2014
FEBRUARY CONTRIBUTORS
Alison Brackenbury, Tim J. Brennan, Randolph Bridgeman,
Joyce S. Brown, Chloe N. Clark, Gregory Crosby, Tony Curtis,
Bayleigh Fraser, CJ Giroux, Lennart Lundh, Maggie Mackay,
MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick, Sean Prentiss, Melissa Seitz.
ALISON BRACKENBURY
Catalogue No. 2ZA
These are the padded trousers that I wear
for riding, second life, a luxury
for which I gave up carpets, holidays.
They keep a stubborn warmth in calves and hips
when rain is blinding, frosts claw from the air.
But all their heat is saved by two long zips.
The left one has a flaw, an inward curl
I often snag when careless, tired, when I
work late, then find, in the full glare of day
a sudden drop of dark, a waking dream
like her, the fine-boned child, the Chinese girl
who nodded too, when her hand shook this seam.
February the fourteenth
Do the birds pair, on Valentine's Day?
The blackcap, with his sooty head,
thug with exquisite beak, allows
his chestnut mate to share the food.
Dark in the sky's eye, kestrels sweep,
two for the valley, borne away
by the west wind which never sleeps,
a hunting pair. Now I can stay
in this sun's pocket, February's
brief kindness, biscuits that you gave,
mouthful of sweetness, the last wool
she knitted, blue as Valentine's day.
Alison Brackenbury Her latest collection (her eighth) is Then, (Carcanet, 2013). New poems can be read at her website here Order Then here
Back to POETRY ARCHIVE
TIM J. BRENNAN
How They Live
As she brushes her hair,
she asks him to tell her
a story with a happy ending
He tells her loving her should be
as simple as putting
a raspberry into his mouth
They both smile; in reality, neither
understands what either is all about
Instead, he pours them both another
glass of white wine and they put them
to their lips and drink
The Last Years of an Alzheimer's Father
A life like
nothing else,
exactly; yet,
a little like a wren
on its winter branch
without a name
Tim J Brennan's poems can be found at Whispering Shade, The Original Van Gogh's Anthology, Handful of Dust, Talking Stick, Unshod Quills, and other nice places. Brennan's one act plays have been produced in Bethesda MA, Chicago, San Diego, Rochester MN, and most recently in Bloomington, ILL.
Back to POETRY ARCHIVE
RANDOLPH BRIDGEMAN
stepfathers
joseph must have had the toughest
daddy issues not that every kid
doesn't think their father is God
but what if he actually is
and when the holy ghosts
been in your woman
how do you stack up to that
most men would have dumped her
and no one would have blamed him
or my father who came home
from the war to a pregnant wife
but like joseph he wanted to
do the right thing too
and still it ate away at him
always feeling like the odd man out
with those two
every argument my parents
ever had ended with my fathers
oh yeah well you fucked
the next door neighbor
right before he slammed
the front door on his way
to the bar
and i wonder if it ate away
at joseph too
with the father
the son
the holy ghost
and mary too
he must have felt like a fifth wheel
like most of us stepfathers
but none of us are quitters
hanging in there until the bitter end
like joseph with his honorable mention
and the rest of us with no
mention at all
Randolph Bridgeman graduated from St. Mary's College of Maryland and is
the recipient of the Edward T. Lewis Poetry Prize for the most promising
emerging poet. He was a Lannan Fellow for the Folgers Shakespearian Theater
04-05 poetry reading series. His poems have been published in numerous poetry
reviews and anthologies. He has three collections of poems, South of
Everywhere, Mechanic on Duty, and The Odd Testament.
Back to POETRY ARCHIVE
JOYCE S. BROWN
Trip Home
First the lights go out.
Then the boom that follows fireworks,
the sound a homemade bomb might make
detonating in the sea. The train jerks
and stops blackly in the tunnel.
This is it, I think, imagining the pop of me,
rupturing like an eardrum. I make a fist
of guts, steel myself for pain,
imagine blinded eyes, stopped wits.
I think about the death I've laid up for myself
like a jar of peach preserves on my pantry shelf.
It comes late in life, in my own bed,
loved dogs attending me. My jewelry
isparceled out, the piano tuned,
thebasement finally waterproofed.
