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Poetry
Hamilton Stone Review #37 Fall 2017
Roger Mitchell, Poetry Editor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Beyer
Accommodations

 

1

when they installed

the city sewer

(many suburbs

 

had formerly

been on septic tanks)

every primary school

 

boy knew someone

who knew a boy

who entered the still

 

pristine concrete mouth

near his house

and after many

 

secret tunnel miles

navigated by chance

emerged head first

 

from a manhole

in the busiest

intersection in town

 

where traffic

hurtled around him

bringing the story

 

and the imagination

it belonged to

to an end

 

 

2
in my youth

the living quarters

of the Melanesian Mission museum

 

were occupied

by a former RAF officer

and his family

 

beyond their rooms

was a room

of spears masks drums

 

and martyrs’ accoutrements

fastened to the wall

or under glass

 

in his den

in the former stable

out across the shell-strewn yard

 

the son attempted

unsuccessfully

to enamour me of the Beatles

 

his mother

sun tanned and husky

as only English women can be

 

walked heedlessly among us

in  a yellow bikini

and gold chain

 

 

3

at Suva

after an all night

windowless bus ride

 

we were billeted

in the house

of an island trader

 

whose son

a school mate of ours

later became a government minister

 

for entertainment

we were shown

The Ship that Died of Shame

 

black and white

flickery sixteen-mil

more disturbing without my glasses

 

and during a future coup

that nice boy

when I knew him

 

was rumoured

to have absconded with funds

to live in exile

 

unlike the rest of us

who were never

in such harm’s way


4

vapour plumed

when the bung was pulled

from a Suzy

 

also known

as a Peter or Rigger

or banal Half G

 

kept cool all morning

insulated in newspaper

buried in the wool

 

the Aussie foreman

joined us for one

and Gordon

 

brought over bread

slab bacon

raw garlic cloves

 

hot roast potatoes

suborned by stealth

from the oven

 

upstairs

in the mutton

canteen

 

a dog’s breakfast

the stockyards

Saturday lunch


5

the hut book

in the orange hut

high in the bush

 

enumerated rat sightings

lightning

firewood supplies

 

there were places

white men weren’t welcome

carrying arms

 

the rivers’ long

drawstrings

pleated hills around them

 

distributing gravel

that cut boot leather

on crossings

 

a handful of tea

dropped in the swirling billy

some tapped

 

with the back of a knife

or stirred

with a manuka sprig

 

dipped a mug or lidless can

blew steam

and tasted mountains

 

6

tobacco breath

face to face

inside the black van

 

our transport

door to door

to the off-season Mill

 

men came and went

as if their purposes

were self-determined

 

we fitter’s mates

assisted the fitters

in their inactivity

 

at lunchtimes

we swam

in the swift river

 

residue

clouding the current

from our naked hides

 

there were hours

after-hours

of supine sun

 

but nothing to rest

or take

refreshment from


7

during my three years’

country service

the rent

 

on our school house

increased from 50 cents

to $1.50 a week

 

so there were howls

of execration

aimed at the Department

 

I was 25

at the start

and 28 at the end

 

I was supposed to be

teaching but learnt

more in that time

 

than a swell private

college then university

had instilled

 

I met one of my

students recently

who wanted to hug me

 

an acknowledgement

that we were once

both young

 

 

8

mowing his lawn

clad only

in minuscule shorts

 

our former colleague

married again

at 81

 

preoccupies

dog walkers

and bicyclists

 

he is still in love

with the face

of a woman

 

in a painting

in Austria

centuries old

 

emblematic

of his faith

in art

 

not so much

above all things

but as part

 

of all things

(which position

is not wrong)


9

in the flat

in London

the landlady called

 

on rent days

puffing up the stairs

accompanied

 

by two leashed pugs

referred to

as The Boys

 

who sat bug-eyed

and stertorous

while she was plied

 

with sherry and

a discreet envelope

almost as if the arrangement

 

was somehow risqué

like alluding

to knickers

 

or noticing

too obviously

the neighbours’ fivers

 

adding

to the strain

on her bodice

 

 

 

 

Years

 

eventually my status at the respiratory clinic

was modified from Immediate to Routine

after a blip on an x-ray

fluttered the family dovecote

and my doctor had solemnly shaken my hand

aware in advance I suppose

that any reprieve is merely a postponement

 

approaching the biblical span and having

(I hope) completed my salaried usefulness

I am closer to the end than to the starting point

which paradoxically seems

more vivid and more relevant by the hour

the invisible border between

what I am and what I am to become

 

sometimes when I see the teenage girl with cancer

who lives in our street

hobbling skinny as a hair trigger

out to the van that takes her on limited excursions

I think about these years and how we can’t

however much we might wish to

gift them to one another

 

 

 

 

Don Brandis
Reviewing Mt. Wallace

 

He’s lying on his back on his stone bed
paunch prominent, holding an empty whiskey glass
on his chest, snoring through pooched lips
a great poet of stony heart and solitude

he’s actually three mountains
a literalist objection he’d dismiss
he’s dreaming of blackbirds
in full color, in all colors
cancelling each other into perfect blackness
the emptiness of all-presence.
He smiles in the big sleep
as a thick cloud of self-vindication
erasing all those golden coaches.

Though silence is the ultimate of song
despite himself he’ll sometimes stroll
among us with his loose-strung blue guitar
to sing what can be sung; the blues we are.

A poem is a moonstone, he says
(or it may have been the blackbird)
not as we are, but for itself alone.

 

 

 

 

Thoreau’s Work

 

I don’t do quiet desperation
he said when he moved into a cabin
that had built itself for him
on a wooded pond a comfortable walk from Concord
he’d helped a little

at night he pulled in the pond and the trees
the sky with its many eyelets, the warm hills
and wrapped them around him like blankets
sensing otherwise they’d walk away overnight
and leave him with the Nothing

in the morning he spread them out again
in their accustomed places
sometimes he’d amuse himself and misplace them
the woods above and the sky below
laughing, they’d right themselves

he’d go for long walks in the woods
when he returned he’d sometimes find
his journal on its own had filled page after page with poetic silliness
which he would patiently edit until it was semi-intelligible
as close to truth as it allowed him

when he died the trees resumed their night walks
the sky and the pond would trade places, and sometimes
in the morning, in his memory, they’d stay that way
unless somebody noticed

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kevin Casey
Ironbound Pond, Somerset County

The air turns dank and heavy

once the last notes of dusk’s brief elegy

are played, and we row

through the growing stillness,

then finally come aground.

