2015

 

 

JUNE CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Maureen Cullen, Marc J. Frazier, Maggie Harris, Clarissa Jakobsons,

Poornima Laxmeshwar, Todd Mercer, Ronald Moran, Robin Reiss, Ron Riekki,

Finola Scott, Danny Earl Simmons, Sarah White

 

 

 

 

 

MAUREEN CULLEN

 

Dreaming Mum

 

She began to speak, to move about her flat,

washing up at the scratched metal sink

wi her seventh floor, eagle-eye view

of a hotchpotch of roofs. Easterhouse

or the Gorbals. Might be Drumchapel.

 

Tight and wiry in her vinyl pinny,

she mops the linoleum, squelches

the head dry. I watch her from the door

and when she turns, she smiles wi teeth

that dinnae quite fit. She has my mole

on her right cheek and my golf ball breasts.

 

She boils the kettle, brews the tea

in her tannin lined pot, lifts out mugs

wi sunflowers on. We munch caramel wafers.

Between chews, she says, my beautiful girl,

comes so near I can hear her breath,

see the craters of her tongue

as she dabs crumbs from the corner

of my mouth, our eyes half-closed.

 

 

The Thin Place

 

I climb up the scree tae the spot

where you posed for the photo.

 

The bridge sits at the shoulder

of the auld house, blind witness

 

tae the plunge of the ravine

where the burn slip-slides below,

 

where the fairie world quicksteps

intae our own. The clock ticks

 

backwards here, a gift

tae bookends on the balustrade

 

in our white cotton frocks,

auburn sifting sunlight,

 

dandelion seeds at our lashes.

 

Maureen Cullen is studying Creative Writing at Lancaster University. She writes poetry and short stories and has had worked published in Prole, Reach, Weyfarers, Scribble, Poetry Scotland’s Open Mouse poetry website, and in various anthologies.

 

MARC J. FRAZIER

 

Grandfather, Carpenter

 

For decades dull tools lay under basement stairs.

 

Once when a tornado blew, we huddled on the cement floor

where these heavy boxes held us to ground.

 

Hasn’t been same since the Depression, whispered father. 

Another mouth to feed, mother mumbled the first day of each visit. 

 

It’s too much: late for dinner, asleep before the TV.

Is he moving in with us?

 

Years ago my brother dug out awls and planes.

Because they were old, someone would pay,

 

not understanding the weight of these tools, their silence.

 

 

Marc J. Frazier has been widely published in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Caveat Lector, Ascent, Permafrost, Plainsongs, Poet Lore, Rhino, The Broome Review, descant, The G W Review, and Evansville Review. He is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry. He is the author of The Way Here, a full-length poetry collection, and two chapbooks The Gods of the Grand Resort and After. His second full-length collection, Each Thing Touches, is due out this June from Glass Lyre Press. He has led numerous workshops and participated in poetry readings in the Chicago area for many years. 

 

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MAGGIE HARRIS

 

Parable

 

The words, when they arrive, will be weighted in their envelope like a sandstorm.

The words, when they are lifted, will be carried to a sofa amid a turbulence

of ashtrays, last night’s pizzas, coffee cups, carcasses of Lego.

Their spilling into the air will be precipitated by smoke, a ritual that calms

the mind and rushes through the bloodstream like wine.

The words, when they are released into the particles of light

offered through the half-curtained windows

offered through the smoke uncurling like a Leonard Cohen song

will appear to be a flattened cast of worms

an amoeba of ink squared to fit the  shape of the page.

There will be a sudden intake of breath, the pages sifted

with thumbs angry at the weight of them

an expelled  - what the f...!

 

Who knows if the words ‘love’ and ‘my daughter’

will be strong enough to soothe the  rage

strong enough to combat those others that follow

as sudden and discordant as hail in June, or a death on a July morning...?

 

The words are gathered in small groups like tribes

unsure of their place, untested to the eye

in an aural world more used to the rasp and ripple of sound

the endless cacophony of day-time soaps and touch-screen i-phones.

