by Miranda Stone
Strip mining scars
the bare skin of the mountains.
Ridges of stone and wood
rise against the sky, blotting out
early afternoon sunlight.
Niches carved in slate
house the copper moonshine stills. In barns,
in shacks men stir sugar and corn
to produce liquid clear and pure
as the strychnine the holy rollers drink
in plank churches on Sundays.
Some survive the serpent’s bite.
Those who succumb lack faith in the god
speaking in tongues to the congregation.
Even in the mountain mist of dawn
when the bobcats slink through the woods,
a single searchlight washes over stone.
A train piled high with powdered coal
snakes its way past clapboard houses.
High above on the mountainside,
rickety shafts sleep, shut up in darkness.
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Next Day Trips
by Perry L. Powell
It's a meat hook. It's a bat.
From out of the bright orange field emerges a parrot
looking over his shoulder.
Check Google for home runs.
What do you know: gold from quicksilver.
The philosopher's stone in a Japanese University.
Martin Luther at the front door with an iPhone.
Life left in the backroom where the boys play.
Like a charm bracelet—
one anecdote after another
walks the runway.
Here is a late lesson we reject:
gather your tote bag;
Bethlehem waits for its master.
It's a meat hook. It's a bat.
From out of the bright orange field emerges a parrot
looking over his shoulder.
Check Google for home runs.
What do you know: gold from quicksilver.
The philosopher's stone in a Japanese University.
Martin Luther at the front door with an iPhone.
Life left in the backroom where the boys play.
Like a charm bracelet—
one anecdote after another
walks the runway.
Here is a late lesson we reject:
gather your tote bag;
Bethlehem waits for its master.
The Lovers Observe the Moon Under Arrest
by Robert Gross
Talk about the moon as a mushroom:
a fleshy obscenity sprung up
under cover of darkness
meant to be arrested at midnight
without memory or remorse
thirty-seven degrees from the horizon
booked in the nodding night court
mindless before high priests
who do not grasp its transit
cannot finger the musty
deliquescence of summer into fall,
the funky quick decay of thought
into sensations, the prison break
of a convicted self into a felony
of infinite quick fragments.
The authorities dare not interrogate
the moon in terms of silence.
They sentence it to death.
Talk about the moon as a mushroom:
a fleshy obscenity sprung up
under cover of darkness
meant to be arrested at midnight
without memory or remorse
thirty-seven degrees from the horizon
booked in the nodding night court
mindless before high priests
who do not grasp its transit
cannot finger the musty
deliquescence of summer into fall,
the funky quick decay of thought
into sensations, the prison break
of a convicted self into a felony
of infinite quick fragments.
The authorities dare not interrogate
the moon in terms of silence.
They sentence it to death.
The Sassafras Tree
by Pamela Hill
“Angel isn’t really dead, you know.”
I sit on the couch glaring at my sister, Gabriela.
“It’s true,” she says. “He’s alive. He must be a spy.”
I leap from the couch and snatch his photograph from the mantelpiece. “You know Angel died.”
His eyes, full of life, stare at me from the photograph as I trace the image of his face with my fingertip.
Gabriela rarely listens and rambles on. “You were married to a spy, Ana Maria.” She points at the urn on the mantelpiece. “No proof Angel’s in that urn.”
My blood pressure escalates, voice rises. “Just go home.”
She moves toward the front door then turns toward me. “I saw him at the church café.”
I return Angel’s photograph to the mantelpiece. “You must have seen someone who resembles him. I see his features in the faces of strangers.”
She leaves, and I snuggle under my quilt wondering if Gabriela needs more therapy to calm her overactive imagination, a term our parents alluded to years ago when referring to her illogical thoughts. Gabriela has told absurd stories for as long as I can remember. Still, I sit wrapped in a quilt all day thinking about Angel and wondering if he can possibly be a spy. He left for work one day and never returned. The police said he died in a head-on collision. I never saw Angel again, only the urn.
During dinner, I see his image at the table. I can’t eat nor drink as the lemon in my tea is too bitter. Washing dishes, soap bubbles become arctic ice floes running over the edge of the sink, and I shiver in the silent, frigid kitchen.
Night comes. I lie disconcert in my room listening to the monotonous ticking clock, and the chiming, and now the ticking again. I fall asleep but wake startled in the middle of the night. What is that knocking? I run to the door and fling it open where I am met by a crescent moon as a cool breeze ripples through my nightgown.
