2015

 

 

 

APRIL  ARCHIVE

 

 

Carolyn Gregory, Michelle Hendrixson-Miller, David Klein, Catherine B. Krause,

Bernadette McCarthy, Michael P. McManus, Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco,

 Debra McQueen, Ronald Moran, Kyle Norwood, Wale Owoade,

Fiona Sinclair, J. R. Solonche, Rodney Wood.

 

 

 

 

CAROLYN GREGORY

 

Evening View

The three sisters are dressed in white linen,
blowing lightly in evening.
Each has brought her glass to catch fireflies
stumbling along the summer hill,
one popping out after another.

They have left their lighthouse chores
for one night in summer
when the heat draws fireflies 
clustering the hill.

One sister's tentative, not sure where to start
while another bends down, 
combing grass for light.
The oldest sister sits back, 
her small bottle full of winged insects
that flicker and falter

below the lighthouse on the hill,
turning east and west for boats
in the harbor.

 

Unbinding

 

When she lets down her hair,

unbinding the long pigtail,

she gathers starlight,

clear as fireflies in the marsh.

 

The frogs and snapping turtles

know her very well.

She is their queen

who comes down to the cattail margin,

stirring sediment with her foot.

 

All green paths lead

to her home,

whether shaggy by the barn

or flattened on the way to the pond.

 

The animals know she has always

been here mowing and hoeing,

making fresh jams from berries

and apples.

 

She will throw down feed

for all of them,

each to its own nature

 

and pray on her bench

beneath Norway spruce branches

later when the sun goes halfway down.

 

                            

Carolyn Gregory’s  poems and essays have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Off the Coast, Cutthroat, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, Tower Journal, and Stylus. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and previously won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Award. Her first book, Open Letters, was published in 2009 and a second book, Facing The Music, will be published in Florida in spring, 2015. 

 

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MICHELLE HENDRIXSON-MILLER

 

Where Grief

Ten grocery receipts,
one list. Outdated coupons

worth two gallons of gas.
So many pens, and four

wint-o-green Lifesavers,
my father’s favorite.

*

Was lung cancer that killed him,
or smoking that killed him,

the tobacco lobby, or Bogart, so
damn cool, smoking in smoke-filled rooms.

Either way, the day he left I knew
the sky was being cut from the world

*

Now here, at the bottom
of my purse,

these four white circles
like hardened smoke.


Michelle Hendrixson-Miller lives in Columbia, Tn. She is currently an
MFA student at Queens University of Charlotte, where she served as
poetry editor of Qu Literary Magazine. Her poems have appeared in
Poem, Poems and Plays, Main Street Rag, and Iodine. In 2011, she
received a Pushcart nomination.
 

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DAVID KLEIN

 

Crossing

 

In a slaughterhouse outside of Hermosillo,

we worked so long we never saw the sun.

After their throats had been cut

by the carniceros, who sang and cheered,

the horses were hung by their hoofs with chains.

Their bodies trembled and shook

as they fought to keep their souls

from galloping home.

 

Among us women who cleaned

the killing floor, and who butchered

the body parts in swarms of flies, this Colonel

would come from time to time.

His fingernails were long and green.

Reeking of Marlboros that hung

from his mouth, he walked thoughtfully,

as if he were buying a sow.

He would stop at a girl, and with a little nod,

the boss would clear out of his office for an hour.

 

We had always called the one who would not go

the Village Virgin,

though from what village and what

her name was, we never asked.

She belonged to this group of reformers

working with people from the outside,

reporters and such.

She acted like she almost didn’t care

if the boss found out.

Like the Marlboros, she reeked,

but of righteousness,

though her fingernails were not green,

but stained with the blood of stallions.

I wanted no part of her

and of her almost not caring

if the boss found out,

because if he did

we would all be made to pay.

 

She was the one who would not go

with the Colonel. We were sure

we would never see her again,

and neither would her parents.

But he kept saying, Tu me intrigan,

and he called her his unbroken mare

 

For three weeks he came,

playing at the gentleman, Tu me intrigan,

until the day he took her wrist and dragged her

across the floor and up to the boss’s office,

screaming and kicking.

And I, for no reason that

I have ever known, the stupid one,

I offered myself in her place.

And because she was so much trouble

to drag along that floor and up those stairs

in front of the carniceros and

us butcher women,

he took me instead

 

When he held me down

on the boss’s desk, his flesh

smelling like a dead rat behind

a wall, I slashed

his eye with the boss’s boning knife.