 

Pulling our boat behind us

far onto the beach,

we share a great pity

for every ounce of its weight

it now must bear, its hull

 

sighing against the sand

as we plant our feet on the shore again,

the firmness of the earth

a burden, a disappointment

like the sorrow of waking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Patrick Connelly
How You Tried to Come Out

 

I didn’t know where you were
            when we changed into costume

 

together in the room beneath the school stage,
            didn’t notice the ease with which you

 

put on those silly tights or sat without a snicker
            while the make-up artist applied blush

 

before each performance, didn’t give a thought
            to the way you stared at Alice or the Mock Turtle.         .

 

Nor did I see the crayfish clawing silt,
            molting in the very streambeds where we fished –

 

a cloud of settlings unfolding in the churn
            amid the tangles of pickerel weed,

 

in this ritual masquerade that is age-old and silent
            as starting a fire. There is no noticing –

 

only slow movements hidden, climbing from the copper shell
            left to rot among the fish bones.

 

While you dreamed, your arms and legs would bend and wind.
            How you squirmed to live your truth.

 

In those many nights turning into dawn, you rose from sleep
            and stood with arms outstretched,

 

as dust settled in columns of morning light –
            slowly, like silt billowing in the rippled brilliance of a stream –

 

and with clean hands bent down to the bed to brush away
            (but instead climbed into yet again and again) your curled shell.

 

 

 

 

Editing Genomes

 

If I could pick a genome

to sequence and edit,

watermelon’d be the one.

I’d tinker with its genes

to reshape the seeds

and make them so aerodynamic

that it’d be possible

to spit the slippery black pits

a country mile. Win blue ribbons

at county fairs and church picnics.

 

I’d make a variety of watermelon

with a husk like a coconut

and three carpels at one end

for puncturing holes to suck out

with long straws the pink watermelon milk.

Another lineage would have a port

like a placenta so mothers

could connect themselves

with flexible tubing and grow

in the watermelons their embryos –

the rind offering fine protection

for a baby, the whole melon

easy enough to slip over the belly

and under a tee-shirt when going out,

though just as easy to put down

by the side of the bed to make

for comfortable sleeping while pregnant.

 

A special pedigree would house

within the red melon-flesh,

a symbiotic strain of bacteria

that generates helium. Kids

would look out from car windows

while passing watermelon farms

to see in the blue sky

hundreds of balloons

with alternating pale lime

and forest green stripes

bobbing high above the field

though tethered to earth

by the fibrous vines. They'd gasp

as one melon breaks free

in the wind and soars higher,

crane their necks

to look out the rear window,

shade their eyes from the sun

with their hands, and watch

as the green speck grows smaller

and smaller until it appears black

like a seed spit into the eye of God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tesa Blue Flores
“love you” said waiting for the uptown a

 

when the world churns and burns/

the streets of the city move in time lapse video, i remain still.

a constant swirl of color and heartbreak

1. just the unorganized files of my flashbulb memories

 

will you be my someone to hold on to…

 

will you let me hold your one hand with both of mine

will you love me beyond time, beyond space or the moment to moment

will you keep me around

will you

please

please help me

 

the stars burn out and falter,

limp spaghetti.

you beautiful man,

i stay in awe of you.

 

never felt so curious about the end,

don’t want one at all.

 

1. promise me one thing,

think before you move.

with purpose - if you lose me you won’t get me back.

 

 

 

 

the one that got away

 

In a different world you are the alcohol-soaked writer

at two in the morning, nighttime

you write a poem but it annoys you, it isn’t everything at the same time.

You write a poem but it isn't good enough for you, up to the standard, breaking the precedent,

so you’ve got to toss it out.

It bothers you, the words staring back at you expecting things.

 

but afterwards you lose yourself re-writing it.

Suddenly you see the beauty and the grace, in those jagged words.

You find the words that you used for the poem

scampering all over your brain but they’re in the wrong order.

You keep writing but none of it is

it.

 

It wants to be written

it find its way back but it doesn’t want you, it is floating around provocatively waiting to grace a new poet with the masterpiece, with the words that turn stoic men love sick.

You can’t get it back.

The words flit around the world, touching everyone but they elude you,

now.

 

 

 

 

questions to get me through 3 PM

 

why does oatmeal taste this way?

isn’t it a great idea to make oatmeal with coffee instead of water?

(2 birds, 1 stone, kill the hunger, erase the exhaustion)

why do I always eat calamari even if I don’t actually like it?

why do people buy $6 coffee?

why is there a gift shop in the 9/11 museum?

why are all my gifts double edged swords?

why is loving people so exhausting?

do you think charles bukowski would like me?

do you think he’d come to church with me?

ha

do you think I could get Emily Dickinson to go to brunch with me? a double date?

you think she’d hold my hand and wear orange as we strut down 5th avenue?

do you think everyone plays games always?

why do the people who believe in love at first sight believe in it?

do you think i hate online dating because i love old hollywood movies?

how come people always want to chat about if i'm maybe russian, italian or jewish? the middle    east?  do I love mexico so much because it isn’t that real to me?

cause I can’t go and live there or because it’s not the united states, that i’ve known so       personally for so long?

why did marc anthony and jennifer lopez break up? angelina and brad? mom and dad?

how come everyone stops loving each other sooner or later?

does everything have an expiration date like that?

who are the people who buy agent provocateur lingerie?

who are the people who voted for donald trump?

who are the students who went missing in mexico?

who is the porn star who my boyfriend told me I looked like?

why do you love the people you love?

could you make it into a poem? could you really capture it?

is that a good valentines day present?

do you think i’ll spend valentines with the boy I have a crush on?

or at the applejack diner at three in the morning?

what is god's love life like? or do you think he's focusing on his career right now?

