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Issue # 48 Spring 2023
Poetry
Edited by Kevin Stein
Matt Hart
Personal Poem #11"Matt, it’s Dean, I’m here!”—Dean Young
It’s 4:31PM in Westwood, and my ears
are wildly ringing on New Year’s Eve,
because I just spent the last hour
and a half listening to Dean’s last voice
message to me, which was his first
in Cincinnati, frazzled and looking
for a beer
The ringing is because I was playing it
entirely too loud through a 12” Celestion
Creamback speaker connected to a Solid State
Fender Bassman FR1000 from 1969,
the year I was born, the year Americans
first kicked up dust on the moon
to make it weirder
Dean was fourteen,
and the astronauts were adults, and
I was a baby without words, which is still
how I sometimes think of myself, even though
I’m 53 and I now know a lot of words, including
“lexical” and “aesthete” and “antithesis” and “brool”
I’m not ashamed to say I cry a lot
Apparently,
I have a new credit card offer in my email,
which I will ignore, and Rose Zinnia doesn’t
have a copy of my new book yet, which
I will attend to I never imagined
that Dean would be gone into particles
and waves just like that at the age of 67,
or that I would be writing back and forth
in the dark with Mark about poetry
and Hüsker Dü and my diabetic terror
Whatever
is going to happen is already happening
is something Ted Berrigan took from
Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysics
but how my repeating it is connected
to what came before it, or now after it, i.e.
the fact that today Mel can’t shake her dream
from last night where Bear bit her
on the finger, even though he’s our dog
and soft and has never bitten anyone,
is beyond me Suddenly
I’m also kind of excited
to be cognizant of the fact (though again
I’m not sure why it’s occurring to me this instant)
that it’s not at all improbable that the Bengals will go
to The Super Bowl for the second year in a row
Football is serious Dreams are scary or hilarious
or both Mark will no doubt think
there’s a randomness to all of this, but let’s hear it
for Joe Burrow and love Let’s remember Dean
falling into the Christmas tree last Christmas—
his last Christmas ever—at 3127 Manning Ave.
Let’s consider
this meandering recklessness
a walk in the footsteps of the giants of the art
and a description of me trying to reckon
with a ghost—his voice on a loop
getting beer like a bell This year
I won’t lose anyone
Donald Revell
The HeavensThree nights overcast consecutively, time
Enough for the star’s cold brother to come
And go, inflicting damage and belittlement,
So that tonight, Arcturus flickers in the clear sky
Dimly and without weapons. This isn’t mythology
Or some fool’s idea for a children’s book. Children
Passed out of existence some years ago one
Cloudless night into the public library, their private
Ukraine. Mythology was trampled to death
By little shoes, brown ones and white ones. And so tonight
I am shooting a glance between prayers, between two
Trees and a poet of the Great War, to what remains
Of Arcturus, guardian of the Bear, now
Defenseless. Time was, my sleep was like an arrow.
Low Barometer
After Robert Bridges
Story’s end is no part of the story—
every variable a danger, be-
ginning with X and the next color
of the night sky, the stranger’s single shoe.
Zeno’s paradox occupies a cloud.
Nevertheless, the end of the story,
the stranger’s intended target, feels no rain,
feels, in fact, nothing at all, the zero
varying my beloved horizon
with clowns and little grimaces of starlight.
The shoemaker’s woody cabinet was heaven.
How could it disappear? How could mother,
mother being an invention of the Germans
sorrowing, while down in Italy
the mother of God was burdened and bored,
disappear? Death is not a part of life.
It owns neither cloud nor the rain cloud’s
mothering astonishment. Eagles
are falling, bears are going blind. Still,
the end of the story is nowhere to be found.
Animals find their way, just as you and I
make do with this little horizon painted
over with clowns and faithless starlight.
Truth be told, we have already outlived
quite a few stars. And even if every hour
divided our lives by two, the life
remaining would begin another story,
one in which the cool, intermittent rain
falls upwards and no animal is strange.
Jeff Knorr
California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation: Dial 3 To Be Connected to A RepresentativeWhat are we but what we offer up?
--Larry Levis
I am a father lying awake at night while the stars and wind
do their work—the night sky turning me toward morning.
