2020

 

 

AUGUST CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Rey Armenteros, Robert G. Cowser, Rhienna Renèe Guedry, Stella Hayes,

Karen McAferty Morris, Anthony Owen, John Short, Fiona Sinclair, Shelby Stephenson,

 Hannah Stone, Grant Tarbard.

 

 

 

 

REY ARMENTEROS

 

My Book is a Fulcrum

 

Propped up by a sea of clothed bodies in an overly-crowded train, I feel what I know is a breast pushing against my back.

 

Once in such a packed situation, giving a fat girl’s arm the slightest pass and how quickly her flesh came alive with bumps.

 

The lady moves my skin to react the same way much against my will as she pushes her breast into me again.

 

My attention toward the book I have been reading has left the train, though I sound off every empty syllable in my head.

 

The train moves us around and we’re swaying, in fact like sardines whose can is rolling on the seas of missed opportunities.

 

The breast pressed against me is increasing the pressure, and I keep going over words like the tolling of a clock.

 

The windows show nothing but a charcoal reflection of the train’s interior, when I locate her slightly brown hair just over my shoulder.

 

As I’m taking in the apple scent that must be hers, turning around is out of the question for the simple certainty it would kill the moment.

 

Instead, I aspire to a sordid communication by moving my back with the motions of the train, giving rotation to our contact.

 

We are moving in unison, but the question remains: are we really completing a circuit or is this something else?

 

We are plunged into darkness — the words have vanished, and my pulse is louder than the screaming passage.

 

When we clear the tunnel, the lights come back on, and I return from this pause in serious doubt.

 

Rey Armenteros is a Los Angeles-based painter and writer who has had his essays and poetry appear in numerous literary journals and art magazines, including The Nasiona, Lunch Ticket, Umbrella Factory Magazine, and Still Point Arts Quarterly.

 

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ROBERT G. COWSER

 

The Value of a Lemon

 

Throughout the school day

 my classmate coughed often

and sometimes wiped her nose.

Before the last class of the day began

she walked to the store on the highway.

When she returned, she carried

a lemon in her right hand.

Once seated in the school bus

across the aisle from me

she used her thumb nail

to puncture the rind of the lemon.

Then she held it to her lips.

 

I smelled the pungent odor

of citrus, a welcome

change from the smell of stale air,

from the odor of wet wool

of schoolmates’ coats

and the musk of the canvas cushions.

 

On a day when we needed color

the lemon shined against

the drabness of the girl’s coat,

a sun peeking through the clouds.

 

 

The Ladies’ Rest Room -1935

 

They came from all parts

of the county---

farm women in cotton dresses

made from feed sacks---

to a haven on Jefferson Street,

a building the county provided

for the wives who came to town,

though rarely, with their men.

The trip was a chance to buy stockings

 and hair nets or to sit wearing curlers

in a shop smelling of scorched hair.

The toilets at the rest room provided relief

and the pleasure of sending

to some hidden place 

water and waste.

 

Robert G. Cowser’s poems, short stories, essays, and short plays have been published in various literary journals, primarily in the United States, but also in UK and in Latin America. He is a native of Texas currently living in the Midwest.

 

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RHIENNA RENÈE GUEDRY

 

Canyons

 

Sticks for stacking, sticks from
the brush, knee-high and brittle

a collection from one field

indistinguishable from another
save the rhythm
of gravel under foot, a snakeskin,

the hollow smell of death from

where once a creature fell, made

a meal for those in need
 

I learned later that sticks

were currency and language

sticks, pieces of clay, hardened into shape
the first typography, the first symbol
like how in childhood “this many” could be
a fist-full of three sticks

how two clumps of clay could be
horses, grain, oil

 

Just sticks beneath us, all

teeth and hair and clay and bone whirled

into earth like a cocoon

a fossil’s slumber, the whisper of sticks under foot
What is left is

here, and here

are the receipts

 

Rhienna Renèe Guedry is a writer and artist who found her way to the Pacific Northwest, perhaps solely to get use of her vintage outerwear collection. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Empty Mirror, Bitch Magazine, Screen Door, Scalawag Magazine, Taking the Lane, and elsewhere on the internet. Find more about her projects at  rhienna.com or @chouchoot on Twitter.

 

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STELLA HAYES

 

Taking Down the New Year’s Tree

 

We started to take it down, in complacent gestures

of a husband & wife. Putting ornaments away with deliberateness,

 

          into an assortment of aging boxes, of varying sizes.                                          

 It lurked in the dark. In ornamental exile.

 

With an unchaste smile, just moments before, having a point of view.

Now dressed down, in picked-over ornaments. It had a will to live

 

out its days. Without a root system to count on as it once had in the near-

by forest. We were diligent, adding water daily, to a dish under its cut-off torso.

