2017

 

 

 

AUGUST CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Isobel Cunningham, Gabor G. Gyukics, Luisa A. Igloria, Brenda Kay Ledford, Joan Leotta, Alison Lock, Robert Garner McBrearty, Todd Mercer, Robert Okaji, Kenneth Pobo, PC Vandall, Mark Young, Aliesa Zoecklein.

 

 

 

 

 

ISOBEL CUNNINGHAM

 

Atlas Cab

 

In the tiled hall

brilliant sunlight streaming in through the skylight,

beside me the scuffed blue suitcase.

How to choose rest-of-your-life clothes?

And of all my books, which ones to take now?

No doubt there will be negotiating sessions in future.

Just in case, take that complete Katherine Mansfield.

Passport, money, underwear, my mother and grandmother’s

framed photographs.

Through the frosted glass

I saw the cab stop. I opened the door

before the driver could ring the too-loud bell.

He took my case without a word.

Into the back seat, that satisfying clunk

as the door of the solid car closed.

The pumpkin-hued leaves of fall screamed at a dazzling blue sky.

He turned his Persian face

“Where to?” 

 

Isobel Cunningham writes poetry and fiction. She self published a book of poetry in 2015 entitled Northern Compass. Her blog is isobelmtl.wordpress.com. She has been published on line by Silver Birch Press and Rat's Ass Review.

 

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GABOR G GYUKICS

 

conjecture or else erased by suicide   

                                                                                                 

silence slightly opens

gives room for the sounds

fussing around

 

as soon as the sounds enter

they stop fussing

become one with

silence

 

the sounds stuck outside

knock together

waiting for silence

to open again

 

 

patch on the foghorn                                

 

under the wings of a dead angel

the moon is making love

to the sun

the negative of their bodies

lie in every river bed

mountain range

dirt road

next to your footprint

in every ditch

 

by the walnut tree

you’ll find a piece

of the moon

and not far from it

under the plum tree

shines a broken part

of the sun

 

 

Gabor G Gyukics  (b. 1958) Hungarian-American poet, literary translator is the author of 7 books of original poetry, 4 in Hungarian, 2 in English, 1 in Bulgarian and 11 books of translations including A Transparent Lion, selected poetry of Attila József and an anthology of North American Indigenous poets in Hungarian. He writes his poems in English (which is his second language) and Hungarian. His latest book titled a hermit has no plural was published by Singing Bone Press in the fall of 2015). 

 

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LUISA A. IGLORIA 

 

Signs and Wonders

 

“Who wants to reach inside the marvelous?”
                                         Tung-hui Hu

 

I begin with what I have
and go on toward all I’ve ever 

wanted. How beautiful the film
of moisture on the grass, not yet 

taken by the heat. Once, a man
in a great coat stood on that

street corner, raised both
his arms, and solemnly twirled

without stopping. Here at the end
of the fence, the metal newel has two 

indentations that give it the familiarity
of a face. How still the river is at midday— 

as if all the wet, bright spirits
have decided to lie down for a nap.

 

 

Postcard

 

Some days the sun shines high from its balcony but not unkindly, like the hostess at a party scattering good luck coins and candy to the children gathered below. You used to cut my hair in the garden: I sat on a stool under the guava tree, with an embroidered towel fastened around my neck. Fringed across the forehead, my hair never grew past my shoulders. When the ends began to curl like upturned fingers against my shoulders, it was time to trim. The shadow of my head reflected in the kitchen window behind, or appeared on the railing. When you were done you shook the shorn locks from my nape, the flocked towel like a matador’s cape. One night you woke me from sleep and carried me on your back, walking through thigh-high grass. Where did we go? I do not remember, only that a south wind slammed the corncrib door. I open and close my hands. Sometimes I find a wispy hair, or a sweet; sometimes a coin whose currency has dulled, but not its glimmer.

