modernpoetryreview

The Echo of Tranquility
and the force of that sacred connexion of sound brought into obedience—dale into vale a way by the ray to tread over spread to slow before go near the cries from the flies for gloom after doom due to want after scant to still for the will without share for the fare

outside bestows with repose except free for me to condemn between them along side ever supply’d to bring forth the spring but forego down below from wrong before long off descends by bends till fell into a cell in the obscure behind poor near lay to astray under

thatch with a latch to care for the pair to retire after fire with rest for the guest in store for the lore smil’d after beguil’d by mirth at the hearth by tries for the flies to impart for the heart with woe over flow beyond spy’d until cry’d after opprest with breast toward

spurn’d though unreturn’d to rove for love up brings with things to decay from they for name after fame through sleep then weep over sound of the found for a jest in the nest to a hush after blush since he said until betry’d to the rise of the skies in the view out of too

with breast since confest about alarms for the charms by the rude to intrude but cry’d to reside through share or despair past stray by the way over Tyne never mine for he turns to me by arms with charms on came after flame for the crowd after bow’d down to

strove for love by clad onto had since he after me beyond day to display for refin’d in the mind under tree over me with shine off mine unto art at the heart in vain by pain to scorn before forlorn with pride after died beneath fault for the sought to pay for a lay but hid

after did to die into I out cry’d but chide under breast since pressed for dear over here to see since thee within heart by part to resign after mine in part for the heart before a true prior to too.

About the Poet
Nicholas D. Nace is a poet and critic living in Virginia. He is the editor of two volumes of essays devoted to the art of close reading: Shakespeare Up Close (Arden 2012) and The Fate of Difficulty (forthcoming). He is the compiler and editor of The Broadview Anthology of Satire, and his essays have appeared in The Burlington Magazine, The Book Collector, and numerous other journals. Other of his poems are forthcoming from Maggy, Rabbit, and Fence.

Toneless Testamentum

Pausing before a coffin, I find myself.
In my soul or casing, nothing surprising.
Some years ago, little or no money,
I thought I would sail into the street,
Take to the ship, throw myself upon
His sword, and fill the ocean with me.
All, not in words, went out of an evening:
Moonlight, tortures, and pouring.
The days of my life declared things.
When you ought to be suffering,
The regular feasts. When against
The crowd and efforts to escape,
Skirting brambles and a rapid rush,
Stainless. To do with such sights
And disembogue is something
Amusing. Does it grow, though,
Fainter? In a different way, lack
Of unconsciousness gains on
The vessel, we hear the whistle,
Fog wills, companionship passes
And the hotel stays afloat, on
The last day we mingle wind
And water, rowing needless
With all our strength. Great
A hurry to stop, and for the food
Of each, we left perishing.
I have thought of this and rest.

 

 

Region Of Sky Unaware Of Saltrot

As at the tarnished
dusk, reminded remark
of day, of that same
going down, ingeniously
silent, a gown half
evening mauled
carelessly and strewn
on water, on rock,

And whereupon perceiving
That same depreciatory
sacrament, that third
state, delighted insignia
in a high room, the many
faces, astonished, hardly
made but by a thrilled
movement persuading
the two hosts, in duet,
though trembling, among
the scattered mirrors,
to bless what guests
remained, as they stood
near the underdeck
reaching for a single coat,

Filled the mind with shadow,
the same contained the mind,
a jaspered indistinctness then
the party seemed to be,
discolorous, for it was later
than they thought they’d stay,
the marbling forces already
well commuted, impartible,
the coat taken, cars waiting,
for each a habitude, and
the hosts still mingling
on the water.

 

 

About the Poet
Daniel Brian Jones edits FOLDER (www.foldermagazine.com). Poems have appeared or are forthcoming in PANK, Prelude, Vector, Spilled Milk, and elsewhere. Music: Harmonium Songs (settings of Stevens poems). He is an instructor at the Atlantic Acting School in Chelsea. Upcoming: the theatrical world premiere of John Ashbery’s “Litany,” in collaboration with dancer/choreographer Sarah Haarmann. www.danielbrianjones.com.

The Colors of Mirrors

.                                                     For Sophie Mitchell

When you’re horizontal, asleep,
all mirrors are precisely white:
They slyly pluck out this
or that secret, etching them
delicately so they remain secrets.

When darkness begins to leave,
quiet as a butterfly’s breath, they
turn almost as blue as a flatted
note you abandoned on a table
hoping it would stay unread.