You have taken my son from me in a system
of lies and promises frail as dried twigs.
Don’t tell me about what he needs as you stamp
a number to him parting our family the way a plow parts soil.
I am a father who sends prayers into the night like birds.
Who wonders if his son feels something inside the way a drum
is beat because somewhere in this valley his father is
thinking of him from any one of ten thousand memories.
Don’t tell me you’re in the process of rehabilitation
when after his return to us I’m simply glad he’s still alive.
I look at photos and see how his eyes have changed
the oblivion of blown fires, of the sky at the horizon
all that is stripped and curves away.
Re-Arrest
For two days after the cops took you,
your backpack sat outside the back door.
Finally, I dragged it upstairs like the corpse
of some dead animal.
On your bed I unzipped it, pulled out
your toothbrush, deodorant, wallet,
a jangle ring of keys to slip locks.
The gun and ammo gone, I sifted through
until I found your pair of Tuff
construction gloves balled one
inside the other like a fist,
the yellow and black stinging faces like bees,
keeping your knuckles clean,
so you could land a beating
like punching out bread dough.
I slipped one on, punched
the old lath and plaster wall
of your room to a slight crack.
Peeling it off, my knuckles pink,
I closed my eyes, looked toward the sun
outside, saw my own blood, police lights,
the dim tunnel of bulbs in the cell block.
Ekphrasis of The Yard
Mule Creek State Prison, Ione, California
They are trapped in the sunlight
walking side by side around
the gray gravel track, brown
skin glistening their tattoos—
a jaguar leaping across a chest
an arc of Gothic letters
flashing MODESTO.
Just outside the frame the white
dudes gather inside the track
pitching dice in a circle
tossing them like butterflies
or a handful of salt into soup.
Past them a set of Mexicans is lined
up shooting off burpees
like a college football team.
Tucked inside the yellow line,
two CO’s in green lean into the shade
against the wall of a building as if hiding.
At the far end of the yard
against the fence two rabbits bound
toward an inmate in his blues
powdery as the sky, kneeling
offering a piece of apple from chow,
whispering prayers flittering like leaves.
Ekphrasis of Post Visit Strip Search
Why do we make a man
bend over to spread his ass
cheeks wide open as a price
for visiting his family?
The heart has been flayed open
like field dressing a mule deer,
the wound a gut shot that unzipped
the stomach for the regret to ooze out.
After hugging goodbye, watching the red
sweater of his girl and the curls
of his small boy pass through doors
slamming shut, the radiant tube lights of visiting,
sizzling the ceiling, he still needs
to bend over in front of other men,
balls hanging like fruit
to be picked or pressed.
The only thing left for the day—watching
the reflection of those two beautiful faces
who left in the dark ink-green pond of despair
to fall into for a while and drown.
Jeff Gundy
BearsAnd some folks even see the bear in me.
-Steven Fromholz, “Bears”Do you want to see bears, our host asked, and I said no at once,
I have no desire to get mauled, but the very next day we saw
a grizzly from the boat, rising up on the steep shore like
an elemental. Then we saw a black bear making its rounds
of the local cans, tipping off the lid but finding nothing tempting.
We saw two moose, mother and child, grazing in mid-river.
I will not tell more of them, or the cabin without running water
with many old sitcoms on DVD, or the cabin with the awkward
noisy staircase. I must tell how my father took it on himself to die
four days into the trip, two days after we saw him miserable
in the care home, saying Do you trust these people? and Can I please
take off this shirt? Please? We got the call as we fought a hot headwind
into South Dakota, too late to turn back, too late for everything,
and so he haunted the highway all the way to Billings, to Boise,
to Golden, haunted the mountains he never saw in his ninety years,
traveled with us like the bear bell I clipped to the day pack.
It chimed and clinked unsteadily as we trudged and clambered,
a fragile ward against danger, one that either worked or served
only to jingle us on our way. I looked for bears black and grizzled
every two to twenty minutes but never had to pull the clumsy cylinder
of bear spray from its place. Anyway I could not imagine
that I could save myself or anyone from the smallest, tamest bear
with such a flimsy ward, with no training in its use. But we heard
only the bear bell, saw only scat, and at last I knew I had not
spoken truly, I did want to see bears, I wanted to be one of those
who have seen bears and ghosts, who have the stories to tell.