Should their passage be halted now, their flight-path of intention interrupted

remain un-posted, in the knowledge they will only be misinterpreted

as yet another complex amalgamation of symbols

rising into the air like the broken body parts of blackbirds ...?

 

 

Love is a Cold Soldier

 

Love is a cold soldier returning from the war

He has no eyes, the emptiness of deserts run infinitesimally

Skimming memory’s lost slopes, the upwards descent into nothing

His legs are lost to an invisible IUD, he walks on air

That carries him from here to there, the woman he once held close

Disappearing beneath his footsteps like early rain.

He circles the house he loves built of dreams and dust

Where windows usher in draughts that help to keep him cold

Like all cold soldiers he retires to lick his wounds

Refusing to take the warmth that’s offered

Through the armour of his skin.

Like all cold soldiers he’s afraid to set alight

The embers deep within him, afraid they might consume him

Unable to gather up the pieces of his body left scattered

On that battlefield where he’d buried deep the last recollections

Of his soul.

When morning comes his coffee trembles in his hands

And he reaches for the endlessness of midnight

When he pours cold wine into his hollow bones.

 

 

Maggie Harris is a Guyanese writer living in Wales. A former Guyana Prizewinner for her poetry, she was Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2014. Her latest collection of poetry is Sixty Years of Loving, (Cane Arrow Press). Her latest collection of short stories is In Margate by Lunchtime (Cultured Llama)

 

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CLARISSA JAKOBSONS

 

Through Birch Trees   

I face the moon rising to my right

as the globe of night unlocks trunks of desire.

 

Ancestors planted trees under the buck-

thunder moon for sweet bounty. Medeine,

Lady of Trees, goddess of woods and hare

grants peace to roadside plantings, crossings,

holidays, and holy places.

 

Birth a wedding tree, when a child is born

plant another. If a beloved dies root an oak,

plant seed-bearing junipers, wormwood,

or silverweed yellow roses to shade the dead.

 

Pray through trees of thanks that I may not

fell a single tree without holy need or step

on a blooming field. May I always plant

flowering trees, sit on rooftops, and walk

below the crescent moon. So may it be.

 

 

Lifeline Epigraph

 

Frangible skin maps wisdom

and prison camps that have borne

more than one life line, Father.

Cities change names as if

atrocities never existed.

Volgograd. Stalingrad.

 

Your photo props the piano leg

proof you walked on this earth.

I turn my back afraid to meet

disapproving eyes dead on,

then matte-knife the Hippocratic

Oath that hung in your office.

 

Scripted Old English reminders

sworn to Aesculapius, Apollo,

Pythagoras, and all the Baltic

gods, I swear you did no harm,

and remove the moldy backing,

release your spores into air. 

 

Clarissa Jakobsons’ alter muse weaves artist books exhibited internationally, twice featured poet at Shakespeare and Co. Bookstore, publications include Glint Literary Journal, Hawaii Pacific Review, Ruminate, etc. Don't be surprised to see her kicking sandcastles, painting Cape dunes, climbing Mount Diablo, igniting Tai Chi poems from the Shard, or walking under Ohio's crescent moon.

 

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POORNIMA LAXMESHWAR

 

It’s about where we belong!

 

For once I want to take you

To the old village

The faint scent of the dust that made us

 

                   Susurrus sacred fig tree

Around which we spun our dreams in coloured threads

                   Dreamed of a city life

                             Bartered our soul for it

 

Nothing has changed here

 

The old crowd still warm the benches

The breeze blows in the same north east direction

And the women still hide their faces

                   I heard our teacher killed himself

The chemical got deep into his flickering mind

                   Flashing nightmares of a failed poet

 

The parakeets seek shelter

                   In the backyard of our bungalow

I only wish I could complete the circle…

 

Poornima Laxmeshwar has authored a small poetry collection named Anything But Poetry published by Writers Workshop. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in magazines such as Vayavya, The Aerogram, Northeast Review, Kitaab, Brown Critique, The Stockholm Review to name a few. Her haiku have appeared in several magazines. She resides in Bangalore and works as content writer for a living.