 

To keep the luster of its needles shimmering. The arms,

strong enough for the ornamental weights, we hung to mark it as ours. For the days,

 

it stayed with us. Each day, caught off guard. In its fluorescent glow.

It wasn't stiff like a corpse—but it wasn't alive like

 

a tree having once lived. You know when something is living—

composed of blood, not chlorophyll.

 

It sinks life into you & you know it. You just do—

We unplugged the lights. And there it stood, in the nude, waiting for morning.

 

Russian-American poet Stella Hayes is the author of poetry collection One Strange Country (What Books Press, forthcoming in 2020). She grew up in an agricultural town outside of Kiev, Ukraine and Los Angeles. She earned a creative writing degree at the University of Southern California. Her work has appeared in Prelude, The Indianapolis Review and Spillway, among others.

 

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KAREN MCAFERTY MORRIS

 

The Straw Ladies

 

I watch them tear the palm leaves into ribbons and plait them,

their deft, dark fingers creating bowl-shaped baskets

at the straw market beside the beach, laboring to the cadence

of the clear lapping water that hisses as the waves

reach their end then sigh in surrender back into the azure.

 

A satinleaf tree spreads shade over them, a long table holds

low, round baskets, perfect nests for distant Indian cobras

that might uncoil and sway to the palm fronds’ clatter

as the skittish, warm breeze shoves them, tongues flicking

as they taste the moist, salty air. My hair feathers across my face.

 

Turbaned in yellow cloth, her shiny face lifts in welcome,

strong, sleek arms offer a basket, a whorl of bright green

bands ducking in and out like dolphins, sturdy, unlikely to be

crushed in my suitcase. She points to a box of produce, “Sour

sop, ripe, very tasty. Here also are sugar apples.”

 

I touch them, nestled there like green sea anemones,

alien fruit. I carry some away in my new basket, along with

papayas and avocados. At our lavish rental house, the two maids

will serve them to us, along with savory peas and rice, and johnnie

cake. They always add sweet condensed milk to my morning coffee.

 

It sits on the back porch holding sunscreen, mosquito repellent

and gardening gloves, silvery now, and flexible even after

seven years, its woven strips smooth when I stroke them.

It had cost so little I had not taken care of it. But maybe, if I

keep rubbing it like a magic lamp, a genie will appear.

 

I would wish that I might again see the leaves above them,

the mahogany undersides, the pale green tops fluttering,

flickering in startling, harmonious contrast, They are threaded

into my life, though I am not into theirs, except as women

under clouds that break like shells in the same paling sky.

 

 

Not as Seasons in Turn

Sapphic Stanza

 

Mist now fades the desolate leafless wood to

specter shapes of trees that are past their fame. Just

yesterday in autumn’s brief reign their wine-stained

canopies floated

 

down the hills.  I feel no regret for it will

come again, this beauty of flame, and true, as

crimson sunset drenches the silhouettes of

dark distant summits,

 

softened sorrow finds me, alone and wary,

knowing how the world holds such sadness for

some, is careless, cold as the winter roots, and

stingy with its joy.

 

Yet the razored memories of vanished loves do

often rush to mind, and in these late hours they

rouse unshrouded, laying claim to my heart, and

fill with sharp grief my

 

eager hollowed soul. Whether lost to death or

broken chance, or drifted away by swift time,

faces, voices enter my earned peace, past the

sheltering shadows

 

cast by firelight, rest in the lamps or dancing

candle flames, not coming as seasons in turn--

but as snow-bound roses, thawing ice at new

year, autumn peaches.

 

Karen McAferty Morris is Poetry Editor of the NLAPW’s magazine The Pen Woman. Her work has appeared in The Reach of Song, Panoply, Lyric, POEM, Avalon Review, and Encore. Her chapbook Elemental was published in 2018, followed by Confluence in 2020. She lives in the Florida panhandle. “Not as Seasons in Turn” was first published in The Reach of Song, 2018.

 

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ANTHONY OWEN

 

Lockdown Bay

 

And gulls came to clean Lockdown bay

one gargled a sandwich half wrapped in cling film

another fought with another for a Mcflurry lid pink as end of day.

 

And a jellyfish released sperm for a clear plastic bag with ham

a nappy unfurled with a rose high on the littered gorse

a pissed-up gentleman gave kebab meat to a horse.

 

Come with me to Lockdown bay and crack open a can of stella

bury fag butts in the sand and throw leave sheets of the sun

park our cars anywhere we like and shout cunt to some fella.

 

Come with me to Lockdown bay and leave a barbecue burning

I’ll make you a Cajun chlorinate chicken sarnie from America

we’ll make out later and I’ll lob a nodder in the mesquite.

 

Come with me to Lockdown bay

look at the big blue sea

then look away.

