2017

 

 

OCTOBER CONTRIBUTORS

 

 

 

Joe Balaz, Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Susan Sweetland Garay, Maximilian Heinegg,

 Deirdre Hines, Devon Marsh, Paul McDonald, Richard Merelman, Gillian Prew,

 Jill Talbot, Sarah White.

 

 

 

 

 

JOE BALAZ

 

Lesson in Science

 

Da round yellow eye

wuz as big as wun dinner plate

 

in da head of wun huge alien serpent—

 

Looks like we are not alone.

 

 

Da legion of hairless monkeys back home

are in foa wun surprise

 

cause we just got wun jolt

of cosmic commonality

 

from da rest of da universe.

 

 

I taught it wuz amazing

wen I saw da Great Red Spot up close

 

but now my heartbeat

has raced to da finish line

 

as da answer

to da momentous question of adah life

 

is now swimming around me in circles. 

 

 

Inside my luminous suit

beneath wun foreign sea

 

I move in strange currents

and view wat humankind has dreamed about.                   

 

 

Wats even moa fascinating

 

is dat it’s right heah

in our own backyard

 

twirling around da same sun.

 

 

Europa

has offered up its ocean secrets

 

and I’m basking in da glow

of sudden insight.

 

 

It’s as startling

as two eyelids opening

 

to da pouring in of daylight.

 

 

Discovery is wheah you find it

 

and da instructor

standing deah before me

 

is going to attest to dat.

 

 

He wacked my desk

wit wun ruler

 

to get my attention.

 

 

I wuzn’t really napping—

 

I wuz just taking

his possible life on adah planets lecture

 

further den he could even imagine.

Joe Balaz writes in Hawaiian Islands Pidgin (Hawai'i Creole English) and in American English.

Some of his recent Pidgin writing has appeared in Heavy Feather Review, Public Pool,

The Rising Phoenix Review, and Unlikely Stories Mark V, among others.  Balaz is an avid supporter

of Hawaiian Islands Pidgin writing in the expanding context of World Literature.  He presently

lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

 

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CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO 

 

The Teenager Who Became My Mother

 

The teenager who became my mother

had a way of feeling, seeing and hoping.

It was her hope that

rafted us through the war.

She was not one eyed,

her hairs were strands

of broken happiness and loneliness.

Each of the scars at her back was a memory.

Her inside was patient as hope.

She had a black painted skin

that shimmers as coal and ruin.

When I asked if she had

seen anyone die during the war,

she moved her head up and down.

She said that she saw five, twenty, even more;

that most of them drowned inside of her.

 

I looked into her eyes

after she had exhausted her dying tales before me,

I saw the teenager who became my mother:

she was a graveyard of those who drowned

inside of her to see us crawl through the war.

 

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto studied English Language and Literature at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria. His works have won Association of Nigerian Author’s Literary Award For Mazariyya Ana Teen Poetry Prize, 2009; National Association Of Students Of English Language and Literary Studies best student poet and the winner of Speak to the heart inc. Poetry contest, 2016. He has published his works in journals, magazines and blogs.

 

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SUSAN SWEETLAND GARAY

 

Unearth

 

Once

I went into a

rocky cave

carpeted

in green.

It was dark

and damp and

time sped up there.

 

We all feel lost sometimes

but the road is before us

and none of us want to stand still.

 

I think I write to

uncover the maps

I know are all around me,

to unearth what is already there.

 

It’s June now and suddenly

everything seems

to be opening.

 

Susan Sweetland Garay lives in rural Oregon and loves time spent in the natural world. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014.  Her first full length poetry collection, Approximate Tuesday, was published in 2013 and her second book Strange Beauty was published in 2015.

 

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MAXIMILIAN HEINEGG

 

Ms.

 

They say they fire up joints in the back row,

that on the first floor you can hear the books

fall from her window where they're casting

ballots against the teachers’ union.

