{"id":4014,"date":"2022-03-12T19:54:05","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T00:54:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=4014"},"modified":"2026-02-04T17:14:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T22:14:06","slug":"spring-2022","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ratsassreview.net\/?page_id=4014","title":{"rendered":"Spring-Summer 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n 
\n<\/a>
\n <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n\"\"<\/a><\/a>
\n           (Cover Art Big Love<\/i> by Jim Ross)<\/strong>
\n 
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

The Poets<\/h3>\n

 
\n 
\nJ.S. Absher<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nBATHSHEBA & SOLOMON
\n 
\nAltars reek of sacrifice.
\nI have bedded thousands
\nbut none so beautiful
\nas Mother, whose wet thighs
\nsmoked in the cold air.
\n 
\n 
\nLETTERS
\n 
\nI don\u2019t like long phone calls, long
\ntexts even less. I don\u2019t care for most
\nlong poems. But I do enjoy my son\u2019s
\nfive-page letters\u2014sometimes printed
\nfrom his desktop, more often handwritten
\nin neat cursive, without strikethroughs,
\nerasures, or insertions. He drafts them
\nin pencil, deletes, interpolates,
\nthen makes a clean copy. His long
\nwalks, his progress in German, office
\npolitics, all in a dark-sky blue ink.
\n 
\nWe write intermittently, sometimes
\nping-ponging our deepest worries.
\nOnce, years ago, I took him with me
\nto the finance company to take out
\na loan; I wondered if he sensed
\nthe humiliation I felt for putting
\nthe little we had up for collateral,
\nthe cheap stereo, the mattress
\non the floor we shared, little else.
\nI don\u2019t ask; he probably doesn\u2019t
\nremember. A lot goes unmentioned
\n 
\nin any relationship\u2014some things
\ndon\u2019t need to be said, others can\u2019t.
\nAt 70 I may not live to tell all
\nI ought\u2014too many second thoughts,
\ntoo many hard fact-checks against pride
\nand compassion; and if the past holds true,
\npoems I\u2019m starting now will survive me
\nundone. Dear Son, it will not be
\ncause for grief: the world is never finished.
\nThe sky, this early afternoon, ten days
\nbefore Christmas, shines bright blue.
\n 
\n 
\nTOWN BOY
\n 
\nA summer evening, \u201959 or \u201960,
\nwe drove down ridge and hollow
\non dirt and gravel roads, past a stand
\nof silking corn in a narrow meadow,
\nthrough fields of Holstein cattle,
\nto a milking barn and a tumble-
\ndown smokehouse and a pale white silo,
\na steeple without the bell.
\n 
\nWe parked by a dirt-gray
\nclapboard house. Boys with dirty nails
\nand a naked baseball welcomed me to play
\nwith my soft town hands. The farmer,
\nsmiling but gaunt, the mother,
\nwith the cracked still beautiful
\n 
\nsugar bowl of her mother\u2019s, laid
\nchores aside to be hospitable.
\nOne of their milkers had died;
\nthey took us to the barn to see her butchered.
\nThey pulled back ribs and hide
\nlike heavy curtains, sliced open the belly
\nand unexpectedly I saw the calf inside her,
\nits hairless milky skin, its hooves like curds.
\n 
\nThey worked by a hissing lantern\u2019s light.
\nWe watched from the shadows till it was late
\nand the cow was nothing but cuts and waste.
\nThey gave us a quarter-side. Come back soon!
\nthey waved us home into a low whey moon,
\nour faces lit by the green dash lights. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJon Bennett<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nNAIL FUNGUS AT THE USED PORNOGRAPHY STORE
\n 
\nDell\u2019s Magazines and Collectibles
\nsat between a cobbler
\nand a fondue parlor
\nin a reek of boot black and gruyere
\nInside, a fat man on a stool
\nflipped through 1000s of pages
\nChic, Hustler, Juggs
\n\u201cTrade or cash?\u201d
\nSkin sallow, eyes rheumy
\nI wondered how
\nhe came to have such a job
\nAfter countless sticky pages
\nhis fingernails had absorbed
\nso much loneliness and shame
\nthey had become spongy talons,
\nfungal ecosystems
\nHe\u2019d take a bite of whatever it was
\nhe was eating at the time
\nwet a thumb
\nand flip the pages
\nof smiling, cherry red lips,
\npert breasts, parted legs
\nand suntans tarnished
\nby only the occasional
\ntattooed teardrop. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMike W. Blottenberger<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nMISTAKES WERE MADE
\n 
\nCan I forgive myself for not
\ngiving something to the homeless woman,
\nbegging by the traffic light?
\n 
\nCan I ever let go of the pain
\nof loving someone who left my heart
\na scorched field?
\n 
\nThis broken bone in my hand.
\nSunsets and dental appointments
\nI missed.
\n 
\nI confess\u2014mistakes were made,
\nbut I have been a disciple to sorrow
\nand to her sister truth.
\n 
\nLet me bite into this apple.
\nLet me live this imperfect life,
\ntasting everything. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRonda Piszk Broatch<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWE COULD BE THE BOAT MADE OF CONCRETE,
\nOR THAT NEW VODKA DRINK
\n <\/p>\n

It\u2019s getting harder to remember your face, your features,
\n your darker side, your dawn. When I was eight, I worried
\ntouching myself would make me pregnant. I miss the lake
\nwhere I walked backward and found a rusty nail, being
\ncarried home by someone else\u2019s boyfriend, the crutches, the
\npain. It occurs to me that if you had wings, we could wear
\nthe same shirts \u2013 the ones with special cut-outs in back, for
\nour wings, and we could crush about the neighborhood,
\nabout the new hybrid dandelions that keep their manes all
\nyear long. But instead, maybe I just recall how you laughed
\nso hard that night before we rode our horses, how you
\nsnorted strawberry soda out your nose and sogged up our
\nbowl of Bugles. That\u2019s okay, in the morning my dog ate
\nthem. Sometimes I find former fragments of you in another
\ndimension, like when I see a mattress on the side of the road,
\nwell, not a mattress, but the springs, or how at five am, after
\nthe punk show you called your mother in Oregon, and I
\nwonder if the bunny living in the hedge is as nervously
\noptimistic as I am about our new administration. Icebergs are
\ncolliding, and the water is threatening to tickle my shins.
\nWhat we don\u2019t talk about we save for another lifetime. I say
\nleave the negligee on the driveway. It\u2019s soaked, and really,
\nit\u2019s not either of our color. You\u2019ve lost all your bay leaves,
\nyour basil, your blue borage. I just hope we find another
\nmirror soon, because this one is busted.<\/p>\n

 
\n 
\nIMPERFECT SONNET WITH BIRTHRIGHT, WITH BIRD
\n 
\nI\u2019m not the fruited flutter, the ghostly
\nbittern biding time inside a lonely year,
\n 
\nthe universe tapping out a message
\nfrom your mother, who insists you call her,
\n 
\neven three years after death. Times I am
\na trapezoid, the tricked absence, trapping
\n 
\nyour traffic of gladness in a pill box,
\nunder the bed, with dust, and papa\u2019s guns.
\n 
\nIf not the chambered bullet, maybe I\u2019m
\nsome go-get-\u2018em goddess, my mask strapped
\n 
\nsecurely behind my ears, my sanitized
\nhands more treacherous, more pandemic
\n 
\nthan the codling moth, pyrethrum scented
\napple tree. Your inheritance, your seed.
\n 
\n 
\nMY LATEST MIDNIGHT’S SUSURRING IN MY EAR
\n 
\nMy religion drives a piss yellow car, smokes
\nlike my mother. I make a note to hope, and tuck it
\ninto my ribcage. When I\u2019m drenched, my religion
\n 
\nhuffs, hands me a towel. Catastrophe laughs in my ear,
\ntells me my mascara makes a Picasso of my face.
\nMy heart has an endless appetite for starbursts,
\n 
\nand not the kind Religion\u2019s hand slapping my ass brings up.
\nI high-five the briny between us, put on my shittiest
\nchartreuse pair of Lamont\u2019s sales-rack pants, celebrate
\n 
\nmy high-water teen years, my uncle\u2019s glee. My religion
\ntells me to open my pain and I do, with the talent
\nof an octopus trainer. Now, I drown insurrection
\n 
\nelectorally with my kombucha, give my religion
\none last backward glance. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nIngrid Bruck<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHRIFTY HUSBAND
\n 
\nfather knows best
\nthough both parents work
\nhe\u2019s head of the household
\nand makes family decisions
\n 
\nthree daughters (ages 8, 11, 12) have come of age
\neven the eight-year-old wears a bra
\nwith his wife, that\u2019s four women
\nmenstruating in the house
\n 
\n       underground
\n       the river flows
\n       blood red<\/i>
\n 
\nthe cost of sanitary products funnels money
\nfrom essentials\u2014or beer with the boys\u2014
\nthe government clinic offers free
\nbirth control pills or injections
\n 
\nmother and girls worry
\nabout possible side effects
\nof birth control on children:
\nloss of bone density, infertility
\n 
\n       heavy fog
\n       levels
\n       a hill<\/i>
\n 
\nthe women obey
\nfather orders
\nit\u2019s the law
\nfather knows best<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nNicole Callr\u00e4m<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLISTENING TO PRINCE ON THE SHANGHAI METRO
\n 
\nit feels damn wrong
\nthis lewdness in my ear
\ndirt in the corners
\n 
\nprints slide down window
\nlights swing guava
\n 
\nyou so good…baby there ain\u2019t nobody better\u2026<\/i>
\n 
\nthe temperature is full fever up in here
\nI slide the scarf off my neck
\nrun a finger over burning skin
\n 
\nis it me
\nor is it
\nthe way she leans against that pole
\nthe way he sucks a slice of mandarin
\n 
\nbursting, juice on his chin
\nhe bites and licks
\nwatches me watching his hunger
\n 
\nyou’ve got the butterflies all tied up<\/i>
\n 
\nunbearable the car slows to a throb
\nof bass
\nheart rush of lip gloss application
\n 
\nmouth open, grapefruit tongue
\nblack boots, gold bracelet
\nmango-colored nails
\n 
\nif I was your girlfriend, would you remember
\nto tell me all the things you forgot when I was your man?<\/i>
\n 
\nhand on thigh    flesh-colored tights
\nwinged eyeliner       train moves
\na finger through caramel
\ndeliberate sweet
\nmy stop finally arrives
\n 
\ntime to
\nget off
\n 
\n 
\nDEAREST MINDERS,
\n  
\nI am a target here,       I know.
\n  
\n& well
\nyou probably noticed my leering problem
\n 
\nI am a womanist but oh
\n\u2026bra lines
\n 
\nthe way girls sweat on August streets
\nit\u2019s a little embarrassing
\nand by embarrassing I mean
\nI heart<\/i> their short skirts
\nthe vulnerable curve of plum breasts
\nbacksides and dumpling stands
\n 
\nit\u2019s true
\nI missed my stop eight times this week because a bead
\nof sweat rolled down the curve of a neck
\n 
\nI confess
\nthere\u2019s one whose words make my blood hurt
\nmy doubts double like crabgrass
\n 
\nI may not be an idealistic foot soldier
\nI miss my bad habits
\nthis pandemic brought a lot
\nof truth
\nlike this spider silk size line between poetry
\nand disappearing into the mountains
\n 
\nI\u2019ve been drinking some
\nI have a fantasy that involves warming rice wine
\n       and braiding hair
\nI need a sabbatical
\nfrom motherhood
\n 
\nI have 246 love poems that would
\nblow
\nup
\nmy
\nlife<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nUBI SUNT
\n 
\nI used to be a red-maned goddess,
\nbestriding Goblin Market.
\nI had triumphs with weighty fish,
\n 
\nwith a moose. I kept bees.
\nI was on my way to Bedlam.
\nI was bedlam. Once, I had awakenings
\n 
\nin waiting room chairs, but that
\nwas decades ago, and now,
\nI believe in my convictions,
\n 
\nand all around me cyberspace flashes,
\n\u201ccome buy, come buy.\u201d
\nEncircled by this benign insanity,
\n 
\nI have no honey. I don\u2019t fish,
\nand where I live there are no moose.
\n 
\n 
\nDOGS
\n 
\nThese will be our last dogs; we say.
\nThey will die just before us in these final days
\n 
\nof the Republic. We remind one another
\nof the Pax Romana, of prior governments
\n 
\nwhen hope and a mean balance remained.
\nThis morning, too many of us have given in
\n 
\nto what is. We used to be like dogs, longing
\nfor some novel thing to eat, expecting
\n 
\nexotic scraps. Then science died,
\nthen facts, and we had to be satisfied,
\n 
\nswallowing the rotten meat, leftover
\nfrom 1776 that lay under the trestles where
\n 
\nthe drunken Roman poets we once cherished
\nwere sleeping freedom off.
\n 
\n 
\nHOW SOMETIMES
\n 
\nYou know how sometimes
\nin a dream, you are
\nthe watcher, observing
\nthe protagonist\u2019s fears
\nand triumphs but
\nat one remove, chased
\nbut not in the chase,
\nnot wearing the handcuffs,
\nnot holding the trophy aloft,
\nnot four husbands deep into
\na reservoir of pissed-off?
\nNow that would be the life. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Carter<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSPRING FAMINE
\n 
\nI just scared a bear away
\ntrying to break into our trash.
\nShe floated across
\nthe lighted driveway
\npushed into the shadows
\nand became one.
\n 
\n 
\nGOING OFF SCRIPT
\n 
\nAt funerals people rely
\non the script\u2014He\u2019s
\nin a better place
\nthey\u2019d say,
\nat my father\u2019s funeral.
\nThis is what
\nI\u2019d say back;
\nI don\u2019t know
\nwhere he is, but
\nI sure as hell
\nknow where he isn\u2019t. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nShannon Clem<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTREAT YOUR TEMPLE, RIGHT?
\n 
\nThe chewy pull of taffy-life,
\nwithout expiration,
\nin blissful junk food purgatory
\nTeeth cracking into
\na thousand broadening smiles\u2014
\nThe chill of kid-drunk cola,
\nclimbing it down throats.
\n 
\nChalky powdered sugar-acid
\nstuck on overlicked fingers,
\nturning Red 40
\nInhaling cotton candy fibers\u2014
\nthe insulation to our childhoods.
\n 
\nBrittled peanut pieces
\nmocked our future bones
\nDeceptive nougat middles\u2014
\nmade dense,
\nour light little souls.
\n 
\n 
\nGLUING LEAVES
\n 
\nI caught a little girl
\ngluing leaves
\nonto a tree.
\n 
\n“You can’t stop them
\nfrom falling,”
\nI said.
\n 
\nShe insisted
\nthat I didn’t know
\nhow these things work\u2014
\n 
\nI agreed. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDavid Colodney<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nANOTHER LONG SEASON FOR THE METS
\n 
\nends with a loss & a groan & a yawn \t& puddles
\nof backwashed beer in plastic cups plopped
\nunder folded seats. At least Mr. Met the Mascot
\ndidn\u2019t flip off a fan this season, making
\nthe year a success on the team\u2019s failure continuum.
\nWe walk from Citi-Field lurching lockstep
\ntoward the 7-train where we board with a clamor &
\nbounce off each other like foul balls rattle a backstop.
\n 
\nOver the screeching whistles of the subway \u2013
\nthe train is a conundrum of mutters & murmurs \u2013
\na frustrated fan (is there any other type of Mets fan?)<\/i>
\nthrows f-bombs with the zip of a Jake deGrom fastball
\n& another yells back that if deGrom wasn\u2019t always hurt
\nthe Mets would be contenders & another howls
\nthat Mets pitchers get no run support anyway so who cares
\nif he\u2019s always hurt & on this point the car can agree. The swearing
\nturns the subway car into a steel thought bubble & how unroyal
\nQueens can be sometimes.
\n 
\nBut this is a poem about optimism.
\n 
\nBecause that\u2019s all fans have: hope for the right trades,
\nthe right free agent. The perfect bat in the heart of the order,
\nthe lefty relief specialist with a filthy splitter.
\nMets fans are a little like Sisyphus,
\npushing that rock from Spring Training to the All-Star
\nBreak to the finish of seasons that rarely end in playoffs,
\nonly to do it all over again the following season.
\nCamus would have followed the Mets, critiquing the absurdity,
\nall this effort into something over which we have no control.
\nBut the answer why is easy: on Opening Day,
\nbefore the first pitch thrown & the first beer spilled,
\nthe Mets will be tied for first place        with every other team. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nLuigi Coppola<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nPUSHING PINS INTO STRAWBERRIES
\n 
\nI got the idea from something inside
\nme: a steeling that goes through marrow.
\nBite on tin foil and you\u2019ll know.
\n 
\nI picked strawberries because
\nthey remind me of babies\u2019 heads:
\npulsing and meaty and juicy
\nand waiting to rot.
\n 
\nYou think I\u2019ve lost the plot
\nbut I\u2019m searching for a way in:
\nthe correct angle, the right pressure,
\nthe exact ratio of pierced fruit to
\nunpierced fruit so as to be found out
\nafter it\u2019s too late.
\n 
\nYou choosing my produce is fate.
\nAnd while you chew on the flesh
\nand escaping claret pours
\nover your lips and a delayed
\nprick to the roof of your mouth
\nwidens eyes at the surprise,
\n 
\nI\u2019ll be in the car park
\nslashing tires and myself. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nSusan Cossette<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLUCKY OLD BROAD
\n  
\nI wear elastic waist pants,
\nzip-up fleece pullovers with cheerful red cardinals,
\ncozy socks, sensible slip-on felt clogs.
\n  
\nI pull Mama\u2019s 1940s glass Christmas ornaments
\nfrom their eggshell crates,
\nthen the ceramic Christmas tree from 1970.
\n  
\nBring me cold beer in a clammy long neck bottle,
\nwatercress sandwiches with the crusts removed,
\ncherry pie and vanilla ice cream.
\n  
\nGive me grandchildren.
\nI want to post ultrasound pictures
\nof my yet-to-be born on Facebook.
\n  
\nI go to bed by 9:00 pm on New Year\u2019s Eve,
\nclad in a Lanz of Salzburg flannel nightdress,
\npurple hummingbirds circling my neck beneath cotton lace.
\n  
\nStarlings feed in the dark.
\nSome say their coming is a sign of death,
\nbut I think their inky feathers are pure beauty.
\n  
\nMy red hair now grey,
\nI am the luckiest old broad
\nstanding on two feet.
\n 
\n 
\nPORTRAIT OF THE MOTHER AS A YOUNG WOMAN
\n-after James Joyce<\/i>
\n  
\nYou were mine, even when the paparazzi
\ngot that first ultrasound shot,
\nyour profile, the tiny hand waving.
\nChubby black and white cheeks on the refrigerator
\nnow public domain, for all to admire.
\n  
\nYou were mine when I breastfed,
\nthe small mouth clamped fast, greedy, needy.
\nI read aloud to pass the time\u2014
\nOnce upon a time and a very good time it was
\nthere was a moocow coming down along the road
\nand this moocow that was coming down along the road
\nmet a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo. <\/i>
\n 
\nYou were mine when I would not let you cry in your crib.
\nWarm in my bed, clammy, finally breathing the peace only a toddler knows.
\nYou were mine when the doctors put you in an MRI tube
\nthen told me it was not cancer.
\nYou were mine when I left you at nursery school,
\nwhen I put you on the bus, when I made your dorm room bed.
\n  
\nIn your adventures, the Power Rangers and my Dawn dolls
\nescaped the twin Lego towers the plastic pterodactyls crashed into.
\nAsh covered, they took the subway home to their little boys and girls.
\n  
\nYou were mine the day I left home,
\nthree suitcases and the fat orange cat.
\nYou made me confess the fears that I have.
\nBut I will tell you also what I do not fear.
\n I do not fear to be alone or to be spurned for another
\n or to leave whatever I have to leave.
\nAnd I am not afraid to make a mistake,
\neven a great mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too. <\/i>
\n  
\nIn my adventures, I will fly away with you,
\nwe, wild angels of mortal youth and beauty.
\nWe will find a small apartment and play X-Box,
\nfeed the four cats, read comic books
\nand eat salty Jiffy Pop.
\n  
\nOur candy wax wings will not melt. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJoe Cottonwood<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSONNY\u2019S BACHELOR PARTY
\n 
\nI\u2019m the designated level-head
\namong Sonny\u2019s carpenter friends,
\nthe one who says no-thank-you
\nat the peyote punchbowl
\nbut also the one who hired Brandi.
\n 
\nBrandi commands Sonny to remove
\nher pink panties with his teeth,
\nhands tied behind his back
\nand then they dance no-touch.
\n 
\nWhen Brandi takes a break
\nI follow to the kitchen
\nbeing the business manager of this party
\nand nobody joins because these rowdies
\nare strangely shy and respectful of a naked lady
\nso we chat as she sips a water bottle.
\n 
\nShe needs no robe, her body a costume,
\nher beauty a shield against the ordinary,
\na pleasant mom who is sending two precious children
\nto Catholic school, and then she resumes
\ndancing with the boy-men until a neighbor
\ncomplains about the noise,
\nand we all go home.
\n 
\n 
\nAUGUST 9, 1984: \u201cI HIT HER.\u201d
\n 
\nI hit my daughter.
\nA poke? A slap?
\nI can\u2019t imagine using a fist
\nbut then I can\u2019t imagine slapping either.
\nA scene deleted from my memory highlight reel
\nbut discovered in my daily journal
\nwhere I summarize and confess each day.
\n 
\nAt age almost-6 she was screaming
\nbecause her brother got to go with Mom to buy pants
\nand she my daughter had to go home
\nin the front seat of my smelly truck
\nso in frustration after a horrendous work day
\nincluding a dropped brick on my toe and a traffic ticket
\nwhich is not an excuse but
\nI hit her.
