2014

 

 

JULY CONTRIBUTORS

 

Stephen Bone, Judy Brackett, Marc Carver, Karen Craigo, Gail Rudd Entrekin,

Marie Lecrivain, Heather L. Levy, Andy N, Charlotte F. Otten,

Nicky Philips, Karen Powell, Fiona Sinclair, Yermiyahu Ahron Taub

 

 

 

STEPHEN BONE

 

Unmendable

 

The vase we bought together

in Murano 

 

slipped through

my careless hands

 

to hit the floor

with a rich percussion,

 

a jigsaw of glass

at our feet.

 

For a moment like haruspices

we studied the red remains.

 

Then the word arrived,

reached you first.

 

Unmendable, you said.

 

 

Ode To a Deckchair

 

Roused from cobwebbed 

hibernation you regain yourself,

emblem of holidays; sun soaked

dreams of cornflower skies

and slumped ease

unfolded

with your teak bones.

A weathered veteran

brave faced to the washout

in city parks, suburban yards;

a salted sea dog

your striped lap punching

back at the gale, robust

as the bandstand's

brass blown tunes. Far

from the pier's oily air

your true worth shown;

benign as a lifeboat

among the shoes

and crockery

you offer yourself,

a buoyant chance

against all odds.

 

 

Stephen Bone has been published in various magazines and journals including Seam, Shotglass, Smiths Knoll, The Interpreter's House and The Rialto. Most recent work in Londongrip Poetry.

 

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JUDY BRACKETT

 

Coming Back

 

Why do they come back, and how

do they decide when to come back—

fluttering in dreams or alive

 

in the tottery walk of an old man             

crossing the street against the red hand,

in the blur of a child spinning impossibly             

fast on a creaky merry-go-round?                    

 

One gloomy winter’s day, a boy with a false

name slithers through the side-porch door,

leaving a bedraggled black-and-white mutt          

shivering under the arbor.

 

Why do we let them in, phantoms

of our unsettledness in this world

and our curiosity about before and after?

There’s never any useful news

 

from the other side, only mixed-up

revisits—miseries and joys, wrong people

in wrong places, grandfathers the same

ages as their sons, their own grandparents.

 

These familiar strangers always float behind a wall                  

of watery glass, bubbled and crazed, figments

of memory’s longing and confusions—

ashes and dust the potter mixes with water,

 

spins on the wheel, shapes and glazes

and tongs into the fire, making beautiful objects—

beautiful, yes, but breakable and cold and dead.

 

Judy Brackett has published short fiction and poems in various journals and anthologies from About Place to Untidy Season: An Anthology of Nebraska Women Poets (Backwaters Press). She has taught creative writing and English composition and literature at Sierra College. Born in Nebraska, she moved to California as a child and has lived in the northern Sierra Nevada foothills for many years.

 

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MARC CARVER

 

French Fries

 

I go to Mac Donald's

I end up in the queue

with the middle aged man

who is keen to have his job

any job will do him

I know he has just started

it is his first week or month

because he has some enthusiasm

It will probably last another few months yet

He asks me what I want and keeps calling me young man

I don't know whether he is taking the piss or not

but it makes a change

I tell him that I want some chips and entertainment

and he calls me young man again

and I can't help but like the guy

I sit down and eat my chips look around

and wonder why life is like this.

 

Marc Carver has had some seven hundred poems posted on the web and eight volumes of poetry published but the most important thing to him is that people enjoy what he writes.

 

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KAREN CRAIGO

 

While Walking on the Treadmill,

I Devise a Plan to See the Expansion

Memorial

 

Today is day three of every

day and I know half

an hour will yield 1,500

steps so today I will be

4,500 steps into my journey—

a modest pace, but the best

plans, the ones we stick to,

seem to start that way, and

a week will take me 10,500

steps farther from where

I started, 10,500 closer

to a place where I’ll have

a handle on it all, and

did I mention I’m walking

with my eyes closed

and I really hear the constant

thrumming of the gears and

the deliberate way each foot

strikes the conveyer? This year

I will travel 547,500 steps,

all of them somewhat plodding,

slow on purpose because

I am clumsy but every one

uphill to bring the burn.

Each tread is about twenty-

eight inches, which is

15,330,000 inches or

1,277,500 feet per year,

and I have time to think

about it, to do the math

and be surprised that this

uphill year will take me

only 242 miles, about as far

as St. Louis with its shitty

pizza and not, it turns out,

to the moon, or even

very close. It will take me

____ years to reach the moon,

and yes I’ve left that blank

because I don’t outright know

the distance to the moon,

do you? I’m just walking here

with my eyes closed and plenty

of time to do the math,

which I hate, and feeling

a little sweat at my hairline,

and maybe January 4 is the day

I’ll curtail my lunar journey,

settle for frozen pie, which is not,

anyway, settling, as you know

if you’ve ever been to St. Louis,

but on the other hand maybe

I’ll keep walking anyway

because the ooey gooey

butter cake is not to be missed.