Ibear some pain, but reach for God
andturn to face the music, which is Brahms.
The lights come on. The conductor's voice
is staticky. The car, its cargo quiet, lurches
into gear, ambles towards the light of day.
The voice explains the brief delay. People talk
again of baseball games, movies and promotions.
At home, the dogs paddle through the grass to greet me.
I see the River Styx slide by the corner of my eye.
In a Rental House
I think my neighbor Billy
is a serial killer. He lives
disguised as a gardener
in his dead parents' house;
They are probably buried
in the garden Billy weeds
while suspicious-looking
people drive up in dusty
trucks or banged up cars.
Last night I leaned over
the back fence and said hello
to Billy. He was wearing old
jeans and a dark blue shirt;
his hair hung over his eyes.
My dog barked at him.
"What kind of dog is that?"
Billy asked without looking up.
He said the Farmer's Almanac
predicts a bitter winter and
I should know in heavy snow
no one gets out of this street.
Joyce S. Brown is a poet who lives in Baltimore. Her poems have appeared in poetry,Yankee, Smartish Pace, Passager, The Tennessee Quarterly, The Christian Science Monitor, The American Scholar, The Journal Of Medical Humanities, Commonweal, The Maryland Poetry Review, Potomac Review, and other journals. For 10 years she was a teacher of fiction and poetry writing in the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. She also served as poetry editor for Baltimore's city paper.
Back to POETRY ARCHIVE
CHLOE N. CLARK
Demeter Blesses Those She Will Not Curse
call out again
the sound of you
is a girl hungry
enough to eat jewels
the jewels red as the dust
of mars but so
much brighter
and the red will bleed
out between her
teeth, sour sweet,
and the crunch of it
is the crunch of seed
of sand and stones
and leaves drying curled
up and falling with the cool
to the cold to the frozen
frozen that will be
for months
and all because
a girl was so hungry
Valley Water or the Other Place We Run To
It was probably a salamander,
one of those kinds that
get really big.
Or a snake,
some type that can
go underwater.
It was probably something
like that.
Still when we found the bodies
floating in the pond,
all those feathers soaked,
and lifted them out
gently as if that might still save them,
there was no sense in
giving shapes to
what had done this.
Chloe N. Clark is pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing & Environment. Her work has appeared such places as Rosebud, Prick of the Spindle, Neon, Utter, and more. She is at work on a novel and can be followed on Twitter @pintsandcupcakes. Visit her website here
Back to POETRY ARCHIVE
GREGORY CROSBY
The Hive
The heartbreak no longer terrifies.
The monster under the bed turned to dust.
You say, I understand, but you don't.
Closets empty; under the bed only dust.
You say I understand. Well, you must.
It takes but a minute to clarify:
Heartbreak no longer terrifies.
Fear gone home to its reptile brain,
Under the bed of the day to day.
You'll say you understand, but you won't.
The monster under the bed is just smoke
& mirrors the dust that we spoke.
That's the joke. Won't you share a last laugh?
Who laughs last, laughs death. No distress;
Heartbreak can't hold on to its terrors.
It can no longer terrify.
Under the bed, the nightmare of space.
Above is the cloud, your eyes & your face.
You say I understand. Honey, don't.
Gregory Crosby's work has previously appeared in Court Green, Epiphany, Copper
Nickel, Leveler, Ping Pong, Paradigm, Rattle, Ophelia Street, Jacket, Pearl, and The Scapegoat Review, among others.
TONY CURTIS
TWO POEMS FOR GARY SNYDER AT EIGHTY-THREE
I. A Wish in One Hundred Words
I am sitting on the back
Of a fallen tree at Samish Bay.
I can't help wishing
The old Poet was here.
We could eat oysters,
Rolled in breadcrumbs,
The way he likes them.
Maybe he'd recite some poems
About the Skagit river,
The full moon over Desolation Peak.
I could show him the slightly tattered,
First edition of The Back Country
I bought in Portland.
Yes, in Powell's bookstore.
Signed - I could carry it home to you:
An offering from the mountain trails;
A grain of sand from the Columbia River;
An autumn leaf from the Ish River country.
