2016

 

 

JULY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Mikki Aronoff, Claire Askew, Kitty Coles, Stephen Daniels, Sarah L. Dixon,

Emma Hall, Amy Holman, Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe, Daniel Hudon,

Jennifer McBain-Stephens, Gretchen Meixner, Robert Okaji,

Bill Rector, Sharon Suzuki-Martinez

 

 

 

 

MIKKI ARONOFF

 

Emptying at Twilight

 

Mother loops into                 

herself, fold upon fold

hands no longer

 

necessary.  It is twilight

and she whispers

to me as I bend to hear

 

i’m emptying

gathering memories

letting them go

 

The sky softly fades.

Her last breath

comes later

 

but not much

as the sun billows              

above the horizon.

 

Her head and thin body

curve towards it.

I see the sheets   

 

she so perfectly matched

corner to corner

end to end.

 

 

Mikki Aronoff has poems in House of Cards: Ekphrastic Poetry, Rolling Sixes Sestinas: an Anthology of Albuquerque Poets, and forthcoming in Bearing the Mask: Southwestern Persona Poems, 3ElementsReview and Snapdragon: A Journal of Art & Healing. She also makes art and is involved in animal advocacy.

 

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CLAIRE ASKEW

 

Two poems from This changes things (Bloodaxe Books, 2016)

 

Spitfires

 

Impossible,

to think he was once seventeen –

the man in the solid coffin,

no longer a man, no longer my grandfather, really

just a body –

too young

to serve – amazing, that he was once too young

for something – so he fixed Spitfires,

those beautiful death machines,

all Blitz pitch, all rivets.

Imagine the big wings, the heat fizz off the airfield –

taxiing a patched rig across the hardstanding

to see if she’d go –

the snubbed guns, ritzy pin-ups

on the buttressed nose.

Fighting bulldogs in their clotted greens.

He loved them seventy gentle years,

and now behind a curtain the coffin burns,

and he walks out of the hangar

in the teatime light.

He knocks his hands together once,

twice, three times. Behind him,

empty Spitfires huge as windmills

in a quiet row. He whistles,

and he’s seventeen

 

Going next

 

It happens as we’re driving back

from another day clearing

my grandfather’s house.

 

It’s Christmastime, and from the rise

all the little hamlets of the valley

are lit like pinwheels.

 

All day we’ve packed boxes in the cold house,

everything damp, our breath standing in the air

reminding us every two seconds that we are alive.

 

Now we’re driving through the black late afternoon,

the wind swinging in the trees like it wants to hurt them,

the trees swatting back with their long sticks.

 

And my father says, now that he’s dead

I’m the eldest, out of nowhere in the hot,

thick air of the car. I’m going next.

 

He says it

like the thought has suddenly come –

keeps his hands on the wheel and doesn’t speak again.

 

And I’m surprised he thinks

I don’t know him better,

I don’t know

 

he’s been thinking it all these weeks,

as we’ve stacked books, made tramp tea

in a pan on the single gas ring,

 

as we’ve surfed together on the loose boards

of the old man’s loft, laughing at the things he kept,

the crap raft of stuff he built for himself.

 

In his head, my dad has walked

to the end of that familiar street,

but instead of scuffing the chalked brick

 

of the last house – outpost beyond which

he wasn’t allowed – then running back

to his name called ahead of the dark,

 

he’s turned. The road beyond the corner

is new, and the houses are low,

so although it’s still far off he can see it,

 

perhaps it’s a tower,

or a spire, or a plume of grey smoke

drifting slow above the rooftops of the town,

 

but he knows this is where he’s going now,

and the road is straight, and there’s no one there any more

to call him home.

 

Claire Askew was born in 1986 and grew up in the rural Scottish borders. She has lived in Edinburgh since 2004, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Contemporary Women’s Poetry from the University of Edinburgh. In 2013 she won the International Salt Prize for Poetry, and in 2014 was runner-up for the inaugural Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish poets under 30. She runs the One Night Stanzas blog, and collects old typewriters (she currently has around 30).

