Poetry

Convolitions 2
(Escapes and Attitudes)

Escape artists and
Copped attitudes

Wield forms of speech
That sound like they

Say or mean something
Worth repeating or

Unwittingly intuitive
Such as “Forgive me for

Speaking out of turn
But my bus just left

For downtown Milwaukee
And now I’m stranded

On its outskirts, no escaping.”
It’s true that I’ve since decided

To shut down feeling
In my unresponsive side

While what I think drifts
Up and away as the constant

Whiz and whir of traffic
Rushing by tears my hair,

Twists my neck, and numbs
My butt, which makes this

Fake injustice just another
Unknowable but inescapable

Attitude adjustment of
Battered body left behind.

About the Poet
Kit Wienert is a Chapel Hill poet whose latest book is Analogs of Eden. His out-of-print chapbooks include The Everywhere Province, The Love Unit, Incidental Musics and Fictions, Idylls and Admonitions, and Doctrines of the Moment. His poems and other writings have appeared in The Lampeter Muse, Credences, Tellus, The Pearl, Exquisite Corpse, Oyster Boy Review, and North Carolina Literary Review, as well as in the anthologies Sparks of Fire: William Blake in a New Age and Gathering Voices.

Forward Plain

Genesis

Begins as breath. Titter, sniffle.
The little voice. Unabridged, sans serif.

Eve

Dress it pretty, then. Skirt, bonnet.
Hushed as a comely girl.
Have her sit, play “Für Elise.”
A tidy scene, like a sentence
without vowels. Craft clarinets,
not whistles, my pet.
Music, not screaming.
Nothing is painful between the knobs,
crags of consonants.
How lovely, flutters and tumults
under an airtight veil.
The bride to be. Or,
what your bride might be.
Depending on tradition.

Gardening

Sinuous, the hours.
Differences of tree and fruit
cradle days: nervous
grenadiers without targets.
Panic greets a whoosh, another
voice, around a kindled wick.
Frenetic cull of beastly
sounds, common threads. Fuses,
not clothes. Braided
lengths of pity, like absolution.

Expulsion

The blank pages welcome
any big bang: howling, breathy
charges, or calmly packed dummies,
birthing quiet, loose anatomies.

Insulince
I hope you never come down,
from so high up on life’s stage.
The audience applauds any show
that pities sin’s lavish wages.

I hope you never come down
from what a pretty face I have,
and how I’ll just be handed
all the things you never had.

I hope you never come down,
again, long enough to feel
that piled-up need to butcher meat
until it looks the way you feel.

I hope you never come down,
so I’ll always feed you sugar,
ant-infested—plus a laugh—
for your diabetic coma.

About the Poet
David Tuvell has written poems appearing, or forthcoming, in Coe Review, Easy Street, Minetta Review, Mud Season Review, New Orleans Review, Steel Toe Review, and other publications. His Bachelor of Arts in English comes from Kennesaw State University, and he also studied substantially at the University of Florida. Outside of poetry, David’s path has been quite various, and he has made his way through things like information science, information technology, and labor.

Field of Statice
In July the bright ones come
from the ground.
Stars on rented stalks
cover strings of silver
strewn by elven-folk
who live for but a day.

Tell me any color—
sea lavender,
limonium, marsh-rosemary—
I tell you l believe
in any memory
come from water.

A sky full of foam,
a fire burning
down the hatchery,
that’s the madness of July.
Give me the herb,
the everlasting calyx.

Dry me a bouquet
and quiet the wind.
Let night put out
even the boldest blues,
the most outrageous purples
and dissolute creams.

The Jacarandas
I left them
on boulevards,
veiled figures wresting
purples from the earth,
the breeze stirring
a kind of trouble.

I left them
as I left my youth—
a memory vivid only
in dream. I left
with my fingers
crossed behind
my back, the countryside
dry and golden
or simply brown,
ready to catch fire
with the first strike
of lightning, the cigarette
thrown from an open window.

I left my inks
there as well,
and the pens. If you don’t
believe me there are stories
of other women
equally bereft.