In full daylight, they disguise
themselves as plain silver
tricking you into believing
you see only yourself and never
notice that you’re blind.

Come sunset, they sing loud
in oranges and violets. Always
just south of the right key to remind
you they’re watching you alertly
as a bent second hand

until you tread—softly-socked—
upstairs to bed. Then they
put on their watchtower faces
and perfectly white glasses.
They read you all night

and they laugh and laugh and laugh.

About the Poet
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies and has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net: Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. Lent 1999 is new from Leaf Garden Press His chapbook, Three Visitors won the Negative Capability Press Chapbook Competition in 2010.  Artifacts and Relics, another chapbook, was just released by Folded Word. His novel, Knight Prisoner, is available from Vagabondage He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster.

Autophobia
I went to the party looking for an adversary
but found it in my own fist
on the walk back home through a film
of vodka and sewer grate steam.
It was late but the neighbor kids were still
playing dodge ball in the parking lot, saying,
The target is his head, aim for his head,
picking on the little guy—probably someone’s
younger brother. In a home video I’m four
with a spray bottle and my mom keeps saying,
Spray yourself in the face, Jackson!,
and I’m laughing because I can’t see
the clouds of gore looming over 2014. Today I went
to therapy with a black eye for the third time
and I could tell my therapist was uncomfortable
asking about it, so instead I talked about
my childhood—about the time my brother rode
his tricycle down the front steps
and killed two teeth. My family thought
I’d pushed him, because somehow
violence bursting outward is easier to understand.
But what’s so incomprehensible about knocking shadows
out the back of your own head?
I was thinking about my sick friend
when I realized he was probably thinking about me,
his face in someone’s toilet bowl, his bruises
obscure self-portraits. He used to say, Why not drink,
why not smoke? You’re only dying slow
and on purpose.

About the Poet
Jackson Burgess is currently pursuing dual MFAs in Fiction and Poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as a Truman Capote Fellow. His first chapbook, Pocket Full of Glass, won the 2014 Clockwise Competition and is forthcoming from Tebot Bach. He has also placed work in Rattle, The Los Angeles Review, Tin House Flash Fridays, and elsewhere.

Music Vigil
A man lay dying in a shuttered room
unconscious, barely breathing, as his wife
sat near him, weeping. Someone whispered prayers
all night, until the unremembered dawn
broke through their darkness. Steps mounted the stairs:
a woman entered as he fought for life.
She crossed herself, and then began to sing.

And as the morning sunlight seems to bring
illumination to the forest, fills
what seemed like empty air with energy,
with unsuspected radiances drawn
from somewhere else, almost an ecstasy
of interwoven streams of light, instills
within the wanderer a sudden peace,

just so her voice brought those present release
from weeping and from grief, and in their place
a quiet joy crept in. They wept, but now
their weeping was transfigured in her song:
only spiritual beauty could allow
such transformations, opening to grace
as rose buds, warmed by dawn, open and bloom.

About the Poet
W.F. Lantry’s poetry collections are The Terraced Mountain (Little Red Tree, 2015), The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree, 2012), winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line, 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. A native of San Diego, he received his Maîtrise from L’Université de Nice, and PhD in Creative Writing from University of Houston. Honors include the National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors’ Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and the Potomac Review and LaNelle Daniel Prizes. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Gulf Coast and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. He currently works in Washington, DC and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.

Coming of Age
You’re a lilywhite egg forked out of picture books,
shrouded in pipe cleaners and masking tape.

You bob in the foam of the rabid altar,
both fear and lust over the crayon sharpener built into the back.

I used Raw Sienna to outline Mother Goose’s corpse on your tongue.
You try to thrust it into the mainframe, tell me you belong nude in the roaster—

I remember how, despite your full-body rash,
you were always trying to work out hip bones on the Etch-A-Sketch.

I push you away; I’m just a mother-head—
a Capitoline Wolf warming the weird eggs
hunched on her ejecta blanket.

You Decide to Meet My Muse
To see if the rumors are true.

Yes, she really calls herself Madame Ampersand,

invites you to brunch in her sepulcher

with raccoons on the doorjambs.

She recalls performing her own lobotomy

with a ballpoint pen—

the story boils your hormones,

makes them squirt out your pores like fondant.

A black licorice flag waves out her eye-hole—

a memento from bedding a Jolly Roger.