 

 

Luisa A. Igloria is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world's first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of the chapbooks Haori (Tea & Tattered Pages Press, 2017), Check & Balance (Moria Press/Locofo Chaps, 2017), and  Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015); plus the full length works Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015. 

www.luisaigloria.com  http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/luisa-a-igloria

 

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BRENDA KAY LEDFORD

 

Mountain Sisters

In memory of:

Poet Katherine Stripling Byer

 

The syrup mill perfumes

a fog-chocked morning,

sunrays break through poplars,

the rain crow’s mournful solo.

 

The Blue Ridge Mountains

hover over the Tuckasegee River

meandering through Cullowhee.

Time creeps in the coves,

 

the past unfolds

as a mountain poet

spills words as a Crazy Quilt

unraveling on the page.

 

Sisters united in spirit,

sunrise to sunset toiling

to care for their families;

isolation as a yoke.

 

The painful beauty,

a chilled breeze;

the mountain woman grasps

her black shawl.

 

Brenda Kay Ledford is a member of NC Writer's Network. Her work has appeared in many journals.  Aldrich Press published her poetry book that won the 2015 Paul Green Award from NC Society of Historians.  She blogs at:  http://blueridgepoet.blogspot.com

 

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JOAN LEOTTA

 

At Fatima

 

Against darkness—

of loss

of grief

we lit a candle

for her brother,

my son.

We breathed in the

subtle sweetness

of beeswax around us.

Our candle's flame

sent a small orb of hope

into a shadowy

corner of the shrine.

I smiled.

 

Joan Leotta’s poetry, short stories and essays appear or are forthcoming in Gnarled Oak, the A-3 Review, Kai-Xin (award winner), Spelk Fiction, Hobart Literary Review, Silver Birch, Postcard Poems and Prose among others. When not hunched over a computer she is walking, shell hunting and daydreaming at the nearest beach.

 

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ALISON LOCK

 

Advice to a son

 

Today, an icy rain falls. The forecast

for snow is no longer a shadow

 

on a screen but a pale spotted mist.

I think about how the weather ages,

 

how damp seeps between the bones,

knees crack when the northerlies

 

bring in the snow, and how you do not believe

me when I say your thin coat will never keep

 

the warmth of my hearth against your chest.

I stare through the window at the

 

bowed heads of the viburnum tinus

whose pink flowers belie the season.

 

 

Alison Lock's poetry and short stories have appeared in anthologies and journals in the UK and internationally. She has published a short story collection, two poetry collections, and a fantasy novella. www.alisonlock.com 

 

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ROBERT GARNER MCBREARTY

 

The Revolutionary in Our Group

 

When the man

In ragged garb

And broken teeth

Came to our table,

Holding his hand out

For a coin, our revolutionary

Friend said don’t give it

To him, it will only slow

Down the revolution.

Our other friend said

But he’s hungry now.

The revolutionary said

It doesn’t matter,

The final revolution is

All that counts.

Thirty years later

Our revolutionary friend

Has an upstairs office

With a view

Of shady paths,

And makes good money

Lecturing about

The injustice to the poor.

He takes comfort

In his cozy home,

His handsome wife,

His children

With nice teeth

From their good dental plan,

While our man in ragged garb

Still waits, holding out his hand.

 

 

Taking Off

 

I think it’s time

for me to take off

I told my wife,

set out on my own.

I’m feeling sort of controlled,

you know, a little pushed around,

and time to get back to being a man

and doing what a man must do.

Fine, she said, take off.

Which way? I said.

 

Robert Garner McBrearty writes both fiction and poetry. His poetry has recently appeared in several literary journals, and his fiction has been widely published, including in the Pushcart Prize, Missouri Review, New England Review, North American Review. and in many other places. For more information about his writing, please see www.robertgarnermcbrearty.com

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TODD MERCER

 

One Doctor County (Easter Springs, 1910)

 

 I save or stave off demise for many with staples of my house-call kit:

paregoric, laudanum, syrup of ipecac, sugar pills, smelling salts.

But the bag comes up lacking— sometimes it’s the saw, the shovel.

Not all my charges linger here on earth.

 

Farm families pay my fees with cherries or sides of beef.

Their migrant laborers trust I’ll set bones and slake fevers

but forget their names and which dirt lanes brought me

 

Carter’s pills and digitalis, bandages and coneflower.