I hope he’s focused.

how do reality stars not hate everything and run away?

isn’t it nice to go into macy's and spray your favorite perfume before you go on a date?

isn’t that a good moment?

isn’t it nice to have your man make you tea while you sit out the window in his shirt?

isn't it strange to be wondering about jumping when you yourself know you love life?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jack Freeman
Kansa, let this cup pass from me

                       

                        i. the namesake of “Kansas”

                        ii. in memory of the antifascist poet César Vallejo

 

One

 

Look here—

it wasn’t I who wrote

‘Beware of the Republic’

with a ballpoint on the

bathroom wall, but I admit

to one crime: in February

I dropped a lit zippo in a puddle

of unleaded gasoline south of town,

posting a picture online with a half-

finished poem with only one line:

    Again the sweetness of a wasp sting.

My fire seared the sun red. At night

I lay in a truck bed and sang to

the pink moon and drank cupfuls

of sulfuric rain. Later, windfarms

sprang up from the ashes, invisible

but for a patchwork on doppler radar.

 

 

Two

 

What’s unassailable on

the plains: sunlight, virtue,

petroleum. Don’t question

camo pantaloons tucked

in canvas hightops, or

the relativity of time. Only

religion. Then we’ll bottle

air to breathe in twenty years,

and we’ll live on Mars, away

from the black dust storms

of nineteen twenty-three;

and the blind man who

crossed the street without

looking; and the rain,

the rain, the rain.

 

Three

 

Forgive me for my morbidity.

Things are good, really, but

for demagoguery. And

the shirtless discomfort of

coffee in excess. And, really,

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,

which coats October in halftone.

Then there’s the man in a violet beret

who circles the intersection and opens

and closes his cellar door repeatedly.

I don’t mean to be suspicious,

but the way things are: that airplanes

scratch exes in the sky, and

carpenters carve pyramids in shingles.

That somehow a child saw me

through a school bus window.

 

 

Four

 

The way things are:

a ceramic bird of paradise rises

from the garden bed next door                   

and disappears in cirrus clouds.

It’ll shatter in the stratosphere.

Its shards will land among cattle

and make the front page of a

county paper’s final issue.

Legend will tell of the day the sky

splintered— when the ground

no longer reciprocated grace—

when the sun forgave blasphemy

by quietly boiling the sea.

 

 

Five

                                                                 

The difficulty is to compose

    with joy. Now the air’s cold

and drips under my sweater collar.

    A paperback tucked beneath

my unmade belt.  I have no ambition,

    my hand writes unknowingly.

“Poverty awaits,” I say to contrails

    and the RV on fire down the street.

 

 

 

 

Tablet of Santiago

 

O God, forgive me—

     I stole the sun

from the men

     of the city &

sowed its roots

     in the soil of

the mountainside.

     Speak to me with

the wired throats

     of antennae,

in doorways

     without doors, &

old cabs up on blocks,

     & an internet café

left vacant after

     the quake. Forgive me

for my anger. A soldier   

     stole the body of

my DSLR, but left me

     the lens. I tried

to barter, but he

     vanished. The heat

here leaves me dumb

     except my fingers,

deaf except my eyes,

     & afraid but for

my legs. Forgive

     me, O God— I left

my chastity in

     an abandoned

house. The air was

     damp with palmettos.

Here the other trees

     have no leaves—

only green twigs

     thick with sap.

O God, my breath

     mists out into

the dry cantina.

     My hair grows

long & knotted.

     & the silence

stains my prayer

     rug. Despite this,

I found my lover

     on the lake bottom

& the nighttime

     cold condensed

my indecision

     in a cloud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christien Gholson
Two sections from “The Close Dark”

11. The One Who Prays Night Night

Wind across the mesa, through bare cottonwoods

that follow the river below; sends leftover snow-dust

 

over the cliff-edge, adjusts a hawk's tail - east, west -

hung in the aerie. Wind pulls blood from the sun, forces

 

my eyes closed. And I saw them both - one east, one west.

To the west, the one whose bones are blades, her body

 

the gate to night, her face all mouth, black circle of black

teeth, grey skin flaking off, falling into this world, become

 

a bullet in the heart, a worm in the rose, a fish floating

belly up, a dead child eating flies. She is the one who turns

 

away, the one who prays Night Night, the one who prays ice

and mold, hallelujah; she is the one who hides behind

 

the bathroom door, chases me into the closet, plays hide

and seek with my fear; the one who moans over an empty bottle

 

in the desert, words conjuring no-water, a drowning wave

of no-water, night-teeth devouring the heart, me crying please

 

touch me, please don't…

 

 

12. The Mother of the Pleiades

 

And to the east, the one who is the mother of the Pleiades,

the one who spins the spectrum around the moon before

 

a heavy snow, opened her robe to show a night of stars,

hideous whirling creatures of light, alive, furnace mouths

 

calling to one another across the waste places, radioactive

charnel grounds, and I saw her hands weave the space

 

between them, gather the lonely into a chorus of fire, light

that burned fear from my eyes; weaving the space between

 

apple branch and the dark star-cluster of seeds at the end

of the fennel stalk, from falling snow to coyote prints in snow.

 

An owl sailed the tree canopy of her body, silent, silencing

everything below. Three drops of blood against the white, soaked

 

into the earth, fed the worm wrapped around the first word.

The ancient ache again - please do, please don't - and saw them

 

both - mother of death, mother of light - hung in the sky, either

side of the winter sun; together, apart; and made no choice

 

because there was no choice to make.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stephen Gibson
Black Place II

           —after a photo of Georgia O’Keeffe in old age

 

There was disappointment remembering someone—

as if camped in Black Place under a night sky

as glittery and meaningless as sequins

on a dress once worn to a party

in New York, back in

 

the day when she, like all of her friends, would lie

about anything—not only Stieglitz’s women—

only much later to ask herself why

she ever bothered faking it then.

