2019

 

 

 

JULY CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Sara Backer, John Bartlett, John Grey, Nat Hope, David Lukens, Julie Mclean,

 Todd Mercer, Jeff Newberry, Niall M. Oliver, Holly Peppe, William R. Soldan,

 Isabelle Thompson, Mark Williams.

 

 

 

 

 

SARA BACKER

 

Light Sleeper

 

The green light from the cable box, winking

like the eye of a nebula, bounces messages off the night sky.

 

The laptop light shines a dot of orange, like transitive Arcturus,

recharging the battery until its light, too, turns green.

 

From the turned-off TV, a giant red Betelgeuse shoulders

the arm that pulls Orion’s unseen bowstring taut,

 

mirrored by the red Antares of the phone, the heart

of the scorpion, rivaling the god of war.

 

The printer beams a blue Sirius, a tiny yet powerful light

erasing all remaining shadows from the room.

 

This constellation never fades: no darkness arrives to reveal

the abundance of invisible suns our closest sun outshines.

 

Come morning, the restless sleeper leaves the curtains closed

and opens large screens of light.

 

Sara Backer earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has two poetry chapbooks: Scavenger Hunt and Bicycle Lotus (which won the Turtle Island Poetry Award). Recent publications include Qu, Nonbinary Review, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Moria, and Hawaii Pacific Review. Website:sarabacker.com.

 

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JOHN BARTLETT

 

The call of the Border

 

When murder

knocks on the door at night.

 

When home

is a ticking time-bomb

 

When despair

is all that is left to eat

 

Only fools

snatch their children from sleep,

secrete them on boats

in the dark

 

Only fools

leave homes still on fire

murdered loved ones unburied

 

Only fools heed the call of the border

like migrating birds

oblivious to borders

 

The true border

lies within the soul

halfway between courage

and extermination.

 

John Bartlett is the author of three novels, Towards a Distant Sea, Estuary and Jack Ferryman: Reluctant Private Investigator, as well as All Mortal Flesh, a collection of short stories and A Tiny & Brilliant Light, his published non-fiction. His poetry has been published in a number of Australian and overseas journals. In June 2019 Melbourne Poets Union published his Chapbook The Arms of Men as part of the Union Poet Series Chapbook. beyondtheestuary.com

 

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JOHN GREY

 

Hank's Garage

 

Sun retreats,

the garage's response

is a dingy bank of lights.

 

Enough to work by.

These men in grubby overalls

go where their fingers take them,

not their eyes.

 

A car rests on blocks.

One worker slithers underneath.

Another scours a bin full of bolts

for one that fits the screw

on his other hand.

 

Miss May adorns the office wall

in all of her semi-naked glory.

The boss sets aside a day's scrawl receipts

to open a box, unfold a wrapper,

manipulate the remains of a sandwich

from the one clean spot on his palm

into his mouth.

 

On his desk,

a metal Indian head

from a long-forgotten oil company

acts as a paper-weight.

In a bottom drawer,

a bottle of cheap whiskey

also holds down

what it can, when it has to.

 

It's sunset.

Attention might be better off

on the long-legged beauty

strutting down the sidewalk

or the distant hillside glowing red and orange.

 

But the world's stopped in at Hank's garage

like it needs a tune up and oil change

before moving on.

 

Of course, there's no one called Hank here.

But nor is there a world that pays the least bit of attention.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in That, Muse, Poetry East and North Dakota Quarterly with work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Hawaii Review and the Dunes Review

 

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NAT HOPE

 

Dolphins 

 

In late afternoon 

we cast long shadows 

across the sand 

as we walk side by side. 

  

We talk of clothes, food and Autumn.  

  

I try to ask you how you are 

as I do every day 

and you tell me you’re okay 

as you do every day. 

 

You move away into the sea and look back once 

and then you watch black shapes that tumble and roll with the waves. 

 

Dolphins. You point. 

Dolphins. I follow your gaze. 

  

And then you dive 

and your skin silvers 

and you click and whistle 

and dip a fin and flip a tail 

and tumble and roll with the waves. 

