2016

 

 

 

JUNE CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Rhonda R. Davis, Sharon Dolin, Beth McDonough, Adam Middleton-Watts,

Ronald Moran, Lesley Quayle, Jim Ross, J. R. Solonche,

Lois Greene Stone, Angela Topping

 

 

 

 

 

 

RHONDA R. DAVIS

 

We Are Here

 

I smell my coffee brewing as

I fold my freshly laundered

sheets, as he sleeps.

 

You smell the stinging stench of bodies

killed in the latest barrage of bombs

dropped above your heads, as he keeps watch.

 

I hear the feet of those I love as they awake from

last night’s slumber, rubbing their eyes as they

find their way to the Saturday morning cartoons.

 

You use a little of your spittle to wet the edge 

of your tattered skirt so you can wipe the dust off your little ones

cheeks, and the crust from their eyes.

 

I ask my loves what they would like for breakfast,

beginning a ritual of making each one whatever they desire,

stirring my coffee, watching the cream swirl.

 

You pull out the last loaf of stale bread as you catch the eye

of the family sharing the cot next to yours. You give them a little,

you wonder if the humanitarian trucks will come today.

 

He walks into the kitchen, boxer shorts, favorite tee-shirt, slippers,

kisses my cheek, smacks me on the ass, yawns, pours his coffee.

He hands me his wallet; I am shopping today.

 

You watch as he comes back, covered with dust, bewildered eyes

streaked with tears that he doesn’t realize that you see. His steps heavy,

he is losing weight; he hands you a beat up can of soup he has found.

 

You live there.

 

 

Rhonda R. Davis has her Associates Degree in Creative writing, English and Theater and has written professionally for two years for her Community College Professors, editing and creating content for various clubs around campus. She has won numerous awards for her writing and is General Manager of an entertainment production company. She writes as a freelancer for The Broad Street Review, an arts based online zine in Philadelphia.  www.mywritingplace6532.blogspot.com/p/my-turn-by-rhonda-davis-momma-used-to.html

 

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SHARON DOLIN

 

Approach Life as if It Were a Banquet

 

Or a lunch basket crammed with

pleasure in restraint and blood oranges.

 

Your rightful portion averts your ireful potion:

caress what can’t be blessed, cup shadows under breasts.

 

Let pass what’s out of ken: lover, job, riches,

a ripe peach

                       until it reaches you.

 

Bring salt for your honey, lime for your grenadine.

Money’s not your fault.

 

You’re a feathered peahen

              preening for marzipan men.

 

Impeccable models, often peccable,

drop their pants at inopportune

           instants of impatience.

 

Implore no more

          for what is, is no more.

 

Sharon Dolin is the author of five previous poetry collections: Whirlwind; Burn and Dodge, winner of the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry; Realm of the Possible; Serious Pink; and Heart Work, as well as five poetry chapbooks. She teaches poetry workshops at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y and Poets House and directs the Center for Book Arts Annual Letterpress Poetry Chapbook Competition in New York City. She also directs and teaches in the international workshop, Writing About Art in Barcelona. “Approach Life as if it Were a Banquet” is from Manual for Living, © 2016 reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press.

 

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BETH McDONOUGH

 

29^th of February 2016

 

On this raw, orra day

                                         snow will  not  come
Winter unreadies to mark
any handover to Spring.
I wind up, bandaged in scarves
                                    viruses, coats

beak my way by trooped angry buses
                                     under a claw of too-grey skies
                                     past all these white lies
                                     salted in gutters, but
                                         snow never comes

An odd almost damp
                            slips my face, cold yet real
                                        sna nivver comes

In the garden, I crumple
hand heats of bay, breathe
all those false warmth charms
which rise resilient from greenhard,
from froar. Not yet, not yet. 
                                      Ach, sna disna come
                             disna come, yit it
                        waants.

 

 

Chives
 

Somewhere under a hot bay’s
ready-redundant beads, March
spikes through earth. Squint
between primroses, all those corms
line into light. Who can be certain
of greetings? Everywhere, green
porcupines spring.

