against the calm
she had studied and knitted
and kept, her finally tamed tiger--
she clenched a photo
in her fist. Of the woman
of every poem--
bare thighs, the sea
in her hair. Waiting
on the dunes, eyes so
sad and wild. To touch her
once more, a knot of legs and sand and skin
collapsed on the shore.
The woman of every poem
kisses her forehead
when it is finished. Just once more.
But they set the crisp
and gold-flecked fields
on fire. Cackling as she whispered,
"Fall will take us all
away."
She was just standing there,
painting every portrait
of her. It was punishment enough,
as the fleeing train of her
dress turned to flame.
Jen Rouse’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Midwestern Gothic, Wicked Alice, Parentheses, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crab Fat Magazine, Up the Staircase, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue and was the winner of the 2017 Gulf Stream Summer Contest Issue. Rouse’s chapbook, Acid and Tender, was published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.
And when they came for her
in matching suits of blue--
waves darkening against the calm
she had studied and knitted
and kept, her finally tamed tiger--
she clenched a photo
in her fist. Of the woman
of every poem--
bare thighs, the sea
in her hair. Waiting
on the dunes, eyes so
sad and wild. To touch her
once more, a knot of legs and sand and skin
collapsed on the shore.
The woman of every poem
kisses her forehead
when it is finished. Just once more.
But they set the crisp
and gold-flecked fields
on fire. Cackling as she whispered,
"Fall will take us all
away."
She was just standing there,
painting every portrait
of her. It was punishment enough,
as the fleeing train of her
dress turned to flame.
Jen Rouse’s poems have appeared in Poetry, Poet Lore, Midwestern Gothic, Wicked Alice, Parentheses, Anti-Heroin Chic, Crab Fat Magazine, Up the Staircase, and elsewhere. She was named a finalist for the Mississippi Review 2018 Prize Issue and was the winner of the 2017 Gulf Stream Summer Contest Issue. Rouse’s chapbook, Acid and Tender, was published in 2016 by Headmistress Press. Find her at jen-rouse.com and on Twitter @jrouse.
Nicole A. Yurcaba
The Strangest Faith
I find you hidden in my strangest places:
in the Old English script, two words, the phrase
Jesus wept tattooed where cervical meets thoracic;
at the curve of my hip where your lips
signed your signature then placed in
hot wax the seal bearing your family’s crest;
in the black nail polish I eased onto my toenails
before I entered bed, and the novel
in which your photograph
sleeps, tucked somewhere between
cover and title page—sneaks
from the headboard’s shelf;
where a silver hoop horseshoes
my earlobe—the fourth and final piercing,
resting unnoticeably against upper helix,
above the owl-figured stud
whose amethyst eyes moonlight-coo.
Nicole Yurcaba, a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist, teaches in Bridgewater College’s English department, where she also serves as the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival’s Assistant Director. Yurcaba’s poems and essays appear in online and print journals such as The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Chariton Review, Junto Magazine, Belletrist, Artemis, and in many other venues. She lives in West Virginia with her fiancé.
I find you hidden in my strangest places:
in the Old English script, two words, the phrase
Jesus wept tattooed where cervical meets thoracic;
at the curve of my hip where your lips
signed your signature then placed in
hot wax the seal bearing your family’s crest;
in the black nail polish I eased onto my toenails
before I entered bed, and the novel
in which your photograph
sleeps, tucked somewhere between
cover and title page—sneaks
from the headboard’s shelf;
where a silver hoop horseshoes
my earlobe—the fourth and final piercing,
resting unnoticeably against upper helix,
above the owl-figured stud
whose amethyst eyes moonlight-coo.
Nicole Yurcaba, a Ukrainian-American poet and essayist, teaches in Bridgewater College’s English department, where she also serves as the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival’s Assistant Director. Yurcaba’s poems and essays appear in online and print journals such as The Atlanta Review, The Lindenwood Review, Chariton Review, Junto Magazine, Belletrist, Artemis, and in many other venues. She lives in West Virginia with her fiancé.
Gregory Byrd
For Paul Zweig
I am trying to remember how it was to be dying
when I read poems of light in my study
in twilight, waiting for the world to brighten,
reading Paul Zweig as my only hold on things
a curious feeling/ that I must pay attention,
or death will gain on me and, Paul,
how can one not pay attention to the light on the wall
from headlights heading to work,
the rising light of morning that adds one lumen
at a time and then is light, the falling light of dusk
where one lumen dies at a time and it is night.
How do some not see the individual moments of pines
when they are that close to death? You know what it was
to wake early, even when you didn’t want to--
called to the world’s miracle of light
writing in your late forties, as I am now,
in that little stone farmhouse in Dordogne.
I wish I could have talked with you then,
for I was reading your book as you faced your own dusk,
too young then to understand your poems,
but drawn to your images, St. Paul,
as if you know I would reach 47
and stare at an early morning’s light
and need these words.
Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared in Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review and many others. Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005), which won the first Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest. He has received a Fulbright Fellowship to Albania, and is a Pushcart Prize Nomination (1988). Byrd has a B.A. from Eckerd College, M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
I am trying to remember how it was to be dying
when I read poems of light in my study
in twilight, waiting for the world to brighten,
reading Paul Zweig as my only hold on things
a curious feeling/ that I must pay attention,
or death will gain on me and, Paul,
how can one not pay attention to the light on the wall
from headlights heading to work,
the rising light of morning that adds one lumen
at a time and then is light, the falling light of dusk
where one lumen dies at a time and it is night.
How do some not see the individual moments of pines
when they are that close to death? You know what it was
to wake early, even when you didn’t want to--
called to the world’s miracle of light
writing in your late forties, as I am now,
in that little stone farmhouse in Dordogne.
I wish I could have talked with you then,
for I was reading your book as you faced your own dusk,
too young then to understand your poems,
but drawn to your images, St. Paul,
as if you know I would reach 47
and stare at an early morning’s light
and need these words.
Gregory Byrd’s poems have appeared in Tampa Review, Apalachee Review, Cortland Review and many others. Among his poetry books are Salt and Iron (Snake Nation, 2014), At Penuel (Split Oak, 2011) and Florida Straits (Yellowjacket Press, 2005), which won the first Yellow Jacket Press Chapbook Contest. He has received a Fulbright Fellowship to Albania, and is a Pushcart Prize Nomination (1988). Byrd has a B.A. from Eckerd College, M.A. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Michelle Bitting 2 poems
Broken Kingdom
What does it take
for winnowed brain cells
and ligaments, layers
of skin tissue stretched
thin as phyllo dough
to sound the alarm?
To know we are
but flashing mementos,
flesh remnants
of ever-crumbling rooms?
Let us tear the curtains down,
let our real suns in. What is
your soul’s net worth, anyway?
The Egyptians understood.
A feather of gold weighed
when you’re no longer there.
You make a choice,
stake your consequences
and in the final moment
risk remorse: the forgone kisses,
a child’s touch,
the way her hair smells
of ocean and brine. The grit,
a pink throne of oiled scalp
and tangled clouds,
beach of abandoned shells
your face shovels deep into now,
this broken kingdom
where all you want anymore
is to lay yourself down
and be buried alive.
Twenty Years Later in a Kitchen
(a golden shovel after Gwendolyn Brook's "Kitchenette Building")
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan. We
wind the clocks and forget why we are,
set our minds and hands to daily buzzing things:
slicing toast, the gimp dog’s bandages, a coupon citadel and wisps of
emerald cuttings so long in the sun their funereal pots go dry.
Where is the gold we foraged, sweet milk of the subterranean hours?
Once I spoke in ritual tongue: our lips touched, a skirt twirled and
my eyes said: Take flight on wings of smoke and flame. The
chariot burning, blood and sky between bodies rose, lit with an involuntary
moan. Now memory opens, a mighty aphrodisiac unleashed. This was the plan.
Michelle Bitting’s third collection is The Couple Who Fell to Earth named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2016. She has published poems and prose in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Diode and others. Bitting is a recipient of the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. A fourth collection, Broken Kingdom is due out in 2019. Visit her at michellebitting.com
(a golden shovel after Gwendolyn Brook's "Kitchenette Building")
We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan. We
wind the clocks and forget why we are,
set our minds and hands to daily buzzing things:
slicing toast, the gimp dog’s bandages, a coupon citadel and wisps of
emerald cuttings so long in the sun their funereal pots go dry.
Where is the gold we foraged, sweet milk of the subterranean hours?
Once I spoke in ritual tongue: our lips touched, a skirt twirled and
my eyes said: Take flight on wings of smoke and flame. The
chariot burning, blood and sky between bodies rose, lit with an involuntary
moan. Now memory opens, a mighty aphrodisiac unleashed. This was the plan.