The Guy with the Pumpkin on His Head
It’s cut like a helmet, this small pumpkin.
It seems to fit him well enough.
He has a black cap underneath.
Everybody on his dorm floor got a pumpkin, he explains, to carve.
It seems to fit you, I say.
It hurts, he says.
You could take it off, I say. We wouldn’t think less of you.
G. gives him her sly side-eye, saying nothing.
Her poems are full of half-spoken sorrow.
She lights up at rare intervals, grins like she understands everything,
then her mask comes down like an overhead door.
The others are quiet. For once nobody’s on their phone.
It occurs to me that we ought to get started.
The guy sits next to G., the pumpkin on his head.
He’s done about 7% of the work for my class.
I made a promise, he says, I promised I’d wear it all day.
Moriah Hampton
Half-BrotherI googled your name today.
15 years is a long time to be out of touch with family.
I scrolled the results
pausing over
a correctional supervision record
a mug shot
a cbs19.tv update
a been verified location
in that order.
So that’s what you’ve been up to—a 10-year stint in a Texas prison.
Your crime: aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Your release date: some time last year.
I wish Texas would ban open carry.
I wish you didn’t suffer from Gulf War syndrome.
I wish your girlfriend who you really loved never died.
I wish you weren’t an outcast in high school.
I wish you hadn’t got hooked on drugs.
I wish our dad never hit you.
I wish you weren’t the “runt” of the pack growing up.
I wish criminality didn’t run in our family.
But more than anything I wish
I could see you smile like
that time your little brother and I visited.
We stood in a circle
slipping into easy talk
the way siblings do when they
feel loved just standing beside each other.
You cracked jokes about the artillery
units suburban moms drove those days.
And we stood in a circle.
You corrected our version of how
many flips you turned when struck by a van as a child.
And we stood in a circle.
You reminded us why you liked ZZ Top so much.
And we stood in a circle.
Your voice cracked
my feet grew heavy as cinderblocks
as you collected yourself.
You looked at me, smiling
your eyes bright.
I ignored the light overhead
believing it was because I
refused to leave.
Claire Keyes
Not Wanted1.
Why don’t the citizens want the terrorist buried
in their city? At whom is his assault rifle aimed now?
Hasn’t he disgraced his family enough?
Now they can’t even bury his dead body?
2.
Will his evil spirit roam into bedrooms
and attics of the city?
His dead body minus his spirit is innocent, no?
Smoothed and dressed in its coffin, what harm can it do?
3.
Have you wondered about the wife of this terrorist
and how much she loved him—or not?
And his children? Papa!
4.
The body of the terrorist traveling town to town,
looking for a plot. Does it give you the horrors?
Are you thinking about the mark of Cain?
Why not?
5.
In olden days, they buried the miscreant at the crossroads,
carts and wagons running over him day after day.
Let’s do the same and show how much we despise this wretch.
Will your town accept this mission?
6.
That solemn protester carrying a sign: “Not Wanted
in Worcester,” does he really carry a gun just in case?
Lisa Bellamy
My SnagsI am alone in the house, restless—
late afternoon, long shadows—and I wander out
the back door, beyond the meadow,
beyond metes and bounds, hike the steep hill
to snags—dead trees, still upright,
hollowed-out by Chickadees. Habitat trees for critters,
for me haven trees. Yes, a graveyard,
but everyone knows graveyards are alive.
I am, of course, visiting my parents—
Mr. and Mrs. Snag. I thrive in their deadness.
I thrive because they are dead and finally useful to me.
Hey! I say, now you have to listen to my song.
Up I climb into the empty father.
Finally, my own treehouse. From the other one,
I hear leaves rustle, a light tune—
pleasantries, better late than never.
Finally, my mother trying to sing.
Stephen Mead
Our LineShed the white chalk of time,
time, time. Brush aside
microbes that have slept here
long after you—and it appears:
a thin finger of dark order,
crushed, condensed for so many ages
beyond us, but we do not become
diamonds. Still, here is everything,
from red ochre to our final, sad
inventions. The green we knew gone,
the blue sky—still above—not trapped
down here in this line, yet our memories
of the blue here. How the landfills have slept!
