2019

 

 

AUGUST CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Cecile Bol, Robert Cooperman, George Franklin, Nels Hanson, Mary Beth Hines,

 Glenn Hubbard, Carolyn Martin, Ronald Moran, Terry Savoie, J R Solonche,

Jamie Sullivan, Bruce Taylor.

 

 

 

 

 

CECILE BOL

 

Distraction

 

I told myself to go write

a poem yet instead got trapped

on BuzzFeed reading about ass

wiping techniques and shit

how about you, when you wipe

do you stand or sit?

yes, it's a thing – moreover, it appears

some of us don't wipe at all

mostly men (that goes without saying)

allowing their butts to leave marks

like toddlers clutching melting Milka bars

and we all wonder how

they have girlfriends – even wives –

and don't their bums itch?

but no need to tell you nothing

beats poetry quite as well as

reading shit about shit

 

Cecile Bol lives in the north of the Netherlands. She is the co-leader of a local English poetry circle. Her English work has appeared (or is due to appear) in The Blue Nib, impspired, Picaroon Poetry and anthologies from The Frogmore Press and Earlyworks Press. More on www.cecilebol.nl. 

 

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ROBERT COOPERMAN

            

Mrs. Cratchit Visits Her Younger Son’s Grave

 

Despite the old man’s pounds,

my little lamb died, died with a smile

haloing his face: to make his going even worse,

for how can I believe in a god so selfish

he has no thought for a mother’s feelings? 

 

Through the long agony of one frowning

specialist after another, Mr. Scrooge paid,

and never stopped his torrent of good cheer

that grated on me like a rusty hinge.

And when Tim rasped out his last breaths,

the old man insisted on attending, sobbing

when he wasn’t clapping my poor Robert

on the shoulder with words meant to buck him up

like a bracing walk through Green’s Park,

 

or holding my hand, as if his talons—

that used to rip pounds, shillings, and pence

from men and women he knew were too poor

to repay him—were soft and consoling

as the fingers of Jesus’ Mother. 

 

I preferred him merciless as a wolf.

Then, at least, you knew what to expect

from the hawk-nosed devil: nothing;

but his cheerfulness, his tears for Tim,

and his speeches of consolation cloyed

like a cup too much sugar in rum punch.

He knew Tim only in those last months,

while Robert, the children, and I had seen him

into this world, were lifted by his high spirits,

and grieved hard as granite for his dying. 

 

Mr. Scrooge takes my hand, while rain

cold and sharp as the Hard Angel’s scythe

turns my mourner’s weeds into a soggy web.

Did I ask him to accompany me

to Tim’s grave? Did I?  Did I?

 

Robert Cooperman's latest collections are The Devil Who Raised Me and That Summer.  Forthcoming is Lost On The Blood Dark Sea.

 

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GEORGE FRANKLIN

 

A French Novel

 

Let me tell you about a book I read in high school.

It begins with a man who’s not sure when his mother died.

See, you’ve already guessed it—set in Algeria

 

In the years before independence.  The man

Has a beautiful girlfriend—at least I remember it

That way—but he doesn’t care much about her.

 

On Sunday, he cooks an omelet on a gas stove

And drinks a glass of wine.  Then, he shoots an Arab one day—

I don’t think you’re supposed to understand why.  He

 

Just keeps talking about the sun as though it were

The reason, but no one can make sense out of that so

He’s sentenced to death after witnesses describe

 

How he didn’t cry at his mother’s funeral.  In high school,

I read he was an existentialist.  Looking that up

In the dictionary wasn’t a lot of help.  Merriam Webster

 

Defined masturbation back then as “self-abuse.” 

I did get it, though, that nothing much mattered to him,

And he shouted at a priest at the end.  The funny

 

Thing is that I wanted him to get away, not to

Die in front of the howling crowd he said

He wanted at his execution.  The word “anti-hero”

 

Meant nothing to me.  I was fifteen and didn’t

Know yet that the world is made up of other people,

That no one’s story is separate from anyone else’s.

