2014
MAY CONTRIBUTORS
Jean Atkin, Chris Bullard, Karen Jane Canon, David Flynn, George Freek, Wendy Gist, Robert Halleck, William Ogden Haynes, Mary Ann Honaker, M. J. Iuppa,
Geraldine O’Kane, Albulena Shabani, Ian C. Smith, Jayne Stanton, Lena Khalaf Tuffaha.
JEAN ATKIN
At Grandmother’s
The sun porch and the blue
footstool, the one with coaldust
gritted in its feet. The scrape
of your shovel, rattle in the scuttle.
The kitchen and the cream
enamel stove, a pig
to light. You, kneeling stiffly,
feeding it.
The sneck and click of the larder door;
a lidded oak pot above the brushes,
tobacco-whiff clinging
in its porcelain inner jar.
In what you called the Room,
over the fire, the gathered flock
in their golden frame; their oily fleeces
close and blue, in snow.
Your bedroom, where I wasn’t
meant to go and once
raised the lid on your kist;
and breathed in wool and wartime.
The spare bedroom’s night country
where I’d keep slow hours alone.
Explore reluctantly its plaster hills
and lanes; and wish for home.
Luck and the Wreck
Luck was with us because we lived at number 7.
I knew it every time I clicked the gate and leapt
from home and down a step, to tricky pavements.
Don’t tread on a crack, you can do it
for a bit, then have to jump
to save your mother.
I’d cross Carrington Road at the phone box, sprint
through the alley, fetch up under the Almshouse wall.
An old man smiled, one day, through the iron gate.
He said, You look happy.
I supposed I was.
I ran faster. Ashfield Road, Alker Street,
The Wreck. I heard my mum remark it still
had all its railings. Not gone for guns, she said,
That’s nice. One day I rode her pre-war bike
quite straight across its bowling green
and twisted to see my tyre-track
print perfect through its rolled-and-velvet grass –
from gravel boundaries, from painted benches
the old men’s voices rose in hunting cries – but I
soared through the open gate between the railings
pressed down once
on the pedals
and landed safely home.
Jean Atkin works as a poet and educator, and lives in Shropshire. Her first collection Not Lost Since Last Time is published by Oversteps Books. Her poetry has been published in Acumen, Poetry Ireland Review, Ink, Sweat & Tears, New Writing Scotland and others, and anthologised by Grey Hen Press and Cinnamon Press. Visit her website here www.jeanatkin.com
CHRIS BULLARD
Fall
She called, “Let’s race,”
then sprinted ahead
into the spring woods.
I trotted after her
and tripped on a root.
Next day in class
I hid my limp.
Eight years we passed time
in the same schools.
Always between us
a distance.
A friend drops she died
ages ago, left kids, etc.
Now, I imagine her
stopped,
out of breath, on the path
that ran to our development.
I’ll catch you yet.
Nancy Drew Confesses her Love for Humbert Humbert
Not of legal age! That’s only a lawyer’s concept.
You weren’t so scrupulous with these niceties
when I was driving a sports car solving the secret
of the ancient clock, or setting traps for culprits
who smuggled gold. I was your Portia, then.
Now you question what your daughter’s heart
deduces. Age, that false clue, has you baffled,
but I who took the risk have found the body.
Now my tongue serves for more than exposition.
How can I explain the fire, the corporal flame
that fills my being when he speaks my name?
This last mystery is not one the mind can solve.
Forgive me, father. We leave tonight for Dark Star.
Chris Bullard is a native of Jacksonville, FL. He lives in Collingswood, NJ, and works for the federal government as an Administrative Law Judge. He received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from Wilkes University. Plan B Press published his chapbook, You Must Not Know Too Much, in 2009. Big Table Publishing published his second chapbook, O Brilliant Kids, in 2011. WordTech Editions published his first full-length book of poetry, Back, in November of 2013. Kattywompus Press published his third chapbook, Dear Leatherface, in January of 2014.
