2015

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER ARCHIVE

 

 

Stephen Bone, Neil Campbell, Yuan Changming, Mark Danowsky, Rob Eccleston, Ted Jean, Laura M. Kaminski, Usha Kishore, Fiona Larkin,  Marion McCready,

Maren O. Mitchell, Claudia Serea, Michelle Watters, Steve Werkmeister

 

 

 

 

STEPHEN BONE

 

78s

 

Emptying your loft

I came across them

behind the gramophone.

The size of dinner plates

and just as breakable.

 

Took each one in turn

from its grey cardboard cover

and lowered the wind-up's

heavy snakelike arm onto 

unfamiliar names -

 

Tino Rossi. Al Bowlly.

Mistinguett. Listened

to distant talents 

scratched with age.

Their voices

 

now and then slurring

under the drag of the needle

as the turntable slowed. Like

grotesque recordings from their

deathbeds.

 

Until, with a few turns

of my arm - as if cranking up

a vintage car - their lungs filled

again with thirties' air. Resurrected

to the prime of your life.

 

 

Attic

 

The sturdy steamer trunks

scabbed with peeling labels.

 

The rusted rictus

of an upturned grate.

 

An abacus subtracting

beads onto the floor.

 

A blind doll. A flock

of damaged shuttlecocks.

 

A gramophone long retired,

Toscanini At The Met, still in place.

 

A Baby Belling.

A yellow beach ball

 

still limply holding

his father's breath.

 

 

Dragon

 

In black ink I uncoiled,

outstretched my wings

across the canvas of your back.

 

Made inseparable

with a needle's sting; a bond

of blood.

 

And though we can never come,

face to face, in mirrors we meet.

Where from over your white shoulder

 

you catch the promise

in the red dot of my eye -

 

the day I leave you

is the day I breathe fire.

 

Stephen Bone has been published in various journals in the U.K. and U.S. These poems originally published in his first collection, In The Cinema, Playdead Press,  2014

 

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NEIL CAMPBELL

 

Without You

 

The mail centre

    without you

Was like a world

    without birds.

 

All the letters

    had no words

And the parcels

    were empty.

 

Only once

    were you there.

In a golden heart

   on a silver envelope.

 

 

Oana in Jeans

 

Let it not be said

That I objectify you.

A soul cannot be objectified.

But forgive me a moment

As I digress pleasurably

And consider the poem of your jeans.

They were so tight

Around your majestic bottom

It was as though two

Denim balloons took flight

Into the vastness of all sky

And floated past the moon

Into the sunset.

 

 

Neil Campbell is from Manchester. He has two poetry chapbooks, Birds and Bugsworth Diary published by Knives, Forks and Spoons. Poems forthcoming in Under the Radar, Eunoia Review and Ink, Sweat and Tears. Currently working on a full collection.

 

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YUAN CHANGMING

 

Don’t Miss Me, Son, Ever After I Die

 

Don’t miss me, Son, ever after I die

For I know how much you will sigh

With mixed feelings when you recall

The spot where I showed you the first sugar cane

The moment when I took you to DLG Elementary

The first time we hiked in Cypress Mt Park

The first sightseeing tour we had (to Zhangjiajie)

The cozy restaurant where we ate in Beijing

The short poem I bribed you to write in grade ten

The lectures I gave you about the dynamic

Rebalancing of yin and yang… No, don’t

 

Don’t miss me, Son, not ever after I die

For I know how you will be getting high

With sadness that can engulf and suffocate 

Your entire inner being when you recollect

The broken pieces of my image, but think

More about your son, about how you two

Can enjoy being together at each supper time

Eating dumplings, talking aloud, joking

And laughing while you are still well and alive

 

Don’t, just don’t miss me after I die, Son

But keep thinking about your own son’s son

While all of you are so very much well alive

 

 