It felt good

 

I ran to El Sahuaro,

to the edge of the desert.

At night when the weeping and prayers

of the others had quieted,

we walked in fields of stars and skeletons.

But I was like the soul of my horses,

galloping toward a welcoming moon.

I knew the moon was just a rock.

I crossed.

 

David Klein’s poetry, short fiction, and personal essays have appeared in Columbia, A Magazine of Poetry and Prose;  Camel Saloon; The Second Hump (Camel Saloon’s best-of publication); The Lost Coast Review; New York Stories;  Film Comment;  Art:Mag; The American Jewish Times Outlook;  Glasschord, Art and Culture Magazine; The Lowestoft Chronicle;  Mouse Tales Press; Drunk Monkeys.

 

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CATHERINE B. KRAUSE

 

What to Do When You're Homeless

 

Don't freeze.

Get a big bag for your stuff.

A suitcase if you can afford it;

Otherwise buy a box of garbage bags,

Double-bag your stuff

And throw the rest of the box inside.

Don't freeze.

Make sure to call the shelter hotline

If it's going to be below freezing.

They'll come pick you up.

They're nice like that.

They don't want you to freeze.

When you get to the shelter,

Spray down your cot with lice and bedbug spray.

It's either your hair or the lice.

It's self-defense.

Don't freeze;

When you wake up, head to a day shelter.

Try to get into a program so you won't freeze.

Be patient. Things take time.

Accept any money you're offered.

Remember you're not arguing with your brother

over who is picking up the check at Trop d'argent.

You're homeless, so show some humility.

Take the damn money.

Take it,

and don't freeze.

 

 

Vests

 

there are a bunch of people

standing around

in union station

doing nothing

 

some of them

have on yellow vests

that read

POLICE

 

they keep telling

the people who have no vests

they have to move

the area is closed

 

that is their job

to make life

just that much harder

for the unvested

 

 

Catherine B. Krause is a programmer from Indianapolis, IN living in Washington, DC. Her poetry has appeared in Gargoyle and is forthcoming in Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. http://catherinebkrause.com/

 

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BERNADETTE McCARTHY

 

Unborn

 

His death brings impotence

and unexpected visits from old friends,

awkward with condolence.

 

My tongue is dry with

rictus gaping at small children

who come knocking

 

behind Mammy's knees,

smart in woollen coats, well-bred,

and knowing their ages.

  

The mother with her shell-smile,

bosom gloating, hair of yolk,

brims with satisfaction

 

at her fruitful use of time.

Our child does, must exist,

sure as first love, vein-slump, drying-up...

 

how could he never have been?

I'd cry from my belly-gulf

with the fury of a foetus scorned

 

but only rattle the tray a little

as I place it on the table, dribbling

tea down my front.

 

The children stare wryly

at the rank-and-file roughage of seedy

flapjacks, raise a brow

 

at two edge-worn bourbon creams.

There's no cake. Baking isn't worthwhile

for a woman on her own.

 

His seed is curdled up;

I should have snuck into the morgue,

probed it out from the still-warm loins,

 

shot it in with the frenzy

of milk over the boil.

Between the toddler and his mother

 

they've eaten the bourbon creams.

The girl belts her brother.

 ‘Ah, why didn’t you leave some for me?’

 

 

Bernadette McCarthy is a research archaeologist living in Co. Cork, Ireland. Her poems have been published in The Linnet's Wings and Causeway/Cabhsair.

 

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MICHAEL P. McMANUS

 

Kitty

 

I keep believing you will return

after months of running the streets and alleys,  

feeding in fast food dumpsters,

on the occasional mouse,

feral and forgotten by everyone.

—My calico Caroline,

I see you meeting me in my master bedroom, 

road-weary, those big soft eyes of yours unchanged—

two delicate windows

through which I see our past and our future

as one perfect now.

You will have lost some weight. 

Broken a claw. Lost the tip of your tail

to a slamming door 

as you fled some unfamiliar room,

in which you wanted to sleep.  

Staying alive is all that matters.

In our bed you will arch your back,

rub against my leg,

then crawl inside my skeleton,

purring as if you really care

for my desiccated heart. 

 

 

One Percent

 

There is sadness inside the candy store

for all those children who have no money—

The others, who are weighted down with more

than they can ever spend, find it funny

 

that poverty has so many faces,

though less amusing than the homeless men

their parents joke about. There are places,

like these, that they will never know again—

 

for money builds a wall that won’t be breached.

