Contributors Biographies
Kelley White
Bio: her poems have been widely published, in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Rattle and the Journal of the American Medical Association and in chapbooks and books, most recently Toxic Environment (Boston Poet Press) and Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shakers in New Hampshire (Beech River Books). She received a 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant and is a member of Germantown Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. After working as a Inner-city Philadelphia pediatrician she has returned Gilford, New Hampshire, to work at a rural health center. Visit her at: kelleywhitemd@yahoo.com
Adrian Matajka
Bio: he was born in Nuremberg, Germany but grew up in California and Indiana. He is a graduate of Indiana University and the MFA program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His first collection of poems, The Devil’s Garden, won the 2002 Kinereth Gensler Award from Alice James Books. His second collection, Mixology, was a winner of the 2008 National Poetry Series and was published by Penguin Books in 2009. Mixology was subsequently nominated for an NAACP Image Award. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville where he resides and serves as Poetry Editor for Sou’wester and co-directs the River Styx at Duff’s Reading Series. These poems are from his recently completed collection, The Big Smoke. Visit him at http://www.adrianmatejka.com
Jon Tribble
Bio: his poems have appeared in the anthologies Surreal South and Where We Live: Illinois Poets, and in the Southeast Review, Black Zinnias, and Southern Indiana Review. He teaches at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he is the managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and the series editor of the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry published by SIU Press. His lives with his poet wife Allison Joseph in Carbondale, IL. Contact him at: j.c.tribble@gmail.com
Kiyo Murakami
Bio: he was born in 1976 in Tokyo, Japan. After graduated from art school, he began to do various art – illustration, design and music, but eventually found that the best way of expressing himself in the world of photography. Two years ago he began a career as a photographer. He says that he gets ideas for many of his photographs from dreams, others from old memories. He is also inspired by old movies and paintings. Several imagines are self portraits. He lives in Tokyo and can be visited at: http://1x.com/member/36210/kiyo-murakami
Joseph O. Legaspi
Bio: he is the author of Imago (CavanKerry Press), winner of a Global Filipino Literary Award. A graduate of New York University’s Creative Writing Program, his poems appeared in American Life in Poetry, World Literature Today, PEN International, North American Review, Callaloo, Bloomsbury Review, Gulf Coast, Gay & Lesbian Review, and the anthologies Language for a New Century (W.W. Norton) and Tilting the Continent (New Rivers Press). A recipient of a poetry fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts, he co-founded Kundiman (www.kundiman.org), a non-profit organization serving Asian American poets. He lives in New York City and works at Columbia University. Visit him at: www.josepholegaspi.com
Terry L. Kennedy
Bio: he is the Assistant Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His work appears in a variety of journals and magazines including Now & Then, The Appalachian Magazine,The Poetry Miscellany, The South Carolina Review, The Southern Humanities Review, and Story South. He lives in the Greensboro area and can be contacted at: terrylkennedy@gmail.com
Lea Banks
Bio: she is the author of All of Me, (Booksmyth Press, 2008). Two poems were nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. Banks is the editor of Oscillation: Poetry in Motion and the founder of the Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls, MA. She attended New England College’s MFA program and facilitated stroke survivors’ writing workshops. Banks has published in several journals including Poetry Northwest, Slipstream, and American Poetry Journal. www.leabanks.com
Herbie Simmons
Bio: he is a product of John Muir High School in Pasadena, California, and of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. Herbie's artistic endeavors are perpetuated by a boundless, open-minded perspective and a belief that he paints one hundred years ahead of his time, making his artwork truly prophetic. He says he is motivated by a fascination with the unknown future and uses it as his driving force. He paints primarily with acrylics, using a myriad of colors to represent the many different races of the world, suggesting that there is beauty in each color and that all people have the ability to come together and function as one. The Los Angeles based artist can be visited at: http://herbie.artspan.com
James Allen Hall
Bio: he is the author of Now You're the Enemy (University of Arkansas Press, 2008), which has received awards from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the Texas Institute of Letters. He is the recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, and recipients of fellowships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, he teaches creative writing and literature at the State University of New York-Potsdam, where he lives. Visit him at: http://www.notbeauty.blogspot.com
Tim Pfau
Bio: he retired five years ago to pursue assorted grandchildren, travel, read and write. He writes a political blog for the Salem Statesman Journal, is completing his second “strange, unmarketable novel”, a book- length epic poem of the Conquest, and other poems. His poems have appeared in Canopic Jar, the Salem Statesman Journal and the Portland Oregonian. He has lived the best half of his life Salem, Oregon since 1978. Contact him at: tjpfau@msn.com
Closing Note: The editor would like to thank the contributors for the use of their work. Each contributor reserves their original rights. Look for the next issue of CSR online on April 1st. Copyright 2011 by Maurice Oliver. All Rights Reserved.
Visit my Scribd site: http://www.scribd.com/maurice_oliver_1
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Editor's Note:
Welcome to the 49th Issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes alligator soup and party hats. It craves lone ranger with a yo-yo string. Baby has an uncanny ability to wallpaper pedal-pushers, and not just any big ears either. This issue flashes red on penitentiary road. It is filled with a blue rug waiting for applause. Add a group of poets made from rhino’s hide, music to collect acorns by and the engine room of a cruise liner in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new extra terrestrial old-time tent revival. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to So strike your own pose in the clothing catalog. Or bed bugs buy war bonds! Either way, hip-hop only eats at Greek diners. So, get rid of those chop sticks and get busy...
