Poetry

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.

“To Curve Nothing Sweeter is the Delight”: A Three-Part Meditation on Love

1.

Sleeping is reddening
evening is feeling;
in mounting feeling,
there is anticipation.

To exchange meaning
and see the difference,
a meadow is useful
more than a memory.

All the circle is thinner
and to hurry the measure
is to shine brilliantly the yellow
sand of recurrence and change.

2.

There is a surface
there is an exception,
there are tears and reestablishment
in a dividing time and every time.

Inside the between that is turning,
there is no place to hold;
to send everything away
is simpler—all room, no shadow.

The space between shows a likeness
and even claims a harmony;
all the rush is in the blood,
bargaining for a little touch.

3.

To satisfy a singularity and not be blinder,
to surrender to one another,
to succeed, to surprise no sinner,
to curve nothing sweeter is the delight.

Not to make a sound, but to suggest
a whole chance to be reasonable,
means nothing precious is excellent
except the precious, stouter symmetry.

The evening is long, and the colder
spring has sudden shadows;
lilacs are disturbed, composed—
this is a result and the rest a remainder.

Source text: This poem is composed entirely of sundry phrases from the prose poem “Roast Beef” in the FOOD section of Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein.

 

Definitions as if Poured from Time

Remembrance: The sweet smoke of déjà vu clouds.

Romance: Velocity in slow motion.

Symmetry: Moonlight coins on tranquil rivers.

Philosophy: Answers reshaping the questions.

Genesis: Space-time kisses away darkness.

Chaos: The half-life of infinity.

Dasein: Being there is having been there.

Folly: Wisdom blindfolded by love.

Melancholy: Ghosts shaping the deep blue of loss.

Solipsism: The outcome of landlocked feelings.

Whimsy: A toehold in the looking glass.

Satire: Irony set to go dancing.

About the Poet
Christina Murphy’s poetry is an exploration of consciousness as subjective experience, and her poems appear in a wide range of journals and anthologies, including, PANK, Dali’s Lovechild, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, and the anthologies From the Roaring Deep: A Devotional in Honor of Poseidon and the Spirits of the Sea, The Great Gatsby Anthology, and Remaking Moby-Dick. Her work has been nominated multiples times for the Pushcart Prize and for the Best of the Net anthology.

The Ephemeral Map
When he arrived in Alaska,
before it was known as Alaska,
before it was known to live
language and stories,
rivers and lakes, and towns,
he was lost with words.

A group of fishers grumbled.
He spread his arms. In the snow he drew
with the corner of his glasses
an X. He drew between them
a circle in the air and pointed
down with his palms.

He continued from the X
a line to where he began.
He punctuated with lakes
and mountains and a forest scene.
He drew a house at the end,
and placed his palm upon his chest.

He pointed forward. He drew
in the unconnected distance
a star. He pointed to the space
between. The fisherman laughed
and piled a snow ball in the between
and rolled it all the way home.

Lesson Plan: Teaching Terroir 1638 C. E.
The first time you’re lost,
scoop a handful of earth.
Rub a smudge across your gums
and tongue. Pocket the clump.

Do this at each occurrence.
When you’re home, redistribute
the dirt along your kitchen
table in regions like a king.

Where you were lost,
press your thumb and spittle
drool into the hole.
Here, you’ll grow your grapes.

And while you cannot mold time,
though it can age, or plot
experience, you can name
your garden, and water and twist the vines.

When you bottle vinegar and wine
and offer it out for trade,
customers will learn your land
by tasting where you found your way.

About the Poet
Tom Holmes is the founding editor of Redactions: Poetry, Poetics, & Prose, and in July 2014, he also co-founded RomComPom: A Journal of Romantic Comedy Poetry. He is also author of seven collections of poetry, most recently The Cave, which won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Book Award for 2013 and was released in 2014. His writings about wine, poetry book reviews, and poetry can be found at his blog, The Line Break: http://thelinebreak.wordpress.com/.

I Guide Stevie Wonder by the Hand
I wait patiently at the corner, watching lights
I say nothing, but walk. He walks.
His hand is slim in mine, cold and dry.
He doesn’t know it, but the color collects in the bed of his fingernails:
This is where he is blackest.
I guide him around a corner
The building with cinder glass obscures what’s inside
I imagine rich people there
I say, “rich white people, but we can’t see them working.”
I nudge him a little and he steps a little higher, avoiding
Legs laying out on the sidewalk, splayed
Brown bagged bottle between them.
Beside the bakery
We smell nuts and caramel cooking
I tell him that everything is beautiful:
Cakes tiered for weddings, cookies decked out for celebrations, candies small and brown.
“Rich white people dressed in furs and cashmere, flashing bills I can’t recognize.”
I walk him further and slow my step over ice
Around dog shit
.                 His nose wrinkles
We are near the park and I angle him—
We walk across the block long park.
The grass is crunchy with winter.
In the exact middle of the park,
Stevie stops me,
We stand still and my heart feels too violent.
He says, “Listen. Just shhh.”

Play Date: Tina Turner | Janis Joplin
I painted her toenails blue
Though the bottle said “azure”
We say this word “azure” aloud
Exaggerating the ‘Z’
And share sounds that make our lips
Pucker.
I blow air on her toes
She blows air across the waves.