 

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KITTY COLES

 

Sawing Through A Woman

You invite me to be sawn in half, saying my waist
is slender as a doll's, my big blue eyes as wide,
my hair as flossy.  What girl could refuse

such a tender overture?  You bind my neck,
my feet and hands and ask
three witnesses to hold the cords, observe me.

Now – with a flourish – you draw out the saw.
My trembling is feigned but makes
you tremble.  The droning of the blade

drowns out your pulse.  Blood spills.
It's Kensington gore but draws oohs and aahs
while I lie still, unreachable and lovely.

My small white hands grow cold.
The spectators draw back.  I am halved
like a pie.  I am meat and blood and bone.

You wipe your brow.  Your face
is clenched and waxy.  My face is unmoved,
a white mask, a kabuki girl.

His breathing stertorous, he heaves and mumbles,
limbs plunging, hauling further from the shore.

His flesh is cool and salt, smooth as a merman's,
beneath my tongue.  Its ripples lift him into wakefulness.

 

Kitty Coles lives in Surrey, UK and works as a senior adviser for a charity supporting disabled people.  Her poems have appeared in magazines including Mslexia, Iota, The Interpreter's House, Frogmore Papers, Obsessed With Pipework, Brittle Star, South and Ink Sweat and Tears.  www.kittyrcoles.com

 

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STEPHEN DANIELS

 

The examination

 

When he asks me to take my top off,

without hesitation I comply.

Remove the cotton barrier between us,

and clutch it in my fists.

I hold it close to my body,

aware that I am exposed.

 

When he asks me to turn around,

I spin and look away,

I don’t think.

His eyes investigate my back,

I sense the anticipation of his actions,

the analysis of eyes moving,

up and down.

 

When he asks me to take off my trousers,

I nervously smile,

unbutton my jeans.

The zip sound scrapes the silence,

his hand is now on my ankle.

His fingers investigate the spaces –

between my heel and his knowledge,

stopping at the knee.

 

When he asks me to sit down,

He moves slowly,

to see what I have to show

he leans in,

places his face close to my chest.

I wonder if he can see my heart pounding.

 

When he tells me I have nothing to worry about,

my skin relaxes,

 

When he asks me if I have always had moles,

I say no.

 

Stephen Daniels is the editor of Amaryllis Poetry and the Secretary for Poetry Swindon, UK. His poetry has been published in various magazines and websites, including The Interpreter’s House, Ink Sweat & Tears, And Other Poems, The Fat Damsel. You can find out more at www.stephenkirkdaniels.com @stephendaniels

 

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SARAH L. DIXON

 

The mask behind the laughter

 

The rictus grin of a clown's final mask,

practised and realised on his second week

in stand-up in 1974.

 

He'd gone as far as painting it on

at least once a month.

Even then he knew what it was.

 

Often he only got as far as the eyes

weighted by world.

 

He always started with the eyes,

dropped down to his resting mouth

and painted on a smile, wide and dark,

but never quite his mind's reflection.

 

This time it was different.

He knows from the first smudge of base

this will be the last

and most considered application.

 

That the mouth will be right this time.

 

Sarah L Dixon tours as The Quiet Compere.  She has been published in Ink, Sweat and Tears and The Interpreter’s House among others. Sarah’s inspiration comes from being by water and adventures with her five-year old, Frank.  She is still attempting to write better poetry than Frank did aged 4! 

 

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EMMA HALL

 

Triturate

 

My mother has held a lantern for so long,

in wait, in wait. And I have waited with her

for the wind to shift, or God to rise 

 

from the graves of our ancestors and answer,

and answer. The mountain is visible from both

our houses, and maybe she remembers

 

her grandfather dressing in white robes to go there,

but she doesn't say. Dragging the ground

to seventy, I see the candle in her pupil flicker,

 

the dark circle at the center growing larger,

and like the others before her,

she is poised to forget our names.

 

 

Glint

 

I keep seeing smallish flocks of birds falling

to the ground then rising. Ever so slightly

 

like sheets being lifted from dormant furniture,

shaken in preparation for folding. I mark this

 

as a kind of hope. A kit of pigeons hover/dropping

along the sidewalk. A merle of red-shouldered blackbirds

 

conducted toward the sun and back, in concert,

 in a frenzied waltz across the neighbor's grass,

 

even as the days drop colder. I mark this

as a kind of hope. Here in the land of my only-living,

 

when I can see something I have never seen.