I wander out on the deck and feel the breeze caress me. Signs of a storm are gathering, and clouds begin to mist. I watch a cluster of sassafras trees sway on a hill just beyond the deck. I think about rain and how the grey-black clouds comfort me, somehow stabilize me, as a lightning flash reveals Angel’s face at the dark end of the deck. In the glance of my eye, I think I see him and run to that side of the deck and call out to him, “Angel.” He doesn’t answer. I imagine a deception in my sense of sight. I wish to climb the hill and wrap my arms around the trunk of a sassafras tree and sleep within a cradle of aroma.
Morning comes. I’m about to leave for the church café and Gabriela shows up. “It could have been him at the café yesterday,” she says.
“Please stop talking about Angel.” I wrap a pink mascada around my neck and leave Gabriela standing on the porch. At the church café, I sit in a corner at a table watching and attempting to sip coffee, but my hands are shaking. I want to believe Gabriela and linger. I want her story to be true, just once.
Angel doesn’t appear, not even an apparition. I contemplate Einstein’s consolation…a distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Is death an illusion? Is flesh nothing more than a prison?
I go home and kiss the urn, remnants of bones that are my past and my present - but not my future. I’ll find a distinction in a returned kiss someday, a kiss, and arms that wrap around me as the blossoms wrap around me from the sassafras tree.
Einstein also said… I never think of the future, it comes soon enough. I’ll go with that.
Saturday, August 17, 2013
All My Dreams Were Caring Women
by Poulome Mitra Shaw
All my dreams were caring women with hips and generous bosoms.
With the tender moon tucked within
With every disenchantment in their stride
They always walked back home
religiously, oh so religiously every night
without pleading with the closed doors
to unafraid beds violating the nightmares seen
They were caring women with forgiving hearts and large kind eyes
I always knew all my dreams were Mother's within.
They let go of all the verses that had baubles of disdain
I always knew all my dreams were Women within
They let go of every stab, every excess untold
I always knew my dreams never trembled
even when nightmare played out its role
They were compassionate women with tender smiles and loving arms.
All my dreams were caring women with hips and generous bosoms.
With the tender moon tucked within
With every disenchantment in their stride
They always walked back home
religiously, oh so religiously every night
without pleading with the closed doors
to unafraid beds violating the nightmares seen
They were caring women with forgiving hearts and large kind eyes
I always knew all my dreams were Mother's within.
They let go of all the verses that had baubles of disdain
I always knew all my dreams were Women within
They let go of every stab, every excess untold
I always knew my dreams never trembled
even when nightmare played out its role
They were compassionate women with tender smiles and loving arms.
Dreaming the Dirt
by Corinne Gaston
Mother and child appear to me
out of the folds of a dreaming spirit
Before my eyes
They grow old, love, and die
And are reborn again.
They are surrounded by the grain
Endless growth and germination, the hot clay
In a world of soil and light
Arching over the earth, planting the seeds.
The mother
Who cradles the moon and child,
The sun that cradles the grain of the earth:
It is all done with purpose
The spirit folds them up
The seedling tucked into my mind’s womb
And then like a jolt
I am feeling the vines grow
I am inhaling the scents of foliage and compost
Dropped guavas
That are overripe and bursting
Full of that sweet-smelling pulp
The soil soothes me from the feet up
Grainy and damp
I am dreaming the dirt
Mother and child appear to me
out of the folds of a dreaming spirit
Before my eyes
They grow old, love, and die
And are reborn again.
They are surrounded by the grain
Endless growth and germination, the hot clay
In a world of soil and light
Arching over the earth, planting the seeds.
The mother
Who cradles the moon and child,
The sun that cradles the grain of the earth:
It is all done with purpose
The spirit folds them up
The seedling tucked into my mind’s womb
And then like a jolt
I am feeling the vines grow
I am inhaling the scents of foliage and compost
Dropped guavas
That are overripe and bursting
Full of that sweet-smelling pulp
The soil soothes me from the feet up
Grainy and damp
I am dreaming the dirt
Never
by Jay Sizemore
been bitten by a jellyfish,
tentacles and barbs injecting venom
into the fascia where the pain hides,
to the point a stranger’s urination
would seem like a comfort on the skin.
