2018

 

 

 

JUNE CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

Faiza Anum, Carl Boon, Mark Blayney, Lorraine Carey, Louis Gallo, M. J. Iuppa,

Karen Poppy, Jane Salmons, Claudia Serea, Bruce Taylor, Terry Tierney.

 

 

 

 

 

FAIZA ANUM

 

The Coronation of a Crow

 

I will dive into my own mirror

Deliberately dipping my dark and dry feet

In the canvas of the Canal

Once, then again, and again.

 

The nails on my feet have a finer dip

Than a fountain pen

With which I will toddle a novel tale:

 

That I will never sink like the trees and the twigs

Trembling on seeing their own shabby faces

In the water.

 

So, I love both my first and second selves 

And I crown

Myself the king of mirrors.  

 

Faiza Anum is an educationist, poet, researcher and occasional translator. Currently, she works as a lecturer at the department of English, the University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan. Her poems have appeared in Transnational Literature (Australia), Illumen (Alban Lake Publishing, USA), Yellow Chair Review, and Open Road Review (India). Her poem “Travelling Tales” was one of the finalists for Open Road Review Poetry Prize 2015.

 

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MARK BLAYNEY

 

Properties of Koans

 

At night in the jade museum

the figurines do not come alive and dance

being too proud and serious for that.

 

Too serious, also, to live. Living

is for those blessed with less intelligence.

Instead, they rest content with immortality.

 

We hide smiles as you turn the key

and steal inside. Ascending the creaking steps

each floor, mountain-like, is cooler than the last.

 

Our guide, affronted by our frivolity

asserts quietly it proves the old text right.

You think, she says, turning in the green

 

exit glow, that immortals live? They do not.

Life is too tiresome. Knees click

as we reach the fifth floor. Instead they know,

 

she adds, strip lights flicking on

like lightning, that immortality

is to be enjoyed from a better vantage point.

 

She takes a guide page from the rack, uses it

as a fan. Look, she says, and we look.

A smoke-black bear. Tigers, roused.                        

 

A monkey takes a peach. I once 

drank that juice, our guide murmurs

and her eyes on ours are the palest blue.

 

The jade is from the Qing dynasty,

its colleagues joining imperceptibly

from the lower Song, centuries before.

 

As if trying to help us understand, there’s a

leaf, veins etched, with two small holes,

nibbled from the hard stone by weevils.

 

Tomorrow the police do a routine check

but nothing is stolen. Just a break-in. The man

on the desk is serene. That’s fine, he breathes              

 

as two dragons climb a vase to form its handle.

Tethered by bamboo they watch the officers leave,

eyes alert, mouths mournful.                                                   

 

Mark Blayney won the Somerset Maugham Award for Two kinds of silence. His third story collection Doppelgangers and poetry Loud music makes you drive faster are published by Parthian. Mark has been longlisted for the National Poetry Competition and is a Hay Festival Writer at Work. www.markblayney.weebly.com   @markblayney 

 

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CARL BOON

 

Terrible Edirne

In all the mosques, Nilay saw faces
she thought she had forgotten:

her grandmother’s at Selimiye
saying beware of certain novels

that will haunt you till you shrink.
A high school friend inside Muradiye

said don’t go in the dark—it’s ripe
with men who will measure your feet

and throw figures to the wind.
In the Eski Mosque off Emin Ertan 

I twirled clover in my fingers,
desiring candlelight, a place to sit.

One grows weary of being looked at
again and again and forever. 

Bring me down, I said, as she loafed
like Whitman past the bakery,

not looking back. The beautiful
who’ve forgotten us never look back.

 

Carl Boon lives in Izmir, Turkey, where he teaches courses in American culture and literature at 9 Eylül University. His poems have appeared in many magazines, including Posit, The Maine Review, and Diagram. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Boon recently edited a volume on the sublime in American cultural studies.

 

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LORRAINE CAREY

 

Alice and her Stilettoes

 

We always walked faster

past her little house on the brae.

Every so often she'd scuttle out

And snare us, clutching a plastic bag

with the highest heels, scuffed

and peeling, ready for the cobbler's vice.

 

Her elfin face powdered,

her fuchsia mouth pursed,

the stain snaked onto her snaggled teeth,

crept over her lips.

She lay in wait,

behind net curtains that twitched.

Her ears hitched to the sound

of the school bus, stalling,

as we stepped off at Charlie Brown's,

stinking of fags.

 

Once John got three pairs

of spine benders, for repair,

so she had a choice,

for Mass on Sunday.