KAREN JANE CANON
Alice through the Looking Glass
Each year the picture of a face unseen,
she touches newly defined cheek bones, hair
longer now, too smooth. How she wants
to ruffle that hair, draw
a small scar, chipped tooth, a butterfly bruise
or a blistered crop of freckles from a summer
of sand love-hearts, poking
toes in worm casts, or standing
shyly by the boys, suddenly not able to join in,
a host of memories only dreamt.
This little Alice is growing,
digitally enhanced, genes pooled to create a face
kept alive by strangers
who never brushed out knots, or squeezed toothpaste
yet possess the power of giving life to puzzled siblings,
who believe their sister exists elsewhere, in a fairy tale
to return each year in secret, just for one day
leaves behind a photograph, ghostly thumbprint.
Chasing Glass
You— first at low tide after the storm, forty years
of chasing glass on stony shores. Spat
by the sea— us and blunted shards, precious
as ambergris, ocean tumbled
snatches of life, tucked
under rocks for deft fingers to find, hold up
to the light. Now you make your mosaics, frosted
necklaces, then— it was for the sake
of finding, spine curved or squinting up
at the sun, a piece of fire
between finger and thumb,
or a chunk of cobalt as blue as your iris,
sparkling through vitreous. This journey
has changed you,
a transformation of salt and sand.
I cradle time in a cupped hand.
Karen Jane Cannon's poetry has been published in Orbis, Acumen, Deep Water and upcoming in Ink, Sweat & Tears. She has had a novel published by Orion and has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.
DAVID FLYNN
Naked Lovers Biting the Heads Off Ginger Men
Brenda and I stood naked in her kitchen at 2 a.m.,
biting the heads off ginger men.
"Nibble at the toes," she said.
"Suck the hands."
Her eyes flamed,
red holes below her red hair.
Half Cherokee, she looked at me
like I was a deer among the trees.
"Lick the face," she said,
her tongue long and red.
Then she bit off the man's head
with her sharp, white teeth.
I love Brenda.
She's scary sometimes.
When I go to sleep beside her,
I never know if I will wake.
That is our love,
tension along the blade of a knife.
When I hold her naked body I know
we will die together.
"This could be a ginger woman," I said.
"It's just an outline of a human."
"No," said Brenda.
"It's a man."
She bit the body in two,
and swallowed the pieces.
Hand in hand, we walked toward
the bed.
David Flynn’s jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. His literary publications total more than one hundred and thirty. His writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com/ .
GEORGE FREEK
A November Evening (After Tu Fu)
The days become shorter.
Those distant clouds
will soon be overhead.
They’ll bring snow or rain.
The flowers which grow
now, will soon be dead.
Everything passes in time.
Even the snow will disappear.
But it will come again.
Flowers and men are
too soon past their prime.
I’m now an old man, up
late into the night,
trying to see by the moon.
It can be done,
but it was much easier at noon.
An Excuse For Not Speaking To A Friend (After Mei Yao Chen)
A breeze rustles the leaves
at the edge of the bay.
After the thunderstorm,
the evening is clear as day.
On the lake a loon is calling,
but from very far away.
The lake is like a placid desert.
But that is deceptive.
I think tonight a strong wind
will blow. Waves will beat
like angry fists against
the shore. Why do I feel
this anger is the more real?
Everyone tells me we
should look for the good.
Forgive me, friend, it’s my
unfortunate disposition.
I can never believe
what others think I should.
In Daylight I Dream Of The Blue River (After Mei Yao Chen)
A goose floats on the river,
so I can almost touch him.
In an ugly mood, he honks at me.
I know that he’s reality.
Leaves fall, denuding the trees
on this wind-blown day.
I can’t see the wind,
but I still feel its breeze.
I can’t see the Milky Way,
yet I know it’s there, somewhere.
Who says we only know
what we see? Who can see
the atoms in a cup of tea?
And I can’t see her,
but I take my dead wife
everywhere with me. Each day,
is different than the last.
But when I sleep,
everything is as it used to be.