Been in a car crash any worse
than a fender-bender, backing into
that parked car the day my dad
had his first heart attack
or getting rear-ended
for paying attention to stop lights,
my neck whipped like a spring,
but not broken.
Seen a desert or a rattlesnake
in the wild, always through panes
of glass or the high gloss sheen
of magazine pages left open
in a doctor’s office.
Had such a moment of clarity
that I felt like God must be real,
clutching his ghost-like fist
around my heart until the joy
burst free, and even murder
had its proper place in the world.
been bitten by a jellyfish,
tentacles and barbs injecting venom
into the fascia where the pain hides,
to the point a stranger’s urination
would seem like a comfort on the skin.
Been in a car crash any worse
than a fender-bender, backing into
that parked car the day my dad
had his first heart attack
or getting rear-ended
for paying attention to stop lights,
my neck whipped like a spring,
but not broken.
Seen a desert or a rattlesnake
in the wild, always through panes
of glass or the high gloss sheen
of magazine pages left open
in a doctor’s office.
Had such a moment of clarity
that I felt like God must be real,
clutching his ghost-like fist
around my heart until the joy
burst free, and even murder
had its proper place in the world.
Triangles
by Benjamin Grossman
are the crowned shapes. They were the earliest markings upon the walls, the beginning dribbles of art. “Pubic triangles” ancients called women’s reproductive organs before language grew immature. But some mummified opinion will say we are born from holes. Yes, circles bring us into life but all those circles lay at the center of closed v’s. More than God knows why Egyptian monuments aren’t pentagons. It wasn’t a crash that placed healthy eating inside of a pyramid. Aristotle understood the golden imprint a three-sided structure leaves upon a story. A trapezoid must be a trapezoid. A square must be square or it risks being mistaken for a rectangle. But a triangle is a contortionist, able to shrink and expand and change while never changing. No matter the exterior conditions, the interior of a triangle will remain constant. We should all be turned green by the inner perfection of such a flexible shape.
are the crowned shapes. They were the earliest markings upon the walls, the beginning dribbles of art. “Pubic triangles” ancients called women’s reproductive organs before language grew immature. But some mummified opinion will say we are born from holes. Yes, circles bring us into life but all those circles lay at the center of closed v’s. More than God knows why Egyptian monuments aren’t pentagons. It wasn’t a crash that placed healthy eating inside of a pyramid. Aristotle understood the golden imprint a three-sided structure leaves upon a story. A trapezoid must be a trapezoid. A square must be square or it risks being mistaken for a rectangle. But a triangle is a contortionist, able to shrink and expand and change while never changing. No matter the exterior conditions, the interior of a triangle will remain constant. We should all be turned green by the inner perfection of such a flexible shape.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Destroying the House with You
by Rich Boucher
Let’s start with the kitchen.
A kiss first, and then let’s upend the table
and send the vase slow-motion flying to the floor.
And then another kiss. And another.
Grab the back of this fridge with me
and let’s push it over as hard as we can,
if only for the sound of thunder indoors.
Why don’t you hold my hand, my sweet,
as we bring our boots up, kick out the window
behind the sink together; it will be as if
we’ve never been told how to act.
We will be the kindergarten playground
within us, clamorous, unleashed.
With the kitchen behind us on fire,
let’s please do decimate the living room;
let’s make it feel its own doomsday
with a smashed-in, thrown television
and TV trays snapped in half for IKEA kindling,
the K-Mart family portraits curling black and burning;
run your loving hands all over me
while I spritz some lighter fluid all over the couch
like a blasting of aromatic and demonic pee.
We’ll take out the bathroom with explosives;
I’d like to see the tub go flying through the ceiling
and up into the sky like a confused porcelain rowboat;
I’ll hold you from behind and let my hands get frisky
while the wavering flag of the shower curtain
burns a plasticene rainbow before our eyes.
The bedroom I think we should save for last;
that would be the best place for firemen to find us;
our crumbly remains an ashen Cupid and Psyche embracing
on the overgrown charcoal pit of our marriage bed,
two glasses of wine’s worth of shards on the sheets
glinting in the flashlight beams like diamonds left in a tomb.
Let’s start with the kitchen.
A kiss first, and then let’s upend the table
and send the vase slow-motion flying to the floor.
And then another kiss. And another.
Grab the back of this fridge with me
and let’s push it over as hard as we can,
if only for the sound of thunder indoors.