Welcome to the 49th Issue of CSR! By now, you regular readers know my child likes alligator soup and party hats. It craves lone ranger with a yo-yo string. Baby has an uncanny ability to wallpaper pedal-pushers, and not just any big ears either. This issue flashes red on penitentiary road. It is filled with a blue rug waiting for applause. Add a group of poets made from rhino’s hide, music to collect acorns by and the engine room of a cruise liner in the book review and you've got the possibility of an entirely new extra terrestrial old-time tent revival. Trust me, when you finish this issue you'll never want to So strike your own pose in the clothing catalog. Or bed bugs buy war bonds! Either way, hip-hop only eats at Greek diners. So, get rid of those chop sticks and get busy...
Robert Peake
The Language Of Birds
She is singing French songs
through the bars of the cage
to the lovebird pecking
the cuttlebone, called Peter,
which, in the Bible, means “rock”—
but he is a clockwork of minuscule bones
draped, like a fog, in feathers.
He preens each day before the glass
and plays games he cannot win—
pin the button to the bars,
tap the code on a piece of horn,
the code no-one can decipher,
tear the newspaper with a toothless
beak, wear down the block of salt.
It is only vowels between them now,
pure vowels, and glass-like trills,
sounds reclaimed from the top of the tower
of Babel. He rings his bell, he strums
the bars, uncurls his wings as though
these sounds could somehow give him lift.
Yellow
The weed has no mind,
except what I lend it, there
between two concrete slabs,
growing flowers so yellow
they burn in my sight, remain
long after I close my eyes,
as if I might see them in death,
smoking torches, sulphurous
beacons, guiding me on their
tough green stalks, lighting
the damp walls of the cave,
itself a borrowed mind, thinking
what stones must think when wet—
thinking sparks from flint,
thoughts about sharpening metal,
thinking what concrete thinks
when tree roots whisper deep down,
conspiring against its underside,
first a crack, then a gap,
a birthing ground for seed dust
to take hold, and rain to fill,
and then a stalk emerges, popping
buds, which become the living
thoughts of yellow beyond yellow.
-both poems previously published in Iota
Matins with Slippers and House Cat
Gumshoe is the sound of no sound.
The squeak of a dress shoe on linoleum rings
distinct from a sneaker on a hardwood court.
The sneak of the squeak is what matters.
I sit here in a squeaky chair, trying not to.
I position myself for zero-gravity effect.
Whole nations are attempting the same:
how to occupy the space between squeak
and no-squeak, that is the question.
My feet find their way into worn slippers.
The toes know to curl up for grip.
I pad through the house, in search of a snack,
some tea, or a book of poems. I glide.
The cat comes in to my office to question me.
She wants to know where I have hidden the dry food.
She wails as though she were starving, or mad.
I tell her that, after the French revolution, churches
were used to store grain. I spin in my chair for effect.
She is unimpressed. She only wants to know if
such an act would have brought mice to the altar.
I argue against utilitarianism. She leaves.
I have seen the sweat of nations bead on the brow
of the common worker. I have pilfered the ash cans
of Democracy, looking for butts. I have told
the priest his collar is guillotine-proof.
I have seen them in the night, rubbing chicken
blood on the rough wounds of the statues.
Small Gestures
Forgive me, rose petals, my fingers
could not resist the habit of plucking.
Some would call it childish, and those
who waggle a shaming finger know best.
I do not own my hands, but slip into them
each morning like a pair of work gloves.
I flex to break up the stiffness, and they crackle
like damp embers stirring back to life.
They are all I have, these slender tongs,
to do what my mind instructs in the tactile world.
Sometimes when they mis-type a word,
I wonder what they are trying to tell me.
Maybe they want to ask about the wartime practice
of soldiers shooting off their trigger fingers—
were they more afraid of dying? Or of killing
someone with a gesture as slight and easy
as curling an index finger into a teacup?
Oh, look what we have done to you now,
little flower. Let us sweep the petals quickly,
from one full-fingered hand into the other.
-both poems previously published in Sugar Mule
The Language Of Birds
She is singing French songs
through the bars of the cage
to the lovebird pecking
the cuttlebone, called Peter,
which, in the Bible, means “rock”—
but he is a clockwork of minuscule bones
draped, like a fog, in feathers.
He preens each day before the glass
and plays games he cannot win—
pin the button to the bars,
tap the code on a piece of horn,
the code no-one can decipher,
tear the newspaper with a toothless
beak, wear down the block of salt.
It is only vowels between them now,
pure vowels, and glass-like trills,
sounds reclaimed from the top of the tower
of Babel. He rings his bell, he strums
the bars, uncurls his wings as though
these sounds could somehow give him lift.
Yellow
The weed has no mind,
except what I lend it, there
between two concrete slabs,
growing flowers so yellow
they burn in my sight, remain
long after I close my eyes,
as if I might see them in death,
smoking torches, sulphurous
beacons, guiding me on their
tough green stalks, lighting
the damp walls of the cave,
itself a borrowed mind, thinking
what stones must think when wet—
thinking sparks from flint,
thoughts about sharpening metal,
thinking what concrete thinks
when tree roots whisper deep down,
conspiring against its underside,
first a crack, then a gap,
a birthing ground for seed dust
to take hold, and rain to fill,
and then a stalk emerges, popping
buds, which become the living
thoughts of yellow beyond yellow.
-both poems previously published in Iota
Matins with Slippers and House Cat
Gumshoe is the sound of no sound.
The squeak of a dress shoe on linoleum rings
distinct from a sneaker on a hardwood court.