 

The Arab may have had a sister who’d made dinner

For him, something with chickpeas and spices that

Would go uneaten.  And Marie, beautiful Marie,

 

May have told a friend in a café about how self-absorbed

Meursault had been, what a bad lover, how

He’d never really listened to her, how she planned

 

To move to Nice someday, open a shop.  And,

In the morning after the guillotine, the priest, whose

Name we don’t know, may have spooned rose petal

 

Jam onto a piece of bread, sipped café au lait

From a blue bowl, and thought how lucky he was

Not to be the one who was dead.

 

In Our Stories

 

My son’s in his room watching videos

And writing a novel about a bounty

Hunter in another galaxy who

Likes anime and can’t be killed.  Simon

And I share this house, meaning I wash the

Dishes, he helps out with the dog.  Every

Night since he was six, we’ve gone for a walk,

Crafting stories together about elves

And trolls, warriors and thieves, and gods who

Don’t care much what happens to people.  A

Hundred generations of heroes and

Villains have been born and mostly met bad

Ends.  The elves are still arrogant, greedy—

The trolls only marginally smarter

Than at the beginning.  Simon asks each

Night about what’s happened in the news.  He

Doesn’t like to read it for himself.  I

Can’t say I blame him.  He’s made a world where

Nothing much intrudes.  He makes himself a

Pizza, some chocolate milk and plays indie

Video games I can’t follow.  Simon’s

Four inches taller than I am, at least,

And his hair’s grown halfway down his back.  He

Doesn’t go to work yet or drive a car,

And he’s got no idea how to talk

With girls his age.  He’s worried that I’ll die

Before he learns to take care of himself,

But he walks to the supermarket and

Buys parmesan cheese, pasta, tomato

Sauce, Oreos, and a half-gallon of

Milk—everything he needs.  His mother and

I got divorced three years ago.  In our

Stories, the gods play less and less a part.

 

George Franklin is the author of two poetry collections: Traveling for No Good Reason (winner, Sheila-Na-Gig Editions competition in 2018) and a bilingual collection, Among the Ruins / Entre las ruinas, translated by Ximena Gómez (Katakana Editores).  He practices law in Miami and teaches poetry workshops in Florida prisons.

 

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NELS HANSON

 

The Promise

 

Did you see the blue

river, she asked, running

deep and pure, unhurried,

 

never slowing? I caught

a glimpse, I said, only

a moment or two. Was

 

there a boat, she asked,

blue with a blue sail?

No, I said, no boat, no

 

sail. One will come, she

said, blue as blue water.

When? Wait patiently.

 

 

Pluto

 

Pluto was a planet, then a dwarf

and now scientists in the journal

Icarus believe the Sun’s farthest

satellite is a giant comet or made

 

of countless comets and asteroids

from the Kuiper Belt past ringed

blue Neptune’s orbit. Once Pluto

was King of the Underworld and

 

sailing rocks of ice with nitrogen

were gathered in a realm like one

where lost souls rest from places

not resembling home, the living

 

with the same revolving seasons,

old hate and love, murder, a frail

peace, eight billion of us breathing

by 2020. Probes provide the data,

 

the European Rosetta spacecraft

launched in 2004, NASA’s New

Horizon in 2006, eight years to

reach a frozen land circling our

 

star on an inclined plane aslant

the solar system. A lone voyager

repeats a path elliptical, at times

nearer the Sun than its neighbor,

 

Sea God with Triton and dozen

smaller moons, the dim afterlife

brighter a while but still almost

five billion miles from Earth.

 

Nels Hanson grew up on a small farm in the San Joaquin Valley of California and has worked as a farmer, teacher and contract writer/editor. His fiction received the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award and Pushcart nominations in 2010, 2012, 2014 and 2016. His poems received a 2014 Pushcart nomination, Sharkpack Review’s 2014 Prospero Prize, and 2015 and 2016 Best of the Net nominations.