 

Lorraine Carey's poetry has featured in: Atrium, Prole, Picaroon, Sixteen, Poethead, Laldy and Ariel Chart among others. Her debut collection From Doll House Windows - Revival Press was published in June 2017. She was a runner up in both the Trocaire / Poetry Ireland and The Blue Nib Chapbook Competition 2017. “Alice and her Stilettoes” Previously published on Poethead, 23 March 2017.

 

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LOUIS GALLO

 

Apple Blossom Time

 

My mother and father sit at the kitchen table

a few years after World War II., the table with aluminum legs

and cracked porcelain top.  My mother spreads a clean cloth

of starched white linen.  She frets over a smudge in the fabric.

My father talks about the war.  He opens a pack of Target tobacco

as my mother spreads a starched white linen tablecloth.

My father does not notice the grease spot.  He talks

about the war. A dull light bulb, coated with grime and dust,

hangs from the ceiling.  My father has not had time to change it,

to make it brighter. He talks about the war.

 

My mother worries about the smudge, has tried everything.

Lemon juice won’t touch it, nor Oxydol.

My father curses the interminable waiting in lines

during the war, Indian toilets – he was stationed in Karachi –,

an explosion that blinded two men.  My mother spreads the tablecloth.

She listens to “Apple Blossom Time” on a small Bakelite radio

and hums along.  My father sprinkles Target onto cigarette paper.

My mother fears a burning ash might scorch the linen.

She cuts her finger on a chopping board.  Her blood seeps into the onions.

 

My father blows a blue smoke ring and thumps the table.

My mother feels the sting of lemon in her cut.

My father says that war saved the economy.

My mother wraps a bandage around her finger and slices

a pecan pie she has just removed from the oven. She hopes

no one will notice the grease spot.  My father smokes and talks

about the war.  The Andrews Sisters swirl in my mother’s head.

The murky kitchen light makes smudges hard to see. My mother never asks

my father to replace the bulb.  My father has doubts about Eisenhower.

My mother says we’re out of Ajax.  Tomorrow is grocery day,

and she compiles a list.  My father says we had to bomb Japan.

 

I am somewhere in the house, so is my baby sister.

My sister will not remember our father talking about the war

or mother fretting over a tablecloth.  Or the kitchen table.

The war, my father says, made us older.  My mother is not old.

Nor is my father.  Hitler got the economy rolling, my father laughs.

My mother and father sit in the kitchen.  A small Bakelite radio plays

the Andrews Sisters. My mother thinks grease from the bulb dripped

onto the tablecloth.  She has tried everything.  My father rolls

a cigarette.  He licks the edge and folds the paper into a cylinder.

He strikes a Diamond match with his fingernail, a trick he learned in India.

My mother tells him that we’re out of Ajax.  My father talks about the war.

I am somewhere in the house, but where?  Where is my sister?

My mother’s grocery list is long.  My father says don’t forget the Target.

 

He says war ended the Depression, not FDR.  My mother coughs

when the cigarette smoke gets too thick.  My sister and I must be playing

in another room.  Sometimes we run into the kitchen and see our parents

sitting at a kitchen table with aluminum legs.  A white cupboard.

The orange pack of Target tobacco.  A smudge on the starched

white linen tablecloth.  Our mother rubbing it with lemon juice.

The bandage on her finger, the wedding ring.  A dull, smoky yellow light.

We’re out of Ajax. The room is dim. Stinking holes in India.

The war has ended.  Our father’s back, Hitler dead.  The economy

looks good.  We’re going out to buy a new car, a Plymouth V-8,

my father says.  My sister is too young to remember.

I sway close enough to that edge of oblivion myself, where whorls

of darkness break forth as glowing suds of light and shadows ignite

the forms that galvanize our lives.

Our mother and father sit at the kitchen table.

   

 

I started a joke

 

I wrote a letter to Barry Gibb

offering to take the place

of Robin and Maurice

(may they RIP)

though I can’t sing

because I can’t stand

to see things end

and I love Robin’s

falsetto tremolo

and true you guys

went bad with that

disco caca

but so what?

