2013

 

NOVEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

PAUL BAVISTER, RICH BOUCHER, RANDOLPH BRIDGEMAN, MARA BUCK,

CHRIS BULLARD, RACHEL COVENTRY, ANTHONY FRAME, ROSIE GARLAND,

JOANNA GRANT, IEVA KRIVICKAITE, MARTIE ODELL-INGEBRETSEN,

UCHE OGBUJI, FRED POLLACK, PAMELA RILEY

GLEN SORESTAD, JEREMY WINDHAM.

 

 

 

PAUL BAVISTER

 

Bitter Cherry

 



I left them while they slept

followed melting snow to the source

of all those muddy southern rivers.

 

Every day was spring: wild strawberries

on sparkling banks, gritty and sweet.

Stumbling on paths just free from ice

 

I crushed peppery scent from bittercress

woke slow worms and snakes

from dripping ferns and rocks.

 

*

 

Weeks before I'd quietly left

the dark kitchen with the food

they always scoffed at as foreign muck:

 

powdered cress and strawberry grits.

Along the frozen path

I passed their bedroom windows

 

heard them grunting, asleep.

I never missed their:

"not this, that".

 

*

 

I'm sure that no one

followed the tracks I left in the moss.

No one heard the twigs I broke.

 

I imagine them now

eating fatty pork from that filthy pot.

 

Paul Bavister has published three collections of poetry, the most recent being The Prawn Season (Two Rivers Press). He works as a gardener and also teaches creative writing for The University of Oxford and Birkbeck College, London.

 

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RICH BOUCHER

 

Live Nude Mercy

 

Maxine glistens in the silver light and slinks on ice,

glides down the stairs in her white lingerie

and shivers her way to the center of the stage;

the air around her hisses like angered air;

I sit with my beer and my eyes turn into telescopes,

erect and polished and focused so very tightly.

About twenty to thirty other guys watch, too,

and they are a colony of leaping apes braying

with bottles of Budweiser in front of them.

Maxine's hips metronome to the rock on the PA

and her white garters glow like bands of sunlight

striping her fit, sinewy thighs in the silly, Day-Glo gloom

of this here titty bar on the outskirts of East Bitch, Pa.

Outside, if we listen closely, we can all hear thunder

making its presence known above our parked cars;

we're locked onto Maxine's glittery cleavage, though,

and then that bra comes off and all of our skullcaps loosen;

the rumbling storm outside the bar listens to our cries

but doesn't change its mind, and rain comes down

as we rain cash onto the floor before Maxine's endless legs.

Our mouths are trying to fly to where she's grinding

when she reaches for her left nipple and tugs at it roughly,

tearing the flesh off her breasts to show us what's underneath,

now that she's bare, naked except for those acrylic heels;

she's showing us the rest of her, her heart, her lungs,

the trickling rivers of blood beneath her everything else,

the logical, red extension of what we came to see

and I'm wondering if I'm the only one who's noticed

what has ungodly ungodly begun to happen to us in here,

to her up there, and where is this new music coming from;

where on earth is this new music coming from?

 

 

Rich Boucher lives, works, writes and performs steadily in Albuquerque, and is the occasional Guest Editor of the weekly poetry column "The DitchRider" at DukeCityFix.com. Rich's poems have appeared in The Bicycle Review,The Subterranean Quarterly and The Nervous Breakdown. Hear his poems atrichboucher.bandcamp.com

 

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RANDOLPH BRIDGEMAN

 

poetry readings –

 



the best stopped writing first

as for the rest of us no one will

note when or why

what a sad lot we writers are

gathering week after week

month after month

year after year

for what

to read to a handful of hangers-on

and to those poor unsuspecting bastards

who wonder in off the street

i'd rather stick my dick in a light socket

than listen to one more poem about

love lost or found

or your high school sweetheart

or how you're so misunderstood

if this is the poetry scene

give me something else for fucks sake

i want to hear poetry that comes

shooting out of you like the beer shits

i don't want to hear about the good girls

who wouldn't give up the cooter

i want to know about the nasty girls

who did even if they were on the rag

or were so ugly you couldn't tell

your buddies

i could give a rats ass about the

good ole' boys in letterman sweaters

i want to hear about that boy you dragged

home from a single parent home

in government subsidized housing

on the other side of town

that boy your dad couldn't stand because
he caught him trying to get into your pants

and you weren't putting up much of a fight

and nobody gives a good god dammed

if you're misunderstood or not

we're the only ones listening

to your shit anyway

 