But touched now,
these minute tubes
sulphur air past grander bulbs.
I rub fingers,
taste futures.

 

Beth McDonough first trained in Silversmithing at Glasgow School of Art. Often writing of a maternal experience of disability, her work may be read in many places including Gutter, The Interpreter’s House and Antiphon. Handfast, her poetry duet pamphlet (with Ruth Aylett) is to be published in May 2016.

 

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ADAM MIDDLETON-WATTS

 

eagles by the river                         

 

walking the dog that is not mine beside a river of swirling shades

the crystalline sky above unscarred

a fleshy taste of memory roils beneath the tongue

a woman approaches

wide and rocky carved

hips kissing the slack in faded workman's jeans

a riverbed of years curling around her eyes

she tells me how the path curves to

the highway some distant miles away

but that it's too muddy to walk today

she talks about a pair of golden eagles

and a bald one that live in the woods

her tailless dog sniffs at the dog that is not mine

the dog that is not mine shows no interest

I tell the woman that the dog that is not mine

is nothing but a joke of a dog

a fabricated hound (Labradoodle)

made for the sticky hands and minds of Disney fans alone

the woman grunts at this and walks on with her tailless dog

I watch the swirling river

stones at my feet

the woman's broad ass

the sky now split with the mass of an approaching plane

the dog that is not mine sniffing at shit that is not his

I watch all of this and I watch nothing

I stand still sensing the day

the clear and simple miracle of day

moving like it must beyond eagles and dogs

and all other things

 

 

wooden table  

           

the music is lost under a dark pall

the waitress smiles

and it is like the tearing of steel

an agonizing effort

her hands touch the wooden table

swirling a stale rag there

her eyes skip over stones and lakes

over bills and the thatch of hair

above a desired man's cock

anywhere but here

she takes our order

smiling like a shipwreck

like blood is only dust

hating the cancer that we bring

with eyes divided a dozen ways

she nods

touches the wooden table

once more

and walks away

while we remain immobile

and silent

thinking dire thoughts

waiting for life

to return to us

someday

somehow

 

 

Adam Middleton-Watts is an oddball British expat writing from South Dakota. When he’s not dissolving in the midst of a savage summer or fattening up for the next brutal winter, he’s writing poems and stories on the backs of unpaid utility bills, and drinking flagons of dark ale.

 

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RONALD MORAN

 

For the First Time

 

For the first time in my long life as an adult,

                     I can lie

convincingly, without carrying a huge sack

                     of guilt

I thought was part of my duty, or, perhaps,

                     a congenital

 

gift whose hungry cells lived inside the sack

                     and by

some genetic trick managed to grow yearly,

                     so it

gained weight, like a child with obese parents,

                     a nice kid

 

who took a ribbing at school, Hey boy.  Your

                     Mama fat like you?

If he were able to mine a talent, academic or

                     whatever

in later years, that would never compensate.

                   So, now

 

that I can fabricate at will, I do not want to,

                     yet another

personal flaw, but it is useful to know I can

                     without

guilt, my primal guardian; and to you, friend,

                     whom

 

I don't know nor ever will, I wish the unsullied

                     life,

where your DNA climbs like wisteria on a frame

                     built

in a distant garage when nobody ever knew,

                     not even you.

 

 

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). Eye of the World will be published in early spring, 2016.

 

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LESLEY QUAYLE

 

Landslip.

 

It was an easy passage,

a brief landslip from uterus to tiles,

a cup splash on cold stone.

Flushed out, lifeless,

a burst fruit, sweetness spilled,

juicing my thighs scarlet and puce,

your names captive on my tongue.

 

Time has fleshed you,

rigged bone with skin,

the nape of a neck to kiss,

nub of wrist, pale hollow belly,

dark hair,  your father’s eyes –

the persistence of your shadow

among tall trees.  

   

 

Ma.

