Poetry

The Triumph of the Bull
We’d been arguing an hour when I stopped.
It wasn’t that I could no longer fight,
or he had stuck in me an intellectual horn,
gouged me beyond the chance to recover.
No, in fact I would say, on the main,
I was winning easily, counter-jabbing
his assaults, thrusting my sword.
What overtook me was mental weariness,
the fatigue of one who is tired of stabbing
the dying bull who is too stupid
to stop charging forward, blindly.
Though strong in reason and in word,
there resides in me this failing,
the inability to seize upon an advantage
and bring a foe to his finish, this
especially the case when the foe is friend,
or was a friend before his face flushed,
before he was made to defend
what he could not. How sad then,
how pitiable, having sheathed my sword,
having turned my back to go on home,
to be gored from behind. How much winning
meant to him, and how little everything else.
I told him he had me, he won, and I was leaving.
He must have smiled, must have laughed.
He maybe even congratulated himself.
Perhaps he went out to celebrate,
stopped for a beer, looked around,
felt alone, maybe learning at long last
what I knew when I laid aside my sword:
each time you win an argument you lose a friend.

 

Bukowski’s Safe Bet
After some years almost all his poems
were as stale as a beer he left unfinished
after he passed out, words dribbling
down the page like puke down his shirt.
He talked incessantly about risk and gamble
while rarely taking one, except maybe
when he visited the track, never leaving
the persona like an actor afraid to remove
his costume for fear they’ll cancel the play.
Like his hero, Fante, he joined the actors
in Hollywood, befriending Madonna, Penn,
and wrote about the beautiful people,
their peccadilloes and foibles and hang-ups,
all the while claiming to be separate.
His work became the descent of drool.
By that time he had more in common
with Margaux Hemingway than Ernest.
Ironically, or maybe not, it was during
this nothing period, when his writing
was a thin ghost of what it had once been,
that his fame increased many-fold.
He didn’t complain. He bought a BMW
and published in Poetry Magazine,
a journal that only a few years earlier
he dubbed a “golden outhouse of culture.”
A whimpering finish to a bestial wail.
Yet in the end there’s nothing to do
but forgive him. Sick, mostly written out,
he knew his last bet was the safe bet:
that people prefer a gossip to a gambler
and, let’s face it, both of them to a poet.

About the Poet
James Valvis has placed poems or stories in Arts & Letters, Barrow Street, Midwest Quarterly, Ploughshares, River Styx, The Sun, and many others. His poetry was featured in Verse Daily. His fiction was chosen for Sundress Best of the Net. A former US Army soldier, he lives near Seattle.

Conversation with a Faucet

My father taught me to relate directly

to the faucet––

not through the mediation of a cup or glass.

 

He’d put his mouth right to it when he was thirsty,

stooping down, as if to kiss it,

something that I liked to see,

since I believed that was what workman did.

(His father had come from Europe as a carpenter.)

 

As I stare now at the faucet––

the stubby one in the little bathroom off the kitchen––

I know what it will say to me

before I even turn the handle:

 

Alan, it will say, I am not the sun,

nor am I the moon with its tides,

but there is something I can teach you.

My sources aren’t anywhere you can see,

but under the earth dozens of miles,

the way things you’ve forgotten

or never dared to reveal

can appear in what you might say now––

free of cloudy sadness or hate

and sparkling with lucidity.

 

That’s true, faucet.

In certain ways, you are an image of myself––

shut off completely, or perhaps mostly,

and then gushing generously,

as if going from depression to mania.

But do me one favor, please:

Don’t refer to your origins.

Let them listen to you

and then guess where you came from

from what you’re saying

with your silvery voice.

 

About the Poet
Alan Feldman is the author of several poetry collections, including Immortality, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2015.  This year his poems have appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Hanging Loose, upstreet, Salamander, Cimarron Review, and (online) in Cordite, Across the Margin, as well as on Poetry Daily. 