\nShe carried on screaming
\nso I drowned her out
\nwith the radio.
\n 
\nA mile later, she quit.
\nBy the time we got home she was singing along
\nwith the Beatles. And me.
\nSo says the journal.
\n 
\nShe\u2019s 43 now.
\nShe might remember.
\nI\u2019m afraid to ask.
\nShe still likes the Beatles.
\n 
\n 
\nSHIRTLESS DUSTY
\n 
\nI first meet Dusty on a beach
\nbeside the Chesapeake Bay
\nin this photo where
\nhe\u2019s dating my cousin Liz
\nwho suddenly grew a body.
\nDusty\u2019s the one with chest hair.
\nI\u2019m the kid with glasses.
\n 
\nIn this photo Vietnam shirtless again
\nhe\u2019s on a river boat patrolling
\nwrites Stay in college.
\nStay the hell out of here.<\/i>
\n 
\nNext here\u2019s him shirtless and Liz shirted
\nin the house he built converting an old log cabin,
\n3 kids raised and gone. Bankers stole his pension
\nwhen they looted Bethlehem Steel.
\nDusty repairs cars, raises a pig
\nthat sleeps under the house.
\n 
\nHere Dusty starts posting paranoid gun-rights
\ncrap on Facebook so I unfriend him.
\nHe dies. Agent Orange kills him
\nthough the doctors won\u2019t admit it.
\nHis life like firing a rifle at the sky:
\na disturbance the air closes over.
\nWe open our shirts,
\nwe see the bullet strike.
\nHere. Right here. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nKen Cumberlidge<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nIN JULIE’S ROOM
\n 
\nI can
\nremember
\neverything but
\nthe undressing bit.
\n 
\nMy fingers know
\nno lingering ghosts of
\nbuttons\/clasps\/shoelaces\/zips
\n 
\nof whether we
\nhelped one another
\nout of layers, into love
\n 
\n(I’d like to think we did).
\n 
\nStrange, not to retain
\nthe choreography
\nof how we came to
\nknow ourselves as us at last:
\nrejoiced in; understood.
\n 
\nYou’d think I would\u2014
\nthat I could call the process
\nreadily to detail’s grateful eye
\n 
\nas with all that passed between us
\non that autumn afternoon
\nin Julie’s room.
\n 
\nJulie:
\nwho we barely knew
\n\u2013 a music student, wasn’t she? \u2013
\nsomeone you’d met at college;
\n 
\na friend<\/i> you said,
\nthough from the way
\nshe’d tilt her head
\nand gaze at you,
\nI thought it plain
\nshe harboured
\nquiet hopes
\nof being more.
\n 
\nCalled away by work
\nshe’d let us stay,
\nsat on the floor,
\nplaying her records
\n(Holst, Debussy…),
\ntalking low or not at all
\nand sipping Schnapps:
\nfire in a glass. Bright. Apple red.
\n 
\nWe used her bed,
\n 
\nconsigned our shyness
\nto its loose, untidy wind of sheets,
\nto catch us as we
\nfell
\neach to the other, then to sleep
\nfor oh, a drifted hour or so ’til,
\nwaking
\n 
\n\u2013 dry-mouthed, tousled,
\nawestruck at our own audacity
\nand fearing her return \u2013
\n 
\nwe fled:
\n 
\nsnuck
\nout like thieves
\n 
\nran
\nheadlong
\nfor the bus
\n 
\nleft Julie
\nto discover
\nthe forensic truth
\nof us.
\n 
\nOn the top deck into town
\nwe huddled
\n 
\nclung
\nas if the world might
\nany minute fall away
\n 
\ntongues humbled,
\nstunned and stumbling
\nover
\nhow we’d ever find
\nthe words
\nto fit the way we felt
\n\u2013 no, better: knew<\/i> \u2013
\nourselves
\nto be:
\n 
\nfree,
\nunburdened,
\nbroken with the past;
\n 
\nall calendars re-calibrated,
\nall we’d known with others
\nrendered null
\nand we new-minted
\n 
\nby a paradox
\nthat still bewilders me:
\n 
\n(Does it you, too?)
\n 
\nhow making love made
\nvirgins of us both,
\nthat afternoon
\n 
\nin Julie’s room. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nCraig Dobson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nREVENGE
\n 
\nthe absences that make us what we are<\/i>
\n \u2014John Burnside
\n 
\nSome feud I can\u2019t recall sent me over
\nnext door\u2019s garden wall, creeping through the dawn
\nto an old Belfast sink rich with oxygenating weed
\nrocks and freshwater snails, over whose slow procession
\nhis neat orange goldfish used to dart and glide \u2013 shooting
\naway to hide that day as I squirted the washing up liquid in.
\n 
\nWhy is it that I can\u2019t summon what I felt when \u2013
\nfeigning innocence after school \u2013 I slipped back across
\ninto my offence to watch him retrieve each russet-gold
\nstillness from the bubbles\u2019 choking iridescence?
\n 
\nAnd why is it only later, when he began to guess,
\nthat I remember the fear dragging me down,
\nand the sudden, buoyant thrill as any sense of fault
\nor remorse drowned in what he couldn\u2019t prove,
\nand I realised that I could still breathe, if not exalt?
\n 
\n 
\nFORBIDDEN
\n 
\nThe bitter taste of apples growing
\nbehind the broken-glass-topped wall
\nopposite the waste ground whose bushes
\nconcealed your small camp in which,
\nunder rotting leaves, you hid the bag
\nof naked ladies you found tossed over
\nthe hoarding one endless afternoon \u2013
\nthe future\u2019s secret pages laid before you,
\nlike the couple you saw by the dying tree,
\ntheir faces buried in each other\u2019s,
\nher white blouse undone, his hands
\nhard on each blue-jeaned half of her
\nbehind which you were watching
\nas you lay with your ladies-in-waiting.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE MIDDLE-AGED MAN AND THE MERMAID
\n 
\nI saw her when the tide hung high,
\nriding its swell in the weed-heave
\nwhere otters hunt the rock pools\u2019 flood.
\n 
\nThe brine wind blew ripples onto her skin
\nand chased grains of sand over the seal-slid shore
\nthat spread all before her.
\n 
\nThe only sounds were sea birds calling
\nin the autumn sky and the fish-tail slap
\nof each wave upon the strand.
\n 
\nWhen she sang, her eyes closed and her shoulders
\nrose from the cold, grey sea.
\nAnd when she sang, she sang just for me.
\n 
\nTuneless and harsh, her voice
\nhawked up a phlegm-drenched rasp
\nof jagged wailing song.
\n 
\nShe was older than I\u2019d thought.
\nHer eyes were gelid, dull as limpet shells,
\nher long hair daglocked with weed and crabs.
\n 
\nHer skin sagged, the colour of silt.
\nHer scales were broken, some missing,
\nher mucous-clagged tail ragged and incomplete.
\n 
\nWhen she finished her song she grinned:
\nher mouth all gaps, its few teeth
\ncrooked, hooked and brown.
\n 
\nShe coughed hard and gobbed into the sea,
\nthen pointed a bony talon my way
\ncurling it over, repeatedly.
\n 
\nI recoiled. She cackled, grabbed
\nher dab-flat tits and licked her tongue
\nlasciviously over her salt-cracked, scabby lips.
\n 
\nI stumbled up the beach, the breeze chasing me
\nwith her raucous screech. I stopped once
\nto look back along the shore\u2019s drawn curve.
\n 
\nShe\u2019d gone. The mirroring sea had closed
\nover the spot where she\u2019d been. Only the gulls\u2019 cry
\nand the wide grey sky hung over the deserted scene. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nClive Donovan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nIT WASN’T ME
\n 
\nIt all started with a finger
\nin the haze of a \u2013 dream.
\nThe gap between brain and hand
\nhardened and fastened, focused
\ninto the semblance of a limb
\n \u2013 linking \u2013 the two
\nand all I had to do was sit
\n*there*
\nwith my own arm bone lazily
\nbut PURPOSEFULLY
\nreaching out
\nfor a glass of stout.
\n 
\nAfter that it was easy:
\nMy hips and feet went off stepping,
\nbuttocks drumming up a storm,
\nelbow sticks nudging neighbours.
\nlegs and lips veering
\ntowards fashionable girls
\nand honestly, it wasn’t me
\nwhen my belly lurched
\naway from my head
\ndan   dan   dan
\n    sing   sin sing
\nin the village hall.
\n 
\n 
\nTHANKS TO THE POLICE
\n 
\nOh let us give thanks to the police:
\nFor that they direct traffic when the lights fail
\nand make everything slow again as in olden times.
\nFor that they respond to burglaries with due diligence
\nand not just issue crime numbers for the insurance.
\nFor that they listen to a raped girl attentively
\nand not comment on her short skirt or drunkenness.
\nFor that they do not insert truncheons into prisoners,
\nnor concoct fake stories for the beak.
\nAnd also that they do not harass citizens
\n‘cos they is black or got long hair or dress gay.
\nBut mostly for that they do not attack protestors
\nwith a ghastly glee
\nlike soldiers with guns and gas.
\nFor all this fine behaviour they deserve
\nlittle umbrellas in their cocktails.
\n 
\n 
\nEVOLUTION
\n 
\nBlissfully savage, a swamp-monster revs up
\nOutrageous teeth like a chainsaw murdering
\nAll moving beings. Fell thing.
\nBerserk, a brigand tramples pulpy bodies,
\nPausing to watch two Liliths fight for the right
\nTo his penis, slapping the victor.
\nRoaring defiance. Boss.
\n 
\nRulers of the world in their own eras:
\nNo lies in their lives, only
\nRaw bellies and power.
\nEliminated now by law,
\nAnd evolution, and election.
\n 
\nNow, somewhere in a bunker
\nWith electric cars and bars,
\nNicely kitted-out and laminated,
\nHere’s a smooth young lad so very civil,
\nPondering which buttons yet un-sunk,
\nShould shoot the rocket soon to smash
\nOn to a distant hamlet far away;
\nDestined to be omelette \u2013 a continent beyond.
\n 
\nNo-one fought for his<\/i> unwanted cock
\nBack at college where they mocked him.
\nStill unnoticed, even now,
\nHis usual erection rises
\nAs the surging missile launches,
\nSavage, singing and amok. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nWilliam Doreski<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nCOSMIC CORKSCREWS
\n 
\nIntergalactic filaments
\nspin with enormous torque
\non their own axis. Can\u2019t see
\nwith my small reflector scope,
\nbut I feel the galaxies link
\nwith massed dark matter to form
\nliving corkscrews sprawling
\nhundreds of millions of light-years
\nfrom large anchoring clusters
\nthrough elongated spirals of blue
\nand red shift: the largest, longest
\nrotations in the night sky.
\n 
\nMotion asymmetries prove
\nthat pirouettes of two hundred
\nthousand miles per hour
\noccur, yet are too leisurely
\nto complete a single orbit
\nin the life, so far, of our cosmos.
\nI won\u2019t live to experience
\na second revolution. But why
\nworry when such vast structures
\nwhirlpool so gracefully, blessing
\nthe universe with their presence? <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nVictoria Dym<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nON THE ISLAND OF TRASH
\n 
\nlike a plastic raft
\nremote Pacific Ocean
\ngarbage patch
\ntwice the size of Texas
\nfloating detritus
\ntoothbrushes-soap bottles-fishing nets
\nswirled and swirled and swirled
\nocean currents
\ngive birth
\nplumed algae
\nmussels
\nopen ocean
\ngooseneck barnacles
\nPlanes crab
\nshrimp-like amphipods
\nall colonizing
\nforming an imperfect union
\nraising a flag
\non the island of trash<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAlicia Elkort<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nIt began with a flower in bloom<\/b>, & I walked
\nalone across the park, fixed my glasses
\nso I wouldn\u2019t miss the sharp contour
\nof tree and bush, wouldn\u2019t miss the men
\nin shadow. Then, I needed love the way
\na dehydrated woman needs water\u2014
\ncascading & poured generously so a few
\ndrops might land on my tongue. But love
\nis an inside job & the fountain was dry
\n& sun was high, cumulus clouds spinning
\naway. I left the bed. I left the room,
\nI left terror where terror lives\u2014
\nin a dark, unimaginative place\u2014 & the antidote?
\nI pull tenacity into my stride, walk out
\nof the house, across the park, my legs
\ncarrying me where I need to land.
\nAs a toddler, I wore a blue top with a whale
\nappliqu\u00e9. Even then I loved whales.
\nTheir largeness, their weight, an antithesis
\nto my tiny body and small voice.
\nI would be safe in the belly of a whale.
\nIsn\u2019t that a puzzlement? A poet
\naware she cannot control what comes.
\nSo, I left the bed, I left the house,
\nI walked alone across the park, fixed
\nmy glasses so I wouldn\u2019t miss the sharp
\ncontour of courage which I pull on like long
\nsocks across my thighs, higher and higher
\nuntil my tongue is ready & I move
\nlike a leopard that no one can catch. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMichael Estabrook<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nROBERT
\n 
\nHe\u2019s my second cousin works on two farms
\nlives in a double wide trailer
\non Burton Hill Road in Barton, Vermont
\nwith his 78-year-old mom (she has nowhere else to go)
\nbut \u201cit\u2019s all good\u201d because they each have
\ntheir own bedroom and bath.
\n 
\nEven though I\u2019ve never met Robert
\nor talked with him when I heard this news
\nI wanted to hop into my Lexus drive up to Barton
\n(only four hours away) assess the situation for myself
\nestablish a \u201cfriendship\u201d of sorts give him
\n$1000 or two become his hero and benefactor.
\n 
\nBut after I slept on it I realized
\nI was being a delusional idiot
\n(not to mention an insufferable egomaniac)
\nso instead I wrote him a nice letter
\nhad a good cry. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRichard Evans<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFORGIVENESS
\n 
\nI wondered what she was about to do
\nthis image slowly hardened like cement
\nshe sat erect upon the wooden stool
\nI gazed as if she were a monument
\nshe placed her hands on the piano keys
\na melody declared yes, she could play
\nmy daughter beckoned, “again ‘nanna please”
\nmother smiled then continued to amaze
\na bit of rust did show, but did not last
\nher Amazing Grace made us sing along
\nshe played gospel with flair the die was cast
\nthis well-kept secret erupted in song
\nthough sad for not hearing her play before
\nI silenced my grief then begged her for more<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nVern Fein<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTRAVELS WITH MY AUNT
\n 
\nAunt hauled me around
\nwith her on her adventures
\n 
\nwhen I was young.
\nShe was a free bird,
\n 
\nnever had a real job,
\nonly errands for her successful
\n 
\nmother and older brother, and,
\nmy parents preoccupied with their lives,
\n 
\na father busy with adultery,
\na step-mother hiding in movie magazines,
\n 
\nleft me at loose ends.
\nAunt Elaine thought I was bright,
\n 
\nshe stimulated my mind
\nin ways no one else did.
\n 
\nAlways stacks of books by her bed side;
\nI think she read the whole library.
\n 
\nBut pages would be turned only until a book bored her,
\nlike the half-smoked butts she squashed, filling her ashtrays.
\n 
\nOn the adventures in her world\u2014
\nthe zoo, baseball games, hole-n the wall eateries\u2014
\n 
\nwe visited champion bowlers who were lesbians,
\nshe a closet one I found out years later.
\n 
\nNever married but verbally abused
\nher one boyfriend (her shield)
\n 
\nbecause he was a pro-union liberal,
\nsnidely calling him her Comrade.
\n 
\nShe read Marx but was a Republican
\nwho loved Eisenhower, loathed Adlai.
\n 
\nDressed like and was a beatnik
\nbefore they were named,
\n 
\nalways wore dark sunglasses,
\neven inside, sported a tam,
\n 
\nfrequented bars with peanuts on the floor,
\nquipping until her humor turned
\n 
\nthe bar flies\u2019 laughter into scorn
\nas her words became mocking fire,
\n 
\nforged by her boiling anger.
\nToo often I was the target of her ire.
\n 
\nThe last time I saw her
\nwhen a young family man
\n 
\nwho visited her only because
\nI felt her loneliness over the phone,
\n 
\nshe was sloppy into a crying jag,
\ntaking shots from a variety
\n 
\nof schnapps bottles, a rainbow of flavors,
\ngetting drunker and drunker,
\n 
\npounding the table over and over,
\ncrying and moaning harder and harder
\n 
\nfor every failure
\nin the world and her life.
\n 
\nWhy did I continue to see her?
\nWhy did I tell you her broken story?
\n 
\nBecause I know she loved me
\nand, indeed, I loved her too. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDan Flore<\/a> III<\/strong>
\n 
\nNEAR WHERE GRAMPY DIED
\n 
\nmy cousin and I
\nwere smoking cigarettes
\nnear the garage
\nwhere my grandfather
\nkilled himself
\n 
\nwe didn\u2019t mention his death
\nthe silence of the garage
\ndid that for us
\nstanding there as big as his ghost
\n 
\nwe went on talking
\nand I remember us
\nmentioning something about God
\nthat made the sand in the yard
\nsomething I wanted
\nto put my toes in
\nand maybe never come out of<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nGeorge Freek<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHE MOONLIGHT CAF\u00c9 (AFTER LIU YONG)
\n 
\nAs night slowly arrives,
\nI sit in a small caf\u00e9.
\nA melancholy moon stares at me,
\nand won\u2019t turn away.
\nAmid black shadows
\nits rays quiver like strings
\non a blue guitar.
\nDead leaves fall from trees.
\nI sit alone, where old men
\nand old women eat
\nbiscuits dipped in tea.
\nThey don\u2019t stare at the
\nmoon. They don\u2019t think
\nof what\u2019s to come.
\nAs I leave, the wind blows
\nmy hat down the street.
\nIt was old and worn.
\nI\u2019m too indifferent to run. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nSteven Fregeau<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHEAVEN HATH NO HATRED
\n 
\nSometimes
\nthe most beautiful thing
\nin the world is a Playboy
\ncalendar hanging
\non the wall of a frathouse
\n& the tin tray of pot
\nin the center
\nof the room.
\n 
\nAll the nightmares
\nof the sun
\ngo down
\nbehind houses,
\nwhile lovers
\nfuck on mattresses
\nwithout
\ntaking off clothes\u2014
\nthe rush
\nto get it done
\n& get back
\nto the party,
\n& the nostrils
\nwide & bragging.
\n 
\nThe rain outside,
\n& a spilled beer
\nwhere a center guard
\nwalks barefoot
\nin boxers
\nthrough broken glass
\n& mouse turds
\nscreaming school cheers
\n& calling friends queers,
\nthen filling
\nthe mouth
\nof a passed-out
\ndrunk
\nwith his scrotum
\nfor a photo
\nshe\u2019ll live to kill
\nherself for later.
\n 
\n    There is much to learn
\nfrom the ways,
\nfrom things done so young
\n& dumb, just to buy
\nweed or speed\u2014
\n    much to learn on the job,
\nupon waking,
\nwhere the high cost of smiling
\nwaits for the right time
\nto fart the beer farts\u2014
\n    much to learn once old,
\nhaving passed through
\na few polite funerals
\nhungover as hell &
\npraying for the day to end\u2026
\n 
\nBut in those times:
\nMiss October
\nrises from her cauldron
\nin the aspect of a witch,
\nprinted on 10,000 pages\u2014
\nthe scent of flowers
\nfills the air,
\nthe peckers in 10,000 hands
\npoint to her with
\nendless praise\u2014
\nher emerald eyes,
\nunnoticed,
\ncast green light
\nupon her tits,
\n& the spiderwebs
\nacross her breasts\u2014
\nadmire her
\nendlessly. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nGerald Friedman<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHEADLONG
\n 
\nIt\u2019s hard to brake and hard to steer,
\nless reliable every day,
\na little hotter every year.
\n 
\nThe oil tanker\u2019s engineer
\ndreams open sea to Prudhoe Bay
\nbut still it\u2019s hard to brake and steer.
\n 
\nNo matter our degree of fear,
\nzero to a hundred, we pay
\nthe racers hotter every year
\n 
\nfor the black prizes they revere,
\nthat speed them on so fast that they
\ndon\u2019t care it\u2019s hard to brake and steer
\n 
\nwhere heaven\u2019s always dry and clear
\nor where the clouds are steamy gray
\nand hotter, wetter every year
\n 
\nand send our bus in the highest gear
\ncareering down the flooded way
\nharder to brake, harder to steer,
\na little hotter every year.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE WISH
\n 
\nI\u2019ll take a path that\u2019s not on Google Maps
\nwhere every way around a juniper
\nmight be another path, find one that traps
\nthe hiker in a siege of thorn and bur,
\nbut once I\u2019ve dodged, pushed, tunneled through their stings,
\nI\u2019ll stand where recent rain reflects a peak.
\nApache plume\u2019s pink threads, dirt-centered rings
\nof grass, red paintbrush bloom. Someone will speak.
\n  
\nWhat will you pay?<\/i> “A memory of success.
\nHealing balm off the bark of a white fir tree.”
\nWhat do you want? <\/i> Now I need to confess:
\n“Grounds to think that the truth will make us free
\nand that a child in a plush seat can tell
\nthat others too don\u2019t clap for Tinker Bell.”<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMac Gay<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nUNCLE CRIED UNCLE
\n 
\nHe selflessly stepped out into the yard
\nby his favorite tree, that water oak,
\nto freeze himself in time and space
\nand not print himself forever on
\na wall and ruin a room with a hole,
\nan indelible hell in the family home.
\nAlways thoughtful, but the thoughts
\nwere now no longer full. “I would like
\nto abscond while me, myself, and I
\nrecognize ourselves, don’t have to ask why.