(28/02/1929 – 14/05/2011)

 

Four years on, I’m still discovering you,

tripping over you in my reflection,

hearing your words – I recognise them

on my tongue, ta-da’ing in my ears,

reunions over how I like my coffee,

don’t have sugar in my porridge,

peel hot crusts from new baked bread,

the recipes for Scotch broth, tablet, scones.

 

I flood the house with lilies, freesias,

pale pink roses – snapshots of your preferences –

free-falling from one accent to another when I think of you.

Your hands are mine, I know how they will look

if I too have to hold my daughter close and say

goodbye.

 

Lesley Quayle is a widely published poet and folk/blues singer currently living in deepest, darkest rural Dorset, UK.

 

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JIM ROSS

 

My Summer In Harlem

 

A whet-necked, white-faced Census taker

in still-charred Harlem, where all the jobs were,

and they paid us by the unit and head, not the hour,

I sang “Fatherless Child” like Richie Havens, as if,

singing on a hot summer’s day would blend me in,

so out of place, I belonged there.

 

Running fit, I tore up seven flights, knocked hard

and on hearing “what choo want?” shouted through

the spy-hole of the grey security door

“I wanna take your Census,” to wit,

the tiny, tinny voice of its elder single female occupant,

residing in a one bedroom, with small kitchen and bath

who with the elevator out rarely climbed up or down

or any direction for that matter came at me,

“I ain’t got much left, but what I got you can have.”  

 

We quickly dispensed with business to focus

on her gift of home-brewed ginger tea and toasty sardines.

“And here’s the two bucks for your time,” I said, plunking

down $2 of the $3.10 I just earned, thank you kindly.  

As I rushed off to the door next door my new friend

with sardine ginger lips grabbed my wrist

with gentle fingers meant to sew: “Time on your

hands creeps like chicken pox where you can’t scratch.

The days, they go slow but the years, they fly by.”

 

 

What Stephen Hawking Didn’t Know

 

Calling a man “just a tad” fastidious in his dress,

or sloppy in his work habits

or hyper in his attention span,

or a soufflé “just a tad” rich, burnt, or fallen,

or film “just a tad” erotic, slow-paced, or gory

represents an ironic conceit by using

an undefined term, “just a tad,” to refer to something

that’s small, but maybe not so small

after all.   

 

Einstein, for all his genius,

could not define the limits of “just a tad,”

track its movement in time and space,

or describe its capacity to expand without end.

 

Hawking, the greatest genius of our days,

could not lay hold of the meaning of having

“just a tad” more time left

to have another drink,

run again along the canal on a steamy summer day,

dance on the river bank,

or do whatever we came here

to do.

 

Oddly, “just a tad” tends to occupy more space,

be more weighty

or catch more glitter than

“a tad,” because the word “just,”

by limiting, and making something

diminutive, somehow

enlarges, magnifies, or brightens.

 

Or perhaps the word “just” somehow

renders “a tad” more righteous,

by distinguishing it from “a tad” regarded

as unjust.

  

Since retiring in 2015 from public health research, Jim Ross has published in 20 journals, including 1966, Lunch Ticket, Gravel, MAKE, Pif, Apeiron, Cargolit, and Friends Journal. Forthcoming: Memoryhouse, Palooka. New grandparents of twins, he and his wife split their time between Silver Spring, MD and Berkeley Springs, WV, USA. “My Summer in Harlem” was first published in Work Literary Magazine, 2015.

 

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J. R. SOLONCHE

 

Spinoza

 

When I was twenty-four, my reasoned faith

was seen as threatening the Jewish world

of Amsterdam, my world. In the rabbis' eyes,

 

I was a heretic, traitor to the God

of Israel, the God of history. My light

was their darkness, and my philosophy

 

was dangerous, a calumny to faith.

When the rabbis questioned me, I closed my eyes

but answered honestly -- Yes, God

 

has a body. God's body is the world.

Yes, angels might be merely tricks of light,

hallucinations. Yes, philosophy

 

if true to itself, denies a God

who says," You are the Chosen of the world."

