2017

 

 

 

DECEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Purabi Bhattacharya, Johanna Boal, Daniel Roy Connelly, Mike Dillon,

Kelsey Englert, Regina Jamison, Pratibha Kelapure, Pippa Little, Maren O. Mitchell,

Tim Phillipart, J. R. Solonche, Paul M. Strohm.

 

 

 

 

PURABI BHATTACHARYA

 

orchid bloom

How we loved rains and loved to stay indoors

most times. Mother well within reach

to feed, fend and tell us tales of ghosts

in misty lanes. We giggled

 

and told each other, how grandpa

said ghosts lodged themselves

in story books, no inns. “Sleep before He appears

takes you both away to those stretches

 

where spiders grow!” The rest of the while

the rains took care of us, lulling to sleep

and singing songs of rivers, lakes and swimming birds

soft times unrecorded, cherished

 

swam on our lashes. How even now, sister

we are lulled to sleep by times, our own

mushy, evergreen and longingness to knit

hilltown tales from your side my side, orchid bloom.

 

 

Purabi Bhattacharya hails from Shillong, India penning both prose & poems. Her works are published in various poetry journals and anthologies and poetry portals including Pulsar poetry webzine, Tuck Magazine,Ink, Sweat and Tears, Setu Magazine and Muse India. Her poetry collection Call Me (2015) was published by Writers Workshop, India. https://www.writersworkshopindia.com/books/poetry/call-me/

 

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JOHANNA BOAL

 

A Landscape of Turf in the West Coast of Ireland

 

When cutting turf,

you must make a clearing

cut through roots, rabbit, raven’s bones

smell the heather!

Your hands pricked by sharp thorns of the gorse

whilst you’re thinking of the raven,

digging with a basic tool

long narrow spade, sharp like the thorns.

 

Icy cold water, you think of artic conditions

but helpful cuts like butter

lift out gently, and place on side

allow the sun to dry it out

it easily breaks and crumbles.

From time to time when looking

perhaps a backdrop of dark, growling skies

touching the stack neatly like turf houses. 

 

Johanna Boal lives in East Yorkshire, UK. She has published poems in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Limerick Revival Literary Journal, Open Mouse, Sarasvasti, Message in a Bottle, Poetry Space and more. She was shortlisted for the Poetry Space and Bridport competitions and her first poetry collection was published in 2014 by Poetry Space, Bristol. Her second is currently under consideration for publication and her first children's book will be published in 2018. 

 

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DANIEL ROY CONNELLY

 

The wrestler Tillet – The French Angel – is examined by Harvard anthropologists, Boston, 1940  

 

– You came to grappling on shore leave in Singapore three years ago, tick. – Into the ring full-time in New York City, tick. – 3 years later, if we may, the world lies ko’d at your feet, tick.

 

At 17, acromelagy, a pituitary failing, a handsome boy morphs into a grotesquerie of bone above the shoulders. His head is a boulder on a cubist throne, his ribs the biggest Harvard has ever seen. His distended face is hammer jawed as Phrenology callipers stretch wide as an opponent’s legs to rest their points on his cauliflower ears. Tillet presents a man from a prehistoric dream or a Triton risen from the bottom of the sea. The photographer from Time darts around like a busy referee. 

 

– We compliment you, sir – You are a remarkable human being – A special guy, Monsieur Tillet – A one-off in more than wrestling – The papers are calling you Angel.

 

They hang on him, egrets to a rhino. Calico trousers tight as a choke hold, he descends the scales, ricks his bull neck from side to side like an executioner whistling his way to work. They can’t take his blood pressure – Too much arm, not enough band! He twists an ear with his fist, lets it pop back into shape and gurns a winning smile for the men in white coats.

 

– Extraordinary – 276 pounds of solid muscle – Easily the most powerful man we have ever seen – Should an adversary attempt a half Nelson he might hurt his hands but he won’t hurt you – We hear you speak 14 languages – Hey, they should send you to fight the Nazis!