\nYou can’t begrudge me that. Yes, I’d
\nlike to remember the man in the mirror,”
\nhe joked, no joke. “I want to still be here
\nwhen I leave, want to know, you know,
\nthe fellow who’s brought in the sheaves
\nfor all the blessed in this house these years.”
\nHe was a thoughtful man, he was, but
\nall meaningful thoughts were leaking out.
\nHe could see before long there would be
\nnothing there, nothing between those
\nsad blue-green eyes, so he put one there,
\nsmall, yet huge for all concerned,
\njust one, just once and for all.
\n 
\n 
\nBLACK HOLE
\n 
\nEvery county has had at least one:
\nthe boy who broke through the ice
\nand drowned in the lake. But does
\nplural diminish his terrible fate?
\nDoes tragedy’s universality
\nlend triviality? Not on your life.
\nEven though somewhat like war
\nwhere death is a dime a dozen
\nthe stark specificity of Jim
\nshot all generals off their dark horses
\nwhen that black hole took him.
\nThough I scarcely knew the kid
\n(several years younger and 2 towns over)
\ngood sleep was scarce for weeks.
\n 
\nYet most of that cow pond was shallow
\nbut under his unlucky hole
\nwhere the creek bed was deep.
\nAnd all of that horror at 8!
\nOld, I’ve had a million close calls
\non ice, in cars, motorcycles, in bars,
\nwith lightning while hiking,
\ndead blackouts when drinking.
\nSo who handles the reasons,
\ntakes care of the rhymes?
\nAnd who in hell seconds your motion
\nof oops when it’s time?
\n 
\n 
\nWATER SAFETY
\n 
\nEver dwelled on drowning,
\nthat claustrophobically lethal failure
\nof the submerged inverse of screaming?
\nDown there no one hears a damned thing,
\nunless maybe Neptune is listening.
\nOh dear, thoughts of futile attempts
\nto suck in viscous fish air
\nprovoke in me fear and despair.
\nWhen you’re out there on sneaky
\nwet water, beware: Even
\nthose expert in swimming
\nsometimes suck in when
\nthey should have blown out.
\nAnd though the water is shallow,
\na babe in the bath is no catfish
\nor trout when the poor thing slips
\nunder. Blunders like choking
\non a chunk of prime steak
\nor a skid on a smooth road’s black ice
\nfor death’s needs often suffice.
\nOne ill-timed gasp can do the dark trick.
\nAnd death is infinite orders of magnitude
\nworse than just being injured or sick<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nGene Goldfarb<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nMOM & DAD, FAST & FURIOUS
\n 
\nM: Nathan, you\u2019re finally home. What took you so long?
\nD: My beloved and I were planning to run away.
\nM: Really. What did you bring me?
\nD: A disease.
\nM: Not funny. And you aren\u2019t much of a gentleman.
\nD: Did I say I was?
\nM: Seriously, did you bring me anything?
\nD: Some money.
\nM: Money\u2019s good. I like that.
\nD: Finally.
\nM: I\u2019m planning for us see my sister\u2019s family this weekend.
\nD: Oh, how I hate that bunch of Hungarians.
\nM: What\u2019s the matter with you? Always against them.
\nD: Are you so perfect? Never tried to learn proper Yiddish.
\nM: So what? Your family are so clannish and don\u2019t try to be nice.
\nD: My family? Don\u2019t start.
\nM: Don\u2019t raise your voice to me!
\nD: You can scream on your teeth for all I care.
\nM: I won\u2019t and you better not.
\nD: Oh, you\u2019re afraid I\u2019ll embarrass you?
\nM: Just close the window if you\u2019re going to be loud.
\nD: Ha! I don\u2019t care. Let the whore on the third floor hear us.
\nM: Enough of this. What do you want?
\nD: I know it\u2019s late. Can you make me a flank steak?
\nM: Sure. Sit down. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRebecca Gomez<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLOVE LETTER FROM THE BRUSH TO THE SHRIKE
\n 
\nYou who are not as you seem and more than you appear
\nshow me the spoils of your day
\nand allow me to assist you with them
\nmake me a part of the bloodiest of what you carry
\nso that I know I am not a convenience
\nbut a necessity.
\nIn turn you must know that I am here always
\na tangle of limbs and hair in a knot at your feet
\nand that you could ask me not to straighten out
\nor imply that the backwards bend of my knees could be of use to you
\nand I would never wish to walk again.
\nMy darling boy
\nwhen you impaled your prey on my shoulders
\nhow was it that you knew
\nexactly what I needed? <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nWilliam Greenfield<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nATTRITION
\n  
\nBetween the day he let go of Mama\u2019s hand
\nand the day he turned away from the mirror,
\nhis bike tires began collapsing under his bulk.
\n  
\nHe tries to revive them at a gas station air pump
\nas bullies mock, Does the doughboy live
\non Rocky Road? <\/i> They chortle, blind to hippo tears.
\n  
\nGrandma untangles her oxygen cannulas and knows
\ntoo well that the need to feed has swallowed them both\u2014
\nlike the last gulps of a railbird as his longshot fades.
\n  
\nShe knows the morbid rush of macaroni and cheese
\ncoursing through the veins; ladles of it help you
\nforget when you could skip rope, twirl like a ballerina.
\n  
\nIf there is hope, it lies beyond the reach of nine-year-olds
\nwho climb maple trees; it begins in the heart of a boy
\nwho bravely asks a little sister to help him lace his shoes.
\n  
\nIf there is hope, it rises in his memory of proud drawings
\nof horses and birds, before the fork pushed the pencil aside.
\nIt begins with the memory of being wrapped in his mother\u2019s arms.
\n 
\n 
\nFORGIVE ME MR. DRYDEN
\n 
\nWhether you have entered the Hereafter or you are
\nusing a white cane to make your way to the bus stop,
\nI hope that you have reached your destination. Forgive
\nme, Mr. Dryden, for not helping you along the way.
\n 
\nWe smoked Canadian cigarettes in the morning
\nmist while you drank black coffee and told me
\nwhen your father\u2019s face began to fade like an old
\nphoto, when the glow of a candle set off a migraine.
\n 
\nForgive me Mr. Dryden for not staying at your side,
\nfor not offering to drive you to the liquor store
\nafter your daughter took on a new gender and your
\nfancy office equipment crashed.
\n 
\nIt should not have ended this way. We drank Labatt\u2019s
\nin Manitoba and watched butterflies drink what we
\ngave back. I still remember how you used your tongue
\nto feed the fishing line through the loop.
\n 
\nMy fishing reels have rusted but I will always remember
\nthe scars of failure, not just the ones that left you in a
\ndarker world, but my failures to find some common ground.
\nI watched you cry the night you saw the Northern Lights.
\n 
\nForgive me Mr. Dryden if we have nothing left to share.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJohn Grey<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nCLUTCHING THE HARD WOMAN
\n 
\nThe quills are not as sharp
\nas I\u2019ve been led to believe.
\nAnd the ice has a story to tell
\nabout every ray of sun
\nthat shone upon it.
\nAnd what stiff metal
\ncan bend like a throat hollow?
\nWhat kind of rock can form a breast?
\n 
\n 
\nI AM FIFTEEN
\n 
\nAnyway, we’re seated together in the dark back seats of the movie theater.
\nNo, I haven’t got to third base. But I’ve made contact
\nand, with my speed, I figure there’s a good chance of an infield hit.
\nChristine’s beautiful. And classy. Maybe too classy for baseball metaphors.
\nBut she breathes in my right ear. And I’m so nervous, she
\nbreathes for both of us. I look down at my hands. How creepy they are
\nin the shadow. Like giant spiders. Are these the creatures I want
\nto represent me down the contours of her knee? To be honest,
\nthey’re the dumbest of creatures anyhow. They wouldn’t know
\nwhat to look for, and if they did come across something worthwhile
\nby accident, they’d have no clue what to tell my brain.
\n 
\nI try to watch the movie. It was her choice. Syrupy music. Older people
\nmaking love. She sighs when stars kiss, sighs sadly when they don’t.
\nIt’s as if she’s up there on the screen while I’m pinioned
\nbetween arm rests. Luckily the other woman shows up and
\nthe love-fest is disrupted. Christine is clearly disappointed.
\nI put my arm around her to comfort her. Her head falls on my shoulder.
\nThere\u2019s nothing here I can brag about to my buddies.
\nBut, at least, I\u2019ve impressed myself a little. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAngi Holden<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSHOES
\n 
\nThe cellophane lid is cracked
\nand yellowing,
\nthe ribbon slides off easily.
\nIn a nest of tissue, resting on a sheaf
\nof documents \u2013 a birth certificate,
\na death certificate, letters
\nof congratulation and condolence
\nthat arrived in the same post \u2013
\nare a pair of shoes.
\n 
\nThey are hand-stitched, satin,
\nwith tiny bows that once tied
\nacross feet so small they could fit
\nin the palm of a hand.
\n 
\nThe scarlet ladybirds sewn
\ninto the ruffles of lace
\nlook like they are hibernating
\namong dried flowers,
\nwaiting for Spring.
\n 
\nWe are only sleeping, <\/i>
\nthey seem to say.
\nOnly sleeping. <\/i>
\n 
\n 
\nKINTSUGI
\n 
\nGather up those fragments,
\nthose memories of better times:
\nthat afternoon on Benllech Beach,
\nthe tiny child splashing through the shallows;
\nlunch with friends, with wine and laughter;
\na walk in Delamere, the autumn leaves
\ngathered round our boots.
\n 
\nHopes for days to come, those too.
\nOne day we\u2019ll meet again, and hug.
\nWe\u2019ll sing and dance and celebrate.
\n 
\nFor now, these broken pieces are enough;
\nthey have to be. The only choice we have
\nis how to hold them, how to piece their edges,
\nbuild up their golden seams to make a bowl
\nbig enough to hold our love.
\n 
\n 
\nEDITH WHARTON POSES FOR HER MOTHER
\nPortrait by Edward Harrison May<\/a>, 1870
\n 
\nThe words you threw at her over the years
\ncame hurtling back from the pages of her novels:
\nall those childhood criticisms,
\nthe sly comments about her first beaux,
\nthe suggestions that she could, should, do better.
\nThe slights about her style – a dress too long, or short,
\nthe wrong colour for her skin, a dated cut.
\nComparisons with her brother, so much brighter
\nand destined for high places,
\nor her younger cousin, so much prettier
\nand so graceful, likely to marry well.
\n 
\nLook deeply into the eyes of the portrait
\nyou commissioned. Only seven and already
\nshe was appraising you, finding you wanting.
\nShe was content to position the folds
\nof her crisp blue dress to catch the light,
\nto cascade her ringlets over its shoulders.
\nShe arranged her smile for the portrait painter,
\nbut he saw her frustration as he sketched.
\nThis artist, who even then could unmask
\nthe shrewd intellect beneath the artful pose. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRichard Holinger<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHERE\u2019S ALWAYS SOMETHING YOU CAN DO
\n 
\n\u201cBring it to the house,\u201d she said,
\nso I let the bundle go back limp
\nfor the first time since finding it.
\n 
\n\u201cPut it on the kitchen table,\u201d she said.
\nIt looked too long and tired lying
\nstretched and flat like that.
\n 
\n\u201cWhere does Dad keep the empties?\u201d she said.
\nI could see the boxes piled in pyramids
\nbehind the Chevy pickup truck.
\n 
\n\u201cIt wants a wooden frame,\u201d I said,
\nunsure of what I wanted and what
\nshe was capable of delivering.
\n 
\n\u201cDarlin\u2019, it\u2019s begun to smell,\u201d she said.
\nI saw what she was getting to,
\nso I grabbed it with both hands.
\n 
\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothin\u2019 you can do for it,\u201d
\nshe tried to make me think before I ran
\ntoo far away from her to hear.
\n 
\n\u201cThere\u2019s always something you can do,\u201d
\nI cried, and brushed away its flies and watched
\nthem buzz above the prairie afternoon.
\n 
\n 
\nRHINO HIDE, BUFFALO HAIR, GIRAFFE MEAT, AND ELEPHANT CHIPS
\n 
\nMy mother\u2019s phobia of snakes
\n       slammed books shut if she turned
\na page and saw what even looked like
\n       one: a wriggling worm, the neatly coiled
\n 
\nrope, or even your sinuous, meandering
\n       lane, diamond-backed for busses.
\nMagazines fared much worse, twisted
\n       by terrified fingers into grotesque
\n 
\norigami status only Satan would favor
\n       as place cards at his toxic table. Inheriting
\nthe fear as surely as our passed down
\n       DNA, my brothers and I, if tripping over
\n 
\n lawn\u2019s slim garter snake (its white-lined black back
\n       striking against its yellow underbelly), or
\nthe gentle, thicker North Woods pine snake
\n        (its coffee stains spilled over scaled khaki
\n 
\nskin), would jerk back like a lassoed calf.
\n       Once calmed, we\u2019d gallop back for scythe
\nor ax to hack the head from offending find,
\n       decapitation meant to kill our waking
\n 
\ndreams. This summer, my psychiatrist brother
\n       before breakfast discovered lakeside a snake
\nwhose lazy posture gave itself up to retrieval.
\n       Roped among fingers, it traveled up the cabin\u2019s
\n 
\neastern steps, through a screen door, to where
\n       a three-year-old\u2019s hands were coaxed to hold
\nthe offering, to value the gift of knowledge,
\n       to revere the blessing of familiarity in order
\n 
\nto vanquish antique stubborn fears born
\n       not two generations past, but millennia,
\nwhen over African grasslands Homo Erectus
\n       speared through camouflaged cover to ferret out fangs
\n 
\nlong taught to leap at any such innocent evil,
\n       the reason why when Paul\u2019s niece\u2019s short, eager
\nfingers received the slick, twisting contribution
\n       to her later psychological stability, it bit
\n 
\nher soft, white flesh in murderous rage, the taste
\n       bitter as ancestral skin stinking of rhino
\nhide, buffalo hair, giraffe meat, and elephant chips.
\n       The little girl yelped, surrendered to onslaught, escaping
\n 
\nover jute woven rugs the color and feel
\n       of ancient lands beneath a sky as blue as a bruise.
\n 
\n 
\nEMILY DICKINSON DAYDREAMS ABOUT HAVING HEAVENLY SEX
\n 
\nEmily Dickinson stared out the window. She was trying to harvest
\nheaven, but the best she could do was to reap Amherst\u2019s denizens
\ngoing about their daily dalliances with husbands, wives, bosses,
\nslaves, mothers, and fathers. But not, certainly, with God. There
\nlay her disappointment! For all the gushing people made over Him
\nin church, you\u2019d think He\u2019d be more forthcoming, a bit more
\nshowy. Shouldn\u2019t He thank the poor souls that pray to Him, acknowledge
\ntheir white steeples, stained glass, rock-hard pews, choir lofts,
\nand multiple organ pipes, the paraphernalia inviting folks to Sabbath
\ngatherings, the audacious, ostentatious luring of non-believers
\nto Jesus and His teachings? All that tacky, pernicious bric-a-brac
\nmerited at least a nod of thanks, a heavenly handshake for a job well done!
\n 
\nBut no, apparently not. To Emily, soaked by streams of golden rays
\nsprayed down from the firmament\u2019s solar showerhead more precious
\nthan an English Regent\u2019s tubbery, the Lord defined appreciation
\nnot through the folderol, the kneeling, the supplication, the bread,
\nthe wine. No. God came to her here, on shafts of light
\nwhose beacon shone like the Groom come to ravish the Bride
\nwhose innocence, her<\/i> innocence, peaks and sparks His feral nature.
\nDropping minute by minute his luminous clothes for the dark of nightfall,
\nHis natural black self, the formless form, is milked by the moon
\nTo silhouette evil\u2019s purity, the waiting woman trembling at the ghastly
\nPromise of his entrance to her most casual dreams and desires, hoping
\nto finally reach her life-long tunnel\u2019s end where past futures illuminate
\nonly one opening, small and far away, its pale, white lunar period
\nturning blood red with the coming of the oncoming night. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJudith O’Connell Hoyer<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWEDDING DAY PHOTO
\n       April 30, 1943
\n 
\nIt\u2019s a Kodak catch outside Llano\u2019s Barber and Beauty Shop
\nas they leave barbered and viewed seriously beautiful.
\n 
\nPrickly hairs attack his neck.
\nA nest of Aleutian curls blaze around her face.
\n 
\nNoon heaps no safety on their brows
\nas they squint into a vast and pounding sun.
\n 
\nThirteen formidable buttons guard the bride\u2019s modesty.
\nHer clutch hides a supply of melting lipstick,
\n 
\nbobby pins and Wednesday\u2019s ticket stub
\npunched by a conductor in far-flung Eastern Standard Time.
\n 
\nA private salutes the couple en route to the chapel
\nwhere potted Easter lilies substitute for wedding guests.
\n 
\nAiry blue petals decorate her shoulder.
\nKhakis are his required complement.
\n 
\nPure I do\u2019s echo through empty pews
\nwhile jeeps vroom by the perimeter.
\n 
\nAfter settling for a Texas roadhouse pork chop special,
\nthey strike out into Midland\u2019s incendiary heat,
\n 
\nand swallow kisses like Karo Syrup on a spoon
\nwhile deaf to bombers\u2019 moon-lit runs.
\n 
\nMay 5th<\/sup>\u2019s dreaded Okinawa orders are slashed
\nwhen he is fever-hit and hospitalized.
\n 
\n 
\nALLIED BOMBS HIT FOE IN FRANCE HARD
\n       NYT front page story 2\/10\/1944
\n 
\nIt was a straighten up and fly right birth
\na Kodak first day snap of me in my mother\u2019s arms
\nset free in Texas heat, an onslaught that
\nbegan before dawn and cooled down under
\n 
\nwaning moonlight, as Allied forces raked
\na railroad junction, then everything
\nwas square in Midland and Limoges with kisses
\nplanted like bombs by the Brits flying low
\nwho plastered the Nazi engine works but
\n 
\none pilot failed to return and it was
\nnot he whom I counted on to arrive
\nhome from work at eight minutes past five
\nwho listened to Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra
\nwhile he ate his skinless franks and baked beans.
\n 
\n 
\nLEAVE-TAKING
\n 
\nThis is how he dies: in the living room,
\nin a hospital bed, taking-in the map of Belgium
\nhung over the fireplace fifty years ago –
\nClaire\u2019s country, where they met.
\n 
\nHe is under glass too.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t touch!\u201d the hospice nurse says.
\n\u201cIt hurts. Touch hurts.
\nExcept his forehead.\u201d
\n 
\nAnd this is how he goes: eyes keen
\non his brother\u2019s words as he recalls
\nthe Remington mower their dad bought
\nwhen they lived on Puritan Circle in Springfield.
\n 
\n\u201cIt was so hard to push,\u201d my husband says.
\nWe understand the whispered yes<\/i>.
\n\u201cBut the blades spun fast
\ngiving the grass a neat even cut.\u201d
\n 
\nYour email says that you move from room to room
\nremoving his things one at a time, hanger by hanger.
\nI imagine you pitching prescription bottles, wallet,
\neyeglasses, passport, carton of peach ice cream.
\n 
\nIt is not what you are looking for
\nit\u2019s what you find \u2013 the risk of being busy \u2013
\na risky business after all.
\nThe certainty – the uncertainty of it all.
\n 
\nFrom the front door you do a double take \u2013
\ncatch a glimpse of him gabbing with the neighbor
\nwho\u2019s returning an adjustable wrench he borrowed
\nlast month for some kind of car fix.
\n 
\nTricked, you slam the God damned door,
\nbolt for your room and drop into oblivion.
\nHours later you come alive to the roar of a mower
\nbeing pushed across someone else\u2019s yard –
\n 
\nits sharp blade cutting one swath after another
\nleaving you with the smell of grass trying to save itself.
\n 
\n 
\nEVENING BAG
\n 
\nIts brass frame opens wide
\nlike an eye eager to examine whatever drops inside:
\na nickel for lemonade, dance card, hairpin.
\n 
\nAn enveloping skin of creamy beads
\nis seeded around the withered handiwork
\nof embroidered rosebuds, daisies and silk bows.
\n 
\nThere\u2019s a hole in the lining the size of a white lie
\nmy grandmother might have told her mother
\nabout what happened that night.
\n 
\nKept since the prom when it hung
\nby its chain on the back of a chair
\nas she waltzed onto the dance floor
\n 
\ninto his arms Down by The Old Mill Stream<\/i>
\nwhere the air was out of breath and her
\nelaborate coil of hair was coming undone. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nKyle Hunter<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWAITING IN THE HOSPITAL ROOM WHILE MY SON IS CIRCUMCISED
\n 
\nIt is wrong and helpful that I am required to watch a battery of videos teaching me how not to
\n kill another person. We are locked in the hospital for 24 hours. My name is not even on the
\nbracelets. I am an accessory. Less useful than the anti-theft device attached to the nub of my
\nson\u2019s umbilical cord. My wife is eating green beans and complaining that she forgot to ask for
\nsalt, again. I am lying on the ugly teal couch staring at a cheaply-framed, poorly-hung print of a
\nbad painting of a quaint idyllic house. It is sweet and na\u00efve, or ironic. I am trying to distract
\nmyself. Trying to think about anything except the blood, and the foreskin, and the blood, and the
\ncrying, and his tiny, reaching hand. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nTyler Hurula<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHE DAY I FOUND GOD IN A PURPLE RUG
\n 
\nI was told that under no circumstance
\nwas I to dye my hair
\nin my grandmother\u2019s home.