The sneak of the squeak is what matters.
I sit here in a squeaky chair, trying not to.
I position myself for zero-gravity effect.
Whole nations are attempting the same:
how to occupy the space between squeak
and no-squeak, that is the question.
My feet find their way into worn slippers.
The toes know to curl up for grip.
I pad through the house, in search of a snack,
some tea, or a book of poems. I glide.
The cat comes in to my office to question me.
She wants to know where I have hidden the dry food.
She wails as though she were starving, or mad.
I tell her that, after the French revolution, churches
were used to store grain. I spin in my chair for effect.
She is unimpressed. She only wants to know if
such an act would have brought mice to the altar.
I argue against utilitarianism. She leaves.
I have seen the sweat of nations bead on the brow
of the common worker. I have pilfered the ash cans
of Democracy, looking for butts. I have told
the priest his collar is guillotine-proof.
I have seen them in the night, rubbing chicken
blood on the rough wounds of the statues.
Small Gestures
Forgive me, rose petals, my fingers
could not resist the habit of plucking.
Some would call it childish, and those
who waggle a shaming finger know best.
I do not own my hands, but slip into them
each morning like a pair of work gloves.
I flex to break up the stiffness, and they crackle
like damp embers stirring back to life.
They are all I have, these slender tongs,
to do what my mind instructs in the tactile world.
Sometimes when they mis-type a word,
I wonder what they are trying to tell me.
Maybe they want to ask about the wartime practice
of soldiers shooting off their trigger fingers—
were they more afraid of dying? Or of killing
someone with a gesture as slight and easy
as curling an index finger into a teacup?
Oh, look what we have done to you now,
little flower. Let us sweep the petals quickly,
from one full-fingered hand into the other.
-both poems previously published in Sugar Mule
Sean Hill
Silas Wright At Age Seven 1914
Silas Wright follows a fish’s wriggle
In the shallows between reeds. He scribes the
Line in his tablet—as much pride in that line
As a man in his son. He almost giggles—
Still he goes on. The next letters come easy.
With this he’ll have more than a mark to bind.
Rambling across the page again and again
In messy rows on it flows until he
Goes a little off the page’s edge. He smiles.
He’s surprised to hear when his mouth opens—
That’s mine.
-previously published in Blood Ties & Brown Liquor
Possessed
In a corked jar I keep a vermilion flycatcher, one of my most prized
possessions. Sometimes I rush to look inside and he’s still flashing
from and to his perch—vital as a pulse; that slim branch his baseline;
he charts my heartbeat, unbelievable, the beauty. In another corked
jar I keep four whiskers from my ex-girlfriend’s orange tabby. Funny
how things get shuffled in breakups like cards and pool balls—games
of skill and chance. I also keep a cyclist who makes his way across
Lake Bemidji in winter. In the Guatemalan pouch the size of a coin
purse where I keep a buffalo nickel or is it Indian head and a tiny
skeleton key, something traded me red dust and its chrysalis for the
dreadlock Khari gave me after he cut his hair before leaving the States
on a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in Lesotho. Gone now forever.
-previously published as a madlib in Indiana Review
Postcard with Blood Stain
I’ve been carrying this postcard for days, dearheart;
now, I finally get to write you. Today
I admired the local architecture—spires,
stained glass windows.
Don’t mind the stain—paper cut
from this postcard. I know it sounds unlikely.
Beaches here are lovely. Well, I bled
from a machete. Didn’t need stitches.
Tried my hand at cutting open a coconut
like the natives. Actually, while touring
a plantation I helped a local woman
give birth. Didn’t want to make myself
out to be a hero. No, I have to confess,
I got involved with the menses
of a woman I met at this great locals’ bar.
Don’t know why I said that.
Was something mundane; a razor nick.
Well, in fact, in a flare up of civil unrest
a stray bullet winged me.
I’m okay; didn’t want you to worry.
Take this postcard and add it to your papier
mâché. Or is it papier collé?
Postcard with Blood Stain Received
It came today with its stain like a postmark,
inkblot, birthmark, spot—and damn,
the dog slipped out when I went to the mailbox.
You named him Spot, concerned with appearances
and, come to think of it, location. You’re always
gone to some locale looking for the locals.
I wanted to call him Fido. This spot’s the whorl
of your thumb—like the trail the dog traces
around the house when you’re away
head down, nose to the floor, before
making tight circles to his tail, loyal
to his nature, finally bedding down.
Sleep well wherever you are.
- both poems previously published in The Tusculum Review
Silas Wright At Age Seven 1914
Silas Wright follows a fish’s wriggle
In the shallows between reeds. He scribes the
Line in his tablet—as much pride in that line
As a man in his son. He almost giggles—
Still he goes on. The next letters come easy.
With this he’ll have more than a mark to bind.
Rambling across the page again and again
In messy rows on it flows until he
Goes a little off the page’s edge. He smiles.
He’s surprised to hear when his mouth opens—
That’s mine.
-previously published in Blood Ties & Brown Liquor
Possessed
In a corked jar I keep a vermilion flycatcher, one of my most prized
possessions. Sometimes I rush to look inside and he’s still flashing
from and to his perch—vital as a pulse; that slim branch his baseline;
he charts my heartbeat, unbelievable, the beauty. In another corked
jar I keep four whiskers from my ex-girlfriend’s orange tabby. Funny
how things get shuffled in breakups like cards and pool balls—games
of skill and chance. I also keep a cyclist who makes his way across
Lake Bemidji in winter. In the Guatemalan pouch the size of a coin
purse where I keep a buffalo nickel or is it Indian head and a tiny
skeleton key, something traded me red dust and its chrysalis for the
dreadlock Khari gave me after he cut his hair before leaving the States
on a tour of duty with the Peace Corps in Lesotho. Gone now forever.
