Poetry

This Isn’t Just To Say
That I have envied Dr. Williams
His indulgent wife
Who tolerates his breakfast thefts
For the sake of art.
But a suspicion creeps in
On little cat feet
That those extra trips to the grocery
And wiping the rain
From the glazed, red wheelbarrow
Make her weary
When the lights go out,
Which might explain
Why the happy genius
Who couldn’t get his own plums,
No matter how sweet and cold,
Spends evenings dancing
By himself.

About the Poet
Mitch Earleywine was born in California, grew up in Missouri, and currently teaches at the University at Albany, State University of New York. His poetry has appeared in Columbia Review and his non-fiction has been published by Oxford University, Springer, and Hogrefe.

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

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.

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. 

Debris
I still remember the days when you would soar across the open skies
Arms outstretched in the air
Ready to catch anything that would come in your way
But then one day, you didn’t catch a breeze, made a wrong turn
And winded up with handfuls of debris and disappointment
So you stopped trying
You folded yourself in
Crumbled yourself into a ball
Like an unfinished poem you’d scrunch up and toss over your shoulder
When you decide you don’t want to finish it
But darling, you’re being too hard on yourself
You aren’t allowing yourself space to make mistakes
Forcing yourself to walk when you have yet to learn to crawl
Take it easy
The world is a safe place to make mistakes
Mistakes are what make us up
So uncrumble yourself, unfold
Smoothen out your old creases and fold yourself into an origami bird instead
No matter how many times you mess up, the sun still rises again every morning to remind you that it is not the end of the world
Even though it may feel like it is sometimes
You can’t touch yesterday, so why in the world are you letting it touch you?
Tear out the pages of your old journals, and set them to flames
The past is in the past; it’s never coming back
All that’s left of the past is fading memories, lessons learnt, and pages going up into smoke
None of which can hurt you
Just take advantage of the past
Use it as your guidance
Don’t be afraid to outstretch your arms again
It’ll be alright, darling
You’re alright

About the Poet
Huda Zavery, is 16 years old, from Toronto, Ontario. She is a published poet and novelist, and her book “The Art of Letting Go” is available at Lulu.com.

Island
A lasso leaps from the ancient fisherman’s
long fingers collaring the pier post,
as the foredeck lifts him like a ballerina:
the swells stretching the sea
like worn trousers about to tear.

Night: The waves’ mob roar chases
the old poet’s ministers of body and soul
beyond the broken clam shells, rags
of seaweed: moon-shimmering wavelets
wash over his toes like petrified stones.

A yacht, partnered to a dancing buoy, wobbles
like a mime doing his coming-home-drunk—
dawn’s opening skit!

About the Poet
Allan Kaplan spends much daytime alone writing and revising, or watching endless late night movies with wife. Books: Paper Airplane (Harper & Row) Like One of Us (Untitled). Poems appeared in journals of various persuasions over the years; i.e.  Poetry, Apalachee Quarterly, Paris Review, Iowa Review, Quarterly Review of Literature, Washington Square Review, Barrow Street, Wind, Folio, Gulf Stream, Widener Review, Nimrod, MPQR and Bad Penny Review.

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.