Y 

yum yum yummy, you have

become so very indulgent

in this juicy alphabet

you can readily get high
high within your hairless skin
as yellowish as the bank

of the Huanghe River

less sleek than a china crane
but more fragrant than a young yucca
while its pronunciation can lead you
to the ultimate truth you are seeking, its shape
can grow from an unknown sprout

into a huge Yggdrasil, where your soul

can perch, cawing glaringly

towards the autumn setting sun

 

 

Yuan Changming, 8-time Pushcart nominee and author of 5 chapbooks, is the most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but  writes English: since mid-2005,  he has had poetry appearing  in Best Canadian Poetry,  BestNewPoemsOnline, London Magazine, Threepenny Review and 1069 others across 36 countries.  With a PhD in English, Yuan currently edits Poetry Pacific with his poet son Allen Qing Yuan in Vancouver. 

 

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MARCH DANOWSKY

 

Left Behind

 

It's unsettling, the dull

sense of loss learned         

 

from losing touch.

It hardly matters

 

if it was your best friend

or a drug buddy.

 

It's when you find

a quiet moment to yourself

 

fragments well up.

That time someone told you X

 

maybe they never found a reason

to tell anyone else.

 

For an instant, you want nothing

but to get back in touch

 

if only to say: Look here

you may not remember my confidences

 

but I still know you

do not trim your nose hair

 

because you once witnessed

your grandmother yank one

 

and it was as if a flood-

gate had opened.

 

 

Shadow’s Territory

 

Out behind the bleachers

during recess on a fair day

my best friend and I met this kid

who called himself Shadow.

 

We did not talk much

after all, we were newcomers

to Shadow’s world of unsung rules—

his wild style.

 

We never got together with Shadow

outside of school, although

maybe I’m forgetting

something he said about territory.

 

Or maybe we exchanged

a silent pact

after seeing Shadow catch a bee

and remove its wings.

 

 

Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Alba, Cordite, Grey Sparrow, Mobius, Shot Glass Journal, Third Wednesday and other journals. Mark is originally from the Philadelphia area, but currently resides in North-Central West Virginia. He works for a private detective agency and is Managing Editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal. 

 

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ROB ECCLESTON

 

The Suit

 

It’s time fer suit agen

Still fits after twenty year

Ready for nother trip to chapel

Getting to be reglar

Third this year and only April

 

This time it’s Joe

Knew he ne’er see spring out

He nearly caught it in ‘42

Bullet straight through him and hit nowt

Must ave bin an ead shot

 

Last time were Jim

Randy old sod

I’d ave bet on some usband

But in the end flu got im

In bed, alone, with jamas on

 

First were Martha

Now she were a game one

Enjoyed er fun did Martha

Afore she got religion

She’ll know if it were worth it now

 

Kids asked t’other day

If I were ter be buried or burnt

I said I d’aint give a damn

But I’d best wear me suit

So He’ll know who I am

 

 

Rob Eccleston is 71 and, after a ten year gap, resumed writing poetry following his retirement at 70.

 

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TED JEAN

 

My brother’s casket’s flag

 

down the walnut balustrade,

in heavily stitched coarse cotton

stripes, descends.

 

Our several courses, too,

enacted in the stair hall, histrionic,

have tumbled through the intervening years.

 

A handful of times, I have bent to lift

a corner of his absence banner, sniff

its fading gesture at the stiff grey suit,

his cool clay wrist, the pungent soil spoils;

to recall his twenty-one gun grin.

 

Oftener, by multiples of sunrise currency,

I stoop to your spare pennant,

to snuffle the urgent earth of our soon conjugal end,

 

and but one blind witness rises in stupid salute.

 

 

Exercise no. 38

 

Pull your simple pickup

into a suitable spot

at the lower corner

of the big empty parking lot

of the new Walmart store

above McLoughlin Boulevard

at precisely 5:45 am, after

the forecast storm

has fully arrived from the coast;

 

kill the headlights,

shut it down, listen

to the idiot rain

tap dance on the roof of the cab

 

till your mind runs clear

 

 

A carpenter, Ted Jean writes, paints, plays tennis with lovely Lai Mei.  Thrice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, his work appears in Beloit Poetry Journal, [PANK], DIAGRAM, Up the Staircase, dozens of other publications.