There was disappointment,

 

and sometimes she felt as blank as that blank sky;

that Black Place out there was inside was a given;

memory didn’t fade as one aged, it lied.

There was disappointment.

 

 

 

 

Memento Mori

 

In the bathroom,

an old red lipstick smudge on tissue

in the bathroom

wastebasket reminded me you

were dead, not in another room,

which I forgot, until that clue

in the bathroom.

 

 

 

 

Formal Portrait of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg Museum

 

Göring stares at us. It’s hot. Summer.

The future (not the one he dreamt of often):

guys wearing shorts (not like early Führer—

in Tommy Bahama—not lederhosen).

Göring stares at us. It’s hot. Summer.

Her Gucci knockoff is made in China.

Göring stares—no tanks, tank tops. Summer—

the future dreamt of—often—not that one.

 

 

 

 

1931 Anti-War Poster at the Japan Art Deco Exhibit in Delray Beach

 

A chorus line of showgirls in oversized top hats

kicks their heels high in the air to show satin

crotches, which the viewer has to look at—

you’d think this was advertising fun,

but the writing says the Diet

 

should be dissolved; it’s a poster in opposition

to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria that

will lead to complete militarization,

Pearl Harbor, the Manhattan

Project, the chorus line

 

of politician following politician who argue for Fat

Man being dropped after Little Boy when

they’d already exploded “Gadget”—

a chorus—a straight line.

 

 

 

 

 

 

J.M. Hall
Overcoming Metaphysical Impossibility (Both Being and Not Being There)

 

The newer York’s so big

that joshua’s in its limits

 

while waiting on a train

platform promising

 

to take him there.  Pays

its taxes, teaches wards

 

of state, yet speaks

of “going to”

 

that city of too

too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

stone hedra

Rain’s Ethnography, an excerpt

 

A few years of this relentless lyricism and my roots
have begun to rot. This cloud of a culture, wet minds
cling, damp nylon on a day when rain threatens.
Wavy longing, silk parentheses of desire, scarves

limply billow in winds born of collective sighs. Clouds
and their poets blindly follow temperature gradients, flee
along windy horizons. Watery writers seek that perfect
moment, words (small earthy particulates) dusting

 

the belly of the cloud, that moment when wet
becomes rain, falls out, fat-mouth roundness of the pulled-out noooo.
It is then, just before Rain's poets fall, reaching back to the cloud,
all of them caught in the lyric mirror silvered

 

with Romanticism’s need for 17th Century Substance.
Rain’s poets mistake dust motes for earth,
see themselves as winged harbingers of clear thinking,
solid metaphor. Me, I find myself longing for a good swift river,

 

or perhaps the bitter sea, but mostly it’s the dark coursing
of groundwater I seek, its relation to porous rock;
the recognition that dust remains a speck, not a mountain,
or even more simply, what I’d like, raindrop's mirrored world

 

reflecting something other than what they want me to be.
Almost certainly, metaphysically-speaking, a waste of time.

 

 

 

 

pebble, Jericho Beach

 

What is Jericho but the beached particulate originating in the destruction of rocky masses?

 

This pebble, a history, yes, and a story, but no animal passions, no teleologies.

 

Sand grains and their indeterminacies irritate animal creases; pebbles hidden, hurt feet, break small bones.

 

It's hard to find pebbles here, unless you go to the gravel paths. This is where the City trucks in specimens―without attaching provenance.

 

To receive a reply from the sands would inundate us with fragmented lithic narratives (all echoing representations, the mimesis of tectonic forces) existential despair surrounding weather.

 

The city: fringe of tall buildings on the north shore; housing, crew-cut and bleached, up the broad forehead of the hill; dark tufts running over the crown.

 

Knowing this pebble's story equals knowing home; knowing these sands' many stories equals many things, none of which can be called morally coherent. None of it provides the rapture of closure.

 

This grey one, with a green stripe, will reside temporarily in a bowl of other pebbles. When I die, I will go with them, slack-mouthed, back to the slow stone grind of inanimate unfolding.

 

 

 

 

weather patterns, Lower Mainland

 

Driving north searching for solace, words
sliding on light, breaking on shadow,
cracking wide where the hooked feet
of individual letters elide into lyric,
& that place on the road
where the mud-flats are barred
by bird shadows; a mouse-hunting hawk,
its curved dark, alien ship, luminescent sea.

Through the tunnel, and the sky.
A post-lyrical melancholy,
petulant rain hung up on the lip of the valley,
as if water billowed into the northern rock
of Sturm und Drang. What happens next,
the bass blow of a semi, sweet tenor
of tire's asphalt hum. A flash of my hat
in the mirrored windows of the next lane's Camaro,
wavering image holding a parallel universe on this road,
still for such a short time that I don't know
for sure if I was ever there.

 

Into the oncoming storm of home and requirements,
the increasingly common
winter lightning of the post-human, cultural bones
that heal subtly out of line, and require
of the body new movement: attention
to the spot where foot steps, and steps, and

each finespun self, of all the body's momentary
characters, movement patterns that come with paths
red-tailed and repeated. This i-am (and that)
found in the field of energy that resolves into lightning strikes,
a strike-spot that allows perception to read
back along the white trail to a red-blossomed sprite
and say “see, there. there I am.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Jones

The Bahamas

 

I’d like to go to the Bahamas,

island of spies and double agents,

where women are more dangerous than sharks,

and wearing the tuxedo I got married in

I could walk into a posh casino

and risk gambling away in one night

everything I’ve loved in life.

Turns out, my son has gone before me,

flying through the Bermuda Triangle

to build houses for the dying

in an AIDS hospice.

When he was there, all he did

was work—hammer, nail, and paint.

It was hot by day and he’d drink

bottles of water rather than chilled martinis,

and at night, instead of turning a key

and racing an Aston Martin

beneath tall palm trees by the sea,

he’d sit by patients’ beds and listen

to the story of their lives,

which my son tells me are mythic

sagas of love and courage told by

“the happiest people” he’s ever met.