\n 
\nWe lived with her, but it was never
\nmy home \u2013 we were just permanent guests,
\nunwelcome ants on a picnic
\n 
\nblanket. There\u2019s always at least one hiding
\nout, searching for a scrap of something left
\nbehind. But I am not one for rules,
\n 
\nand I didn\u2019t have anywhere else to go.
\nSo in the dead
\nof the 1 PM summer
\n 
\nafternoon
\nI remove everything
\nfrom the bathroom counters.
\n 
\nI bring in my book so I have something
\nto do while I wait for my hair to transition
\nfrom its dull yellow to a bright purple beacon.
\n 
\nI know it would be best not to move to lessen
\nmy chances of painting anything into a purple
\npermanence, proof
\n 
\nI was there. I grab my bright
\nass eggplant colored dye and with a practiced
\nhand I goop it onto my hair in grape
\n 
\ncolored gobs. I rinse and grab the black
\ntowel to mask any purple leakage.
\nAfter I dry my hair, I finally notice
\n 
\nit. The blinding white bath rug marooned
\nin the middle of the bathroom floor \u2013
\nliterally maroon now.
\n 
\nMy lungs flutter and forget how to inflate.
\nI frantically flail through Google, searching
\nfor the perfect solution to un-dye.
\n 
\nI empty every cupboard seeking stain remover,
\nvinegar, detergent, baking soda, and hope
\nflavored fairy dust. I run that thing
\n 
\nthrough the wash three separate times
\nand even though I left my god
\nat my old house, I find
\n 
\nHim again in this moment, lurking
\nin that stupid stain.
\nHe must have heard me because I un-
\n 
\npurpled the shit out of that rug.
\nI know for her love exists in my absence,
\nand one day she\u2019ll wish for a trace of me left behind.
\n 
\n 
\nHER LOVER\u2019S TEETH LEAVE A BRUISE
\n 
\nIt is black, blue, and monstrous.
\nPeering from beneath the soft
\nedge of her t-shirt. This Rorschach
\n 
\nbitten into her, blood ink
\npooled under the breathless
\n 
\nlayer of her skin. I try to remember
\nlove isn\u2019t a scarcity,
\neven when someone you love
\n 
\nalso loves
\nsomeone else.
\n 
\nI\u2019d learned this in polyamory
\nclass. There\u2019s no actual
\nclass. The antithesis
\n 
\nof jealousy. Only she was there
\nwith me wrapping
\n 
\nher green ivy spikes
\nthrough my bloodstream, screaming.
\nAnd then I\u2019m picturing her lover\u2019s
\n 
\nsilk black hair and she is wrapping
\nherself around my wife
\n 
\nfrom on top of her lap. I see her teeth
\nand she is laughing. The insides
\nof her lips are painted
\n 
\nwith merlot, blooming.
\nLipstick printing poppies
\n 
\ndown
\nher
\nneck,
\n 
\nand I can hear their breath
\nas they fog the windows
\n 
\nwhile my peeking plants blush.
\nAnd now I am pulled back. I rewrite
\nthis fight. Love is not a mono-fits-all
\n 
\nlabel and now when jealousy comes,
\nshe whispers. I welcome her to remind
\n 
\nme that love is infinite,
\nand we love in multitudes.
\nWe are only<\/i> better
\n 
\nfor it, and I see this in the soft spot
\nof her arm where there was once a bruise.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nNate Jacob<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nI WILL DIE IN MY SLEEP
\n 
\nI have forever nightly rehearsed my closing moments,
\nmy quiet and glamorous curtain call as lights lower,
\naccompanied by a final and contented sigh,
\nand a flash of a smile, before up the stairway I go.
\n 
\nI have not bothered with any other details,
\nthe how and the when and the where.
\nI prefer a good surprise, a stranger at the door,
\noutstretched hand with an unexpected invitation.
\n 
\nMy body, no longer mine, will remain, cooling silently,
\nlaugh lines softening while soul skips up and out.
\nIf allowed by whatever powers manage the process,
\nI will wrap you one last time in a wispy, fuzzy-edged hug.
\n 
\nIn time, you will wake, having dreamt in meadowy breezes,
\nthat the sun and the grass pushed and pulled us
\ninto a dance with no steps, only an embrace,
\na kiss, a letting go, and a whispered secret.
\n 
\nYou will likely and hopefully not look forward to it,
\nso I keep this planned secret guarded,
\nnot wanting to turn it all into a competition,
\nseeing who can go first and forever. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJim Kangas<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLINES AFTER A LINE FROM THE GRATEFUL DEAD
\n 
\n\u201cWhat a long strange trip it\u2019s been,\u201d
\nwhat a lop-wheeled, breakheart journey
\nfrom babe in a buggy to boy on a bike
\nto ruin on a hospital gurney.
\n 
\nLittle heart hankered for bonbons and love;
\ncongestive heart hasn\u2019t a clue
\nwhy the things it desired didn\u2019t arrive
\nyet a bill for them did, and it\u2019s due. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDerek Kannemeyer<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHOPSCOTCH HOP
\n 
\nOne two hopscotch cold poached egg
\n       Martha Mills has a metal leg
\none foot stinks, the other foot squeaks
\nMartha Mills is a Freak Freak Freak
\n 
\nThree four hopscotch her friend Joe
\n       when he walks it starts to snow
\nall the ants break rank and sing
\nLook out it\u2019s Joe the Dandruff King
\n 
\nOne two three four hopscotch six
\n       Mildred Lintz eats rats for kicks
\nshe\u2019s so fat the earthworms scream
\nLook out it\u2019s Lintz the Earthquake Queen
\n 
\nSeven eight hopscotch nine and turn
\n       you dumb boy, Derek, you\u2019ll never learn
\nif we told you that a blow-torch was a hair-dryer
\nyou wouldn\u2019t know the difference till your face caught fire
\n 
\nNine eight seven six hopscotch five
\n       I am the cutest girl alive
\ngirl can dance, girl can think
\ncompared with me you\u2019re the Missing Link
\n 
\nFour three two one hot buttered toast
\n       I\u2019m gonna marry a game-show host
\nwhen he wants to kiss goodnight
\nI\u2019ll say Only If The Price Is Right
\n 
\n 
\nTHE ASSASSINATION OF HENDRIK VERWOERD, THE ARCHITECT OF APARTHEID,
\nBY THE MENTALLY UNBALANCED DIMITRI TSAFENDAS, ON SEPTEMBER 6, 1966
\n   ” You are guilty also when you do nothing.”
\n   ~ Dimitri Tsafendas, years later, unrepentant, and (since his trial) tapeworm-free.
\n 
\nBut who could be South African, and White, and wish to harm Hendrik Verwoerd?
\nNo one in his right mind.
\nTake David Pratt, who shot Verwoerd twice in the face,
\n“to shoot the epitome of the apartheid state.”
\nThat dude was (quote) “mad,” and “not political.”
\n 
\nDimitri Tsafendas stabbed him four times. Ditto Tsafendas!
\nA dark-skinned white man, he wished to be reclassified as “mixed,”
\nto live with his mixed race lover; Verwoerd, he said,
\n“helped blacks at the expense of whites”;
\nhe claimed a giant tapeworm spoke to him.
\nSee? Mad! Cried the judge, “I can as little try this man as try a dog!”
\n 
\nThey gave him a cell on death row next to the room they hanged men in,
\nseven men at once sometimes, says Wikipedia.
\nThe rug Verwoerd bled out on stayed, the death-stains
\nswabbed and squeegeed from it, on the Volksraad floor, says Wikipedia,
\nuntil apartheid itself was ten years defunct. Only then
\ndid the local divinities, Parsimony, Truculence, and Idolatry,
\nallow that it might be (quote) “shabby.”
\nThat’s me editorializing, of course, not good old Wikipedia.
\nJust the facts, please, backed by footnotes. Such a comfort.
\n 
\nI’d come to Wikipedia after my father died.
\nHe’d gotten us out of Cape Town when I was six:
\nVerwoerd and Verwoerd’s ilk had robbed him of his country.
\nFifty years before, I’d watched the news of a knifing
\nbreak like a dam over him, and I’d seen\u2014
\nthough he didn’t exult, exactly, because what could this one man’s death
\nchange?\u2014how it might look to hate someone. To let oneself
\nhate. Even if (given the betrayal hate is,
\nof how a man should treat a man,
\nsince you, I, and every man are equals),
\nit was surely hate for the state Verwoerd had made, that Verwoerd epitomized\u2014
\nnot for the man. May we all, my father taught me: Verwoerd, Tsafendas,
\nBlack man, Coloured boy, be larger than our labels.
\n 
\n(There are no women in this poem. This was then!
\nWomen were “understood.”)
\n 
\nVerwoerd, said the bio, was born in Amsterdam,
\nbut left at two for Wynberg, the Cape Town suburb where I was born.
\nHis father, believing that God had forged a covenant with the Boer Calvinists,
\ngave his only begotten son to be their prophet.
\nAnd lo, to die for them, and to be their martyr!
\nTo be mourned by millions.
\nThe mad dog Tsafendas, meanwhile, on hanging row,
\nshrank, over the decades, into a footnote’s squint.
\n(He outlived apartheid! If not that rug.)
\n  
\nNor did he cry, or talk of it, my father,
\nbut that day, in our exiles’ lair
\n(as I watched with him, as I felt the blade descend),
\nthe immaculately knit fabric of something darkened\u2014
\nwith blood; perhaps with grudge; perhaps with grief. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJerry Krajnak<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nshopping for real estate with wallace stevens
\n  
\nthe cabin needs a coat of paint
\nwindows washed trash hauled away
\nferal things have torn the screens
\nunlock the door let in some light
\n  
\nstrike a match and try the stove
\nfrom underneath a silent rat observes
\noak pops as cabin warms
\nthe room begins to breathe
\n  
\nin the corner a single bed
\nperiwinkle comforter on top
\na folded nightgown white as night
\ncannot quite cover all that lively blue
\n  
\nimperfect friday paradise
\nwe both attest as cabin sighs
\nrat watches us approach the bed
\nand lift the white to let the blue escape
\n  
\na proper place for rat or man
\nto dream while the week moves on
\ncelebrate its final days
\nstay warm throughout its holy nights
\nwith periwinkle dreams
\n 
\n 
\nPENICILLIN DAY AT THE DISPENSARY, NHA TRANG, 1970
\n 
\n    I wanna be an airborne ranger
\n   I wanna go to Vietnam
\n   I wanna be an airborne ranger
\n   I wanna kill a Vietcong<\/i>
\n    -basic training marching cadence
\n  
\nSoldiers line a narrow hallway,
\ngreen beret still on each head,
\ncamo pants below bare kneecaps,
\nwaiting for their slant-eyed nurse
\nto pump some icy penicillin
\ninto each American ass.
\n  
\nThey stare at photos on the wall:
\na rotted face, syphilitic sores,
\nfond warnings for incoming troops
\nwho next will visit scenic Nha Trang.
\n  
\nCo Hai could warm syringes first,
\nbefore injecting, she does not.
\nInstead, with every righteous stab
\nshe blesses girls brought low but knows
\nhow her collaboration soon
\nwill hurt her when these men go home.
\n  
\nSo, she injects the painful mix,
\nand hears a groan, patches the wound,
\nthinks of her baby who waits at home,
\nits father now and forever gone. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMargo LaPierre<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nCENTO FOR CLAIRVOYANCE
\n 
\nA flashback isn\u2019t a memory, but an instance of time travel: the body believes it
\nis a predestined uterine tug and here
\nlike an invisible comb through hair
\nin the fertile darkness of grammar
\n 
\nlanguage and other ways to invent the water, and other ways
\nto collect what is inside me
\nstill prod the coarse pink yarn into a dress.
\n 
\nSuch facts lie beneath the grasp of contemporary research.
\n 
\nExhaustion is a hall
\nof an unfinished poem,
\nof intentions, marbles filling
\nrecesses of the brain\u2019s fjords, too
\n 
\nof all the genesis\u2014pollen of a flowering godhead,
\ncrutched in your armpits.
\n 
\nHow is the hyacinth\u2019s head bent wrong?
\n 
\nIf the pollen is heaved
\n   notoriously promiscuous
\nfrom the stupor of married sleep
\n 
\nor the merest shake
\nstraps disclosure and violence together in ways
\npapaya can\u2019t distinguish
\n 
\nthe future will be luminous and reckless
\nand in my mouth: the froth. <\/a>
\n <\/a>
\nCitations<\/a> for Cento for Clairvoyance by Margo LaPierre<\/i>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nTracy Lightsey<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nODE TO PANTIES
\n 
\nI’ve always wanted to write a poem about panties,
\nthose flimsy songs from a young man’s dreams…
\nYou see them, innocent as a young woman’s cheeks,
\nhanging from clotheslines, smiling like prayer flags.
\n 
\nBaskets for the type of fruit that makes our hands
\nshudder and move involuntarily as if to grab and lift
\nall that juicy, ripe fullness to our lips and just kiss….
\n 
\nThe young men dream of peaches; O’ my luscious
\ngod I could swim face first up that juice for days
\nat a time, like a climber tipping my face to the sun…
\n 
\nAn older man might dream of red, delicious, apples
\nstable, committed, ready to nestle in all winter,
\ntheir sweetness crisp with crystalized starlight…
\n 
\nbut I dream of the humble, ripe, avocado, bottom-
\nheavy, pregnant with your one large seed protected
\nby layers of fat that burn more healthy and clear than
\nany of the sugars of your blonde European cousins.
\n 
\nPatient, like generations of women swaddled
\nin traditional clothing, going nowhere, just the weight
\nof contentment in my hand, you open with a grin
\nand swallow me in to that deep satisfaction that
\n 
\nno one else can come close to, like a knowing
\nthat all this will continue beyond us; these forests,
\nthe cloud enshrouded mountains that rise
\nfrom their mists, the jaguar’s call in the distance…
\n 
\n 
\nUNHOOKING THE BRA
\n 
\nFor a young man, there is nothing more
\nmeaningful, no rite of passage more fraught
\nwith terror and danger, than learning how
\nto unhook a woman’s bra.
\n 
\nThe way those heavenly orbs can pour
\ntheir light into your hands is one of life’s
\ngreatest mysteries, and when you actually
\nslide a nipple into your mouth, child,
\nI tell you, your spine will become a high
\nvoltage transmission line and your hands
\nfind a mind of their own as they reach for
\nfruit that’s been denied them for years.
\n 
\nAnd when you master it one-handed,
\nunder her sweater, for instance, in the
\nback of the car while the windows fog over
\nwith your co-mingled breath, you will be
\ncrossing the Rubicon, from neophyte
\nto master, boy to man.
\n 
\nSpring will come early into the cheeks
\nof her high country; wind will rise
\nwith the moans in her throat, and birds
\nsing from her still barren branches…
\n 
\nBut her snow may start melting
\nbefore you are ready, her rivers
\nthaw out and flood…
\n 
\nNobody knows who’ll be affected downstream…
\n 
\nBut by then you will probably
\nhave wandered into that high country,
\nher meadows full of butterflies and wildflowers
\nprotected by snow covered peaks no one else
\nhas explored…
\n 
\nThe moon looks down and just shakes her head,
\nthe sun grinning through your glistening beard.
\n 
\n 
\nGRANDMOTHER SPIDER
\n 
\nShe sits at the top of the hill
\nand laces on her brand new rollerblades.
\n 
\nAs long as she’s in gravity and time
\nshe might as well have some fun.
\n 
\nEternity is fine every once in awhile,
\nfloating and being all meaningful,
\nfeeling like she’s serving the light…
\n 
\nBut on days like these– when the sky
\nflings back her skirts and greets us
\n 
\nwith a clearer blue than we could
\npossibly imagine, and time stops,
\n 
\nhis mouth gaping open to stare, and
\ngravity, encouraging mother that she is,
\n 
\nwaits, arms open and beckoning–
\nwell, what’s a young girl to do, but
\n 
\nstand up on all eight wheels, holler
\na good cowgirl holler, and let go
\n 
\nto gods who are even greater than she. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDiane Louie<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nKEEPING TIME
\n 
\nHowever we fathom the meaning of time\u2014
\nas particle, flow, arrow, or chime,
\nwhether it lives in the world or the soul,
\nwhether it\u2019s relative, whether it\u2019s whole,
\ncircadian rhythm, physiological clock,
\na law that\u2019s elastic, a wave that\u2019s a rock,
\nillusory pattern or synchronous change,
\nbeing<\/i> becoming increasingly strange\u2014
\nhowever we try to say what Time is<\/i>
\nthe essence eludes us like bubbly fizz.
\nNo one ever said that we
\ncould hold on to eternity.<\/i>
\nBut still we wish that Time would slow
\ndown enough that we could know
\nwhere we\u2019ll be before we\u2019re then
\npulled away from where we\u2019ve been\u2014
\nyet here we are, and here we go,
\ngrateful, at the least, to know
\nthat whether or not Time ever grows clear
\nTime\u2019s given us each gyroscope of each year
\nwhere forwards and backwards are equally true:
\nyou whirling me as I whirl around you. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nBob MacKenzie<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
\n 
\nOn another morning like this
\nwe made love softly as dawn
\nslipping out of the dark
\nas we eased from blankets
\nto coffee in the kitchen
\nour breakfast talk intimate
\nas the touch we had shared
\nin the waking light of dawn.
\n 
\nThis dream persists in memory
\nas on a newly dawning morning
\nwe once again share our love
\ntouched softly in dawn\u2019s glow.
\n 
\nI wake in today\u2019s early light
\nyour arm gentle upon my chest.
\n 
\n 
\nMY FRIEND LAZARUS
\n 
\ndead a dozen times
\nwhile well-paid plumbers
\nfixed pipes and valves
\n 
\nmade his heart pump again
\nno guarantee this time
\ntheir repairs will hold
\n 
\nblessed with photographic vision
\nlazarus remembers each time
\nhe\u2019s stood just past death\u2019s door
\n 
\ndrawn toward light beyond
\nwhile plumbers wrench him
\nback to an uncertain world
\n 
\nfor a regular like lazarus
\ndeath\u2019s no more a mystery
\nthan life that won\u2019t let go<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRichard Matta<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWINTER\u2019S HOSTAGE
\n 
\nNow, after a bleak season of shovels
\nfilled with heart strain, the wind\u2019s vice
\non throat and chest, here is Spring.
\n 
\nAm I the icicle on the eave hidden
\nin shade, clinging, dripping away,
\nnot yet ready to shatter and melt?
\n 
\nWho doesn\u2019t live for vibrant Spring!
\nIts sprouts and scented blossoms, love
\nalmost everywhere. Who doesn\u2019t\u2026.
\n 
\n 
\nAFTER THE BREAK-IN
\n 
\nShe dresses mannequins
\nlike criminals
\nfixes them with fishing line
\nto her condo curtain tracks.
\n  
\nThey guard her looking meaner
\nthan the thugs who broke in
\nwounded body, shattered spirit.
\n  
\nShe throws punches full of pain
\ncurses the innocent air in the street
\nfront room of rattling memories.
\n  
\nI watch a teardrop form as she snips
\na yellow rose head from a broken stem.
\nWe rearrange what\u2019s left. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJoan Mazza<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFIRST MEETINGS
\n 
\nI\u2019ll call you sometime.
\nCan I have your number?
\nIt was nice meeting you.
\nTake care\u2026.
\n 
\nDo I have his number?
\nHe doesn\u2019t answer, doesn\u2019t call.
\nTake care
\nhe doesn\u2019t hurt you when
\n 
\nhe doesn\u2019t answer, doesn\u2019t call.
\nMaybe he\u2019s lost your number.
\nHe doesn\u2019t hurt you when
\nhe forgets who you are.
\n 
\nMaybe he\u2019s lost. Your number?
\nHe\u2019s like most men\u2014
\nhe forgets. Who you are
\nisn\u2019t his opinion of you.
\n 
\nHe\u2019s like most men
\nwho do their thing and just move on.
\nIsn\u2019t his opinion of you
\nabout his desire
\n 
\nto do his own thing? Just move on.
\nIt was nice meeting you.
\nAbout his desire?
\nI\u2019ll call you sometime.
\n 
\n 
\nAFTER YOU LEFT
\n 
\nWindows opened, a breeze blew through
\nmy body. Wearing sweats, fur hat,
\nrubber boots, no bra,
\n 
\nI circled the house. No cracks, no collapse.
\nRhododendron buds remained tight.
\nThe weeds grew and I let them live.
\n 
\nI shed the veil, the mask, and plastic
\nsmile. B followed A. No one stuck out
\na foot to trip me, or found my voice
\n 
\nannoying. The bed was bigger. Clouds
\ntook form. Locks changed, entry code
\nrevised, security system armed,
\n 
\nI slept again. Nightmares ceased.
\nI woke with eyes wide, rested,
\nremained armed
\n 
\nuntil you moved
\nthree thousand miles away.
\nNot far enough.
\n 
\n 
\nTHINGS I WILL NEVER HAVE TO DO AGAIN
\n 
\nChange a diaper
\nPlay cards
\nScrub a grill
\nPitch a tent and sleep on hard ground
\nPray for a rescue, pray for anything
\n 
\nI will never have to be respectful
\nto an employer who\u2019s a jerk, a dick
\nbecause I need the job to pay bills
\nor fear losing a reference,
\nnever again have to laugh or smile
\npolitely at racist, sexist jokes
\n 
\nNever will I have to write a college paper
\nDraw blood from a patient
\nIron a man\u2019s shirt
\nMow the lawn
\nEndure the interview of a first date
\nSwim laps
\nMemorize life cycles of the algae
\nInsert a tampon or diaphragm
\nor worry about getting pregnant
\n 
\nNo more setting up urine and sputum
\nto grow bacteria and fungi,
\nno more searching through feces
\nfor parasites
\n 
\nNever again will I have to tiptoe
\naround a crazy person under my roof,
\napologize to my sister for being born,
\nexplain my mother\u2019s candor
\n 
\nNo more begging
\nPretending to be aroused
\nFaking an orgasm or two,
\nno more feigning interest
\nin engines, sports, supplements
\n 
\nI\u2019ll never again read a book I hate
\nor be tentative when discussing it
\nFinally, I can be silent,
\nlet someone else think they can fix it<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nBrian McAllister<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nMY FATHER
\n 
\nFirst, I heard him in my laugh,
\nthat same throated cackle
\nthat clattered through the halls
\nfrom downstairs cocktail parties.
