2015

 

 

FEBRUARY ARCHIVE

 

 

 

Grace Curtis, Edilson Ferreira, Roberto Carcache Flores, Eugene Goldin,

 Carol Coven Grannick, Alan Harris, Sarah James, Mercedes Lawry, Pippa Little,

 Ronald Moran, Aoife Reilly, Claudia Serea, Jay Sizemore,

Sarah White, Laryssa Wirstiuk

 

 

 

 

GRACE CURTIS

 

The Day the Earth Spun Backwards

 

Like a film that could be played

in reverse, the truck didn't hit the buck,

didn't injure his left hind-

 

quarter. The buck didn't falter,

turning backward circles

in the lot where new homes

 

were not being built. I didn't wish

for a way to put it out

of its movie-trope misery. I didn't wish

 

for a gun for the first time in my life,

and I did not, not know what

should be done. I didn't look

 

upon his dipping

and bowing, and the way he favored

the bad leg, and think

 

holy-mother-of-god,

how could such cruelty blanket

of a place meant for families

 

and lawns and swing sets.

He did not drop his head,

and those great antlers weren't scraping

 

the hard rubble of an unborn dwelling; instead,

he became another explanation

for how the earth might undo

 

its spin, or how Columbia might have missed

the moon, or how water

trapped at Three Gorges

 

Dam, might have flown back

upstream revealing small villages

that weren't washed under

 

by the weight of progress.

 

 

Besides

 for Soaad, Israel, June 2014

 

there’s too much green. The way it wrings

itself onto a path; chaos. Not a perfect green

like Phthalo, its soft powder, insoluble; a green

Caravaggio would have given

an arm for, or the one on the pile

of squeezed tubes that wasn’t there

even for Picasso, so quiet in his search,

a midwife thought him stillborn. How we

 

make do; you, against the squared-off corners

of gray clay over cinder block. Your ashen

olive trees mute against the upturned brown

beneath. Me, wrapped in these encroaching leaves,

the dried-blood-red crabapples weighing

like coins in a purse, like a heavy heart. What if

we could honestly think of somewhere else, change

any dark place?; that notion, colorless

 

against rumble on so windless a day. Nothing

is ever stopped or coalesced against

this onslaught, the pressure of ground-in argents,

of a stout chlorophyll. Colors that both soothe and bore,

cinerealed, smoky, tight-packed. Nothing eases

against this moil, against our landscape paints of homage.

Nothing lets up. Not even the hoary hills or miles of lawn

open up here, where every last thing abdicates on each

of our wide-placed, earth-stained grounds.

 

 

Grace Curtis’, The Shape of a Box,  is available from Dos Madres Press. Her chapbook, The Surly Bonds of Earth, was selected the 2010 winner of the Lettre Sauvage chapbook contest. Her work can be found in Naugatuck Review, Sou’wester, Red River Review, The Baltimore Review, Waccamaw Literary Journal, and Scythe. She works for The Antioch Review. www.gracecurtispoetry.com

 

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EDILSON FERREIRA

 

Finally, at Home.

 

So simple one fact, one vision,

so close, clear, and plain one statement.

Our house we have built five years ago,

since our marriage, plus two sons by now,

can you imagine just today I feel at home,

like at father’s and grandfather’s?

I saw, climbing by the walls – one gecko!

This little lizard, by long ancestor’s friend,

familiar to old houses, mosquitos and gnats’

hawk-eyed predator.

I’m happy to afford dwelling for one more,

half-forgotten an acquaintance.

By now, being the sole animal in this house,

it is a deputy of our Lord’s fifth Creation Day,

prior to all of us, who are of the sixth one. 

 

 

Edilson Ferreira is a Brazilian poet who writes in English rather than Portuguese, in order to reach more people. Has been published in four printed British Anthologies, online or printed reviews like Cyclamens and Swords, Right Hand Pointing, Boston Poetry Magazine, West Ward Quarterly, TWJ Magazine, The Lake and, forthcoming, in The Stare’s Nest. Short-listed in four American Poetry Contests, began to write after retirement as a Bank Manager and is seventy-one years old. Lives in a small town with wife, three sons and a granddaughter.