Michelle Bitting’s third collection is The Couple Who Fell to Earth named to Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2016. She has published poems and prose in The American Poetry Review, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, Vinyl Poetry, Plume, Diode and others. Bitting is a recipient of the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. A fourth collection, Broken Kingdom is due out in 2019. Visit her at michellebitting.com
Freesia McKee
Partial List of My Mother’s Fears
Mistakes would claim my sister and I: Our feet would get twisted in the stirrups. We’d each
drag by one leg from the geriatric horses at Bar-N-Ranch. The electrical sockets in our
home were mis-wired and we’d get electrocuted from plugging in the TV. We’d start a fire
using Glade PlugIns. If we knew where she hid the matches, we’d light a candle and burn
the house down. We’d stick butter knives into the sockets. We’d stick butter knives into the
toaster. We’d cut ourselves badly while using butter knives. We’d strangle ourselves with
plastic grocery bags by the age of 9 or 10. Our ponytails would become entangled in
oscillating fans. We’d mistake lead paint chips for tortilla chips. A pot of boiling water
would tip and cascade over us. Another sick kid carrying a big stick would poke our eyes
out. A male kidnapper would take us on the night bus to Chicago. We’d get crushed
between moving cars in the Pick ’n Save parking lot. A fall on our auntie’s icy driveway
would cause irreparable damage. Plastic necklaces we wore to bed would strangle us in our
sleep. We forget the life preservers and drown on the church trip as our canoes sank into
the lake. We’d sustain brain damage in the alley after falling off our bicycles. We wouldn’t
be wearing our helmets. A rogue dog would bite our hands and mangle our arms. We’d run
into the road after a rogue dog. A rogue dog would give us rabies. Our friends’ housecats
would cause severe allergic reactions requiring hospitalization. A creepy caller would find
out on the phone that no adults were home. Opening plastic packaging with our mouths
would shatter our front teeth. We would die in car accidents caused by teen drivers. We
wouldn’t be wearing our seatbelts. We’d cut the tendons in our hands and arms while
cleaning blenders and food processors. We would forget to drink water in July, resulting in
dehydration and permanent vegetal states. We’d start smoking cigarettes. We’d become
pregnant before she wanted us to. We’d be unable to stop smoking cigarettes while
pregnant. Despite everything she did, we wouldn’t go to college.
Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her words have appeared in cream city review, The Feminist Wire, Painted Bride Quarterly, Gertrude, and Huffington Post. Freesia's poetry is forthcoming in CALYX, Rogue Agent, and Sinister Wisdom.
Mistakes would claim my sister and I: Our feet would get twisted in the stirrups. We’d each
drag by one leg from the geriatric horses at Bar-N-Ranch. The electrical sockets in our
home were mis-wired and we’d get electrocuted from plugging in the TV. We’d start a fire
using Glade PlugIns. If we knew where she hid the matches, we’d light a candle and burn
the house down. We’d stick butter knives into the sockets. We’d stick butter knives into the
toaster. We’d cut ourselves badly while using butter knives. We’d strangle ourselves with
plastic grocery bags by the age of 9 or 10. Our ponytails would become entangled in
oscillating fans. We’d mistake lead paint chips for tortilla chips. A pot of boiling water
would tip and cascade over us. Another sick kid carrying a big stick would poke our eyes
out. A male kidnapper would take us on the night bus to Chicago. We’d get crushed
between moving cars in the Pick ’n Save parking lot. A fall on our auntie’s icy driveway
would cause irreparable damage. Plastic necklaces we wore to bed would strangle us in our
sleep. We forget the life preservers and drown on the church trip as our canoes sank into
the lake. We’d sustain brain damage in the alley after falling off our bicycles. We wouldn’t
be wearing our helmets. A rogue dog would bite our hands and mangle our arms. We’d run
into the road after a rogue dog. A rogue dog would give us rabies. Our friends’ housecats
would cause severe allergic reactions requiring hospitalization. A creepy caller would find
out on the phone that no adults were home. Opening plastic packaging with our mouths
would shatter our front teeth. We would die in car accidents caused by teen drivers. We
wouldn’t be wearing our seatbelts. We’d cut the tendons in our hands and arms while
cleaning blenders and food processors. We would forget to drink water in July, resulting in
dehydration and permanent vegetal states. We’d start smoking cigarettes. We’d become
pregnant before she wanted us to. We’d be unable to stop smoking cigarettes while
pregnant. Despite everything she did, we wouldn’t go to college.
Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook How Distant the City (Headmistress Press, 2017). Her words have appeared in cream city review, The Feminist Wire, Painted Bride Quarterly, Gertrude, and Huffington Post. Freesia's poetry is forthcoming in CALYX, Rogue Agent, and Sinister Wisdom.
Yuan Changming
MIKE: My Chosen English Name
M
despite your body as imposing as a massive mountain
you have a mindset hidden deeply
in the wisdom of a little owl or the plasticities of a drop of water
I
To begin with, the hieroglyphical origin of
My identity was simply no body but a common reed
Bowing its head to the rising sun on the barren bank of the Nile
Slim, tall, hollow-hearted, standing against tropical heat
Until one day 'I' was used as a human symbol, an open vowel
Referring to the speaker and since then I have become
One of the most frequently spelt letters
In the linguistic order of the day, always capitalized
To embody my dignity though I am nothing
But a common reed that could have been made into a flute
K
an other basket
you hold anything having a shape
but sand or water
E
born to be a double reed that can be bent
into a long vowel the most frequently used letter
in english, echoing endlessly in silences
if pulled down, it offers two doors
one leading to Soul via will, the other
to Him via wisdom; if turned up right
it forms a mountain with three peaks
like three holy swords, pointing high
one against the sun, one against the moon, one against the sky
Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart and three Best of the Net nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1,429 others across 42 countries.
M
despite your body as imposing as a massive mountain
you have a mindset hidden deeply
in the wisdom of a little owl or the plasticities of a drop of water
I
To begin with, the hieroglyphical origin of
My identity was simply no body but a common reed
Bowing its head to the rising sun on the barren bank of the Nile
Slim, tall, hollow-hearted, standing against tropical heat
Until one day 'I' was used as a human symbol, an open vowel
Referring to the speaker and since then I have become
One of the most frequently spelt letters
In the linguistic order of the day, always capitalized
To embody my dignity though I am nothing
But a common reed that could have been made into a flute
K
an other basket
you hold anything having a shape
but sand or water
E
born to be a double reed that can be bent
into a long vowel the most frequently used letter
in english, echoing endlessly in silences
if pulled down, it offers two doors
one leading to Soul via will, the other
to Him via wisdom; if turned up right
it forms a mountain with three peaks
like three holy swords, pointing high
one against the sun, one against the moon, one against the sky
Yuan Changming published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Qing Yuan and hosts Happy Yangsheng in Vancouver; credits include ten Pushcart and three Best of the Net nominations, Best of the Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Threepenny Review and 1,429 others across 42 countries.
Diane Thiel 2 poems
Haiku Petroglyphs
One winter morning
down Paseo del Volcan
trying not to speed
too quickly past ghosts
of others who have traveled
scribbling petroglyphs
on the face of rock
exposed like an expression
of dormant stirring
edges of rifting
deep faults where volcanos formed
the cinder canvas
sisters separate
nod to each other across
the ruptured time lines
scrawled within our cells
stick figures remembering
writing one story.
One winter morning
down Paseo del Volcan
trying not to speed
too quickly past ghosts
of others who have traveled
scribbling petroglyphs
on the face of rock
exposed like an expression
of dormant stirring
edges of rifting
deep faults where volcanos formed
the cinder canvas
sisters separate
nod to each other across
the ruptured time lines
scrawled within our cells
stick figures remembering
writing one story.
Swamp Roses
People down here want to make roses grow,
trying new rounds of chemistry,
every kind of poison or solution
you can devise to make them bloom
uniform, cultivate them for a prize.
While the swamp roses come up wild,
and the hyacinth floats on the surface
of streams, with the blue forget-me-nots,
branches uncoiling as the flowers do.
Find me here instead
something that grows unforgettably blue,
the tiny wild garden you can see
growing in the crevices of rocks
or traveling like water down the river.
Diane Thiel is the author of 10 books of poetry, nonfiction and creative writing pedagogy, including Echolocations, Resistance Fantasies, The White Horse: A Colombian Journey, and Winding Roads. She has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright, a PEN Award and an NEA Award. Thiel was born and raised in South Florida and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown University. She is Professor of English and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the University of New Mexico.
People down here want to make roses grow,
trying new rounds of chemistry,
every kind of poison or solution
you can devise to make them bloom
uniform, cultivate them for a prize.
While the swamp roses come up wild,
and the hyacinth floats on the surface
of streams, with the blue forget-me-nots,
branches uncoiling as the flowers do.
Find me here instead
something that grows unforgettably blue,
the tiny wild garden you can see
growing in the crevices of rocks
or traveling like water down the river.