That, lifts the sheet, christens the air

 

with the sudden dust of wonder.

 

 

Emma Hall is a poet living in the American South with her husband and two children. She is also the founding editor of Forage Poetry Journal.

 

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AMY HOLMAN

 

What Not To Wear

 

We destroyed the webs, face first, unaware 

until softness broke on us, that spiders 

had developed spaces between the bayberry, 

 

folding chaises & railings. My father 

might hit it, first, out for his morning run, 

flail & shout, but any of us foundered 

 

in its sticky architecture, laughing or

screaming. My brother used to draw precise

buildings with perspective when he was

 

eleven. Not every day did arachnids lace

the deck with split-levels, just a few. 

Never anywhere else but in Avalon in June,

 

outside that midcentury modern upside-

down house facing the Atlantic in the dunes. 

If still cloudy by light, dew crystalized 

 

our view. Bejeweled, the web was something 

to behold, but not to wear. Social cobweb 

spiders work together, spinning their town, 

 

but long-jawed orb weavers steal air rights, 

independence leveraged off hospitality.

It’s hard to say what it was for sure that shrink-

 

wrapped us. Tribes might say we skipped out 

into the origin of the alphabet, and I ran 

back inside with broken verses in my hair.

 

 

Amy Holman is a poet and literary consultant in Brooklyn, New York, and author of Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window (Somondoco Press, 2010) and the prizewinning Wait For Me, I’m Gone (Dream Horse Press, 2005). Her fiction chapbook, Lighter Than A Dream was a 2015 finalist for publication at Anchor & Plume. 

www.amy-holman.com 

 

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ZOË SÎOBHAN HOWARTH-LOWE

 

Painting the Roses Red

 

A dust storm is sweeping up the path,

hunting out the corners of closed eyes,

the backs of throats. Inhale me.

 

The sun is tearing at the back of the neck

and a single feather is floating on an updraft,

lifting and lilting – then dropping.

 

The birds are holding council,

so many hurried conversations.

 

I am abandoned in the forest,

devoid of the white rabbit.

 

You quit me;

leaving me among the flowers,

red paint on my dress.

 

The birds have talked themselves hoarse

and the roses are crying.

 

 

Pocket Full of Stones

 

Leaves breaking through the waters surface,

green, brown – the water is autumnal,

leaves falling, drifting.

 

The water is shallow,

still, it treads me down, hard,

pressing me into the grit

and dust that creeps up around me

and over me, tasting of the smell of wet grass.

 

There is light here,

giving shapes to the movements

of rocks, twigs and leaves

all of which are drowning with me.

Pulled in by my clumsy attempt

to see what drowning feels like.

 

 

Rehearsing

 

At school I play Ophelia,

handing out pansies for thoughts

and rosemary for remembrance.

I mourn for the withered violets

before drowning offstage.

 

At home, I become Ophelia,

planting rye for sorrow,

fennel for regret,

picking stones out of the earth

to sew into the hem of my dress.

 

At home, I test my weight

on the branches of willow trees,

waiting for one to break.

 

 

Zoë Sîobhan Howarth-Lowe is a Poet and Mum from Dukinfield, UK. She has an MA from Bath Spa, and if the poetry doesn't work out, she also enjoys wargaming...

 

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DANIEL HUDON

 

Clarification

after Mary Oliver

 

How many mysteries have you seen in your lifetime?

I don’t know, let me think.

How much time do I have?

 

Seen? Really seen? Do you mean how high in the atmosphere

ice crystals can align to give you a halo

around the sun, or, even better, sundogs

 

that shepherd the sun like ghostly, ephemeral

companions glowing faint as rainbows that come and go,

depending on the clouds? Or, how raindrops – while they fall –

 

can steal the sun’s light and fan it into an arc

of colors that spans the sky?

Do you mean how many mysteries have I seen today?