They eat, not food, but everything that’s sweet.

And when they go away, they can’t be reached

behind their gilded gates, where all is neat—

 

even the air, as if they own it too.

Yet when they shit, it always smells like poo.

 

 

Michael P. McManus is a Navy Veteran and service-connected Disabled Veteran whose work has appeared in numerous publications such as Louisiana Literature, Texas Review, Atlanta Review, Rattle, Prism International, The MacGuffin, Pennsylvania Review, The Dublin Quarterly, Texas Review, Burnside Review, and O-Dark-Thirty. He is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship Award from the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and his poetry has received Pushcart Prize nominations as well as The Virginia Award and The Oceans Prize. He attended Penn State and The University of Louisiana at Monroe. 

 

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ELIZABETH McMUNN-TETANGCO

 

Lucky

 

In the car, you trace

the leather of the seatback

with your hand.

Your hand looks just

like your mother’s in the dark.

Your veins are straws. Hard

and hollow

and so thin.

The judge they picked,

with the sad eyes, told you to come to the old prison

to surrender, but you don’t know what to think

on the way there. You see the streetlight

on your cheek; you think

of nothing

of your children

of your hair,

in the clean window,

smooth and rich. You put your hand

against the glass, and it is cold.

You are so lucky,

someone said at that one party, normal people

would have gone to jail

for life. Don’t

think of that. You think of stars,

above the car, like frightened children,

and you brush

back your smooth hair with shaking fingers. You are

lucky, you say, once,

in the dark car, you are so

lucky.

 

Live Stock

 

Chickens in stacked cages

in the truck are

as round as puffing cheeks.

Their skin is red as rubbed-raw

eyes

where the wind lifts up

their feathers.

 

 

Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco lives in California's Central Valley. Her poetry has appeared in The Lake, Right Hand Pointing, Word Riot, Hobart, Paper Nautilus, and The Tule Review, among others.

 

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DEBRA McQUEEN

 

My Child

 

Slow to mature

I didn’t want a baby

Till I was 40

Then thought of myself

As a cliché

Then found myself a man

To have one with

And couldn’t

Then was surprised

Because I’d always got

What I wanted.

 

So was it want

Was it clock, biology

Or was it pressure

From society

To be normal

To fit in

To center on something

Other than self.

 

Is there even a self

Or just one complex being

An invisible cord

Connecting us one to the other?

 

One of my students

Hugs me daily

Says Miz McQueen

You too skinny

Says Miz McQueen

Can I come live witchoo in your house

Says Miz McQueen

I want to be your daughter

And I say Sweet child

Darling girl

You already are.

 

 

Debra McQueen’s poems have appeared in Red Triangle, The Legendary, Undertow, and NEON. WORK Literary Magazine published one of her many scathing resignation letters. In spite of this, she still has a job teaching special education in Soda City, South Carolina.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

The Poetry Rainbow

 

                        I

 

At the end of the poetry rainbow, instead

                   of finding

the golden tablet of words, one may learn

                   that any

extant poem is still subject to an unnerving

                   scrupulosity,

and thus be wary of offering a new poem,

                   for fear        

it was written before, then having to listen

                   to a soft voice

echoing in a huge, nearly noiseless chamber,

                   Guilty.

                  

                      II

 

No, poetry is never the right button to push

                   for

scientists who delight in deconstructing

                   emotive

responses, as if lines of poetry were suspect,

                   since love

cannot be quantified, even by its apologists

                   or its 

antagonists, when all of us look for the same

                   reward

at the end, all we want to be able to say is,

                   Yes. O Yes.

 

 

Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Emrys Journal, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry.  His most recent book is The Tree in the Mind, published by Clemson University Press (2014)

 

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KYLE NORWOOD

 

Correspondence With Walt Whitman

 

       For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

                                     —Walt Whitman

 

       The open road goes to the used car lot.

                                     —Louis Simpson

 

 

Dear Walt, a mockingbird flew to the top of a telephone pole

a moment ago, and in his brightest treble

tried every boast he knows, and made me think of you.

The ivy by my apartment steps

has tiny new translucent leaves;

low beds of primroses, small but immodest,

bloom beneath the privet hedge along

the side wall of the bank building; even the tall

glass face of the bank is full of reflected sky:

reminding me that before you melted away

into the responsive body you loved best,

you made a promise.