-previously published as a madlib in Indiana Review
Postcard with Blood Stain
I’ve been carrying this postcard for days, dearheart;
now, I finally get to write you. Today
I admired the local architecture—spires,
stained glass windows.
Don’t mind the stain—paper cut
from this postcard. I know it sounds unlikely.
Beaches here are lovely. Well, I bled
from a machete. Didn’t need stitches.
Tried my hand at cutting open a coconut
like the natives. Actually, while touring
a plantation I helped a local woman
give birth. Didn’t want to make myself
out to be a hero. No, I have to confess,
I got involved with the menses
of a woman I met at this great locals’ bar.
Don’t know why I said that.
Was something mundane; a razor nick.
Well, in fact, in a flare up of civil unrest
a stray bullet winged me.
I’m okay; didn’t want you to worry.
Take this postcard and add it to your papier
mâché. Or is it papier collé?
Postcard with Blood Stain Received
It came today with its stain like a postmark,
inkblot, birthmark, spot—and damn,
the dog slipped out when I went to the mailbox.
You named him Spot, concerned with appearances
and, come to think of it, location. You’re always
gone to some locale looking for the locals.
I wanted to call him Fido. This spot’s the whorl
of your thumb—like the trail the dog traces
around the house when you’re away
head down, nose to the floor, before
making tight circles to his tail, loyal
to his nature, finally bedding down.
Sleep well wherever you are.
- both poems previously published in The Tusculum Review
Amy King
As If A Lantern In Love Led
Like you I have
forgotten everything
spoken so far,
I knew the dinosaurs
in their history
and I have a complex tie
that longs to be subtracted.
All together, we make each other
up. I gave you
a little slice of heartache
to latch onto
& a sixty-pound cumulous cloud
cools her way
straight to the top.
Bashfully enamored eyes
descend as we speak
silently above
the moonlit stove of midnight.
I Too Am Chicken
An author thinks she knows more than
she does. She knows even less.
For example, someone else wrote this.
Thoughts approach in the shower;
she watches them haunt her swirling tides.
That’s the cliché declarative.
She thinks,
Whenever I exist, people name me at the gate;
I trip over my own grass velvet heart
and I am the only person left on this flight.
In the distance, I see no one who can take
off and no perfect landing.
Alas, her red robin eyes to and fro
twitch lightly in their sockets.
A Final Note
There is a deliberate pleasure in watching
someone smoke cigarettes. Even the echo
of that sentence smells like a stolen observation
that the smoker is deeply, darkly thinking.
In books, they brood; on screen, they are the rebel
or daring victim being slowly, unknowingly undone.
I have always wanted to occupy my mouth
in similar fashion and gather great thoughts
from the shadowed glow erasing my face.
I suckle sweet cigar substitutes instead:
savor the proximity of nature we’re taught.
Toast the lung in all its sanctity and encourage
its diverse role within ourselves. As always,
let the credits scroll down your face
before stubbing out the coal.
The Spirit Is Near
Wrapped in personal pity, betrayer sphinx slinks
and eats; he privately shuffles our motivations.
I like the capability of my eyes, the way they
brighten the woman on the curb by the church.
She will burst alive in two minutes. You cannot
believe the wind last night. The things it sells.
The sun buffs the surface of technology across
our city of cracks and cataracts, which in turnig
nores the shoes rubbing my feet from their bones.
Enter some disease where the woman sells
her tears prior to civilization. That moment is now
upon the funeral pyre. In the crumblings & ramblings
of old men seated in tired t-shirts on stoopsever
lasting, they survey remainders of wars over-lived
and fat berries beyond the perimeter ripened
with blood brought back from dust fields
by worms underfoot and pregnant.
We make wine to toast the cross and tender liars.
-All poems previously published at Poetry X
As If A Lantern In Love Led
Like you I have
forgotten everything
spoken so far,
I knew the dinosaurs
in their history
and I have a complex tie
that longs to be subtracted.
All together, we make each other
up. I gave you
a little slice of heartache
to latch onto
& a sixty-pound cumulous cloud
cools her way
straight to the top.
Bashfully enamored eyes
descend as we speak
silently above
the moonlit stove of midnight.
I Too Am Chicken
An author thinks she knows more than
she does. She knows even less.
For example, someone else wrote this.
Thoughts approach in the shower;
she watches them haunt her swirling tides.
That’s the cliché declarative.
She thinks,
Whenever I exist, people name me at the gate;
I trip over my own grass velvet heart
and I am the only person left on this flight.
In the distance, I see no one who can take
off and no perfect landing.
Alas, her red robin eyes to and fro
twitch lightly in their sockets.
A Final Note
There is a deliberate pleasure in watching
someone smoke cigarettes. Even the echo
of that sentence smells like a stolen observation
that the smoker is deeply, darkly thinking.
In books, they brood; on screen, they are the rebel
or daring victim being slowly, unknowingly undone.
I have always wanted to occupy my mouth
in similar fashion and gather great thoughts
from the shadowed glow erasing my face.
I suckle sweet cigar substitutes instead:
savor the proximity of nature we’re taught.
Toast the lung in all its sanctity and encourage
its diverse role within ourselves. As always,
let the credits scroll down your face
before stubbing out the coal.