 

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ROBERTO CARCACHE FLORES

 

El Tunco

This is where

you slipped

from a coconut palm,
right after

you scratched

its leaves

with a dollar coin,
hoping to find

some answers

or enough money

for a new smartphone
with a touch screen,

unlimited texting,

and a ringtone

that echoed

the ocean’s snores,

without the scent

of its salty dreams.
 

This is the place

the space between

your toes has been

longing for
every time you

went to sleep,

even in the

dustiest of sheets
to a playlist

with songs

about blue skies,

aged rums,
and a violet sun

going down

on the sea

until it

got dark.

 

 

Leaving Perquín

 

You heard rumors

from a local

radio transmission

of sneezing

palm trees,

allergic to the ashes

the wind blew,

bullets inside

sacks of black beans,

and men who believed

in the freedom

of land.

 

Remember how

you crossed

the green hill crests

with a steel wool kite

tied around your ankles,

while frantically chasing

the scent of an underground fire

you thought long gone?

 

You walked through

the trails of Perquín

with nothing but your toes,

while softly humming

I’ve been here before.

 

Roberto Carcache Flores is a Salvadoran writer whose work has been featured in publications like the Eunoia Review, the Legendary, Potluck, and the Haiku Journal. He writes in English out of an irrational fear for the many complexities of the Spanish language.

 

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EUGEN GOLDIN

 

Not For Nothing (for Mark Strand)

 

Not for nothing, but I've been thinking about the way he was always so concise and the way he looked so young.
And, he had that square jaw and was tall and thin - with not so much a curl to his hair.
Not for nothing, but I can see him in a sweater or tweed jacket with long pressed pants looking so handsome and studious.
And, the way he wore those rimmed glasses made him look so WASPY, which, of course, he was.
Not for nothing, but my guess is that he smoked, because he wasn't that old when he died earlier today from cancer.
And, maybe he was a meat eater, although for my 2 cents, he could very well have been vegan. (probably Presbyterian, but for all I know, Pagan)
Not for nothing, but this poem has failed because it is so ponderous and I fail to get the metaphor.
That said, I never seem to know what will be accepted for publication and wonder if those I have torched might have been any more acceptable than the rest.
Not for nothing, but I am sad he is actually really gone.
Then again, I question whether I am even fully here.

 

 

Eugene Goldin was born in NYC. He teaches at Long Island University, Brookville, NY. His poetry has recently appeared in Calliope Magazine, The Fredericksburg Review and Brickplight.

 

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CAROL COVEN GRANNICK

 

Deborah Voigt Does Broadway Show Tunes At Ravinia

 

If you watched you would have seen

that sounds wanted to escape

 

from arthritic bodies of salt-and-pepper-haired dancers

who populated ballet classes in the fifties and sixties

 

and were the singers – maybe even soloists –

of high school choirs and village shows

 

now picnic-eaters with fingers tapping

and buttocks bouncing,

 

walkers and readers, widows and couples

and partners rich with lives distant

 

from one another but buzzing together

with this music, this amazing music

 

that pulls us into one group because

it’s one thing we all have

 

that made us happy in sad times

delighted in happy ones.

 

We know all the words

want to sing along with Deborah Voigt

 

but instead we listen, pretend her voice

is ours, and smile and tap our fingers, bounce our butts

 

except for that one there, the one

at the perimeter of the pavilion

 

in a many-colored culottes

and an orange sweater that might not match

 

and she swishes and sways,

kicks up her legs side to side,

 

busting loose for herself and the rest

of us cowards, dancing and dancing,

 

dancing and singing the words

 

out loud.

 

Carol Coven Grannick is a poet, children's author, and freelance writer. Her middle grade novel in verse, Reeni’s Turn, was a finalist for the 2014 Katherine Paterson Award, with excerpts in the Spring/Summer 2015 Hunger Mountain. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cricket, Highlights, Ladybug, Poetica, Broad! and more.