Everybody writes

a bad poem

every now and then

(like this one),

even Keats . . .

but mostly I hate

things ending

like the Bee Gees

& eventually

the human species,

even the universe . . .

man, I hate that

 

 

Louis Gallo’s work has appeared or will shortly appear in Southern Literary Review, Fiction Fix, Glimmer Train, Hollins Critic,, Rattle, Southern Quarterly, Litro, New Orleans Review, Xavier Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Missouri Review, Mississippi Review, Texas Review, Baltimore Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, The Ledge, storySouth,  Houston Literary Review, Tampa Review, Raving Dove, The Journal (Ohio), Greensboro Review,and many others.  Chapbooks include The Truth Change, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct journals, The Barataria Review and Books:  A New Orleans Review.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

 

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M.J. IUPPA

 

Spring’s Riddle

 

It’s not a question of weather, the sun

flattens in its patience, waiting for

its cue to shine. What will tease us

 

into believing that the twitching

light isn’t rain mixed with snow?

 

Beneath the sycamore, crocuses

with mouths full of ice begin

to sing their resistance.

 

The first redwing arrives, then

another rings the lilacs.

 

The lake sky unlocks—ready.

I keep my eyes open and focus

on nothing.

 

 

Icarus Girl

 

The pageantry of morning’s fresh snow

trims every rail and limb and acute angle

 

awakening that unmistakable tingle of

happiness that quivers like a shock to

 

the green-eyed woman’s face, whose

mouth rarely parts with a kind word or two

 

except on a morning such as this, when

a girl with chestnut curls falls from the lake

 

sky and sails, arms outstretched, over cresting

waves and light glistening near the edge of

 

the pencilled horizon, sailing beyond

hues of dawn, dragging her big toe

 

to stir a wide wake

without making a splash.

 

M.J. Iuppa ‘s fourth poetry collection is This Thirst (Kelsay Books, 2017). For the past  29 years she has lived on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. Check out her blog: mjiuppa.blogspot.com for her musings on writing, sustainability & life’s stew.

 

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KAREN POPPY

 

At Nezu Shrine

          Tokyo, Japan

 

While there is something

to be said for stillness,

 

I would rather be

water moving than stone

smoothed by it.

 

I would rather be light

falling than a mountain

shadowed by loss of sun.

 

I would rather be

leaves moving toward

light, haphazard,

without eyes, but

with the sense,

always, of moving

toward you, just as you

move toward me.

 

While there is something

to be said for stillness,

movement also has its natural course.

 

Like a great black bird,

perched here on

this red painted gate,

ready to take flight,

wings spread against sky,

trees soon beneath it.

 

Karen Poppy has work published or forthcoming in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, ArLiJo, Wallace Stevens Journal, Parody Poetry Journal, and Voices de la Luna, among others. She has recently written her first novel, and is an attorney licensed in California and Texas. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 

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JANE SALMONS

 

After Dad Died

as if weeping were a seed

and I the earth’s only furrow

Pablo Neruda’s “Lightless Suburb”

 

So dark

in the coalbunker

between cobwebs.

A vacuum packed

silence. Trapped

sciatic nerve.  A mouth

full of soot and ash.

 

Starlings line up

on a telegraph wire

against winter sky.

 

Why do you whistle

that tune in my dreams?

 

Wading through a field of mud

arms outstretched

at the foot of the stairs.

 

Let’s play a game of Scrabble

without vowels. Crypt. Rhythm.

Hymn. Cwtch.

  

 

In the Dead of the Night

 

A wolf steals through my house in the dead of the night

his breath mists the windows, his scent marks the mat

nothing remains when the day becomes light.

 

He sidles and slavers, he’s wiry and slight

he zigzags and backtracks, this way and that

a wolf steals through my house in the dead of the night.

 

He howls at the moon, his teeth gleaming white

he prowls in the pantry, he scavenges scraps

nothing remains when the day becomes light.

 

I’m jittery, I’m skittish, my nerves are wound tight

he growls from the shadows, he snarls and he snaps

a wolf steals through my mind in the dead of the night.

 

He sneaks up the stairwell, it’s only one flight

a blur of grey fur, his yellow eyes flash

nothing remains when the day becomes light.

 

He lolls on the landing and gives me a fright

he grins and he preens in my dark habitat.

A wolf steals through my heart in the dead of the night

nothing remains when the day becomes light.

 

Jane Salmons is a teacher living and working in Stourbridge in the West Midlands, UK.  She is currently studying an MA in Creative Writing and has been previously published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, Algebra of Owls, Snakeskin, I am not a Silent Poet and Creative Writing Ink.  In addition to writing poetry, in her spare time she enjoys creating handmade photomontage art.

 

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CLAUDIA SEREA

 

Ode to slow cooking

 

Nothing good comes quickly,

the old woman said,

chopping the Holy Trinity

for the pan.

 

Rushing never made a great stew.

 

You have to let the parsnip fibers break

and the vertebrae sing.