She prophesizes that all my dreams will come true:

I will be bred into iron.

I will be doled out to the willowy congregation

like deer meat.

She makes you promise to take a lap around the playground,

distracting you as she censors

the new memories blooming on your eyelids.

About the Poet
Katie Hibner is a confetti canon from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Bone Bouquet, glitterMOB, Powder Keg, Smoking Glue Gun, and Word for/Word. Katie reads for Sixth Finch and dedicates all of her poetry to her mother, Laurie.

Crossing the River at Flood Stage

crossing the century-old truss bridge
I still see the tower from last night’s dream

what caused the tower to sink into the stony ground?
the sky’s golden haze conveys the notion
that the tower will rise, fully amplified, once
I step off the other end

it is also a matter of stepping past procrastination

how many times did I say I’d come back
to this field where
in my youth
I’d walk to disappear?

*

to enter this tower is to become the field
of tall grass with its four-chambered cave
sequestered under the granite boulder

*

today is dangerous, but rare

ignoring the orange cones and the yellow
“do not cross” tape
the wooden planks of the bridge want to tear free
and tumble

water surges, rattling the old
bolts in the metal

caught in the truss frame web
the bridge seduces me with a sway
like the throb of a lake
with its lone fisherman in a boat

*

I’m absorbed in the sound of the river

that resounds
in the wind-thrashed trees

*

imagine being swallowed
into a world that reveals black
as a color of all colors

if you gaze long enough you’ll see
the rousing iridescence
similar to the oracular portals in the peacock’s plume

*

what of the tower?
dreams slide like mercury from burning cinnabar –

the tower unravels
from bedrock: becomes the field

*

to cross this bridge is to become the tower

*

as the embankments of the river – including the town

with its outdoor theatre
and its one café –

including the hospital on the hill
where I was born –

now dissolve

my former self sheds with each step forward

About the Poet
Michael Spring is a natural builder a martial art instructor, and a poetry editor for The Pedestal Magazine. His poems have appeared in: Atlanta Review, Flyway, Gargoyle, Midwest Quarterly, Spillway, Turtle Island Quarterly and West Wind Review.

Raised in Captivity Microchip Zoos and Pressing ENTER

In a crumpled-paper-night carbonate silica shifts in the slats
the child wakes in absence of TV glow, to etch
shadows for the plasmodium

and teddy bear stares, a threadbare coded by window
after window judge of self-repeat, species
in cotton ball bloom— ursus-ursus
headlights and peek-a-boo (he browser
gives answer, “anything you want”

wrapped in dark chiffon. Dear God, click
on my profile, anything On the wooden
floor the Ark’s fissures caulked with the lux of a door ajar—
bosoms heave, future widows metacarpals
are separated into ontological piles

sit in deep grooves Ursa Major kneels
offering salt from a bygone pretzel
where star charts cannot reach, sodium is licked
from the palm, tastes but slip self-medicated.
in-text citations, lost filaments
on the motherboard

Galoshes are worn to tread
puddles fossilized thumbprints splash
via the browser left by ancient
broods. Cuman, Pict, Lombard, Magyar, Algonquin

Birdcalls in a mother’s channels struggle
to find the mainframe eyes sweep
the fragile path glacial ruts to indecisions,
ochre extracted binding an unknown
god at dawn from the iris, a grainy screen.

About the Poet
Ian Rice is a graduate of Florida Atlantic University’s MFA program. He is currently teaching in Sarkad, Hungary. His poems have been published in Menacing Hedge and FishFood Magazine. http://ianrice001.wix.com/ian-rice

Awakening Barometer Dead Year Bistro Concave
by Mitch Earleywine, Emory Jones, Cathryn Shea, Judith Skillman, Ottilie Mulzet, Frederick Pollack, and Ana Prundaru

The pillow is cool against my cheek, as if I’m not under hot film lights.
Those poems that were largely unlocated weather reports.
We are all so much fertilizer, food for worms.
Autumn bears its ocher stamp.
Would you like a tryst with your tea?
Beneath bridges I look for a justification, welcome paralyzing nuances of lies.
He sliced the sheep’s heart right at the aorta.

Note: This is a different version of an exquisite corpse with no restrictions. Each poet contributed a word for the title and a line for the poem. Everything will be organized according to whoever responded first. The resulting poem can be a little chaotic, since each poet does not know what has been written or what will be written.