II. One Hundred Words On The Old Buddhist
Sometimes when I make a cup of tea,
And sit by the window
Looking out across the hills,
I think of Gary Snyder
Up on Crater mountain,
Drinking tea made from snow-water;
Watching out for forest fires.
How old was he—
Twenty-two, twenty-three?
I remember reading he spent
Days naked in the clouds, where
Only eagles had to face his bare cheeks.
The branch tapping on my window
Reminds me the old poet, logger,
Buddhist, is eighty-three today.
He climbs a different mountain now:
Higher, steeper;
And though the air is thin,
I watch him steadily climb and go on.
House
i.m. Elizabeth Bishop 1911-79
You wondered how I got the house
In North Haven, Maine.
Well, I saw it in the newspaper.
Wooden, faded cedar,
Lonely as my grandmother's house.
I called the number. A woman's voice
Asked, 'And what do you do?'
In case she didn't trust poetry or poets
I replied, 'I like to paint a bit and watch
The sandpipers running on the sand.'
'As long as you're neat and there are
No dogs or men involved, you'll do.'
'I'm allergic.' I said, 'Neat as a seamstress.'
'You're a poet, aren't you?' she said,
'Come now! The sandpipers are waiting.'
Tony Curtis lives in Dublin, Ireland. His latest book, Pony (Occasional Press), was reviewed in the November issue of The Lake.
BAYLEIGH FRASER
EMDR
the water room
Back room. Big cartoon
anchors dot the ceiling, big
so I can look up and know
the weight of my flesh. Tropical
fish flutter behind aquarium glass,
translucent, unstable cells inside
the hesitation of my father's eyes
searching through their bodies
the same way the dusty Jesus crawls
into my bare, stone neck, then rises
back to the wall. Round, round
eyes watching my big girl thighs.
ursa minor
Hey, Daddy, ceaselessly
I see the Ursa Major curled
in your arm, asking me
to mirror, to minor, minor
itself – my elbow to wrist.
The art of it: a radiating pinch,
a chord uncertain, missing
the spot promised. Promised
the way that promises are:
loud and unfinished.
thwarted
by the sound of Miami
against my girl face, against
the roar of the cargo truck
slipping into the highway mud,
against the prayer to God's
wide, dark ear: let me know
where I'm sleeping, because
the hammering adult sure doesn't.
By my body grown bony, nemesis
to its blood. Host rejecting graft.
Copycat skin. Undesirable parent.
That is, after all, the truest prayer:
please, not him inside my skin again.
the water
We live in the lungs of it,
or rather, we are the lungs
filling and draining ourselves
of the molecules in which we drown.
Water language sloshing in our bone
marrow, like we are its own beach,
the syllables connecting our long
bodies inside the apartment that
doesn't belong to us. I can't really
belong to anyone, especially you,
the lazy haze. Just that we're drunk
enough, and it's hot enough.
the men in the house
are very loud.
My body contorting
into molds preset:
the pure, lying pots.
Hold here. Stay there.
They paid for this art.
The canvas, bought blank.
Can they bury the body
before they paint, or
does that stuff cost extra?
The old cherry popping from
the sundae into a mouth,
an awful, hot mouth.
the way out
is going
back to
the anchor
as the fish
swimming by,
coming out
of the light.
Bayleigh Fraser is an American poet currently residing in Canada with her husband and two children. She studied English at Stetson University and plans to continue her education in Canada. Her poetry has appeared in A Bad Penny Review, Motley Press, The Social Poet, and elsewhere. Bayleigh is the editor of Caesura Poetry Magazine, an electronic magazine that publishes new and emerging poets. You can find her online here
CJ GIROUX
Spring Flight
Armsraised, muscles tensed,
my daughter tugs on the string of her Barbie kite;
this nylon arc thins into a pink dot on blue, nothing.
Barbie looks above, below, before, behind,
searching for Ken, currents, the backstroke
lifting him like ego, like pride;
her tresses rise and fall as in a child's drawing of snakes,
and curls culminate in circles
like water whirlpooling, cycloning
over a clear drain.
I imagine Ms. Gulch cackling, slicing
the air between these tanned lovers.