The Spirit Is Near
Wrapped in personal pity, betrayer sphinx slinks
and eats; he privately shuffles our motivations.
I like the capability of my eyes, the way they
brighten the woman on the curb by the church.
She will burst alive in two minutes. You cannot
believe the wind last night. The things it sells.
The sun buffs the surface of technology across
our city of cracks and cataracts, which in turnig
nores the shoes rubbing my feet from their bones.
Enter some disease where the woman sells
her tears prior to civilization. That moment is now
upon the funeral pyre. In the crumblings & ramblings
of old men seated in tired t-shirts on stoopsever
lasting, they survey remainders of wars over-lived
and fat berries beyond the perimeter ripened
with blood brought back from dust fields
by worms underfoot and pregnant.
We make wine to toast the cross and tender liars.
-All poems previously published at Poetry X
Allison Joseph
Disobedience
Do I really want it back,
that pen for chipped
furniture, my room the last
stop for the peeling bureau,
the sagging mattresses
my grandmother once slept on?
Do I want to re-live
that shedding green carpet,
my unsteady desk with its
wobbly wooden chair,
the room cold no matter
the season, so clammy
no space heater could
warm it fully? I satin that room, engrossed
in library books, afraid
my father might find
my overdue copy of Fear of Flying,
that I read fitfully in the almost-dark,
astonished over its sex scenes.
Or I pecked at my stolid gray Royal,
striking stiff keys one at a time,
fingers hesitant on the heavy
machine, pressing out poems.
I taught myself new words
from someone's set of vocabulary
records, knitted long scarves
only to rip them apart.
Who wants to know that self
too timid to live beyond books,
too restless to make anything
enduring from yarn, words?
Do I really have to welcome
that girl back, the one
who loved transistor radios,
crochet hooks, who hoarded
pennies in a ripped purse?
I don't want her back
but she's here anyway:
gangly, ashamed,
disobedient daughter
who never seems to leave
her room, sneaking out
only when necessary,
leaving her dinner untouched,
sink of dishes unwashed.
Little Rascals
At ten I only thought of them as cute,
not a metaphor for race relations
or gender dynamics, just resourceful kids
intimate with junkyards, scrap heaps,
full of Busby Berkeley ambitions:
Alfalfa with his strangled singing
and stray cowlick, Spanky with his
fat waddling rear and quick mind,
Buckwheat, whose wild hair never
knew a comb, that mute cherub Porky,
all of them charter members
of the He-Man Woman Haters' Club,
as if they even knew what a woman
was like--how one walked, talked,
smelled. Of course, they had Miss Crabtree,
perfect blond teacher with perfect teeth,
manners, pursued by some stupid beau
the kids just had to foil before
the atrocity of marriage took place.
But I prefer the Rascals no longer
talked about: Mary and Wheezer,
two kids clearly caught
in the fist of the Depression,
Stymie, who pondered life under
a bowler almost as large as he,
Waldo, the scheming nerd
who always wanted to steal Darla
from Alfalfa, Darla herself,
with her sassy song numbers,
snappy comebacks. She
was the real talent, crooning
"I'm In the Mood for Love" better
than Alfalfa ever could, with
seemingly more knowledge
of the future, about what could happen
once the cuteness wore off, the checks
stopped coming. I don't have to tell you
that Alfalfa died tragically,
but it does seem relevant
that not too long ago some man
claimed to be Buckwheat,
though the real actor
had died years before.
Maybe that's what we all want,
one shot at fame, a chance
to be remembered as superior,
greater than our ordinary selves,
our performances captured on film
so that generations to come
could exclaim over how darling
we were, how poised, how young.
-both poems previously published in Word Press: Fine Literary Publishing
Accessible
Come here you slut of a word,
let me lay you down and stroke you
until both of us spin in the joy
of easy access, safe passage,
no stumbling over curbs, no fumbling
over straps and snaps my too-blunt fingers
can’t open—let your flesh bubble free,
rise to the surface to meet sun, rain,
other elements of weather so
occasional as to be erotic: monsoon
surges, liquor-laced Delta storms.
You and I go way back, seventh
grade at least, and I didn’t mind
that you flirted with everyone,
air kisses all around, never hesitant
to flash a silky leg, swell of décolletage.
I’d heard rumors of your promiscuity:
stories that you’d sleep anyone—
and for certain, I saw you tramping it up
in college, making the rounds in the library:
helping the lit majors first, then the science
geeks, then finally the red-eyed math
majors who sat straight up in triumph
when you whispered by, hair levitating
on backs of narrow necks. Some call
you “whore”—too many people get “it”
when you’re around, and there’s a world
of “it” we’re all not supposed to get,
code not to be cracked, safe whose
combination has been eternally lost.
But you don’t care, tearing your shirt
open to reveal that combination tattooed
across your chest in deft calligraphic
script, red numerals I can’t wait
to run my fingers over, a kind of
Braille no one is unworthy of.
’80’s Night at the Casino Boat
We’re all a little fatter than when
we last loved these tunes, some
of us balder, but all of us remember
how to sing along, how to bob our
heads, tucked far from the gaming
floor’s easy neon promises.
The lead singer still sings
in raspy bliss and fury,
as if the same girl who broke
his flimsy heart has kept her
rock star poses, as if he’s still
playing in his stepdad’s garage,
though, from the looks of him,
he is somebody’s stepdad, or
somebody’s uncle, the long-lost
kind, dirty jokes and tour
van tales spinning out every
family reunion. He peers out
at this crowd stuffed in their
chairs, says this is like a high
school reunion, forty years later,
and we laugh with him, our
paunch his paunch, his guitar
slung over his belly as if on its way
to an inevitable decline.