Diane Thiel is the author of 10 books of poetry, nonfiction and creative writing pedagogy, including Echolocations, Resistance Fantasies, The White Horse: A Colombian Journey, and Winding Roads. She has received numerous awards, including a Fulbright, a PEN Award and an NEA Award. Thiel was born and raised in South Florida and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Brown University. She is Professor of English and Associate Chair for Undergraduate Studies at the University of New Mexico.
Jennifer Litt
The Moon Is a Friend for the Lonesome
When it slips behind a cloud, you return
to the poem about the dog & how
it retrieves the moment. You live
on a quiet street near a Zen center,
but the truth is you wouldn’t make it
as a Buddhist, your desire to worry
the past & predict the future anathema
to monks who create mandalas
from colored sand swept into jars,
returned to water, blest. A few stars
poke through the hazy night. You wish
you could pin one to your chest.
Jennifer Litt is the sole proprietor of Jennifer Litt Writing Services (www.jenniferlitt.com) and taught writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology and SUNY Brockport. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, journals and magazines, including Gulf Stream, Lumina, Mixed Fruit, Naugatuck River Review, nycBigCityLit and Stone Canoe. She is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed through Zero, published in 2016 by Blue Lyra Press in its Delphi Series, Volume 2. She lives in Fort Lauderdale.
When it slips behind a cloud, you return
to the poem about the dog & how
it retrieves the moment. You live
on a quiet street near a Zen center,
but the truth is you wouldn’t make it
as a Buddhist, your desire to worry
the past & predict the future anathema
to monks who create mandalas
from colored sand swept into jars,
returned to water, blest. A few stars
poke through the hazy night. You wish
you could pin one to your chest.
Jennifer Litt is the sole proprietor of Jennifer Litt Writing Services (www.jenniferlitt.com) and taught writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology and SUNY Brockport. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, journals and magazines, including Gulf Stream, Lumina, Mixed Fruit, Naugatuck River Review, nycBigCityLit and Stone Canoe. She is the author of the chapbook, Maximum Speed through Zero, published in 2016 by Blue Lyra Press in its Delphi Series, Volume 2. She lives in Fort Lauderdale.
Michael Chin
Fire Bright
We burned at stakes, you and me. We wouldn’t have called ourselves magic,
but that didn’t matter then.
Remember a grassy field when we were just girls, and boys
were just boys, and we snuck out past our bedtimes with no idea where we’d
go but a knowledge that starlight was sweeter when stolen.
You said you could smell the stars and Joe said you were smelling grass,
dumby, and all I could smell were his stinky feet. Why would he leave the
house barefoot?
We chased one another in spiraling games of tag. I looked up and the stars
swirled with motion and I laughed so you laughed, so the boys laughed. When
my laugh turned to a cackle, just like my mother’s, that was cause to laugh
more.
Then.
Joe chased you to pin you down, to steal a kiss, that was all, and I could swear
I saw you blush, even in the dark, grass in your hair.
They say black cats are bad luck and brooms aren’t meant for flying, but were
we meant for kindling?
Maybe to burn bright like stars.
Maybe to smolder.
Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Georgia with his wife and son. His hybrid chapbook, The Leo Burke Finish, is available now from Gimmick Press and he has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss. Find him online at miketchin.com or follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
We burned at stakes, you and me. We wouldn’t have called ourselves magic,
but that didn’t matter then.
Remember a grassy field when we were just girls, and boys
were just boys, and we snuck out past our bedtimes with no idea where we’d
go but a knowledge that starlight was sweeter when stolen.
You said you could smell the stars and Joe said you were smelling grass,
dumby, and all I could smell were his stinky feet. Why would he leave the
house barefoot?
We chased one another in spiraling games of tag. I looked up and the stars
swirled with motion and I laughed so you laughed, so the boys laughed. When
my laugh turned to a cackle, just like my mother’s, that was cause to laugh
more.
Then.
Joe chased you to pin you down, to steal a kiss, that was all, and I could swear
I saw you blush, even in the dark, grass in your hair.
They say black cats are bad luck and brooms aren’t meant for flying, but were
we meant for kindling?
Maybe to burn bright like stars.
Maybe to smolder.
Michael Chin was born and raised in Utica, New York and currently lives in Georgia with his wife and son. His hybrid chapbook, The Leo Burke Finish, is available now from Gimmick Press and he has work published or forthcoming in journals including The Normal School, Passages North, and Hobart. He works as a contributing editor for Moss. Find him online at miketchin.com or follow him on Twitter @miketchin.
Joanne Pagano Weber
Paris Time
at exactly 23 hours and ten paris time sapphron drew
stockings as sheer as the shadows of midnight over
her kittenish ankles. out she prowled, the long arm of
the clock turning toward the eclipse of the moon.
between le dou et le trios. her ice-spindle heels tapped
the granite place des perdus. here she would rest at last.
the quarter hour chimed. the cargo would be unloading.
he’ll call now, she thought.
Joanne Pagano Weber is a visual artist, a writer, and educator. In recent years she has collaborated with the sculptor Janice Mauro on cross-disciplinary installations, including text, which combine humor and social critique concerning the ramifications of global warming. She exhibits at Art 101 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and teaches Fine Art at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in The Bronx, New York, and at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey.
at exactly 23 hours and ten paris time sapphron drew
stockings as sheer as the shadows of midnight over
her kittenish ankles. out she prowled, the long arm of
the clock turning toward the eclipse of the moon.
between le dou et le trios. her ice-spindle heels tapped
the granite place des perdus. here she would rest at last.
the quarter hour chimed. the cargo would be unloading.
he’ll call now, she thought.
Joanne Pagano Weber is a visual artist, a writer, and educator. In recent years she has collaborated with the sculptor Janice Mauro on cross-disciplinary installations, including text, which combine humor and social critique concerning the ramifications of global warming. She exhibits at Art 101 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and teaches Fine Art at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in The Bronx, New York, and at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey.
Bruce Robinson
One Year, One of These Years
One year, one of these years,
having learned enough to smile
at other people’s children,
looking forward, I’ll feel myself old,
too old, and I won’t come down,
not to visit, despite the warmth,
despite the weather, the sea, and
the centuries at times at rest
yet vigilant beneath the roads and the
dolphins anxious in the intracoastal.
I’ll have thought of their “weaving” for
too many years, and may at last have come
to understand that they, I mean the dolphins,
were okay with that, complacent
or perhaps they just felt justified
by whatever verb I happened to use.
I mean, they didn’t seem to
mind at all, as long as the tides
flowed warm but not much longer,
our lives as long as the water was warm.
Born near the corner of W.4th and W. 11th in NYC, Bruce Robinson acknowledges the assistance of the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Key West Literary Centers. Recent work appears in Mobius, Cleaver (Life as Activism), Fourth River/Tributaries, Panoply, and the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses.
One year, one of these years,
having learned enough to smile
at other people’s children,
looking forward, I’ll feel myself old,
too old, and I won’t come down,
not to visit, despite the warmth,
despite the weather, the sea, and
the centuries at times at rest
yet vigilant beneath the roads and the
dolphins anxious in the intracoastal.
I’ll have thought of their “weaving” for
too many years, and may at last have come
to understand that they, I mean the dolphins,
were okay with that, complacent
or perhaps they just felt justified
by whatever verb I happened to use.
I mean, they didn’t seem to
mind at all, as long as the tides
flowed warm but not much longer,
our lives as long as the water was warm.
Born near the corner of W.4th and W. 11th in NYC, Bruce Robinson acknowledges the assistance of the Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Key West Literary Centers. Recent work appears in Mobius, Cleaver (Life as Activism), Fourth River/Tributaries, Panoply, and the Pittsburgh Poetry Houses.
Lucia Leao
Today
I woke to bells.
No. I woke and then – bells.
Of course there is a church nearby,
and a train station. Places that feel
old in sound.
There is a balance
between temples and railroads.
In the bright light, going up towers.
In the dark hours, the escaping of rails.
Lucia Leao is a Brazilian translator and writer who has been living in Florida for 24 years. Leao has published a collection of short stories and is a co-author of a young-adult novel, both published in Portuguese, in Brazil. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and Literatures from UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from UERJ and a master’s degree in print journalism from University of Miami, Florida, USA.
I woke to bells.
No. I woke and then – bells.
Of course there is a church nearby,
and a train station. Places that feel
old in sound.
There is a balance
between temples and railroads.
In the bright light, going up towers.
In the dark hours, the escaping of rails.
Lucia Leao is a Brazilian translator and writer who has been living in Florida for 24 years. Leao has published a collection of short stories and is a co-author of a young-adult novel, both published in Portuguese, in Brazil. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and Literatures from UERJ (Rio de Janeiro State University, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), a master’s degree in Comparative Literature from UERJ and a master’s degree in print journalism from University of Miami, Florida, USA.