 

Or, how I can sit in the quiet of the sunlight

by the window warmed by light that was created

deep within the sun’s core when hydrogen fused

 

into helium and the oh-so-tiny extra mass

was transformed to light that zigged and zagged layer

by layer out of the sun across the chill

 

of interplanetary space to get to me

and how I can sit for hours in this quiet, warming light

oblivious to the Earth’s turning while I write

 

in my notebook and now and then look up

into the clear sky to see the sun shining

and shining for you and for me and for all of us?

 

Is this what you mean? There are the clouds too. I could tell you

about the clouds. And the blue sky.

And the stars – oh, the stars.

 

Or, do you mean something more mysterious?

 

 

The Rock Thief

 For Vicki

 

Said she lived near the beach and stole a rock

each time she went, as if the great spread arms

of the beach were a guardian of rocks

who smoothed them in collusion with time

and counted them again and again, round

and sharp, speckled and dark, and knew if one

went missing, knew too its abundant sand

was an afterthought, a charitable

gift to those who didn’t understand rocks.

Rocks are rocks wherever you go, she said,

and wondered what could possibly absolve

her from stealing another one – thieve

a blade of grass from a meadow? a cloud

from the sky? They stacked up on her porch,

her window sills and book shelves, gray round disks

shut up tight with their million year old grins.

Every day she walked there. At night,

she lay in bed and strained to hear the sussurant

waves hushing the beach to sleep.

 

Daniel Hudon, originally from Canada, is an adjunct lecturer in astronomy and math in Boston. His latest project is the forthcoming nonfiction book about the biodiversity crisis, Brief Eulogies for Lost Animals (Pen and Anvil, Boston). He lives in Boston, MA, and can be found at danielhudon.com and @daniel_hudon.

 

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JENNIFER McBAIN-STEPHENS

 

Cracked Earth to Valleys, or All the Flower People

 

I.

It starts with a crackle. A downpour, then silence.

Everything grows here.

 

It’s easy to lose one’s way—

the dark greens swallow me whole

lushness a monster, light greens turn dusk to shadow

beckon me to the creek down the street and the creek up the street

reborn upon  Fisherman’s Rock.

Dust is absent,

Every droplet a disguise, all moisture a lie.

I am overtaken by a shimmering green person suit.

 

The dawning of shhhh 

chords flourish, electricity flickers

wind power left for dead.

 

II

The Occoquan River begrudges morning, a shivering shingle

one lone obstacle               wedges into a human-made

habitat.

Pike maneuvers past muck sick tendrils

float wet cement still            leaf veins caught prisoner 

halfway to sludge.

So many mosquitos

drone a quiet mass.

 

III.

whoosh

slicked back sparrow pantomimes flight

a crowd source bird tolerates

curmudgeon swallowtails, uninvited to feed,   

scarcely pecks black seeds, a favorite I am told.

The humming bird foregone for

the yellow finch

see a brilliant flash of wing   a starring role      

against  green                   tree lined screens.

Cardinals don’t  swoon as well.

 

 

IV.

A coral Tiger lily bends over dandelion business

sturdy to the white root, an edible crown.

Black-eyed Susans run amok, impervious to drought, if there ever was one.

Runt pumpkin seeds sprout in a Ziploc sandwich bag,

too confident to hide.

Bees pull rank, choose the brightest landing pads, dodge angled rain.

 

 

V.

I only visit land locked Iowa in dreams

The snarling sidewalks, the summer ants, 

the brightest corn field                 in hazy stop motion

The sun falls into the Iowa River every night, a  preschool painting

 

It’s the oxygen that wakes me                 dramatic gusts        

stops and starts.

The wind all encompassing, always everywhere at once,

through valleys, over hills,

the top of this hill surrounded by sycamore and elm is the same

as that last curve, that bend taken yesterday .

 

A lightning rod flashes a quick truth:

you could be this still.

 

Jennifer MacBain-Stephens went to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and now lives in the DC area. She is the author of two full length poetry collections (forthcoming.) Her chapbook “Clown Machine” is forthcoming from Grey Book Press this summer. Recent work can be seen or is forthcoming at Jet Fuel Review, Freezeray, The Birds We Piled Loosely, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Inter/rupture, Poor Claudia, and decomP. Visit: http://jennifermacbainstephens.wordpress.com/

 

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GRETCHEN MEIXNER

 

Disney Movie Meltdown 

 

First there were the blondes.