About the Poet
DeMisty D. Bellinger teaches creative writing at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in many places, most recently in Driftless Review and Specter Magazine. Her short-short “Tiger Free Days,” first published in WhiskeyPaper, is on the Wigleaf’s Top 50 Short Fictions of 2014. DeMisty lives in Massachusetts with her husband and twin daughters.

A Cold Draft in Summer
In our full-moon drive,
headlights focus ahead
on the warm summer highway.
Suddenly the moonbeams
hang like icicles
as we come to the only house
where snow is falling,

where the lawn is white,
the roof is buried
nearly to the chimney top.
Nothing but shadows drift
across this freezing place.

The chimney breathes not
a smoke signal or spark
to show that someone
is tending fire.

We slow down but keep idling
homeward where our porch light
burns darkness away, where window
light melts our place into summer,
where we live always near the boiling point.

But here in the sudden winter, a single puff
rises from the snowcapped chimney
as if someone has given up the ghost.

You turn your head and shiver, turn off
the air conditioner, glance back
at the snow light drifting behind us, and sigh:
Who chooses to live and die in bitter cold?
Maybe they can’t take the heat.

I break out in cold sweat.
Even ice can burn, I say,
stepping on the gas.

A Sun too High to Light the Way
In a forgotten graveyard’s fog
thick as spiderwebs,
I hear the owl’s cold call
turn to caw, a cat’s purr
turn to dirge.

Nothing flies beneath
a mask of heavy darkness.
Nothing has enough shape
to have a name,
but to the touch, hard stones
stand like broken teeth.

Like the memory of the sun,
the path beneath me disappears.
The safety of tree limbs
creaks way above my head,
strains against the fog wall.

A crow could not see his shadow here.
A man could only feel himself falling here.

Feathers and limbs settle for this ground,
bury the stone that might have named me.
Imitating light, the silk shroud ties all
the lost together.

About the Poet
Robert S. King, a native Georgian, now lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Atlanta Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published eight collections of poetry, most recently Diary of the Last Person on Earth (Sybaritic Press, 2014) and Developing a Photograph of God (Glass Lyre Press, 2014). Robert’s work has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of Net award. He is currently editor-in-chief of Kentucky Review, www.kentuckyreview.org.

The Drama Teen’s Captivity Narrative
She sits unnaturally still in the auditorium’s wood-slat chair, her back mast-straight, legs stowed like obedient spars. As the curtain rises on South Pacific she inhales, holds her breath for three full beats—the practiced pose of a daughter championing her mother’s cause. All daughters must learn to play such parts for small-town show.

See how her thumbs tap the playbill sheaf—in tandem—like oars slicing the tide, steering past faux beach scenes, past the enchanted evening’s bonfire bulbs. Soon she’ll duck into a private cove, weave fresh palm ribs into her stick map. It won’t be long now, her thatched plot to escape Potemkin Isle, the martial merriment, her mother’s command performances, nearly complete.

About the Poet
Maureen Kingston’s poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in B O D Y, Gargoyle, Gravel, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, The Screaming Sheep, So to Speak, Stoneboat, Terrain.org, and Verse Wisconsin. A few of her pieces have also been nominated for Best of the Net and Pushcart awards.

Thunder, Lightning
Thunder, lightning appear
on the sea and we slip to
Lesbos to be islanded and
enclosed.

Thunder, lightning. You roar
as I strike between your sandy
legs and we weep for the
banishment of emptiness
on the returning ship to
Athens streets.

Shall I lay my legs on
yours as we impregnate
the other eternally,
and birth from our lips
as we destroy our single
being, a crying child?

Thunder, lightning. I flash
behind your steps, unable
to describe on papyrus
the instance you slipped
into my menstrual flow
to heal small cuts and make my
heart beat longer for you
or your baths in the
sea that stirred me to compose
in the dark. Thunder

and lightning. I do not hate
men but how can I be tender
when every animal seeks out its
kind? Shall a bird love
shells or make nests for
hawks designed for doves?

Thunder, lightning are hammer
and necklace and we will never
return to any avenues but
their skies.

reprinted from Catch and Release and from The Rain, Party, and Disaster Society

About the Poet
Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of “The Chapbook “( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and “Love Poems “( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as “not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them.”  He was a nominee for Poet Laureate of Florida.”Thunder, Lightning” is the closing poem of his WIP,  “The Ends Of The Earth.”

A Trial Separation on Trial
I’m still not clear on how it happened.
Or even where.
Sure, there’s people not happy about it
but their ranks have thinned over the years.
What’s that you say?
Sorry, I can’t hear.
My ear’s in mothballs.
And please don’t scream.
You’ll wake the baby.
Of course, there is no baby.
No mother either.
I’m so alone, I could die in my pajamas,
staring into the fog of death, mistaking it for sleep.
That’s me.
Always on the cusp of life and death.
A study in Hermeneutics and predestination.
Cross my o’s, dot my t’s,
before truth and method get here.
And suddenly a phone call from out of the blue
rings like smoke spirals rising from a cigarette
Wrong number? Forgiveness?
Forgiveness but still a wrong number?
Who can bear these oblivious distances,
people standing in their bright tropical garb
while I am huddled up in the chill off my own body?
It is she, says the voice.
It is she but without the urgency.
She sounds calm as if nothing every happened.
But everything’s happened.
If not, why am I in such
advanced stages of myself?

About the Poet
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in New Plains Review, Big Muddy and Spindrift with work upcoming in South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, Sanskrit and Louisiana Literature.