David Kirby 3 poems
This Historic Day
That’s what they say when the president signs a bill or a dictator
is deposed.
But when I was a grad student, I shook hands with Allen Ginsberg,
who’d had sex with someone who’d had sex
with someone who’d had sex with Walt Whitman.
And when I was a little boy, my doctor had once worked in a lab
with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Just think: four degrees of separation from our greatest poet,
one from the man who shot the president.
That’s pretty historic.
Whitman . . .
“The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels
sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame . . .
The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow
in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only,
but of the Soul,
O I say now these are the Soul!”
And I’ve lived my whole life in the provinces,
whereas you who live in New York or London are no doubt
connected to every figure in history.
You may be one yourself: the children of Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings ran away
and changed their names, so you might be a descendant
of the third president.
Then again, what are the odds? You’re probably just an ordinary person,
that is, magnificent.
So enjoy your day.
Go to work, if you have to.
If you don’t, throw a party: call a few people, ice down some drinks,
light the grill.
Even if no one comes, you’ll be fine.
Enjoy your drink, be it a PBR or a nice Amarone.
Enjoy the Grateful Dead, if that’s who you’re listening to,
or your Mahler.
Enjoy your hot dog: the mustard’s sting, the sweet consolation
of the relish,
the softness of the bun, the way the skin of the hot dog resists your teeth
at first and then parts with a gentle click.
Kafka said you don’t need to leave your room. Just sit at your table
and listen.
Don’t even listen. Just wait. Don’t even wait.
The world will walk through your door any minute now
and take off its mask.
In Kenya, someone turns left instead of right at a yellowwood tree
in 845 A.D.,
and the next thing you know, Barack Obama is the president
of the United States of America.
Borges says the man who strokes a sleeping animal is saving the world,
as is the one who justifies a wrong done him
and the one who prefers others to be right.
But so does a little girl who cuts her own hair and, when asked who did it,
says,” I don’t know.”
The first person to eat oysters, haggis, liver.
The one who wrote the first poem.
The one who read the first poem and said, “Change it.”
That’s what they say when the president signs a bill or a dictator
is deposed.
But when I was a grad student, I shook hands with Allen Ginsberg,
who’d had sex with someone who’d had sex
with someone who’d had sex with Walt Whitman.
And when I was a little boy, my doctor had once worked in a lab
with Lee Harvey Oswald.
Just think: four degrees of separation from our greatest poet,
one from the man who shot the president.
That’s pretty historic.
Whitman . . .
“The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels
sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame . . .
The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow
in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only,
but of the Soul,
O I say now these are the Soul!”
And I’ve lived my whole life in the provinces,
whereas you who live in New York or London are no doubt
connected to every figure in history.
You may be one yourself: the children of Thomas Jefferson
and Sally Hemings ran away
and changed their names, so you might be a descendant
of the third president.
Then again, what are the odds? You’re probably just an ordinary person,
that is, magnificent.
So enjoy your day.
Go to work, if you have to.
If you don’t, throw a party: call a few people, ice down some drinks,
light the grill.
Even if no one comes, you’ll be fine.
Enjoy your drink, be it a PBR or a nice Amarone.
Enjoy the Grateful Dead, if that’s who you’re listening to,
or your Mahler.
Enjoy your hot dog: the mustard’s sting, the sweet consolation
of the relish,
the softness of the bun, the way the skin of the hot dog resists your teeth
at first and then parts with a gentle click.
Kafka said you don’t need to leave your room. Just sit at your table
and listen.
Don’t even listen. Just wait. Don’t even wait.
The world will walk through your door any minute now
and take off its mask.
In Kenya, someone turns left instead of right at a yellowwood tree
in 845 A.D.,
and the next thing you know, Barack Obama is the president
of the United States of America.
Borges says the man who strokes a sleeping animal is saving the world,
as is the one who justifies a wrong done him
and the one who prefers others to be right.
But so does a little girl who cuts her own hair and, when asked who did it,
says,” I don’t know.”
The first person to eat oysters, haggis, liver.
The one who wrote the first poem.
The one who read the first poem and said, “Change it.”
Shaving Liver Loon
Everyone goes crazy in graduate school: you’re not a kid any more,
the demands are much higher, the other students are competitors
rather than friends, you have more debt, you’ll need a job soon,
your professors don’t care. Is it any wonder, then, that a pal
from my undergrad days writes from grad school to say
that his roommate started taking a box of water balloons
every day to the roof of the building where they lived
and throwing them at passersby and then graduated to
something he, the roommate, called the shaving liver loon,
which is a standard water balloon only filled this time
with half shaving cream, half cod liver oil? I’ve never been hit
by or thrown or made or even seen a shaving liver loon,
but it looms large in my mind. Imagine you’re all dressed up
and you’re wearing a new suit and freshly polished shoes
or a beautiful dress and heels and you’re meeting the boss
or you’ve finished the interview and been offered the job
or successfully defended your dissertation or you’re just out
for the day in your jeans or cargo shorts, planning your lunch
and trying to remember the name of that place you read
about—Fruition? Fermentation? Something like that.
Or maybe just thinking your thoughts, remembering
the first day you arrived in this city and how you were
homesick and filled with dread, and then one day it seemed
as though every door was open to you, and now you see
a future for yourself not only doing the one thing you love best
but also helping others to make their dreams come true
when, splat, you’re hit by a shaving liver loon, and it’s as
though an avenging angel has opened his bowels above you,
and now your hair is ruined, not to mention your makeup
and clothes, and you’re knocked to your knees as well,
and passersby don’t know what to make of you, because
they want to help, but you stink to high heaven and look
worse, and mainly they, like you, don’t know what has
happened, whether it’s a terrorist attack or a job-site
accident or something you did to yourself, but no,
it’s none of these things, it’s a shaving liver loon,
but you survived it, and when your head clears,
you want to get your hands on the idiot who did this
to you, but you’re also, not happy, exactly, but seeing
again for the first time in a long time how life
is unpredictable and often scarier than it turns out
to be, because you’re not dead or even injured,
and your biggest problem now is to get from here
to where you live so you can shower and change into
new clothes and take the old ones to the cleaners
and then go to that restaurant whose name you finally
remembered, either alone or with a friend, and treat
yourself to a nice meal, to that Thai shrimp sandwich
you’ve been meaning to try and a classic cocktail,
like a Manhattan, say, or a martini, and in the days to come,
you’ll think about what happened, though you’ll do so
in a not entirely accurate manner, because nothing
like this has ever happened to you before, nothing
even close, so no doubt you’ll get this detail wrong
or eliminate that one entirely, and you’ll never find out
who did this to you or why, but as you order a second
drink you realize that your heart is glad, in its way,
and your spirits strangely lifted, because you understand
now that everything in the future is going to turn out well,
even if not exactly the way you thought it would,
and if that’s not enough, there’s one other thing,
which is yeah, you’re getting a story out of this, a good one.
Everyone goes crazy in graduate school: you’re not a kid any more,
the demands are much higher, the other students are competitors
rather than friends, you have more debt, you’ll need a job soon,
your professors don’t care. Is it any wonder, then, that a pal
from my undergrad days writes from grad school to say
that his roommate started taking a box of water balloons
every day to the roof of the building where they lived
and throwing them at passersby and then graduated to
something he, the roommate, called the shaving liver loon,
which is a standard water balloon only filled this time
with half shaving cream, half cod liver oil? I’ve never been hit
by or thrown or made or even seen a shaving liver loon,
but it looms large in my mind. Imagine you’re all dressed up
and you’re wearing a new suit and freshly polished shoes
or a beautiful dress and heels and you’re meeting the boss
or you’ve finished the interview and been offered the job
or successfully defended your dissertation or you’re just out
for the day in your jeans or cargo shorts, planning your lunch
and trying to remember the name of that place you read
about—Fruition? Fermentation? Something like that.
Or maybe just thinking your thoughts, remembering
the first day you arrived in this city and how you were
homesick and filled with dread, and then one day it seemed
as though every door was open to you, and now you see
a future for yourself not only doing the one thing you love best
but also helping others to make their dreams come true
when, splat, you’re hit by a shaving liver loon, and it’s as
though an avenging angel has opened his bowels above you,
and now your hair is ruined, not to mention your makeup
and clothes, and you’re knocked to your knees as well,
and passersby don’t know what to make of you, because
they want to help, but you stink to high heaven and look
worse, and mainly they, like you, don’t know what has
happened, whether it’s a terrorist attack or a job-site
accident or something you did to yourself, but no,
it’s none of these things, it’s a shaving liver loon,
but you survived it, and when your head clears,
you want to get your hands on the idiot who did this
to you, but you’re also, not happy, exactly, but seeing
again for the first time in a long time how life
is unpredictable and often scarier than it turns out
to be, because you’re not dead or even injured,
and your biggest problem now is to get from here
to where you live so you can shower and change into
new clothes and take the old ones to the cleaners
and then go to that restaurant whose name you finally
remembered, either alone or with a friend, and treat
yourself to a nice meal, to that Thai shrimp sandwich
you’ve been meaning to try and a classic cocktail,
like a Manhattan, say, or a martini, and in the days to come,
you’ll think about what happened, though you’ll do so
in a not entirely accurate manner, because nothing
like this has ever happened to you before, nothing
even close, so no doubt you’ll get this detail wrong
or eliminate that one entirely, and you’ll never find out
who did this to you or why, but as you order a second
drink you realize that your heart is glad, in its way,
and your spirits strangely lifted, because you understand
now that everything in the future is going to turn out well,
even if not exactly the way you thought it would,
and if that’s not enough, there’s one other thing,
which is yeah, you’re getting a story out of this, a good one.