 

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MARY BETH HINES

 

Salamander

 

At the bus stop drenched

in cold April rain Mother

unfurls her yellow

umbrella, a swaying

canopy of goldenrod

and bluebells, and invites

a dripping girl to join us

as we wait for the 505 bus

to sweep us from the curb

into the cool dark, to hurl

us into the story spilling

like confession from the woman

who in the half-light looks

like a young Dorothy Day

and Mother cannot

turn away even though

she wants to

cover her eyes

instead she slips off

her coat, drapes the girl,

bares her own thin skin

to soak in, exhale, the wrenching

bus air like the long-

tailed salamander I saw

through glass at the zoo years back –

its wet eyes, the spotted

full-body freeze

when I caught it

beneath the dome

of my fluorescent

hazel gaze.

Mary Beth Hines is a writer following a long career as a project manager. An active participant in Boston-area workshops, her poetry has recently been published, or is forthcoming, in journals such as the Crab Orchard Review, Gyroscope Review, the Aurorean, Literary Mama, and Sky Island Journal, among others.

 

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GLENN HUBBARD

 

From the Cradle to the Grave

 

“...set the ethical terms on which Britain’s new social contract was founded.”

 

Sandra Lewis, aged 11,

 

ran towards the bathroom, ran along the crowded

corridor crying, hoping to find some toilet

paper to stuff between her crotch,

not having what some might call sufficient courage

to ask a member of staff for money

to purchase the pads her mum's wages

did not run to, the pads that were not

on the shelves of the food bank run by

that nice Reverend Waters in the chapel

next to Tesco, from where Sandra still

had not stolen what she so needed,

not being what some might call brave enough

 

[The Reverend Waters, aged 63,

 

understandably, was very grateful

to the sympathetic store detective,

who was able to persuade

the aisle manager not to take

the matter any further when

she tried to steal sanitary items

from Tesco, inexplicably.]

 

when,

 

half-blinded by her tears, she ran straight

into Warren Hobbs, aged 8, who was carefully

carrying an apple to his little sister, having slipped

it into his pocket unbeknownst to Ms Smith,

who had fetched him a sandwich and some fruit

when she saw him holding his stomach and, after

getting him sat down and giving him some time

to dry his eyes, had managed to prise out of him

the revelation that he had not eaten anything

since the day before, when Mr Brown, who

had still not been able to speak to Ms Smith,

had fetched him a sandwich and some fruit.

 

[Mrs Hobbs, aged 25,

 

had not got to the food bank

having been stopped for stealing

menstrual pads, again, in Tesco.]

 

 

Warren Hobbs

 

dropped the apple, which bounced and

then travelled under a table. And Sandra

stopped without thinking, thinking she

might be able to help. But now, down on

all fours, she can feel Warren's eyes, wide

with surprise, fixed on the blood on her

thighs. And she cries. Harder.

 

Still surprised by his apparent ability to write poems that people enjoy, Glenn Hubbard has been writing since 2012.  His work has been published in a number of poetry magazines and last year one of his poems was submitted for the Forward Prize. Glenn has lived in Madrid since 1987.

 

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CAROLYN MARTIN

 

How to Write a Great Country Song

 

three chords and the truth and throw in

half-dozen sweaty beers, a red guitar,

a slow-talking gal who sets you dreamin’ 

how her breasts would feel if she was willin’

and you were so inclined when your fingers

find the chords and you work your rhymes for curves

and heft, beauty marks, and nipples risin’

long before her clothes slide off and how

you’ll rope her in with strings of half-slant lines

that make it clear tonight is all about

a few more swigs and sex on worn-out sheets

with nothin’ more in mind but then she ups

and leaves with it was mighty nice and how

she might have stayed but she won’t pay the price

for bein’ one more one-night nights you fret

about in three-chord sets and so you trash

your rhymes and case your silenced red guitar

and hear a country song struttin’ out the door.

 

From associate professor of English to management trainer to retiree, Carolyn Martin has published poems in journals throughout North America and the UK. Her fourth collection, A Penchant for Masquerades, was released by Unsolicited Press in 2019. Find out more about Carolyn at www.carolynmartinpoet.com “How to Write a Great Country Song” was previously published in The Poeming Pigeon, the Music Issue, 2017.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

Connections

 

I'm talking on my land phone with a friend

                        about            

nothing important, and she says to me, Uh oh,

                        I hear

my doorbell ringing, and I'd better take care

                         of business.