 

They say she reads the Oedipus cycle

aloud, that one by one the heads drop

to the desk like leaves, after Colonus

her soft analysis is the coup de grace.

 

They say she taught the grandparents,

the parents, & now they funnel

her the ne'er do wells, lowering the last

hurdle to let them finish the race.

 

They say her charges turn a pass for water

into a jaunt down the halls of C building,

that you can hear them rattle the lockers

sounding lost as they call after girls.

 

Yet everyone wants to know if she's still there.

When they hear she is, not a syllable sinister,

& last year, when she fell on her way in,

the children shuddered for her bones.

 

She was back the next day, pulling her cart

of books & papers, to her room in this castle

on the hill that they say was built by a man

who perfected prisons in California.

 

Waiting for Bono

When Kevin the carpenter told Simon of Cork
he’d heard from a friend who worked security
for The Lads when they came through town
that we might see Bono at arm’s length
we were off, Simon’s sedan peeling
down Playstead to Davis Square

to admire the doorway in the Burren’s back-room.
It was as fair a chance as any, a night off
for the band between a stand in the Garden-
a habit of theirs, to thrill lucky punters
& my wife said, what if you don’t go & they do?
One said Unlikely

they'd pass this way, a publican's ruse,
confiding that Bono, that merchant of justice
was nursing a broken arm from a busted affair,
Bicycle accident? Load of shite-
so we stood for hours, gents
trading pints, the opening call of “the Miracle

of Joey Ramone” led by Kevin, who’d seen him
twenty times, from North of the neck
of Ireland to Gillette.
& All night we kept our eyes on the backstage rope,
keeping us from no one but the bouncer
who stood at attention, careful enough

to preserve the possibility of the imminent
performance, while the barmen struggled to keep up.
Though Bono was a no-show, it didn't matter,
I was lucky as a man off his leash, as the speaker streamed
the hits & the crowd sang each line, from the feminist
nod of on your knees, boy in “Mysterious Ways,” to the taste

of empathy in “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” sung
just the way the crowd does on the arena’s floor, full-
throated, shoulder to shoulder with strangers in beers & joints,
the faithful glowing phones proof of assent & attendance.
We'd find him later, maybe next summer, when we heard
he might make his way back through town.

 

Maximilian Heinegg's poems have appeared in The Cortland Review, December Magazine, Tar River Poetry, Crab Creek Review, and Columbia Poetry Review, among others. He lives and teaches English in Medford, MA, where he is also the co-founder and brewmaster of Medford Brewing Company.

 

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DEIRDRE HINES

 

Red Flying Saucer Caught on Camera Above Cafe Florence, Letterkenny, County Donegal.

 

It was on the last Thursday of the wettest

or the driest July on record-

This may or may not have had some sort

of numerological significance,

of a kind Meteorological Eire

no longer used in their forecasts,

having sent the Magi into eternal retirement

on the advice of Government Directive 101.

Nevertheless

There had been definite signs and omens

that anyone with an ounce of wit

would not have missed-

But since when were wit and sense

deemed necessary

in these days of plastic currency?

On the one hand

The Gallagher hens were laying late,

The waters of the Swilly were runnning wrong,

Japanese Knotweed had the run of the ground-

No cause for ESB blackouts could be found.

Five hundred empty houses lay fallow

As nurses from the psych unit followed

after the homeless sick in the hollows

of the shadows cast by fat bellied wallahs.

But on the other hand

Five hundred met their twin flames in dreams

described in viral Facebook streams.

Many who heard their names repeated

in unexpected places were compelled

to google ' Fogotten Truths Revealed'-

That night

as poets spoke at the Open Mic

of moments of truth that gave them pause,

A hound and his man stand outside looking

up at a hovering disc in the red night sky

and he is brought to mind of that painting

by Ghirlandio of 'The Madonna with Saint Giovannio'

the saint his grandmother named him after

and he saw hanging in a Florence gallery

and of how histories will haunt until

the truth of every Truth illumines another

light on the other side of the shepherd's story.