The Way Things Go
I ask the guy sitting next to me at the dinner party what he does
for a living, and when he tells me he’s a courier, I say I know
a courier, a student whose summer job is to shuttle huge
amounts of cash between one business and another in Seattle,
so his bosses tell him to dress like a bum and carry the money
in a knapsack, and the only thing he is told in training is that,
if anyone menaces him, he’s to drop the knapsack and haul ass,
and the dinner party guy says, well, my job’s a little different:
I take priceless works of art back and forth on cargo planes
between American museums and, say, the Louvre, and I think,
okay, now I know there’s more than one kind of courier
in the world, but isn’t that the way things go? I can tell you
for a fact that when somebody’s mouthing off to you,
the one surefire way to get them to stop is to say,
“You know, you’ve got a big old booger in your nose.”
They’ll wipe their nose, look at their hand, and try to get back
to the stupid stuff they were saying before, but by then
it’s too late. This always works—always. You can say
the same thing five minutes later, and they’ll react exactly
the same way: wipe the schnozzola, look at the hand, stutter.
Last time I flew to Paris, I was standing at the front of the cabin
and talking to an exhausted flight attendant, and he starts
to tell me about his family and how much he loves them
and how proud he is, and he begins to cry. Okay, now
imagine you’re on an airplane and you look up, and a man is talking
to a flight attendant, and the flight attendant is weeping.
What would you think? Nothing good, right? No, you’d think
something terrible is happening, whereas you wouldn’t know
what to think at all if your sweetheart threw a surprise party
for you and got each of your twenty closest friends to invite
someone you don’t know, so you come home from work,
thinking you might pour yourself a stiff one and then watch
one of those cold-case stories on the detective channel
while your dinner defrosts, but while your friends stifle
their laughter somewhere in the back of the house,
suddenly there are twenty complete strangers in your kitchen
shouting, “Surprise!” as you run your hand through your hair
and think, what the fuck. Seriously, you could show
this poem to somebody and say, “See? Isn’t this
part about the booger funny? Oh, wait, you’ve got a big old booger
in your nose,” and even though you’ve already told them
it’s a trick, they’ll still wipe their nose and go abba abba abba.
The kid who was a courier in Seattle told me he had
this hedgehog named Haiku, and when I asked him what
hedgehogs were like, he said they were the worst pets
in the world: when he picked Haiku up, the little fellow
did what all hedgehogs do, which is to shoot out his quills,
and even though you’ve done it a thousand times before,
when you pick your hedgehog up and he shoots out his quills,
you drop him, and then you feel terrible, and the hedgehog
doesn’t like it, either, but that’s the way things go:
you’re humping down Western Avenue in Seattle or sitting
on a plane and watching a movie you’ve already seen
and didn’t like the first time or you’re coming home after
a hard day at the office, just a terrible day, one where everything
that could have gone wrong did, and then a couple of other things
you weren’t even thinking of came along,
and they went wrong, too, and suddenly, hedgehog!
The world opens its hands, and you fall toward the next second,
minute, day of your beautiful, your astonished life.
Poet, critic and scholar, David Kirby is the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor of English at Florida State University in Tallahassee, FL. Kirby is the author of more than two dozen volumes of criticism, essays, children’s literature, pedagogy, and poetry. His poetry has been featured in numerous anthologies, including several issues of Best American Poetry.
Rebecca Aronson 4 poems
Oracle
The kestrel hovers in the still air of a barn
as if on strings, suspended while the mice grow accustomed
to the new condition of shadows, to the sense
that something is there, above sightlines
waiting like a held-breath for the moment of their forgetting,
and they will forget, lulled by the air’s stillness
and the grain dropped to the floor by the horses’ careless chewing
who are lazing now in the sun-struck field under clouds
that resemble wings and are filled with their own restlessness
so that all is feather and sway
in the grasses, in the stubs of leftover stalks, in the shimmering
top branches of trees so tall and far way
they are mythical, irrelevant beauties
while the air in the barn hangs like a storm
ready to drop its dark water, like a wire
the moment before it is tripped.
The kestrel hovers in the still air of a barn
as if on strings, suspended while the mice grow accustomed
to the new condition of shadows, to the sense
that something is there, above sightlines
waiting like a held-breath for the moment of their forgetting,
and they will forget, lulled by the air’s stillness
and the grain dropped to the floor by the horses’ careless chewing
who are lazing now in the sun-struck field under clouds
that resemble wings and are filled with their own restlessness
so that all is feather and sway
in the grasses, in the stubs of leftover stalks, in the shimmering
top branches of trees so tall and far way
they are mythical, irrelevant beauties
while the air in the barn hangs like a storm
ready to drop its dark water, like a wire
the moment before it is tripped.
Chrysanthemum
Before they rot and darken orange chrysanthemum feathers spin onto the table like twirling
skirts, silky as cat ears and temporary. As everything. Only more so. The cat’s nubby tongue is
solid like a word like oligarchy but it is only a petal disintegrating. Even the swirly glass
paperweight, lead-heavy, is a petal: my breath, your hand, petals which would smear to nothing
in a good rain, a hard melt. Petal civilization, petal walls, petal generations marking a single
planet a little for a little while, petal in space, starlight already gone –reclining on a lawn chair to
fix the sight into your petal eyes won’t make it less gone, won’t laminate the petal of your life.
Before they rot and darken orange chrysanthemum feathers spin onto the table like twirling
skirts, silky as cat ears and temporary. As everything. Only more so. The cat’s nubby tongue is
solid like a word like oligarchy but it is only a petal disintegrating. Even the swirly glass
paperweight, lead-heavy, is a petal: my breath, your hand, petals which would smear to nothing
in a good rain, a hard melt. Petal civilization, petal walls, petal generations marking a single
planet a little for a little while, petal in space, starlight already gone –reclining on a lawn chair to
fix the sight into your petal eyes won’t make it less gone, won’t laminate the petal of your life.
Oceans 11
Cuttlefish, my hero, my familiar
the one underwater entity I envy,
the superpower I covet—
on video I watch the magic show, morph
and disappear, translate
from mollusk to rock to mere shadow
striped and stippling the ocean floor.
There is dagger and tumble, how you scuttle
and obfuscate, ink cloud
another darkness mimicking your shape. How I
have hidden,
changed my colors in an eye-blink,
a mid-conversation conversion.
How seaweed fronds
are mistaken for arms, while you are armed invisibly,
mouthy, hungering, watching
like I am watching but with patience
that is infinite.
Cuttlefish, my hero, my familiar
the one underwater entity I envy,
the superpower I covet—
on video I watch the magic show, morph
and disappear, translate
from mollusk to rock to mere shadow
striped and stippling the ocean floor.
There is dagger and tumble, how you scuttle
and obfuscate, ink cloud
another darkness mimicking your shape. How I
have hidden,
changed my colors in an eye-blink,
a mid-conversation conversion.
How seaweed fronds
are mistaken for arms, while you are armed invisibly,
mouthy, hungering, watching
like I am watching but with patience
that is infinite.
The Last Falling
Won’t be over the ripened edge
of Vesuvius, preceded by your wind-stolen hat
swirling out of reach nor into the jeweled décolletage
of a dance partner, though it might be
on the swath of damp yard
that snakes along the roadway’s tame echo,
the boundary of your last home
as you navigate with cane and grocery bag
and keys. You will as if a man swooning
dip fast the sack of your body
needing only gravity and my arms
which, lacking the gym muscles of a good son
nonetheless will be up
to a desperate task:
a smatter of seconds and grace will
will your head cradled
above the puddle, the asphalt, above breaking--
or it will occur in sleep
yours or mine
and I will miss it and never know
the exact second.