\n 
\nAnd there were other signs,
\nhow I\u2019d catch myself resting
\nmy chin on a loose fist just so
\nor nervously drumming my fingers,
\nand still more signs until
\n 
\nsomething as ordinary as
\na simple gesticulation might
\nsuddenly assume an ominous tone
\nas diffident, as indifferent
\nas if time itself had whispered half a sentence
\nand abruptly turned away
\nwith a casual wave of the hand
\n 
\nleaving only this echo
\nof time\u2019s bared teeth
\nand convulsing throat.
\n 
\n 
\nLAERTES
\n 
\nReturn at last, an aged son, quarrelsome
\nfrom years tacking against his own headwinds,
\nfinally home to other harbored griefs
\nand a disheartened father still plowing.
\n 
\nI imagine the old man kneeling there,
\none hand feeling that furrow the tusk dug,
\nthe other outstretched to the balked rows. As if
\nthat reach could span the long horizon of years.
\n 
\nAnd what of you and me, Father? Could we
\nredeem our days adrift? The old quarrels?
\nMemory is the greater loss because
\nI can still recall the trees you planted
\n 
\nand I am ready to come home and plow
\nnow that you have been dead these twenty years.
\n 
\n 
\nTHE PERSISTENCE OF SELF
\n 
\nI am a ship of Theseus
\n   A kite without a string.
\nI slough the old into the wind.
\n   I\u2019m more event<\/i> than thing. <\/i><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nThomas M. McDade<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTIME FROM ABOVE
\n 
\nPigeons join the gulls on the beach
\nsparrows stick to the boardwalk.
\nSandpipers needle Neptune’s ass,
\ntwo guys run along the shore
\ncarrying boulders; why not?
\nA Mennonite family walks the beach.
\nSmall bonnets on the women\u2019s heads,
\nmight as well be halos so many folks stare.
\nSandcastle contest underway at noon,
\nowner of Jungle Miniature Golf died,
\ntoday is my suicide brother\u2019s birthday.
\nI\u2019d like to get stuck at the top
\nof the Ferris wheel down on 15th
\nand squint to make gaping adults
\nshrink to the size of the children with
\nmany more years to live and I might
\neven see or imagine I see a giraffe
\nor at least one of the tall palms
\non the corner of 22nd and Pacific
\nand name an exact hole or par. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJason Melvin<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nBEING DAD
\n 
\nI can\u2019t help but laugh as I watch them
\na game only she is playing
\nrunning from him   her little legs carrying her
\nslightly stumbling   fifteen clumps at a time
\nfootsteps echo down the shopping mall corridor
\nshe stops to look back   toddler giggles
\nburst out like hiccups
\nher dad in a hurried walk   bags in both hands
\njust past his fittest days
\nShe laughs and takes off again
\nHe speeds up to a labored jog
\nand regards me   a stranger
\nwith a look of   what do I do? <\/i>  resignation
\nI smile understandingly
\nyou chase her, Dad
\n   before you know it
\nyou\u2019ll be doing what I\u2019m doing
\njudging the too-short shorts
\nshe wants to buy at Hollister
\nYou chase her
\nbut don\u2019t catch her
\n   let her run
\n 
\n 
\nI WANT AN EGG MCMUFFIN
\n 
\nthe morning fog calls
\na shrill ring from an old rotary
\ngiven no choice but to answer
\nit isn\u2019t nature on the line
\nshe is in the background squawking
\nas inaudible as Charlie Brown\u2019s mom
\nit was Ronald
\nand his purple friend
\nwith the murderous name
\na call from three towns over
\nthe crisp fog
\nan enticing excuse
\nto fill my belly
\nwith slow suicide
\n 
\nthe doctor said the medicine
\nthat makes me shit too much
\nis working
\nand my glucose levels are better
\n 
\nI celebrate with blurry brake lights
\nand low visibility
\n 
\nI celebrate with ghostly-looking coffee addicts
\nsplayed on the sidewalk outside Starbucks
\n 
\nI celebrate with the man at the crosswalk dancing
\nwhen absolutely no music can be heard
\n 
\nI celebrate with the little girl
\nemerging from the fog on a unicycle
\n       a fucking unicycle
\n 
\nI celebrate with the grease of a hashbrown
\nsliding down my bearded chin
\na circular egg, cheese and a piece of ham
\nthat Canadians call bacon
\nall wrapped in the loving embrace of an English muffin
\nwith crispy burnt edges
\n 
\nI celebrate with a cool sip of ice tea
\nunsweetened of course
\n 
\nI\u2019m not a maniac<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMike Mesterton-Gibbons<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWITCHES DANCING
\nfrom a painting<\/a> in the Scottish National Museum<\/i>
\n 
\nW<\/strong>hen once a castle stayed unused too long
\nI<\/strong>n Scotland, homeless witches found a squat.
\nT<\/strong>hese witches, who think paying rent is wrong,
\nC<\/strong>an deal with any interfering Scot
\nH<\/strong>arassing them for squatting there at night,
\nE<\/strong>nchanting all the dear departed souls
\nS<\/strong>till lurking in the castle for a fright:
\nD<\/strong>isplaying mesmerizing rigmaroles,
\nA<\/strong> charismatic dancing witch\u2014who leads
\nN<\/strong>octurnal rounds of hornpipes, jigs and reels\u2014
\nC<\/strong>asts spells on any meddler with her deeds.
\nI<\/strong>f you’re the rent collector, your appeals
\nN<\/strong>ot only get no rent \u2026 but also you
\nG<\/strong>o home and pay the landlord what is due! <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nLisa Molina<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nENDGAME
\n 
\nHe speaks monotonal,
\nbarely at all, and only
\nwhen not lost in his
\n 
\nworld of the levels
\nand numbers of lives
\nhe has left in the game,
\n  
\nas he sits in his room,
\nface reflected in the dark
\nbluish glow of the monitor,
\n 
\nfingers frantically pushing
\nthe controller\u2019s buttons
\nhe holds in his hands.
\n 
\nWill he find his way out?
\nWill he dare enter the
\nunpredictable world of
\n 
\nflesh and blood,
\ninstead of pixels
\non the screen?
\n 
\nOr does he fear the revelation
\nof his blood being tainted with
\ncancer for the fourth time,
\n 
\nover which he has no control,
\nlike with the push of the A or B button;
\nglitches, low life energy, death?
\n 
\nCan he put the
\ncontroller away,
\nlive a real life,
\n 
\nand venture outside
\nto the world of this
\nunknown endgame?
\n 
\n 
\nTOOTHLESS
\n (Inspired by the painting Famine<\/a> by Marian Spore Bush, 1933) <\/i>
\n 
\nThe bird has lost its teeth.
\n 
\nBeak flayed open now
\nas blades, to tear out
\nthe teeth of those deceased.
\n 
\nA sacrifice offered by
\nthose with soft, swollen
\ngums in the grave.
\n 
\nFor they understand
\nthe insatiable hunger
\nand desperation of
\n 
\nthe now-toothless bird, and
\nstill feel the desire to chomp and
\nchew on the lives they once knew.
\n 
\nThe bird has found its teeth. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJohn David Muth<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSEX AND THE ARTHRITIC MAN
\n 
\nMaking love with inflamed joints
\nhas a couple of advantages.
\n 
\nMy wife has to do most of the work
\nwhich is very welcome
\nafter spending all day at the office.
\n 
\nI can also better control my hang time.
\nWhen things are moving too fast,
\nand cracks appear in the cast iron dam,
\nand the whole structure is ready to burst,
\nI move a shoulder or hip too fast
\nor at an awkward angle.
\nA beam of pain shoots out
\nand solders those leaks,
\nsaving the villagers
\nwho live in the valley below.
\n 
\nAdmittedly, it takes a few minutes
\nfor the donkey to get back up to a gallop
\nbut mom always told me
\nthe foundation of a good marriage
\nis effort and sacrifice.
\n 
\n 
\nDESCRIBING 2021 TO FUTURE GENERATIONS
\n 
\nShould anyone ever ask me about 2021:
\nthose too young to remember,
\nor those who were not yet born,
\nI\u2019ll tell them it was like
\na year-long barbed wire colonoscopy
\nperformed without anesthetic
\nin the back of a kidnapper\u2019s van
\nby a drop out from a Honduran medical school.
\nEvery cancerous polyp was missed
\nand the bill reduced me
\nto financial destitution.
\n 
\nAttention spans will be so short by that time
\nthey\u2019ll probably leave the room
\nbefore I finish my analogy.
\nI won\u2019t be sad to see them go. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJames B. Nicola<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHREE BEAUTIES
\n 
\nThere is a Beauty that\u2019s not merely beautiful
\nas being plucked and gunked and all of that,
\nbut creamed in care. Its shine\u2019s as terrible,
\nonly inversely.
\n 
\n       I once saw a cat
\nturned monster by the tendrils of a blaze.
\nA scraggly, matted bundle, charred and soaked,
\nunnoticed darting past the firemen\u2019s hose
\ninto the crackling breaches where she picked
\nup, one at a time, by the neck, her scraggly brood
\nof babes and dropped them six feet from my feet.
\nSix times she turned back in. She knew the crooked
\npath to scale up leaning beams more scorched
\nthan had they been on fire, and altered course
\nas beam by beam caught fire and fell to the ground.
\nShe made a pile of her kittens, then a nest
\nof seven, and with each return and drop
\nof a blob, she got blacker, wetter, wilder.
\nOnce all were safe from the fury of the night,
\nshe licked them off, and only then, herself,
\nfor all that time the ugliest ball in the world:
\nBut no light\u2019s more flattering than flames or candlelight
\n\u2014the firemen looked great as the building burned\u2014
\nand nothing in the world could ever be
\nmore Beautiful than that mother cat, to me.
\n 
\nAnd you were with me, dear, the second time.
\nThere was a pock-marked man, his cuffs too high,
\nchecking out at the Spencer five-and-dime.
\n(I don\u2019t expect you to remember.) You laughed, but I
\ndid not because I\u2019d seen him, coming in,
\nholding the door for two molasses women
\nwhile you sped past. And later in Aisle Four,
\nI saw him squat by, smile at, and restore
\na girl of three with dripping eyes and nose
\nto a benign mother over in Five
\n\u2014you\u2019d been in Two, and picking panty-hose.
\nShe was relieved the daughter was alive,
\nsure, but forgot to thank him. He did not
\nseem to be miffed, but just went on his way,
\nas to another mission. You cut me
\nwhen you laughed at him\u2014I\u2019d been about to say
\nI hoped that he\u2019d enjoy the beer he bought\u2014
\nI did, in fact. You remember: Shopping day,
\nthe paunchy pock-marked ill-dressed geezer, I
\nsaid he was Beautiful, and you asked why?
\nYou even liked my answer, then.
\n 
\n               And when
\nI wake some mornings and see you before
\nyour treatments at the vanity, undraped
\nby sleeve or hem or collar, unsettled
\nby headlines of the homeless, the war-torn,
\nthe trafficked and the pummeled and the slain,
\nthe embers of a post-pubescent ardor
\nrekindle visibly behind your eyes.
\nI’m warmed by the remembrances of kindness
\nand caring\u2013outrage when appropriate\u2013
\nand former friends now activists, or gone.
\nOur stomachs misconstrue new gastric gurgles
\nfor hungers deeper than the physical;
\nthe half-heroic lungs and heart respond.
\nOur minds don’t think to catch the racing breaths
\nthough, still unsobered by the mug-tipped sips,
\nthe salaries, the rites of safe survival.
\nThe flame is sparked. It lights the other road
\nwe could have trod, and it invites again.
\n 
\nAnd in these moments before you and I
\nbecalm concerns and gasps with the satiety
\nof warm croissants as duly-dosed as pills
\ndelivered by the doctor of the day,
\nbefore either restores the other with
\nthe calming, cooling quip “But who are we
\nto think there’s anything that we can do,”
\nI feel a tinge of the Beautiful in me
\nand swear I catch a glimpse of it in you. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Nisbet<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHIS BROTHER
\n 
\nDafydd supported many of John\u2019s matches,
\nhelping the groundsman, standing in as scorer,
\nadmiring but rather envious, applauding
\nhis brother\u2019s innings, as he blocked, pushed out,
\nbefore the cutting loose, the final drives
\nsplitting the field, racing across the fragrant turf
\non their way to the boundary.
\n 
\nA later contest, Falklands, the machine gun fire
\nstreaking across Goose Green in wintry May,
\nand John was back, damaged but turning now
\nto the bowls for the disabled. Dafydd
\nwould ferry him there, gladly in support,
\nand, after the winter in the leisure centre,
\nback out in May into the sun again.
\nHe\u2019d thrill to the smell of the turf, the sight
\nof John\u2019s ball scudding along the green.
\n 
\nBut moods can heal more slowly than the body.
\nDafydd was tested now. He\u2019d tease and humour,
\ncheck the tantrums, push out encouragement,
\nuntil at last the game\u2019s convivial ending,
\nhandshakes all round, the chips from Rabaiotti\u2019s
\nand the calm drive home. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAl Ortolani<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nINTERVENTION
\n 
\nThe family dog has a rabbit trapped
\nunder the deck, or maybe it is better
\nto say, the rabbit has the dog trapped,
\ntethered to the pressure treated wood.
\nHe orbits, single-minded like a storm
\non a chain, swinging from stanchion
\nto stanchion. We\u2019ve seen the rabbit
\nonly as a silhouette, unhurried
\nin the shadows. The dog squeezes
\nhis shoulders into the darkness.
\nI pull him out by his hindlegs, fill in
\nthe hole, cover it with chicken wire.
\nThis is no way to live I tell him.
\nYou should see yourself in a mirror. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobert Perchan<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nthem old timer expat blues
\n 
\ni\u2019m a lot like mars
\npeople ask one another
\nyou think there\u2019s water on bob?
\nwas there ever life anywhere there?
\nfunny how that face
\nup there on that red and angry planet
\nkind of matches his own mug down here
\nbut with better cheekbones
\nmore macho jowls
\nsame frown though
\nsame icy glare
\nsame grumpishness
\nwhen you talk to him it\u2019s like
\none year is 687 days long
\nor five minutes is like three hours
\nif you landed a rover on him
\nwhat kinds of pictures
\nyou think it would send back
\nsparse hairs growing out of pores
\nflakes of skin shedding
\npitted and pocky as all get out
\nfor the most part
\nthe only signs of life
\nsave maybe all that salt water
\nscience now says is up there
\nfrozen in lakes beneath
\nall that martian surface dirt
\nlike tears unshed
\nor little green men semen
\nstill it\u2019d be nice to be touched upon
\ntrod upon even
\nby those precise mechanical roving legs
\ndon\u2019t nudge him you-know-where though
\nthe cameras remember
\nseldom miss a trick
\nso yes he\u2019s out there
\nsame as he is earthling down here
\nall alone in his own orbit
\nhis only claim to fame
\nwhen he mentions himself
\nin the same breath as a god of war
\nof some dead civilization
\nor snickers candy bar brand
\n300 million miles away
\nand still sending us
\nhis goddam poetry
\n 
\n 
\nON THIS DAY IN BASEBALL: JUNE 3, 2002
\nOR, THE REAL<\/i> SAMMY SOSA STORY
\n 
\nOkay, laugh your asses off. See if I care.
\nYou think Wanda Humphire is a hilarious
\nname for a brothel madam, that\u2019s your affair.
\nWorks for me. Ballplayers like it, anyhow.
\nSpecially the Cubs. White Sox a bunch of
\ngoody two-cleats, if you get my meaning.
\nDoesn\u2019t hurt either we are just down the way
\nfrom Wrigley. They trickle in Friday nights
\nafter dropping another one to the Dodgers or
\nthe Cards. But good guys. Good paying johns.
\nNever rough with my girls. All except one,
\nyou know. That damn Sosa. Sammy Sosa.
\nQuite the stud, way he struts and swaggers.
\nHe\u2019s in here one night down the hall in 1-D.
\nWith poor Sally. Been with us barely three
\nmonths now, poor gal. Horrible damn racket.
\nDoor\u2019s locked on the inside. I call Dusty
\nfrom Monica\u2019s room. He was Cubs skipper
\nthat season and always looks out for his boys.
\nWe bust down the door of 1-D and there\u2019s
\nSally crouched in a corner shaking with fright.
\nOut of her mind. Shattered on his third whack,
\nshe wails. And there\u2019s Sammy standing there
\nstark naked with his dick cracked in two places.
\nI shush Sally and Dusty and me together we
\ncheck Sammy\u2019s pecker. Damn thing\u2019s corked.
\nNo doubt about it. Against house reg\u2019s and
\nSammy knows it. Albert Belle Rule, we call it.
\nBack in July of \u201994. Guys will do most anything
\nto help them last longer and get more bang for
\ntheir buck, sure. But corking, nope. We don\u2019t
\nallow that. Fair is fair. And foul is foul. Sorry,
\nDusty says. It\u2019s embarrassing. Sammy\u2019s too
\ngood a fucker. We\u2019ll all be scratching our balls
\nover this and wondering why, why. It\u2019s too bad.
\nSammy\u2019s standing there, shaken. Humiliated.
\nI forgot, he says. I forgot to take it out. I cork
\nit for \u2013 you know \u2013 practice<\/i>. But I always
\ntake it out for the real thing. I just plain forgot.
\nAnd he seems sorry. What do you call it \u2013
\ncontrite. What to do, I ask myself. A tough
\ndecision. Ban him for life? That\u2019s too harsh.
\nToo hard. So I suspend him for ten Friday nights.
\nAnd then reduce it to seven Friday nights when
\nSally of all people \u2013 how do you say it \u2013 intercedes.
\nHe\u2019s so sweet, you know, she smiles and sort of
\ntilts her head, when he just shortens up and bunts. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAdrienne Pilon<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHE BUCHANANS
\n 
\nTom
\n 
\nA boy, I was sat on a pony\u2019s back,
\ntold it was all mine. Tasted shame in
\nthe sand I ate when it threw me face
\nto ground. In that pit I learned to wield
\n 
\nwhip and crop, to hold myself hard.
\nTo drive a horse, a car, a woman without
\nregard. Gleaned what I was high in a saddle,
\nblack shining joints, a god in armor
\n 
\non a field of imaginary war. Forever, I
\nerased that sanded outline of a boy. I
\npolished my teeth, my fingernails, my
\ncufflinks like new chrome. I am
\n  
\nmuscle grip and money tough; my
\neyes a warning flag of bright blue. I
\ncan have anything by stretching out my
\nhand and taking it. The meek inherit nothing.
\n 
\nDaisy
\n 
\nI wasn\u2019t born this careless, heedless
\nof what might come. I never learned how
\nthe jeweled fruits I plucked from cut glass
\nplates were grown and ripened under a yellow sun.
\nNor the way a silkworm spins its skeins, how those slender strands
\nare woven together, soaked in hues of apple, cantaloupe, plum.
\nNo one taught me to recognize birdsong,
\nhow to be alone. I didn\u2019t know that a pearl grows
\nfrom a grain of sand in the salted fold of an oyster.
\nThese simple things were kept from me.
\nI was made for show, my face opening like a flower,
\nmy laugh tuned to the timbre of silver,
\nmy whisper husked to echo the rustle of paper.
\nMy enchanted life unspooled in cool, curtained bedrooms,
\nthe hush of white dresses laid upon white beds after
\nthe imprint of my sleeping body had been smoothed,
\nerased by other hands. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nKenneth Pobo<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHANGING THE LAUNDRY OUT TO DRY
\nPainting by Berthe Morisot<\/a>
\n 
\nThe clotheslines sag like Karin\u2019s dreams,
\na woman who wanted an education,
\nbut her father said no.
\n 
\nSo she hangs clothes. The steam train
\npasses. Hands wet, wind blows
\nsheets up into her face.
\n 
\nThe women talk and clouds listen.
\nThe clothes must be perfectly dry
\nbefore they can come indoors
\nand be folded. Mistakes don\u2019t ride
\nthe train. They stay and stay. She fears
\nbeing a big mistake. The day
\n 
\ndisappears like steam. She could fall
\nasleep but chores are piled high.
\nHer arms hurt. The night sky
\nmight kidnap her but she would
\nwillingly go. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nKen Poyner<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFREE WILL
\n 
\nI am just about out of town
\nwhen I realize I have left
\nmy luggage in the lobby
\nof the one tolerable hotel in that place.
\n 
\nOf course, I have to go back.
\nI will wear most of the clothes again
\nand it is less than a two mile return.
\nA real no-brainer.
\n 
\nFor you, however, this is not your
\nluggage, and nothing you will wear
\never. One would think
\nthis would be as easy for you
\nas it is for me. One equation,
\n 
\ndifferent values. See,
\nI am going back now,
\nwhile you are on the bench
\noutside of the one bank in town
\nwaiting for the traffic light to turn,
\ncounting the seconds: green, yellow and red.
\nI slip by and up the hotel steps.
\n 
\nYou catch me as a slither of shadow
\nand lose count.
\n 
\n 
\nLIBERATION
\n 
\nAfter three years of cheating
\nwith the secretary, you find
\nthe wife has known all along,
\nhad been looking for the relief.