 

Deirdre Hines is an award-winning poet and playwright. Her first book of poetry The Language of Coats was published by New Island Books. It includes the poems that won The Listowel Poetry Collection 2011. New poems have been published in The Bombay Review, Abridged, Boyne Berries, The Lake and Three Drops from a Cauldron to name a few. Her website is www.deirdrehines.com amd she blogs on poetry at www.alllanguageisastoryofforestblogspot.ie She reviews poetry for Sabotage.

 

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DEVON MARSH

 

She Does Not Make Sea Level Rise

 

As big as Delaware it came up

in dinner conversation unexpected,

the way it broke from Antarctica.

 

My son had listened to the same

report I’d heard that explained

how the berg, already afloat

 

when it cleaved, would not affect

sea level, though it held back glaciers

that would if they slid into the sea.

 

I listened to the story while driving

across town to visit my mother,

taking an indirect route just to see

 

old neighborhoods, the church where

my kids attended preschool, the paved

trail where they first rode bicycles.

 

My parents moved to be near us. Now

my mother drifts daily through wide halls

to the dining room, weekly to the hairdresser,

 

back to her apartment, her television,

her telephone, tele being Greek

for “at a distance,” like the callers’

 

voices she would love to hear. They float

far away on swells and troughs in an ocean

of their own making. My mother asks

 

the same questions over and over.

Her community feels like a group of refugees

from an archipelago of half-sunken towns

 

with schools, churches, pharmacies. Parks

with blue pools. And around the parks,

quiet roads where they taught my generation

 

to ride bikes, then to drive. Roads we followed

out onto ice the size of a state, our being

done with islands, unconcerned with melt.

 

Devon Marsh served as a naval aviator and now works as a risk manager for Wells Fargo Bank. His poetry has appeared in The Lake,Poydras Review, Muddy River Review, Penmen Review, Loch Raven Review, The Kakalak

 

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PAUL MCDONALD

 

Manet’s Olympia

 

Whose idea was the kicked-off slipper,

bootlace necklace? Yours of course,

Victorine, nude on the unmade bed.

 

Your maid’s a flower bearer, a breast of blooms

fresh from your admirer. You should have heard

the scoundrel joke as he passed them on.

 

He’ll be here anon, hence the cat’s arched back;

she’d shapeshift to the shadows if she could find some.

Your skin craves light, rejects halftones

 

to glare like wild teeth, no half measures

for your mismatched eyes, forthright stare.

But I can only wonder how you know I’m there?

 

Paul McDonald runs the creative writing programme at the University of Wolverhampton, England, and is a poet, novelist, and critic. His publications here

 

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RICHARD MERELMAN                                                                                  

 

My Favorite Things

after Rogers and Hammerstein

 

Fred, the man in the bed across from me,

          begins to die. I can tell

          from the nurses rushing in

and by their speed finishing up and drawing

          a blue curtain around him and

 

by the smell of his fear. We were admitted

          together.  I get better, and

          he gets worse. Go figure.

For a while before he was too sick, Fred and I

          would talk jazz. Fred saw

 

Coltrane live at Birdland, playing a long version

          of My Favorite Things in

          waltz time and hard bop,

ending with his patented sheets of sound.

          I told Fred I liked the tune

 

with lyrics. So now our room is finally silent,

          and I start to hum the melody

          softly, not to bother anyone,

just loud enough, I hope, for Fred to pick it up.

          I can’t imagine why I add

 

raindrops on roses, bright copper kettles, warm

          woolen mittens, girls in white

          dresses. I even scat a chorus.

From behind the curtain comes a metallic tap tap tap,

          tap tap tap. By dawn, Fred is gone.

 

 

Some Hiroshimas

 

We cursed the stink bombs that fell

          from the trees on our route to Cole Elementary.

 

The pulp cloaked the street, like the puke

          we’d spewed on our bibs when we were little.

 

Stink bombs were vomitous, squishy,

          viscous. The smell clung to our clothes.