 

I should have told you 

how I would bind your feet in broidered straps 

I should have told you 

how I would plait abalone in your hair 

I should have told you told you 

how I would weave a robe of pure sea silk 

I should have told you 

how I would knot it too tight to unwind. 

 

Daughter again 

you step from the sea  

stars skitter like unfettered sequins in your wake. 

 

As darkness settles 

you take my hand  

and I will not cast my eyes back to see  

black rocks that tumble and roll with the waves. 

Nat Hope was born in Yorkshire, but now writes and works in Italy.  She recently completed an MA in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

 

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DAVID LUKENS

 

The Weight of History

 

It used to be a cinema, in the days when every town had one.

A pair of Doric columns, double doors propped open,

leaking darkness into the busy street.

 

Inside, one room runs for ever - half the length

of a football pitch at least. The back door opens on to fields. 

No stalls remain, plundered long ago for springs and velveteen.

 

Vic, the doyen of house clearances, finds it difficult to say no. 

He cannot face a tearful relative and tell the truth -

It's all rubbish really but I'll take that mirror off your hands.

 

Daytime he broods by the till; above him the furniture creaks

in teetering towers: sideboards stacked on chests, chairs hooked

on coat stands, the only space a narrow central aisle.

 

At night, he wanders round the shop, stopping

at his favourite pieces to stroke a joint or admire

the depth of patina.  History comes out to meet him.

 

The poet whose sonnets had lain for years unnoticed

in a Georgian desk before Vic found them.  The ballerina

searching her make up case for its cache of drugs.

 

When he is out collecting, Vic's wife swings the axe

and feeds the pot-bellied stove with furniture, a betrayal

he is too kind to mention. Instead, he makes sure the items

 

nearest the stove are modern tat with chipped veneers.

And he comforts her in the night when she wakes, wet with fear

from her dream of dying in a landslide of other people's lives.

 

David Lukens lives in Wiltshire and has worked in business and IT.  He started writing late, coming to poetry via novels and has been published in magazines such as Acumen, Brittle Star, Butcher’s Dog, The Interpreter’s House and Under the Radar. “The Weight of History” was first published in Butcher’s Dog, 4, Autumn 2014.

 

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TODD MERCER

 

Almost Every Apartment for Rent in Beer City

 

The sink is burled New Hampshire granite,

the countertops marble, the floor Italian travertine.

The hammered copper light plates were shipped in

from Poland where an old man hand-forms them

in the styles of his ancestor-craftsmen before him.

All sound stops dead at the high-index polymer

ceiling tiles, the same ones NASA uses.

Nice gas stoves with built-in griddles.

Triple-filtered water sprays in the shower enclosure,

pulses and dances from all directions

at the touch of a button, or on verbal command,

as the built-in Alexa-thing is always listening.

These apartments offer residents everything

except a reasonable rent-to-income ratio.

The floorplan is nearly identical to the other

recently constructed stock. It’s two or three hundred

square feet of “affordable” luxury. No word on where

poorer folks can live, but these shoeboxes

couldn’t hold more needless swank,

more up-market accents. They sure aren’t

for everyone, even though they’re everywhere.

 

Todd Mercer was nominated for Best of the Net by in 2018. His chapbook Life-wish Maintenance is posted at Right Hand Pointing. Recent work appears in: A New Ulster, Clementine Unbound, Mojave River Review and Star 82 Review.

 

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JEFF NEWBERRY

 

My Father’s Shadow

 

As a boy, I trailed behind on hot days,

hiding from the bright sun, secure

 

in the cool caul of his cast silhouette,

where I tried to fit my body into his mold,

 

my head into his place like a carnival

cut-out. There, I couldn’t see his squint

 

or the red sheen on his forehead,

the sweat that ran from his hairline

 

down his cheeks like salted tears.

There, the burning heat stayed at bay.

 

I couldn’t cast my own shadow there.

One day, I’d have to walk into the light

 

and bear the heat on my own. No more

hiding the lea of his ambling stone.

 

But then? I followed, walking on his back,

trying so hard to disappear into him

Jeff Newberry's most recent book is a collaboration with the poet Justin Evans, Cross Country (WordTech Editions, 2019). He is the poetry editor of Green Briar Review.