About the Poet

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions, 2017. Came Home to Winter is forthcoming from Deerbrook Editions later this year. Her poems have appeared in journals including Poetry, FIELD, Cimarron Review, Shenandoah, and in anthologies including Nasty Women Poets, Lost Horse Press. She has been a writer in residence at the Centrum Foundation, and is the recipient of a 2017 Washington Trust GAP grant. Visit www.judithskillman.com, jkpaintings.com, https://www.facebook.com/judith.skillman

Laika the Space Dog

Alone, she entered an abyss
bejeweled with blue giant suns,
white dwarfs, black holes, quasars
and nebulae like clouds of gnats
in the deep, the clockwork spin
of galactic arms across all dreams
as Laika, the Soviet space dog
was launched into heaven
for the Motherland and reached
the tonnage of night without food
or water and died, memories stirring
of chasing fireflies through sweet grass,
her hot breath lost beyond worlds,
Earth’s scent wisped to her brain
until her last thoughts began:

Look, there’s a darkness
and the blue globe is dimming.
I wish I could take the Earth in my mouth
and run with it across the stars
where my grave is laid in a bed of stars.

Here without hares or foxes
life is bigger and blacker
than I thought it could be, my paws
like wings floating in this gray car
where I’ll die lonelier than snakes
and drown in night’s deep river,
crossing the boundaries of touch
without stone or soil to walk on.

People sent me to the forever
where no flowers open smells,
only glittering specks blossom
and sleeping I dream of dogs
running over glaciers, chewing antelope,
chasing shaggy brown beasts, their tusks
like sharpened moons—I carry
my kind’s history to the end of ends.

Howling towards shadows’ outer layers
my ghost is fleeing to the world.

Dying I will come back, Yes, I’ll taste
tender air and amber sunlight
back from immensity. I’ll climb
the rainbow’s stairs earthward
back to green shoots and streets
cobbled with hardness, back from the timeless
seabed of space to the churning ground. Back.

Poem for Bobby Fischer: 1943-2008

Nothing soothes pain like human touch—Fischer’s reported last words

The universe scrolled on, stars like spurs
in heaven and northbound geese swept
over Reykjavik where he played
C4 for the first move of game six
and where he died bearded and schizoid
as King Lear, an anti-Semite loved
by his Jewish mother. At fourteen
he was the American chess champion,
a high school dropout, and afraid
the government read his thoughts
through tooth fillings. Yet

he stood like a kraken risen
above white whales drumming in the deep,
a god rounding islands with his will
while galaxies burn and wheel
their dreaming work on his grave raging
Icelandic poppies from the earth,
the sun’s wellspring soaking glaciers,
his rooks, knights, kings and bishops dance

in memory, before we, like all
who lived, wither heroically
vulnerable in our last nights
while our tears rust into frost
and the ocean rolls over its deep bed of stones.

About the Poet

Eric Fisher Stone lives in Fort Worth, Texas where heI graduated from Texas Christian University and work at a PetSmart. He is an incoming graduate student at Iowa State University’s MFA in Writing and Environment. His poetry has appeared most recently in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Zetetic: A Record of Unusual Inquiry, Eunoia Review, New Mexico Review, Uppagus, Yellow Chair Review, Turtle Island Quarterly and Third Wednesday.

Our Dear Creatures

The morning before the first faith, light is moving pharmacologically;
you choose not to consider the furniture;
the earth gives fever to our enclosure/forgets to breathe— uneasily
the chest that expels the sparkless ruin abandons itself to visible:
we’ve found the aftertaste of condemnation pinioned
around the dripping framework of delicate and venial knives;
of our thoughts replaying a Nehru blazer in velvet paisley blue,
fitted— neck loosely collared like guilty fondness in the backyard—
you discover chicken-wire, the first thoughts of incarceration,
footprints of giants permanently cast. We grope for veins of pleasure,
blindly exchanged like last night’s eventual riches,
protected by small nests slithering across botanical sand rifts
hoping to make sex and crazy babies together but it seems we both doubt
the motility of such sounds/waiting to be plucked like strange florets;
our dear creatures retreat/to later skulk back; don’t mention the position
of earth— foreign lands may sometimes obscure your guerilla vision
removing surest eyes/ I’m a smiling hostage to my own checkered plan,
an event dismissed by the greater requirements of background love;
outside the oppression of lubricant the world runs more loudly,
unwilling to do anything more than arouse without coming any closer:
in a stillness; we struggle to subconsciously/reveal translucent fruit
and optical crown, wearing the ribald face of shredded decency,
the curl and forward bend of your intimate body harshly maintained
by rejecting the wanderings of rogue surface waves running deeply.

Velvet Wolves

Inside you are two loves—

composed of velvet wolves
and predictable visibility
sinking beyond all inclination.

In the bleak museum
hundreds of feet within you

we spend hours leaning
beneath the rockabilly shirts
and mistaken claims

the pictures you refuse to return.

This sounds like a harpsichord—
whatever it is that’s going on between us

silk and gabardine fit perfectly
the duality
of our confused history

until a polar swarm
cuts across our branch-swept path.