All our lines, from Linear B to the breadlines,
borderlines, spoken lines, bloodlines
one hundred billion human lives
that lived at odds with the world
and one another and finally form a single file.
Michael Lauchlan
WhenceI’ve known large hearted friends
who’d speak ancient truths
at the worst possible times
They were pinned by firehoses
cuffed and jailed When my wife
so young found drunk brothers
lashing each other with chains
she keened until they stopped
From what heart such loud love
Sometimes I think
I didn’t have a heart at all
until I held my daughter in my hands
held her pulsing form and heard
her voice call from a deep chamber
her still-milky eyes reaching
through mine her heart
drumming out that she was here
to stay that she’d embark
swimming into a slate gray sky
like a great inexhaustible bird
Howie Good
TransitionsA premature hint of spring creeps into town overnight. Suddenly I’m aware of the dead birds
hanging by their stretched necks like window ornaments. I started growing a beard as a
diversion, for something to do, but have kept it as a kind of camouflage. Even so, an air of
sadness clings to me like a gypsy curse. Or maybe it’s that words have begun to resist assigned
meanings. My own countrymen prefer speed, directness, simplicity – the booming echo of a
gunshot to the eerie silence that follows.
Barry Seiler
RefrigeratorGreat stone face observer
of our pratfalls, chuckling softly at our appetites.
What good is a dim bulb
in the dead of night?
We wrap our arms around the refrigerator.
We wish to dance a slow dance,
something about the stillness of the night,
the frayed remains of teenage dreams.
But the refrigerator will not be moved.
It will have none of us. It won’t dance.
We can’t make it.
A Modest Talent
Bob Marcucci had
Frankie Avalon hold his nose
to get a certain sound
when he sang “De De Dinah,”
his first big hit.
I read it in Marcucci’s obit
in the New York Times,
our newspaper of record.
In one sweet move
he created a distinctive pop stylist
as well as a witty self-critic.
Frankie had a modest talent,
but he made it work:
Venus, Bobby Sox to Stockings,
with John Wayne in The Alamo,
which the Duke actually directed.
Those beach movies with Annette.
So much fun to shoot.
What odd has beens popped up in them--
even the great must earn a living--
Buster Keaton, Dorothy Malone,
and lurking deep in the credits,
the late Peter Lorre.
Michael Hettich
The NeighborThe woman in the apartment next to ours hadn’t made a sound for days. We were starting to
wonder where she’d gone, or whether she might be injured, so we stood with our ears to the wall,
holding our breaths. I thought of the lovely smell of her perfume, when she passed me on the
stairs with a nod. We’d never spoken.
Most evenings that summer we climbed out the kitchen window onto the fire escape and up to
the roof, where we sat against a wall, on the still-warm tarpaper. We drank cheap wine, and
laughed sometimes, like young men do when they’re lonely. When it poured a summer shower
one night, we took off our shirts and howled out at the city; then one of us picked up an empty
bottle and threw it across the alley to the roof of the building next door, where it slid and
bounced but didn’t break. So we threw the others, our summer’s collection, one after the other,
laughing and hugging in a sudden of burst of release that felt like joy, as though we’d suddenly
discovered something potent and fresh in all we were supposed to be.
We were standing eight stories above the city, so if we’d missed and a bottle had fallen to the
street, we could have killed someone. But no one thought of that—
and when the rain stopped we climbed back down to our apartment, slid in through the window
and stood shivering, dripping on the cracked and broken linoleum floor. It was then we heard her
voice through the wall, singing a song we all knew, a sweet ballad. While my friends guffawed, I
was choked by a flood of relief and gratitude: Her voice was so pure—like something I
remembered but had never felt before.
I almost sang back to her, right then. Instead I saved my song for later, when no one else would
hear me.