 

Karen Craigo teaches English to international students at Drury University in Springfield, Missouri. A chapbook, Someone Could Build Something Here, was just published by Winged City Chapbook Press, and her previous chapbook, Stone for an Eye, is part of the Wick Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in the journals Atticus Review, Poetry, Indiana Review, Prairie Schooner, Puerto del Sol, The MacGuffin, and others.

 

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GAIL RUDD ENTREKIN

 

1978

 

My thirtieth year to heaven I traveled West

headed as much away from the flat bland plateau

of my childhood’s songs sung over and over

through summer’s melt and the freezing misery

of slushy streets, the black ruts in the snow of endless

Ohio winters – as toward the siren song

of California, its open doors swiveling and banging

with those coming and going, those adrift,

worn down by dailiness, and those bursting

up and out of their square holes, looking

for fellows in the wine, poems at table, words

pouring down around them and people catching

them in their inverted umbrellas like rain,

looking them over in their delicate hands,

pocketing the beauty, dropping the sensible words

into their pockets for another year, another time

to come after the open sky, the poets standing up

telling and everyone hearing, the painters

in their purple cloaks swirling, and the young

woman dancing alone on the square

while the flute player under the bridge

where the echo swells best wears

his green bandana, takes

gold in his velvet hat. 

 

 

Gail Rudd Entrekin‘s newest book of poems is Rearrangement of the Invisible  (Poetic Matrix Press, 2012).  She taught college creative writing for 25 years and is editor of the online environmental literary journal Canary www.hippocketpress.org/canary and Poetry Editor of Hip Pocket Press in Orinda, California. 

 

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SUZANNE IUPPA

 

Raking, in a Pyrenean Garden                                                                               

 

There is a quiet gap in the constant sheets of rain.

Let’s go out, first you, then I,

into the small, soaking green and brown back—

 

the rising smell of roast meat and

wood smoke hypnotises our limbs,

siskins trill within our hearing

 

as we work to separate dead leaves

from waking grasses. Bending, gathering.

Who would have thought this young fruit tree

 

would shed so much?

Enough to clog these tines and soak our clothes,

many baskets of good detritus

 

to a pile fit for burning

although I am sad at the thought of it—

like the ancient nest of grass and baling twine

 

you hand me, sacrificed for a rose’s pruning,

undoing the perfect knot in the convex cup

adding another layer 

 

to the peat core of seasons beneath us

some perfectly intact with defined edges

some a murky smear best forgotten,

 

and both our backs bowed with the same labour,

the same tenderness in our movements

spanning whole stepped degrees in scale:

 

the doe-eyed primrose discovered blooming, at our feet

and the obstinate snow and black mountain, above.

 

 

Territories                                                                           

 

The overpass unravels its usefulness at night

underneath a fox cough and the cows lowing;

a lit ginnel between A-roads and B-roads

 

that took many messy and stop-start years to complete,

bordered by LED antennae, and in places, ancient hedgerows

hanging on for dear carbon saving life—

 

and as the stars split the blackness

and swagged gardens call out from either side, familiar,

there is a shift down to a chorused humming

 

behind hermetic seals; through double-cylinder door locks

while the clipped grass field at the edge of the park

shimmers endlessly, just like the desert.

 

Suzanne Iuppa is a poet, community worker and filmmaker based in North Wales. She has published poetry and short fiction in a variety of British and American literary magazines, and her poetry series On Track: Poems from Welsh Pilgrimage was published by Alyn Books in 2013.

 

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MARIE LECREVAIN

 

Advice to the Loveless Poet From St. John of the Cross

 

St John of the Cross never specified exactly how long

a dark night of the soul is supposed to last. He didn't

include instructions like stay hydrated, bring a flashlight,

a book to read, and a snack or two.

 

He never intimated that waiting for that special moment

of union with the divine is akin to waiting by the phone

for a 3 am booty call with the god of your choice.

 

He did suggest it requires a conscious cultivation of OCD,

a lack of personal hygiene, and a clear understanding

of the boundaries between devotion and your inner masochist.

 

I find this advice helpful in my relationship with Le Muse;

I’m in it for the L-O-N-G haul, though I tried to break up

more than once via text message: Dr Ms, Wr Dn! C U L8r!

