2013

 

DECEMBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

HOLLY BURNSIDE, DAVID COOKE, DAWN CORRIGAN,

DAMIEN  COWGER, ANTHONY FRAME, ROSIE GARLAND, PATRICK LODGE,

SHARANYA MANIVANNAN, MATT  MARINOVICH, TODD MERCER,

 NIALL O'CONNOR, DALE PATTERSON, DAYNA PATTERSON,

JOHN  SAUNDERS, CLAUDIA SEREA, JULIA KLATT SINGER,

JEN WEBB, JEREMY WINDHAM.

 

 

 

 

HOLLY BURNSIDE

 

 

What Lives in the Shallows is You

 

What I knew was the dream of a farm, of sleek jars of canned fruit,

sweet red preserves, of chickens and the circled arms of the old green hills.

I saw the brambles mown down, the garden plowed and planted,

that cabin so rich and ripe in weathered wood and limestone rock,

not the crippled little room where your fist first bit my flesh.

 

We prayed at the place where water is born, high among the rocks

at Hooper Bald, photographed white cows, bowed down in graveyards,

stroking stones like wisdom lived there, until you were raw, and ready

to promise the rocks and stones everything, anything, and I just wanted

the cool metal of the Chevy's hood under my patient, hopeful back.

 

I beat back terror driving breakneck down the bad dog road,

riding out along the knife-cold river in the dark. I was washed under

and made clean, I thought, by your smooth and oily passion, and by

the grandfather mountains watching my willingness to forgive,

the way I craved belief, the way I waited for the cure that never came.

 

For me, the river remains forever in full flood, the trees and hills

crisp-rimmed, the mountain laurel sweet in shadow. There is no farm

in my history, no prayer beside the river, and I have painted you out

of the crippled little room without mercy. There is nothing left of you.

Your rage lives only in the shallows, caressed by the bellies of fish.

 

 

Holly Burnside is a poet and photographer from Toledo, Ohio. Her poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Country Dog Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Toledo Free Press Star and Pirene's Fountain. She is also co-editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry, and has worked as the creative writing workshop facilitator at Aurora House, a local transitional home that serves women who are working to overcome substance abuse problems, homelessness, and domestic violence.

 

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DAVID COOKE

 

 

The Dresser



The shrine and archive of those who had gone,

the dresser loomed imposingly, hogging

its space – their one attempt at opulence

in a room that was otherwise spartan.

 

Ranged above it, in a gap left beneath

the ceiling, there were portraits of couples

who had tied the knot elsewhere: brides and grooms

in cheap suits they'd wear again on Sundays.

 

Pushed to the back of a shelf – half-hidden

behind unsorted papers and the pots

for pins and pens – a girl in a white dress,

her image silver-framed, clutched her missal

 

in a gloved hand, staring back awkwardly

through jumble. A repository for anything

too highfaluting for everyday use,

it housed the china they laid out for guests –

 

the loaded Yanks, who were distant cousins

trying to find their 'roots', or English kids

whose accents wavered between two places;

their mums and dads who were sons and daughters.

 

Stashed away, alongside the cutlery,

the lace, and a stiff folded tablecloth,

there were biscuit tins that bulged with photos

in which the poses always seemed the same.

 

 

An Open Drawer

 

I have opened a drawer in memory

revealing odds and ends, a treasure trove

of objects they may have thought

were useful, but mostly never were;

and laid among them the airmail letters

– light blue and flimsy.

 

Slicing them open with a kitchen knife

along striped edges, they eased out

the creases to read the news

from Sydney, Detroit, Toronto...

and learned how children prosper,

that work is work and how,

wherever you travel,

you will find a face from home –

 

All the details of ordinary lives

translated by distances

to a gauche formality –

Hoping, as ever, this finds you in health,

each aspiration couched in pieties –

One day, God willing, we will see you again.

 

And buried in that drawer

with bits of twine, ribbon, forgotten keys...

the mass card for a son who died

and never made it anywhere

beyond their glistening fields,

their moist low-lying hills.