 

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LAURA M. KAMINSKI

 

Conveying the Blessing

an early gift for Saddiq M Dzukogi, written a few days before his 25^th birthday

when I was small enough to be
invisible, I was once a shadow
behind the trunk of the mango
listening to the conversation 

of my parents, heard an elder
ask my mother: and how far is
it to America? how many days
on foot for a healthy man? 

I held my breath to better hear
because I knew this was a journey
I might also take some day long
distant in my future, but I could

not understand the answer, this
confusing talk of ocean, water 
so large on a clear day looking 
you could not see the other shore.

forty+ years later, I understand
no better. google tells me that,
by air, if I could fly directly
from this small patch of farm-

land in missouri, to zaria,
sweet zaria, to bring a blessing
to you for your birthday: ten
thousand kilometers the journey.

 

ten thousand! even if I were
to borrow those winged shoes
of mercury, file a flight-plan
and then walk across the air,

it would take a healthy man
two hundred days to cross from
here to there upon his feet,
and I am not as strong as such

a man, and those winged shoes
are much too large to fit me,
and late! so many days too late!
but how then? if I cannot find

a way to reach you, how will
I be able to convey these gifts
I've gathered for your birthday?
all I have is this paper and 

this ink. but if...what if I
take it out just before the dawn
in the cool of that last hour
before we can tell two threads

apart by colour? what if I go
walk beneath the lemon-blossom
sunflowers that stand two meters
tall and bend their heads to

 

read over my shoulder in the
dark? what if I hold the paper

up to their faces, let them
touch the poem to their petals?

what if I take this paper to 
the creek that whispers like
small children playing quietly
behind the barn? what if I 

dip a corner in the gentle
ripples of the water, let it
taste the letters? and later,
in the afternoon when the sun

is almost at the halfway mark
between top center and horizon,
i go into the garden, wrinkle
up the poem by using it to

catch the pollen spilling from
the blossoms of blue pumpkin
and sweet melon? and what if
I am joined here at the flowers

by a tiny hummingbird, an
iridescent gem with wings so
fast in flight they are near
invisible, create a loud

 

electric hum when they are
near? what if I give way to
this glorious young friend,
leave the poem on the grass

to watch as he immerses his
entire self into the heart 
of every bloom, sips from its
center, emerges solid gold?

if the poem so comes with
me and i use it as my market
basket, and then, at midnight
following, I take it out

into the night and hold my
arms as high above my head
as I can reach, angle it to
face the moon, will that act

of hope create a necessary
magic? will the moon deign
to accept the traces left
by sunflowers, treat this

poem as a sun, reflect it,
bounce these blessings far,
over my horizon, carry them
to yours? bounce through time
  
zones, over nations, bounce
again through dawn and dusk
until she sees your upturned
face where you stand as if

you're blind, a man who's
cast both eyes up into the
firmament and waits for them
to come back home so he can

find his road? will the moon
shine on your waiting face?
will she convey these gifts,
will your eyes return to you

and say they've seen a tiny
bird submerging in a blossom?
will they turn up in their
sockets, tell your ears to

listen? and will you hear
the other gifts then, hear
the birthday blessing in
the whisper, in the hum?

 

 

Laura M Kaminski (Halima Ayuba) grew up in northern Nigeria; she currently lives in rural Missouri. She is an Associate Editor at Right Hand Pointing. Her most recent collection of poetry is Considering Luminescence; these poems are part of her forthcoming collection Dance Here.