Won’t be over the ripened edge
of Vesuvius, preceded by your wind-stolen hat
swirling out of reach nor into the jeweled décolletage
of a dance partner, though it might be
on the swath of damp yard
that snakes along the roadway’s tame echo,
the boundary of your last home
as you navigate with cane and grocery bag
and keys. You will as if a man swooning
dip fast the sack of your body
needing only gravity and my arms
which, lacking the gym muscles of a good son
nonetheless will be up
to a desperate task:
a smatter of seconds and grace will
will your head cradled
above the puddle, the asphalt, above breaking--
or it will occur in sleep
yours or mine
and I will miss it and never know
the exact second.
Rebecca Aronson is the author of Ghost Child of the Atalanta Bloom, winner of the 2016 Orison Books Poetry Prize and finalist for the 2017 New Mexico/Arizona Book Award, and Creature, Creature, winner of the Main Traveled Roads Press Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The Tishman Review, The Paris American, Tin House, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and others. She teaches writing in New Mexico, where she is also the co-coordinator of Bad Mouth, a series of words and music. Her website is http://rebmarack.wixsite.com/rebecca twitter and instagram @rebmarack
Bruce Weber
It Isn’t Easy Being a Poet
it isn't easy being a poet, mark remembered belinda
saying as she reached up for the moon, and the moon
understood how difficult being a poet is, the moon had
been writing for millions of years, but only recently was
the moon happy with its poems, and the sailboats
skimmed the tranquil waters, the sun rose with a smile
on its lips, the moon took a long desired nap, dreaming
of poems jumping off its tongue, like a gold metal winn-
ing olympic diver convincing language to perform a 360
degree spin move, the impossible gyrations of a human
body enticing words to be their friend, the meaning of
every single word weaving to its proper place on the
page, and belinda tipped her hat to poets, raised a drink
to poets, acknowledging how difficult is their deed.
Bruce Weber is the author of five published books of poetry, These Poems are Not Pretty (Miami: Palmetto Press, 1992), How the Poem Died (New York: Linear Arts, 1998), Poetic Justice (New York: Ikon Press, 2004), The First Time I Had Sex with T. S. Eliot (New York: Venom Press, 2004), and The Break-up of My First Marriage (Rogue Scholars Press). His work has appeared in Up is Up, But So Is Down: Downtown Writings, Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers and The Unbearables Big Book of Sex. He has performed regularly in the tri-state area, both alone and for many years with his former performance group, Bruce Weber’s No Chance Ensemble, which produced the CD Let’s Dine Like Jack Johnson Tonight (members.aol/com/ncensemble).
Alexis Rhone Fancher
Poem For Formerly Amish Leonard (A Sister Poem)
Your sister will tell him she’d always longed to be Amish.
How she adored those high-necked, muslin convictions and chic bonnets.
How she’s long felt a religious conversion coming on.
Your sister will accompany Leonard on road trips,
straddle him from behind the Harley he traded for his clip-clop buggy,
whisper salacious Bible verses in his ear.
She’s always been a zealot.
Your sister will dub him a work in progress, ask Leonard to share
the beach house in Venice, with its exorbitant rent and clogged drains.
Leonard, while no virgin, will have never had deux soeurs, en même temps.
Not yet, anyway. The sex will be especially hot.
Each morning Leonard will make blueberry pancakes, wash the dishes,
read Tom Robbins aloud.
The three of you will spend long days on the beach,
shooting selfies as proof of life.
Each night you and your sister will compete for his affection.
It will almost come to blows.
Soon, your sister will cut you out of that photo on Venice Beach,
although your arm will still be visible around Leonard’s (naked) shoulder.
Then she’ll do her best to cut you out of his life.
In the end, Leonard will flee your squabbling for the open road,
his long-haired freedom billowing out behind him,
careening toward countless women yet to be conquered,
and as far away from the two of you as he can get.
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s books include: How I Lost My Virginity to Michael Cohen and other heart stab poems, (2014), State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015), Enter Here (2017), and Junkie Wife (2018). She is published in Best American Poetry 2016, Rattle, Slipstream, Hobart, Verse Daily, Plume, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly.
Sarah Carey
Mary is No Longer Working for the Company
Please direct all inquiries relating to the company to Ms. Smith-Jones, the
group email said. Two lines squeezed between a salutation and the boss’s e-
signature had HR written all over them. Then we remembered Mary vanished
over a month ago, how no answers came to our messages, not even an out-of-
office reply, how unlike herself she became in this silence we knew wasn’t her,
but we made it normal: her parents were ill, a close friend had died, the
children both down with that new strain of flu. We were shocked, we said, had
heard no rumor, called each other not to gossip — no, we told ourselves, we
simply cared, knowledge is power, isn’t it, we of all people in her circle should
know why the thing, until it dawned on one (and we were all for one and one
for all) we should have seen her absence as a sign, our own inquiries as
complicit in picking the body apart. Or perhaps the closeness we imagined
was never there and we could finally probe our worst nightmare, being let go.
My father used to say, what we don’t know, won’t hurt us.
Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Carolina Quarterly, Superstition Review, Valparaiso Review, Barrow Street, The Christian Century, UCity Review and elsewhere. Her debut poetry chapbook, The Heart Contracts, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. She works for the University of Florida and lives in Gainesville. Visit her at sarahkcarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
Please direct all inquiries relating to the company to Ms. Smith-Jones, the
group email said. Two lines squeezed between a salutation and the boss’s e-
signature had HR written all over them. Then we remembered Mary vanished
over a month ago, how no answers came to our messages, not even an out-of-
office reply, how unlike herself she became in this silence we knew wasn’t her,
but we made it normal: her parents were ill, a close friend had died, the
children both down with that new strain of flu. We were shocked, we said, had
heard no rumor, called each other not to gossip — no, we told ourselves, we
simply cared, knowledge is power, isn’t it, we of all people in her circle should
know why the thing, until it dawned on one (and we were all for one and one
for all) we should have seen her absence as a sign, our own inquiries as
complicit in picking the body apart. Or perhaps the closeness we imagined
was never there and we could finally probe our worst nightmare, being let go.
My father used to say, what we don’t know, won’t hurt us.
Sarah Carey is a graduate of the Florida State University creative writing program. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rattle, The Carolina Quarterly, Superstition Review, Valparaiso Review, Barrow Street, The Christian Century, UCity Review and elsewhere. Her debut poetry chapbook, The Heart Contracts, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. She works for the University of Florida and lives in Gainesville. Visit her at sarahkcarey.com or on Twitter @SayCarey1.
Tony Gloeggler
The Dialysis Shuffle
I settle into my recliner,
my book and I pod to my right,
head phones around my neck.
The technician bundles
my blanket over me.
She then velcroes
the blood pressure sleeve
to my left arm, readies the needle
to stab me, hook me up
to dialysis. I nod to the patients
shuffling by for their treatment,
more men than women, more
black than white, some leaning
on crutches, pushing walkers,
most older and worse off
than me. I check the clock,
note when my three hours
will be done. I try to sleep
as long as I can, usually
the first hour and fifteen
minutes, then I pick up
Townie by Andre Dubus,
I am up to the point
where he stops fighting,
writes his first story
and Playboy pays two thousand
for it. Ah, a memoir and fairy tale
all in one. The overhead TVs
are showing Law and Order,
The Rifleman or Married
With Children. Their voices
collide and evolve into gibberish.
A nurse hands me a cold can
of some thick protein drink
that I need help to open.
Vanilla pecan. The nutritionist
goes over my latest blood results,
tells me I’m eating too little
of some things and too much
of everything else. Ninety minutes
to go, I try to fit my head phones
over my head with one hand
and my woolen hat covers
my eyes. I press shuffle, shut
my eyes and turn the volume up.
Music carries me away:
It starts with Younger Girl
and I’m thinking the Critters,
but no, it’s the Lovin’ Spoonful
and I’m walking to Central Park,
to see John Sebastien, the night
Thurman Munson’s plane crashed
and Erica’s hugging me tight
as I try not to believe her.
Surfer Girl. The first song Brian
wrote in his car. He played it
last week at Jones Beach
right after the heavenly
In My Room. I had never
even been to Coney island
when I first heard it
in my father’s car. He changed
channels, but already I saw
myself sitting on a blanket
with Claire Kerchoff curled
into my lap expecting Seven
Minutes of Heaven. Crimson
and Clover is next, endless
psychedelic shit wafting
from a schoolyard boom box
and I’m running full court
in baggy bell bottoms. Next,
Sam Cooke’s too smooth
version of Havin’ A Party
with the relaxed loping beat,
the too syrupy strings
until I remember that first
night I saw Southside,
his Asbury Jukes, encoring
at the Bottom Line, a white
guy showing a black man
how it’s done with nothing
but gutter grit and sweat. Ronnie
Spector’s Beehive bouncing
behind the harmonies, Miami
Steve and the Big Man bumping
rumps as the Professor pounds
the keys and a few years later
Bruce picks up the harmonica
to kick off The River at No Nukes,
that mourning, moaning opening
about a life closing in on itself.