Her hair bobby-pinned and bunned,
she swerves on curved fenders
gleaming like quicksilver,
towing the Balloon Boy in his grey Mylar bubble,
spinning, blurring, reporters trailing in his wake.
We find meaning in nothing.
CJ Giroux is a lifelong resident of Michigan who continues to be inspired by the peninsulas that surround him. Born and raised in the metropolitan Detroit area, he is an assistant professor of English at Saginaw Valley State University.
LENNART LUNDH
Write a Poem
You can write a poem
as a memo to yourself,
something to hang
on the icebox door of life:
Dear Diary.
I think he loves me.
Mom died today.
You can write a poet
as a way to touch me,
something to tap
my secret heart:
Dear friend.
I miss you when you're gone.
Remember that day?
You can write a poem
as an old-style Chinese meal,
something from column A
and then from B:
Wait an hour.
Your soul will be hungry.
Again.
Your Blue-eyed Boy
It's not the mid-night pains
that make me stare into the dark.
It's the ones I've loved,
even those who never knew,
shuffling off their paths.
And the ones I've learned from,
even those who never knew me,
laying down their pencils.
And it's not my fault,
for growing older every day.
Ah, Death, Death,
Death,
you're really beginning to
piss
me
off.
Lennart Lundh is a poet, photographer, historian, and short-fiction writer. His work has appeared internationally since 1965. Len and Lin, his wife of 45 years, live in northern Illinois, where he manages text acquisitions for a university.
MAGGIE MACKAY
Picking up the Pencil
Your student hand pencils a heavy mark
on the white space. The stone's grain
starts to show. Gleaned at low tide,
it smacks of salted beds of pebbles,
washed by North Sea currents and seaweed traces.
Light movements across the space calm your doubts.
Banishing Mrs Smuts you lose your school day doubts,
smudge, rub, blot a heavy line or loose mark,
stirred by the sense of Joan Eardley's traces,
her footprints on that beach. Another line reveals a grain
of doubt which stops your hand. A second pebble
is a fresh challenge, a chance to stem the tide.
You walk Joan's sands. Dreamtime... beachcombing at low tide,
your feet drawing faint surface lines. Those doubts
sting your fingers, blotting seal-grey patterns in pebbles,
like synapses in nerve cells. Your eyes lift to mark
the angled detail with smeared grooves of grain.
The room stills. You hear a pencil shift to leave its traces.
You stare into the image, make traces
of an orange stone, crater blasted, eroded by the tide,
a volcano, bursting gigantic grains
across your sketch page. More fuel for your doubts?
Instead your fingers smear a rivulet to mark
the change of colour, a dark replaced by brighter pebbles.
Six on the table, a daunting huddle of pebbles,
battered by nature, revealing traces
of water, salt, their individual mark
you imitate with your tiring hand as the tide
of indecision grapples with those limpet doubts.
You falter. Not like you to let slip a single grain.
Your teacher intervenes with a grain
of insight. 'Change your perspective on those pebbles.
Refresh your touch, flex your fingers, chase those doubts
down.' You erase careless carbon traces,
the hesitating lines of an easy, potent tide,
run a fine and bolder mark.
The grain of lines and traces take shape in this enlightening life,
as you view the pebbles, imbued with colour by infinite tide;
Your doubts slip away as enduring love of learning makes its mark.
Maggie Mackay discovered her inner poet through the Open University creative writing experience, with her work appearing in several UK publications, including the Still Me... anthology and (forthcoming) the online magazine, Ink, Sweat and Tears. She begins a Masters in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University in January 2014.
MARYANN MCCARRA-FITZPATRICK
Cutting Romaine Into Ribbons
no time like the present, she thinks,
cutting romaine into green ribbons
clinging to the white inside of the
bowl, damp from being just-washed,
her hands perpetually wet, it seems,
and her face to the fire, stoking
those coals to produce plate after
plate proffered at table, the
jumble of silver made a pretty sound,
like bells it was, as she dropped
them on the cloth, the blade of
the knife mirroring back two eyes
two hands, two ears, a mouth,
close-pared fingernails that peel
the protective seal from the ketchup,
screwing the lid back on tight, tight
the bell sound brings her back, back to
the black night under the stars, the
vigil over, walking home the long
way, the taste of the open air upon her tongue
Halfway to Ninety
halfway to ninety and grey-haired
dotage, the infants born with
indignant screams, flailing their arms
into hers, pillar of salt dissolved
into a river
soaking the scrubs of
the doctor, down to
the soles of his shoes
silver threaded through brown, the
tapestry woven and rewoven whilst
the ghosts of suitors wait in the
anteroom--they are as air, no
burden upon the household
and where, from here? the road,
though straight, crops up, uneven,
stubborn patches creased and
cracked, though her soles,
her soul, has adapted to it all,
ripping the bandages off at intervals,
ruthless, relentless, without a word.