 

 

David Cooke has published three collections, the most recent of which is Work Horses ( Ward Wood, 2012). His poems and reviews have appeared in Agenda, Ambit, The Bow Wow Shop, The Critical Quarterly, The Irish Press, The London Magazine, Magma, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Reader, The Shop and Stand.

 

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DAWN CORRIGAN

  

The Horologist

 

For me the noise of Time is not sad

- Roland Barthes

 

For me the noise of time isn't so sad.

The bells and little gongs, the sonnerie

are full of stories as Scheherazade.

 

The clockworks bring no doom, my tense Comrade,
but if you insist, then say they toll for thee;

for me the noise of time isn't so sad.

 

The bells of hell go ting-a-ling. So said

my dear old dad; a sot, a debauchee

as full of stories as Scheherazade.

 

I left his house when I was just a lad

and sought the music of machinery.

For me the noise of time isn't so sad.

 

I loved the order that a wristwatch had;

I joined a Worshipful Company

as full of stories as Scheherazade.

 

A sick clock whimpers like a grudging dad

but I return it to its destiny

so that its tick tock doesn't sound so sad

and once more it sings, like Scheherazade.

 

 

The Caryatid



keeps her back turned always

to the temple and its god, who deems

 

the things of this world beautiful always

with an air of accusation, his fingers

 

the fingers of a jolly maniac

breaking a twig into pieces.

 

The paint on her face unpeels like sepals

revealing the blank nebshaft beneath,

 

her true face. Citizens forget the sulky god

who hides within, awaiting his return

 

to glory. She's better, this shabby statue

who's always held things up.

  



Dawn Corrigan's poetry and prose have appeared in a number of print and online magazines, and poems are forthcoming at Right Hand Pointing, Slipstream, and Don't Just Sit There. Her debut novel, an environmental mystery called Mitigating Circumstances, will be released in January 2014.

 

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DAMIEN COWGER

 

Specks

 

When my daughter points

to the stars, I find that I lie to her.

About so many things.

I make up constellations

she can understand.

Find the shapes to shape

a connection.

She lies right back,

pretending that she can see

where, in the endless expanse, I'm pointing.

 

She wants me to think

she's smart, and I want her to know

that she is—so much more

than me. Because one day,

the sun will rise an hour later than predicted

or the stars will disappear

into the void and I'll ask her, through tired eyes,

to point me in the right direction,

or any direction.

 

Damien Cowger's work has appeared in various journals including The Southeast Review and The Rumpus. He is the winner of the 2012 Science Fiction Poetry Association's Poetry Contest in the short form category. He lives in Harrisburg, PA where he is the Managing Editor of New Ohio Review.

 

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ANTHONY FRAME

 

Interpreting Night Routes

 



The moon is in perigee, which means its grip

has the power of ten ancient myths, gravity

is jealous, and metaphysical astronomers watch

the stars, wondering if they're different tonight,

if they fly faster, if they fall with greater grace.

Deer doesn't care for metaphors, he doesn't feel

the pull which I know from books, my feet tightening

to the ground a condition of psychology and

an abstraction. Deer just wants to kill time

until we're in Ann Arbor, an hour's drive,

and I'm his quiet cousin with sewn-shut mouth

and sewn-open eyes, still learning to drive a stick shift,

muttering about different distances to the moon,

which Deer figures is better than nothing. He doesn't care

about gravity, if we work all day Thursday

and all night Thursday, then we get Friday to sleep,

to write checks on our honey-do lists, to remember

the taste of a beer under a full noon sun. We'll do it,

week after week, we don't care which god has cursed us

or that the boulder is shaped like a truck. At the on-ramp,

a man stands with a tin cup and a cardboard sign,

he's wearing a brown winter coat and heavy black gloves.

It's warm today, the man is wearing his uniform,

we're wearing our uniforms, the cardboard doesn't sing.

It's 9:30 at night on a Thursday, why is a man

tin-cupping at 9:30 at night on a Thursday? I turn

the truck onto the highway and we never see

the man again. We'll see a lot of tin cups and

cardboard signs tonight, a lot of unemployed uniforms.