But we can fight that skid
by singing along, proving
we were breathing in the 80’s,
garish decade when radio
still played bands too ugly
for television, British Invasion
only twenty years gone,
long before downloading, viral
videos. The drummer can drum
like anyone—Ringo, Levon,
Bonham—lead guitarist and bassist
riffing young man solos
until we finally break
from our church row seating,
start swaying and shuffling
toward the stage, aging bones
liquid under the spell of songs
stored away somewhere on
cassette, the saddest-looking
groupies ever defying our own
ankles to shake what our
ex-wives left us, losing our
orthopedic brittleness
in these three-minute blasts
from the Smitheerens, bonus time
tonight for the gamblers
and losers, dealers and winners,
all our brilliance glowing
until the final chord thrums.
-both poems previously published at Connotation Press
Disobedience
Do I really want it back,
that pen for chipped
furniture, my room the last
stop for the peeling bureau,
the sagging mattresses
my grandmother once slept on?
Do I want to re-live
that shedding green carpet,
my unsteady desk with its
wobbly wooden chair,
the room cold no matter
the season, so clammy
no space heater could
warm it fully? I satin that room, engrossed
in library books, afraid
my father might find
my overdue copy of Fear of Flying,
that I read fitfully in the almost-dark,
astonished over its sex scenes.
Or I pecked at my stolid gray Royal,
striking stiff keys one at a time,
fingers hesitant on the heavy
machine, pressing out poems.
I taught myself new words
from someone's set of vocabulary
records, knitted long scarves
only to rip them apart.
Who wants to know that self
too timid to live beyond books,
too restless to make anything
enduring from yarn, words?
Do I really have to welcome
that girl back, the one
who loved transistor radios,
crochet hooks, who hoarded
pennies in a ripped purse?
I don't want her back
but she's here anyway:
gangly, ashamed,
disobedient daughter
who never seems to leave
her room, sneaking out
only when necessary,
leaving her dinner untouched,
sink of dishes unwashed.
Little Rascals
At ten I only thought of them as cute,
not a metaphor for race relations
or gender dynamics, just resourceful kids
intimate with junkyards, scrap heaps,
full of Busby Berkeley ambitions:
Alfalfa with his strangled singing
and stray cowlick, Spanky with his
fat waddling rear and quick mind,
Buckwheat, whose wild hair never
knew a comb, that mute cherub Porky,
all of them charter members
of the He-Man Woman Haters' Club,
as if they even knew what a woman
was like--how one walked, talked,
smelled. Of course, they had Miss Crabtree,
perfect blond teacher with perfect teeth,
manners, pursued by some stupid beau
the kids just had to foil before
the atrocity of marriage took place.
But I prefer the Rascals no longer
talked about: Mary and Wheezer,
two kids clearly caught
in the fist of the Depression,
Stymie, who pondered life under
a bowler almost as large as he,
Waldo, the scheming nerd
who always wanted to steal Darla
from Alfalfa, Darla herself,
with her sassy song numbers,
snappy comebacks. She
was the real talent, crooning
"I'm In the Mood for Love" better
than Alfalfa ever could, with
seemingly more knowledge
of the future, about what could happen
once the cuteness wore off, the checks
stopped coming. I don't have to tell you
that Alfalfa died tragically,
but it does seem relevant
that not too long ago some man
claimed to be Buckwheat,
though the real actor
had died years before.
Maybe that's what we all want,
one shot at fame, a chance
to be remembered as superior,
greater than our ordinary selves,
our performances captured on film
so that generations to come
could exclaim over how darling
we were, how poised, how young.
-both poems previously published in Word Press: Fine Literary Publishing
Accessible
Come here you slut of a word,
let me lay you down and stroke you
until both of us spin in the joy
of easy access, safe passage,
no stumbling over curbs, no fumbling
over straps and snaps my too-blunt fingers
can’t open—let your flesh bubble free,
rise to the surface to meet sun, rain,
other elements of weather so
occasional as to be erotic: monsoon
surges, liquor-laced Delta storms.
You and I go way back, seventh
grade at least, and I didn’t mind
that you flirted with everyone,
air kisses all around, never hesitant
to flash a silky leg, swell of décolletage.
I’d heard rumors of your promiscuity:
stories that you’d sleep anyone—
and for certain, I saw you tramping it up
in college, making the rounds in the library:
helping the lit majors first, then the science
geeks, then finally the red-eyed math
majors who sat straight up in triumph
when you whispered by, hair levitating
on backs of narrow necks. Some call
you “whore”—too many people get “it”
when you’re around, and there’s a world
of “it” we’re all not supposed to get,
code not to be cracked, safe whose
combination has been eternally lost.
But you don’t care, tearing your shirt
open to reveal that combination tattooed
across your chest in deft calligraphic
script, red numerals I can’t wait
to run my fingers over, a kind of
Braille no one is unworthy of.
’80’s Night at the Casino Boat
We’re all a little fatter than when
we last loved these tunes, some
of us balder, but all of us remember
how to sing along, how to bob our
heads, tucked far from the gaming
floor’s easy neon promises.
The lead singer still sings
in raspy bliss and fury,
as if the same girl who broke
his flimsy heart has kept her
rock star poses, as if he’s still
playing in his stepdad’s garage,
though, from the looks of him,
he is somebody’s stepdad, or
somebody’s uncle, the long-lost
kind, dirty jokes and tour
van tales spinning out every
family reunion. He peers out
at this crowd stuffed in their
chairs, says this is like a high
school reunion, forty years later,
and we laugh with him, our
paunch his paunch, his guitar
slung over his belly as if on its way
to an inevitable decline.