My son says All Saints Camp

had once been a leper colony

where the lost waited for Jesus

to come and heal them. Tonight,

sitting under the red umbrella

on our back porch in suburban Illinois

beneath a full moon and summer stars,

sipping wine in good health

and listening to my strong son

tell me about his trip and what it meant,

I would like to thank those kind souls

eaten away by disease and time,

the dying young and old

who took my son’s hand

and in prayer and thanksgiving

told him everything.

 

 

 

 

Quixotic

 

In a silk-lined tweed suitcase

trimmed in black leather

and secured with straps and buckles,

I pack my necessaries: a pearl-handled razor

and my father’s tortoise-shell mirror,

a leather flask and onyx field glasses.

My wife reminds me not to forget a toothbrush,

my pills, some cash and cell phone,

even though she knows all I require

are a few thin books, starched shirts,

greatcoat, straw hat, and passport.

I’ve always taken only what I need— 

a pen and a box of linen stationary

to send word from Madagascar or Tibet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael Lauchlan

Myth

 

We come from elsewhere and live here

at the end of a block of bungalows

in a flagging empire’s minor outpost,

 

A word lurches into town, gets

its flight-lust under our skin

 

but remains lodged in a line,

blocked like letterpress type

 

in case we need it. We don’t

until what rises off a river

 

evokes the face of a child

about to attempt a song, a dismount,

 

the steal of second base--

and we unearth a name

for hours abducted from gravity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irene Mitchell
Passersby

 

The head turns left a bit as though to spot the bird now

calling on the sixteenth day of the sixteenth year

of the millennium, marking her temporary departure from the fray.

 

At first, noiseless and unnoticed she went and still is glad

to be gone except for occasional hunger and the momentary

desire to walk the usual pathways with Joe.

 

All necessary hurdles, as Tess called them, were not worth

the parchment they were written on when the noon siren

sounded in such rheumy weather.

 

When the train slows, it is obvious the conductor likes

to pronounce, “Yonkers!” 

Funny thing about architecture.

 

 

 

 

X

Today’s drama of significance is all of one color.

The lecturer sticks to the topic, which is x. Shelter

can be found in x in palest blue. Among the sharps

and monochromes, x is untouchable.

Fond memory also has a part to play, for to hold memory

that long is the cru x of happiness.

Only believe in ebb and flow as the factors

which promulgate each new vision, for visions

are the impetus for removing the bathrobe, dressing,

venturing out when the hours seem friendly.

 

It is never regrettable to be without an errand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Okaji
Letter to Schwaner from the Toad-Swallowed Moon

 

Dear Jeff: The glow here betrays our fantasies,

and between day and night and that uncertain

moment when neither holds sway, I have gained

a toehold on consequence. Who knew darkness

could shine so? Last November the surgeon

incised my belly six times but no light oozed

out and little crept in. I say little, but feel

a peculiar radiance emanating from my middle

which I can only attribute to the moon, although

the medical professionals would say it's just

gas. But what do they know of Sheng-Yu or

Li Ho, of jade wheels and spilled cups? Last

night, to honor our marching sisters, I looked

to the cloud-filled sky and toasted them and

our ancestors, the poets and scapegoats, friends,

allies, compatriots, Five White and Jackboy,

shedding a solitary tear of joy in the process.

We won't label the other tears, but I shudder

at our country's current course and how the

bulging wallets of the rich continue swelling

at the expense of the poor and unhealthy,

the elderly, the unacknowledged, and those

living on the fringes, in colored shadows.

If we meet in person on some desolate, moon-

free road in a country that could never be,

how will I know you but from the ghosts and

smiles sparkling in the surrounding fog,

and the little voices singing their sad tune

of happiness into the night. This is where

we stand today, but tomorrow? Look for me

on that bench. I'll be the full-bellied fellow,

the one with an eclipse leaking from his shirt

in a six-point pattern, two glasses in hand,

wine uncorked, ready for reptiles and politicians,

mirth and causation and good conversation

in brightness or tenebrous calm, whichever

needs replenishing more. But bring another

bottle. Or two. Talking makes me thirsty. Bob.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stan Sanvel Rubin
Number 100

 

Number 100 of the reasons

is the smell that isn’t mine

that lingers in the bedroom.

 

You have to be alert to catch it,

but it’s indelible as a stain that won’t be gone

no matter how hard you scrub.

 

There’s no chemical to use to blot it

from the air, the rug, the closet

you hung your shirts in,

 

upside down in neat rows like memories

that make sense, not these, the ones

that plague my sleep

 

as if an acid residue still lingers

and kisses my cheek when I lay

my head across the smoothly yielding pillow.

 

No need to hold the indigo silk scarf

against my face again

the way someone holds a photo

 

of something that wasn’t really there

and isn’t here now

except by this peculiar odor

 

that lasts the way a dream lasts

when you don’t want to wake up

and can’t wake up and won’t.

 

 

 

 

 

 

M.C. Rush
Isolate

 

Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do,

and sometimes it does matter what you don't do,

but only sometimes.

 

All my solicitude

was offered to frauds.

 

Since no one accepted my offer

I will live for myself

and am hardly the first to have done so.

 

What do you do with the didn't-happens?

Do the infinite mourning and the endless celebration

cancel out?

 

Whether I have been neglected or judged inadequate,

my course—not recourse!—remains the same.

 

Shall we define people by what they lack

or what they add?

 

Sometimes those who live for themselves

gift the most to the world.

 

Sometimes the world is even wise enough to take it.

 

Usually not.  Usually the unseen are unknown,

isolate neurons routed around in synaptic denial.

 

The present is the edge of a waterfall

that the past streams over into a misty future.

 

Sometimes when you're holding back

you intuit an endless replenishment.

 

A river can pass through the eye of a needle

but only slowly, slowly.

 

Many innovations look like carelessness.

 

Many juxtapositions feel like love.