Cinderella, hardworking, sweet,

But a bearer of weak stupidity,

A most absurd failing for a

Graceful future princess to have.

Why does she scrub the floors

With snivelling, weepy desperation,

Rather than a face of cold defiance

The stepsisters have no defenses

In their sleep. Yank out their hair

Or spit in their morning coffee.

But no, Cinderella sweeps and mends,

Counting the days till someone saves her.

 

Aurora takes laziness to a new level.

Sleeping from a prick of a thimble?

Sounds like a hoax, born from a

King’s desire to keep his daughter’s

Predilection for morphine a secret.

“She’s waiting for love” paints a

Nicer picture than she’s napping

To forget dancing naked in a moat

And giving her milk away to Philip.

Once she awakes up and leaves rehab

She’ll smile warmly and wave to peasants

But only if she stops hallucinating fairies.

 

Snow White, another sound sleeper.

Again an evil matriarch is blamed

Rather than the beautiful simpleton who

Takes a bite from an apple held in

The dirty, wrinkled hand of a hag.

Maybe she didn’t have a mother but

Some things are common sense like

Not flitting around with little men

Thinking your reputation won’t suffer.

What kind of insecure woman needs the

Devotion and care of seven strangers?

That prince obviously likes a woman

With experience and an open mind.

 

Now Ariel was ambitious at least.

She faced the threat of extinction

From her own ignorance but everyone

Likes a girl with a sense of adventure

Especially when it’s accented by

Bushy, red hair and a seashell bra.

Her prince better stay sharp and alert.

His wife has more options for a lover

Than man or woman, she has the catalogue

Of the whole sea - from crab to whale.

He’ll deal, as long as she doesn’t bring

Some coral reef disease into their bed,

Eric can accept her ocean baggage.

 

Surprise! Belle likes to read!

An intelligent, avid mind!

She rejects the physical beauty

Of Gaston for a gruesome beast

Who in human form resembles a

Pathetic singer from the eighties.

Of course Belle also abandons a

Literary career for wifely pursuits.

Maintaining that castle won’t be easy,

And now she’s lost half the porcelain

Since they magically transferred into

Lazy humans instead of quaint teacups.

She’s going to read Ladies Home Journal

Pouring over recipes for a hungry animal

Rather than revelations in the classics.

 

Jasmine had a tiger. Enough said.

Well, almost. Again we see a woman

Kept captive by older, ugly men.

A fat sultan denying his daughter

The right and privilege of a sunset.

Is it really the first time she’s

Ever snuck into the marketplace?

Why not jump on the tiger’s back

And crash through a window,

Barrelling into the inept guards?

How is a woman with limited knowledge

Of people, fruits, and the punishment

For thievery, supposed to choose a

Suitable husband or even impress one?

Luckily, Aladdin is uneducated and

Thinks her innocence is endearing,

It doesn’t hurt that it makes him feel

An unstoppable genius in comparison.

 

There are a few females missing from

This montage of prettiness and charm.

The African princess must be in the

Vault. They will get to her sooner or

Later, once they’ve fairly portrayed

The minority groups of lions, aliens,

And conscious toys. The plain, American girl

With brown hair and a college degree

Is still waiting for an invitation

To tell a story that doesn’t involve

Overbearing men and mentally challenged royalty.

Keep watching, the princesses can

Only live so long in fairytales,

Without accidentally killing themselves

Or getting knocked up before the

Prince has bedded them. Then they will

Be kicked out of the castle, selling

Beads and frogs on the side of the road,

Dirt spitting on to their dresses,

Their jewels worn by peasants who

Finally take the helm of the story.

 

Gretchen Meixner grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and has been constantly reading and writing since she learned how. She has a bachelor's degree in English Literature from Emmanuel College. Her job involves business and technical writing, and she writes fiction and poetry on the side. She currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

 

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ROBERT OKAJI

 

Mother’s Day

 

The dog is my shadow and I fear his loss. My loss.

I cook for him daily, in hope of retaining him.