But we can fight that skid
by singing along, proving
we were breathing in the 80’s,
garish decade when radio
still played bands too ugly
for television, British Invasion
only twenty years gone,
long before downloading, viral
videos. The drummer can drum
like anyone—Ringo, Levon,
Bonham—lead guitarist and bassist
riffing young man solos
until we finally break
from our church row seating,
start swaying and shuffling
toward the stage, aging bones
liquid under the spell of songs
stored away somewhere on
cassette, the saddest-looking
groupies ever defying our own
ankles to shake what our
ex-wives left us, losing our
orthopedic brittleness
in these three-minute blasts
from the Smitheerens, bonus time
tonight for the gamblers
and losers, dealers and winners,
all our brilliance glowing
until the final chord thrums.
-both poems previously published at Connotation Press
Ira Sadoff
In Madrid
When the Lord God went belly-up, out of business,
little brats went shin-kicking through the streets of Lapaloma.
The Watchmaker closed up shop to peel wallpaper off the Vatican.
Neitzsche was in my dream too, in a tedious spat
with Anna Mahler: the syphilis was invisible, so he thought,
these are my thoughts. Sunny, a hundred degrees. Frozen daiquiris.
I wasn’t going to let any sordid affair spill my happiness.
Until the Romanian chipped away at the pieta.
He was driven, bi-polar, mood disordered:
at least they could name him this. As for the dark stuff,
blank page after blank page, motives sail by
like an afternoon cloudburst, and I don’t want to be belabor
the matador, how speared he was, or how she came to me
in a black dress out of Manet and took me in her mouth,
and I’m whispering Dear God,
the way we talk about the old rhymed poetry
with a reverence for clarity and a few simple rules of behavior,
don’t make me feel we’re all drives and cracked hardware,
wired wrong: I want to blame someone, I want to
paint over the underground, where I’m waiting at 3 A.M.
for the train, and yes, I’m sure I’m being followed.
Once I Could Say
Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.
I might even sing to him.
Did I not hear the beatific,
the breathlessness –
a patter shaking the tamarind pod,
the bright green feathery foliage
stammered by a breeze?
Those muttering implosions,
did nothing intend them?
Is the harp, too, obsolete?
When the wren took his awl
to the infested branch
he fed me an idea there.
Revival
I was standing between two screams:
shortcomings the virus I spread through a crowd.
This time the stage was heated and galloping,
and vital life forces were the sheen of a horse’s back
after a run. The water was choppy too
when the nun removed her habit
and waded into the river. Wading into the river
was an act of faith, not a mandate.
This woman, lover of Christ, as I’m
a lover of Christ, wants him to raise us up
past storm warnings and electrical pulses,
past detonating impulses, wants us
to rise above the given flesh. On my knees,
coughing before the mother of Pearl, I’m shoeless
at the shore of the river, dipping my foot in.
-all three poems from the collection True Faith
My Father's Leaving
When I came back, he was gone.
My mother was in the bathroom
crying, my sister in her crib
restless but asleep. The sun
was shining in the bay window,
the grass had not been cut.
No one mentioned the other woman,
nights he spent in that stranger's house.
I sat at my desk and wrote him a note.
When my mother saw his name on the sheet
of paper, she asked me to leave the house.
When she spoke, her voice was like a whisper
to someone else, her hand a weight
on my arm I could not feel.
In the evening, though, I opened the door
and saw a thousand houses just like ours.
I thought I was the one who was leaving,
and behind me I heard my mother's voice
asking me to stay. But I was thirteen
and wishing I were a man I listened
to no one, and no words from a woman
I loved were strong enough to make me stop.
-poem first appeared in "Palm Reading In Winter"
In Madrid
When the Lord God went belly-up, out of business,
little brats went shin-kicking through the streets of Lapaloma.
The Watchmaker closed up shop to peel wallpaper off the Vatican.
Neitzsche was in my dream too, in a tedious spat
with Anna Mahler: the syphilis was invisible, so he thought,
these are my thoughts. Sunny, a hundred degrees. Frozen daiquiris.
I wasn’t going to let any sordid affair spill my happiness.
Until the Romanian chipped away at the pieta.
He was driven, bi-polar, mood disordered:
at least they could name him this. As for the dark stuff,
blank page after blank page, motives sail by
like an afternoon cloudburst, and I don’t want to be belabor
the matador, how speared he was, or how she came to me
in a black dress out of Manet and took me in her mouth,
and I’m whispering Dear God,
the way we talk about the old rhymed poetry
with a reverence for clarity and a few simple rules of behavior,
don’t make me feel we’re all drives and cracked hardware,
wired wrong: I want to blame someone, I want to
paint over the underground, where I’m waiting at 3 A.M.
for the train, and yes, I’m sure I’m being followed.
Once I Could Say
Once I could say
my loyal friend, the house wren.
I might even sing to him.
Did I not hear the beatific,
the breathlessness –
a patter shaking the tamarind pod,
the bright green feathery foliage
stammered by a breeze?
Those muttering implosions,
did nothing intend them?
Is the harp, too, obsolete?
When the wren took his awl
to the infested branch
he fed me an idea there.
Revival
I was standing between two screams:
shortcomings the virus I spread through a crowd.
