Poetry

Portland to Barcelona, Winter to Spring
I. Portland
The snow drifts block my view of the water.
Waves and waves of white, but no push and pull,
no give and take. Spring eludes, birds huddle.

II. Barcelona
The seagulls caw and wheel, while cold days linger
on, despite a clear blue sky. From the mountain,
the tramontana bares its teeth anew.

III. Barcelona
On a park bench, we sit as he unwraps
the old blue bottle, thick with a relief
of Catalans dancing the sardana.

IV. Portland
In front of City Hall, his mittened hand
reaches for a woolen purple hat, left
there by a neighbor, a knitter, a friend.

V. Portland
The smell of hops claws the air, fights for space,
rises above the wind. It is winter.
We drink Allagash Black and toast the sun.

VI. Barcelona
In front of the old stone masia,
a tree stands solid, fisted with white blooms,
a soft spectre against a concrete sky

VII. Barcelona
With the first rains, they petal down, pasting
themselves to the sidewalk, a sudden riot of spring,
while the scent of salt shakes out on the wind.

VIII. Portland
The days are getting longer, the sky pinks
early, lingers in the gloaming. Robins
alight, their red bellies promising spring.

About the Poets
Tasha Graff used to live in Barcelona, Spain but now she lives in Portland, Maine, where she teaches English. Her poetry has appeared in such places as Word Riot, Epigraph Magazine and From the Fishouse. Her latest projects include writing poems about wrens and learning the uke.

Melissa Leighty used to live in Portland, but now she lives in Barcelona, where she is a freelance writer. Her essays and poetry have appeared in Salt, Colloquium, and English Journal. Her latest projects include a book imprint and a cookbook about Catalan cuisine.

All Comets Welcome

Thoughts stream through the streets
with air on fire, ride neural networks,

streak by in a hurry, leave
tales fuzzy and images blurry.

(Cable is laid from here to Mars
but yesterday’s futures are expired.)

In another hub, messages queue
burning with importance, anxiously

ready to spin their quotes
in lasting anagrams good for the cryptic.

(Please do not ask What is Truth?
Our answers are unbelievable.)

Click the icon to send your comet
into the ether. It will fly

never to be seen or heard
in this lifetime. Roger, over, out, away …

Don’t wait up for a reply.
(Mail sent to important people

will be misplaced without a trace.)
Ever so happily, after

you pass, your star might cruise
the main drag again

and moon onlookers
while they stare into the space

devoid of a comma.
Your caesura will have caused

a longer pause
than you ever intended.

 

About the Poet
Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming in Absinthe and Permafrost, and has appeared in MARGIE, Gargoyle, Blue Fifth Review, Quiddity, Sierra Nevada Review, Soundings East, Poet Lore, and elsewhere. Cathryn’s chapbook, Snap Bean, was released in 2014 by CC.Marimbo of Berkeley. She was a merit finalist for the Atlanta Review 2013 International Poetry Competition. Cathryn is included in the 2012 anthology “Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape.” In 2004, she won the Marjorie J. Wilson Award judged by Charles Simic. Cathryn served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology, and worked as a principal technical writer at Oracle.

 

Eco Echoes 83
Reproductions, cardboard, of Gauguin’s
Native sarong’s colors have become bleached
Blank by Patio Florida sunlight, and
Have grown longer to cover kneecaps.
Tahiti simulation has been maintained
By coconuts and tattoos. The tiles, white,
Have become mirrors that reflect the bottoms
Of protruding chins. Since most of the chins
Have white beards, the result is white on
White, and the floor is a collection
Of Malevitches. Pots that once had
Plants, now only dirt covered with
Crumbled-up scrapped lottery tickets.
All the tickets looked homesick, old, their faces
Wrinkled by fingernails. The enigma
And monument of their lives is the
Suitcase by the barbeque grill
With its mildewed charcoal.
Someone came to move in, and help
Pay the mortgage, but when he
Saw the life-style, the ping pong table,
Spoons used to flip jam on each other,
And the underclothes of baby sitters
Crowded in the bronze-wire garbage bin,
He left the suitcase with all his belongings
And ran away to find, if he could,
A forest. While running, he shouted
All the way, “Where are you, Pan?”

About the Poet
Duane Locke’s poem that appears in this issue is his 7000th poetry publication. He has 33 books of poems published including Visions and Terrestrial Illuminantions, Second Selection from Kind of Hurricane Press, forthcoming in 2015.  My main book publication is Duane Locke, The First Decade (Bitter Oleander Press, 1968-1978).