I shift until we're in fifth gear. Deer chain smokes

because he's scared when I drive, because his wife

won't let him smoke around his daughter, because

smoking isn't rebellious when you work for

your parents and they both smoke, it's expected

like birds flying in a V, chased by violent clouds.

I tell past life stories from college, Deer likes to hear

about college, about the short film I made of a friend

rolling a joint, the history class about all the kings dying

in all the strange ways, Henry VIII with syphilis

and the casket blowing up. Deer likes to hear because

it means I'm talking and he hates giving speeches

to the stars. After a few miles I stop talking,

Deer takes over, what he's doing on his day off,

mowing his lawn and chasing his dogs until his daughter

gets home from kindergarten, a Disney movie

about a magical place far away from US 23,

an invisible tea party, Deer's hamburger belly

in a tiny chair across from his little girl, Deer as

Mad Hatter but without the mercury poisoning.

I'm taking my wife to the art museum,

the traveling Picasso exhibit finally here, memory

and mankind, humankind, cubed into a kind of

grave distortion, all those angles that have seen

and scratched all those places, but I always write

angels instead of angles. The way Deer taps his fingers

on the dash means he wants to read my poems

but doesn't know how to ask. I remind him

that Whitman said, Vivas to those who have fail'd.

Deer starts yawping, he's a dog, we're staring at the moon

so big we should be able to grab it, take a bite out

until it's a crescent. We yawp for the cresting river,

for the tin-cuppers, for my wife, his wife, his daughter.

We yawp, Deer's laughter all teeth. There should

be snow on a night like this, mood weather, I tell Deer

there should be snow, when I write it I'll write it

with snow. He tells me to always tell the truth.

There's snow, we're driving eighty-seven miles an hour,

a headlight burnt out, mile after mile the moon

not getting bigger, not getting smaller. We're trying

not to look back, to ignore the songs of our sleeping lovers

who we fear will disappear if we don't stay focused

on the road ahead. We're trying to outrun the sun

that snores as we work. We're trying to succeed.

Vivas, Deer. Vivas.

 

 

Anthony Frame is an exterminator who lives in Toledo, Ohio with his wife. His first book of poems, A Generation of Insomniacs, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag Press. His chapbook, Paper Guillotines, was published by Imaginary Friend Press and recent poems have been published in or are forthcoming from Harpur Palate, Third Coast, The North American Review, Redactions, The Dirty Napkin, Gulf Stream and diode among others. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of Glass: A Journal of Poetry. Visit his website here

 

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ROSIE GARLAND

  

Defacing the currency

 

The train slips loose of the South:

its knitted straw huts, tinder-dry,

 

from its crusts of mountains, walls of slapped plaster,

from its rumours of a wet season, its promise of rain.

 

We shudder past railway stations with faded names;

their paint exhausted by the sun's bombardment.

 

The soldier in the seat opposite leans into his radio,

face wide with news of the coup. He sucks

 

his cigarette to a red ember, unwraps a banknote

and burns a hole in the face of the President.

 

We head north into a barricade of thunderclouds

taking up position around Khartoum, Omdurman.

  

Born in London to a runaway teenager, Rosie Garland has always been a cuckoo in the nest. An eclectic writer and performer, ranging  from singing in cult gothic band The  March Violets to twisted alter-ego Rosie Lugosi the Vampire Queen. She has five  solo collections of poetry and is winner of the DaDa Award for Performance Artist of the Year and a Poetry Award  from the People's Café, New York. Her debut novel The Palace of Curiosities was published in March 2013 by  HarperCollins. Visit her website here.

 

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PATRICK LODGE

  

The Bus to Ano Mera

 

The early morning bus

to Ano Mera stalls

in a whirlpool of goats.

The driver adds his

obscenities to the whistles

 

bleats and bells

that flow like a fast

current around us.

A woman lifts a child

onto my lap, shifts

 

two dangling chickens

from right to left,

better to punctuate

her barked invective

with stabbing finger;

 

her black nails edge

her chopping hand

like a funeral card.

I feel sick you said;

I offered a Mentos.

 

Yesterday we thought

of death on the plunging

boat to Delos; today

in this becalmed bus

we think there may be life.