 

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ALAN HARRIS

 

Still Driving
 

my odometer refuses to roll over

 

the coolant light is on
and there’s nothing I can do about it

 

I keep the tires in good shape
and just had new wiper blades installed
but there’s so little else I can replace

 

my gas gauge can’t be trusted
the driver’s side blinker won’t even wink
at the headlights up ahead
or the trooper trying to get around me

 

I can’t tell if the siren’s for real
or is it the background of a song
on my AM radio

 

and in my rear view is either
a hearse or a tow truck

 

content to follow me home

 

 

Conversations

 

I listen to them in my living room
those pictures on the wall that speak to me
in a language all their own
a dialect where nouns and verbs
are replaced by memories
where syntactic rules
are governed by reflection

 

and there we converse
about chance and purpose
where I often find myself
highly motivated
to take a few more pictures
while there’s still time
to keep the conversation going.

 

At 60, Alan Harris completed his MA in Creative Writing. Today he's an MSW candidate at Wayne State University specializing in gerontology. He writes poetry, plays, and short stories focused on themes of aging. He's earned the 2014 John Clare Prize at Wayne and Pushcart nominations in 2013 and 2014.

 

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SARAH JAMES

 

Endurance

 

Nearly a metre tall,
the lone dandelion

 

pushes its fierce jaw
through the deadening mass:

 

the brambles’ latticed scratching,
a nettle-stung drought

 

of light. In this brutal dark,
stubborn roots draw up strength

 

from the land’s glacial inheritance,
set the stem’s Taraxacum slant,

 

steady its head against winds
and raindrops’ Cossack dances.

 

Our father’s father in the garden.
His calloused hands – thorns

 

embedded in weathered skin –
beating back weeds with his stick.

 

Each blow determines those angles
of stony resistance,

 

despite a leadening stoop
and the nearing of last rites.

 

When time comes, we nudge
ashen parachutes into short flight.

 

Asterisks fall at our feet;
find cracks in the hard earth

 

to grow from: defiant stars on stilts,
striking up at the sky.

 

 

Sarah James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and journalist. A narrative in poems, The Magnetic Diaries (based on Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary), is published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in April and her fourth solo collection, plenty-fish, with Nine Arches Press in July. Her website is at: www.sarah-james.co.uk .

 

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MERCEDES LAWRY

 

Haydn’s Floating Heads

 

Buried first with a “substitute” skull,

Joseph Haydn lost his head to fanatics

of phrenology who hoped to link his musical genius

to an appropriate bump. Though located later,

it was not until 1954 that head was reconciled to body,

re-buried with the stand-in head perhaps as reward

or nod to its consecration and reluctance to chuck it into a bin.

 

As bits and pieces of saints are scattered

in dim chapels and damp naves, the body parts of the renowned

sometimes achieve a life of their own. The holiness

of a Haydn head spans years like a rosary of rogue notes.

Where does music live and how does it escape idea?

Curling out from the splendid folds and fissures

inside a pocket of bone.

 

Note: Thanks to Simon Winder, whose clever book, Danubia,

brought this information to my attention.

 

 

What Cannot Be Said And Is Said

 

Words out of pockets

into mouths, out of mouths

onto pages or scribbled in sky.

Lodged in marrow or chronic worry,

spit or sputtered.

 

Said out loud, then whispered

in favor, out of favor, stumble

over syllables, accents and emphasis

less holy, more geographic.

 

Choose noun for breakfast,

verb for lunch, run the sentence

down and around the pasture

back to the city street, left

into an alley of the forlorn

in night’s palm.

 

Describe this notion of being.

Choose aptly, be wary of simile.

The meaning is like water,

see my point? Words with teeth:

race, cancer, drone, missing, liable.

These are what spring to mind.

 

Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, The Saint Ann’s Review, and others.  Thrice-nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she’s published two chapbooks, most recently Happy Darkness. She’s also published short fiction, essays and stories and poems for children. She lives in Seattle.

 

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PIPPA LITTLE

 

At The General’s Graveside

 

drops of light drown

the carved letters of his name

 

hero of war/

in love, a deserter

the cold weight of him

seeps from her wishful hands

 

the wind needs and needs

and is never answered

either where he ends

or how she breathes

 

forest of black leather, old wheels

through slit-tongued grasses,

 

her webbed

staying, unswayed, among

 

candle-barbs

stuck in standing water or

spots of smoke

on a lens

not memories nor epithelials

 

o weight of him

the wind needs and

is never answered

where he ends

she breathes for him

 

out of the dark

who breathes

who breathes

 

 

 

Inland Waterways

  

Jenny Wren, Early Riser,

over slow water

of milky lustre

you drift and gather

afternoons into evening,

mixter-maxter

peacock blue, vermilion,

primrose, amber -

 

scumbled and grained

in cast shadows and scrolls,

your slight serif

turns fire,

arches and glistens

in shallow-glass,

simmers its

silky enamel

in one last careless patter,

dims with pressure change

and dusk

to silver exhalations:

Painted Lady, Grizzled Skipper,

go softly now

into your rest

between moon

and mooring. 