 

 

 

Diversions

 

Someone says “Look.”

Someone says “Listen.”

 

Directing your attention

differently.

 

Look, you know it's not the same.

Listen, I'm not going to say it again.

 

Useless ritual

whose point's to soothe.

 

There's something wrong with you

if you find lies easier to believe than the truth.

 

We all like them better, sometimes,

but you can't just believe what you like.

 

Words worried into wards

against l’appel du vide.

 

I meet so few people,

and all of them the wrong ones.

 

Content to adorn their silence

with raucous baubles.

 

Consciousness derives poetry.

But consciousness is a poem.

 

I love the gorgon

for her irreversible effect.

 

 

 

 

Necronyms

 

The silence that isn't silence

is a cacophony of self

echoing in the cocoon.

 

All of our names for everything are wrong.

Because they're ours and all things

have better names of their own.

 

Not a rejection, just a recognition.

How better to destroy something

than by discovering its name?

 

Everything means,

though it may not mean to me.

Poetry, poverty.  Many, one.

 

How better to discover something

than by destroying its name?

Garish description of rococo perception.

 

Shy electrons,

energy, enemy,

fouled with fame.

 

 

 

 

Good Enough

 

Is good a minimum

or an abundance?

Is good at least enough?

We like good

but we love better.

Does good come

with its own name

or does it rely on us

to call it?

If it is good

is it right?

Is it all right?

Is it good enough?

Is good enough?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Claire Scott
Interview

 

my hands flutter like sparrows

could be charming on a first date

but this is an interview finally

an interview after four months

of filling out applications

for Amazon, Sweet Dreams,

Mel’s Bar, In-N-Out Burger

scooping fries for hours

carpal tunnel be damned

I seriously need this job

that pays minimum wage

demands double shifts

requires a two hour commute

I desperately need the cash

down to a box of Uncle Ben’s &

four cans of SpaghettiOs

avoiding my landlord, hiding in the closet

they can see how nervous I am

I weave my fingers together like a potholder

place them firmly on my lap

one hand floats to my cheek

scratches the scar on my neck

this will never do

I reweave them, press them on my lap

they tell me they will let me know

I already do

 

 

 

 

still life with rapist

 

he stands behind me

touching my hair

my hair in braids

with red ribbons

ribbons my mother

put in that morning

before she left

wearing her starched

housekeeping uniform

from The Lenox Hotel

& her all-is-well tone

 

could be a caring

father/daughter

posing together

but my eyes too wide

my fists too knotted

knotted with

knowing what

will come

next

again

the two of us

frozen in a tableau

his hands touching me

forever

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hilary Sideris
Come Non Detto

 

We came to pay

attention to the trees.

 

A turtle crawled

for cover in clear need

 

of more than a shell.

Riding from Brooklyn

 

on the crowded LIRR,

I confessed I loved

 

living alone, soon as

I said it, took it back,

 

as if not said. A crow

comes close, blue-black,

 

even its beak, pure

gloss on twisted Fire

 

Island pine & no such

thing as unsaying. 

 

 

 

 

Anima Mia

 

Does it have to mean

your soul mating with

mine when you mansplain

 

why the sponge smells,

how to fill the macchinetta

del caffe (no water above

 

the valve!) & twist it tight

so it won’t sing. I’ve got

my listening face on,

 

comprehend the vowel you

tether to the end of every

word because your mouth

 

can’t not. Insomma,

we end up in this kitchen,

where our mothers still

 

tell us how much the meals

we cook would cost

if we ate out.

 

 

 

 

Common Law

 

We make a pact,

let our toenails go,

wheeze, hack

 

in prewar radiator

heat. Some nights

you slip from sleep,

 

click the door shut

in closed caption,

nod at your screen.

 

By turns we look

away, glasses half

full, yours of blood

 

orange gelato,

mine of critter

chardonnay.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Sloan

Saying No to Golf

Golf courses live in a state of constant befuddlement
which is why I choose to stay away from them.
Trees argue it’s best to plant your feet, if you have feet,

so when deer pass through they will say “These guys

know their own minds and we respect that”—

but clouds think outside the box, scoff at stay-at-home types.

 

Trapped in the middle are these dimpled white balls

shooting into the sky but then losing their nerve,

changing their minds, looking to go underground.   

 

Whitman rode on the top of a bus going down Broadway,

wind buffeting his white hair, while Thoreau holed up

back in the trees. As far as I know neither ever played golf.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lynn Strongin
Crawl Space

            Room only for me & a cut out window on top for the stars.

Twists the spine a bit

But magic is the core of it.

Like the kiln down our street            that fiery cauldron which bakes things

Burning glaze & color in.

The little landscapes are a separate department:

            Buttons, collars, wallpaper

Saturated with the color which miniatures can possess.

Yes. Yes. Out of the crawl space I climb in the morning

Bones deformed by sleep

Mind bent in all directions

The main one

The refreshed language of longing.

 

 

 

 

Freedom to Float & Fly

                        The ghost of my cousin’s dead child

Floats above my head. I reach up to touch his cheek

Brush back his towhead bangs.

            He is become so thin:

“it was a very nice funeral,” said our Rumanian grandmere.

            Once again, it is autumn.

No birth without blood                        but his death, though from the blood,

Was colorless, pale.

Boxes of coffee: water towers: wallpaper museums: button collections

Are in my list to things to taste delicious as jam: I take the leftover rouge jam

Spread it on his thin lips in a perfect cupid bow.

“Magdalen with Smoking Flame” &  other luminous, incandescent paintings of La Tour

take shape & float alongside Mikey, the boy who died at fourteen.

They have a harsh beauty with cutting hedge

As he did

Wanting to keep it from all the boys

Diving in a perfect arc, even doing a flip backwards

His last autumn            it was so warm in Arizona

 

As though nothing disturbed the air

Although like the girl gazing down in candle light 

His pale thin body

Seeming thru water            floating

Was diving thru flame.