 

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TODD MERCER

 

Havana

  

Skidding to a stop, the car rolls

down an icy embankment outside Buffalo.

The guy who never moved away

thinks of and curses his college roommate,

who sips mixed drinks and snaps happy selfies

with healthy ladies down in Havana,

where it’s eighty Fahrenheit in January.

Dangling down from his seat-belt, inverted,

for once stymied in his aim to wish only well

when he hears of friends’ success. If it doesn’t burn,

the Buick, if he isn’t found here buried

beneath several feet of new snow

before someone saves his bacon,

he’s gone to Cuba next. Round trip ticket,

one-way junket special, stowaway class,

first available. You let Nature almost kill you

a handful of different winters, then you find

a vector out. Manhood proven. You go

to where the commonest of accidents are sunburns.

You buy Solarcaine, to counter it. You tip

the resort help like a human being does. Nap

whenever you feel like a snooze. Woozy bones

don’t ache much in sea air of the islands.

Why keep fighting it in winter-land? If the gasoline trickle

comes to nothing, he’ll buy a Spanish dictionary,

let his buddies hate him slightly

when they break out snow-moving machines

next winter, stuck in New York state,

those who stayed, a different species

than the ones who went into the world.

 

 

Todd Mercer won the first Woodstock Writers Festival’s Flash Fiction contest. His chapbook, Box of Echoes, won the Michigan Writers Cooperative Press contest and his digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance, was published by Right Hand Pointing in 2015.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

My Father's Telescope

 

took both of us to set it up on our front porch,

and whenever we did, I could never focus it,

 

just as I could not focus on much then, at nine,

my mind too soft, too spongy to grasp figures

 

in the sky, the constellations my father called

out to me on our walks on Leon Street, after

 

supper in the colder months, saying, Look!

There's Taurus the Bull, and so I stayed silent

 

as a prop, while his body and mind locked

into a universe alive for him.  Later, under

 

streetlights in Philadelphia and New Britain,

anywhere, my shadow began to lengthen;

 

one night I caught up with it and never let it go.

Above, the heavens kept shining for my father.

 

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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ROBIN REISS

 

Brother

 

Brother, we were planted in the same warm soil, sprung

like stems from the same incision, same C-section

sea shanty stomach — now dust and underground, a sunken ship.

 

She sang with the gusto of sweet pears, chunking through garden steam,

sitting me among pillars of daffodils

and you (only two) babbling fingertips in dirt.

 

The apex of June grew her snap peas and took

her life, laid a shroud of heat over half-

breastless chest and buried her like a seed.

 

Brother, Father potted us dutifully through the cold, grew

us in the crook of his tender bank of snow: I, the casing

of ice that never thawed, you (too young to know), the bloom.

 

Robin Reiss is a twentysomething from Massachusetts who graduated from Westfield State University with a degree in English literature. Her writing also appears or is forthcoming in Winter Tangerine Review, Bop Dead City, Futures Trading, Melancholy Hyperbole, and The Sigma Tau Delta Review.

 

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RON RIEKKI

 

Hugging My Mother After the Fight

 

That’s it.  That’s all

this poem is trying

 

to accomplish.  I want

to show you a moment

 

where my mother leaned

in, her hospital heart

 

all tired and grey, the clock

behind us obnoxious

 

with its ticks and we

squeezed each other

 

until the water inside

us had to pour out

 

of our ducts, two fat

toothpaste tubes

 

in a house so messy

you’d think we were

 

just two more pairs

of pants that needed

 

to be placed some-

where else.

 

 

Airport Security

 

They look like zombies,

scalpel-blade zombies,

eyes like drowning

from repetition,

these warehouse cops,

gazing at X-rayed bags

that show purse skeletons

and shirt bones,

a man in front of me

with arms and legs making

an X so that a man can feel

his feet, legs, buttocks,

chest, neck, heart.