Why don’t you hold my hand, my sweet,
as we bring our boots up, kick out the window
behind the sink together; it will be as if
we’ve never been told how to act.
We will be the kindergarten playground
within us, clamorous, unleashed.
With the kitchen behind us on fire,
let’s please do decimate the living room;
let’s make it feel its own doomsday
with a smashed-in, thrown television
and TV trays snapped in half for IKEA kindling,
the K-Mart family portraits curling black and burning;
run your loving hands all over me
while I spritz some lighter fluid all over the couch
like a blasting of aromatic and demonic pee.
We’ll take out the bathroom with explosives;
I’d like to see the tub go flying through the ceiling
and up into the sky like a confused porcelain rowboat;
I’ll hold you from behind and let my hands get frisky
while the wavering flag of the shower curtain
burns a plasticene rainbow before our eyes.
The bedroom I think we should save for last;
that would be the best place for firemen to find us;
our crumbly remains an ashen Cupid and Psyche embracing
on the overgrown charcoal pit of our marriage bed,
two glasses of wine’s worth of shards on the sheets
glinting in the flashlight beams like diamonds left in a tomb.
Leaning Against A Cyclone Fence/Mid Summer
by Susan Winecki
A Saturday morning stroll. I stumble upon a pack of teenage girls, shooting baskets on a nearby playground. Drawn by their shining bodies moving over steaming cement like shooting stars across a breath-stopped night, I lean against the cyclone fence and watch. Transfixed by tangled, mist-covered limbs, arms, hands bobbing up an down like buoys on a windy sea, I stay. I stay for the smacking of overheated flesh making contact with its own kind. I stay for the grace and grit of these holy innocents who still know freedom and fairness. Those firm bodied teenage girls were love-filled, beauty-filled, wild-filled. Steam rose, sweat dripped from them into tiny cracks on the cement floor. The earth claimed these unfolding lionesses as their fast-moving limbs moved in concert with one another – reaching, squatting, falling, landing, twisting, arching, pivoting, soaring. I stay for that and pray that they will never stop warming the air around them, setting fires on sun parched playgrounds, breathing with a vengeance.
A Saturday morning stroll. I stumble upon a pack of teenage girls, shooting baskets on a nearby playground. Drawn by their shining bodies moving over steaming cement like shooting stars across a breath-stopped night, I lean against the cyclone fence and watch. Transfixed by tangled, mist-covered limbs, arms, hands bobbing up an down like buoys on a windy sea, I stay. I stay for the smacking of overheated flesh making contact with its own kind. I stay for the grace and grit of these holy innocents who still know freedom and fairness. Those firm bodied teenage girls were love-filled, beauty-filled, wild-filled. Steam rose, sweat dripped from them into tiny cracks on the cement floor. The earth claimed these unfolding lionesses as their fast-moving limbs moved in concert with one another – reaching, squatting, falling, landing, twisting, arching, pivoting, soaring. I stay for that and pray that they will never stop warming the air around them, setting fires on sun parched playgrounds, breathing with a vengeance.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
Amelek, Feared No God
by Sy Roth
The tired ones hung back
walk-weary lines of them
snaking the rear
shuffling gait
young ones their crutches.
Youthful steps moved the others forward
heads mounted to their goal
inattentive to the rear.
Amalek swore to his soldiers
he would preserve them,
desiccate the healthy,
consume the old and bent.
Godless ones licked their lips,
for the laggards were a tempting lot
easily consumed
swept away before so
the others could mourn.
They ate the rear with
cannibalistic gusto.
Youth buried beneath their weak,
laved in their blood.
A storm of tears unglued the skies.
Men razed their dreams,
the meek,
the weak,
the infirm,
the young
lost in a morass of ego.
Amalek feared no god,
only himself.
The tired ones hung back
walk-weary lines of them
snaking the rear
shuffling gait
young ones their crutches.
Youthful steps moved the others forward
heads mounted to their goal
inattentive to the rear.
Amalek swore to his soldiers
he would preserve them,
desiccate the healthy,
consume the old and bent.
Godless ones licked their lips,
for the laggards were a tempting lot
easily consumed
swept away before so
the others could mourn.
They ate the rear with
cannibalistic gusto.
Youth buried beneath their weak,
laved in their blood.
A storm of tears unglued the skies.
Men razed their dreams,
the meek,
the weak,
the infirm,
the young
lost in a morass of ego.
Amalek feared no god,
only himself.