 

Each regret is a thread woven around the oak’s branches.

Each day lived is one less to live.

 

Soon the rabbits will be safe, and the squirrels.

As if they were not. One morning

 

I’ll greet an empty space and walk alone,

toss the ball into the yard, where it will remain.

 

It is Mother’s Day.

Why did I not weep at my mother’s grave?

 

I unravel the threads and place them around the dog.

The wind carries them aloft.

 

 

Every Wind

 

Every wind loses itself,

no matter where

 

it starts. I want

a little piece of you.

 

No.

 

I want your atmosphere

bundled in a small rice paper packet

and labeled with strings of new rain

and stepping stones.

 

I want

the grace of silence

blowing in through the cracked

window, disturbing only

the shadows.

 

Everywhere I go, bits of me linger,

searching for you.

 

Grief ages one thread at a time,

 

lurking like an odor

among the lost

things,

 

or your breath,

still out there,

 

drifting.

 

Robert Okaji lives in Texas. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Clade Song, riverSedge, Panoply, Steel Toe Review and elsewhere, and may also be found on his blog at https://robertokaji.com.

 

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BILL RECTOR

 

I leave, therefore arrive, arrive.

 

A fat perch finned by greening willows,

a rainbow arcing after rain, or a carp,

ancient, still, with wind-silvered scales,

the little lake embodies what lives in it.

 

Thrown free on the first cast, my worm

traces its separate shape to the bottom.

A breeze fingers the slackness in my line.

Only Death fishes with a naked hook.

 

Music, hauntingly clear, then snatched away,

the spirit is like a radio heard over water.

Black ants scour the ground at my feet.

 

Where is it? Where has it gone?

The giant holds me in a rough palm.

He could easily crush me, but doesn’t.

 

 

the lesson

 

I don’t look like a swan.
I don’t walk like a swan.

 

Nor do I trumpet like a swan.

 

But to the line of downy cygnets

behind me I am a swan.

 

I lead them to the lake

to teach them how to swim.

 

Swimming is their nature.

Mine, to thrash like I am drowning.

 

I stand on the bank

and flap my elbows like wings.

 

Flying is their nature,

Mine, to stand on tip-toe and pretend to soar.

 

They will grow up

to become symbols of grace and beauty

 

after I demonstrate to them

how this is done.

 

Bill Rector is co-founder, with Mark Irwin, of Proem Press. He has published a book of poetry entitled, bill. Recent poems have appeared in 32 Poems, Field, Rattle, and Hotel Amerika.

 

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SHARON SUZUKI-MARTINEZ

 

The Wall Looking West

 

Each time someone dies in my family,

a wall falls away from me. The first wall crumbled

when my mom’s heart stopped in an airport far from home.

 

She was my North Star and a wall of stone.

My brother, my East wall, my bulletproof-glass wall

was shattered by marauding tumors.

 

And my father, my South wall of earth, slowly eroded

away for lack of appetite. When he was gone,

the roof collapsed to the ground. Then I was the last wall standing

 

in the family house of myself.

I am the wall facing each setting sun.

 

The wall with the door always open

to the Land of the Dead.

 

The one woven of flowers visited by ancestors

in the shape of grasshoppers as large as children’s hands.

 

 

Dream of the Sward

 

1.

“Your secret-charm word is Sward,”

my dream students said.

“You must say Sward every day for good luck.”

 

2.

Sward means an expanse of grass.

The word comes from the Old English for skin.

 

Thus, the Sward is the skin of the earth.

 

3.

The Sward itself

is nothing like swagger or shard or sword.

Neither sharp nor hard,

the Sward only emanates tenderness.

 

The Sward dreams 

of swaddling you in the warmth of her lush arms.

 

4.

Consider which makes you feel luckier:

 

the rabbit’s foot amulet or

the three-legged rabbit

frolicking upon the flowering Sward?

 

Sharon Suzuki-Martinez is the author of The Way of All Flux (New Rivers Press, 2012). She curates The Poet’s Playlist website, and has forthcoming poems in Gargoyle, Duende, and Dusie.  Please visit her at http://sharonsuzukimartinez.tumblr.com/

 

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