 

Let the marrow melt

and dissolve, slowly,

the way water carves limestone

into caves.

 

Add the ox heart tomatoes later,

and feel the sweetness

when you taste for salt.

 

Think how far, how long

the peppercorns traveled

from Vietnam

and the Malabar Coast

only to open their small eyes

in your pot.

 

Add bay leaves,

the chef’s Olympian crown.

 

Pour a swirl of wine

and taste again

the dark nipples of the grapes

in the seaside wind.

 

History is there,

and love

 

with a hint of grass

in the lamb bone.

 

Claudia Serea’s poems and translations have appeared in Field, New Letters, 5 a.m., Meridian, Gravel, Prairie Schooner, and many others. An eight-time Pushcart Prize and four-time Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, 2012), A Dirt Road Hangs From the Sky (8^th House Publishing, 2013), To Part Is to Die a Little (Cervena Barva Press, 2015) and Nothing Important Happened Today (Broadstone Books, 2016). Serea is a founding editor of National Translation Month, and she co-hosts The Williams Poetry Readings in Rutherford, NJ. Her latest project is Twoxism, a poetry-photography collaboration blog with Maria Haro.

 

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BRUCE TAYLOR

 

Always Expect A Train

 

says the new sign at the tracks near my house

I’ve crossed three or four times a day for years

on my way to wherever to get whatever

I need or want or think I have to have

 

but I’ve never seen one coming or going

nor even, as I’ve imagined, been stuck there

watching car after car rumble by full of whatever

going wherever or rumbling empty back.

 

I’ve not even seen a speck of one at a distance,

future engine speeding my way or red caboose

at last trailing away, vanishing into the past.

But some nights when the stutter in my heart

 

wakes me before dawn, or one of my old regrets

sits on the edge of the bed smoking and sighs,

the moan of a not so distant whistle haunts me

and rumbles in the dark I always am expecting.

 

 

Tracking in Snow

 

Most mornings we know

the tracks outside our door,

bunny and Bambi, Rocky

the raccoon we recognize

even without his mask.

 

Sometimes we can’t and don’t.

Something feline the books say

though we’ve never seen a cat.

Something canine but dogs don’t

run loose this time of year.

 

Once from our shore somebody

stepped off, walked straight

across the frozen lake

alone, in the dark, in the cold,

at least as far as we can see.

 

Fresh snow covers everything,

scratch of squirrel or crow,

even our own familiar trails

which took us somewhere and

brought us, this time, back.

 

 

Men Fishing with Wives

 

Who runs the motor who steers the boat,

knows what’s biting on what and where,

who handles the anchor who ships the oars

who’s too quiet or never quiet enough?

 

Who wears the silly hat who forgot the beer

or the bait or sunscreen or bug spray

who remembers what the other forgets

who is always right at least half the time.

 

Who wants to catch the big one, who doesn’t

care if they ever catch anything at all.

Over the years they’ve learned things

upon which they’ve learned to agree.

 

Never let the fish get in the way of fishing.

Never let the holes in your net get bigger

than the fish you hope to catch.

Be patient. Keep your bait in the water.

 

Bruce Taylor’s poetry has appeared in such places as: Able Muse, The American Poetry Journal, The Chicago Review, Cortland Review, The Formalist, Light, The Nation, The New York Quarterly, The Northwest Review, Poetry, Rattle  and on Writer’s Almanac.

 

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TERRY TIERNEY

 

Blue Jay

 

lances down from red maple,

squirrel darting in retreat, clutching

phone line, ducking for cover.

 

I sense the airborne threat,

trying to pick cherries, a boy

with courage only for ground fall,

 

the blue jay's screech and swoop

protecting even rotten fruit.

I fill the bird bath to distract him,

 

his sharp beak and talons

claim cherries and water, staining

the basin red with skins and pits.

 

My family moves to a new town,

then another, each house white,

a three-bedroom ranch where

 

blue jay perches in the backyard tree,

redwood, box elder, catalpa, spruce,

blue jay always the same.

 

It was years before he found me here,

my own ranch house,

my cherry seedling.

 

When he lights on my window sill

I know what he will say.

Every move disturbs his nest.

 

Last house, last tree,

blue jay the color of sky.

 

Terry Tierney has poems coming or appearing in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Front Porch Review, Third Wednesday, Riggwelter,Rat’s Ass Review, Cold Creek Review and other publications. He has stories coming or appearing in Jersey Devil Press, Fictive Dreams and SPANK the CARP, Longshot Island, Literally Stories and Big Bridge. Website: http://terrytierney.com

 

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