 

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USHA KISHORE

 

Girl Trees

To the women of Piplantari

 

Today they are planting trees here, to celebrate

the birth of a baby girl, invoking mother-goddesses

lost in time.  Their spirited talk about a greener future

 

revives the still air; their veiled giggles, promises to

the tired earth mourning for green trees that once stood

and breathed.  Elsewhere, they drown baby girls

 

in milk, sell them in bazaars, pluck them out

of their mothers’ wombs, like fragile dreams. 

I touch the earth, her drying skin watered by tears.

 

I hear the whimpering of foetuses inside her throbbing

womb, overflowing with new seed yearning to be born.

I hear stories pulsing in her lapis-blue veins.

 

I hear leafy whispers, rustlings, auguries of the birth

of a dark woman, saviour of the world.  I hear cries

of unborn girls, with wombs as large as the universe.

 

Meanwhile, in the festive hamlet, rainbow saris flower 

amidst the myriad saplings they carry for the little girl,

a miniature mother goddess chuckling in her cradle.

 

Today, the village common is a pulsating forest

of women, laughing, singing, dancing.  Mother Earth

reborn, every girl becomes a tree, every tree a girl.

 

 

In Piplantari, Rajasthan, local women plant 111 trees in the village common, each time a baby girl is born.

 

 

Usha Kishore is an Indian born British poet and translator from the Sanskrit, resident on the Isle of Man.  Usha is internationally published and anthologised by Macmillan, Hodder Wayland, Oxford University Press and Harper Collins India among others.  The winner of an Arts Council award and a Culture Vannin award, Usha’s debut collection On Manannan’s Isle was published in 2014.   A second collection, Night Sky between the Stars, has been published this year by Cyberwit India.  Recently Usha won the Exiled Writers Ink Poetry Competition.   Her work has been part of international projects and features in the British Primary and Indian Middle School syllabus. Forthcoming is a book of translations from the Sanskrit, Translating the Divine Woman, from Rasala India. “Girl Trees” was shortlisted for The Live Canon Poetry Competition, 2013 and appeared in the Live Canon Prize Anthology, 2013.

 

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FIONA LARKIN

 

Killing the Queen

 

is easy if you stun her first, a cushion muffles

her furious, unremitting hum.  Hear

the anthem of her million unborn offspring

in their paper palace.

 

Lay her out on the windowsill, its chipped white slab

setting off her silent mustard patterns,

her belly sharpening to a point,

her hollow ovipositor.

 

Set a pound for scale beside her.  A pale gold profile

smiles at her smashed head, calmer than you.

Let her lie in state.  Commemorate

your regicide.

 

 

Inhale

 

I see you making pastry, weekly rite,

despite the flour rising as it falls,

your fingers gloved in silky dust,

hypersensitive.  No clinical

calculator, you reckon all the weights,

cool-handed and sharp-eyed.

I help with rubbing in, incorporate

the white and yellow fats

by rubbing out my fingerprints,

till flour settles in their loops and whorls.

You bind it all together with an egg.

Veils drift as you flour the bottle,

rinsed of milk, for rolling out the dough.

You lift and turn its heavy disc, dry

as bone, and drape its soft flop

on the clouded glass, let it fall to fit

the white enamelled pie plate.

I scoop in the stewed apple, watch

you roll again and drop the top in place,

trim and crimp the edge, prick and glaze.

Your wet cloth, wiping the work top,

dampens down your allergens,

as you untie your nurse's persona,

the white cotton surgical mask.

 

 

Fiona Larkin was born in London to Irish parents.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a range of publications, including Envoi, And Other Poems, SOUTH Poetry, South Bank Poetry, Ink Sweat & Tears, London Grip and The Stare's Nest. “Killing the Queen” was originally published in The Oxord Magazine issue 356.

 

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MARION McCREADY

 

Gorse

 

Ulex, furze, whin -
I've been collecting its names
as it furnishes the hills
at the end of Auchamore Road.
          The hills that crouch around
the Bishop's Glen and the Balgaigh Burn.
 