 

Randolph Bridgeman graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland and is the recipient of the Edward T. Lewis Poetry Prize for the most promising emerging poet. He was a Lannan Fellow for the Folgers Shakespearian Theater 04-05 poetry reading series. His poems have been published in numerous poetry reviews and anthologies. He has three collections of poems, South of Everywhere 2005, Mechanic on Duty 2008, and The Odd Testament, published in 2013.

 

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MARA BUCK

 

  

No way...



I have never dreamt of flowing dresses,

 

trains to trip me up,

veils to blind me,

 

elaborate fingernails to cripple my hands

as I tear off false lashes,

 

Silicon and Botox and

Spanx and Panx and the obligatory arsenal

 

to create of Me the She of the

airbrushed illusion.

 

I am not Marie Antoinette,

though I like my cake.

 

We shall share it

and grow fat and happy

together.

 

Keep your ankle-spraining stilettos,

your push-up bras,

 

your murderous pantyhose and

all the powder and the paint,

 

for I am the female of the species

who had the sense to eat the apple

 

and I found it most delicious.

 

 

New Year's Cleaning



I never wanted Tupperware ---

never craved that distinction

of sealing my life's leftovers

within the plastic boundaries

adored by millions of Marthas,

 

never needed the security

of casseroles for supper,

never clipped the recipes

or saved the coupon packets,

always grabbed the handheld baskets

at the supermarket,

 

never pushed the shopping cart.

 

Along the line I was persuaded,

was convinced that I was jaded,

that a single life was alien,

domesticity offered more.

 

Cookbooks smothered poetry.

The vacuum gobbled jazz.

Laundry draped the etching press.

Shoulds and musts ascended.

Sunrises fogged and sunsets faded.

 

Years have flown, and I

alone, the kitchen goddess

shaped of dust and obligations,

secure within a cupboard,

am now sealed

inside a plastic bowl.

 

Mara Buck writes and paints in the Maine woods. She has won awards or
been short-listed by the Faulkner Society, the Hackney Awards, Carpe Articulum,
Maravillosa, and has been published in Carpe Articulum, Caper, Huffington Post,
Orion, Clarke's, Poems For Haiti, Pithead Chapel, Drunken Boat, and others.

 

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CHRIS BULLARD

  

Only Sleeping

 

In a cage at the pet store,

one ferret was a feast

for twelve. He lay

on his back with a paw

missing, his cheek ripped off.

 

I hauled my cat food

to the cash register

and said, "There's

a dead ferret back there."

to a lanky kid in a red vest.

 

Matt (by his name plate)

didn't look away or raise

his drawl a notch to proclaim,

"She's not dead.

She's only sleeping."

 

Perhaps, I should have shouted

more loudly at the dead,

shaken them with more vigor,

called their names

and begged them to come home.

 

And, maybe, more effort

would have roused them;

but all that silence

suggested they wanted

another forty winks.

 

I've given up trying to wake them,

just as I won't disturb the calico

snoozing on my lap,

her claws against my knee,

enjoying a fierce sleep.

 

Soon enough, she'll stretch,

rise with bright hunter's eyes,

pad to the cellar

and scatter the camel crickets

or tear apart a mouse.

 

Charm

 

She arrived on the porch in a dress too black

for a parched July, asking in languid Carolina

syllables for my roommate, who wasn't around.

Her bus wouldn't leave for hours. She had bags

she wanted to set down. To avoid the inside

heat, we strolled to the shade of Clark Park,

stopping at a circle of clover growing through

the burned sod. "I always find the lucky kind.