 

Pippa Little was born in East Africa and raised in Scotland. She now lives in Northumberland with her husband, sons and dog. Her first collection, The Spar Box (2006) was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. Her latest collection, Overwintering, (Carcanet) was published in 2012.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

Attic Squirrels

 

Today, another one died in the closed

                   off area

of my attic, in a space like a bubble,

                   heavier

than air but still lighter than water.

                   Last year

a squirrel dug under a partition to die

                   there,

 

in a peace to be found nowhere else;

                   but still,

I want to know why, when it first

                   entered

my house, it acted like it’s party time—

                   tap dancing,

bumping into the air ducts as if drunk,

                   maybe

 

on the heavy air—then, when all went

                   quiet

the piranhas of the insect world began

                   living

off of the newly dead, leaving behind

                   the pungent

smell of a carcass stiffening, it having

                   been purged.

 

What sounded like a raucous party might

                   have been

the hoarding of enough acorns secretly,

                   a treat

to nibble on before its long sleep settled

                   in.

So I am thinking that my guest today

                   is old:

 

one who knew its days in the huge nest

                    in the V

of an ancient maple out back were over,

                   my house

the nearest setting for a burial plot,

                   a space

with soft insulation to cushion a body

                   worn out.

 

 

Ronald Moran lives in Simpsonville, South Carolina. His poems have been published in Commonweal, Connecticut Poetry Review, Emrys Journal, Louisiana Review, Maryland Poetry Review, North American Review, Northwest Review, South Carolina Review, Southern Poetry Review, Southern Review, Tar River Poetry, and in twelve books/chapbooks of poetry.  His most recent book is The Tree in the Mind, published by Clemson University Press (2014

 

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AOIFE REILLY

 

Encounters with a Hare

 

A fighter with grace and fertility

magical helper in the unexpected

moment of my early morning

backyard smoke and scribbles.

 

I know it means something when we meet.

I wonder about your tunnel vision

if you see me, seeing you,

what you’re a sign of.

 

Will it rain, what’s the right action?

Before I consult the cards you vanish

quick as a breath

over the stream and into the willow

leaving my destiny up to me.

 

Second coffee on the second day

we meet again.

Somehow I’m meddling in your world

but in the split second of

my mindless thoughts, your steady grace

our rhythms mingle.

 

In the meadow-sweetened hedgerow

I could be Alice or Artemis

and you the trickster

reminding me I’m sometimes more,

sometimes less than you.

 

Whatever the sign

animal medicine startles me

into stretching time and gratitude

this everlasting game of hide and seek.

 

 

Grianstad

 

Swirls of starlings

absail between sun and moon

hurl themselves into a dance

through ghosts of trees

they go where they need to go

winter shrouds.

 

Long nights slide in

embers empty the land

dying woods wait for the earth to turn.

 

In the betwixt and between

I am a still frame in the granite glow

and leaves are twisted silver songs.

 

Stars gasp, turf smoke curls

crisscrossing the place where love was exhausted

and blankets way down in the moment before light.

 

Ready now, I follow the starlings and birth another year.

 

 

Aoife Reilly is living in County Galway, Ireland and is originally from County Laois. She is a teacher and psychotherapist. She has been attending poetry workshops with Kevin Higgins at the Galway Art Centre since September 2013 and has read at open mike of the Over The Edge Series at Galway City Library.

 

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CLAUDIA SEREA

 

Postcard from Childhood

 

A mournful bell,

her voice clangs

in the narrow alley

between apartment blocks:

We-Buy-Empty-Bottles!

 

No one is home,

except the kids who go to school

in the afternoon.

 

From the top floor,

I see her long red skirt

and the braid over forehead.