 

Tillet receives handshakes and takes the offered cigar as the team files out of the room. He smokes it in silence under the lights and peers round at foetuses in jars, spears and shields nailed to the walls, bits of ancient bone left out on the chrome-topped table. Angel feels like one million brand spanking new American dollars.

 

Measured out, I measure up, Neanderthal or otherwise, he assures himself, lumbering off through Harvard Yard towards his next opponent.

 

Daniel Roy Connelly's pamphlet, Donkey see, Donkey do was published by Eyewear in June 2017. His first collection, Extravagant Stranger: A Memoir, was published by Little Island Press in July 2017. He is a professor of creative writing, English and theatre at John Cabot University and The American University of Rome. “The Wrestler Tillett…” first published in The Moth 25, Summer, 2016

 

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MIKE DILLON
 

Colmar: After the Rain
 

In a famous gingerbread town of Alsace
where an old accordionist struck up a waltz
my wife and I danced around fresh puddles
shining from the ancient cobbles.

We followed our feet: one-two-three, one-two-three.
The old accordionist’s smile stayed fey.
I guessed what he was thinking:
Good tippers, they. Just keep them dancing.

And he did. Even when a Chinese tour group
snapped pictures of our semi-OK box step
in the town my father visited during the War.
I heard him say it once when I was a boy — Colmar.

The gingerbread town where my father
had to fight house to house in the coldest weather
Europe had recorded in one hundred years.
And so the GI’s entered by the light of their own flares

a town deemed too beautiful, too historic to shell in advance.
All war is crazy but that made no damn sense
said my father and then said a buddy’s name from Scranton, PA
split by a tracer threading a dark hallway.

A boy whose name I once knew and would forget
by the time my wife and I danced the box-step
around fresh puddles seventy years after the War
in the beautiful gingerbread town of Colmar.
 

Mike Dillon lives in Indianola, Washington, a small town on Puget Sound northwest of Seattle. He is the author of four books of poetry and three books of haiku. Several of his haiku were featured in Haiku
in English: The First Hundred Years, from W.W. Norton (2013).

 

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KELSEY ENGLERT

 

Games for Children

 

To celebrate the anniversary

of my birth, the day I joined

all other life, my father bought

us a beast to slaughter.

 

Little friends joined our ritual.

With joy, we noosed its neck,

whipped rope over branch,

and hoisted the creature up.

We danced under its twirling weight.

 

We spun in circles, needing dizziness

to lose inner sense before

we blindfolded ourselves and

took turns beating it with a bat.

 

Bat to body, home run. We laughed

so hard when we broke it

to pieces. On the ground,

we fought for spilled innards

while our parents cheered.

 

And every father wanted his son

to be the one brute enough to smash

the beast to bits. They watched that boy,

bat in hand, grinning over the piñata’s corpse.

 

The way he followed through

on each blow, the way he kept calm

when others wrestled for scraps—

that was how they knew that

he’d really be something one day.

 

 

Trickle-Down Theory

 

Buy your way above flood lines. Pay to trickle water on

your neighbors while stopping the flow at your doorstep.

 

The single largest predictor of the strength of a monster

is the power of its source, the wallet of its father.

 

The power position is essential to the snatch,

to the clean and jerk. Collect all the muscle you can.

 

Why start with a low dose and work up?

Shoot high, and go low only if you must.

 

And if conscience claws at your loafers, stomp down.

Thick soles are your ancestors’ heirlooms.

 

Power is neither created nor destroyed, only transferred.

Better to be too strong than the labor used to grow others.

 

Power always rises. There is no downward trickle.

Even the Roman cavalry has been unearthed.

 

Kelsey Englert’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Passages North, Barely South Review, The Citron Review, Bartleby Snopes, and Jersey Devil Press, among other literary magazines. She is a Pennsylvania native and earned her M.A. in creative writing from Ball State University and M.F.A. in creative writing from West Virginia University. She currently teaches at the University of Arkansas at Monticello. For more information, visit www.kelseyenglert.com.