 

And all she does is smile, pat me on the head,

hold out her hand to me and says, Kiss the whip, bitch,

which I do (gladly!). Someday. Some… night…

at 3 am… She’ll call me… And I’ll be here…

pen in hand… ready… and waiting…

 

 

Texting in the Time of Mercury Retrograde

(to S, because you are right…)

 

Here, in the void, I listen for your voice

amidst the technological howling

of progress. Instead, I hear repeated

prophecies of binary dissonance

that annihilates the warm tone I treasured

inside the deep well of my memory.

 

Our devices overwrite memory

and intention. My own language, my voice,

is now a klaxon. What you once treasured

is now a hateful childish howling

that inspires cognitive dissonance,

and woefully, can be often repeated.

 

The luddites were right. Progress repeated

distorts the very walls of memory.  

To escape from the plague of dissonance

you and I must find a new, better voice

to triumph over that constant howling,

and recover the trust we once treasured.

 

I can barely recollect our treasured

evenings of discourse. I repeated

them in my head to drown out the howling

of despair that lurks within. If memory

can be trusted, your low and soothing voice,

when we first met -  dispelled the dissonance

 

and sadness within. That same dissonance

has returned to steal away those treasured

moments of joy engendered by your voice.

Face to face, we can end the repeated

mobius of progression. Memory

restored, we’ll turn our backs on the howling.

 

What can be done for those lost to the howling

call of techno-babble, a dissonance

disguised? Our collectivized memory,

the best of who we are, once treasured,

will be erased. What’s left? A repeated

mantra of nothing. No sound, and no voice

 

to tell our tales. Now... are you howling

yet? I hope so. Keep fighting. Dissonance

balked will immortalize our memory.

 

 

Marie Lecrivain is the editor-publisher of poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles. She’s the author of The Virtual Tablet of Irma Tre (© 2014 Edgar & Lenore’s Publishing House) and editor of the anthology Near Kin: Words and Art inspired by Octavia E. Butler (© 2014 Sybaritic Press). 

 

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HEATHER L. LEVY

 

Day Trip

 

“What’s a sea shore?” she asks,

The sea air whipping through her caramel hair.

I tell her a shore is an endless stretch of formidable joy,

A horrible assault upon the ego,

A painful beauty that shoots salt through every pore of your being.

 

“What are sea shells?”  She crinkles her tan nose in wonder.

I explain that a shell is the carrier of mermaid songs

And souls who whisper their lost dreams into the iridescent caves

Where voices are trapped and washed away forever with the persistent roar of the ocean.

 

She looks down at the small conch in her hands,

Then out to the great expanse of green sea

And says, “Whatever, mom.”

 

 

Preschool

 

She throws herself into the verdure,

The green catching the Sun’s fingers through her hair,

Sweeter than golden molasses on dying bark.

She is nature, pure and unbridled,

Terrifying as she tramples past torn photos of who she was,

Who I thought she would remain.

She laughs, pine needles through my heart,

A memory when I held her head against my chest

And lied that everything would be okay, somehow.

 

I feel that craggy gorge she’s jumping over

Rising in my throat until all I taste is acid.

I need to catch her, to pull her back into my arms,

But I can’t reach her.  I never could.

She pauses on the other side of the ravine

And turns to see me, face set in horror against the trees,

And she smiles with a secret in her eyes.

Then, she’s gone again

And I’m left clenching the answer.

 

 

Working and writing in Oklahoma City with her husband and two children, Heather L. Levy was the 2008 adult poetry contest winner for Readerjack.com and was a part of the special edition short story anthology for her short fiction piece The Canvas.  She was a featured writer for the AOL-owned Aisledash.com, garnering millions of hits for the site during her period of contribution.  

 

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ANDY N

 

Days

 

Three days since you told me you love me

And two since you kissed me on the cheek.

 

Four since you rang me up accidentally

And six since you tripped over your cat in the kitchen.

 

Seven since you kicked me out of bed for snoring

And eight since you set your toaster on fire.

 

Five since you misplaced your keys blaming me

And yesterday since you swore at the Postman

Yelling into the intercom,

 

Mixing the days and the madness into one

Like a comedy sketch gone wrong.

 

Lost

 

Never just lost for words

Even in a slight panic

Or rooting through your trousers

Then both pockets of your coat

Then lastly your bag

 

As both Ang and Ellen

Offer to help you out

Looking at the floor

With a stunned silence,

 

As you say, no I do have it

I do have it

And delay the bus leaving

For another 10 minutes

Before you find your wallet.