George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Belvidere, IL. His poetry has recently appeared in The Missing Slate, The Stillwater Review, The Tower Journal, The Foliate Oak, and The Burningword Literary Journal. His plays are published by Playscripts, Inc.; and Lazy Bee Scripts (UK).
WENDY GIST
A Rose For Grandmother
We’d gab in relaxation mode
on the patio under palm
trees that fanned as sun
dripped through greenery to alight
on your white tresses like
a jeweled crown; clouds
stirred fine shade.
We beamed at the edge
of fluffed roses,
crunched teeth into
cucumber sandwiches,
the green fragrance tickling
rose suckled noses.
After we nibbled,
you’d cut a long-stemmed
rose with sharp shear blades,
and would swathe the base
in wet paper towel and say,
“There’s stardust in the bud of a rose.”
And, when silence
settled, you’d say,
“You know, you got somebody
who cares about you, and that’s
more valuable than a god.”
I wondered if that was true.
When thunder began to blossom
in the darkening sky,
your eyes flooded
tears you were unable to hold.
Grandmother, I hugged you snug
when you spoke of blues:
your childhood home burned
one New York day past,
collapsing in ash, ignited by
lightning. You’d stress,
“When tragedy strikes
gently hold a rose, a rose…”
With your hand on mine,
“You’re like a rose
from stamens to petals. Tell me
what color will you blossom…?”
Wendy Gist was born in Southern California, raised in Northern Arizona. Her poems and flash fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in ASU Canyon Voices, Burningword Literary Journal, Crack the Spine, Glint Literary Journal, Lines + Stars, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Pif Magazine, Poetry Pacific, Red River Review, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, Sundog Lit, The Chaffey Review, The Fourth River, The Voices Project, Yellow Medicine Review and elsewhere.
ROBERT HALLECK
My Father
Today I try to remember
anything at all about him.
It gets very hard.
If only someone would say
"Yes, you remind me of him."
Advertising For Me
She left me while
I was playing golf.
Left me a voicemail
and two old Greyhounds.
You would be happier
with someone your age
retired, free time and
good health if you are lucky.
On Match.com I'll say I remember
listening to the radio and doing dishes.
Call me.
I don't text.
Flowers For Their Date
On an impulse
he bought her flowers.
It took a long time.
People were ahead.
He was late for
their date and
she didn't let
him forget it.
Three weeks later
they broke up.
Robert Halleck is a retired banker living in Del Mar, California with two retired racing Greyhounds. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years and has published two collections of his works. Recent poems have appeared in The Boston Poetry Review, The San Diego Poetry Annual, The Scapegoat Review and other poetry blogs.
WILLIAM OGDEN HAYNES
Snapshot
The ocean, as it always does, stretches a straight line
to form an apparent border between the earth and sky.
In the foreground on the beach, stands a family,
arms circling shoulders, leaning toward one another,
looking directly into the camera lens with obligatory smiles.
A passing beachcomber has volunteered to
snap the picture while they hold their pose.
On the left is Bob the alcoholic and
his long-suffering wife Millie is on the right.
And between them is the unemployed son
and his wife holding their baby.
Their temporary smiles are merely muscular
contractions elicited by the camera held by a stranger.
The truest thing in the photograph
is the horizon, and even that, is an illusion.
Dignity
The waitress topped up cups of coffee
easing along a line of red vinyl-covered booths.
She scribbled on a small green pad and carefully
impaled each order on the fry cooks’ spindle.
She bussed tables, piling breakfast plates
high and balancing them on her arm,
opening the double doors to the
kitchen with a bump of her hips.
Marie had reached that age where she
dyed her hair dark and wore too much makeup.
She knew her days were numbered.
She would be waiting tables here until
her feet gave out or she was replaced
with a younger, prettier model.
Every morning at seven, an old man arrived
dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt and a bow tie
as if he were headed to an important meeting.
When she saw him, she would smile and point to
an empty booth or quickly clean a table for him.
Marie would stand by his booth looking
ten years younger, asking about his sons,
long since relocated to the west coast.
And he would always query her about
her two cats and their latest antics.