Greater Canyons Will Fall
The land falls away, leaving only a squid rising from the ocean’s cellar—tiny frozen puffs squelching onto the dry kelp of winter. I adjust a diadem of frenzy bolted inside my forebrain, randomly shrinking thoughts. As my eyes rise, satellites are uplifted into a moonstruck orbit. Indifference is pleased at the healing of recognition. The honed bluntness of my words, acutely angling from me, repairing vestigials into furrows of sutured essentials. This will only happen once: A dissention of thought tumbles elephantine upon the promenade of my vena cava and stands impatiently in the overhang of my lungs. The sphincter of fulfillment, nectarous entrails. The suffused enunciation of epithets. Unreflected, Unechoed. A karmic certainty.

You can rush in. You can apply opaque. And no, it would always be gone and yes, you wouldn’t let go of me temporarily. Yet it is windless in day, together in the mountains leaving the calm of the thoughts pushing its valuables—you try to take my lips from me and inject me with healing serum and I object. Here, love is illimitable. There isn’t anything that grow that doesn’t need something. You can’t thrive just anywhere consuming everything. But no.

Here you are. I found you like the first orange wedge I gave away. I offer you grapes and mint leaves and someday I’ll stand in the garden eating strawberries or cucumber, displaying them on a sleeve or stocking. Yet it is wonderful as a parent; bees lining to center stage to absorb accolades and infrequent humiliation, as your youngest follows her parents in bright imitation, with hugs and swimming eyes, finding old words for smart and adorable to misapply to the verb of parent. It is all binding in the apple skin and orange peel, and dull wrens in the rain-breeze of my contentment, Yet there is nothing in the mist of me, this night, if always since I was captured, totally here, even now, unseen and present. Then you consider me gone, leaving lemonade in a glass pitcher. Tupperware. Milk jug. A form of plastic shaped like birth. The weakest of all appear; so that the unloved can close their eyes and sleep.

What you’re looking for is a new faith in Panama, timid and circumspect. It could be a small crater—
without the tenacity to become a lake. Below you, hands held in an inverted steeple, an untraditional sign: A sigil departs a predictive quay where songs from the original voice less now from that which many silence. A demon disfigures in the fog of a child found playing on the idyllic sidewalk of rejection.
Or a soft powder blanks the sky where fish spat. On home doors, the soles of vortex withhold from a barn swallow given to honesty, its cage, or worse—its cigar-box coffin— with panoramic end. The shallower it remains, the more we are bored by the shape of the sky. A self-guided fog enjoys its noted disarray— has an epiphany, and destabilizes random thinking. A depth so violent and profound, that no added force, no dying star, can agitate it further.

Morning certainly, but still dark enough to occasionally blink at the sky releasing fragments of light. White doors on the newly molded condominiums will be emptied shortly with worn purpose. Reflections are absorbed by trees. A few leaves can be found, but no one questions the randomness of purpose directing the countryside. It is a fearsome thing to call anything ugly. Leaves repattern themselves without warning, taunting sacred earth and the once-humans it incorporates, chipping away at cold statues, passing through pores to arrive at the Dead Sea. I will lie and tell you this is a desirable end. Later, these same thoughts will sink me. A certain wariness punches into me heedlessly, stunning my thoughts like a skeptical cricket, in a woodland emptied of glass leaves and poppies. Here are the small chasms in the center of the wilderness waking up. And the greater canyons will fall silent again in the yellow dirge of nightfall.

 

Wishing Cistern
Images of horizontal women
and catatonic lovers

high flying birds
electrical chemicals

a sacrilegious mushroom,
marigolds at war is in my heart

forging mellow blueness
claiming a humanity they have no right to claim.

A gift stolen from the dark earth
kaleidoscope reality incognito

eager metaphysical elevation
from a fastback’s flattest depth

astral intervention found in ripples
warring on an abstract roadmap

an uplifting trance of voice and touch heals
Jayne Mansfield stumbling on a foggy highway.