Stephen Gibson
A Blow-Up Sex Doll Overhead like a Calder Mobile—Art Palm Beach
One Japanese term for such sex dolls is Datchi Waifu—
roughly “Dutch Wife”—for when sailors, centuries
ago, on long voyages, fashioned cloth for when horny;
voyages sometimes took years, and sailors never knew
if they were going to end up like Mel Gibson in Tahiti
with his bare-breasted beauty (see Mutiny on the Bounty),
or like Nelson Rockefeller son Michael, in New Guinea,
who’s last seen fleeing from his swamped dugout canoe.
It’s 1961: he’s eaten by cannibals, according to one view.
In New York, you’d see sex dolls and teen girls, the 1970s,
on 8th Ave.
Liana Kapelke-Dale
MendingI stitch the seams of my vintage slips
where the threads have started to unravel.
I sew the underwires back into my bras
when they start to dig into my sternum.
I replace the frayed straps on a blue lace embroidered dress
choosing ribbons from the mess of materials I have stashed.
When the apocalypse comes,
I will be of use.
I will patch clothes and bags—
not neatly but securely.
I will line-dry tired linens beneath the angry sky,
hope the scent will restore the way things were when the sun was still kind.
I will bake old potatoes,
scrounge and barter for cheese and butter.
I will offer them to strangers,
fill the space between us.
Now I have no quantifiable value to capitalism.
The numbers of my life are probably in the red.
But when the end of the world arrives,
when worth can no longer be quantified—
then, I will be golden.
Claire Scott
I Am Just FineThe corporation planted poison ivy in my yard last night
five plants, five feet apart
along with twenty pink flamingos
you know the tacky kind you see on cheap lawns
not the nicer ones with solar lights
I called the police but Laura (they are all named Laura)
is tired of hearing from me and tells me to see
a doctor or simply hangs up or doesn’t bother
to answer when she sees my name
I have a doctor who thinks I am just fine
although she has suggested a brief night or two
in Lord Have Mercy Hospital
along with something called DBS or TMS or ECT
to help me leave the house, make some friends
but my neighbors are nosey, peering in my windows
at night, stealing my mail, wearing backward baseball caps
my doctor gives me pink pills to take twice a day
I toss them in the trash
As a kid I was left alone with my Ginny dolls
dressing and undressing them in the shadow of curtains
my mother kept closed even on sunny days
while she stayed in bed behind a barricaded door
she warned me to watch out for strangers,
to cross the street or I might be dragged off in a car,
beaten, beheaded and dumped by the roadside
at night I could hear her crying as I lay awake
listening to my father banging on the triple locked door
I notice dirt under my nails, five empty containers in the garage
I notice a charge for $23.99 on my credit card
I call the police
Depression Gallops Through My Family Like a Frenzied Leopard
My son is depressed again, unable to move
no point, no point
I rub his back and feel my hands trembling
my face scrunching back tears
I take the orange vials out of his room
Lamictal, Xanax, Klonopin, Lithium, Abilify
I reach for my cell and my mother is dead
all over again
your call cannot be completed as dialed
my breath stops as I imagine
the grave site, the rose petals, the minister who talked
about her devotion to her children, her generous
spirit, her unflagging energy
only this never happened
there was no funeral, no memorial,
no fond memories of a caring mother
Yet I still call her when I am upset
a fallen soufflé, a fender bender,
a flat tire by the side of the freeway,
or when my son asks if five stories is enough
I think that’s Einstein’s definition of insanity
but there’s a blank space, a caesura in my soul waiting
I miss who she wasn’t, who she couldn’t be
she who had only alcohol to dull her depression
bottles of scotch stashed behind a scramble of shoes
numbing her while us kids napped
gargling Listerine and smearing Fire and Ice on her lips
before our father came home
no rows of pills, no therapist, no psychiatrist
no mother who looked after her with love
so I call and call as though I could will her to health
and she is always never there
Sharon Whitehill
How Misfortune Has Altered My View of MisfortuneThe live oak kinetic with squirrels,
the aloe plant cluster sprung
from a single spiked pup,
the clerodendrum grove’s starburst blossoms,
the avocado tree heavy with fruit:
an invisible property line,
robbing me of this lush green expanse
I wrongly imagined my own,
dooms it to fall to the bulldozer’s blade.