 

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NIALL M. OLIVER

 

Magic at the morning market

He appears to choose randomly,

my dad, reaching into the basket

with his finger and thumb 

 

to reveal a single red apple. 

Placing it on his open palm,

he holds it out for us to look

 

as if a crystal ball 

that any second might levitate. 

Sweet as a bell in a wood, 

 

he says, before tossing 

for the grocer to catch,

and through the air, it sparkles. 

 

Niall M Oliver is an Irish born writer who lives in London with his wife and two boys. He takes inspiration from his roots and everyday life, and has previously been published in a couple of anthologies but has yet to meet anyone who claims to have read them.

 

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HOLLY PEPPE

 

Vienna, 1933

 

At seventy-seven, Freud

spoke flawless English,

placed a small, bronze statue

of Pallas Athena

on his palm,

calling her “imperfect

because she had

lost her spear.”

 

To reclaim her place

in the Professor’s scheme,

she must wince or break:

she did not.

 

Nor had mighty Zeus winced

or broken apart

when she sprang

from his head-womb

armed for war.

 

But for wings

she was one with angels,

but for a spear,

one with Freud.

 

Holly Peppe taught poetry, literature, and writing for many years in high schools and universities in the U.S. and Italy. Literary executor for the Jazz Age poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, she has written and lectured widely about Millay’s life and work. Her own published writing includes poetry, translations, critical essays, and biographies.

 

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WILLIAM R. SOLDAN

 

Back in the States

 

At the border, they take drills to our doors,

everything short of greasing up a rubber glove.

The mosquitoes are ferocious, drink their fill

as we plow south down potted two-lane,

a buzzing cloud seething around the cab, our things—

books, clothes, trinkets made or traded for—tossed

by careless hands.

 

The road parts sleeping grassland country like

a zipper or an unstitched seam, body around it

soaked in moon glow, the ridge and hollow of a hip

or the slope of soft shoulder spied through a midnight curtain.

 

Then he hits a fox at fifty-five, and we spend an hour

in a field, among the sway, believing it’s still alive.

His spirit animal, or someone else’s.

 

Some believe that to see a fox at the start of a journey

is a bad omen, he says.

 

But we’ve been out here for many weeks now,

and besides, it’s dying, even dead.

 

But they’re said to inspire swiftness of mind and body, too,

he says, and shrugs.

 

So what does any of it mean, I ask, if everything means anything?

 

We never find it, not even its trail.

We drive until we find the sun,

or it finds us.

 

William R. Soldan is a writer from the Ohio Rust Belt and the author of the story collection In Just the Right Light. His work has appeared is such publications as Neologism Poetry Journal, Jelly Bucket, Bending Genres, Gordon Square Review, and many others. You can find him at williamrsoldan.com if you'd like to connect.

 

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ISABELLE THOMPSON

 

The Facts

For Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, the art teacher of Theresienstadt

 – murdered at Auschwitz on the 9^th October 1944.

 

There were art lessons at Theresienstadt.
A prisoner held art lessons for the children.
She filled her suitcase up with art supplies
and the children sat and painted pictures.

 

A prisoner held art lessons for the children
in a stark-windowed building at the camp,
and the children sat and painted pictures
of blue butterflies and rabbis flying.

 

In a bleak-windowed building at the camp,
children painted small red houses with trees,
blue butterflies and long-robed rabbis flying,
clutching Torah scrolls in clamp-closed mouths.

 

Children painted houses overhung with trees,
eels and anemones slipping through murk,
scrolls of weed clutching mouthless creatures.
15,000 children were prisoners in the camp;

 

girls and boys sunk down within the murk.
Only 150 survived
of 15,000 imprisoned in the camp.
Their teacher saved 4,500

 

pictures – two cases full of art supplied
by children who did not survive
though 4,500 paintings were made
in art lessons held at Theresienstadt.

 

Isabelle Thompson is studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. She has previously been published in Ink, Sweat & Tears.

 

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MARK WILLIAMS

                                                                  

In the Blue Box

 

In the last thirty days I have finally found

a reliable concrete man to patch our driveway.

I have called a noted arborist to diagnose

the sickly dogwood tree in our backyard.