Love is jealous of every other creature

real or imagined,
that dares to share its name.

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, USA with his wife, Vickie and daughter, Sage. He is a three-time Pushcart, Best of the Net and Best of the Web nominee whose work has appeared in more than a thousand publications.

Tending by Succulents

Aloe, sedum, fox tail agave,
painted echeveria
and their baby-plump cheeks,
their water-storing tissues,
a hillside tutorial on thriving
sunbeam-leashed or less.
Hardihood, longevity, reaction, analysis,
I see them coat the fat like rind,
the veins a secret trailing
my lifeline and pinned thorn-point
inward. Drying out to the brink,
pushing blooms through
near loss, I will only think the name.

On a hike I never venture—
rattlers under rock—
spiny glimmer, green satin, pearly
tips, sleek skin, warm center, swollen
flesh strike love pierce my chest
like primal life and make of me
a desert.

The Overlook

Rail-side, people bend
like angle rulers to ogle
the lower-stream fish rush
and its fleet of fins
and its snippets of shimmer
baiting the river to rise
halfway and offer more,

or they scan the landscape
as if it were Atlantis
dug up and displayed
so that some eyes fill and others
fall somber. One fan twitpics it
“not a fiction, but true”
#IHeartNature.

Skyward, flocks of chatter
dive through blue
as a larger bird swallows
its distant kin,

wings, beaks, feet pushing

off canyon like fog

on a panorama settling up.

About the Poet

                                    Uncut Footage
                                      1.
                        He Lets Her In
 
            She said her name was Tracy Evidence
            but I would not believe that. I am called
            Case, Justin Case. Both of us were burdened
            with criminal misnomers. Blond as snow
            her spell dimmed the room. “Now,” she said, “convince
            me you are blood and bone. Stretch out your tall
            shape. Brush my face with your eyes.” So I turned
            my back. Kept silent. Watched a taxi’s slow
            progress through traffic. “No one’s coming, miss,
            if that’s why you’re waiting. Your cool face stalls
            time but clocks keep ticking. Something I learned
            before you were pulled out of air. You know
            my name. I’ve heard yours. Why not just commence
            your tale. Pauses bore me and I might fall
            asleep. Kiss me back to life then and return
            your gun. I smell oil. You don’t need to show
            it off. I’ll do the polite, hear your hints
            and you can trust my form. I’m no Ken doll®
            to play with. I’ll tell you if the words burn
            blue and true. Close those dark eyes. Talk. Now. Go.”
  
                                                      2.
                                    She Spells It Out
 
Her hands draw crisp minarets in the air:
 
                        I pass a fish across the sun.
                        I wait for two days, then wait one.
                        I turn my eyes from what might come
                        And I remember all you’ve done.
 
                        Now watch me scrape scales off the moon
                        Then listen closely. Hear its tune.
                        The light fades out while white sands bloom
                        And your harvest comes with dark at noon.
 
Now look: her fingers fold to sketch a square:
 
                        You’ll chase a trail of white lip gloss
                        Over unsettled, suspect sheets.
                        You will not touch the scar you’ve lost
                        Blazing a trail with white lip gloss
                        That drops from her purse. Your careless toss
                        Leads from mirrored walls to empty streets.
                        You’ll chase your tale. The bright lip gloss
                        Is settled. You’ll suspect her sheets.
 
Palm shadows shape a tree, its branches bare:
 
                        They lean and stretch their lost (slipped?) kisses. Now look—
                        Their skin takes fright and they miss
                        With eye and tongue. What’s at risk
 
                        Is this morning, as a blue evening
                        Closes, broken. Without cues
                        Songs begin for just those two,
 
                        Beyond our ears. They hide their bright silence
                        In half notes fenced by a white
                        Sheet. Over that wall, their night.
                                                        
                                            3.
                                    Elsewhere
 
                        Apostle spoons settle in red velvet.
                        Their case is open. Dust never sleeps. Clocks
                        click, stuck on a minute. A featherweight
                        page sighs, falls back into the leather book.
                        No one is in the is room, so that sunbeam
                        may not exist. A perhaps cat once preened
                        here. Stray hairs give her away. Old smoke—
                        Yesterday’s ghost—hovers. The curtain inflates
                        then drops soft against smudged glass. All the locks
                        are open. This emptiness is at rest.
           