 

Why bomb? The year was 1945;

          a gigantic weapon had just erased

 

two Japanese cities. Posters in hallways

         portrayed the Japs as beyond bad.

 

No one told us the tree was named 

         ginkgo, prized in Japan for its leaves

 

whose petals resemble a geisha’s fan.

         Roasted seeds of the female gingko

 

flavored the tea in pleasure houses

         before the War. Ginkgos are living  

 

fossils, whose timelessness perhaps implied

         a superior destiny for the Empire of the Sun.

 

Hiroshima finished that. Four ginkgos

        survived the blast…the only breathing

 

plants. Bearers of hope they were called.

        Do students at Senda Elementary

 

in Hiroshima complain of nausea

        when the nearest ginkgo sheds its fruit?

 

Do their teachers speak of that day in 1945

        and tell them a smell cannot speak for itself?

           

Richard Merelman taught political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (USA) for most of his academic career. He published his first volume of poems, The Imaginary Baritone (Fireweed Press) in 2012, and a chapbook, The Unnamed Continent, (Finishing Line Press) in 2016. Individual poems have appeared in a range of journals.

 

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GILLIAN PREW

 

your verb is all water and light

 

an oil slick of colours all wind and spindrift

a kaleidoscope

 

not meat

or a sheep's fleece hung out, steaming/ not something a man kills

 

you do

like a liquid prism

 

good grief

you are wild

a brave beam of broken

 

I feel my heart crimson - beat

by beat it composes a bursting –

 

the lochside is hurting

a heron calls like a king/ raises his wings like a cloak of rain

his feet still rooted to the shallows

 

your thrill of colour makes no sound/

you pass quiet as a cloud

into light and water

 

I will have you Instagrammed soon

 

Born Stirling, Scotland in 1966, Gillian Prew studied Philosophy at the University of Glasgow from 1984 to 1988. Her latest chapbook, Three Colours Grief, was published by erbacce-press in June 2016. She can be found online at https://gprew.wordpress.com/

 

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JILL TALBOT

 

 

Daddy Warbucks for Sylvia Plath

 

Catholics love fairy tales; innocent

As candles waiting for fire.

Daddy Warbucks, here is one for you.

 

Daddy, I have had to kill you

With a smile and a curtsy

And a how do you do?

With your box sawed in two.

 

An engine, an engine,

Getting ready for the party. Alice,

Tiny Tim, Virgin Mary, all invited, all set

To bow down—The tiramisu

Is to die for—You see, I’ve done it again.

But oh, I loved some version of you—

His name was Nick, he had a thing for orphans.

And I did exactly as you taught me to do.

 

But they pulled me out of the sack,

And with each needle prick we were back

On the same set I always knew

Would come true. With my better half

 

And a love of the rack and the screw.

I stole this poem from Sylvia Plath.

I’ve been praying to her ghost to heal you.

In the ICU a spider said, But he is not you.

 

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,

Keeping score with chalk and onions.

You took my potatoes straight from the source.

Your English heart and my Irish hair—

An eye for an eye, a baby for a wand.

Adoption papers signed. The king will never

Banish you. Never asking if I want seconds

But a brother will do.

 

If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—

My other daddy never existed, gone

Before I found you. All knowing the shape

Of a wishbone thrown into the fire. Ach, du—

 

There’s a stake in your fat black heart

And the villagers all adored you.

They are waiting for me to kill Sylvia.

To serve you back the heart on the platter.

You sneeze, they crumble, God bless you!

Daddy, daddy, I will never say I do—

I will eat my potatoes until England crumbles

And the king says, You do not do.

 

Jill Talbot attended Simon Fraser University for psychology before pursing her passion for writing. Jill has appeared in Geist, Rattle, Poetry Is Dead, The Puritan, Matrix, subTerrain, The Tishman Review, The Cardiff Review and is forthcoming in PRISM. Jill won the PRISM Grouse Grind Lit Prize and 3rd place for the Geist Short Long-Distance Contest. She was shortlisted for the Matrix Lit POP Award for fiction and the Malahat Far Horizons Award for poetry. Jill lives on Gabriola Island, BC.