As a child I was drawn
to the yellow flood
of pea-bud blossoms
hanging from their knife-spines.

The scent of coconut in the air
mingled with the salty firth.

          Here and now -
every morning we walk
between gorse hills
and garden tulips.
          Mothers throng
to the school gates -
the bell's gone, we're late
as usual. I usher you in,
hang up your coat
on the yellow duck peg
assigned to your name.

          Then I become nameless
for a while - not even 'mum'.
And drift back towards the hills,
the yellow arms of gorse
beckoning.

These hills are my school;
the gorse flowers - a throng of mothers

and I, the nameless one,

                drifting between them.

 

 

 

Lindow Man

 

They keep you in a dark corner

and at first the voyeur in me

is thrilled to see the peat-preserved

flesh, bone, hair.

 

But when I look at you 

I'm surprised by my desire

to touch your cheek, stroke

the delicate scroll

of your ear -

head turned to the side,

chin to chest

as if resting in sleep.

 

I want to give you back

into the arms of the bog.

But they keep you here,

freeze-dried, in a glass cage.

 

Lying on a bracken-brown bed -

your curled up body;

skin tanned to leather;

centuries of peat

dyeing your hair red.

I know your last meal

was charred bread

and somehow mistletoe.

 

If these glass walls could -

they would smash to smithereens

and release you into the air.

 

If the dried quag under you could –

it would open up and swallow you

back into the earth.

 

 

Marion McCready lives in Argyll, Scotland. She is a recipient of a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award (2013) and winner of the Melita Hume Poetry Prize (2013). Her first full-length collection, Tree Language, was published by Eyewear Publishing (2014).

 

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MAREN O. MITCHELL

 

Y, The Philosophical Letter

 

divides, yin and yang, not against itself,

but meshes into wholeness by opposition,

 

putting forth the personal power of no,

the youth of yes that yields to no one,

 

like surrender, the universal white flag

of raised arms, and the strength of a weapon

 

to down a Giant; as surely our Y lives fork

into constant choices: that major, this job;

 

on leaving home each day, the speed

and skill of our driving, whether we miss

 

our appointment as participant in the wreck

we slowly pass, or arrive just in time

 

to cause it; the unassuming blind date

that captivates, determines family branches;

 

and when we don’t believe in our best intentions,

our unselected options hover in yesterdays’

 

if only, threaten to haunt, hourly ghosts,

and, yet if we do, and let hungry fate claim

 

the residue, we find our choices good

and our life even better.

 

 

M Is The Sound Of Humming

 

music by those who cannot

or choose not to sing;

 

the middle of the alphabet;

the longer, true dash;

 

although cracked, sanely

and sufficiently supported

 

by identical sides. Surfaced

as a pictograph for water,

 

evolved into mountain mime,

she mirrors choices:

 

more, most, mine, me;

is the means of petty cruelty,

 

derivation and definition of words.

M’s omnivorous reach embraces

 

our scavenging face mites;

ammonia marigolds;

 

storybook field mice to adore,

the too real house mouse we abhor;

 

meteors dying in splendid

celebration of infinite mysteries;

 

and morning that levitates us

from blinding night.

 

 

Maren O. Mitchell’s poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, The South Carolina Review, Hotel Amerika, Southern Humanities Review, Town Creek Poetry and elsewhere. Her nonfiction book is Beat Chronic Pain, An Insider’s Guide (Line of Sight Press, 2012), available on Amazon. She lives in the mountains of Georgia, U.S.

 

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CLAUDIA SEREA

 

My grandmother, the angel, and I

 

I’ll sit in the hallway

of the deserted winter palace

next to my grandmother,

next to the angel.

 

The three of us,

we’ll sit holding hands,

still like statues,

through the tide of revolutions,

war clatter and thunder,

and the dead silence that follows.

 

We’ll be the ones who burn slowly,

protecting our small flames.

 

My grandmother will wear

her best flowered head scarf.