The band joins in, drives it
to the reservoir, lifts it with memories
full of possibilities ‘til I’m singing
along, kicking my feet when
a LeBron James cramp grabs
my calf and I’m screaming
like a banshee, a Spirit
In The Night, as two nurses
rush over, unhook me
from the machine, make me
stand tall. Press down. Hard.
Walk. No shuffling allowed,
back to the real world,
eyes wide open with tubes,
needles, dangling from my arms.
Tony Gloeggler's work has appeared in New Ohio Review, The Examined Life Journal, Rattle, Mudfish and The Pittsburgh Poetry Review. His books include One Wish Left (Pavement Saw press 2002 and The Last Lie (NYQ Books/2010). Until The Last Light Leaves (NYQ Books 2015) was a finalist in the 2016 Binghamton University Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award.
Nels Hanson
House
The feel of the absence
of something
like God
sends the partial self
on an endless search
for a missing self
though seldom
to a house
where the door
is open
but few enter
the silence wafting
the down feather
of your name
as another self
waits in an upstairs
room with a light
always on.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
The feel of the absence
of something
like God
sends the partial self
on an endless search
for a missing self
though seldom
to a house
where the door
is open
but few enter
the silence wafting
the down feather
of your name
as another self
waits in an upstairs
room with a light
always on.
Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.
Ricardo Rodriguez
fragments of touch
i think they can smell it,
a lavender-scented boy who likes boys,
& that explains my intimacy with the faceplant on locker room tile,
their hands on the back of my skull
-
recall the time the boys thought it would be funny,
thumbtacks between their fingers,
slapping my back.
now i want to be stronger
so i prescribe a new story to the remembrance:
when the skin was pricked it did not draw blood but light
-
at first i feared the touch of men,
now i crave it
-
now i let the ravenous
pick me up & drive me to their place.
his touch on every part of my body
when i only wanted him on my lips
he tells me his name & i imagine it’s real
until i watch him replace his wedding ring
hidden in his pocket with a picture of a daughter
who he tells me about when dropping me off
-
this yearning for a touch of intimacy
has lead me to bedrooms,
which i mistake for slaughterhouses:
they brim with the echo of animalistic grunts,
rhythmic swings.
something hits the floor lifeless
but doesn’t stay dead
-
though i didn’t seek them,
though i’ve never been fragile with my body,
i know there’s a difference between
pleasure & destruction.
how they are also twins
-
i sought instead placement.
-
his hand up my shirt, down my pants,
as we enter one another--
carnal magic.
these are reversals of my vanishing acts.
i reappear to my body & am reminded
just how physical i am
-
in every stain, every burn, swollen flesh,
every touch.
i am made present-tense
i am, here here & here
Ricardo Rodriguez is a South Florida-based painter and poet currently studying for his BFA in painting at Florida Atlantic University.
i think they can smell it,
a lavender-scented boy who likes boys,
& that explains my intimacy with the faceplant on locker room tile,
their hands on the back of my skull
-
recall the time the boys thought it would be funny,
thumbtacks between their fingers,
slapping my back.
now i want to be stronger
so i prescribe a new story to the remembrance:
when the skin was pricked it did not draw blood but light
-
at first i feared the touch of men,
now i crave it
-
now i let the ravenous
pick me up & drive me to their place.
his touch on every part of my body
when i only wanted him on my lips
he tells me his name & i imagine it’s real
until i watch him replace his wedding ring
hidden in his pocket with a picture of a daughter
who he tells me about when dropping me off
-
this yearning for a touch of intimacy
has lead me to bedrooms,
which i mistake for slaughterhouses:
they brim with the echo of animalistic grunts,
rhythmic swings.
something hits the floor lifeless
but doesn’t stay dead
-
though i didn’t seek them,
though i’ve never been fragile with my body,
i know there’s a difference between
pleasure & destruction.
how they are also twins
-
i sought instead placement.
-
his hand up my shirt, down my pants,
as we enter one another--
carnal magic.
these are reversals of my vanishing acts.
i reappear to my body & am reminded
just how physical i am
-
in every stain, every burn, swollen flesh,
every touch.
i am made present-tense
i am, here here & here
Ricardo Rodriguez is a South Florida-based painter and poet currently studying for his BFA in painting at Florida Atlantic University.
Charles Rammelkamp
Where to Begin
My friend Mina and I adjunct
in the English department at the community college.
Right now we are teaching The Scarlet Letter
in the Intro to Literature classes.
Mina’s ex-husband owns an adult bookstore
out on Route 40, where the strip clubs cluster,
LED light displays advertising massages,
sad teenage pole-dancers in spike heels and G-strings.
Pure Pleasure’s the name of her ex’s sex shop.
Mina doesn’t mention him much.
The other day a burly young man with a beard
entered Pure Pleasure with a can of gasoline,
poured gas all over the magazines,
set the place on fire with his Zippo.
“I’m sick of this store,”
he told the man at the cash register,
Mina’s ex’s employee,
a skinny guy with tattoos named Mitch.
“I’m going to burn it down.”
A few years earlier, the arsonist,
a man named Harry Pugh,
had been arrested on animal cruelty charges.
He’d skinned and baked his pet cat.
“I wanted to try cooking it with onions,” he explained.
Somehow The Scarlet Letter seems
a little tame by comparison,
but Mina really identifies with Hester Prynne,
maybe because Hester doesn’t break
even after her public humiliation.
Charles Rammelkamp is Prose Editor for BrickHouse Books in Baltimore, where he lives. His most recent books include American Zeitgeist (Apprentice House), which deals with the populist politician, William Jennings Bryan and a chapbook, Jack Tar’s Lady Parts, by Main Street Rag Press. Another poetry chapbook, Me and Sal Paradise, is forthcoming from FutureCycle Press.
Gregg Shapiro
Not Waking but Dreaming
(with apologies to Stevie Smith)
The dead man never dreams of drowning, of dying
alone or in the company of strangers, surrounded by
family, chosen and biological. The dead man sings
of home improvement, new lungs, temple upgrades,
Lasik surgery, a different reflection, fading horizontal
stripes, ultraviolet rays and skin decorated like a canvas.
In order to be heard over the well-intentioned chatter
and warm kisses, the dead man competes with gurgling
organs, antique ghosts in glowing machines, loudly
complaining furniture, insistent mist, abandoned turtle
shells, faulty airbags, mysterious crops, the carnivorous
call and prehistoric wingspan of perpetually hungry blue
herons, and burst blood vessels. Reminisce is spelled
the same as forget when memory becomes synonymous
with treachery and flight. As he watched the fawn emerge
from the tall marsh grass, tattooed in ticking, tail flicking,
dancing dangerously close to the man-made edge
of the cool blue pool on reed-thin legs, the dead man
knew he was not waking but dreaming of another kind
of sleep. When hours are never yours, when they are
only shared, borrowed, on loan, inevitably returned
late, overdue, with unreasonable penalties, exorbitant
fines, and no immediate, possible means of repayment.
Gregg Shapiro is the author of Fifty Degrees (Seven Kitchens, 2016), selected by Ching-In Chen as co-winner of the Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Other books by Shapiro include the short story collections How to Whistle (Lethe Press, 2016) and Lincoln Avenue (Squares and Rebels Press, 2014), the chapbook GREGG SHAPIRO: 77 (Souvenir Spoon Press, 2012), and the poetry collection Protection (Gival Press, 2008). He has work forthcoming in the anthology Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos (Anhinga Press, 2018). An entertainment journalist, whose interviews and reviews run in a variety of regional LGBT and mainstream publications and websites, Shapiro lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with his husband Rick and their dog Coco.
Bruce Lowry 4 poems
Elegy with a Newsman in It
There is no internet at the motel –
no Gideon bible, either.
There is a coffee pot, though,
and a window,
and snow on the ground.
There is so much to read,
reflecting the small passions –
history, poetry, The Rolling Stone,
an interview with Lou Reed,
the scribbled notes of a dream –
slapping down Motown in a newsroom
with a cops reporter from a hundred
years ago. Shalimar, she wore,
even weekends, to the great fire
in Poplarville, some poor farm family,
and the death of a daughter named Zoe.
Maslow did not believe a Southerner
could name a child that in 1981.
Maybe I didn’t believe it myself,
or believe him when he spoke
of the three deaths
gathering in this wall of haze,
motel in Alabama, or hospital in Greenwich
among the blue tubes, where he asked
me to bring him Lobster Cantonese
if it was in season, and yes, there will be a wait
not the last meal he ate, but the last
he wolfed down, using his fingers.
There is no internet at the motel –
no Gideon bible, either.
There is a coffee pot, though,
and a window,
and snow on the ground.
There is so much to read,
reflecting the small passions –
history, poetry, The Rolling Stone,
an interview with Lou Reed,
the scribbled notes of a dream –
slapping down Motown in a newsroom
with a cops reporter from a hundred
years ago. Shalimar, she wore,
even weekends, to the great fire
in Poplarville, some poor farm family,
and the death of a daughter named Zoe.