The line behind me

feels so slaughterhouse,

a sewage-house, a lawnmower-

house, a stalactite house,

a beard house, a mineral house.

I want to tell the uniformed

frown that there are no suicide

bombers in Cedar Rapids,

that it’s too boring here

for suicide, that we kill

ourselves by watching

too much TV.  I put my shoes

back on and walk into a cornfield,

the stalks like storms.

 

Ron Riekki's books include U.P.: a novel, The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works (2014 Michigan Notable Book), and Here: Women Writing on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, http://msupress.org/books/book/?id=50-1D0-3479#.VKZ4kmTF-PU.

 

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FINOLA SCOTT

 

The Heroic Age

 

We wait out the days, weeks, months

for the dark

to lift.

Burrowed we paw and crunch below

sliding ice cliffs.

Shrouds of freezing cobalt cloak

the masts .

On a blackboard sky stars

scribble messages we fail

to read,

morse code blinks for others.

 

On the bright side of the world

a German submarine sinks

HMS Formidable,

at Champange

90,000 allied servicemen die.

 

Draped in ebony this land

bides its time.

Flesh frozen rigid

we wait and fear bright release,

heartbeats measured

in crystal. Breaths and thoughts

locked in

ice. Spasms and cracks

crush horizons. Our ship a toy

pincered by polar packs. I remember

your naked face

as you walk away.

 

A slam winning granny, Finola Scott performs at many events including 10Red and Henderson's Poetry.in Edinburgh. She is widely published in magazines & anthologies - Grind, The Open Mouse, Poetry Scotland, Stares Nest, The Poet's Republic, Rooms. This year Coastword Festival judged her overall winner in their competition . Finola has been placed in many other competitions throughout the UK.

 

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DANNY EARL SIMMONS

 

Good Poems Bleed

So, I might open a bottle of something strong and drink straight from it.
Maybe I will start paying attention to tones of voice and hidden implications.

I might go to church twice on Sunday then watch the evening news.
I could always spend time pawing my way deep inside the blackness

of back in time. I might make myself comfortable staring a little too long
at alternative venues or send a little text, hoping it gets read between the lines.

I could try sulking into a masculine kind of radio silence until my wife
starts to wonder and react and the whole thing comes crashing down around me.

While I'm figuring out a way to let the red run and wash away this dry spell,
I’m going to sing our son to sleep, just like I do every night, and watch his eyes

get heavy after his second request. I’m going to tickle him after I get home
from work and let his smile inspire another sweet nothing that languishes

through one rejection after another until I finally put a stop to its humiliation.
I’m going to cringe when she frames it and hangs it above her nightstand

so she can read it like a prayer before turning off the light and resting her head
on my chest as our bedtime breathing becomes an all night long blood harmony.
 

Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and enjoys community theater. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals such as The Pedestal Magazine, Naugatuck Review, Off the Coast, Boston Literary Magazine, and Fifth Wednesday Journal.
 

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SARAH WHITE

 

Mrs. Walecki’s Weather

 

We used to greet each other

in the elevator. She would say

it’s vindy. I would agree.

 

Then, I often heard something

between a humming and a mewing

as if a hungry kitten

had strayed into the building.

It was Mrs. Walecki, leaning on her cane,

tapping her way around the lobby

in a scarf and hat too heavy

for the season. I’d say hello.

She’d answer with the funny sounds,

a signal, maybe, to other widows

in the building

 

about how long

she’d been alone—ten

years without one daughter,

five without the husband

who survived a War  

beside her

but she won’t see him again

in the wind or the rain.

 

Today, a table in the lobby

holds a picture in a frame:

 

Ellen Walecki: 

a beauty in her red blouse,

a scarf of bright blossoms

and hair of brushed honey—

a woman with two daughters

and a husband named Henry.

 

She’s dressed for a party.

 

Sarah White’s most recent publications are The Unknowing Muse (Dos Madres, 2014) and Wars Don’t Happen Any More (Deerbrook Editions, 2015). She lives in New York City.

 

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