Some of my friends think I'm sort of a witch."

She raised a stem with four leaves to her lips.

Her breath made the petals wave like wings.

When she passed the flower to me, I was fixed

to that moment like Merlin bewitched in his stone.

Forty years later, I still see the clover tremble.

 

 

Chris Bullard is a native of Jacksonville, FL. He lives in Collingswood, NJ, and works for the federal government as an Administrative Law Judge. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from Wilkes University. Plan B Press published his chapbook, You Must Not Know Too Much, in 2009. Big Table Publishing published his second chapbook,  O Brilliant Kids, in 2011. WordTech Editions has accepted his book of poetry, Back, for publication in November of 2013. Kattywompus Press has accepted his chapbook, Dear Leatherface, for publication in 2013.

 

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RACHEL COVENTRY

 

Analogue

 



In the days of puddle splashing,

you were entirely unafraid,

or at least you seemed that way

to me.

 

You pulled your boots back on,

over ripped stockinged feet

and took the camera outside

to the magical dawn.

 

Were you on your own

or were you laughing with him?

The red light bleeding slowly

from a wounded sky.

 

It was before they built all that shit

you had a clear view

the picture was good,

the camera, a precious gift.

 

When it got cold you went back in,

to finish the spliff,

everything was as good

As it ever would be.

 

From your back garden,

you can no longer see,

the sun pull away from the river.

The camera is a relic

in a box under the stairs.

 

Rachel Coventry writes poetry and fiction Her work has appeared in Skylight 47, Burning Bush 2, Boyne Berries, Bare Hands, The First Cut, The Misty Mountain Review and is forthcoming in Poeticdiversity. She was short listed for the 2012 Over The Edge New Writer of the Year Competition.  She lives in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland.

 

 

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ANTHONY FRAME

 

Everything I Know I Learned from Playing Air Guitar

 

When your left hand strokes the air,

don't think of a neck or fake frets. It's best

 

to imagine a sausage – one that resembles

your arms. Try to feel the curvature

 

of a fresh intestine, the buoyancy of

poor cuts of meat, ground up and pliable

 

– like you. If you own a strobe light

or a disco ball, use them – life lacks substance

 

without a little flare. And when you stare

at the wall or at whatever audience

 

you've dreamed – your windows and blinds

closed tight – make your face as sharp

 

as a ballpoint pen. But when you shake,

when your head dances and your eyes surrender

 

to the brilliant darkness of their lids, smile

as though you're suspended above a crowd of

 

a thousand pairs of ripped jeans. See,

you're not alone, there's a competition, a trophy,

 

a place where making your body into

an instrument is seen as more than a skill –

 

where you're celebrated for being both Quixote

and the windmill. So, swing your arms,

 

make a cradle of fingers, jump with weak legs,

whether you're being watched or not.

 

Imagine being four inches taller, imagine having

hair of five colors. Imagine, fellow fool,

 

you've never looked into a mirror and learned

the lie about the gods looking like you.

 

There's a need for this kind of fantasy,

which helps fight time as it travels – limbs bloating,

 

faces sinking into gravity's potholes.

It's why some tattoos would be better

 

as words without pictures. It's why

clouds just want to make love with

 

everything. It's why when the music stops,

some of us won't break the dance – we just

 

keep spinning our arms around and around

and around in the tight circumference

 

of an imagination. We offer to the wind

what the strings never really needed –

 

the drama of arms and long hair,

a body and soul for the word whoosh.

 

Anthony Frame is an exterminator who lives in Toledo, Ohio with his wife. His first book of poems, A Generation of Insomniacs, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press. His chapbook, Paper Guillotines, was published by Imaginary Friend Press and recent poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Third Coast, The North American Review, Redactions, The Dirty Napkin, Gulf Stream and diode among others. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Visit his website here

 

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ROSIE GARLAND

 

Dreaming of panthers



 

A night too hot for bed sheets. The room pants out swollen air.

He stands at the open window, palm circling his stomach.