 

Antony Owen is a writer from Coventry raised in the industrial heartland of Coventry which has influenced his writing. He was shortlisted for The Ted Hughes Award in 2017 and the following year won a category in the British Army Armistice Poetry competition. His is known for hard hitting poetry and representing forgotten voices.

 

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JOHN SHORT

 

The Dunes

 

The boy’s eye caught movement but

it was just his parents in the dunes,

attempting to sunbathe, fumbling  

with bikini straps, shades, suntan oil.

 

Someone had misinformed him

that butterflies only live for a day;

he saw one near the sea that evening,

felt sorry for the fate of its beauty.

 

The next day he roamed all around

eventually getting lost; they had to

send out a search party to find him

and his parents were hysterical.

 

Years later he brought his girlfriend

to that beach, the dunes, she had hair

like midnight but her summer dress

reminded him of coloured wings.

                            

Time Travel

 

I’d love to travel back:

feel the sweet warmth of mints

inside my mouth in 1870,

lick Victorian ice-cream,

follow that monochrome lad

who just slipped round the corner,

into the rest of his life.

 

Granddad when an urchin,

stole rides, he said, just clinging

to a horse-drawn carriage,

then after smashing windows

police rang the doorbell at night;

blue pills they dished to anyone sick

when later a corporal in the war.

 

So thank you, early pioneers

for the bemused folk crowding the lens,

staring at us through portals of time

but unable to communicate,

oblivious to sufferings ahead

with no idea we’d understand it all.

 

John Short spent years in southern Europe and now lives on Merseyside, near Formby. Widely published in magazines such as South Bank Poetry, The High Window, Envoi, The Blue Nib, London Grip, Sarasvati and Poetry Salzburg, he was a Pushcart nominee in 2018. His pamphlet Unknown Territory (Black Light Engine Room Press) is out this month and his collection Those Ghosts (Beaten Track Publishing) will appear later this year.

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

60th birthday

 

Our diaries are torn up that March.

Your internet searches to find some way to mark

my 60^th are all dead ends.

But, in the two months since you got the motorbike,

I have learned to take corners so low I could tag the tarmac,

compensate for shunts at junctions and lights

by leaning back against the sissy bar,

adjust my position when pot-holes wind, with a wriggle,

even chat at raucous night club volume, as we motor along.

So, I decide a blast down to Margate,

for chips and ice cream on the seafront, is gift enough,

because your coaxing me at 60,

on the back of a motor bike, is the new adventure,

every bit as exotic as my eyes scaling

the great pyramids, and still part of you,

pivoting my life 360 degrees.

 

Fiona Sinclair's new collection Time Traveller's Picnic was published by Dempsey and Windle in March 2019. She is the editor of the on-line poetry magazine From the edge.

 

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SHELBY STEPHENSON

 

Almond Joy

 

Peter Paul Halajian

started Peter Paul during World War I. 

 

He stopped making the Almond Joy

(sugar and coconut shortages)

 

to concentrate on making

Mounds through World War II, 

 

Winjamy Candy

Manufacturing Company. 

 

Hershey owns the business now. 

My father chews his candy bar,

 

standing on the oiled plank-floor

of Mr. Charlie Parrish’s Store

 

down the road about a mile

from the home-place here on Paul’s Hill. 

 

My father loved to nibble a “Peter Paul Almond Joy,”

that enrobed layer of milk chocolate, the coconut-center,

 

the two almonds on top

shaped like the end of his foxhorn. 

 

William Paul Stephenson 

would rear back and sing: 

 

“Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t;

Almond Joy’s got nuts.  Mounds don’t” –

 

that jingle he’d claw-pick on his banjo, after a toddy, 

His White Owl flaring – poof. 

 

He’d lean toward me to put the “ring” on my finger. 

“My Emperor of Cigars” – his voice would linger.

  

Shelby Stephenson's recent book of poems is Slavery and Freedom on Paul's Hill.

 

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HANNAH STONE

 

You may now drive to take exercise

 

The soundscape of live music has the compulsive allure of pornography to a guilty Puritan. Onegin’s lyrical lines and the lamenting woodwind could be the synched recordings of covid-world, but in the ball scene the shoes of the corps de ballet slap slap the steps of a czardas. The faint scent of crushed resin from their point shoes mingles with the green threads from wet trees. You overtake a sedate sedan, driven in the middle of the road by a whitehaired codger in a flat cap, cousin to the one who sat, with splendid disregard for social distancing, on the churchyard bench where you’d drunk your mid-walk coffee. He poured out his monologue. He was invulnerable, needed to stretch his legs, but his dear wife Joan, she stayed at home. Reception is poor this far from town, and the approaching storm crackles into the radio broadcast. The tenor spits out a cascade of Russian regrets, but it is too late. That is the tragedy of opera: no-one ever acts in time to prevent calamity. Next comes a polonaise, and you can hear the rapid breathing of the dancers, too closely miked. Ahead are two cyclists, pumping up the hill, buttocks swaying above knife-narrow saddles. The tarmac blisters from the heat, oozing like a suppurating sore. The voices reach a plangent climax. Applause clatters like tropical rain on a hot, tin roof. You flick the windscreen wipers to their fastest pace.