They offered to buy my philosophy.

 

They called it an annuity. In my eyes,

it was a bribe to be silent on faith.

Believe, they said, but not in the daylight.

 

I refused, of course, and left the dim light

of the synagogue. My orthodox world

was unsatisfied. My intolerant faith

 

demanded excommunication. My God

became a God who turns away his eyes.

I would not bargain with philosophy,

 

so again I was called before the faith-

ful when the synagogue blazed with candlelight,

and the shofar wailed. While a thousand eyes

 

watched, the candles, one by one, were snuffed, the world

unmade, until they cursed with a philosophy

of curses, and only darkness and God

 

and Chaos remained before my eyes.

So I was accursed in the sight of God

and in the sight of men. But the burden was light.

 

I lived with a family of the Christian faith.

I taught the daughter some philosophy

and ground lenses to earn my way in the world.

 

My burden was light. The great of the world

came to talk philosophy and faith,

and I made lenses for men's eyes to see God.

 

 

J.R. Solonche has been publishing in magazines, journals, and anthologies since the early 70s. He is author of Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions), the chapbook Hearts Content (Five Oaks Press) and co-author of Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books). He lives in New York's Hudson Valley with his wife, the poet Joan I. Siegel, and nine cats, at least three of whom are poets.

 

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LOIS GREENE STONE

 

cable stitch

 

Catching the tall cylinders of wood on the

back of the chair, a skein of thin wool was

held in place so I could wind it into a ball

suitable for knitting a sweater, or socks,

hat, or mittens. Why didn’t any stores

have knitting-ready spheres rather than

coils of yarn?  What if my chair’s back

didn’t have tall projections above the seat?

Round and round the fibers changed from

long strands to what resembled a child’s

plaything.  Ready.  I can begin.  Begin.

This long-sentenced piece is what

pleases a literary editor who sees words

in run-on, and it’s designed to extend

as a skein.  For me?  I usually write

with a period placed

after a short line

as if I were

typing

dot.com.      

 

Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

 

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ANGELA TOPPING

 

Three poems from Hearth

 

 

The Old, Old Songs

 

There was a wild colonial boy, Jack Duggan was his name.

Dad’s toughened fingers moved over the keyboard

of my birthday piano, touch-typing the melody.

 

I could play only from music, which he struggled to read.

He’d never learned but under his patient hands

tunes awoke from their slumbers and began to sing.

 

I practised ‘My Grandfather’s Clock’ incessantly, relishing

staccato tocking, the chorus: stopped, short, never to go again.

‘I’ll Take You Home Kathleen’ made him think of Mum,

 

his Irish lass, though born in England. Jack Duggan’s song

was the only one whose notes he could remember; its plaintive

arpeggios an elegy for a different life, always out of reach.

 

 

What became of the Black Piano

The piano is huge against the wall,

black and steadfast, polished shiny.

The lid is shut, heavy, sound.

Pedals are silenced tongues

put out for holy communion.

 

One day the piano left the room,

dragged outside for the burning,

sentenced to death for its unsharp sharps,

its dumb keys and broken ivory.

They had to take an axe to it first.

 

 

SteelMusic

I am looking into the heart of a secret,

watching metal bend to the pulse

of my hand, how the melody creeps out,

 

so slow it’s barely recognised or so fast

it’s crazed. Even clockwork winding down

distorts that pin-prick sound.

 

The fixed plate’s steel teeth catch

each small nub to play the tune

as the handle turns, driving the speed.

 

Meant to be hidden inside a box

or charming miniature plaything;

I prefer to spy out the mechanism,

 

pry into the workings of my toy

so that I can know the unknowable

that skates beneath mirrored surfaces.

 

 

Angela Topping is a poet and author with seven poetry collections from Stride, bluechrome, Salt, Lapwing and Mother’s Milk Books. Her three pamphlets include one from Rack Press in 2011. Hearth is her second collaboration.

 

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