 

Under the rhododendron, a leopard draws itself together

from the night, unravels claws across the grass.

 

He turns to tell his wife. Her back is a low wall across the mattress,

her thighs twitch in a recurring dream of running.

 

When he looks round, the cat has gone, leaving a scatter of pawprints

the same size as the wine glass he left on the lawn.

 

He thinks he's too wound up to go back to sleep, but

next thing he knows, it's morning. There's an empty snarl

 

of sheets next to him. He stumbles downstairs. The kitchen stinks

of a loaded cat tray. He unlocks the back door, calls her full name,

 

not the shortened version she hates. There's no answer.

The shadows under the magnolia stir themselves, uncoil.

 

 

Souvenirs

 

I hang the baskets on my wall; straw woven

in a geometry of stars and crosses.

Far from home, they sprout English mould.

 

I string the beads: a yoke of carnelian

the rust of old blood,

amber the thick yellow of buried bone.

 

The bracelets manacle my wrists with verdigris.

They tarnish in this climate, despite

central heating, double glazing, door seal.

 

 

Born in London to a runaway teenager, Rosie Garland has always been a cuckoo in the nest. An eclectic writer and performer, ranging  from singing in cult gothic band The  March Violets to twisted alter-ego Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. She has five  solo collections of poetry and is winner of the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year and a Poetry Award  from the People's Café, New York. Her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was published in March 2013 by  HarperCollins. Visit her website here.

 

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JOANNA GRANT

 

Fascia

Kandahar Airfield

 

The anatomy of the foot. I never knew. I had to look it up.

Diagrams on Wikipedia, instructional videos on YouTube,

to explain this new pain I had no names for just yet.

 

It seems like everyone I know has something broken.

When they sent Brian out to Trajan to try to repair

all those expensive, neglected, rusted-out guns,

he got thrown out of the back of a truck

on a rutted dirt track in the black of new moon.

It took them an hour to figure out he was gone.

They went back and scooped him up,

with a dislocated shoulder and a broken foot

that healed with a seven millimeter spur.

A record, the medics said. He has the x-ray on his phone,

next to the shot of the titanium plates in his neck.

 

Cutaway diagrams and a little chart.

This is the connective tissue.

Fascia running like a rubber band

along the underside of the foot.

Too much strain, a sudden wrench,

not enough recovery time or just bad luck,

you've got yourself some inflammation.

Fasciitis. Maybe even a spur. The heel

accreting new layers to protect itself.

Aggravating the poor raw tissue.

All this pain. What you get when

a connection goes wrong. Goes wrong.

 

One of the girls in the dorm room next to mine

works for the USO and sometimes brings work home with her.

Some Army guy named McGrath. God knows what he does to her

in there but it sounds like she enjoys it. Enough to raise the dead.

Against every rule printed out small on the backs of our doors.

Oh leave them alone. Let them have their fun. One day

no thumps no moans. And then another. And another. Who knows

where our McGrath has gone. Most likely the USO girl never will.

He's just gone. Now instead of their lovers' noise my groans. Nothing works.

I've tried pressure. I've tried ice. Some exercises I looked up on WebMD.

Just agony, a cramping foot. Fasciitis. All those connections. Strained. Or torn.

 

What After

 

The question of what happens next.

 

In the hospital room after her chest

made its last ragged rise and fall. That rush

of what might have been the soul escaping,

 

the body falling in on itself, an abandoned house.

Now all the children's toys and odd little sticks

of furniture thrust out in the rain, huddled by the curb.

 

At some point things must retake hold,

all the words recalled from their waiting room

in the dull yellow hallway, linoleum the color

of a smoker's finger under the flickering fluorescent lights.

 

Some time from now, no one knows when,

all this will be nothing. A shred. A glimpse

through the wrong end of a telescope,

 

the way a stamp in a passport, a change of place

makes last year last month last week yesterday

nothing but a haze. A snatch of dream fading away.

Eight weeks or eighty lifetimes ago. Who's to say.