I keep stitching needles in there, scalpel and retractor set,

leeches to scour infection, for thinning the blood.

 

My people are dying and birthing beside bean fields, in orchards.

They’re mangled in machinery faster than I cross the townships.

No time to monitor medical literature, against freak contingencies.

 

Leaving out again tonight. The kit’s heavy with stoppered bottles:

hazel and iodine, balm for burns, sedatives to soothe into slumber

or insensibility. I salvage the preservable. The inside zipper pocket

cradles enough narcotic for a quiet mercy sendoff, a favor to a friend.

 

Todd Mercer of the bustling Grand Rapids and rural Antrim County, Michigan won the Dyer-Ives Kent County Prize for Poetry (2016), the National Writers Series Poetry Prize (2016) and the Grand Rapids Festival Flash Fiction Award (2015). His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance,appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer's recent poetry and fiction appear in Eunoia Review, Literary Orphans and Sonic Boom.

 

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ROBERT OKAJI

 

Letter to Wright from Between Gusts

 

Dear Tami: The wind here speaks an undiscovered language:

diffident, it lurks in the background, stuttering, fingering

everything, shifting directions, mocking us, barely noticeable

until it gets pissed off and BLOWS! Then, shit happens. Pickle

jars appear in purses. Love notes remain unwritten. Shingles

flap across the lawn and idiots are elected to office (nothing new,

I know). When I was a kid I marveled at those fortunates who

lived under the same roof for years, for decades, entire lives, while

my family rolled around the globe, collecting vaccination scars

like postcards or nesting dolls. How interesting, I thought then,

to know and be known, to avoid the perpetual newcomer's

path. Having shared this house with my wife and various dogs,

birds, rodents, insects and arachnids for thirty-three years, I now

know this - home is not a stationary edifice. No cornerstone

defines it any better than fog rubbing the juniper's tired back,

or courting mayflies announcing warmth's arrival in their brief

pre-death interludes. Desire is a feckless mistress; after obtaining

the prize, we miss the abandoned and wonder what might have

been. When you arrive at your new town remember this: no one

is stranger to you than yourself. I speak from experience, having

absorbed differences at one end only to watch them emerge

hand-in-hand at the other, like newborn twins or nearly forgotten

reminders of an uncle's kindness in a year of typhoons and sharp

replies and rebuilt lives. Home is a smile, a lover's sleepy touch

at 3 a.m., or the secret knock between childhood friends reunited

after decades. It lives in soft tissue, not steel, and breathes water

and air, flame and soil and everything between. But it can't exist

without your mind and body lugging it around. I would like to

tell you what the wind is saying, but it's singing different tunes

these days, and my translation skills begin and end in that still

place between gusts, floating in the twilit air like so many empty

pockets. These are the only words I have. Not much to hang a hat

on, and I apologize for my shortcomings and inability to expound

with clarity. I speak in poetry, but mean well. May your moons

be bright and your winds wild yet gentle, even if you can't fathom

their meaning. I'll keep trying if you will. All the best, Bob.

 

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. He is the author of several chapbooks, including From Every Moment a Second (forthcoming, Finishing Line Press), and his work has appeared in such journals as Crannóg, Eclectica, and Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art, and may also be found on his blog at https://robertokaji.com

 

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KENNETH POBO

 

Rousseau’s Eve

 

She takes the fruit,

can’t guess

the many myths

to come from this exchange,

generations of women

pegged as doom bringers,

naive, dumb Dora’s

who squander bliss.

 

A white Eve

against the green.  When she

hands Adam the fruit—

does he shiver? 

 

After taking a bite, the lummox

runs for leaves,

making excuses

to blame her

while bedding her.

 

 

Magic

 

Jerry waits for magic,

leaves the porchlight on

in case it should pop

 

in at night.  Jeff does what he can,

but the house still needs cleaning,

the lawn mowing.

 

Jeff shrugs off magic,

scrambles eggs and if it’s sunny

he’ll wash the car.  Jerry

 

thinks today the talking goldfish

will appear. 