His breakfast was leisurely with three
cups of coffee accompanied by
flirtatious chatting with each refill.
He always left a generous tip,
which they both knew, was never
for the food or service.
William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan and grew up a military brat. His first book of poetry entitled Points of Interest appeared in 2012 and a second collection of poetry and short stories Uncommon Pursuits was published in 2013. Both are available on Amazon in Kindle and paperback. He has also published over ninety poems and short stories in literary journals and his work has been anthologized multiple times.
MARY ANN HONAKER
She'll Fall In Love
It will happen like this: one day,
she'll fall in love with a painting.
The painting is a city at night
like a torch held over a river,
a wobble outwards of bright
in uncertain dollops of eye-smack
pimpled about with white
with the edges in the daylight
and the center shellacked in night.
Yes, the center blackest black and
woozy with it, a closed eye. It's when
she opens the back door on a summer night,
pushes open the screen, and steps out
from under the moth-orgy at the porchlight
into the warm nothing and then she peers
past the edge of the yard into the center
of the woods and she can't see a damn thing.
But she knows it's filled with warm and breathing
and something out there, in there, in that middle
is looking back at her and knowing her
like she will never ever know it. Like her,
the painting has edges that are color and noise
where life is happening in little star-bursts,
but inside the streets wind to where
a man past his capacity for hope naps
fitfully in doorway, yanking back
his stinging toes each time they slip
from grubby blankets, where a woman
falls drunkenly into arms she would not
in light consider, where no one has wakened
sad and headachey with an allergy to light,
to remembering what the good people
closed their eyes to all night.
The price is high but she will pay it,
buy it not because she walked down that dark street
and saw everyone there, and they saw her,
but because she didn't, and she never will,
yet she loves that secret almost sexual thrill
of peeking into a darkness her eyes can't penetrate,
then turning her back on it, and slipping again
into the light.
Mary Ann Honaker holds a B.A. in philosophy from West Virginia University and a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School. She has previously published poetry in many online and print journals, including The Dudley Review, Euphony, Caveat Lector, and Van Gogh's Ear. She lives in Salem, Massachusetts.
M. J. IUPPA
A Brief Spell
At the picture window, I sway in time with the pin oak’s branches
slow lift then quick dip, seemingly caught in the excitement
of sudden wind and rain and errant flakes of snow.
Among these minutes, darkness comes, filling in the airy
spaces. No glimpse of moon or star, only the evening’s
cool periwinkle.
If I were outside, this brief spell could cure loneliness.
The weather’s uncertainty, its push and pull, could
be a gift of gathering, of letting go.
Dear________
Late afternoon, scent of rain in the summer air, under-
sides of leaves shudder—a bluesy rift that catches me
half-listening while writing the letter that keeps me
from what I should be doing .
I tell you I need a shovel, one that will dig deeper
than I have ever dug before. I need not be afraid
of what I will find among the crumble. After-
all I know what is there.
What thunder claps in the distance?
My hands ache in their cramped work. The pen’s
ink, trailing a string of glossy words without flinching
or stopping, gets ahead of myself—I hold onto the page
with one hand, knowing anything can happen
when it suddenly rains.
M.J.Iuppa lives on a small farm near the shores of Lake Ontario. For the past ten years, she and her husband Peter Tonery have been committed to food sustainability. She has numerous publications (poetry, fiction, nonfiction and plays) in national and international journals as well as two full length poetry collections Night Traveler (Foothills, 2003) and Within Reach (Cherry Grove Collection, 2010) and five chapbooks; her latest prose chapbook Between Worlds (Foothills, 2013). She served as the poetry advisor (2007-2012) for the New York Foundation for the Arts, and since 1986, has worked as a teaching artist in the schools, K-12 for a variety of agencies (RCSD, BOCES 2, Young Audiences, Genesee Valley BOCES, Project U.N.I.Q.U.E. and V.I.T.A.L. Writers & Books, and others) Currently she is Writer-in-Residence and Director of Arts Minor Program at St. John Fisher College.