 

 

Andy N is a 42 year old writer, performer and sometimes experimental musician from the North West of England but seen most around Manchester, Trafford, Tameside and Bolton. Details of his books can be found on his official website  http://www.andyn.org.uk 

 

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CHARLOTTE F. OTTEN

 

Visiting Van Gogh’s Arles

We drive the tangled roads
to Arles
into Van Gogh’s sunscaped land,
looking for his Cemetery Alyscamps,
his towering golden trees
and ghosty sarcophagi.

We join his lovers
on the path,
Caesar strolls beside us
scrutinizing
each marble burial stone
where  a Roman soldier,
an officer, a dignitary
lies buried under icons
of philosophers,
shepherds,
a smiling monster,

and the solitary man
with arms still lifted
to a god who is as deaf
as Ahab’s Baal.

We find ourselves
in a necropolis
tramping on golden leaves
that will die.
and remember that we’re
not the first to stroll here,

a rumor persists that Christ
Himself attended the burial
of a martyr,
left the imprint of his knee
on a sarcophagus.
We reach a dead end,
we haven’t found Christ’s knee,

Van Gogh’s Caesar
has disappeared
in time’s deathless images,

and all that is left
is Van Gogh’s painted garden
with a golden landscape
of dying boneless stones.

 

 

Charlotte F. Otten is the editor of The Book of Birth Poetry (Virago/Bantam).  Her poems have appeared in journals as diverse as Agenda, Southern Humanities Review, The Healing Muse, Poems from Aberystwyrh, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine.

 

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NICKY PHILLIPS

 

Visiting Haworth

 

Thoughts run to my late grandfather

taking me by train, showing Ladybird books

to me, reading me Ned the lonely donkey.

I treasure it still: dog-eared,

deserving of a place in the museum.

 

What would Ned make of Charlotte’s corset,

nightcap, unborn baby’s bonnet?

Thick stockings, demure dress, prim practical shoes:

a world of fashion away from the 1950s

mother, father, Timothy of his story.

 

Ned could romp with the lion, march with soldiers,

compare notes among the pages of Jane Eyre,

breathe heather from the moors deep into his nostrils,

rue poor sanitation, lack of clear running water,

wonder at the girls’ minuscule handwriting,

 

share the sorrow of their early losses,

understanding the importance and closeness

of family life. Those looking in would see,

from the tattered pages of the tale, how loved

he was and learn, from that, a little of me.

 

 

Nicky Phillips lives in rural Hertfordshire. Her poems have appeared in The Cannon’s Mouth; Ink, Sweat and Tears; Every Day Poets; The Ranfurly Review; and various anthologies, including ‘The Best of Every Day Poets Two’ (2012) and ‘Heart Shoots’, in aid of Macmillan Cancer (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2013).

 

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KAREN POWELL

 

Eric

 

Your armchair left empty,

too many potatoes

and places set for Sunday lunch.

 

Shopping in Gallowtree Gate,

I see the back of your head

or someone with your walk.

 

I see your mouth moving

when your brother speaks.

He uses your laugh.

 

 

Overheard

 

They didn’t realise I listened

as they sipped weak tea and gossiped.

Today, the new neighbours – the Poles.

She wore neat slacks and pastel blouses;

he had, they agreed, ‘come to bed’ eyes.

Aunty Milner told of the foreign rows

heard through the too thin shared wall;

him slamming the peeling front door;

driving fast in his blue Ford Zephyr.

That blonde – she paused – at The Wyvern.

They sighed, tutted, refilled their cups.

 

The day before I’d called for Lucja,

watched her mother pretending not to cry.

You see, I already knew the signs.

 

 

Secrets

 

I like secrets. Learning the hidden stories

of others – their addictions, crimes, affairs.

Not to share, just squirrel, consider.

Yes, I do like secrets. The best are mine,

tucked away until I choose to unfold

a snippet. I watch the subtle shift

of expression or tone as I reveal

a detail disturbing the me they knew.

Secrets. Each of life’s segments holds a piece,

and if combined, some would still be missing.

 

 

Karen Powell has an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University. Her poems have appeared in Hearing Voices, Swamp, The Prose Poem Project, Kumquat Poetry and Message in a Bottle. http://karenpowellnotebook.wordpress.com/

 

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FIONA SINCLAIR

 

Sparkler

 

Espresso high on his proposal,

no thoughts of a ring until on the Ponte Vecchio

amidst the blaze of bling,

his disappointment at the Medici price tags.

Time was I could have let you loose with my credit card.