\nNow you can concentrate
\non why the secretary types
\nso slowly, and with her legs
\ncrossed, and go on to complain
\nabout paisley scarves, and sandals
\nworn against winter. The wife now
\nsleeps like a dedicated dockworker.
\nIt has appeal.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDonna Pucciani<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFOX
\n 
\nThe summer of another
\nvery long year is cut by the canter
\n 
\nof the neighborhood fox
\nwho has nested in a nearby
\n 
\nbackyard. Crossing the street
\nas I drove to the grocery,
\n 
\nearly and masked, it confronted
\nme with its pointed snout,
\n 
\na mardi-gras face of russet and black.
\nI slowed my car to let it saunter
\n 
\nacross the street. In that moment,
\nthe mist of morning exhaled
\n 
\nin the empty space between
\nwoman and animal, each
\n 
\nin its own prison of plague
\nand air, its own dubious solace
\n 
\nof breathless solitude, our eyes
\nmeeting at the crossroads
\n 
\nof dawn and daylight,
\nhope and despair.
\n 
\n 
\nLOT\u2019S WIFE
\n 
\nWhen you turned
\nyour naughty pretty head,
\nthe punishment descended,
\na sodium paralysis.
\n 
\nThe grains solidify into
\nthe column of your body. First,
\nthe toes, then the ankles, freeze.
\n 
\nLegs halt mid-step as you try
\nto outrun the hand of the Almighty,
\nthe mandate of your mate.
\n 
\nYour torso stiffens, lungs unable
\nto expand. Say goodbye to air.
\nYour eyeballs petrify into marbles.
\nYou are salt-lick for Jehovah.
\n 
\nYour children, having run ahead,
\nsuddenly miss you. Farewell to them,
\nthe smell of their babyness.
\n 
\nAnd Lot, striding ahead, wonders
\nwhy you could never obey.
\n 
\n 
\nALESSANDRO, ONE MONTH OLD
\n 
\nButter-plump,
\na little lump with eyelashes.
\n 
\nToday, he sneezed
\nfor the first time, startling
\n 
\nhimself, eyes marble-dark,
\ncheeks a-tremble, spine
\n 
\nstiffening, though he cannot
\nsit up yet, only lounge
\n 
\nin his plastic carrier-seat.
\nIf I were a kangaroo,
\n 
\nhe\u2019d be in my pouch
\nin a New York minute.
\n 
\nBut this is not Australia
\nor Manhattan. I am in Chicago,
\n 
\nand Alessandro is in Madrid,
\nnaked as a newborn mouse,
\n 
\nsweet as a newly-hatched
\nrobin. His fists flail, his vision
\n 
\nfollows a purple duck floating above.
\nIn another month, an old
\n  
\nwrinkled auntie will meet him
\nat the airport. Fat as a Sumo wrestler,
\n 
\nhe will find some kind of heaven
\nin her bony arms. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nBrady Riddle<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nTHE FRAGILITY OF THINGS
\n 
\nOne time, I dropped this plate.
\nIt was a simple act.
\n 
\nEnough of the pieces remained
\nintact for glue
\n 
\nto work\u2014just some scars
\nand this innate sense of the fragility
\n 
\nof things, small and great
\n 
\nwe hold to hope will only remain
\ncracked, like that time I dropped
\n 
\nthe plate\u2014it was a simple act.
\n 
\nNo matter the ways
\nwe handle the pieces
\n 
\nsometimes,
\n 
\nthere\u2019s no way to reclaim
\nthe second it leaves our hands
\n 
\nthe exact moment we know
\nwe know<\/i> its fate:
\n 
\nlike that time
\nI dropped the plate\u2014it was
\n 
\nsuch a simple act. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRandall Rogers<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nHOLD THE MAYO
\n 
\nLife
\nis a death sentence
\nwritten
\nin the stars
\nsandwiched
\nbetween
\neternity and yesterday
\non whole wheat. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nEd Ruzicka<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSKUNKED ANGELS
\n 
\nMy fellow deckhand, Ronnie,
\nescaped a gang of Nashville dealers,
\nhitched down to the Gulf
\nto cold turkey off heroin.
\nI\u2019m just tying bowlines for summer bucks.
\nOn a deadbeat Saturday, Ronnie
\nhooks us up with a local yahoo
\nstoned out of his gourd by 4 p.m.
\n 
\nWe loll on this home-boy\u2019s front porch.
\nHe doesn\u2019t move or twitch for a half hour.
\nThen two humming birds dip and join
\nat the hip just above tridents of canna lilies.
\nThe guy throws his head back and cries out,
\n\u201c Damn if that ain\u2019t cuter
\nthan a spotted pup in a new red wagon.\u201d
\n 
\nThe three of us end up at last call
\nin a bar with an interior decor
\nlike an oil slick on wrenched seas.
\nEveryone is stiff, silent, pickled
\nuntil the needle drops
\ninto K23 on the juke box.
\n 
\nDeck hands, crew-boat Captains, Ronnie,
\nhome-boy, boiler-masters and a few Debs,
\nstart to sing in unison to no one in particular \u2013
\nlow, breathy bent into bar or table tops
\nwhere brown bottles are microphones.
\nIt\u2019s a chorus of skunked angels,
\nwithout a soprano in the bunch.
\n(\u201c Back in Luckenbach, Texas,
\nain\u2019t nobody feeling no pain.\u201d)
\nWe sing as if these words
\nhold the only hope around
\nand the song itself is what
\nsheds light off mirror glass.
\n 
\n 
\nSHOELACE
\n 
\nIn the basement of the Louvre,
\nMiriam\u2019s tiny finger pointed
\nat the sculpture of a man
\nwith the head of a falcon,
\nanother with the lithe,
\nmuscled body of a lion.
\n 
\nOn a morning when a fan
\nwho stood in a crowd behind ropes
\nwas struck by lightning at the eleventh green
\nduring the U. S. Open in Chaska, Minnesota,
\nMiriam and I were often
\nthe only two in that basement.
\n 
\nShe was awed. I was awed.
\nOur mouths dropped agape.
\nNo doubt the troops were awed
\nas Napoleon plundered Egypt
\nfor the glory that is France.
\n 
\nAs we made our way back up,
\nMiriam\u2019s shoelace caught
\nin the escalator\u2019s jaws.
\nI felt a sudden tug. Instinctively
\nI ripped her up into my arms.
\n 
\nThat engine could have
\nshredded her foot
\nwith only a shudder.
\n 
\nWe stood to the side.
\nCrowds filed by blank faced,
\nas if fate and history
\ncan be held at arm\u2019s length,
\nare things printed in guidebooks. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nM. A. Schaffner<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFOOLS IN OLD STYLE HATS AND COATS
\nNovember 3, 2020<\/i>
\n 
\n“Greatest Generation” makes me think
\nof year long minutes crouching under desks,
\nhead in hand like their prisoner,
\nlike children now in active shooter drills.
\n 
\nThe nukes still linger, waiting
\nfor a simple cue to take the center stage.
\nThe guns still spread like dragons’ teeth
\nsprouting psychopaths to snarl on the news.
\n 
\nYou get one big shot each age to save the kids
\nby taking the bullies’ toys away —
\nto save yourself from looking in the mirror
\nat the blown-out wall behind you
\n 
\nand thinking how you crouched and turned away
\nwhen you might have saved the world with a vote.
\n 
\n 
\nFLEW RIGHT PAST THEN CIRCLED
\nNovember 30, 2020<\/i>
\n 
\nThe house fell last decade, not last year.
\nThe song that sounded new, an artifact
\nof the previous century.
\nLadies and Gentlemen we are now approaching
\nthe Forever Zone,
\nwhere all is as it always was
\nand will be forever.
\n 
\nExcept for my limbs, which spring so readily,
\nbut now just in sleep and it’s there
\nI see her again as we always were,
\nonly to wake to arduous labors:
\ndogs to be let out, coffee to make.
\n 
\nNo trick can evade
\nthe shadow dimming behind me.
\n 
\nBut last summer is still last summer.
\nLong walks acquire a meaning
\neclipsing decades of work and striving.
\nWeary and abraded I still await her
\neach day the way a puppy greets the world. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nKarlo Sevilla<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nENGLISH AS A SECOND LANGUAGE
\n 
\nDaily we chat online, interisland\/internationally,
\nthis Asian side of the Pacific as the language
\nof the powerful empires must be taught. <\/i>
\n 
\nBut my First World student doesn’t need me;
\nshe holds two master’s degrees:
\none from an Aussie university,
\nthe other one’s from the UK.
\nAnd I\u2019m a mere college dropout
\n(albeit of my developing country\u2019s
\nla primera universidad)<\/i>.
\n 
\nI guess she\u2019s just using me for practice,
\nas verbal training partner.
\nBut I have long submitted
\nto her linguistic superiority.
\nSo earlier, my feedback to her:
\n“English blooms from your mouth
\nas cherry blossoms burst forth
\nin spring.\u201d<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Shepard<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWHO IS KLAUS SCHWAB AND WHY IS HE SAYING
\nALL THOSE TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT ME?
\n 
\nEven his name sounds slurred
\nupon utterance, drunken snake,
\nwind rubbing the edge of
\na sandstone ledge, everything round
\nand hollow. He might be the devil,
\nprophet of doom preparing us for
\nthe devil\u2019s work, miraculous meltdown of
\nmankind into a mush of nonsense.
\nHe might be our savior, far-seeing
\nand benevolent, an illumined being
\nleading us to the promise land.
\nFrom his invisible command center in Switzerland,
\nhe predicts our future as he sees it.
\nMore war and economic ruin, collapsing
\nfoundational structures. He has a plan
\nto Build Back Better with The Great Reset.
\nIt begins with the Fourth Industrial Revolution
\nand ends with a world of robot rulers.
\nHe might be the smartest man in the room.
\nHe might be the answer I\u2019ve needed
\nto a question I\u2019ve never asked
\nabout a world that deserves us less and less.
\n 
\n 
\nCARTOON LIFE
\n 
\nI don\u2019t mind the mindless violence
\nof cartoons, the falling-off-the-cliff variety,
\nfizzling fuses of exploding red bombs,
\nevery time a mouse kills the cat
\nby turning the tables on the ratfink
\njokester, hoisting up his bloody head.
\nDeath is never the final punchline
\nin comedy as Wile E. Coyote taught us,
\nbouncing back from the Greyhound bus
\naccident, his body splayed across the grill,
\nsurviving a dozen deaths each episode
\nbecause of hairbrained schemes that backfire,
\nas when Elmer Fudd went a-hunting
\nand only bagged himself, the shotgun
\nbarrel tied in a bow. Life is no joke.
\nIt gives worse than it receives, and while we
\nkill ourselves so that we may survive,
\nsomeone is painting a cave on the side
\nof a mountain, planning our next crash. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAnnette Sisson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nWHAT THE SCAN DOESN\u2019T SHOW
\n       To believe in this living is just a hard way to go.
\n       John Prine, \u201cAngel from Montgomery\u201d <\/i>
\n 
\nThe CT scan rewrites the story of her broken
\nshoulder. A heart attack knocked her off
\nthe couch, her fractured scapula
\ncollateral damage, a second
\nlayer of dominoes
\nfalling.
\n 
\nIt doesn\u2019t expose her motives, why she had
\nher teeth removed, refused the plan
\nfor implants, hides away in her
\ncluttered den, cancels lawn
\ncare, housekeepers,
\nexterminators.
\n 
\nIt doesn\u2019t show the conflicts she imagines, frets over\u2014
\nher rituals of checking, reassurance: investments,
\naccounts, the weather in Jackson, Birmingham,
\nAsheville (the cities where her children
\nlive), websites of their employment.
\nShe prefers to browse, not
\nto be family.
\n  
\nShe ignores the piles of unopened mail,
\nturns away her sons, their appeals
\nand questions, starts another
\nround of solitaire.
\n 
\nA scan cannot pinpoint why she strains so
\nhard to protect herself, her story\u2014
\na life she gave up on
\nyears ago. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nPaul Smith<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSO MANY LIGHTS
\n 
\nI never knew there
\nwere so many lights
\nin our kitchen
\nthere is an oven light
\nto see whatever\u2019s being warmed up
\nand an overhead light
\nattached to the microwave
\nbut actually lighting
\nwhat I\u2019m frying on the stove
\nI am now the cook
\nthe housekeeper
\nshe never had to show me these
\nand there is another over the sink
\na pleasant source of illumination
\nyellowy
\nwith a softness
\nthat could coax a spirit
\nback from where
\nit\u2019s been called to
\nI turn it on around four
\nin honor of all the meals I ate
\nnever knowing what it took
\nto cook them
\nand there is another one
\noutside on the patio
\nsaffron colored and beacon-like
\nin what otherwise is gloom
\nit was hooked up to a motion sensor
\nbut nothing stirs out there
\nI had an electrician change it
\nso
\nit comes on when I want it to
\nwhich is every afternoon
\nabout the time
\nshe started dinner<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nAlec Solomita<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFLUSH
\n 
\nFlush among peonies
\nwith your sleep-too-little,
\nsmoke-too-much eyes,
\ncanny, soft, and drowsy,
\nI came upon you on
\nmy morning walk
\nand sat beside you
\non the green bench.
\nWe\u2019re both wed,
\nbut the air was fragrant
\nand so still this empty dawn
\nthat I kissed you
\njust once.
\n 
\n 
\nIMPERISHABLE MUSE
\n 
\nAll speech grows ill
\nwhen I sit down
\nto write.
\n 
\nAnd you won\u2019t let it heal.
\nWhat the fuck is up with that?
\nDown I sit; up you pop.
\n 
\nYou exhaust me as I try
\nfinally to exhaust you.
\n 
\nMy trapped readers
\n(numbering in the tens!)
\nmust be very tired of it.
\nI know I am.
\n 
\nVanish!
\nthe time you sat
\nand missed the kitchen chair.
\n 
\nGet thee behind me!
\nthe time you shyly
\nasked me to show you
\nhow to use the bathroom.
\n 
\nBegone! your high cries
\nwhen I\u2019d come to visit the Home.
\n 
\nFly! for Crissakes, Andr\u00e9
\nfinding you on the floor
\nof your room, stained and forgotten.
\n 
\nEvery time I sit down to write,
\nthe first line is \u201cMy poor baby.\u201d
\nGive me a time out.
\nLet me write about Queen Anne\u2019s Lace
\nor some such horseshit. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMary Ellen Talley<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nATTIC NOISE
\n 
\nAfter I called
\nto wish you
\nHappy Birthday,
\nthe roof rats
\nthreatened
\nto sneak out of the attic.
\n 
\nYou told me
\nin your birthday rambling
\nthat our father ate a mouse
\nwhen you were five.
\nHe held a dead mouse,
\nhis hand rose,
\nhis
\nmouth
\nopened
\nand you ran
\nstill believing to this day
\nbecause you believed then.
\n 
\nDays later now,
\nmy husband carved
\na hole in the wall,
\ntrapped two rats
\nthat had traipsed tree to tree
\nacross neighborhoods
\nand found a weak spot
\nin our roofline.
\nHe was on his way
\nto drop the bag of rigid rodents
\nin the trash
\nwhen I called you in Arizona.
\n 
\nAny scratching
\nbehind the heat vent
\nhas terminated \u2026 but you caution me
\nthat baby rats
\ngrow rapidly.
\n 
\nOf this,
\nyou are certain.
\n 
\n 
\nSONNET FOR A TATTOO ARTIST
\n 
\nGet thee on thy retro Harley, I pray
\nthee glide miles and miles despite the jarring
\nroads, the fearsome westward end of day
\nwhen sun heads low where you\u2019ll be merging \u2013
\ndeer crossing roads at dusk and if I dare
\nannounce my worry asking you to text
\nand briefly let us know your current where
\nwhile we wait as parents bred to listen
\n 
\nfor triple-trill sparrow song come morning,
\nlawn mowers, leaf blowers, drivers scurry
\nand scores of noisy neighbor kids playing
\naway hours, we feign away our worry
\nsoon hearing the rev under sun blue sky.
\nOur son is not a sonnet kind of guy. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nSusan Thornton<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nOATMEAL FOR SUPPER OR: GONE FOR GOOD
\nDayv James-French
\n1953 to 2016<\/i>
\n 
\nTonight home to a
\nlate supper of oatmeal
\nand apple slices at the end
\nof a twelve-hour day with still
\n 
\nwork to do and suddenly
\nyou are there in my
\nthoughts and the same familiar
\nrage–how could you leave us
\n 
\nlike that?– but it wasn\u2019t your
\nfault, it wasn\u2019t suicide. You
\njust slipped away in your
\nsleep. You were never well and
\n 
\nsomething in you just gave
\nout. Our days are numbered,
\nwe are told but who ever
\nreally thinks about it? Now
\n 
\nI remember our forty years
\nof friendship. Listening to
\nBlondie–Debbie Harry–at
\nsuch a volume David had to
\n 
\nleave the room. Drinking
\nso much I hardly knew
\nwho or where I was. The time
\nyou misdirected us leaving
\n 
\nthe restaurant and we drove
\nto the airport and back before
\nwe finally figured out how
\nto find your neighborhood.
\n 
\nEvenings in restaurants when
\nyou were so obscene neighboring
\ndiners left their meals and walked out.
\nThe time you broke a glass
\n 
\nby bringing it sharply to the table
\nto make a point. Why do I
\nnow remember all this with
\nsuch affection? Why this
\n 
\nendless blind love for you?
\nI could tell you things I
\ntold no one else. Secrets that
\nburned my throat in the
\n 
\ntelling. You listened, smiled,
\nsaid, \u201cMmm, and then?\u201d
\nAt the end, you
\ndied at home, in a safe place, not
\n 
\nas you had feared, in a
\nflop house where someone could
\nand would steal your boots. In 1979
\nwe thought we had it made:
\n 
\na literary conference with
\nTom Congdon, the editor who
\ndiscovered Robert Benchley
\nand the novel Jaws<\/i>. We
\n 
\nmade bets who would be first
\non his new list for the next
\nyear. We were sure we would be
\nliterary lights and you
\n 
\nwere in your particular sphere.
\nWell-known of many
\nauthors, widely published,
\nand your work anthologized.
\n 
\nAnd I have gone on to become —
\nWhat exactly, have I
\nbecome? A teacher at a high
\nschool, a traveler, a mom,
\n 
\na widow, a person who eats
\noatmeal for supper after
\na twelve-hour day and scribbles
\nwith pencil on paper
\n 
\ntrying and failing to outrun her
\ntears. Vale<\/i>, old friend,
\na salute to you wherever
\nand however you remain–
\n 
\na thought in my mind–
\nan answer to a question
\nI did not know I had–
\na magic that is gone–
\n 
\ngone for good. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nW. Joey Thornton<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLETTER FROM OCTOBER 2002
\n 
\nSweet brother,
\nI hope this letter finds you well. Mouth agape, you speak without lips. The river crashes against
\nconcrete overpass railed edge. The young men, drunk with brilliance and stupidity, stand at your
\nmouth and laugh. Laugh at the water lapping against their ankles. Laugh at your ripe, rotting
\ncorpse cache deep, deep in the pond downstream. Downstream with the rolling golden carp. The
\nyoung men\u2019s laughter barks against the alder trees. The trees drop black berries and golden
\nleaves, making the ground slick and scaly.
\n 
\nYour mother calls, dear sweet brother. She wishes to hold you within her belly again. Your meat
\nand bile. The young men turn to walk home, uphill toward the burlap hillsides. You do not
\nfollow. Mouth still agape, hungry for laughter.
\n 
\n 
\nA PASTORAL
\nOn Antonio Ligabue\u2019s Self Portrait with a Fly<\/a><\/i>
\n 
\nThe fly has been there as long as I can remember. For better or worse. He ticks and bites my cheek.
\nDrinks the water from the corner of my eye, his snout poking and popping. Sometimes I wish he\u2019d
\nfind somewhere else to go. I ask, \u201cDear brother fly, would you go off into the green fluttering
\nfields and find a calf, twisting and tightening?\u201d I ask him, \u201cFind a calf that has failed to dance with
\ntheir brothers and sisters. A calf that failed to thrive and sing. A brown or white or black calf
\nbaking in the sun and soil. Its skin turning to supple leather and flattening against the cold earth.
\nA calf. brother fly, the perfect spot to raise your crawling, beautiful milky-white, wriggling
\nchildren. Brother fly, would you leave me to give this calf\u2019s flesh the opportunity to birth your
\nchildren? Turn their failed flesh to life?\u201d But somehow he chose me, this fly. What did I do to
\ndeserve this constant companion? I pray at church that he will leave me some day, but he prays
\ntoo, scratching his front legs together in an Our Father or Hail Mary. Our faith in God the Father
\ngrows with each and every tiny bite and Psalm. Oh my tiny, pious friend, will you leave me and
\nfind happiness elsewhere? Have children and swarm the farmer\u2019s golden fields of wheat and soft
\ngreen clover? Will you miss me? <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nReese Warner<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nADVICE
\n(after Propertius I.4)
\n 
\nGive it up, Klaus, I won’t do it. Another string to
\n  my bow? No thank you! And not just because
\nyour metaphor is ancient and annoying. (Tell me:
\n  violin or hunting? Which bowstring was
\nit you were thinking of? I know you don’t have a clue.)
\n  There’s lots of scrumptious beauties in the Six–
\ntrue enough–Swedish or Chinese or…Zimbabwean,
\n  or some Toronto-only EA mix.
\nSo what? I dream of none of them. My Cynthia’s got
\n  them all beat like she was Gretzky. There’s none
\nso good-looking, none half as smart, and, once in bed, if
\n  the truth be told, there’s not a one as fun.