Maslow did not believe a Southerner
could name a child that in 1981.
Maybe I didn’t believe it myself,
or believe him when he spoke
of the three deaths
gathering in this wall of haze,
motel in Alabama, or hospital in Greenwich
among the blue tubes, where he asked
me to bring him Lobster Cantonese
if it was in season, and yes, there will be a wait
not the last meal he ate, but the last
he wolfed down, using his fingers.
Hold My Hand
don’t hold my hand
Hold my hand
hold the door to my hand
Hold the door
and hand of the girl
Who won’t hold
a door at the deli
Where I order pastrami
on rye “hold the mustard”
Hold time made slow, wipers and glass
gentle Jersey rain
Hold Wednesday on an apple
eaten whole
Hold memory, a Mother’s hands
egg salad, whole wheat
Hold the red napkin holder
on a green counter,
Hold “Saljobar” logo,
hold ketchup and relish
Relish the whole words
runny as eggs,
“Doll” and “love” and “hon”
hold sugar and cream
Hold paper bran muffin cup,
but don’t hold my hand
Or the line out the door
or the mayo
On a BLT or the lettuce
in low light of a campus grill
Hold my weight, my head
burst from a chocolate shake
Hold all the good stuff,
pizza with anchovies
And Cap’n Crunch and
ham on nickel-
Loaf bread at midnight
Hold your aces till the end, papa
hold your valentine
Hold the dirty water
and the dirty glass,
Hold out for something special,
hold this topsy world
Together with fig preserves
and the taste of sin.
Hold my hand, papa
and don’t hold back,
Tell me again the old stories,
Switzerland and the Seine
Tell of the mess hall, and bloody helmets,
snow in the Ardennes
Only this time, tell me all of it.
Hold nothing in.
don’t hold my hand
Hold my hand
hold the door to my hand
Hold the door
and hand of the girl
Who won’t hold
a door at the deli
Where I order pastrami
on rye “hold the mustard”
Hold time made slow, wipers and glass
gentle Jersey rain
Hold Wednesday on an apple
eaten whole
Hold memory, a Mother’s hands
egg salad, whole wheat
Hold the red napkin holder
on a green counter,
Hold “Saljobar” logo,
hold ketchup and relish
Relish the whole words
runny as eggs,
“Doll” and “love” and “hon”
hold sugar and cream
Hold paper bran muffin cup,
but don’t hold my hand
Or the line out the door
or the mayo
On a BLT or the lettuce
in low light of a campus grill
Hold my weight, my head
burst from a chocolate shake
Hold all the good stuff,
pizza with anchovies
And Cap’n Crunch and
ham on nickel-
Loaf bread at midnight
Hold your aces till the end, papa
hold your valentine
Hold the dirty water
and the dirty glass,
Hold out for something special,
hold this topsy world
Together with fig preserves
and the taste of sin.
Hold my hand, papa
and don’t hold back,
Tell me again the old stories,
Switzerland and the Seine
Tell of the mess hall, and bloody helmets,
snow in the Ardennes
Only this time, tell me all of it.
Hold nothing in.
Larkin’s Bracelet
Shag bark hickory like Larkin’s hair
in seventh grade, ashen,
shimmery, beyond the gray dawn
smell, and the paper mill,
steel-boned cars before the EPA,
before pimples got bad
before we spilled our book bags
into the halls outside
Mrs. Valentine’s class,
when math was still a mystery,
indivisible, a word we said in the pledge
but didn’t begin to understand
that came after ‘one nation,’
and ‘under God,’ and then died
somewhere outside in the pines,
though in some way it still
stands for numbers we could not
comprehend like Vietnam dead, or dates
on Larkin’s bracelet, some
MIA from Wisconsin
who went missing in ’67 someplace
in the jungle, while we were
pulling back from our small tables,
and the wood of the tables,
scratching the old tiles
with the soles of our shoes.
Shag bark hickory like Larkin’s hair
in seventh grade, ashen,
shimmery, beyond the gray dawn
smell, and the paper mill,
steel-boned cars before the EPA,
before pimples got bad
before we spilled our book bags
into the halls outside
Mrs. Valentine’s class,
when math was still a mystery,
indivisible, a word we said in the pledge
but didn’t begin to understand
that came after ‘one nation,’
and ‘under God,’ and then died
somewhere outside in the pines,
though in some way it still
stands for numbers we could not
comprehend like Vietnam dead, or dates
on Larkin’s bracelet, some
MIA from Wisconsin
who went missing in ’67 someplace
in the jungle, while we were
pulling back from our small tables,
and the wood of the tables,
scratching the old tiles
with the soles of our shoes.
Tallulah
Happening on the table of the weavers
the foam and tallow,
gray sky above a birch stand
near the river where we dropped
our canoes like warriors in
autumn near the cane breaks
a world we did not know but
maybe once knew in the penmanship
of census takers awakened
by sounds of the granary,
or by whiskey light in a young
girl’s hair in a photo, say, 1904,
or in the last red leaf on the bayou,
moss baking with indigo
blankets made by fire light
above the trading post
resembling maps they had drawn
in persimmon juice up on Big River
when the ponies were running,
and the pipe smoke held together
painting black circles in the air.
Bruce Lowry, a native Southerner, is a career newspaper journalist, and adjunct English professor. He holds an MFA from Drew University. His poems and short stories have been widely published, and include two Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work has appeared in Valley Voices, Gris-Gris and Exit 7. He resides in Union County, New Jersey.
Happening on the table of the weavers
the foam and tallow,
gray sky above a birch stand
near the river where we dropped
our canoes like warriors in
autumn near the cane breaks
a world we did not know but
maybe once knew in the penmanship
of census takers awakened
by sounds of the granary,
or by whiskey light in a young
girl’s hair in a photo, say, 1904,
or in the last red leaf on the bayou,
moss baking with indigo
blankets made by fire light
above the trading post
resembling maps they had drawn
in persimmon juice up on Big River
when the ponies were running,
and the pipe smoke held together
painting black circles in the air.
Bruce Lowry, a native Southerner, is a career newspaper journalist, and adjunct English professor. He holds an MFA from Drew University. His poems and short stories have been widely published, and include two Pushcart Prize nominations. Recent work has appeared in Valley Voices, Gris-Gris and Exit 7. He resides in Union County, New Jersey.
David Subacchi
Living With The Dead
In Manila poor folk struggle
paid a pittance by machantes
to look after the mausoleums
of their departed ancestors,
And as a bonus, they are permitted
to make their homes alongside
the stone covered corpses,
to live with the dead
Children play on marble floors,
clothes hang from brass carvings
and within these cemeteries
hidden shops sell essential goods
to the population of caretakers,
the polite name for those
who have little choice
but to live like this
Maintaining memories,
digging graves,
assisting at funerals
even exhumations,
always eager to help,
alert to new business
Hanap patay
Searching for death
“We cannot pray for more to die
but we need the dead to live”
says a face lined by hunger,
The local moneylender
leaning against a tomb
studies his manicured fingers,
flashes a yellow toothed grin
and nods in agreement.
David Subacchi lives in Wrexham, Wales where he was born of Italian roots. He studied at the University of Liverpool and has four published collections of his English Language poetry First Cut (2012), Hiding in Shadows (2014), Not Really a Stranger (2016) and A Terrible Beauty (2016). His work has also appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. You can find out more about David and his work at
http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/davidsubacchi
In Manila poor folk struggle
paid a pittance by machantes
to look after the mausoleums
of their departed ancestors,
And as a bonus, they are permitted
to make their homes alongside
the stone covered corpses,
to live with the dead
Children play on marble floors,
clothes hang from brass carvings
and within these cemeteries
hidden shops sell essential goods
to the population of caretakers,
the polite name for those
who have little choice
but to live like this
Maintaining memories,
digging graves,
assisting at funerals
even exhumations,
always eager to help,
alert to new business
Hanap patay
Searching for death
“We cannot pray for more to die
but we need the dead to live”
says a face lined by hunger,
The local moneylender
leaning against a tomb
studies his manicured fingers,
flashes a yellow toothed grin
and nods in agreement.
David Subacchi lives in Wrexham, Wales where he was born of Italian roots. He studied at the University of Liverpool and has four published collections of his English Language poetry First Cut (2012), Hiding in Shadows (2014), Not Really a Stranger (2016) and A Terrible Beauty (2016). His work has also appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. You can find out more about David and his work at
http://www.writeoutloud.net/profiles/davidsubacchi
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Founder & Co-Publisher
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Reviewers: Freesia McKee and Michael Hettich
Managing Editor & C0-Publisher
Michael Mackin O'Mara
[email protected]
Founder & Co-Publisher
Lenny DellaRocca
[email protected]