GERALDINE O’KANE
Culture Dogs
We lap up culture from the space between talk,
letting our tongues wag out poems –
overheated dogs.
We honour the word
by bringing it to the people,
assembling them in huddles
with comfortable seats.
We are the mud and wattle holding
tradition together,
protecting literature –
bringing it forth on a platter.
We are the message made visible
within the full lipped smiles of those
who open their hearts
and let us graffiti them with beauty.
The Couple
(After Philip Levine’s “The Two”)
The black and white haze
Of strangers caught in a moment
on a random park bench
reminds me of boney stories
I cannot put flesh on.
You got married
in a place I have never visited,
yet I have seen you both
in chromatic photos
together smiling out at me;
shapes I have only ever known
as separate entities.
I heard you spent your honeymoon
on a park bench in Edinburgh,
you were happy then,
how bad must things have become.
Geraldine O’Kane is a regular and diverse reader at many local events, such as Belfast Film Festival, Sunflower Fest, Fermanagh Live, the Belfast Book Festival and more. In 2013, she was the winner of the North West heat of the All Ireland Poetry Slam, and one of the Ulster representative in the slam final in Galway. Her poetry is mostly inspired by observation, and the state of the human condition. She specialises in micro poetry, a first collection of which is forthcoming from Pen Points Press.
http://thepoetokane.weebly.com/
ABULENA SHABANI
Agronomist IV
She wore rubber gloves
to plant a fake field of flowers.
The first dainty shape
she placed firmly in the ground
moaned in the direction of the north star;
her stomach burned
of unknowing.
She had no memory of flowers or fields.
She guessed depth, height, organization patterns;
even shape was imaginative.
She only had two old photos
and a handful of grandma's childhood memories
to serve as seeds.
It took months of meticulous planning
to fill the field.
Measurements needed to be made, calculations
regarding the number of total petals and stems.
How many shapes should be formed by hand,
the time
required to gather materials -
cans, plastic bags, old gloves, rubber, bottle caps -
found objects or relics -
the age of production's garbage.
It would be no easy task
to simulate nature, god, or machines.
Not the work itself - rather - the feeling
of ten thousand bees in her stomach,
all inexperienced nostalgia.
Albulena Shabani was born in Macedonia to ethnic Albanian parents and raised Muslim in rural Wisconsin. A UW - Milwaukee graduate, her words have been featured or forthcoming in the Women's Media Center, Word Riot, and Adbusters. She represented Milwaukee in the 2010 International Women of the World Poetry Slam and was an mtvU Fulbright Fellow to Kosovo in 2012
IAN C. SMITH
Pelican Sky
Following my feet to this haven of stillness
where I spent time with people I love
I see a pelican pair fly past the sun.
That fallen tree still reaches midstream
these years gone, stubborn new growth reflected
in the depleted river’s pebbled pools.
The durable trunk would serve as a pier
were the river higher, ghost swimmers splashing,
children grown up or gone, with me preoccupied.
Now this counting of years, a kind of paralysis,
as market gardeners work rows of lettuce
beyond willowy fringes on the opposite bank.
What would an alternative life have been,
suffering, beauty, the shape of time lost
darkening a different long steady failure?
Watching the tiny wake of an unseen creature
I feel if I look away it shall disappear
like a limb torn from me, like those years.
Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in ,The Best Australian Poetry, London Grip, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Weekend Australian,& Westerly His latest book is Here Where I Work,Ginninderra Press (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.
JAYNE STANTON
Everyspoon
You are the christening spoon
gifted to a chance recipient
by the two-year-old who posted it back
through the letterbox into the street.
The silver spoon I don’t remember,
one my mother won’t let me forget.
You are one of a back-to-back pair
my father put to better use on nights
when my mother was out at work.
Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen played along
with his freestyle percussion to Midnight
in Moscow and Green Leaves in Summer.
You are the wooden Good Luck token
tied around with ribbon, given
by a bridesmaid all those years ago.
You’re up there, somewhere, boxed
in the loft with the horseshoes and hearts,
a black cat, a 21 key to the door and more.
