Poetry

Tornado

1893

In the downpour and darkness,
it swept southeast for six miles,
cutting across the Kansas prairie,
leaving not a house, barn, tree,
or headstone standing in its path.

At the Hutchinson farm, seven horses
were killed and Mrs. Hutchinson
lost her life. Her arms and legs were found
in a treetop a mile away from where
she had prepared the evening meal
an hour before.

As soon as the storm had passed,
the awful hunt began.  All night long,
with lanterns in hand, neighbors searched
for the dead and dying.  The last body
was discovered the next afternoon.

And on a Sunday three days later,
the Union Pacific ran special trains
to Williamstown for people
to see the damage.

About the Poet
Terry Allen lives in Columbia, Missouri and is an Emeritus Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, where he taught acting, directing and playwriting. He directed well over a hundred plays during his thirty-eight years of teaching.  A few favorites include: Candide, Macbeth, Death of a Salesman, and The Threepenny Opera. He now writes poetry and has been published in Fine Arts Discovery, Well Versed, I-70 Review, Freshwater Poetry Journal, Boston Literary Magazine, Garbanzo Literary Journal, Bop Dead City,Third Wednesday, and Star 82 Review.

Atropos the Fate Dismantles Her Own Altar
Replicas of my shears rust in museums.  Thieves out-think
code to touch the blood of those blades.  As though memory
of war could make them brave. As though legend explains –
bad luck to say it – death.  In case

your myths are sketchy, I’m the Fate that snips, the ultimate
Fortune. Tarot card with an edge bent down.  I watch

another launch, private sector invading Space with a ship labeled
Youth Unlimited.  Better to re-seed the mountaintop.  Better
to sign on for the invisible circus of the brain.  My metal

is as illusory as the vision that hangs in the sky for a silver
tremor after the blast. When the pilot has two beats
to bank away.  No one hand could sabotage so many breaths

in a nano-second.  A city’s arteries under a mega-flower becoming
flame, the confounder of paper and scissors.  Don’t you realize
I took my own life eons ago? Fascinated by my power
but needing practice?  Scientist injecting herself with disease
so sure of her miracle cure.  All Fate

is collective.  The end disproved by one selfless citizen
or cell.  Ghosts are a comforting legend: sisters in an attic
mixing thread with destiny. Come, Children,

look at guns under glass.  At Oppenheimer and the Curies.
Then tell me if you believe in an old woman with a jackknife
in her pocket.  Each of you fingering the trigger up your sleeve.

Transmogrify
South-south-west to north again
wind tonight batters hemlock,
the maples.  I listen
to old puzzle games: branch
to bone
and back, unveiling
faces: my miscarriage, my
least used Muse, the mask
of the thief
who kidnapped me young.  South-
south-east to west
again.  Firs bend.

Once at a Casino, I saw a Medium’s
show.  The billboard read: ‘Transmogrify.’
I was loaded
and lucky, looking from
the other side.  North to south
and back again when
I saw the cheekbones
of a just-past-middle-aged woman re-form
into the brow of a child,
drowning.  Astonished parents
wailed. The audience
moaned nooooo-waaayyyy.

I was struck
by how much we dare to re-assemble
each other: me and my
sister’s boyfriend kissing in the toolshed
that windless
summer re-creating not my worst sin
but the outline
of a gypsy in a head-scarf
whose profile might become
lovers or a do-over
dream, north-
north-west and back
again, one mutable
bone.

About the Poet
Joanne M. Clarkson’s fourth poetry collection, “Believing the Body,” was published in 2014 by Gribble Press. Poems have appeared recently in Rhino, The Baltimore Review, The Healing Muse and Fjords Review.  She was awarded first place in Northern Colorado Writers Annual Competition in 2015. Joanne has  Master’s Degrees in English and Library Science. She has taught and worked as a professional librarian.  Her life-long hobby has been reading Palms and Tarot, taught by her psychic Grandmother.  See more at http://JoanneClarkson.com.

Two Views of the Sky
Motors churn for the hillside. Outside
the glass           up        sky floods, rolls
on cirrus flicks, feathered souls, new
wave keyboard notes—enough clarity
.           to tip it back in a blue
.           bottle, enough stretch
.           to sprint the next care.
.           Enough azure to rise.