 

 

The Priest on the Lake

(Lake Ohrid, 2013)

 

The lake seems hammered flat

to the horizon; a line of silver

solders air to water, each
depthless, opaque to each other.

 

Two silhouettes, against light

no better than a badly-dipped

candle, like silent movie actors

mime a parody of speed in a water-taxi.

 

The boatman sits gurning, grits

his teeth, guns the grudging outboard

into a veneer of roar. The keel

chamfers a diamond-bright edge,

 

true as any orthodoxy, across

the mirror gloss. The priest

in the prow clamps his hat tight,

leaning forward as if fighting a gale

 

of deviation gusting from all-night

lakeside bars; his beard is a schism,

a paradox split over cassock

and cross. He stares into the lake

 

seeking resolution in this urgent

dawn journeying, sees nothing

beyond the tain, his reflection

standing alone against a blueing sky.

 

The boatman, more soft-wired,

ductile, looks backwards, smiles

as the scar of wake silently

heals in the salve of shining water.

 

 

Patrick Lodge was born in Wales, lives in Yorkshire and travels on an Irish passport. His poetry has appeared in magazines and anthologies in England, Wales, Ireland, Greece, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. He was a prize winner in the 2009 Envoi International competition. His first collection An Anniversary of Flight was published by Valley Press in October 2013.

 

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SHARANYA MANIVANNAN

 

Smoke



Because you were the only one old enough

to gather together all the lives I've lived,

 

I would lay still, afterwards, and listen to

you bathe through the thin walls of the

house you inherited from your grandmother,

 

and consider the cowardice

of beautiful men

who pretend to not be vulnerable.

 

Your damage did not keep you from harm,

not from trafficking in it, not from taking it.

 

Now I take lovers too young to sustain me,

who look at me as though I am enough, and

afterwards I burn, insipid as incense, and

think of those oppressive afternoons when

 

you thought I knew everything, when you

mistook my diffidence for mystery or

quiet insouciance, and all the while

 

I hid my shaking hands under the table

and pretended I breathed fire, feigned

I wasn't made of smoke.

 



Sharanya Manivannan is the author of Witchcraft. She has received the Lavanya Sankaran Fellowship, an Elle Fiction Award, and been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. Her fiction, Poetry and essays have appeared in Drunken Boat, Hobart, Wasafiri, Prairie Schooner, Killing the Buddha and elsewhere.  Visit her website here

 

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MATT MARINOVICH

 

In His New Home



He couldn't sleep at all,

neither could his wife,

or the baby. They hadn't counted

on the whitish glow spreading

through the thin line of trees

that separated them from the mall

and the sound of cars on the highway

or the puddle of water

that mysteriously appeared

at midnight on the kitchen floor.

On the third night there,

a small plane cut its motor

and crash landed in a small field

next to the watertower.

He somehow expected to see the pilot

even before he heard his footsteps

on the deck, the blood leaking

from his woolen sleeve

and leaving its fine script on the wood.

The man had white hair,

a badly broken nose, and looked

almost fatherly. They sat

opposite each other at the kitchen table,

listening to the sound of sirens

pestering the empty roads,

and the man told the pilot

that he'd always had reservations

about being a homeowner,

and the pilot, squinting down

at the dishtowel the man had

helped wrap around his obscenely bent

forearm, told the man he'd always

had reservations about being a pilot.

The man's wife, who had been listening

to them in the darkness behind

the door, had even more dreadful

reservations, but she held the baby

against her chest and listened to

it sigh, in an eerily adult way,

as its mouth slipped off her breast,

and then it began to scream.

 

Matt Marinovich has had work published in Esquire.com, Salon.com, Poetry East,  Passages North, and other magazines.

 

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TODD MERCER

  

The Restaurateur's Deconstruction

[Ekphrastic on Edward Hopper's "New York Restaurant" (1922)]

 

If you said the customers come

for Delmonico steak and Waldorf salad,

you wouldn't be entirely wrong,

but everything in this

city of millions

promotes loneliness or fights it.

 

To have a Someone go to the trouble

of meeting you here,

a Someone you're eager to see,

who arrives clean, well-dressed, not late,

carrying news,

carrying potentiality.