Letter from Amsterdam
As I write, three boys are playing poker
in the corner with a deck of nudie cards.
The naked women shush over each other
as they’re shuffled, whisper secrets

from other lives. Can you imagine? Playing
cards when the real thing is out on the canals,
beckoning for their attention, their wallets
and bulges. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so

crude. Is that why my letters return unopened?
The prostitutes in the Red Light District
call out to me when I walk in the morning,
but I’ve been good. They swat at the glass

like manatees at the aquarium. You told me
once that sailors mistook those for mermaids
long ago. I think that happens here, too,
when night falls. Beggars, so far, leave me

alone. Maybe they sense that I am broken,
like them. You wouldn’t like me saying that,
I know. Yesterday, I opened the hostel door
and a cat sauntered in as if it had a bed

reserved. It smelled of burnt lemon
rinds and blood and I thought about the night
you perfumed yourself for me. The owner’s
daughter shrieked and chased it with a knife

that cut the air in front of me into thin ribbons, all
the way from the kitchen. I know even a single flea
could be the end for them, but I wish I could stop
thinking about what happened next. That whole night,

a German fellow on mushrooms kept asking
me if I saw colors and faces in my dreams.
Then, without pause, he asked if I dreamt at all.
He drove me crazy with his questions

and fractured English so I read my braille
mathematics textbook for six hours, to anchor
myself in its numbers. I was on mushrooms, too.
I wasn’t going to tell you that, at first.

I was going to pretend that this trip was all
about tulips, Van Gogh Museum audio tours,
and wooden shoes. You would have believed me, too,
or acted like it, at least. But I’m tired of that.

I’m composing this letter to you in my mind
because all my notebooks have been stolen
from my bunk. It doesn’t matter. This is the only way
I can reach you anymore, anyway.

About the Poet
Ross Losapio is a graduate of the MFA program at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he served as Lead Associate Editor for Blackbird. His poetry appears in Copper Nickel, Hayden’s Ferry Review, the minnesota review, The Emerson Review, and elsewhere.

Small Pond
Look through the window.
Trees have a singular purpose
and it’s not to be beautiful
or to shed leaves, like tears,

into the pond (which knows many forms)
once more lapping against its muddy borders,
once more housing hearts, heartbeats,
heart leaks.

Yesterday, a month ago, two seasons ago, a year ago,
six-hundred full moons ago, eons ago, star-births ago,
now minus X ago—it was a solid as cinder
and the children were playing hockey—
falling, fighting, learning physical laws.
A nose bled freely onto the ice;
the reeds shivered and bowed.

Nothing is temporary; everything is forever.
Though we must forgive ourselves
for our misinterpretation of time.

At some point along liquid infinity,
our atomized hearts will coalesce again
to pass along one last throbbing missive:

submit sooner—sublimate with grace

and then break apart once more
scattering their quarks
out to the milky perimeter,
the ineffable border of the stretching plane

where they will glide across the black gulf
like pucks slapped towards the net.

About the Poet
Amir A. Tarr is completing his M.D. at University of Miami with a focus on psychiatry and gender identity. He received an M.S. in bioethics from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a B.S. in psychology from UW-Madison. His poetry and fiction has been featured or is forthcoming in Chiron Review, One Throne Magazine, Rust+Moth, The NewerYork, and elsewhere. His work in the field of medical humanities has been featured in the The American Journal of Psychiatry, Academic Psychiatry, Medical Encounter, Neurology, Psychoanalytical Perspectives, The Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, and JGIM.

Encaustic Sun
You were told it threw off threads
of flame—coronas—told it was
a roiling star, a ripe orange set to rise.
That its combustion, like your youth,
would never end.

You were shown how, at its heart,
a great store of fusion lay untouched,
the furnace of forever.
A summer’s worth of flies,
blackened swaths burning beside freeways.

Spikes of cadmium yellow,
and plates thrown to break
their china finish. Each new day
like the last, vain for an hour
beneath its fog and frost.

Place of ghosts, of the stick-hands
witches wear when they pinch
to punish children.
Small pane of glassed-in combustibles,
tar-faced grid of fir behind fir behind fir.

Where were you asked to stand
in the picture of your life?
What pose had you to hold?
Who didn’t want to?
Which one had to press a button in order to shine?

Enchanté, you said, on meeting this star
and the sun worked harder
to make you pretty.
Until the earth grew old in its orbit,
years like shells imploding.