                                                            4.
                                         Around A Corner
 
                                    Two eyes, blank as steel, shift loosely
                                    as lazy toys from a school carnival.
                                    They see nothing. They reflect less. But once,
                                    maybe an hour ago, they were alive
                                    as water, looking through a mirror to see—
                                    What? Here’s a mute witness. Your arrival
                                    is empty. Move along. There’s not a chance
                                    of recall. Some one came. They peeked, then died.
 

About the Poet
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies: Good Poems, American Places, Hunger Enough, Retail Woes and Line Drives. He has also been nominated for both Pushcart Prizes and The Best of the Net. He is the author of two full-length collections, Lent 1999 (Leaf Garden Press) and Soren Kierkegaard Witnesses an Execution (Local Gems) as well as two chapbooks, Three Visitors (Negative Capability Press) and Artifacts and Relics, (Folded Word). He has written several novels: Knight Prisoner (Vagabondage Press), The Magic War (Loose Leaves Publishing), and A Book of Lost Songs (Wild Child Publishing, forthcoming). He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster where he makes a living showing people pretty things in his city.

Martha Distress Quartet Nebraska Resist Kinship Metallurgy Seasing Shank Of Said
By Steven Alvarez, Kris Bigalk, Roger Camp, Ed Coletti, William Doreski, Lou Heron, Alec Hershman, Peter A. Manos, Daniel Lassell, Ian C Smith, and Jonathan Taylor

When we know the most is when we don’t
A melancholic outline of pale hills
This music kills flies.
Pastel cheerleaders ranting
Just another day of outrage, and the fat old white men grin around their cigars, victorious
with swirling birds girding virgin birch, flirting
horizontal frequency & vertical resonance lightening suave tonalities
Violet cries Lot at the edge of the inlet
His rocking arms besotted with pollen
All common side effects, the doctors warn.
Stick it to the moon.

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. 

This morning, the park

full of trilling bright bluebirds
empty of people;
cerulean brushstrokes flit
from tree to tree, sixteenth-notes
blooming on a staff
of a dewy cast iron fence;
silence like a gate
ajar, waiting for warm wind
to blow open shade to day.

Missing

Long gone belonging, a silver earring, loop
hooked around itself, fashioned after its twin,
or maybe before – longing so long it curved
to meet itself so the longing would stop, or be
infinite, dispersed throughout itself like blood
inside the fascia of a wire, electricity feeding
itself instead of sparking at either end.

To miss is to long too long, unbent, uncurving,
to miss is to follow the road and not stop
to consider the ocean, the dome of the sky.
To miss is to lose oneself, like a waterfall
forgets how to fall in the winter, silvered
into a mimicry of itself, a frozen forgetfulness.

About the Poet
Kris Bigalk is the author of the poetry collection, “Repeat the Flesh in Numbers” (NYQ Books).  Her work has recently appeared in the anthologies It Starts With Hope, Down to the Dark River, and The Liberal Media Made Me Do It.  She directs the creative writing program at Normandale Community College in Minnesota.

International Color Chart

“Tahitian Sunset,” The Musee d’Orsay the morning after the Millennium
When the doors opened there was no line of tourists waiting,
the same was true of the stairs inside. An empty room of
Renoirs opened on an empty room of Van Goghs opening
on an empty room of Monets. The room of Gauguins held
two guards playing hide and seek. Who says French civil
servants are rule bound, having no sense of humor?

“Bristle Grass,” Lodi Gardens, Delhi
According to the sign on the grounds of the garden
Lawns are maintained by the Archeological Survey of India.
In the background, a cow harnessed to an industrial
green lawn mower pulled it leisurely across the vista
while a sister cow followed, chewing contentedly from
the trail of clippings.

“Dove Beige,” Bharatpur National Park, India
Our young guide led us through the forest to the home
of the holy one, a shallow cave, where we found the man
draped on his bed, a doe and fawn at his feet. An orphan
that had adopted the man, this fawn now grown with a child
of her own, this scene as ordinary as the birds nesting unmolested
in the electrical wires in the hallway of our hotel back in Agra.

“Million Dollar Red,” Reference Desk, Santa Ana Public Library, California
She approached with girlish reserve, a professional
redhead soliciting information about penal code
647. Reaching for the tome, her coat spread, the
trademark thigh high boots and velvet shorts unveiled,
while her body huddled over the statues, engaged
in an act to coax intercourse from print.

About the Poet
Roger Camp lives in Seal Beach, CA where he gardens, walks the pier, plays blues piano and spends afternoons with his pal, Harry, over drinks at Nick’s on 2^nd. His work has appeared in the North American Review, Pank, Southern Poetry Review and is forthcoming in the Tampa Review and Gargoyle.