That's the draw which fills the seats,

that, plus atmospherics:

décor, food scents,

wait-staff darting by, dispensing,

ice rattling in glasses,

kitchen sizzle muffled by the doors,

word salad as background

the buzz of a dozen other conversations

you and your Someone sit among

but have no stake in.

 

Bread broken in convivial company

a great escape from shoehorned shoebox spaces.

In my place you're a name, a personage,

you're a distinct possibility.

Free an hour of the stifling

office cubicle, the compressed

sardine housing.

Free and at least for now,

not alone.

 

 

Todd Mercer won the Woodstock Writers Festival's Flash Fiction contest and took 2nd and 3rd place of the Kent County Dyer-Ives Prizes in 2013. His chapbook Box of Echoes won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest. Mercer's poetry appears in Thema, Blue Collar Review, and Black Spring Review; his flash fiction is forthcoming in Dunes Review and Apocrypha and Abstractions.

 

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NIALL O'CONNOR

 

Benim Türk Kardeş (My Turkish Brother)

 

The Turks are not a quiet people

they celebrate with cannon boom and beat of drum,

loud music and jingo beat,

big sounds they believe will frighten what they fear.

 

They have winds that wander from shade to shade

riffling palms like packs of cards

venturing inland to conspire

with white-water dreams;

each threading their separate ways

through pine scented mountains.

 

And it is here on Mount Nif,

in the cool breath of our father,

I share thoughts with Mokthar Sen,

thoughts that could not be voiced within earshot

or sight, of the village mosque;

thoughts that in my youth we dared not speak

in the shadow of the village steeple.

Thoughts that make us brothers.

 

 

Dulce et Decorum est . . .

 

Self medicated by drugs and desire,

dna patented and futures sold,

cloned by deceit we willingly expire,

exploited, abused, true story untold.

 

Who told the baby in its innocence,

that living would be used to coarsen life,

that a man could be bought and sold for pence,

portioned by a wanker's knife?

 

Homes now mortgaged for a lifetime or more,

cardboard boxes rented by night,

beached souls, blood leached, clawing at closed doors,

to what Job Title should they take their fight?

 

Tumorous bills support medic elite,

everything with a price, - just beyond reach,

tick right boxes, or go live in the street,

this is the gospel governments preach.

 

You must pay, you must save, and you must slave,

a menial's life of constant duress,

where greed is the only way to behave,

as bankers' growth, means more of less.

 

Telling each other, you must do your best,

futile in the face of this old story,

and new Lie; Dulce et decorum est

pro patria labori . . .

 

 

Niall O'Connor is an internationally published poet and blogger, a 2013 Pushcart Prize nominee, he reads regularly at the Writer's Centre and other popular Dublin venues. He released his Debut Poetry Collection, Change in the Wind this year to much critical acclaim. Niall blogs at the very popular Dublin Post

 

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DALE PATTERSON

 

Goodwill

 

Her Santana t-shirt enters its ninth life.

She pushes a stroller. Her child's

sippy-cup leaks a sticky red juice

colors a Wonder Bread wad.

 

I donate my Arrows XL, dress white

with French cuffs, pin stripes
and paisley. They ask if I want a receipt.

I nod my head yes. Exit.

 

A homeless man sits in the shade,

his beard is a leftover nest, his shirt

a worn fresco, Madonna and child.

 

The afternoon sun lashes my neck.

I imagine an angel dressed in disguise,

turn the key in the lock. The seats in my car

are now burning like fire.

 

 

Grand Trunk Railway- HO Scale

 

At the Battle Creek Station

a woman reads Betty Crocker

to her husband. Arms folded

legs crossed he stares like a saint

in a protestant pew.

 

Outside the dispatcher's office

a porter wears company jewels,

mans a two wheeler

loaded with Samsonite luggage.

 

A frustrated boy has hands

on his hips and calls to a dog.

It refuses to come.

 

Three men in gray suits

share a paper. One reads

the headline, Russian Eye
in the Sky. The others read sports,

wonder if Spahn will throw

spitballs at Mickey.