a room perhaps, of quiet, where
burnished-gold afternoon turns
into slate-blue evening, the
birdsong singing her, finally, to sleep
MaryAnn McCarra-Fitzpatrick lives in Peekskill, New York. Published in Chronogram, Obsolete! Magazine, The Mom Egg, MoonLit, Make Room for DADA, Thick With Conviction, Clapboard House, Cavalier Literary Couture, Torrid Literature, Laughing Earth Lit, Cheap and Easy Magazine, Contemporary Literary Horizon, The Westchester Review. Forthcoming in The Echo Room.
SEAN PRENTISS
Crossing the Lake at Dawn the First Morning
We set out from shore cloaked in the dark
Of dawn and rest our paddles into water lily
Lake, leaving sleep and our home behind
For the benediction of the cove awakening
This silent morning , this morning of fog.
The beaver slaps his tail toward more busy
Work. Over toward the gap, the loons call
To us or the morning's sun or the eyes of
The eagle or just to the glory. It's a call,
A trumpet, a wail, a witch's voice, or a song
From the thin spin of clouds themselves.
Isn't this how the world touches us—in that
Space between the night silence and day racket.
On the Edge of Turtle Cove, Away from the City
This cove has taught us three turtles upon
A log, a heron tranquil as a log, a beaver's
Lodge as home, a frog hiding in tall grasses,
And the way the water shimmers first light.
The water frees us all of our names to a life
Of lakes and coves and our mountains alone.
From the still edges of this lake, a bustling
City fades out of our mind's sight, further.
Sean Prentiss is the co-editor of a forthcoming anthology on the craft of creative nonfiction. This book, The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre, is being published by Michigan State University Press. His essays, poems, and stories have appeared in Brevity, Sycamore Review, Passages North, ISLE, Ascent, River Styx, Spoon River, Nimrod, and many other journals. His essays have won Honorable Mention in The Atlantic Monthly's Graduate Student Writing Contest and won Fugue's nonfiction contest, and he has been awarded the Albert J. Colton Fellowship for Projects of National or International Scope.
MELISSA SEITZ
Chromatic
Last August, lightning snapped
our words in half as we
raced towards home. Bodies drenched,
we dropped white sails, skidded
into shore.
Winter's wrath radiates
above the frozen lake
where fishermen's shanties
blossom in shades of gray
and milkweed.
Should you return again
in springtime, I will be
sailing alone on waves
the color of old scars
opening.
Silhouette
An easterly wind,
fraught with desire,
slammed sleet against
our house, layering
windows with whorls
of ice, disguising
the bird's silhouette
thirteen feet above
the frozen ground.
We witnessed
the dove's
stunned spiral
towards earth
before becoming
airborne again,
wings mirroring hands
praying within our
prism of light.
Melissa Seitz and her husband live at Higgins Lake, Michigan. Her work has appeared in The Bear River Review, The Dunes Review, Greenhouse: The First 5 Years of the Rustbelt Roethke Writers' Workshop, The Prose-Poem Project, and various other journals. Please visit her blog here
I'm on the mend from my injury but still some way to go with physio before I'm back to normal. There's a backlog of emails to tackle so feedback from me will be a slower than usual.
It's not easy getting a book or pamphlet accepted for review these days. So in addition to the regular review section, the One Poem Review feature will allow more poets' to reach a wider audience - one poem featured from a new book/pamphlet along with a cover JPG and a link to the publisher's website. Contact the editor if you have released a book/pamphlet in the last twelve months or expect to have one published. Details here
Reviewed in this issue
Share
Print