 

The Gypsy woman walks slowly,

bent under the weight

of the sack filled with empty jars

and milk bottles.

 

She looks up.

 

I step away from the window,

letting the curtain fall.

 

 

The Cemetery is Full

 

The eyes of the dead

bloom irises and bluebells.

 

Eaten by rain and ivy,

the soldier’s face is blown off.

 

The dog at his feet is intact.

 

A Madonna with broken arms

holds a headless baby

 

and the bronze angels

carry wilted tulips.

 

Only the lilies

trumpet the day.

 

The alleys are crowded

and quiet,

 

and I suspect

all the souls are gone,

 

leaving behind the petals

and perfume.

 

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 four-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 (8^th House Publishing, Canada, 2013). More at cserea.tumblr.com.

 

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JAY SIZEMORE

 

In the veins of the Earth

 

there are slippery sounds,

where the water gets shallow,

rippling over piles of rocks

and loose dirt, swirling brown.

 

There are silver flickers of light,

scattering from tails of fish,

hexagonal patterns of rainbow scales,

the blood cells, the tea spoons.

 

There are banks nested in root and mud,

where the oxygen breathes in and out,

turtles carry their homes in from the flood,

bull frogs singing the current to sleep.

 

Running down hills, or just before cliffs,

the glass sheen breaks into chaos,

white suds and thunder, careening

into a cascade of prismatic humility.

 

There is a science that dwells in simplicity,

all things returning to their source,

legs nestled in the soft grass and breeze,

listening to the erosion.

 

 

Jay Sizemore keeps his head above water. He eats poetry for breakfast. His work has appeared in places such as truck stops and movie theater bathrooms. Don't hold it against him that he lives in TN. His chapbook Father Figures is out now. www.jaysizemore.com

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

Manhattan on the Nile

 

Mosquitoes and no-see-ums

have made it to my bedroom

on the eighth floor.

They aren’t metaphors,

but teenagers

preparing for motherhood

by feeding on my blood.

 

Their saliva itches. 

Their wings make a noise

in polluted pools

near the edges of my river

where zinging songs bring

mates together.

 

When they meet

their wing-beats harmonize

as mine have not

 

ever since I wrapped

myself in a gauze net.

 

Sarah White’s most recent collection is The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014). She lives in Manhattan on the Hudson

 

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LARYSSA WIRSTIUK

 

Birds of the Meadowlands

 

So, get this: I’m in Secaucus,

this suburban

New Jersey town best known

for its designer outlet stores and Manhattan

   media-company outposts.

 

I come for the Starbucks.

 

I know a lot about Secaucus; best

  of all it sits within the Meadowlands,

a lush blend of wetlands and uplands

once polluted by toxic waste, now

preserved as a diverse ecosystem.

 

          I order my venti soy misto.

 

Two young women with smartphones

approach me, asking, “Are you from

around here?”

“I guess,” I say. I’m from Jersey City,

four miles away.

                         “What are you seeking?”

 

I sprinkle cinnamon in my cup.

 

“We’re trying to get

to Forty-First Street.”

I am thinking

of birds:

black skimmer, osprey, peregrine falcon,

  snowy egret.

 

          The coffee’s hot enough to burn.  

 

Birds of the Meadowlands do not see

    streets.

“I’m almost certain

 it doesn’t exist.”

                                                     “We’re looking

                                                     for Shake Shack.”

 

          Soy’s not as cruel as milk.

 

I point them to Paramus, where

         they can find the shakes

                and fries:

      “Go right, take next exit, stay

       on that road.”

                             They’re on their way.

 

I fear my coffee’s gotten cold.

 

Mid-October: the birds of the

Meadowlands are tired.

                                      They remain, for a moment,

                                      to gain weight

                                                          before going

                                  to warmer states.

 

I am caffeinated.

 

I almost knock over my cup

       when I stand

     to scan

the parking lot.         They meant

                                    “Manhattan”:

Forty-First Street          in Manhattan.

 

 

Laryssa Wirstiuk is a writer and writing instructor based in Jersey City, NJ. She teaches writing and digital media at Rutgers University. Her writing has been published in IthacaLit, Hamilton Stone Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature and is forthcoming in Barely South Review. You can view all her work here: http://www.laryssawirstiuk.com.

 

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