 

The sky is a basement ceiling
but a woman's hair blows out behind.

In fear that they might all miss

the train, no one is moving.

 

The Inter-City Limited

will arrive in five minutes.

 

Dale Patterson is a visual artist and poet living in Indiana. His work has appeared in many online and print journals, most recently in The Tower Journal, Midwestern Gothic, The Museum of Americana,  Short Fast and Deadly, and Main Street Rag. Dale's website can be found here

 

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DAYNA PATTERSON

 

Growing Up in a Bookstore

 

Your first steps are watched over

by sad-eyed Brontës.

 

On hands and knees you buff away

black scuffs from butter-colored wood.

 

At Christmas, your fingers learn

the perfect shape of books as you

marry them to silver and ribbon.

 

Vertigo isn't optional, or amathophobia.

You can ignore Keep Off

Ladder signs as you swing

Fred Astaire-like from the rungs.

 

At home, you doctor broken books,

bandage their torn skin.

 

Your room grows shelves where,

outside their Eden, they multiply

like wild because that's what you're given

for every holiday on the calendar.

Don't bother asking for anything else.

 

You date only bibliophiles—

your marriage bed is an inflatable

mattress on a box spring of books.

 

Your spouse enters a book as a submarine,

can't hear you under all those words.

 

Dayna Patterson's chapbooks, Loose Threads (2010) and Mothering (2011), are available from Flutter Press. She is Poetry Editor for Psaltery & Lyre.

 

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JOHN SAUNDERS

 

We Used to Smoke

 

circled all the time by fumes

that fed us feelings of self-assurance.

We would fret after a while,

squeeze our pockets

like stress balls,

search for comfort.

 

One of our tricks was to hold

the cigarette like a pen,

between finger and thumb.

Another was to blow rings.

We played a game –

ring the nipple- afterwards.

 

Imagine smoking in our bedroom.

The filter of love

in a fog of illusion,

the ashtray balanced on your stomach.

 

 

The Answer

 

She curled her finger

around the lock,

waited in her own insouciance

while he clambered on board.

 

They spoke only to satiate

their thirst for sound,

mentioned what each thought

the other wanted to hear.

 

Even the dog under the table

cocked his ear

when he heard her

answer 'yes'.

 

John Saunders was born in Co. Wexford, Ireland. His first collection After the Accident was published in 2010. His poems have appeared in Ireland, The United Kingdom and America and in numerous online journals. His second collection Chance was published in April 2013 by New Binary Press. He is a founding member of the Dublin Hibernian Poetry Workshop.

 

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CLAUDIA SEREA

 

Better Wine than Water

 

Better wine than water,

better fire than air,

better dead

than living without you

 

The sun hides its disk

in dust rags.

 

The Gypsy tells our story

and strings the silence

with accordion wails:

 

Better honey than sugar,

better kisses than handshakes.

 

Para-pa-dam-

para-pa-dam.

 

Night falls,

cinder flakes.

 

We part the darkness,

alone in the world.

 

Tell me more,

hammered dulcimer.

 

I'm drunk on your voice,

on your mouth.

 

Better lovers than friends.

 

Hurry home,

hurry,

before the song ends.

 

 

August night in Oltenia, 1985

 

The plains are always more romantic

than the mountains,

 

the small human silhouette

against the vast expanse

and the wind.

 

The sky rotates

and uncovers the mouth of a well

that breathes warm in its sleep.

 

This is the moment

when you'd slip your arm around my shoulders

 

and we'd watch how

the invisible chain brings up

the moon.

 

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in New Letters, 5 a.m., Meridian, Word Riot, Apple Valley Review, and many others. A two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada, 2012),The System (Cold Hub Press, New Zealand, 2012), and A Dirt Road Hangs from the Sky(8th House Publishing, Canada, forthcoming). Read more at her website here

 

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JULIA KLATT SINGER

 

The Things in a Day that Cannot Be Stopped

 

The sun, the moon, and yes Venus--

whether there are clouds

or not. The last drink,

the first kiss. The edge

of a knife nightmare,

the soft falling of death--

how darkness becomes

pure & empty.