I lie awake in the dark and lament my misfortune:
to be deprived of the land,
from the back of my house
to the tangle of jungle enclosed by the fence
some previous tenant installed,
that I made my own for ten years.
My long, peaceful solitude lost.
A third of my patio severed.
Merely a cramped strip of grass for my dogs.
*
The morning after the storm
I look out on a splintered scene,
a mocking mosaic by a mad artist
that radically changes my view of misfortune:
no longer mourn the live oak,
that’s cracked down the middle
and threatens to fall on the house.
No regret at being deprived of starburst trees
now bent or snapped off,
an avocado uprooted past hope,
or the pines flung askance
beyond the section of chain-link
not ironed flat by the wind.
Empty of angst, I gaze at what’s left,
grateful that others must cope with a mess
that’s no longer my burden.
Only the aloes still stand, marking time.
Nancy Smiler Levinson
Imprinted--After Henri Cole
Her birthday was not a milestone
it was just a number eighty four
the Times was delivered on schedule
but not the poetry journal she’d ordered
Maintenance came up and fixed
her clogged bathroom sink
Beneath the soft pink lightbulbs
she penciled in her thinning eyebrows
sprayed Pleasure on her inner wrists
a traditional gift from her husband Oh how
profoundly she missed him
no tears allowed on a birthday, though
the bad luck thing you know
she was in good health knock wood
but for the macular degeneration
arthritic hand and bum right hip
She would meet Cece for lunch
and indulge in tiramisu desert
and even though she’d pleaded
no more gifting she would
open the family’s gift
with them on facetime
Yes her fortunes were gathered
attested to by thousands
of processed photos pasted on pages
an outdated mode yet viewed in light
reflected by emeralds and rubies
every face every pose every scene
a diffusion of memory
It was the end of November
ridiculously warm in California
her Midwest childhood celebrations
were sledding and skating parties
she felt a wistful breeze about winter
what beauty shown in fresh fallen snow
what mystery in each small flake
on the walk home from school
eyelashes crystalized fingers
tingled despite wool mittens now
her stiff fingers tapped her keyboard
Funny, she thought, how she still liked
the feel of a pencil in her hand
she used one for crossword puzzles
her first poem had been written in pencil
that came in a gift box of eight
each bearing her first name all the letters
imprinted in shiny silver caps
Tim Staley
First Responders by Apodaca Park, Corner of East Madrid and Solano
Not me necessarily, but folks
on their way home from Walmart
feeling for a pulse.
Muscle shirt and basketball shorts
trying CPR, holding down a
fountain of blood until
someone calls 911. Until
tower network dispatcher.
Until starter flywheel crankshaft.
Until fire department. Until ambo.
Until the front line arrives common folk
catch blood's breaking wave
struck sideways and skipping across
pavement to a sprawl.
The neon green Ninja,
a carousel horse on its side wheezing
antifreeze gasoline and brochures
promising virility.
The rider’s an emblem of something
Kawasaki doesn’t advertise.
Without asking why, SCA combatants
with swords of rattan wrapped in duct tape
direct traffic – shields tightly strapped
to their forearms for 45 minutes or so
until the sound of the crash
dissolved into the swaying trees
and I slept like a drugged baby
in the soothing orchard of my good health.
J.R. Solonche
Watching the WarAfter a while, your mind stops.
Your mind stops watching the war.
Your mind stops watching the war
and leaves the body on its own.
The parts of the body are left on
their own, each one watching
the war on its own, each one
reacting separately to what it sees.
So your eyes see the bodies, then
close, then turn away, then open
on the window or the door. So
your head sees the bodies, then
shakes, then says silently over
and over, "No." So your chest sees
the bodies, then heaves heavily.
So your shoulders see the bodies,
then tighten, stiffen as in death.
So your legs see the bodies, then
sag under the weight of your body.
So your hands see the bodies, then
rise upward, palms upward and open,
open to what you most hate about it,
the only answer it will ever have to
the only question you will ever have:
What is the difference between one
man and another, the difference
between one woman and another, the
difference between one child and another?