Downsizing
by Robert Demaree
Favorite authors dropped off
For the church book sale,
The passing of a friend.
Easier to part with:
Those memos to the file,
Notes on events
Of interest to lawyers.
We did not succeed:
A storage shed, tight
With boxes, whose labels
Have lost meaning;
Somewhere in there
Green Depression Glass
That did not sell on eBay,
The Chelsea we bought for Caroline.
Favorite authors dropped off
For the church book sale,
The passing of a friend.
Easier to part with:
Those memos to the file,
Notes on events
Of interest to lawyers.
We did not succeed:
A storage shed, tight
With boxes, whose labels
Have lost meaning;
Somewhere in there
Green Depression Glass
That did not sell on eBay,
The Chelsea we bought for Caroline.
Letter to My Sister
by Warda Al Barbar
I sailed the sea of mourn
forlorn but canopied
with your virtuous soul
upon a crying wave.
I dropped my remembrance
as an anchor to abstain
between the eastern sun
of forgets
and the western moon
of ignorance;
a compass I lost
when I heard your mellow voice
murmuring in a melodious dream.
The waves swallowed me
when I saw your coy smile
painting an archaic picture
of a crowned epoch;
I found myself safe but taken
by memories that grieve me
not alone. Your mother
drunk the sea to beget you again;
your father is a shore of sadness,
standing to erase death.
I sailed the sea of mourn
forlorn but canopied
with your virtuous soul
upon a crying wave.
I dropped my remembrance
as an anchor to abstain
between the eastern sun
of forgets
and the western moon
of ignorance;
a compass I lost
when I heard your mellow voice
murmuring in a melodious dream.
The waves swallowed me
when I saw your coy smile
painting an archaic picture
of a crowned epoch;
I found myself safe but taken
by memories that grieve me
not alone. Your mother
drunk the sea to beget you again;
your father is a shore of sadness,
standing to erase death.
Marking Time
by Susan McDonough-Hintz
11:01 a.m.
Goodbye filled our mouths and lingered,
diffuse on the tongues, swirling.
6:32 a.m.
This morning I reached for a
tube of toothpaste and my
neck hairs lifted like eyelids,
my nipples stiff as peaks, nostrils
flared by the sudden smell of you,
but you weren’t there.
6:41 a.m.
I was alarmed.
The light was changing.
8:26 p.m.
Halfway up the mountain
night falls. I dig my bed
in dirt, cover myself with leaves,
and sleep, awake unearthed and
well bruised. Jagged rocks,
out of my way.
4:44 a.m.
I am alive and all of you is surge.
And the flash.
11:01 a.m.
Goodbye filled our mouths and lingered,
diffuse on the tongues, swirling.
6:32 a.m.
This morning I reached for a
tube of toothpaste and my
neck hairs lifted like eyelids,
my nipples stiff as peaks, nostrils
flared by the sudden smell of you,
but you weren’t there.
6:41 a.m.
I was alarmed.
The light was changing.
8:26 p.m.
Halfway up the mountain
night falls. I dig my bed
in dirt, cover myself with leaves,
and sleep, awake unearthed and
well bruised. Jagged rocks,
out of my way.
4:44 a.m.
I am alive and all of you is surge.
And the flash.
Needles of Freezing Air
by John McKernan
Slither
Right in
Covering the floor
With its metaphor of broken glass
Over oak across a black rug
Imitating the sounds
Of certain months and years
Of German and Russian history
Adding a strange new conclusion
To the Cinderella epic
I've just read to my daughter
Who asks What did that?
And I answer honestly I don't know
Just a fierce wind Probably nothing Nothing at all
Slither
Right in
Covering the floor
With its metaphor of broken glass
Over oak across a black rug
Imitating the sounds
Of certain months and years
Of German and Russian history
Adding a strange new conclusion
To the Cinderella epic
I've just read to my daughter
Who asks What did that?
And I answer honestly I don't know
Just a fierce wind Probably nothing Nothing at all
The Dilemma of Atoms
by Bobbie Troy
these unseen microbodies
positive, negative, and neutral
attract and repel each other
connect and disconnect
from themselves
but never know
that they have created
matter out of randomness
because they are on the inside
looking out
these unseen microbodies
positive, negative, and neutral
attract and repel each other
connect and disconnect
from themselves
but never know
that they have created
matter out of randomness
because they are on the inside
looking out
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