I’ll have my Converse on.

 

The angel will be bored.

 

My grandmother, the angel, and I,

we’ll wait for someone

to open a window

in the endless shiny hallway.

 

We’ll wait

for a breath of fresh wind,

or an explosion

 

to blow us out

like candles.

 

  

Red and blue balloons

 

For days, we lay tangled in wires,

dripping tubes,

and purple pain tendrils.

 

I hallucinated

a garden of ashen roses

my dead grandmother was pruning.

 

Big eyes,

small mouth,

you were finally rescued

from my feverish womb.

 

In the nightmare cloud,

I curled around you.

 

*

 

You were asleep in your basket

in the back of the car

 

and I was looking out the window

at the blinding world.

 

Icicles were melting.

 

You breathed wet,

unopened snowdrops.

 

And everything was new

and beautiful—

 

the slow traffic on Route 17,

East Rutherford’s bleak

industrial park,

 

and, by the Buick dealership,

the red and blue balloons.

 

Claudia Serea is a Romanian-born poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1995. Her poems and translations have appeared in Field, New Letters, 5 a.m., Meridian, Word Riot, Apple Valley Review, among others. A four-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, she is the author of Angels & Beasts (Phoenicia Publishing, Canada, 2012), A Dirt Road Hangs From the Sky (8^th House Publishing, Canada, 2013), To Part Is to Die a Little (Cervena Barva Press, 2015) and Nothing Important Happened Today(Broadstone Books, forthcoming). Serea co-hosts The Williams Readings poetry series in Rutherford, NJ. She is the founding editor of National Translation Month. More atcserea.tumblr.com.

 

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MICHELLE WATTERS

 

bipolar janitor creates angry housewife poet

I thought you were a genius.

 

your ability to insert profanities into every sentence.

without batting an eye.

 

your belief that the neighborhood psychic

cut feet off chickens to use them as magical talismans.

 

your knowledge of whittling and making hashish.

though I saw you do neither.

 

I saw you build a medieval village, complete with drawbridge

and moat, entirely out of flat toothpicks.

 

I saw you make a round kite just to see if it could fly.

it couldn’t.

 

I saw you try to make a papier mache’ pumpkin that filled the kitchen.

it turned out to be half a pumpkin.

a giant orange bubble that took weeks to create.

a few minutes to tear down.

 

later when I was an adult. I found out you were bipolar.

 

now I look at my childhood as some artistic statement

sandwiched in between the profanity you were such a master at

 

I don’t want to be remembered as just a housewife

so I’ll let your abuse define me.

 make me into this poet with a chip on her shoulder

 

I’m sure you would agree

anything is better than being remembered for how well you cleaned a toilet.

 

 

Michelle Watters poetry has appeared in Vending Machine Press, Red Paint HIll Poetry Journal, Black Heart Magazine, Bop Dead City and elsewhere. She is a assistant poetry editor at Mud Season Review. Michelle lives in Shelburne, VT with her husband, daughter and two dogs.

 

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STEVE WERKMEISTER

 

King of the Road

 

I stood in the sun, flicking my wrist

in the slow studied

 

way of a boy mastering a pitch for his

father.  I was nine

 

or ten, and he had come back to teach

me the curve.

 

His hat marked home, ashes from his cigarette

fell to the ground

 

beneath his knees.  I did my best to pinch

the ball between

 

thumb and forefinger just like he showed

me.  I didn’t notice

 

the whiskey bottle until he pulled it from

his pocket to drink

 

down his disgust. He had nothing else

to give, and the ball

 

kept sailing into the dirt, skittering across

the weeds, scattering

 

small grasshoppers like bits of light chaff

caught in the wind.

 

 

Steve Werkmeister is currently an Associate Professor of English at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas. Between family and classes, he is sometimes able to write. He has (or will have) recent work in Silver Birch Press’s All About My Name series and Pankhearst.

 

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