 

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REGINA JAMISON

 

Christmas

 

We impaled the angels

Put nooses around the snowmen

          hung them high up on the tree

a sea of blue and green beneath

red lights    steady at first    then they winked

          while we sang    while we made

a joyful noise   then wrapped and placed

our spoils under the tree

Today was about us

Not about him or her or whomever

you imagined that Other to be

It was a day of atonement   a day

          of sacrifice     a present and a pledge

A band aid for all of the bruises –

see the love I bought for you

tied down and wrapped so pretty

Forgive my hands

          the words I’ll say tomorrow

See the pretty paper the angels

strung up for you

 

We lopped off its head

A green gaggle of needles

          twanged and pinged

then plunged to the ground

We bound its feet in iron

          dressed it in popcorn

                   embarrassed it before God

but today was about us       not about

him or her or whomever you imagined that

          Other to be

It was a day of climax and anti-climax

A day of giddiness and sobriety

We sang        over the tears

that had already assembled in our hearts

          for tomorrow

 

Regina Jamison’s poetry has appeared in Five Two One Magazine, Artepoética Press Anthology: the Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2016, Promethean Literary Journal, Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing Vols. 14 & 15, Magma Literary Journal, and in various online journals

 

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PRATIBHA KELAPURE

 

Amnesty (A Pantoum) 

 

Pine needles, this amnesty of aromatic balsam

Red and green lights shimmer on the tree

Signs of season bring promise of joy

To the family of four under vaulted ceiling

 

Red and green lights shimmer on the tree

In the shadows are strewn the wounding words

The family of four under vaulted ceiling

Trims the tree with the treasured trinkets

 

In the shadows the strewn pieces of wounding words

Who will bring the magic wand to wave away the hurt?

They trim the tree with the treasured trinkets

Mom tiptoes; Dad bellows; girls jingle bells

 

Who will bring the magic wand to wave doldrums away?

Perhaps this ritual of decoration will turn magical

Mom tiptoes; Dad steps on a stool; the girls jingle bells

Tentative efforts to set the fractured family structure

 

Will this ritual of decoration turn magical?

One last push to mend, to seal the fissures

Mom’s pirouettes; Dad hums a tune; girls jingle bells

Pine needles. This amnesty of aromatic balsam

 

Pratibha Kelapure is the editor of The Literary Nest, an online magazine of fiction and poetry. Her poems have appeared in The Lake, One Sentence Poems, Sugar Mule Literary Magazine, Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv, and many others.

 

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PIPPA LITTLE

 

Marigolds

 

In the southern lee of the church wall

a choir of marigolds survive

each colder and colder morning

of frosts and Christmas-coming:

 

I watch for their defiant faces

keep faith that they sing long enough

forgotten by gardeners

and the gods of winter

 

to keep me

from the mouth-shut dark

 

 

Haw

I would love you less without your thorns

though I’m gladder for your rosy cheeks

 

winter is a familiar place, a nest

left bare but soft and deep:

 

flown south those friends we cannot follow

know nothing of your bonny house

 

where each year we decorate the dark

flicker and sparkle    out

 

Pippa Little is a poet, editor, reviewer and tutor. She lives in Northumberland and works as a Royal Literary Fellow at Newcastle University. Her second full collection, Twist (Arc Publicatons), was reviewed in the August issue.

 

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MAREN O. MITCHELL

 

Recipe

 

From under the protection of the bakery glass case,

into a thin white paper bag, between reverent fingers

and wet teeth, to the last lingering creamy flaky bite,

 

the how-it-came-to-be of a cream puff is a mystery to the uninitiated,

shrouded as Masonic rituals, yet, to produce needs only

a few common ingredients, simple steps, moderate patience,

 

like finding our way through life:

Heat oven to 400°. Let the heart warm enough.

Have eggs at room temperature. Let humor mellow temper.

 

Sift dry ingredients together. Allow space in decisions,

filtering bad from good from mediocre.

Boil water and butter together; add flour

 

suddenly. Adding a third element can blend opposites.

Remove from heat. Rest between major life events.

Beating vigorously, add eggs, one at a time, until completely

 

incorporated. One step at a time brings us to goals.

With pastry bag form into desired shapes. Choices determine outcomes.