I’ve taken my uncle to the grocery

and our beagle to a chiropractor.

I have driven to a bookstore to purchase

a birthday card for my wife

and to my mother’s apartment

when she didn’t answer my call that morning.

I have obeyed my chest-congested, slightly confused,

eighty-five-year-old mother, leaving her alone

when she gasped, I don’t want you to see me this way—

meaning she’d overslept and not dressed,

fixed her hair, or put on make-up. I have driven home,

cleaned my neglected office, and rested on my sun porch,

where half-way through a cup of coffee

I remembered to give my mother another call,

this time finding her too breathless to speak.

I’ve bounded up fifteen steps,

forced her down as many, and

witnessed what I feared to be her final breath—

her head drooping like a wilted flower in my car.

I have run a red light, zoomed

into my smooth, newly-repaired driveway,

and given my mother chest compressions

while my wife breathed into her mouth.                                          

I’ve called my sister in Illinois, my brother in Oregon,

and repeated my mother’s instructions

to an ER doctor who removed a breathing tube.

I have seen our redbud bud, azaleas bloom,

and my mother in an ICU come miraculously to.

I have had my hair cut.

I’ve eaten a birthday dinner with my wife

and tuna sandwiches in the hospital lunchroom with my sister.

I’ve discovered how to lose weight

 

the pleasures of caffeine,

and my mother alone in her hospital room after a massive stroke.

I have seen pain in her eyes when she mumbled,

I’m sorry you have to see me like this

and joy when they opened for a last time to her children.

I’ve had a wonderful life, my mother said.

 

I have been stood up by the noted arborist

and tapped on the shoulder by a funeral home director

at the mausoleum service. I’m sorry to tell you, he said,

but the cemetery says you owe another dollar ten cents.

 

I have felt the joy of anger being released.

 

I’ve ridden in the back seat of a hearse

and driven my five-time married, terminally-ill uncle

to divorce court in his Chevy van,

stopping only to snatch a wheelchair (A wide one!

he commanded) from an unattended clinic foyer.

I have pushed my uncle in a stolen wheelchair

past security into a courtroom.

I’ve eased him into a La-Z-Boy recliner in his den—

his feet the size of cantaloupes, legs thin as vines,

a snake of tube uncoiling from his nose    

to a tank of gurgling oxygen in the hall.

Life, I heard my uncle say

as my cousin Julie stepped into his kitchen.

Life, I heard him say again.

In the blue box. And with peaches.

 

I’ve written one obituary, two eulogies, a large check,

twenty-four thank you notes, about that many emails,

and I’ve almost called my mother on the phone

at least three times. In the last thirty days

I have seen our dogwood clench its leaves like fists.

 

 

King of Albania

 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about Otto Witte—

German lion tamer/circus acrobat whose extraordinary magic skills

earned him an honorary chieftainship in an African Pygmy tribe

before he eloped with the Emperor of Ethiopia’s daughter. Otto, who in 1913,

while sword-swallowing his way through the Balkans,

discovered he resembled a certain Turkish prince

whom Albanian Moslems had asked to be their king—

Otto’s cue to grab a uniform, pin some medals,

and proclaim himself King Otto I

before declaring war on Montenegro,

raiding the treasury, and escaping the country.

                                                                           Or so he claimed—

all the way to his not-at-all bitter end in a Hamburg home for the aged,

where Otto clung to his fantasies and an identity card

issued by well-meaning German police.

 

                            Otto Witte

                           Entertainer

                    Former King of Albania

 

I’ve been thinking about Otto Witte—

how we could all use a little pseudologia fantastica.

If only you believed you eloped with Ethiopian royalty,

that you ruled Albania and Montenegrins feared you.

If only you believed you were happy.

 

Mark Williams' poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, The Southern Review, Able Muse, Rattle, Nimrod, The American Journal of Poetry, New Ohio Review (online), and the anthology, New Poetry From the Midwest. Finishing Line Press published his poem, "Happiness," as a chapbook in 2015. He lives in Evansville, Indiana. “In the Blue Box” first appeared in the eBook anthology, The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss (Smashwords) in 2014

 

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