You are the children’s first feeder,
a novelty handle on mush, slopped
from a nursery rhyme bowl, discarded
in favour of ham-fisted fingers.
You are a mother’s mobility aid,
an easy-grip handle on mush, slopped
from a nursing home bowl, discarded
now that you’re no longer needed.
The Dive
Crossing the canal this afternoon
I spotted you – a flash, electric blue
wings piston-powered; you’re gone.
I’d love to follow. I’m not fit
to own the air. Your body’s wired
for flight. I see in you the boy
his motorbike in fog an arrow –
kingfisher and chrome, the bridge
at speed, his dive, a frozen future.
Jayne Stanton is a poet, teacher and tutor from Leicestershire. Her poems appear/are forthcoming in Under the Radar, Southword, Popshot, Antiphon, The Interpreter’s House, London Grip New Poetry, Obsessed with Pipework and others. Her debut pamphlet is forthcoming from Soundswrite Press in autumn 2014. http://jaynestantonpoetry.wordpress.com/ @stantonjayne
LENA KHALAF TUFFAHA
Immigrant
I am not buckled safely into my seat
I am watching the road unravel
behind us like a ribbon of dust.
Through the back window of my uncle’s Datsun
Amman looks like a tender little place
the color of my teddy bear’s fur.
Its houses crowded into one another
on its seven parched hills
are the shades of my family’s skin --
almond of my mother’s brow,
wheat of my father’s arms,
tea-with-cream of my grandmother’s palms.
We are driving away on the only road to the airport.
We are driving away from this doll house town
and my storybook childhood of tree-climbing,
and laughter of too many cousins to count.
We are driving away from impending war.
We are driving
away because we can leave
on the magic carpet of our navy blue
US passports that carry us
to safety and no bomb drills,
to the place where the planes are made
and the place where the President
will make the call to send the planes
into my storybook childhood,
over the seven hills,
next door to neighbors who will now
become refugees.
We are driving and I
am not safe
driving away from
myself and everything I know
into the great miracle of
a country so large
wars are kept thousands of miles at bay.
My young life is coming undone
on the road behind me
where I know all the names of
the trees in Arabic
rumman, saru, zayzafoon
and I know the spot on each dry hilltop
where the crimson poppies return in spring,
and I know the best bakery to line up for
Ramadan pancakes before breaking the fast.
In the backseat of my uncle’s Datsun
I want to float through the window
and run towards yesterday
when August was just late afternoon ice cream
and late night card games
and the crinkle of brown paper and tape
covering copybooks,
fresh as this morning’s bread,
ready to receive the school year ahead;
math equations,
poems,
histories of battle.
Upon Arrival
You will need to state the reason for your visit,
Don’t say because I want to walk down old roads
and caress stone walls the color of my skin.
You will need to state the reason for your visit.
Don’t say because the olives are ready for harvest
and I will coax the fruit from the trees
press it into liquid gold.
You will need to state the reason for your visit.
Don’t say because my parents’ house
still sits empty on a bluff overlooking the sea,
the green shutters my grandfather had just painted
remain sealed shut
and the army listed the property’s owners
as absentees.
You will need to state the reason for your visit.
Don’t say because I am carrying prayers in my suitcase
for a people who wait,
and I’ll unfold them
embroidered linens of verse
and spread them out across the land.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha writes poetry and literary translation. She has lived in and traveled across the Arab world, and many of her poems are inspired by the experience of crossing borders: cultural, geographic, political, borders between peace and war, the present and the living past. Her work has appeared in the journal Magnolia, Exit 13 magazine, Al-Ahram weekly, and the Seattle Times. Several of her poems are forthcoming in the online journal Human, based in Turkey, and in the print anthology Being Palestinian, to be published by Oxford Press in 2015. She lives with her family in Redmond, Washington, in the United States.
Unfortunately I have just spent the last seven days in hospital
after an injury, and haven't been able to process the September issue and will have to move it back to October. Sorry about this. I may not respond to your emails in the usual time as I am on strong meds.
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