 

But for the length and breadth and width of now. All moments cracking open.

Every breath its own eternity, its yearning. What. What next. What now. What after. What.

 

 

 

Temple, All My Beautiful Birds

Near Angkor Wat, Cambodia

 

This is a place

we used to bomb.

 

Where they killed each other

in scores. Where all the fields

 

the rippling green paddies

send down their roots

 

through mines and skulls.

 

So many of the places we've touched—

sown with death. All our little cairns,

our bottles on sticks, our red ribbons.

Beware in every language. So little use.

 

But this temple lies untouched.

 

Except for so many years' drift

of ragged souls. Missing things.

 

Here you can buy a little bird or two or three

little brown things to flutter

in your outstretched hands—

pray over them, then let them go—

 

Set free, your little birds

in their gratitude send

back to you what you miss,

your missing piece.

 

I am foreign here,

 

these rituals are strange to me

 

but—if I should buy my own little birds

send them off on the wing into the evening—

 

would they come back, would they

come back, would you come back

 

back, to me?

 

 

Joanna Grant teaches writing classes to American service members in deployed locations, including Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Djibouti, and South Korea.

 

 

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IEVA KRIVICKAITÉ

 

To my schoolmates

 



When I left, I thought –

my home will be my home

and now houses are my home and apartments are my home

and lobbies and waiting rooms are my home

and when I say I'm going home,

I say I'm leaving here and going elsewhere

and when I say I'm going back,

I say I'm going somewhere I have been before

 

The fear of staying and the fear of going

how you cried over dinner in January, when you came to visit,

how you came from our home to my home

how you said – I fear I will die on the journey back

and I was annoyed because I feared the journey will die inside of me,

I feared I will have to stay in this

winter, the kind of winter that freezes your lungs when you inhale it

the kind of winter that you need ten times more love to survive

and what if I'm annoyed by your love

if I'm annoyed by you trying hard to squeeze into the bubble I live in

you wallow your body on my parents' couch

they don't know who you are no they don't

LABA DIENA, my father articulates in Lithuanian, as if it would make you understand

as if it would make me understand

my home is not my home

 

And then everyone else, when they left, they thought –

our homes will be wherever and whatever

and then they came back, prescriptions snarling in their purses

minus 10 kilograms, minus 5 thousand pounds, minus one year of life

or two years of life

in fact, minus the lifetime

because the prescriptions will never leave the purses

and they are not who they used to be

when I think of them resting in hospitals,

I think of soft white pillows and food you don't have to worry about and flowers

but then maybe also accusations

my father, saying LABA DIENA to a nurse in a normal voice

he doesn't have to make her understand, she knows

and the idea of a soft white pillow is suddenly sickening

 

And then I leave and I think –

my home is my home

it's just not the home it used to be

it's portable, my home is me, I'm portable,

and all the places I go are just places where I place the bubble I live in

 

Ieva Krivickaité was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and is now aiming for an MA in
Comparative Literature and Slavonic Studies from the University of Glasgow
(UK). Krivickaité's writings and translations have appeared in various
Lithuanian magazines and her poetry is forthcoming in St Petersburg Review and
The dirtcakes.



 

 

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MARTIE ODELL-INGEBRETSEN

 

Dear Woman, Love Estrogen

 



I remember when I first saw you,

curving around like your mother with vermilion,

writing on small pieces of paper with pencil.

I took your hand and traced a thought that you hid

in the dry shingles outside our bedroom window.

 

You were my history and my beginning

and I was a road you would take

under the trees to seek shade from my hold,

and even there I made your fantasy

with lipstick and tweezers

and the sweet smell of dirt.

 

Naked, you were a circle within a circle

and I was your instrument of energy and life,

playing something about lust and love;

I taught you the words,

although you couldn't say them out loud.

 

Ask me how I know so much, I said into your dream,

where you rode horses

and wept for loss of blood.

 

I am your woman, I whispered, knowing the untruth,

but saying it anyway.

When you moaned, I mentioned I'd only be with you for a while

and made a path within your heart that said, hurry.