 

About the Poet
Richard King Perkins II is a state-sponsored advocate for residents in long-term care facilities. He lives in Crystal Lake, IL with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart nominee and a Best of the Net nominee. Writing for six years, his work has appeared in more than a thousand publications including The Louisiana Review, Bluestem, Emrys Journal, Sierra Nevada Review, Roanoke Review, The Red Cedar Review and The William and Mary Review. He has poems forthcoming in Hawai’i Review, Sugar House Review, Plainsongs, Free State Review and Texas Review.

Kingsbridge Dawn
While frigid sky drifts blue
muted clocks promise oblivion,
a voice wakes before the others
to talk the sun through its weary rising

Mingling major and minor keys of
daycare rooms,
between the night’s rumble of the Deegan
and the morning’s urgent horns.

Mingling keys, major and minor,
a voice empties on the sun streaks
of rented eggshell walls, sun cracks that
survived the sharp Kingsbridge skyline,

Blanketing her brother’s body,
and warming treads in
tilted hallways and onto
tarred, spotted sidewalks.

About the Poet
Hillel Broder is a teacher of English literature and composition. He earned his doctorate at the CUNY Graduate Center. He lives with his wife and four children in the Bronx.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Pluviophilia
My corpse has awoken from its crusade
in the other world of myth and dream,
where I failed to subject gods and beings
to whatever tenuous totalidoxy

I thought I was seeking. To verify
You exist. I suppose this is all for the best.
Infallible ideas tend to lead to holy wars,
which would end poorly, me having no army.

I imagine I wouldn’t like it either
if You were so busy developing
more comprehensive Michaelologies
you withheld this delicate rain –

The world I journeyed toward returns,
the earth a cradle made of water.
Delight of the souleye the only knowledge.
If You aren’t present, neither is the cosmos.

Harbor Mandala

.                                             i have come to you harbor
.                                             this morning after a nightmare
.                                             has absconded only its anxious
.                                            wake still within me

beyond the shoreside minnows                       demanding I apprehend
below the gulls perched on buoys                   an amorphous dream
the small boat trolling depthward                   subject it to reason
to beg for what it cannot see                          force it to signify something

.                                             your surface a canvas
.                                             where the cloud muted sun
.                                             paints abstract patterns
.                                             of deep blues shaded with greys

whatever i thought i was                                 i could have come empty
going to see was not this                                 handed silently greeted
wind brushing across                                      an old friend opened
your skin creating visions                                my eyes invited you into my soul

.                                             ducks float napping silently
.                                             in the oak shade i wander by
.                                             my sandals quacking with
.                                             each step on my way home

Morning
The tiny harbor ripples            did not begin               when I happened

upon them.  The breeze           breezing them towards            me does not symbolize

any Spirit uniting        us.  Ducks cluster,       scatter, squawking      like ducks.  This is not

a performance                                     for my eyes; I’m a human                   being, taken

on a stroll by               his soul through his                 soul as each of these

souls lives its image                 solely for this tethered            pleasure: being.  I’ve finished

losing the world          I thought I controlled,                        and the tiny flecks

of light on wavelets,               where dawn and                     haven face one another,

remind me you speak              in visions, promising               prayers harmonize deeper

than soliloquies, even                          as the water-                sparks’ patternless dancing

duets its endpoints,                 lineless pictograms, strange                 succorous listening

to a language sung      in figures, one             I no longer have                      to master.

About the Poet
Michael Collins’ poems have received Pushcart Prize nominations and appeared in more than 40 journals and magazines, including Grist, Kenning Journal, Pank, and Smartish Pace. His first chapbook, How to Sing when People Cut off your Head and Leave it Floating in the Water, won the Exact Change Press Chapbook Contest in 2014. A full-length collection, Psalmandala, was published later that year. Another chapbook, Harbor Mandala, is forthcoming in July of 2015. Visit http://www.notthatmichaelcollins.com/ for more