Even for an afternoon,

even for a single minute ringed

with gold and stretching all the way

past the grave.   

 

 

Kenneth Pobo has a new book from Circling Rivers called Loplop in a Red City.  In addition to The Lake, his work has appeared in: Mudfish, Orbis, Hawaii Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere.

 

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PC VANDALL

 

After a Poem by Adrienne Rich

 

A poem mushrooms and breaks in two; somewhere else. It’s by a house

where leafmold grows into grass and trees talk. It’s between our country

and the Russian woods. It’s making a strip of paradise

its own. Here is where the persecuted

 

shadows disappear but the fooled light stands still. The truth is, I dread

those dark shadows because I know the revolutionary

ways ghosts move closer to the edge of crossroads and disappear.

Dread isn’t necessary, so why do I

 

tell you where it is? I’ve abandoned these wants, this meeting

place in the mesh-ridden trees.

I won’t tell you because you won’t listen

to anything at all. Listen, have you not walked uphill to the old

 

meeting place near the unmarked road? They’re picking off people

who tell you to buy it but won’t sell it. It’s about time to want

it, make it, and own it because anything else

has already disappeared.

 

‘After a Poem by Adrienne Rich’ is a transposition of Adrienne Rich’s “What Kind of Times Are These?”, using most of the same words in my poem as she used in hers, as well as the form but subverting the order and meaning.

 

 

Father

 

I’ve seen your face at the grocery store,

fondling cantaloupes for ripeness,

on a bar stool with shooters lined up

 

in front of you, on the park bench hooting

after some girl who swims past you, your eyes

glazed and pressed to the goldfish bowl.

 

I can still see the smudge of your breath

on the glass. Yesterday, I heard music

and I looked up, half-expecting to see

 

you there. You’re the man yanking the child,

the tears a woman cries for and the guy

with hands held to his head as if fingers

 

were pistols, and yet dead, you’re alive

in the trees, potholes and in the roaring

thunder of a rainstorm where I count

 

the seconds without you. You are the grin

on my daughter’s face, the two-toned look

of my son and the furrow of lines

 

around my mother’s mouth. You are the dad

I try to tame, the father I conceive

into something bigger, brighter and better.

 

PC Vandall’s work has appeared in Rattle, Room, Carousel, Freefall, Kansas City Voices, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Zetetic and many others. Her next book is forthcoming from Oolichan Books. 

 

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MARK YOUNG

 

Threads

 

Later, after the

whales had

been re-

floated, she went

down to the beach

& lay in their

indentations. She

pressed her ear

against the wet

sand. The shell

principle, a tin-can

telephone. Though

not the sea

she heard singing

but the threads

leading back

from it.

 

 

Mark Young's most recent books are Ley Lines & bricolage, both from gradient books of Finland, The Chorus of the Sphinxes, from Moria Books in Chicago, & some more strange meteorites, from Meritage & i.e. Press, California / New York.

 

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ALIESA ZOECKLEIN

 

On David Hockney’s A Bigger Splash, 1967

 

Above the perfect blue, an up-splash,

a mid-air wandering of droplets

 

thinned to a veil. Not a tender scene

but high noon and naked. 

 

A bank of low shrubs, two tall palms and

a chair. Everywhere else, the allure

 

of geometric perfection: stuc-

co wall, plate glass, strip of

 

cement—impeccably

clean. Not a lesson in suffering

 

unless you bring that with you. The pool

appears flat, swept, impenetrable,

 

but not, of course, impen-

etrable: Someone you’ve always known.

 

Someone you’ve never met.

In the high hills of another time.

 

Near the canyon you recognize. Here

is your rendezvous with desire,

 

what swims most silently

in you. Here is an ocean in min-

 

iature, your private underworld

of perpetual disappearance.

 

 

Aliesa Zoecklein won the 2014 Peter Meinke Award for her chapbook At Each Moment, Air. Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Water-stone Review, Grist, Cimarron Review, Cream City Review among others. Aliesa lives with her wife in Gainesville, Florida where she teaches writing at Santa Fe College.

 

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