 

       Personified dim shapes—you hidden orchestras,

       You serenades of phantoms with instruments alert . . .

 

I looked for you in the used car lot:

behind the sagging chain-link fence,

out on the asphalt muddy and oil-stained,

 

among the faded paint jobs, dented doors, ripped upholstery,

scuffed white-wall tires hunkering in the wheel wells,

ragged weather-stripping loose and droopy behind muddled windows,

a rust-spotted Honda was stranded, and as I turned away,

the salesman assured me, “This car’s a cherry.”

He was brawny and muscular, probably lifted weights,

loved the sound of his own voice, loved, I’ll bet,

to relax and gab with the guys in the office trailer.

Am I on the verge of a usual mistake,

alone and uneasy among the murderers,

latrine diggers, prostitutes and presidents

you swallowed in your half-savage alimentary love?

 

       Trooping tumultuous, filling the midnight late, bending me

                powerless,

       Entering my lonesome slumber-chamber, why have you      

               seized me . . .

 

Now I will try to do nothing but listen.

I hear mites crawling in the carpet,

and the voice of my spirit tallies the song of the mites:

“Blind, slow, nosing among skin cells,

fluffs of string, fragments of dead mites;

not knowing much, but knowing food when we see it;

dog-paddling through the infinite, keeping our heads

below the turbulence, cozy in the dome of our limits—

it’s a strange life, but not a bad one,

immersed in our small plenty.”

 

       Fill me with all the voices of the universe,

       Endow me with their throbbings . . .

 

The noon sky replete with the unseen,

stars beyond stars; no frame for the portrait you’re painting:

 

painting the endless body,

painting the waist and thighs,

painting the weed’s dream and the water’s appetite,

painting the rim of the Grand Canyon, and the declivity also,

painting the mysterious intercourse of heaven and hell,

painting yourself into a corner and out again,

painting over the paint with fresh hallelujahs.      

 

Yesterday, when I read “Whoever you are

holding me now in hand,”

my hand tingled, not for the first time,

with a peculiar penetrating warmth.

 

       I said to my silent curious soul out of the bed of the

               slumber-chamber,

       Come, for I have found the clew I sought so long . . .

 

For the last years you spent in a body,

you lived content on a bustling dirty street in Camden

in the soulless administration of Benjamin Harrison

and asked your readers to allow you

a little levity, because “the passing hours

(July 5, 1890) are so sunny-fine.”

Come now and loiter here with me

on a side-street off the open road,

where two cats are crouched between parked cars,

eyeing each other, not sure whether to sniff or spit;

where two little girls on a porch play

with a can of shaving cream, lathering their chins,

letting it ooze on their dresses;

where a proud tail-waving vocalist

who makes the songs of other birds his own

runs through his fervent repertoire—

mouthpiece for nature, instigator of song,

goading me

to widen my admiration.

 

        . . . Poems bridging the way from Life to Death, vaguely    

               wafted in night air, uncaught, unwritten,

       Which let us go forth in the bold day and write.

 

Kyle Norwood is the winner of the 2014 Morton Marr Poetry Prize from Southwest Review. His poems have also appeared in Innisfree Poetry Journal, Seneca Review, Right Hand Pointing, and the anthology Poems for a Liminal Age. He earned a doctorate in English at UCLA and lives in Los Angeles.

 

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WALE OWOADE

 

How I met your ghost

I saw myself inside
your path. How they brought
the graveyard inside your house


how they took
your daughter first
how your son’s soul
ran past a bullet
how your cries
were not what they used to be.

How you cried and cried
till your crying and wailing
are still heard
how you crawled inside a knife


how I met your ghost
how I wept between your past
how I brought your ghost
inside my poem.

 

 

Wale Owoade is a Nigerian poet. He was a finalist in the 2014 Laura Thomas Poetry Contest and won the Silver Prize at the 2015 Tony Tokunbo Fernandez International Poetry Contest. His works have been published in various journals including: Anthology of World Contemporary Poets, Epistle of Lies Poetry Anthology and footmarks: Poems on One Hundred Years of Nigeria’s Nationhood, Kalahari Review, and Maple Tree Literary Supplement, Canada. He is the Managing Editor of Expound Magazine.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

All in the mind.

 

Any family history of mental illness,?

I can offer no great aunt teaming tweeds with straight jacket,

or uncle lurking in the lingerie section of M & S,

but shrugged mum was an alcoholic,

aunt’s depression keeps turning up like a bad penny …

A line of stick figures conga across the psychiatrist’s notepad.