Bake for 10 minutes, then 25 at 350°. Timing can be all.

 

Let dry until firm. Be content with the diagram of our lifeline—

side roads always lead somewhere.

Fill with filling of choice. Choices change.

 

Eat cream puffs. Marvel at our map, where we came from,

how traveled, where we hope to go.

 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems appear in The Comstock Review, Town Creek Poetry, The Lake, The Pedestal Magazine, Still: The Journal, POEM, Slant, Poetry East, Hotel Amerika, Tar River Poetry, Appalachian Heritage, Chiron Review, The South Carolina Review and Southern Humanities Review. Two poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Pushcart contributing editors. Work is forthcoming in Poetry East,POEM and Hotel Amerika. She lives with her husband in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Georgia.

 

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TIM PHILLIPART

 

Steps and Words

 

Featured at the 1963

eighth grade school dance,

are ten of us over here and,

ten of them over there.

We of the Windsor knot,

they of white, wrist gloves,

knew the box step,

the twist,

even how to stroll.

We'd tell you

all the words to Surfin' USA and

both the words in Wipe Out.

The steps and words

over which we tripped,

were the 10 across the room and

"May I have this..."

 

Tim Phillipart sold his business, retired to write and discovered that wasn’t very retired at all. He ghost blogs, writes poetry, nonfiction and an occasional magazine piece.  Send emails to timphilippart@yahoo.com

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Cemetery

 

The dead occupy one third.

The rest is empty.

Just grass.

 

You would think it would be filled.

The church dates back to 1825.

Did they move away?

 

Did they take to cremation suddenly?

Did they stop dying?

I like it this way.

 

Plenty of elbow room.

You can put me there.

Near the Civil War veteran who won the Medal of Honor.

 

Put me close enough to see it around his neck.

But not so close to have to introduce myself.

Or be obliged to listen.

  

 

On the Highway, I Passed a Funeral Cortege

 

On the highway, I passed a funeral cortege.

It was not much of one as such things go.

The black hearse was polished to a high gloss.

The limo with the immediate family followed.

Then came six or seven unwashed cars of cousins

and friends. I said to myself, “Solonche, look well

on this because this is what yours will be.

Not much of one as such things go,

your corpse in the casket in the black hearse

polished to a high gloss followed by your wife

and daughter in the limousine, followed by six

or seven unwashed cars with friends.” So

I looked well on it. I kept the headlights

of the hearse in my mirror as they receded,

as they faded, until they looked like a candle

flickering before it goes out. How fast I had to drive

to do that. How fast I drove to do that.

 

J. R. Solonche is the author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), Heart’s Content (Five Oaks Press), Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions), Invisible (Five Oaks Press) and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, the poet Joan I. Siegal and several cats, at least two of whom are poets.

 

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PAUL M. STROHM

 

Less is Not a Lack of More

 

That’s very rich of you, you know

it’s very hard to live on the less

you know, but you may not know

what exactly less is. Think less

about yourself, more about others

who have the real less on which

a couple of small kids get less,

less food, less health care, more

and more stress to get what little

less is still available out there.

You should think less about more

stuff, a little extra for yourself,

pass the hat around for the less

fortune not whose less is more

than enough to barely survive.

So if it’s not only thoughtlessness

but much more of your intent,

you should probably know

less fortunates don’t want your more,

they merely want less of their less.

 

 

Listening to Eileen Myles Reading Her Poems in Paris

 

I couldn’t go to Paris so I got on Youtube

and there was Eileen Myles reading her poems,

yes there she was in Paris in the corner of a room

cool frog people on the floor eating french fries

and the kids were hungry licking their fingers

she said hunters lolling around the fire what do you get

yet they laughed at the perfect faceless fish

which swam through her conversation as

her quibbles about right and wrong outside the room

stopped. One more poem and I’ll cut to the book.

 

Paul M. Strohm is a freelance journalist working in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in HuKmag.com, the Berkeley Poets Cooperative, The Lake, WiND, and other literary outlets.  His first collection of poems entitled Closed On Sunday was published in 2014 by the Wellhead Press.

 

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