I know not the different types of clouds, still,
to think what’s given me. Is depth in my eyes
to see what she prepares? And the human catch,

to look for elsewhere desire—the other side, now
bleeding streaks in purple          and break-light red.
You could grab your own running blood and pour
it in a glass                    taste the particles running
the heavens. This is not for display. This is home.

I turn. She creeps along the aisle with cane, between
two skies, down the steps. Off the bus, into the street,
words lisped about cans on the ground, and the fixx.

About the Poet
Timothy B. Dodd is from Mink Shoals, WV.  His poetry has appeared in The Roanoke Review, William & Mary Review, Big River Poetry Review, Crannog, Two Thirds North, and elsewhere.  He is currently in the MFA program at the University of Texas El Paso.

Pool of Narcissus

Hypatia, we came onto the constellation of our child,
proclaiming: Alas! the spirit goes, somehow knowing it to be true.
Turning back dials until day went black,
turning back dials until our fear-sores pussed,
turning back dials until fate arrived to us.
Christians broke your devices for watching the suns,
death gassing under their robes (like Eliot’s yellow fog, I think).
Butter knives, ceramic shards—
I saw them drag you by your hair to the plaza,
vivisect & pyre your limbs on a cross.

I barely know you anymore, you had said to me,
Barely remember who we once were.
There was pain, I recall, and something of a tribunal.
Will love be again? Will our love be again?
On the stand you labored
like a wet-tusked walrus sucking its mustaches.
Love is cruelty—please don’t get me wrong—
cruel that it fosters the disfigurement of vanity.

.               My sister came then to find me seized at my mirror,
.               clutched me back from the dark,
.               back out of the frying pool of Narcissus.
.               (Is he still looking? Has he yet risen?)
.               Turns out there was no you, Hypatia, just me and my reflection.
.               I swear I saw you peering back, eyes welled white with tears.

About the Poet
Hayden Bunker previously studied poetry and creative writing at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT and Hellenic International Studies in the Arts in Paros, Greece. He has a background in youth and community theater, and is currently pursuing a B.A. in English Literature at Reed College in Portland, OR.

Permafrost
Greyhound wheels turn through the bleak grey of a winter rainstorm cracking the Midwestern
sky – we twist, fly, turn jagged.  Outside our windows the world stretches gaunt, tight-lipped and
shattering quiet like lying in bed and trying to think of all of the right things to say this time —
discovering our empty mouths.   Come here. Plant your roots in my stomach and love can grow
like a vine through us both before we say goodbye, say I’ll see you again when I’m hunger pangs
in a bloated stomach and you’re made out of faded eyes and all our missed memories, saying
love is a vine but my stomach is sick and I won’t last another winter without something to keep
me full. Your mouth is the gaping of an empty cave, bone deep cold, and winter is killing me, is
crushing me under your heel. So goodbye everything between the gulf of your body and mine –
maybe there’s heat beneath but we have to find it, to dig in, to claw through permafrost where
even acid can’t burn to it. We have to get down deep enough, and there it will be, safe, hidden
like the seed of everything we’re wrapped up in if you peel away enough layers, if you’re willing
to bleed knuckles against ice, to dig in deep enough.

About the Poet
Betty Stanton is a writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is currently a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. Her work has appeared in various journals including Siren, Gravel, Proximity, andNimrod International Journal of Prose and Poetry and is forthcoming in several other publications.   

Diabolus Ex Machina

God waits in the theater rafters
in white robes, and straps
that wrap his torso to a crane’s hook
that will lower him onto the stage
at the cue of a trumpet. His drop-in speech
is the quick save for his writer’s poor plot,
for only a god can make
the ludicrous convincing.

The devil lounges below the floorboards,
listening to footsteps crisscross above his head.
He knows each move and line: the understudy
for every actor. He waits by the trap door
to catch the one who falls into his lap, to pamper
him with wealth and petty power, ply him
with cognac, and then assume his role on stage.