After his questions empty the contents of my past like a dustbin,

He urges a leap of faith across my disbelief to his diagnosis.

Later I keep to myself internet research that somatic

was only recently divorced from its shady coupling with psycho.

Nevertheless explanation to friends

about a leaky mind contaminating its body

still met with a change of subject;

far easier to wear the fashionable label of bi-polar.

 

 

Fiona Sinclair's first full collection of poetry, Ladies Who Lunch was published by Lapwing Press in September, 2014. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

What To Do While Waiting For The Poem

 

While waiting for the poem,

you should write a poem.

Not the one you are waiting for,

which will be the great poem,

the perfect, shining poem

that rises resplendent in the east

of your mind like an Aegean sunrise.

Not that one which will be

the flawless diamond of a poem,

the hardest of all you shall ever write,

against which all others are tested.

The poem you write while waiting

for that poem, will be a tear-shaped

piece of glass to trick the heart.

 

 

J.R. Solonche has been publishing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions) and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife, the poet Joan I. Siegel, and nine cats, at least three of whom are poets.

 

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RODNEY WOOD

 

Praise Poem for The Young 'Uns

 

It's magic the way David, Michael and Sean

appear from behind black curtains with only

an accordian for company and stand level

with the audience of 20 sitting on blue chairs.

No mics are used and tonight the mixing desk

is dark and silent as their homes in Teeside.

Before they even start Sean tells us about

how they were given the nickname, the Young

'Uns, ten years back at a folk club in Stockton

and the name stuck like an albatross or a shadow;

Sean interrupts himself to talk about people

they've met on their tour of the smallest folk

clubs in England such as Redditch where

they had palms read but not properly because

they did not have the right equipment

or how at Fareham someone waited outside

with a translation of the song Pique La Baleine;

and here in Aldershot there's a steward

who's going to write a poem but Sean says

if he puts away his notebook and pen we'll start.

So I put them under the seat. David wipes his nose,

Sean and Michael have some water then voices

carol like larks as they sing about the hedge priest

John Ball who spoke against the poll tax, joined

the Peasants Revolt and wrote When Adam delved

and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

and five members of the English Defence League

who were invited in for a lovely cup of tea

at a Yorkshire Mosque and then had a game

of football.

Sean looks at me and says

Can you write about all this? Yes, I reply, oh yes.

 

 

Praise Poem for Tim Ries, Tom and Ben Waters

 

I'm here to praise Tim Reis because

he plays a whole family of saxes with a beautiful rounded sound

he's recorded with the Rolling Stones and they've recorded with him

he played with the Rolling Stones at Hyde Park in 2013 and after the gig

he gave Tom a new sax to tame

he gave Tom the sax, a Selmer Mark VI, he played at the Westy

I'm here to praise Tim Reis because he grew up to become the man he hoped to be

 

I'm here to praise Tom Waters because he's only 13 years old

he was on stage at the Westy with his dad at the Westy

he watched the Rolling Stones from the side of the stage at Hyde Park in 2013

he told Tim he plays a cheap sax and will never improve because he can’t afford

a better one

and Tim gave him a new sax to tame

he placed his shiny new sax on the Westy stage under a spotlight

so everyone could admire it

he looked cool in his striped green and black shirt

he blew like a pro with growls, wails and jumps

I'm here to praise Tom Waters because he knows he's still a boy

and maybe he'll grow up to wear the sky

 

Lastly, I'm here to praise Ben Waters, Tom's dad, because

he played piano with the Rolling Stones in Hyde Park in 2013

he sat at the Westy like a King on his throne even if it was made from two beer crates

he played boogies, stomps and kept inserting quotes from the classics

he played Chuck Berry songs so his drummer (Earl) could take off his sun glasses

and sing them (except the Russian version of Johnny B Goode)

he looked so proud when his son played solos or just blew on his sax like a pro

with growls, wails and jumps

I'm here to praise Ben Waters because at the Westy he rushed back on stage after the encore to tell the audience this story about Tim Reis

who gave a new £4,000 Alto Selmer Mark VI to 13 year old Tom,

who blew like a pro with growls, wails and jumps

who blew on the Westy stage like a pro with growls, wails and jumps

 

 

Rodney Wood lives in Farnborough, Hampshire, UK. He has been published in many magazines and in 2013 was shortlisted in the Poetry School pamphlet competition.

 

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