You hurried for me like a perfect hostess

and pre-teened into a blossom of beguile.

I know I didn't tell you or help you along with this,

for I enjoy the effect I have on play.

 

I bore your children with you, felt the milk drop,

and listened endlessly for a change in voice,

a nuance that told what was under

the thoughts of the men you loved.

 

I miss holding the sweet tenacity that let me see your soul,

and how you loved within your heart, not your heat;

and now when I see you dancing with bare feet,

I wonder if you ever needed me at all.



 

Martie Odell-Ingebretsen was born in Pasadena, California. She fell in love with books at an early age and continues that love of reading. She received her AA degree at Pasadena City College and attended the University of California at Berkeley and several California State College campuses where she majored in English Literature. She is a child-development specialist and has taught young children for over thirty years. She has had poems published in Bitterroot International Poetry Quarterly, Western Poetry Quarterly, Who's Who In Poetry In American Colleges and Universities, ABC's of Grief, Reflections, Voices, Pirene's Fountain, and a novella, Sweet William.

 

 

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UCHE OGBUJI

 

Rooting Reflex

 

I'm no more your mother

Than the spasm that sets the mountain into the earth's bosom,

Yet your head sweeps sharp across my shoulder,

Tickling my collarbone.

They say your neck is still a dummy

Filling out each week with sense and sinew.

I'm no more your mother

Than the spark that urges fire upon the pile of faggots.

When I kiss your cheek, stick out my lips to pull my stubble from your

soft skin,

Your head sweeps sharp across my face

Thwarting my protective impulse

From one baby hand on shoulder to my face

To baby hand on chest.

I'm no more your mother

Than the supernova hurling our sun from crèche nebula.

You hunt and peck your orbit for moist, jutting flesh;

Your head sweeps sharp down past my shoulder, at my restraining hand.

Your breath comes in hot, humid puffs,

Punctuating your spasmodic quest.

I'm no more your mother

Than the model who focuses the painter on the painting.

Your cry comes in a rush of quick perplexity,

Fading into coil towards your next eager thrust.

Your head sweeps sharp upward, to fix my eye, to measure;

Your head sweeps sharp toward your mother's voice as she approaches.

I'm no more your mother

Than the nervous squibs of smell, sight and sound the brain balls

into love.

 

Uche Ogbuji was born in Calabar, Nigeria, lived in Egypt, England and elsewhere before settling near Boulder, Colorado. A computer engineer by profession, he has a collection, Ndewo, Colorado forthcoming in 2014 from Kelsay Books. He is editor at Kin Poetry Journal, The Nervous Breakdown. Founder and curator of Twitter @poetrycolorado Visit his website here.

 

 

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FRED POLLACK

 

The Inspector

 



I have replaced the mosquitoes

with a slow, pensive moth,

which appears not to be drawn

to the lamp beside my cot,

but whose eyes reflect it from the dark.

I have kept, however, the mosquito-net.

As a symbol of sleep, it aids sleep,

and makes my silhouette,

if not attractive, more mysterious.

 

At dawn the clients gather on the steps

below the verandah. They point out

the unfortunate, colonialist

nuances of assembling thus,

and for that matter of verandahs.

They complain of confusion

about sex, anger, religion,

and what they perceive

as "a sort of grey ticking"

in what they had seen as their minds.

We have lost authenticity,

they say, and cite as examples

that word, and the fact that they speak

in turn, without interrupting.

 

I reply, You will not always have me

with you; point at the mud

of their street, now clean and drying;

and gesture vaguely at the temperature,

which has decreased one degree

during my stay. The daily

moderate tremors show

they are moving towards Europe. Which, I console them,

has its own hands full,

must pull together now as glaciers advance.

 

By this point, the school day

has begun and boys and girls,

all in ironed whites,

pass, some hands linked. They should

be starting quantum computing

and critical theory soon, and show

a restrained but all-seeing,

all-dismissive confidence.

I do love children, whatever people think.