\nShe rules. It’s no use, Klaus, for you to babble on of
\n  Babylon. Give me no Ishtar, no She,
\nall your mythological foxes, no Guineveres,
\n  and no, not even Hermione G.
\nGive me my real sinful Cynthia. And, Klaus, you need
\n  to stop this scheming. Cynth will so get word,
\nshe will so tell all her girlfriends they should shun you, and
\n  if she proscribes you, you’ll never get hard
\nagain. Luscious barista girls chanteusing weeknights,
\n  marketing reps with condos on the lake,
\nand strippers shopping at Seduction, they will all do
\n  just what she says. For her offended sake
\nthey’ll see you’re living lonely. So don’t do it, dude, don’t
\n  go there, that’s social doomsville. I would hate
\nto see you, panting and restless, your balls swollen with
\n  unspent seed and you moaning for a date.
\n 
\n 
\nGHOST STORY
\n(after Propertius IV.7)
\n 
\nTime for a ghost story. Death is not the end–I know.
\n  I saw my Cynth, all shimmery, her brown
\nbangs bloodied a fiery Irish red from when she went
\n  through the windshield of Jimmy’s Ford. That clown.
\nHe should have been the one to die, not her. I get it:
\n  Toronto’s not much fun just now, grey snow,
\nCovid, lockdowns. She thought she’d get away, but figured
\n  I would rage with jealousy and say no.
\nSo when I said, “Go, his family’s had that cabin since
\n  the Twenties, planed planks, stone floors, a lake they
\nown themselves,” she had no excuse, though I know she finds
\n  Jimmy a bore. But all that winter play,
\nskiing and skating and s’mores, so sparkly and white, it’s
\n  not for me. And anyway, I trust her.
\nBut now her ghost floats by my bed, j’accusing, “If you’d
\n  just still been jealous, just still felt the fire
\nfor me, I’d be alive.” “Me? It’s my fault? You should have
\n  stopped him drinking, or stayed out of that car,
\nor worn your seatbelt!” You get nowhere chastising ghosts,
\n  but then that’s just the way our squabbles are:
\nwe fight to win. “You shouldn’t have let me go. And now
\n  you’re sleeping peacefully, forgetting those
\nfevered nights tangling up my satin sheets, even–I
\n  see right through you–dreaming of some girl who’s
\nred-haired and bare-kneed in her skates and pleated skater
\n  dress.” What can I say? She wins again. Death
\nreally is x-ray specs. Seeing her bloodied hair, I
\n  fantasized fucking Cynth as a redhead.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nJ.T. Whitehead<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nFROM \u201cTHE SECOND BOOK OF JOB\u201d
\n 
\nV.
\nOn his 4 by 4 porch sat Job the Third,
\ncounting up all those things he had not lost.
\nLosing his sobriety. It occurred
\nto him, he was gaining his buzz, a cost
\nhe could pay. He had a roof. For now, it was the night
\nsky, which sang its blues like John Lee Hooker.
\nOr, no. That really was John Lee Hooker,
\nfrom speakers inside. He had music, sight,
\nhearing, touch, smell \u2013 definitely still smelled \u2013
\nand he felt, as if suddenly compelled,
\nto thank God for his senses and his eyes
\nat the sight of these cerulean skies
\nand his neighbor \u2013 her thighs \u2013 and the decree:
\nwords he could read, and whose words set him free. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nDavid L. Williams<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nAN UNUSUALLY BAD BUSINESS
\n (in the age of mechanical reproduction)<\/i>
\n 
\nMy dad\u2019s first business, way downtown, evolved
\ntoo fast. The back rooms piled with wooden blocks,
\nused to engrave, soon gave way to the Xerox
\nwhich, much as clocks kept track of time, soon solved
\n 
\nthe problem of quick copies and revolved
\nunendingly around them, as did dad
\nfor many years, until he finally had
\nrun himself ragged. He was so involved
\n 
\nwith work, at times back then I\u2019d roam outside
\nsome alleys, drunkards, and the shop next door
\nalso with new machine, its owner\u2019s pride,
\nuntil it sliced his hand off for an encore.
\n 
\nMy nightmares grew from when it splotched the floor,
\na screaming ambulance, and reams of gore. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nMelody Wilson<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nPONTICELLO
\nSul ponticello \u2014 Italian term that instructs the player
\nto bow near the bridge of the instrument producing
\na strange, glassy sound. -inmusica.fr<\/i>
\n 
\nBack when we drank like breaching
\nthe sound barrier, we walked six blocks
\nthrough sideways rain, wedged ourselves
\ninto the Irish bar on Hawthorne. The kids
\nwere accounted for. If we were lucky,
\nmorning would never come. Right about
\nthe time I began to panic about how
\nwe might never get another drink, the band
\nreturned from break, violin unzipping the room.
\nThe singer twisted the microphone stand
\nwhile you leaned in close to yell something
\nabout your father\u2019s fiddle, a probably fable
\nI\u2019d never heard before, but the music
\nswallowed your story\u2014everyone up\u2014tables,
\nchairs\u2014roiling. The throng closest to the bar
\nvibrated with regret, but they could not leave the line.
\nAnd then there was air; I was back in my chair,
\nposturing with an unlit Marlboro Light, owning it
\nlike a smoker, like an actress, laughing at nothing
\nwhile you regaled the couple at the next table
\nwith the story of your father\u2019s fiddle, and I wondered
\nif the queue might be shorter at the men\u2019s room.
\n 
\nToday I researched the band online, clicked
\nthe only title I recall. Strings shimmered
\nlike an almost remembered name. Was that
\nall it was? Just that?<\/i> I remember it differently,
\nSaturday night ripped open at the seams,
\nplate glass window pulsing, in\/out,
\nwishing it could shatter, rupture the moment
\nin undisciplined notes, let them pool
\nsticky and slick on the concrete floor.
\n 
\n 
\nSATELLITE
\n–for Jenny
\n 
\nSalt, tequila, lemon<\/i>. Laugh.
\nYou were seventeen, I was thirteen,
\nthe baby must have been asleep.
\nI was just learning, salt, tequila, lemon. <\/i>
\nEverything spinning, the turntable,
\nthe laughing faces, the room. You were a
\nplanet orbiting a dead star.
\nI was faking it.
\n 
\nYou hurtled into the universe.
\na cat\u2019s eye swirl of amber and orange
\nnot to be outshone. You dangled
\nplace to place, low-slung jeans,
\nnut-brown skin. I was just a girl
\nwith regular breasts. You enthralled
\neveryone, tall and hard, cigarette
\nbetween your fingers, a plan
\non your lips.
\n 
\nYou were ten, I was six. Our grandfather\u2019s
\nsecond wife hated you, but
\nfinally outside, you swept me
\nonto your back, galloped
\nthrough boysenberry rows neighing
\nas I laughed, our faces windblown,
\nour tongues forbidden red.
\n 
\nAt fifteen you stepped into a car,
\nfell into the arms of adulthood,
\nof a man, a child, a botched
\nsurgery, a regimen of prescriptions.
\nYour marrow, already steeped
\nin dreams you would never achieve,
\nhardened, recalcified into a path
\nI couldn\u2019t take.
\n 
\nBut on this long-ago night, we laugh
\nand drink as McCartney sings
\nfor the rabbits on the run<\/i>
\nand we do not imagine
\nthat decades later when rehab
\nis finally off the table
\nyou will bring malt liquor and marijuana,
\nand I will refuse to go.
\n 
\nLet\u2019s sit here and watch the spider plants
\ngrow, let the records spin. When the lemons
\nare gone, we\u2019ll drink tequila straight.
\nI\u2019ll try to keep up, and you\u2019ll laugh at me
\nthrough those beautiful teeth.
\n 
\n 
\nPEARL
\n 
\nMy face flushed
\nwhen you swung into the lot
\nto pick me up from school.
\nMaybe it was the
\ncracked windshield or your
\nfaded Mumu, maybe the stream
\nof smoke that trailed behind
\n 
\nyour hand. The old Caddy
\nlurched to a stop, dieseled,
\nand I slipped quick
\ninto the backseat.
\nGuilt swept through me
\nlike a warm trickle
\ndown my leg.
\n 
\nMemories swirl shiny
\nand smooth in my mouth, orbs
\nthat crowd my cheeks, click
\nagainst my teeth. But yesterday
\nthis one seared my tongue. I tried
\nto work it to the front, spit it out
\nbe clean, but my lips were sealed
\nand couldn\u2019t be undone. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Wright<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nLIFE IN ENTROPY
\n 
\nThe scream of sirens
\na little louder than the shouts
\nin her head as her son is hauled off.
\n 
\nHe\u2019s gone but she has the last
\nof their food stamps,
\ntheir broken lock, torn screens.
\n 
\nThis week she got a job moving clothes
\nothers leave in the wrong spot,
\nfinds the proper place
\n 
\nfor each blouse, sweater, pair of pants
\nthen returns home, waits for chaos,
\nhis unending gift to her. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nSusan J. Wurtzburg<\/a><\/strong>
\n 
\nSHADOW LOVER
\n 
\nAlone together we walk
\nfor a life-long talk.
\n 
\nWonders if I appreciate
\nlight as she does.
\nPulls me near,
\ngrateful I see.
\n 
\nHuddles close at midday,
\nshyly hides underfoot.
\nBrave expansion, afternoon
\nlow sun, a lengthy stretch.
\n 
\nNightfall disappearance,
\nreturns with the moon.
\nRomantic companion
\nin the silver glow.
\n 
\nLunar departure, and
\nI am abandoned again.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\n\u201cCento for Clairvoyance\u201d borrows lines from 23 source poems. The words, word order, italicizations, and punctuation of each line are identical to those in the source poem. Capitalization may have been altered. In the list below, the first numeral refers to the stanza; the second numeral refers to the line within the stanza.
\n 
\n1.1 Sachiko Murakami, \u201cStill, Here,\u201d Render<\/i> (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020).
\n1.2 Jaclyn Desforges, \u201cA Process of Maturation,\u201d Danger Flower<\/i> (Palimpsest Press, 2021). 1.3 Sonnet L\u2019Abb\u00e9, \u201cNomads,\u201d A Strange Relief<\/i> (McClelland & Stewart, 2001).
\n1.4 Jessi MacEachern, \u201cNotes on Moving,\u201d A Number of Stunning Attacks<\/i> (Invisible Publishing, 2021).
\n2.1 Canisia Lubrin, \u201cAct VI: Ain\u2019t I a Madness?\u201d The Dyzgraphxst<\/i> (McClelland & Stewart, 2020).
\n2.2 Shira Erlichman, \u201cNeedle,\u201d Odes to Lithium<\/i> (Alice James Books, 2019).
\n2.3 Robert Lowell, \u201cThose Before Us,\u201d For the Union Dead<\/i> (1956).
\n3.3 Lisa Robertson, \u201cCinema of the Present,\u201d Cinema of the Present<\/i> (Coach House Books, 2014).
\n4.1 Liz Howard, \u201cBrain Mapping,\u201d Letters in a Bruised Cosmos (McClelland & Stewart, 2021).
\n4.2 Susan J. Atkinson, \u201cHer Sunlight,\u201d The Marta Poems<\/i> (Silver Bow Publishing, 2020).
\n4.3 Micheal Mirolla, \u201cOn the Acceptance of Death After Life,\u201d Light and Time<\/i> (Guernica Editions, 2010).
\n4.4 Elee Kraljii Gardiner, \u201cTunica Intima,\u201d Trauma Head<\/i> (Anvil Press, 2018).
\n5.1 Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Edward Snow, \u201cThe Second Elegy,\u201d Duino Elegies<\/i> (North Point Press, 2000).
\n5.2 Brecken Hancock, \u201cWoman, Wolf,\u201d Broom Broom<\/i> (Coach House Books, 2014).
\n6.1 Roxanna Bennett, \u201cCurse of the Hyacinth, Unmeaningable<\/i> (Gordon Hill Press, 2019).
\n7.1 Doyali Islam, \u201c33rd<\/sup> Parallel,\u201d heft (McClelland & Stewart, 2019).
\n7.2 Christine McNair, \u201cthe problem of orchids,\u201d Charm<\/i> (Book*hug, 2017).
\n7.3 Nancy Lee, \u201cAlphas,\u201d What Hurts Going Down<\/i> (McClelland & Stewart, 2020).
\n8.1 Frances Boyle, \u201chandle with care,\u201d This White Nest<\/i> (Quattro Books, 2019).
\n8.2 Amber Dawn, \u201ctouch \u2260 touch screen,\u201d My Art Is Killing Me<\/i> (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020).
\n8.3 Caroline Szpak, \u201cAllostatic Load,\u201d Slinky Na\u00efve<\/i> (Anvil Press, 2018).
\n9.1 Paul Lisson, \u201cAwaiting the arrival of the butcher,\u201d The Perfect Archive<\/i> (Guernica Editions, 2019).
\n9.2 Elana Wolff, \u201cCord,\u201d Everything Reminds You of Something Else<\/i> (Guernica Editions, 2017).
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\nBack to the poems<\/a><\/strong>
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\nCONTRIBUTORS’ BIOS
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\nJ.S. Absher<\/a><\/strong> (www.js-absher-poetry.com) is a poet and independent scholar. His full-length book of poetry, \u201cMouth Work\u201d (St. Andrews University Press) won the 2015 Shull Competition of the NC Poetry Society. \u201cSkating Rough Ground,\u201d will appear in 2022. Chapbooks are “Night Weather” (Cynosura, 2010) and \u201cThe Burial of Anyce Shepherd\u201d (Main Street Rag, 2006). Absher is preparing three books focusing on North Carolina and Southern US history. He lives in Raleigh, with his wife, Patti.<\/a>
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\nJon Bennett<\/a><\/strong> writes and plays music in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. You can find more of his work on most music streaming websites and on his website<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nMike W. Blottenberger<\/a><\/strong> lives in Hanover, Pennsylvania and his poetry has appeared in Baltimore Review, Gulf Coast Review, Mid-American Review, The Pennsylvania Review<\/i>, and The William & Mary Review<\/i>. He works for a non-profit organization and teaches poetry in the schools. <\/a>
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\nRonda Piszk Broatch<\/a><\/strong> is the author of Lake of Fallen Constellations, (MoonPath Press). Ronda\u2019s current manuscript was a finalist with the Charles B. Wheeler Prize and Four Way Books Levis Prize, and she is the recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant. Ronda\u2019s journal publications include Fugue, Blackbird, 2River, Sycamore Review, Missouri Review, Palette Poetry, and Public Radio KUOW\u2019s All Things Considered. <\/a>
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\nIngrid Bruck<\/a><\/strong> lives in Pennsylvania Amish country, a landscape that inhabits her poetry. A retired library director, she writes short forms and poetry. She writes a monthly column, \u201cPearl Diving,\u201d featuring online writer resources for Between These Shores Books, and serves on the BTSA editorial team. Some current work appears in Failed Haiku, Heron\u2019s Nest and Verse-Virtual. Poetry website: www.ingridbruck.com><\/a><\/a>
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\nNicole Callr\u00e4m<\/a><\/strong> is a nomadic bureaucrat and disciple of existence in all her life-affirming and confusing manifestations. She adores rideshare bikes, red wine, and Osmanthus flowers (preferably a mix of the three…all at once). Nicole has been published in A Shanghai Poetry Zine, Nude Studio, Kissing Dynamite, and is a RAR alumnae. You can find her on Twitter at @YiminNicole<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nWendy Taylor Carlisle<\/a><\/strong> lives in the Arkansas Ozarks. She is the author of four books, including The Mercy of Traffic<\/i>, winner of the Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Award and five chapbooks. Her work appears on line and in print and this spring Doubleback Books reprinted her 2008 book, Discount Fireworks<\/i> as a free download<\/a> For more information, her website is www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com<\/a>; follow her @wtcarlisle<\/a> <\/a>
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\nMichael J. Carter<\/a><\/strong> is a poet and clinical social worker. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, he holds an MFA from Vermont College and an MSW from Smith. Poems of his have appeared in such journals as Boulevard, Ploughshares, MomEgg Review, Western Humanities Review, among many others. He lives with his two hounds and spends his time swimming and knitting. <\/a>
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\nShannon Clem<\/a><\/strong> is an elusive creature rumored to reside with their progeny somewhere in California. In addition to reading and writing poetry, they exist to experience their love of music, Netflix, and dreaming. <\/a>
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\nDavid Colodney<\/a><\/strong> is the author of the chapbook, Mimeograph<\/i>. His poetry has appeared or will appear in journals including South Carolina Review, Panoply, and St. Petersburg Review. He holds an MFA from Converse College and serves as an associate editor of South Florida Poetry Journal. David lives in Boynton Beach, Florida. <\/a>
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\nLuigi Coppola<\/a><\/strong> is a teacher, poet, first generation immigrant and avid rum and coke drinker. Bridport Prize shortlisted, Ledbury and National Competition longlisted, Poetry Archive Worldview winner\u2019s list, publications include Worple Press\u2019 anthology \u2018The Tree Line\u2019, Acumen, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Iota, Magma, Rattle and Rialto.<\/a>
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\nSusan Cossette<\/a><\/strong> lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up<\/i>, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut\u2019s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, Vita Brevis, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review<\/i>, and in the anthologies Tuesdays at Curley\u2019s<\/i> and After the Equinox.<\/i><\/a>
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\nJoe Cottonwood<\/a><\/strong> can\u2019t help it. He\u2019s drawn to mountains and a more hardscrabble way of life. He grew up in Maryland at the foot of Appalachian ridges, spent summers in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Now he lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains of California among turkeys and redwoods and the occasional lion. <\/a>
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\nPrize-winning poet* Ken Cumberlidge<\/a><\/strong> cut his performance teeth on the Liverpool pub poetry scene of the 1970s, and has never recovered. He’s now based in Norwich, but can be lured out of cover by the promise of good company and an open mic slot. If you’ve been to an open-mic on Zoom in the last year or so, there’s a sporting chance you’ve encountered him. Ken writes about love, sex, nature, loss, personal identity and queerness, with an occasional foray into the eerie and macabre. Poke him with a sharp enough stick and he may even wake up long enough to get shouty about politics. More of Ken’s work can be found via his Linktree at linktr.ee\/kencumberlidge<\/a>. (* the prize was a chocolate cake. He guessed its weight.) <\/a>
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\nCraig Dobson<\/a><\/strong> has had poems published in Acumen, Agenda, Antiphon, Bandit Fiction, Butcher\u2019s Dog, Crann\u00f3g, The Dark Horse, The Frogmore Papers, Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter\u2019s House, Lighten Up Online, The Literary Hatchet, The London Magazine, Magma, Neon, New Welsh Review, The North, Orbis, Pennine Platform, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Prole, Rat’s Ass Review, The Rialto, Stand, Southword, THINK, Under The Radar and Vita Brevis. <\/a>
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\nClive Donovan<\/a><\/strong> devotes himself full-time to poetry and has published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Fenland Poetry Journal, Neon Lit. Journal, Rats Ass Review, Prole, Sentinel Lit. Quarterly and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, U.K. quite close to the river Dart. His debut collection, The Taste of Glass, is recently published by Cinnamon Press. <\/a>
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\nWilliam Doreski<\/a><\/strong> lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He has taught at several colleges and universities. His most recent book of poetry is Mist in Their Eyes<\/i> (2021). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell\u2019s Shifting Colors. <\/i> His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in various journals. williamdoreski.blogspot.com<\/a>. <\/a>
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\nVictoria Dym<\/a><\/strong> is a graduate of Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Clown College with a degree in Humility, a Bachelor of Arts, in Philosophy, from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Masters of Fine Arts, Creative Writing-Poetry from Carlow University. Her two poetry chapbooks, Class Clown, <\/i> and When the Walls Cave In<\/i> were published by Finishing Line Press in 2015 and 2018. Victoria is the co-founder of The Metanoia Retreat for Writers<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nAlicia Elkort<\/a><\/strong> has been nominated thrice for the Pushcart, twice for Best of the Net and once for the Orisons Anthology. Her first book of poetry will be published in 2022 by Stillhouse Press. She was the finalist in the 2019 Two Sylvias Press Book Prize and has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. She lives in Santa Fe, NM. For more info or to watch her two video poems: aliciaelkort.mystrikingly.com<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nMichael Estabrook<\/a><\/strong> has been publishing his poetry in the small press since the 1980s. He has published over 20 collections, a recent one being The Poet\u2019s Curse, A Miscellany <\/i> (The Poetry Box, 2019). Retired now writing more poems and working more outside, he just noticed two Cooper\u2019s hawks staked out in the yard or rather above it which explains the nerve-wracked chipmunks. He lives in Acton, Massachusetts. <\/a>
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\nRichard Carl Evans<\/a><\/strong> was born in Los Angeles, CA in the year 1957. A high school graduate and lover of the arts, he began writing verse around 1996. The book Writing the Natural Way by Gabriel Lusser-Rico introduced him to the world of creative writing and poetics.<\/a>
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\nA retired special education teacher, Vern Fein<\/a><\/strong> has published over two hundred poems on over eighty sites, a few being: *82 Review, Bindweed Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Courtship of Winds, Young Raven’s Review, Poesis, Monterey Poetry Review, and Rat’s Ass Review. Recently his first book of poems–I WAS YOUNG AND THOUGHT IT WOULD CHANGE–was released by Cyberwit Press<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nDan Flore <\/a><\/strong>III’s poems have appeared in many publications. His fifth chapbook, Written in the Dust on the Ceiling Fan, was published by Dead Man’s Press Ink and is available on Amazon. <\/a>
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\nGeorge Freek<\/a><\/strong>‘s poetry has recently appeared in “The Stockholm Review of Literature”; “Ink, Sweat and Tears”; “Miller’s Pond”; and “Gray Sparrow.” <\/a>
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\nSteven Fregeau<\/a><\/strong> grew up the first half of his life northwest of Chicago; the second half he has lived in Ohio. His vices (drawing, painting, writing, reading, scream therapy) are solitary; still he\u2019s been published in RAR, Burningwood, Disquiet Arts, Poetry Quarterly<\/i> and some others over the years. <\/a>
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\nGerald Friedman<\/a><\/strong> grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in Espa\u00f1ola, New Mexico, and teaches physics in Santa Fe. His poems have appeared in various journals, including Entropy, The Daily Drunk, Better Than Starbucks<\/i> and As It Ought To Be. <\/i> You can read more of his work at jerryfriedman.wixsite.com\/my-site-2<\/a>.<\/a>
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\nMac Gay<\/a><\/strong>‘s latest book of poems is OUR FATHERLESSNESS, out this past June from The Orchard Street Press, Ltd. His GHOST HUNT, runner-up for Eyewear Publishing’s 2017 Beverly Prize will be out in 2022. His poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and Main Street Rag. He teaches English at Perimeter College of Georgia State University.<\/a>