Phillip Sterling
Words Frequently Confused: Capacious, CapriciousThe plants we’ve overwintered in the solarium
find spring therapeutic. The Christmas cactus,
the leggy windowbox geraniums, the last
of the green peppers repotted and brought in
before frost—even the sticky umbrellas
of the Shefflera, gifted some twenty years ago,
at the death of my mother (“The Mother Plant,”
I call it)—bask in the rehabilitation of the sun.
It’s the way we’ve conspired it to be: solarium
defined as “a room of sun,” a room at times
“designed for convalescence.”
The bluebird
sees it differently. The bluebird finds the room
threatening, finds the bluebird in the window
an angry taunt, a playground bully, vaunting
and parrying his vigor in unconscionable offense.
He head-butts the reflection riotously, smacks
again and again the unwitting image of himself,
no matter what we try to do to dissuade him,
to prevent him from doing himself harm . . .
It’s in his nature, I suppose, jealousy having
evolved in many species. Notice how your seedlings
tilt and crowd in the glare of the sun, how they
wish their small leaves could be wings.
Daniel A. Rabuzzi
The BoarA boar caught long ago,
I remember it
Penned in a barn on
A farm in Pennsylvania.
The beast’s bristles were dark, translucent,
Its blocky body otherwise opaque,
Yet quick.
Snout hammered the slats of the pen,
Hoarse breath seared the wood,
Throat bellows threw pigeons
From the rafters.
Then still,
Very still.
One tight eye looked at us
An angry “o” in a knothole,
The lord of the underworld defying his captors.
I think the boar became prosciutto,
As brilliantly red and salt,
As his anger.
Christopher Rubio-Goldsmith
The Bone-MammaSome time ago I drove to Phoenix often and as Camelback Mountain
rose into view through the dustsmog
I would spin the radio dial and find the Bone-Mamma.
That voice and those music choices were the journey’s surprises.
Because the truth is this, Phoenix is a strip mall bathroom
after the cherry bombs. (Please forgive me). Let’s shuck the tamale, wipe
away the sweat, that radio show made me recall what
I desired from life. The beats made me recall all the boys
I had been before. The one who called from jail,
the other who read Neruda while
trying to figure out trigonometry, the one
who watched himself watching himself. The one who wanted
to turn the painting over and look at the
other side of art. Clean a warehouse wall and
let the untouched soot leave an image of temptation.
I can’t remember if I smoked during those drives with the Bone-Mamma
telling me about the heat and the local concert news. I do know
listening to the Velvet Underground always got my cool-meter
up. My sunglasses and white-shirt total Richie Valens estilo. One friend
was a cover boy for the local magazine Mondo Homo. He swore
the Bone-Mamma taught an entire generation how to ask for
those experiences they did not know how to ask for. The notion
that dreams always matter. Discovery has a bass line. That guitar
riff is the burn and the hurt.
What is happiness to youth? You don’t choose your favorite
song. The world is full of places, real dogs, imagined gardens,
lips, la Bone-Mamma on the drive home, them the rules.
Heikki Huotari
The Prophet Practices Reverse PsychologyNice nothingness you got there; be a shame if something were to happen. Chaos
agents are spaced equally for maximal advantage. Do you want the wall to fall? A
cause or not for celebration, between stick and carrot falls the fulcrum. Now you
hear the hammer and the anvil and the stirrup, now you don’t. Proprioception is
one end of the spectrum, pareidolia the other. Halt who goes there, says the center
of attention inexplicably, The weakest or the missing link? Surrender dear and
dance. Where I come from there is no war, there is no go-along-to-get-along.
Causation is the enemy of correlation. Brains do not remap for artificial limbs.
There are no artificial limbs. The world may come to correspond to my opinion
like the time of day to every broken clock. My no-fly zone is activated by a
drone. A saucer, object or phenomenon like life may pass before my very eyes
and I may want to be a cog in some machine...but not today.
Jane Simpson
Immortalised in artThe artist paints Bathsheba at her bath,
scumbles her skin,
Rembrandt van Rijn rendering in oils
the woman believed to be his lover
layer upon layer
the surface disturbed at her breasts
believed to be cancer.
Whether or not the model was
the artist’s lover,
whether or not the artist captured
what was later believed to be cancer,
she has made the ignoble noble
for every woman diagnosed.