 

Fred Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, The Adventure and Happiness, both published by Story Line Press. Other poems in print and online journals. He is Adjunct Professor of Creative Writing, George Washington University, Washington, DC.

 

 

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PAMELA RILEY

 

Miracles

 

There were no more miracles that year -

no child snatched back

at the edge of the cold lake

in January

or the deep sickness

of winter

sent fleeing from the bones

of old ladies.

Roots in the spring

did not untangle

and bring warmth to the orchards,

turning stones to apples

and the soft air of April

did not quicken in the sun

and grow into a forest,

Summer did not bring

back the birds.

The swallows had left

their nests all burning,

And the August nights

did not pull the stars

one by one out of orbit

and set them

on a new course.

No, the year had only grown

old and careless

and left the young men

to once again

 

walk out on wings.

 

Snow

 

Snow does not linger here,

hugging the unforgiving ground -

it only trespasses.

The black ice beckons

I feel it in my sleep,

pronouncing each syllable of my name.

It has a memory -

winter, 35 years ago,

the crawl space

under the stairs

where our knees

buckled

and rubbed the matting

threadbare.

We played hide and seek there

and hangman,

slept with flashlights

tucked at our feet,

and did not fall asleep

until morning.

Your hands were my pillow

and you trusted me

with every word you said.

Adults called it fleeting

as if magic

were a dangerous thing.

But I spent December

watching you try

to fly.

To leave the tight

clutch of our family

and the pulpit

of this street.

I watched you climb

out onto the shingled roof

wondering at your madness

and the simple trick

 

of drowning in the stars.

 

Pam Riley is a native New Yorker, who still misses the Big Apple. She likes to  spend her free time going to the theatre, museums and traveling. She has been  writing for years and enjoys working in both poetry and prose. The little  quirks and imperfections of life are her inspiration.

 

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GLEN SORESTAD

 

Autumn Walk

 

First day of October, dull, low sky,

wrapped in morning's clingy grey

we shrug through the dampness,

cry of a lone gull overhead.

 

We brush across this autumn canvas:

yellows, ochres and drab browns.

Ahead, framed against a blood-red bush

we watch a walker-friend approach.

 

He tells us he is now walking later,

the chemotherapy has slowed him.

He rues all those cigarette decades:

imagines a tolling of distant bells.

 

We go our way and he labours on.

Ahead, the park grass still rich green

and our steps quicken. We move toward

the ponds where water birds call.

 

Glen Sorestad is a Canadian poet who has published over 20 volumes of his poems over the years. He has been translated into at least seven different languages and his poems have appeared in literary magazines and journals in various countries. He is a recipient of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and is a Member of the Order of Canada.

 

 

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JEREMY WINDHAM

 

After the Funeral

 



When the men of my family left to bury my grandfather's sister,

I went home with the women and built a tipi inside myself.

 

I could have helped heave mounds of wet earth over her casket

and level the loose dirt above her with the backside of a shovel.

 

I could have driven home with the men in silence instead of tending
my hideaway's hearth and chanting prayers of courage over its flames.

 

I helped my grandmother unfold checkered linen over the card table

where we sipped microwaved coffee and waited by the telephone.

 

It was my cousin who answered my father's call two hours later;

the men had finished early, the rain made the dirt easier to move.

 

By that time I had already leaned imaginary saplings together,

stretched the sun-dried hide of my boyhood over whittled limbs

 

and crawled inside to flee from the weeping, to remember her alone.

I glanced out the window whose sill she helped paint, failing at first

 

to recognize her in the fig falling from the tree in our front yard,

the tree that had wilted once before bearing its first round of fruit.

 

She greeted me as she never had before, called me out from myself

by a snapped stem, a fig split open on the asphalt, wavering, then still.

 

Jeremy Windham is currently earning his BFA in creative writing at Stephen F. Austin State University where he also studies music and violin performance. His poetry can be found in The Blue Route, Psaltery and Lyre, Steam Ticket Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Portland Review, and is soon to appear in Southern Humanities Review.

 

 

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