 

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ANGELA TOPPING

 

The Five Petals of Elderflower

 

With the odd number five strange nature’s laws

Plays many freaks nor once mistakes the cause.

                                    John Clare

 

I

Enter through its centre of five petals

past the crown of stamens like matches

slide down the green stem, landing with legs

either side of the junction between stalks.

Now you are surrounded by flowers.

Soak up the hum – you are at one with lace.

Sleep now, as in fresh sheets, soothed

by the sun, head in blossom, a perfumed lullaby,

leaves far below to catch you if you fall.

But you will not fall: the petioles enmesh.

Your cheek is on your mother’s breast,

the flowers are sweet milk. Rock-a-bye.

 

II

This tree is elder. It’s safe. With the blossoms

we can make elderflower champagne

with the berries, elderberry wine.

Put your nose into it. Yes, it’s a good scent.

If it smells like cat’s pee, so will your champagne.

So we don’t pick those. This tree is fine.

Hold this bag open while I cut some.

We don’t want to drop any –

see how easily each flower head can come away.

There’s lots of stories about this tree. Some say

it’s Faerie, but your mum knows more about that.

I say it’s very good to use. But we mustn’t

take all the blooms from one tree or there’ll be

no berries, neither for us nor birds.

 

III

The smell is buzzing in my head, as we walk

down the night lane, away from the heated air

of the pub where friends spilled onto the car park.

We whisper as we pass sleeping cottages –

can’t even see the elder, just smell it, as the lane

becomes a funnel of scents and fuzzy leaves.

I’m giddy, stumbling; now there is no-one to see

you take my hand. We cannot even see each other.

The flowers smell of sex, of lust, foreign tongues to us.

Too soon the lane opens out into streetlights,

pavements, cars. You drop my hand. The scent

is left behind, pollened on memory.

 

IV

Elderflowers sing jazz, each petalled phrase

plays another variation on the last.

Its saxophone voice rises above twanged strings

of cello and double bass, holding the melody

as it flies high. Notes dance round our feet:

we wade in sound. It’s a five bar blues,

scrolls of baroque, rising like smoke, tasting champagne.

White is not white, is green and cream and ivory.

And it sings the blues.

 

V

By its five textures: the rough underside of leaves

and the smooth front, the strong stem, thinner wands

of stalks, and cobbly lace of blossom like slubbed silk.

By its green taste, its umbrella canopy,

by the cushion of blooms each with five petals.

By these things, I swear to remember you.

 

 

“The Five Petals of Elderflower” is the title poem from Angela Topping’s book, reviewed in this month’s issue.

 

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SARAH WHITE

 

The True Scandal of the Magdelene

 

                                    for Madeline Artenberg

 

A friend is reading me her poem

about Mary of Magdala, whose clandestine union

with the Christian Messiah, though a juicy item,

 

intrigues me less than the question

of Mary’s name and what became of it: An Oxford college

lists itself as Magdelen (pronounced Maudlen).

 

No one speaks of Mary Maudlen, but there is maudlin

to describe a work of art displaying sentiment

out of proportion with the situation.

 

Neither the college nor the region explain the connection,

only the image of Mary—weeping

at the Crucifixion, at the Tomb, and, later, in the throes

 

of Penitence. Europe’s artists—Donatello, Titian,

de la Tour—have glutted her with sorrow

and regret, a maudlin person, not the strong,

 

orgasmic heroine of Madeline’s poem.

If Mary wept, so what? Should a woman in tears—

no matter why or when—forever be open to opprobrium?

 

If maudlin must be in the dictionary, let it rarely

be assigned to persons, paintings, songs, or poems. Amen.

 

A review of Sarah White’s most recent collection, to one who bends my time, features in this issue of The Lake. She lives in New York City.

 

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