 

What business?  Why?  I'm thinking, Is she

                          really

the poster child for American connections?

                        We want

to know what happens next, when and what

                        do I have

 

to do or say to get beyond my next next?  As in,

                        I'm talking

on my land phone, my cell phone keeps ringing,

                        although

I do not want to talk to him, I must answer, since,

                        well,

                                              

I could be missing something big, even at my age.

                        Might

he be calling to tell me his svelte cousin in Atlanta,

                         a luscious

widow, lonely like me, is looking for a new guy

                        to beef up

 

an evening on her leg of the eternal journey,

                        something

better, if only momentarily, like a meteor just

                        abandoned

by a comet, on its way to the heaven of comets,

                        lighting up

   

our cosmos, if only fleetingly, and that is just

                        what

I want to happen, a flight of radiance, and even

                        though

it may not last, it is finally here, and, yes, still

                        glowing.

 

Ronald Moran has published 13 books/chapbooks of poetry and has poems coming out soon in Tar River Poetry and The South Carolina Review.  His work is archived in two university libraries.

 

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TERRY SAVOIE

 

For the Resident Mourning Doves

 

Good Day, I say, speaking to the whistling wings

          of those two mourning doves

who've flown off to settle on power lines above me

          & balance there while cooing & muttering to each other

about matters that matter most for them, their remarkable

          good fortune in the sun rising once more

& the sheer delight they take in lingering a moment to attend

          to this singular event more closely. 

The doves, a bonded pair certainly, have monitored the sun's travels

          & my own daily habits as well

for the better part of two years so that they know me now

          both outside & inside as I, in turn, believe

I know them.  They seem keen, this wintering couple, to endure

          those bitter months ahead, relying again on

my magnanimous gifting hand with its daily helpings of loose seed

          to keep their feathers & flesh together,

bobbing their heads to the affirmative above thin, delicate necks

          always craning hard in my direction,

their pebble-black eyes set to anticipate my every move & my goodwill

          for their existence.  They don't

fully realize what's ahead, but they do know I am here

          waiting to hear again

their telltale whistling wings as I carry out my bag of seeds. 

          They attend the rising sun that wakes

each of us, opening wide its fist from the east to hit the house face first

          as the three of us concentrate

fully on this apparent Now that's here, naked, cold as it is

          at our feet.

 

Terry Savoie has had nearly four hundred poems published in journals and anthologies over the past four decades. These include poems in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, North American Review, Ploughshares and The Iowa Review.  A selection, Reading Sunday, won the chapbook competition and was published by the Bright Hill Press.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE 

 

The Library Has a New Librarian

 

The library has a new librarian.

Her name is Emma. Emma is tall.

Emma is slender. Emma has short

dark hair. Emma has very beautiful eyes.

Emma has large, very beautiful eyes.

Emma has large, very beautiful hazel eyes.

The first time I saw Emma, I wanted to say,

“Emma, you have beautiful eyes.” I didn’t.

I didn’t have the nerve. I said, “Thank you”

and left with my book. I didn’t even say

“Emma” because I didn’t have the nerve.

The second time I saw Emma, I wanted

to say, “Emma, you have beautiful eyes.”

I didn’t. I didn’t have the nerve. I said,

“Thank you” and left with my book.

The third time I saw Emma, I wanted

to say, “Emma, you have beautiful eyes.”

I did. I had the nerve. I said, “Emma,

you have beautiful eyes.” “Why, thank

you,” she said. “You’re welcome,” I said.

I lost my nerve. We were both happy.

 

 

Lethe

 

What’s on tap? I asked the barmaid.

The barmaid gave me the beer menu.

I see you don’t have the one I want.

What’s that? she asked. Lethe, I said.

I never heard of Lethe, she said,

pronouncing it leth. It’s Lethe, I said.

It’s the name of a river in hell.

Oh, she said. Isn’t that the Styx?

she said, pronouncing it stikes. That’s

a different river, I said. The Styx is

the one you cross to get to hell,

the underworld. The Lethe is the one

you drink from once you’re there

to wash away all your memories, I said.