Artillery the dirge-song,
a cold-hardened ground
where the shy star stays close
to the horizon, well-behaved
as any mercenary.

About the Poet
Judith Skillman’s new book is House of Burnt Offerings from Pleasure Boat Studio. The author of fifteen collections of poetry, her work has appeared in J Journal, Tampa Review, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, The Iowa Review, Poetry, and other journals. Awards include grants from the Academy of American Poets and Washington State Arts Commission. Skillman taught in the field of humanities for twenty-five years, and has collaboratively translated poems from Italian, Portuguese, and French. Currently she works on manuscript review. Visitwww.judithskillman.com

There Dewy Driven Zero Medium Lacuna Fantasy
by Charles Bane Jr, DeMisty D. Bellinger, Alicia Hoffman, Tom Holmes, Allan Kaplan, John Lowther and Christina Murphy

Is no nothing as I sleep inside your soul.
Sticky neck, nuzzle closer, get stickier still
I shall wear the creditors’ loathing with pride.
Time, within the white shadows floating, like delicate smoke
and in the space between
between the patio and the oak, her grief bled into a field of red poppies.
Is there an artificial sweetener that won’t damage any internal organs?

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. 

Canyon
Pop Art happened mostly in Manhattan.
A dirty hanging pillow swings from string
& holds a plum pit in its many mouths.
Nightingale sings from the lawn. Carroway
seeds in the green harbor light, the way
an eagle applies paint: with his beak
until he finishes art school, then he covers
himself in cyphers & flops around. Dig
tonality under the museum. Like the re-
contextualization of ephemera. Like the re-
configuration of magicians with pigeons
in their coat pockets. Everyone sweating
in the painting of a red candle turning blue.

About the Poet
Jim Davis is an MFA candidate at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Wisconsin Review, Seneca Review, Adirondack Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Contemporary American Voices, among many others. Jim lives, writes, and paints in Chicago, where he reads for TriQuarterly and edits North Chicago Review.

Souldrifting
Into a dry lakebed of black salt, into the dead oasis,
denuded husk, crest of dune, sand-vortex and grit,
I came to you from another place, an aged denizen, almost next door—
skin-worn and foot-fatigued, broken-hinged and hungry,
bent-backed, bow-legged, flat-footed, tired,
the standard of your presence rebuffing grains thrown by wind.
Deja-vu trickery: we’ve been here, heard that; seen this before.
I want to remember the only time this was real, a tangible togetherness,
sometimes vulture-eyed, sometimes raspy-voiced,
my snake-fangs and coyote bones sinking in a hazy ravine
just like the people of yesterday who were also me.
Moon-sputtering gloss in arid radiance, fingers curled to fist,
neither fully dead nor fully still alive,
I who am and will never be,
a quietness of lung-taking, releasing blue puffs to the natural beyond
like voices falling through to an openness of space,
hands touching spirit-vistas and the walls of eternity,
as you anticipate, soon to sleep in this place at last,
the place that holds the taproot of my life,
without me or without you and only certain-to-be.
There is no doubt you will remember how you found me here,
existing in the fear-of-death which is death;
driest reptile-skin and rattle-tail disappearing,
feet bound in gauze and linen, mouth grimaced open,
depleted essence letting me drift from that world to this,
the I who was certain would not die, the necessary birth, but no different;
so turn away from my scars and weary lines,
the woebegone hair, the lizard-tongue rough of my face,
failing eyes, bad knees, deafened ears, weakened heart;
knowing the soul’s simplicity makes a sacrament of everything else.

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 Crannog. He has poems forthcoming in The William and Mary Review, Sugar House Review, Plainsongs, Free State Review and Milkfist.

Marston Moor
The dead advance in gun-smoke
Between the grey of stars and grass
Lighting wicks of waiting cannons
Where king on white horses pass.

Men with grapeshot filled chests
Stumble without heads round the field
Not knowing the gunplay has stopped
Waiting for their orders to yield.

Men run through with swords linger
Jabbing the air with glinting steel
Beneath a rising fat and evil moon
Soldiers thinking their lives are real.

Survivors of the battle have gone mad
Watching dead friends standing tall
Now the king has lost his head to tyrants
His lifeless eyes watching heroes fall.

About the Poet
Matthew Wilson has had over 150 appearances in such places as Horror Zine, Star*Line, Spellbound, Illumen, Apokrupha Press, Gaslight Press, Sorcerers Signal and many more. He is currently editing his first novel and can be contacted on twitter @matthew94544267.