 

 

Here are today's slides

 

An indeterminate period of time after the pandemic, research was commissioned into hitherto neglected evolutionary trends. It was felt important to understand the facts presented to the population. The sideways gait of generation CV pedestrians had been presumed to develop from the discipline of diverting to avoid hazardous slipstream of runners and cyclists, who, conversely, proved incapable of negotiating zigzags. Lip readers had become extinct. Ventriloquists frequently performed a comfortingly familiar technique known as zoom-latency. Flat-earthers acquired a confused new lease of life, thanks to the mandatory wearing of masks. Peering over the top of a blue horizon was a total mindfuck. All these fascinating phenomena deserved further investigation. When I say research was commissioned, I mean it in the sense that 10,000 tests had been done, a proportion of which were represented by the despatch of DIY tests with no return address. Linguists therefore translated 'research' more accurately as 'interest', or, more radically still, ‘can’t be arsed, but want to placate the populus.’

 

I’ll level with you

 

I’ll level with you; I’m afraid. Today my horoscope tells me I’m free to imagine anything I want to, tells me I could be day dreaming about all kinds of things. My horrorscope tells me I’m using public transport for the first time in 51 days. I’m afraid I may be challenged about the purpose of my journey. I’m afraid I no longer understand what is essential aside from oxygen, caffeine, cats and trees. I’m afraid my train will be cancelled. I am afraid my train will not be cancelled, and that it will contain other people. I am afraid of other people, not in the hellish way Sartre meant, but as agents of infection. I’m afraid my ability to think for myself is compromised; that lockdown will confine compassion as well as passion. I’m afraid my train won’t stop on platform 4 at Kings Cross but will swerve at the last minute to Platform 9 ¾, where I will be propelled, like vicious droplets, into a fantasy world. I am afraid I will prefer wizards and magic wands and sorting hats to the real world I have left behind. I am afraid that if I do arrive at my intended destination, my birth city, which I once shared with millions of other people, will no longer feel like my city, or even our city, but a plague city. I’ll level with you. I’m afraid. I am.

 

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dream Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Lieder, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet-theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases.

 

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GRANT TARBARD

 

I Had A Whirlwind Life When I Was 8

 

I wanted more excitement. I took a trip round the world,

haggled out of my pocket money at a rug market in Istanbul

 

culminating in taking peyote in a Manchester bus station, 

like all bad nights when I was eight. My organs were animals 

 

fighting each other, digging my spleen for a late night shish kebab. 

I gambled on my natural teeth hindering my pleasure intake. I kept 

 

it closer to home, cutting my hair during sleep. No, I’d have to invent 

a machine for that and I didn’t own a functioning pencil. I changed 

 

my name by Deed Poll to Big Dick Daddy Yum Yum, which, at 8, 

I thought was funny and my motto was A Boy Needs A Pencil, 

 

which now is somewhere buried murmuring 

through a dungeon of throw cushions. 

 

 

Boleyn

 

From within the clamour and tonnage 

of court life I, warmly fearless, a restless 

grandiose, did assure the king of my purity. 

 

As it turned out the curtain had already fallen, 

salvation raised its eyebrow too my youthful grace 

that was regarded as a blackbird, a bad omen for England. 

 

My placid character was found to be unacceptable, 

one long season of rain disconcerting my king’s advisers, 

their words form themselves as a fog over London. Lord, 

 

preserve my shadow for tonight the grave shall not have me, 

I swallow my voice as a jewel, I fear I will be a pseudonym 

for a bloody end. Am I the wife homogeneous, an imitation 

 

of her obscure ribboned veins, her low violet hook into him, 

sophisticated as flame. I will become transparent, whispered 

arms, a hush between the legs. I will become a conspiracy 

 

of nudity’s kiss where the kingsmen exam the bath water. 

I am alone, I am scrutinised and his true nature forged this 

precise moment, in my solitude. And this, the way women 

 

wish for beauty only leads to him removing my charming 

delicacies and an absorbing abyss of labor pangs. What magic 

will shine in this freckled vacuum, far away from his want? 

 

My weak contents fund a terrible shortness of breath. 

 

Grant Tarbard lives in Basildon, Essex, home of Depeche Mode. He likes to think he’s atheist. He is the author or Rosary of Ghosts (Indigo Dreams) & a new collection, dog’ (Gatehouse Press) will be out whenever there’s a break in plagues.

 

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