About the Poet
Sara Backer won the 2015 Turtle Island Poetry Award for her chapbook Bicycle Lotus. Recent poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The Pedestal Magazine, So to Speak, Marathon Literary Review, Silver Blade, and Strange Horizons. Follow her on Twitter @BackerSara or sarabacker.com.

The Water Cycle

I.
These flowers carefully gathered are,
for the moment, my organs.

And I couldn’t tell if I was real

until a butterfly
landed on me.

II.
My body to be carried down to the river
to be dutifully contributed to memory—

yet you didn’t even notice how I was floating,
watching from just above the trees.

III.
Rain is a tension of surfaces,
clinging to windows and wet branches.

Your eyes, full of weather.

Memories rolling in
from great distances

dark clouds over the heavy arms
of a few neurons.

IV.
My face
looked up at
my face

in another sky.

V.
Dreams seem to be great instances
seeping through your ceiling.

Your face splashed with handfuls of rainwater.

VI.
Do not confuse as I confused
this body with that

which is ceremoniously dumped
in the river.

There is no need to bury water.

Rain is attention
to surfaces.

Careful the rocks are slick
with thought.

About the Poet
Tim Carter is an MFA candidate at Syracuse University. His work can also be found most recently in The Seneca Review, Copper Nickel, This Land Press, and Willard & Maple. He frequently plays straight pool with old army vets and walks around the frozen city.

Becoming Seraphim
The ghost laments in the burnt-out foxglove.
Eats the ash-filled apples, the phantom fruits.
The blueness of death filling the air
Like early spring.

His body fades, and he feels the wind
Expand his organs.
They burst like bulbs at high voltage,
Like blood clots to the brain.

In their place the simplicities of light,
Of hidden fractals,
Vanished joints that form new systems
Of bone,

Astral marrow, cartilage the color
Of forget-me-nots,
Nerves like new philosophies,
Hesitant at first, then ending civilizations.

Among the conifers, the brackish undergrowth,
The memory of stilted fields,
The ghost is growing hexagonal wings
Bright as camphor,

Is setting dark, unnerving eyes
Like hot stones in his panicked sockets.

About the Poet
Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has been published widely in such places as
The Coe Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.

In Morph We Trust
There’s something cathartic
about moving. The boxing
of evidence. Transforming
what had been memories
into fresh dumpster feed.
The burning of bridges.

*  *  *

A roach awoke
after a dream-free night
as a man, amazed
by the status quo,
quantum comfort zone,
the empty essence
of equivocal miracles.

*  *  *

Existence of ever-changing
places and faces is designed
by an Uncertainty Principle
which snakes like history
around a sixty watt bulb,
crawls into cozy corners
with rogue regrets crusading
for a Manifest Destiny
of ethically ordained hedonism,
dances across dignified dust
caressing hardwood floors
with Painted Desert denial,
sparks longing in the egos
of languidly lost strangers,
crowns the king of chaos
with the curse of hope.

*  *  *

A man awoke
after a dream-filled night
as the wind, calmed
by the strange change,
instant anxiety escape,
the gravitational immunity
of ethereal substance.

*  *  *

The fatigue and pain
of moving alone provide power
for catharsis. Every sore muscle,
each bleeding knuckle, all
the ascended stairwells, together
they set us up for a fall.
They negate filters and dissolve
shields, leaving only what is.

 About the Poet
Mike Davidson is an attorney, former Assistant Cook County Public Defender, and former college English instructor whose writing has appeared in several journals. He is a a past recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award in Poetry.

 

Percussion/Swimming

we are rhythms a rattle

.                                        of bones

arms the wind at war

.                                        zagging

to the blue of chlorine

.                                        finish

.            when the water
.            triangles

.           crystal bewilderment

.            when you don’t know
.          how to breathe

.           or won’t

you know the sound

.                .           .               the way words drown

.                .           .   and worlds

.                (the beat

.                .           an absence

.                .           .         .      of universe)

submerged and

.                .           .how to get away

About the Poet
James Croal Jackson’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, Rust+Moth, Glassworks, Thin Air, and other publications. He grew up in Akron, Ohio, spent a few years in Los Angeles, traveled the country in his Ford Fiesta, and now lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find more at jimjakk.com.