 

 

 

 

 

 

John Stupp
Choreography

 

Goons

enforcers

ballet dancers

call them what you will

to get to Wayne Gretzky on the ice

you had to pas de deux with Dave Semenko

to properly kick Ryan Giggs

you first had to curtsey in front of Roy Keane

and so on

you have to ask yourself

was it worth the examination

was it worth

a stick blade between the legs

or a studs up tackle

followed by a bouquet of forget-me-nots

and a get well card

to come face to face with God

or was it unacceptable

like when

Tony Zale was cast as himself

in the MGM movie Somebody Up There Likes Me

the story of the boxer Rocky Graziano

played by Paul Newman

old blue eyes thought he’d rough up Mr. Zale in rehearsal

the first time they met face to face

in front of the cast and crew

that’s when Tony knocked him out

I don’t mind waltzing a bit

but I had to show I’m the boss

said the former middleweight champ

picking Paul’s teeth out of his glove

before he was fired

the production was set back a week

according to the papers

as usual

the dancer got the blame

someone else the glory

 

 

 

 

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

 

After the election

I went to church and prayed to Elvis

I didn’t want to run afoul of the Commandments

this close to the apocalypse

it had to be legal

therefore I prayed to Elvis man to man

straight up

listen E

I said

oh priest of rhinestone jumpsuits

oh indiscriminate drug gobbler

oh impersonator of yourself

come down from your father Tom Parker in heaven and deliver us

from King Donald the First

and his money changers

show us where we done wrong

tell us are we going to hell

and how much does it cost to get there

and is it still like Vegas

with the mob

and the Teamsters Pension Fund

we need to know

anyway E

now the choir is singing

like you at the piano that last day

remember

before you pulled a Lenny Bruce on the toilet

while memorizing the Shroud of Turin

which as a matter of fact

still looks like you the Pope said

with sunglasses

and some stranger’s mouth

that Melancholy marked for her own

 

 

 

 

 

Aden Thomas

Lilacs

 

When I think of you,

I think of lilacs,

that subtle shade of

          lavender,

and the purple bough

 

I picked for you

the day we walked through the park

holding hands in secret.

Only the

          trees

could see.

 

I kissed your forehead.

Your hair smelled more like

          lilacs,

and later that day when you pressed them

into a book of poems by Neruda

 

I remembered the clouds,

blending in a different hue,

          billowing

like a sky

full and full of lilac blue.

 

 

Flood

 

You stood for me out in the rain.

You waited so long the grass beneath your feet

filled with water, your boots

filled with water, and then your veins.

 

You waited as the waters floated cars

and the roads and mailboxes disappeared.

You waited because I said we’d be together,

grow old together.

 

I said all the things I knew

to keep the streets from flooding.

I meant them then,

I mean them now.

 

But who am I?

Just another man

who stayed inside,

who never learned to swim.

 

The world floods, our lives

flood, and the books all say it.

There are but few survivors

and everyone knows it.

 

You probably thought it was easy

for me to watch you outside,

knowing there was no dove,

no rainbow, no sun.  

 

 

 

What We Call It

 

A few years ago a woman from town

disappeared,

in the middle of the day,

just like the old days

when men would go

out for a pack of cigarettes

and never return again.  

 

She walked barefoot,

never looking back,

west across the sagebrush,

through the reservation,

and up into the Wind River Range.

No one has seen her since.

 

They say she starved

or was taken by a mountain lion.

Some even say she made it

all the way to Gannett Peak,

thousands and thousands of feet

up from where she started.

 

How could a woman

abandon her family like that?

That’s what everyone wanted to know.  

Only a man, irresponsible,

a dead-beat,

would go and do a thing

like that.

 

Sometimes I go outside,

look up at the stars

when I can’t sleep.

In this part of the country,

there are so few people,

no light pollution,

you can see the wild skies,

they way they were supposed to be,

unencumbered,

thousands of years ago,

the deep eternity of stars,

forever flowing like rivers,

and I know, for all of us, man

or woman,

it doesn’t matter,

 

that ancient light

is like a heart beating,

pumping the universe

through us.

We can’t continue

another moment

the way we were before.

 

Some call it wanderlust,

the inability to stay put,

the desire to run off

in any direction

just to see where things

end up. Out here

we just call it living.

 

 

 

Maybe

 

The sound of her

in the shower

is like rain

falling against the window.

 

She hums to herself.

Maybe she knows

I’m listening, maybe

she knows I’m writing

another of my hundred poems

about her.

 

And maybe there’s a moment

the humming and the rain

live inside the same song.

 

Lying still in the cool sheets,

I hear my breathing then,

as deep and slow

as a river bending itself

underground below the rocks.

 

Maybe the song finds a cavern there

where it all comes together,

the deep pools of water,

deep echoes

against soft stone.

 

Maybe the water

comes back a gentle stream

washed by the sunlight and shadows,

so cold and so pure

you could drink it

from your cupped and naked hands.

Maybe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Weaver

The Gift

 

They gave me back a house alive with hands,

saying, this was not the season

to lie down inside your bones, to feign sleep.

Your father’s pictures in the family album

have healed with his absence; my heart

pushes blood through new veins, pulls light

 

through filtered air. I turn off the house lights

to sit in the familiar dark. It’s another season

that might last hours or years. I have to hand it

to them; they could have hidden the scarred heart

in numbness, or kept it in the back of an album.

But they left it for all to see, asleep

 

in the wall of my chest. When I wake

sleep sings through my veins. My hands

explore purple seams for cracks of light

just as they search the family album,

arranging and rearranging the fading seasons.

The house ticks ceaselessly. Winding its heart

 

each day, I can only think of my own heart

when the ticking ceased, and albums

of pain opened my chest, a hundred hands

shaking the body back from broken sleep.

I saw my father above me in hospital lights,

a colorless blood descending, waiting for the season

 

to change. He rests in the company of seasons.

I wanted to ask him if the hand that took his heart

had taken other pictures, and whether the light

would help close my chest. The stitches sleep

like pairs of folded hands.