You forget everything about the upper

world.  Oh, she said. I guess that means

we do have it on tap. All the beers do

that, make you forget, don’t they?

she said. Like Lethe IPA, Lethe amber

ale, Lethe stout, Lethe red, Lethe wheat?

She was pronouncing it right. Yes, I said.

You’re absolutely right. I’ll have a Lethe

stout. She wasn’t as dumb as she looked.

 

J.R. Solonche is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (chapbook from Five Oaks Press), Invisible (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize by Five Oaks Press), The Black Birch (Kelsay Books), I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions), In Short Order (Kelsay Books), Tomorrow, Today & Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions),  If You Should See Me Walking on the Road (Kelsay Books), and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley.

 

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JAMIE SULLIVAN

 

Composition VII

                     

“Hungry souls go hungry away.”

—Wassily Kandinski
 

Nina was all light and swirl

in a lemony dress.

“I’m all breath,” she thought.

 

Arthur’s eyes studied the canvas,

gesso on his fingers, smear of ocher on his lip.

He had done enough of her nude.

So he painted her voice, a moth skipping through him

from bloom to bloom, or a warm

stream in the cool air.

 

But Nina wants to dance with Kandinski

in a ballroom in Minsk with an orchestra playing

and feel the shimmering cymbals,

and the violins riffling through her hair.

She wonders if he thinks in paint

as she sways with Kandinski among

the japonica and Chinese lanterns.

 

Could he paint time elapsing

or the music spiraling through the inner ear?

She had felt his brushes at play on her skin.

She wonders as she dines with Arthur

on sardines and olives on crackers

in the apartment on Skinker

with the Paris green door.

 

Jamie Sullivan is the author of Pack of Lies, forthcoming from Main Street Rag. His poetry has appeared in Flyway, The Naugatuck River Review, and The Briar Cliff Review among other journals and anthologies. He teaches writing and literature at Mount Marty College. 

 

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BRUCE TAYLOR

 

“The good gardener plants for three, maybe four years from now.”

 

In a garden like that there’s

always too much to do.

The maple he should have

planted the day                                                       

his daughter was born

would have been by now

memento yellow.

 

And through the kitchen door

she should be stepping

to shake some white thing

or another and stand

just a moment just so

the hollyhocks would have

something lovelier to tower over.

 

And tiger‑lilies should be

flashing shamelessly orange

and late asters in their

final purple should be nodding

thick and heavily‑headed

against the garage he ought

to have painted last year,

 

or the year before last,

immaculately white.

 

 

“Wherever one gardens there is heartbreak.” 

 

Working an autumn garden

it’s not hard to think about dying

when the thinnest, most delicate

of ices lingers all morning

here and there in the yellow grasses.

 

The sun on our back

throws what is before us

into a sharp relief,

snapdragon wither from

stem to bud and dahlia from

the ruined blossom down

 

fruits, leathery pods,

nuts and berries,

a blizzard of seed,

blights, rusts and smuts

 

the dry husks of the day

like a fire going out

from its center

burning clear at last.

 

 

“Every gardener knows the pleasures of a pile of catalogs and a chair 

by the fire"

 

No need of many earthy

instructions here,

no thistle nor cursed soil

no regions bereft of summer

where hope is deferred

every expectation blighted.

 

No white flowers and lanterns at evening.

No mottled rustle and ruin of Autumn                          

leaves piled high against the door.

No charm wafted to a swarm of bees.

No perennial huddling

low against the bitter winter gale.

 

No Spring passed

in anxious doubts and fears.

No green and leggy anticipation

of some privileged ignorance of

the hungrier facts of life.

 

 

Bruce Taylor is retired, living in a small Wisconsin village, and is pleased to have had his work appear previously in The Lake, as well as in Able Muse, The American Journal of Poetry, The Chicago Review, The Nation, The New York Quarterly, Poetry, Rattle, and Writer’s Almanac. These poems appeared in “Taylor’s Encyclopedia of Gardening”, In Other Words, Upriver Press, 2014.

 

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