You had sworn off real jewellery anyway,

after watching mother milk men for sapphires, diamonds …

Found yourself drawn to modest silver and faux-pearl  

Your friends will think I’m a cheapskate

But this ring would always mean;

hot chocolate he stood a spoon  up in,

your OMG at the scale of ‘David’.

the Duomo photo-bombing every view.

 

Designer bags raised friends’ expectations,

your extended hand met with a pause,

‘It’s very you’, ‘How unusual’

the backstory beginning to sound an excuse.

Handling his heart like cutting a precious gem

you obtain his blessing to buy something glittery,

a We’ll see to your paying for it yourself.

He sacrifices the meet at Sandown to ring shop,

but you soon find emeralds don’t come cheap,

In the 11^th hour jewellers ,  I’d forgotten about this one,

two diamond body guards flanking a superstar stone,

old stock at pre- gold rush prices,

knocked into your price range

by his cheeky chappy  How much for cash?

In the car you take it from its conker casing,

you and the ring  both off the shelf now.

 

 

Fiona Sinclair's first full collection of poetry will be published by Lapwing Press in September. She is the editor of the on line poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.

 

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YERMIYAHU AHRON TAUB

 

Fellowship Prize(d)

 

Once I knew buses,

I could tell you the path of the cross-town 33, past the grocery

on the corner of X and Y, where I would descend, with my shopping cart

clattering behind me, and enter the realm of the divine. 

Here, spices, greens, fish, meats would elicit a reaction Pavlovian in

regularity.  I knew I would unlock the mysteries of this bounty. 

Salvatore (I could never bring myself to call him Sal) would croon the

discoveries of the day and offer a wink and a special discount.

“I take good care of you,” Salvatore said.  And so he did.

 

Once I knew buses,

I could tell you the path of the 41, how it stopped at the overpass, you

know the one, where honeysuckle twinkles with such insistence.  On the

promenade, Ethel would tell of what ought not be missed at the

Cinematheque.  Irving would regale with tales of nude beaches of yore.  

Betty would point out the flight of birds only she could spot.  Even without

binoculars Betty knew.  Only Leo couldn’t bring himself to merry. Ethel

did so try to extricate him from the nightmare ongoing that began with 

a knock on the door so long ago.  Still, Leo never missed our Fridays.

 

Once I knew buses,

I could tell you the path of the 107, with Mr. Jackson (I never knew his

first name) at the helm for at least 16 years.  I remember the day he started. 

How Delia always knew where to get the best orthopedic shoes.  She had

to, with all the trudging over marble and mahogany she did with a vacuum

cleaner and mops and such.  How Esperanza favored the 8:23 bus, with

her kids to get to school and so many errands to run.  It was a good

time slot for her, for us all.  Reasonable.  Mr. Jackson always said to me,

“Don’t get into no trouble today, hear?” when I departed his 107 bus.

 

Only now I know these walls.

It’s my arthritis and my circulation and my heart.  It’s almost everything

really. Sal’s market is long gone, replaced by a liquor store, with deals

struck out front at all hours of day and night. Sal would be distraught.

Ethel and the Promenade Gang have all passed.  I won’t go into the

details, except to say that Leo outlived them all.  Except for me,

of course.  The 107 route was discontinued.  I tried to find out what

happened to Mr. Jackson, but got nowhere. 

They said they didn’t know of a Mr. Jackson. 

 

Only now I know these walls.

And I was never much for decorating.  Just didn’t have the knack.  But

always were flowers.  Now Esperanza walks up the three flights to be

with me. She arranges for groceries to be delivered.

She brings me flowers; she opens the windows for me

so that I may smell that which I can no longer see.  Esperanza remains

to me from the buses that zigzagged across the avenues and boulevards of

the metropolis scarred by potholes never repaired (despite my pleas),

through the honking of cabbies and the swerve of bike messengers,

 

past ladies stepping over puddles and excrement,

beneath the canopy of live oaks whose lowermost branches caressed the

bus roof at Eighth Avenue and 13^th Street as the “Stop Requested” bell

chimed in our ears.  Esperanza remains to me from the buses that

delivered me to and from the central municipal offices those many years.

Once I knew buses, once I knew buses.  Now Esperanza washes me,

now Esperanza holds me, now Esperanza sings to me melodies of her

abuela, as geraniums and daisies and poppies (and what’s that other one)

sway nearby, as these walls inch ever in.

 

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is the author of four books of poetry, including Prayers of a Heretic.  He was honored by the Museum of Jewish Heritage as one of New York’s best emerging Jewish artists and has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize and twice for a Best of the Net award.  Visit his website at www.yataub.net.

 

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