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\nGene Goldfarb<\/a><\/strong> now lives in Manhattan having recently moved there from Long Island. He loves reading, writing, travelling and is a foodie and film afficionado (all kinds). His poetry has appeared in Black Fox, Green Briar, SLANT, The Daily Drunk, Rat’s Ass Review and elsewhere.<\/a>
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\nRebecca Gomez<\/a><\/strong> is a Philadelphia area writer. Her short stories and poems have appeared in journals such as The Drabblecast, Sledgehammer Lit, The Orchards Poetry Journal, and Trouvaille Review among others. She is also the playwright of The Clinic, a short play that premiered in the 2019 Philadelphia Fringe Festival with Lone Brick Theatre Company.<\/a>
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\nWilliam A. Greenfield<\/a><\/strong>‘s poems have appeared in dozens of journals, including The Westchester Review, Carve Magazine, The American Journal of Poetry and others. His chapbook, \u201cMomma\u2019s Boy Gone Bad,\u201d was published in 2016 (Finishing Line Press). His chapbook, \u201cI Should have Asked the Blind Girl to Dance,\u201d was published in 2019 (Flutter Press). His full length collection, \u201cThe Circadian Fallacy,\u201d was published in 2020 (Kelsay Books). He lives in Liberty, New York with his wife, son, and a dog, always a dog. <\/a>
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\nJohn Grey<\/a><\/strong> is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, \u201cLeaves On Pages\u201d \u201cMemory Outside The Head\u201d and \u201cGuest Of Myself\u201d are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review. <\/a>
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\nAngi Holden<\/a><\/strong> is a retired lecturer, whose published work includes poetry, short stories & flash fictions. She won the Victoria Baths Splash Fiction competition, and the Mother\u2019s Milk Poetry Prize for her pamphlet Spools of Thread. Her short story Preserving History was selected for Open Book New Writing 2021. <\/a>
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\nRichard Holinger<\/a><\/strong>‘s books include Kangaroo Rabbits and Galvanized Fences, humorous essays about surviving life in suburbia, and North of Crivitz, poetry focusing on the rural Upper Midwest. His prose and poetry have appeared in The Southern Review, Witness, Boulevard, and have garnered four Pushcart Prize nominations. Degrees include a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from UIC. Holinger lives west of Chicago in what\u2019s considered country. <\/a>
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\nJudith O’Connell Hoyer<\/a><\/strong>‘s 2017 chapbook “Bits and Pieces Set Aside” was nominated for a Massachusetts Book Award by the publisher of Finishing Line Press. Her book “Imagine That” is forthcoming from Future Cycle Press in March 2023. Her poems can be found in publications that include CALYX, Cider Press Review, Southwest Review, The Moth Magazine (Ireland), The New York Times Metropolitan Diary, and The Worcester Review among others. She splits her time between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, USA. <\/a>
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\nKyle Hunter<\/a><\/strong>‘s poems have appeared in Main Street Rag, Rockvale Review, So It Goes, Gravel, and elsewhere. His work in Flying Island was recently nominated for the Best of Net Anthology. When not writing or wrangling his five kids, he practices law and dreams about making good use of his BFA in oil painting. <\/a>
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\nTyler Hurula<\/a><\/strong> (she\/her) is a poet based in Denver, Colorado. She is queer, polyamorous, and is cat mom to two fur babies and a plethora of plants. Her poems have been published previously in Anti-Heroin Chic<\/i> and Aurum Journal<\/i>. Her poems feature love, polyamory, family, and being queer. Her top three values are connection, authenticity, and vulnerability; she tries to encompass these values in her writing as well as everyday life. <\/a>
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\nNate Jacob<\/a><\/strong>, one of Idaho’s least well-known poets, continues to write poetry on the regular instead of folding laundry, registering the car, or even getting a much needed haircut. His children have at last given their approval, as has his wife, for his writing, which is all he ever needed. You can find his published poems online at verse-virtual.org and in the winter 2021 issue of Rat’s Ass Review, and in the upcoming Spring 2022 online edition of Streetlight Magazine. <\/a>
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\nJim Kangas<\/a><\/strong> is a retired academic librarian and musician living in Flint, Michigan. His work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The New York Quarterly<\/i>, and West Branch<\/i>, et al. His chapbook, Breath of Eden, <\/i> was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in the fall of 2019. <\/a>
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\nDerek Kannemeyer<\/a><\/strong>‘s recent works include a poetry chapbook contest winner (Blue Nib, 2018); the five act “Play of Gilgamesh” (Silver Birchington Plays, 2019); a poetry collection, “Mutt Spirituals” (San Francisco Bay Press, 2021); and a photography\/non-fiction tome “Unsay Their Names” (2021), about the fall from grace of Richmond’s Lost Cause statuary. Photographs taken for “Unsay Their Names” were the fall 2021 gallery show at Richmond’s Black History Museum. <\/a>
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\nJerry Krajnak<\/a><\/strong> is a Vietnam veteran who is retired in the North Carolina mountains after forty-plus years of teaching. Recent poems have been published in Plants and Poetry, Novus, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, Sublunary Review<\/i>, and in the Flee to Spring<\/i> anthology. <\/a>
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\nMargo LaPierre<\/a><\/strong> is a queer, bipolar Canadian freelance editor and author of Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes<\/i> (Guernica Editions, 2017). She is newsletter editor of Arc Poetry Magazine<\/i>, membership chair of Editors Ottawa-Gatineau, and member of poetry collective VII. She won the 2020 subTerrain<\/i> Lush Triumphant Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2021 Fiddlehead<\/i> Creative Nonfiction Contest. Her work has been published in the \/temz\/ Review, Room Magazine, Arc Poetry Magazine, filling Station, CAROUSEL, PRISM International, carte blanche<\/i> and others. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Find her on Twitter @margolapierre<\/a>. <\/a>
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\nTracey A. Lightsey<\/a><\/strong> is from the mountains of Western Colorado, where he lives, teaches, farms, and practices massage therapy. He studied at the University of Northern Colorado with James Doyle and with Aaron Abeyta at Western Colorado University. His work has appeared in Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal<\/i>, and Sage Green Journal<\/i>.<\/a>
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\nDiane Louie<\/a><\/strong>‘s book of prose poems, Fractal Shores, a winner of the National Poetry Series, was awarded the 2021 John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry. She lives in Paris, France, with her partner, a research scientist. <\/a>
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\nBob MacKenzie<\/a><\/strong> grew up in a photo studio in mid-century rural Alberta with artist parents. His poetry has appeared in more than 400 journals across North America and as far away as Australia, Greece, India and Italy. Bob’s published sixteen volumes of poetry and prose-fiction and his work’s appeared in numerous anthologies. With the ensemble Poem de Terre, his poetry has been spoken and sung live with original music and the group’s released six albums. <\/a>
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\nRichard L. Matta<\/a><\/strong> grew up in New York\u2019s rustic Hudson Valley, attended Notre Dame, practiced forensic science, and now lives in San Diego with his golden-doodle dog. Some of his work is found in Ancient Paths, Dewdrop, New Verse News, Gyroscope, and Healing Muse. <\/a>
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\nJoan Mazza<\/a><\/strong> worked as a medical microbiologist, psychotherapist, and taught workshops on understanding dreams and nightmares. She is the author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self, <\/i> and her poetry has appeared in Valparaiso Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Italian Americana, Poet Lore<\/i>, and The Nation<\/i>. She lives in rural central Virginia. <\/a>
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\nBrian McAllister<\/a><\/strong> is Professor of English at Albany State University. His greatest joy is his students. He lives with his wife, a cat, some dogs, and a horse in rural Georgia. <\/a>
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\nThomas M. McDade<\/a><\/strong> is a 76-year-old resident of Fredericksburg, VA, previously CT, & RI. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. McDade is twice a U.S. Navy Veteran serving ashore at the Fleet Anti-Air Warfare Training Center, Virginia Beach, VA and at sea aboard the USS Mullinnix (DD-944) and USS Miller (DE \/ FF-1091). <\/a>
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\nJason Melvin<\/a><\/strong> is a father, husband, grandfather, high school soccer coach, and metals processing center supervisor, who lives just north of Pittsburgh. His work has recently appeared in A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Roi Faineant<\/i> and others. He was nominated for Pushcarts by Outcast<\/i> and Bullshit Lit<\/i>. He was named second runner up for the Heartwood<\/i> Poetry Prize 2021. He can be found on Twitter @jason5melvin<\/a> and on his website at jasonmelvinwords.weebly.com<\/a>. <\/a>
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\nMike Mesterton-Gibbons<\/a><\/strong> is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, the Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO., the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. <\/a>
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\nLisa Molina<\/a><\/strong> is a writer in Austin, Texas. Her digital chapbook \u201cDon\u2019t Fall in Love with Sisyphus,\u201d launched in February 2022, published by Fahmidan Publishing & Co. Molina\u2019s next print chapbook will begin preorders in November\u201922. She was recently named a finalist in the \u201c50 Shades of Blue-Flash Fiction Contest,\u201d by The Ekphrastic Review. Read her words in Beyond Words Magazine, Sparked Literary Magazine, Epoch Press, and Neologism Poetry Journal. Visit Lisa at: Instagram<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, lisalitgeek.wordpress.com<\/a> <\/i><\/a>
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\nJohn David Muth<\/a><\/strong> is from the central New Jersey area. For over twenty years, he has been an academic advisor, working for Rutgers University. His latest book, Misanthropes Rarely Procreate<\/i> (Kelsay Books), was published last year and can be found on Amazon.com. <\/a>
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\nJames B. Nicola<\/a><\/strong>, a returning contributor, is the author of six collections of poetry, the latest being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense<\/i>. His decades of working in the theater culminated in the nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Guide to Live Performance<\/i>, which won a Choice<\/i> award. <\/a>
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\nRobert Nisbet<\/a><\/strong> is a Welsh poet whose work has appeared widely in Britain and the USA. He won the Prole Pamphlet Competition in 2017 with Robeson, Fitzgerald and Other Heroes<\/i>. In the USA he has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize four times in the last three years. <\/a>
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\nAl Ortolani<\/a><\/strong> is the Manuscript Editor for Woodley Press in Topeka, Kansas, and has directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans across Kansas in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. He is a 2019 recipient of the Rattle Chapbook Series Award. After 43 years of teaching English in public schools, he currently lives a life without bells and fire drills in the Kansas City area. <\/a>
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\nRobert Perchan<\/a><\/strong>‘s latest book is Last Notes from a Split Peninsula: Poems and Prose Poems<\/i> (UnCollected Press, 2021) \u2013 a steal at 130 pages for fifteen bucks. He eats and drinks in Busan, South Korea. Find him at robertperchan.com<\/a>. <\/a>
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\nAdrienne Pilon<\/a><\/strong> is a teacher, writer and editor. She’s on the editorial teams at a couple of small lit mags and she’s published here and there, most recently at Eclectica, The Dirty Spoon, Vita Brevis, and elsewhere. <\/a>
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\nKenneth Pobo<\/a><\/strong> is the author of twenty-one chapbooks and nine full-length collections. Recent books include Bend of Quiet<\/i> (Blue Light Press), Loplop in a Red City<\/i> (Circling Rivers), and Lilac And Sawdust<\/i> (Meadowlark Press). His work has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Nimrod, Mudfish, Hawaii Review, and elsewhere. <\/a>
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\nKen Poyner<\/a><\/strong>, after years of impersonating a Systems Engineer, has retired to watch his wife continue to break national and world raw powerlifting records. They travel extensively between sites of powerlifting or literary interest. Ken\u2019s four current poetry and four short fiction collections are available from Amazon and just about everywhere else. kpoyner.com<\/a><\/a>
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\nDonna Pucciani<\/a><\/strong>, a Chicago-based writer, has published poetry worldwide in Shi Chao Poetry, Poetry Salzburg, The Pedestal, Journal of Italian Translation, Acumen and other journals. Her seventh and most recent book of poetry is EDGES. <\/a>
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\nBradley Riddle<\/a><\/strong> currently resides in Shanghai, China, where he teaches secondary English at Shanghai American School. Brady has been recognized in various journals around the world since 2002 and featured poet and presenter at writers’ conferences and poetry festivals from Houston, Texas to Muscat, Oman to Beijing, China. Most recently, Brady\u2019s work can be found in A Shanghai Poetry Zine<\/i> and Alluvium<\/i> in Shanghai, China; Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine<\/i> in Hong Kong; and Prospectus: A Literary Offering<\/i> in the US. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRandall Rogers<\/a><\/strong> is a writer from the US Midwest. He is dedicated to reading, writing, and watching TV. He attempts to co-edit the poetry publication The Beatnik Cowboy, an online weekly and triannual hard copy poetry publication offering fresh, unpretentious views of life. Conspicuous consumption of the curious. Ripley\u2019s like in its presentation of word oddities as poems and rarely artwork. Randall is seeking new directions in poetry building on the shoulders of wee little folk. \u2018Cuz there\u2019s lots of \u2018em round the Black Hills, and \u201cthey\u2019re good poets\u201d Randall says. Ask any local Lakota. Randall\u2019s editorial blitzkrieg may be viewed online at Beatnik Cowboy dot com<\/a>. Little people rule!! <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nCover Art photographer Jim Ross<\/a><\/strong> jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding research career. With graduate degree from Howard University, in seven years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, and hybrid in over 175 journals and anthologies on five continents. Publications include Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal<\/a>, Hippocampus, Ilanot Review, Lunch Ticket, Newfound, Stonecoast, The Atlantic, and Typehouse. Representative photo essays include Barren<\/a>, Litro<\/a>, Kestrel<\/a>, and Sweet<\/a>. Jim and his family split time between city and mountains.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nEd Ruzicka<\/a><\/strong> knocked around the country and globe a bit before settling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where he lives with his wife Renee. Ed has two books – the most recent “My Life in Cars” addresses the marriage between desire and the American highway. Ed has been published in many journals and anthologies. Ed is an occupational therapist. More at: edrpoet.com\/poems.html\/<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nM. A. Schaffner<\/a><\/strong> lives in Arlington, Virginia. Recent publications include poems in the anthology Written in Arlington and ArLiJo,<\/i> and an OpEd in the Washington Post<\/i> about reenacting and CRT. Past acceptances included Poetry Wales, Poetry Ireland, The Tulane Review, Boston Poetry<\/i> and other journals. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nKarlo Sevilla<\/a><\/strong> of Quezon City, Philippines is the author of the poetry collections \u201cMetro Manila Mammal\u201d (Soma Publishing, 2018) and \u201cOutsourced! . . .\u201d (Revolt Magazine, 2021). Recognized among the Best of Kitaab 2018, shortlisted for the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition 2021, and thrice nominated for the Best of the Net, his poems appear in Philippines Graphic, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, DIAGRAM, Small Orange, Radius, Matter, Eclectica, Better Than Starbucks, Anti-Heroin Chic, Eastlit,<\/i> and elsewhere. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Shepard<\/a><\/strong> is a poet and musician living in the lowlands of California’s San Joaquin Valley. His work has appeared most recently in Black Poppy Review, Poetry Super Highway, and Autumn Sky Poetry. He is the author of Quiet Stars Falling into Quicksand Memory<\/i> (Merced College Press, 2017). <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAnnette Sisson<\/a><\/strong>‘s poems can be found in Birmingham Poetry Review, Nashville Review, Typishly, One, The West Review, HeartWood Literary Magazine, Sky Island Journal<\/i>, and others. Her first full-length book, Small Fish in High Branches<\/i>, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press (2022); her chapbook, A Casting Off, <\/i> was published by Finishing Line (2019). She was named a Mark Strand Poetry Scholar for the 2021 Sewanee Writers\u2019 Conference, a 2020 BOAAT Writing Fellow, and winner of The Porch Writers\u2019 Collective\u2019s 2019 Poetry Prize. annettesisson.com<\/a><\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nPaul Smith<\/a><\/strong> writes poetry & fiction. He lives in Skokie, Illinois with his wife Flavia. Sometimes he performs poetry at an open mic in Chicago. He believes that brevity is the soul of something he read about once, and whatever that something is or was, it should be cut in half immediately. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nAlec Solomita<\/a><\/strong>‘s fiction and poetry have appeared in the Southwest Review, The Mississippi Review, Panoplyzine, Poetica, Lothlorien, Litbreak, Rat\u2019s Ass Review, The Rye Whiskey Review, Oddball Magazine, The Galway Review<\/i>, and elsewhere, including several anthologies. His poetry chapbook, \u201cDo Not Forsake Me,\u201d was published in 2017. His full-length poetry book \u201cHard To Be a Hero,\u201d will be coming out this spring. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMary Ellen Talley<\/a><\/strong>‘s poems have recently been published in Banshee, Beir Bua, The Plague Papers and Ekphrastic Review as well as in several anthologies. Her poems have received three Pushcart nominations and her chapbook, \u201cPostcards from the Lilac City\u201d was published by Finishing Line Press in 2020. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSusan Thornton<\/a><\/strong>‘s memoir, On Broken Glass: Loving and Losing John Gardner<\/i>, was published in 2000 by Carroll & Graf, New York. Poems have been published in Paintbrush Journal, The Denver Quarterly, Rats Ass Review and SoFloPoJo<\/i>. Short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2016<\/i> and Flash Fiction Annual (2017) <\/i>. Susan lives and works in Binghamton New York and, for her sins, is a high school teacher of French. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nW. Joey Thornton<\/a><\/strong> has undergraduate and master’s degrees in Music: Vocal Performance from Central Washington University. His current writing interests touch on health, disability, horror, aging, the bleak and beautiful. His work has appeared in Central Washington University’s Manastash Literary Journal. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nReese Warner<\/a><\/strong> lives and writes in Toronto, ON, Canada, and works as little as possible. Previous pieces–both fiction and poetry\u2014have appeared in Grain, The Antigonish Review, and The Asses of Parnassus, among other places. For a complete list, please see: pubs.reesewarner.com<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nJ.T. Whitehead<\/a><\/strong> is a Pushcart Prize<\/i>-nominated short story author (2011), a Pushcart Prize<\/i>-nominated poet (2015, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), and was the winner of the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize <\/i> (2015). Whitehead has published over 280 poems and prose works in over 100 literary journals and small press publications, including The Lilliput Review, Outsider, Slipstream, Left Curve, The Broadkill Review, The Iconoclast, Gargoyle, <\/i> and Poetry Hotel<\/i>. His first full-length collection of poetry, The Table of the Elements<\/i>, was nominated for the National Book Award<\/i> in 2015. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nDavid L. Williams<\/a><\/strong> is recently retired from 34 years teaching high school English in Lincoln, Nebraska, his primary residence since he went to college there in the 80s. His poetry has mostly been written since May of 2021, and he has only recently started trying to publish, with success already in several journals. More about David and his poetry at classwords.com<\/a>.<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nMelody Wilson<\/a><\/strong>‘s recent work appears in Quartet, Briar Cliff Review, The Shore, Whale Road Review, Timberline Review, SWWIM, <\/i> and Tar River Poetry<\/i>. She received the 2021 Kay Snow Award, Honorable Mention for the 2021 Oberon Poetry Award, and finalist in the 2021 Patricia Dobler Poetry Award. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nRobin Wright<\/a><\/strong> lives in Southern Indiana. Her work has appeared in Rat\u2019s Ass Review, One Art, Young Ravens Literary Review, Olney Magazine, Sledgehammer Lit, Muddy River Poetry Review, Sanctuary<\/i>, and others. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and her first chapbook, Ready or Not<\/i>, was published by Finishing Line Press in October of 2020. <\/a>
\n 
\n 
\nSusan J. Wurtzburg<\/a><\/strong> lives in Hawaii, with her husband, a dog, and many books. Writing keeps her sane in these volatile times, and her poetry has appeared in Bindweed Magazine, Poetry and Covid, The Literary Nest, The Pen Woman, Verse-Virtual<\/i>, and Quince Magazine<\/i>. Thanks to the Rat\u2019s Ass Review Writing Group members for wonderful input over the years.
\n 
\n <\/p>\n

\nBack to Top<\/a>
\n 
\n 
\n 
\nEdited by Roderick Bates
\n 
\nRAT\u2019S ASS REVIEW SPRING-SUMMER ISSUE 2022 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED<\/div>\n

 
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                       (Cover Art Big Love by Jim     Nicole Callr\u00e4m is a nomadic bureaucrat and disciple of existence in all her life-affirming and confusing manifestations. She adores rideshare bikes, red wine, and Osmanthus flowers (preferably a mix of the three…all at once). 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