Hunger. Wanting. Desire.

A memory of

a brush of your hand,

the lingering

warmth of your body

& how at dusk, that fox

who has no fear

of any of this

comes to your porch, watches

as you undress.

 

 

Doll Parts

 

Plastic arms, plastic legs

I'm soft-bodied

clenched fists, but weak inside.

 

Hair you can only cut once.

 

Name me

after a flower after a sin.

 

Days I spent in your arms

on your hip

a sweet pout, the pinkest lips

 

Lay me down

to shut my eyes

 

Lift my shirt to see

the heart you drew

on me.

 

Julia Klatt Singer writes poetry and fiction. Her book of poems, A Tangled Path to Heaven was published in June, 2013, from North Star Press. She is the poet in Residence at Grace Neighborhood Nursery School, and has co-written six songs with composer Tim Takach. Visit her website here

 

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JEN WEBB

 

Marking Time

 

The moon hangs aslant tonight: it looks

like there's a problem, looks like there's a flaw. He says

it's just the smoke that buckles the light;

the sky is fulvous, but he says nothing's wrong—

the world is as it should be, and we will cope

whatever comes. But the moon is hanging aslant

between Orion and the horizon, it hangs

deflected and dislodged.

 

Summer does it every year, rolling fire and flood

in patient hands, tomorrow's worry-beads.

We keep watch outside, marking time

while the night passes by

while the smoke smears the sky

the stars fall, and rise, and between

the hills and the horizon, the fires

breach their lines. The helicopters buzz,

the sirens start to sound.

 

He turns to find his keys: they're where they were

it won't be long before we leave.

Last season, in another hemisphere, and the snow

kept coming: we kept watch inside as that soft

screed drifted near: a different threat: a

disappearing sky. It comes down to physics

he said: the more you know, et cetera.

We kept watch through the windows, built

our little fires. We were waiting

for a change: we are

waiting still.

 

 

All at Sea

 

Imagine a whale. Not like those we saw

only on the horizon

that year we spent on Stradbroke: you

watching from the watchtower, me jogging

along the hills, each of us inventing moves

to lure the great salt-washed

creatures close to shore.

Cheated, we paddled in

the winter-weight surf, Queensland-warm

but nothing changed.

The whales rose up, on

their lazy way down south; a fluke, a breached tail,

sometimes a great spume; but so far away you

had to strain to see. Imagine

a whale: imagine drifting so far from shore

for all those waiting days, till finally

it becomes clear

that no one's reaching

anyone any

more.

  

Jen Webb lives in Canberra, Australia, and is the author of a number of books, including poetry, short fiction, and scholarly works. She is a member of the management team of the International Poetry Studies Institute, based at the University of Canberra. Visit their website here

 



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JEREMY WINDHAM

 

Hercules and the Hydra

 

Mythology burned our mouths the day I hiked

behind the neighborhood through the forest

with my father who was glad I didn't know

he was checking for snakes along the way.

How hysterical I would've been if I knew
he was listening for rattlers over the sound
of his voice as he recounted the second labor
of Hercules, the slaying of the Lernaean Hydra
whose heads multiplied after each decapitation.

He told me how it ended in fire, how the stumps

of every writhing neck cauterized themselves

by the venom in the beast's own blood.

I still can't blame him for omitting the truth

most storytellers ignore, how Hercules murdered

his own children and killed the Hydra to absolve

his sins, how he knelt beside the uncoiled serpent
to wash his hands in the boiling pool it left behind

where he let the poison scald him, not yet immortal.

Near the end of my father's version of the myth

I was searching the forest floor for what he knew.

I was looking for the truth I would not find

until I had read the entire story years later

and found my father in the hero's hands,

my own hands, hands that sinned and purged

and sang their labors into a magnitude of stars,

forgave themselves into a span of celestial rest.

 

 

Jeremy Windham is currently earning his BFA in creative writing at Stephen F. Austin State University where he also studies music and violin performance. His poetry can be found in The Blue Route, Psaltery and Lyre, Steam Ticket Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Portland Review, and is soon to appear in Southern Humanities Review.

 

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