I have no choice except to open the album

 

and look there for you, Father. You’ve made the album

a house where the walls whisper, sleep, sleep.

A fat worm eating at the center of a bound heart.

My purple scar glows, baffled in the dark season

of seasons, casting light where there is no light.

In the narrow hall you hear the clock’s hands

 

turning the album pages slowly towards sleep.

Your hands have become translucent seasons

of light falling through an open heart.

 

 

 

 

Lost Discourse from a Bathtub

 

You must remember, my young friend, these stars above

are scheming bastards; even now we are their free slaves.

 

Even now they are watching us. They have designs

for what we believe to be our lives. That is why

 

we call them constellations. We are set upon by stars.

Their lights are our conjunctions to serve out.

 

Never doubt they are not constantly elated

over our misfortunes. If one should extinguish itself

 

right here where I sit comfortably, I wouldn’t be amazed.

Who am I to stand in the way of supreme accidents.

 

I appreciate celestial mischief and maneuverings

at anyone’s expense. Someday you might repeat

 

those very words; that too I would call accidental,

provided a heavenly body hasn’t done away with my own.

 

But all the same, it wouldn’t matter. You, no doubt,

would forget in the tangled arms of a woman

 

even your adoration for me at this moment.

That likelihood is neither your fault nor mine.

 

There’s no need to protest your innocence.

It’s as fatuous and unlikely as rain rising upwards.

 

 

 

 

Snowline

 

I leave through the window

and walk toward the invisible river.

Never have I seen so thick a fall.

The prints I made have filled

so that each time I leave

there is nothing in the wind that says

all this isn’t real. All this is simply

a longing for the green pulse

beyond the old sun. I return

to the fire that licks at the flesh

of green wood and the wood hisses back.

 

 

 

 

Lamentations

 

I. Heavily bored

 

The room no paper in the bath

where many a fellow did Grace

I confess I profusely snore in,

rats having taken my gin in escrow.

I am not without a rheum of my own,

the service though no one but myself.

The padres have stuck their ecumenical

foot inside my head. It is half-soled

Christian and singing ennui, soldiers

knocking door to whore; bed springs

moaning amen after, ceremonious

without rhythm. My rats return

and offer the going rate. We haggle,

consider a loan, and idiots all wait.

 

II. Diminishing Returns

 

A sudden wind, flat back and up

he yearns from his vantage point

the slow curve of thighs and burial

mound, the star-shaped mole

of David. Quick to rise he comes

loosely up short, hears “I haven’t

seen you since the monkey died.”

A rapt eye stares back, flashes a wink.

An evening of London dry smoke and gin.

His ears prick back. The moon howls.

More horse than whore she clatters, snorts,

Sparks dancing from her painted heels.

Kindling into flame stoked.

Time enough to dance another crawl.

 

III. Earful Symmetry

 

Top hat and tails, spats

you drink your gin

through a celery stalk,

quibble the diminutive ear

of your hostess, she who

must dismay and intrepid

scatter ashes in your long wind.

They say you whisper

nothings caloric when your

slow tongue is wedged

fastidiously in her sweet ear.

Trumpets bleat against the oracular

silence. You wax ingloriously hard

until limp from prattle you withdraw

to lick fresh wounds.

 

IV. St. Vitus does the two step

 

We avoid familiar songs now no longer

elastic as once we were that Boston night.

I am tuneful for the lowdown jazz,

the requests subtle and sweet

as a gin dance hot in June, warm

throat in my hot hand. Squint dear?

You hide my shoes worn outrance

by toenails, one black, tattooed with vowels.

Fandango! My arches have fallen

no flatter than yours. Dare you

crawl youthful on my low limbs?

 

V. Verso/Recto

 

Tossed with insomnia

you turned from rough copy

always an impolitic bookworm

and fatted on what lay between.

When she closed fast the leaves

you cracked the binding.

 

VI. Yoicks

 

From the curb you dog about

crazy drunk, dei plenus and bladder

distended. You cross

and spying a bitch in heat

are off ripe to join

con anima and fuoco.

 

The morning after sobers

bloodshot and colic. As you stir

your coffee spoon rings out

like a clapper. God’s teeth!

You swallow mud unsweetened.

A voice twists its way past

the hair thickly settled in your ears.

The opacity slowly congeals.

She talks hammers and nails you.

You focus again and see only her

teeth, bawdy and whitening,

biting off words into menacing

syllables, running over and over.

You run outside to fetch the paper.

 

VII. Toto, I have a feeling

 

You have only to open the door

and snort proud at the dog

who bone in mouth enters and drools

on the carpet recently laid bare

for facile ingress, egress; or, after coffee,

shuffling your wife, marmalade

on your tie, make the usual hubbub

imperious before exiting boldly

into traffic. As you leave someone

enters. No matter checking the sheets

for sins of emission. None

too faithful staid she unfolds

linens at the drop, pants

about asthmatic. You she goads too far:

clonic pains in the thighs by night,

headache. Better you pass in turn

disguised than come away glands full.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mark Young
A line from Admiral Zheng He

 

It's crunch time at work. A

kind of panic sets in. China's

freshwater crisis, with its

polygonal shape & elastic

 

waistband, keeps contami-

nation concealed to protect

property prices. Public un-

awareness campaigns use rich

 

warm earth tones, & take an

holistic approach to making

people overlook everything.

Within which, hidden in blue,

 

are those things which must

never be known. Helmets with

an anti-bacterial fabric comfort

liner are provided as a courtesy.

 

 

 

Choose the questions that the phrases below best answer

 

I need to loose weight, do yoga to get stronger

This kind of operation causes very intense pain

All carry meaning & are used to convey both emotions & narrative
I like to talk to people at the gym

All fees must be paid in full before the course commences

A plus-sized dress on a skinny runway model
Inspired by the German & Soviet military in the '40s

The ultimate Star Wars experience

Visit the fruit ranch

Failure hazards are identified
Genealogy meat in War of 1812
Their tails can be indicators
He has seen too many burned down homes
Imperialist representations of gendered & racialized social classes