This time the stage was heated and galloping,
and vital life forces were the sheen of a horse’s back
after a run. The water was choppy too
when the nun removed her habit
and waded into the river. Wading into the river
was an act of faith, not a mandate.
This woman, lover of Christ, as I’m
a lover of Christ, wants him to raise us up
past storm warnings and electrical pulses,
past detonating impulses, wants us
to rise above the given flesh. On my knees,
coughing before the mother of Pearl, I’m shoeless
at the shore of the river, dipping my foot in.
-all three poems from the collection True Faith
My Father's Leaving
When I came back, he was gone.
My mother was in the bathroom
crying, my sister in her crib
restless but asleep. The sun
was shining in the bay window,
the grass had not been cut.
No one mentioned the other woman,
nights he spent in that stranger's house.
I sat at my desk and wrote him a note.
When my mother saw his name on the sheet
of paper, she asked me to leave the house.
When she spoke, her voice was like a whisper
to someone else, her hand a weight
on my arm I could not feel.
In the evening, though, I opened the door
and saw a thousand houses just like ours.
I thought I was the one who was leaving,
and behind me I heard my mother's voice
asking me to stay. But I was thirteen
and wishing I were a man I listened
to no one, and no words from a woman
I loved were strong enough to make me stop.
-poem first appeared in "Palm Reading In Winter"
Alicia Hoffman
This Earth Is A Novel
at all, but small and fine like the lines flowing
from a ball point pen; our lives are being crafted
carefully, the paper we rest upon is more
like a poem about a snow-capped mountain
in Alaska, about how we dance there
on its crags and warm our bodies as characters
light fires that glow near the crevasse, about
how we learn to speak the language
of snow: utvak, pirta, muruaneq — snow carved
in block, light snowstorm, soft deep snow.
And as the snow fades to damp rain,
(kanevvluk) I am ready to be convinced
there will always be more stanzas, that
the poets will continue to master the language
of alder, aster, iris and the flakes will continue
to drift and curve the stems in the vowels of snow.
-previously published in The Centrifugal Eye's
Study
Light, take us beyond
this ordinary day.
In a novel I am reading,
a bone doctor becomes
a photographer, a student
of natural duality—veins
and roots, flesh and earth.
Bodies mirroring universe.
It’s not a far stretch, this dark
room of ourselves. Come,
jump in the bath of the lake,
feel the color rising, there,
at the top corner, a curve
of shoulder, smooth stone.
If you concentrate enough on
the composition we will emerge.
-previously published in Writer's Bloc
Noise
If I told you we are only
so much noise, that when
we are gone our chatter
still soars through seamless
nights towards distant satellites
would you wonder how much
of this talk is worthwhile?
I've always admired the monks
who take the vow of silence.
If I had, would monastic bells
ring clearer? There is so much
noise. Forests know better.
Fern unfurling, speak for me.
Artifice
Your song does not escape me,
though your motions may
move to construe many masks
I am not a fool. Underneath
the stage, the music orchestrates
its magic. Always, what is over –
looked is what is never so easy
to see. There is a full band here,
trumpets and oboes and the snare
of the drum. And there, pitted
beneath the waves of so much sound
is one chord being strummed, alone
in its pitch and sway, a singular
achievement and marvelous in its quiet
intensity, like a low bass beat blooming
from the back row of a noisy auditorium.
When everyone is watching your face,
face forward for the quirks and antics
of your act, I will show you, I will
be the one to turn back and take note.
-both poems previously published in Pirene's Fountain
This Earth Is A Novel
at all, but small and fine like the lines flowing
from a ball point pen; our lives are being crafted
carefully, the paper we rest upon is more
like a poem about a snow-capped mountain
in Alaska, about how we dance there
on its crags and warm our bodies as characters
light fires that glow near the crevasse, about
how we learn to speak the language
of snow: utvak, pirta, muruaneq — snow carved
in block, light snowstorm, soft deep snow.
And as the snow fades to damp rain,
(kanevvluk) I am ready to be convinced
there will always be more stanzas, that
the poets will continue to master the language
of alder, aster, iris and the flakes will continue
to drift and curve the stems in the vowels of snow.
-previously published in The Centrifugal Eye's
Study
Light, take us beyond
this ordinary day.
In a novel I am reading,
a bone doctor becomes
a photographer, a student
of natural duality—veins
and roots, flesh and earth.
Bodies mirroring universe.
It’s not a far stretch, this dark
room of ourselves. Come,
jump in the bath of the lake,
feel the color rising, there,
at the top corner, a curve
of shoulder, smooth stone.
If you concentrate enough on
the composition we will emerge.
-previously published in Writer's Bloc
Noise
If I told you we are only
so much noise, that when
we are gone our chatter
still soars through seamless
nights towards distant satellites
would you wonder how much
of this talk is worthwhile?
I've always admired the monks
who take the vow of silence.
If I had, would monastic bells
ring clearer? There is so much
noise. Forests know better.
Fern unfurling, speak for me.
Artifice
Your song does not escape me,
though your motions may
move to construe many masks
I am not a fool. Underneath
the stage, the music orchestrates
its magic. Always, what is over –
looked is what is never so easy
to see. There is a full band here,
trumpets and oboes and the snare
of the drum. And there, pitted
beneath the waves of so much sound
is one chord being strummed, alone
in its pitch and sway, a singular
achievement and marvelous in its quiet
intensity, like a low bass beat blooming
from the back row of a noisy auditorium.
When everyone is watching your face,
face forward for the quirks and antics
of your act, I will show you, I will
be the one to turn back and take note.
-both poems previously published in Pirene's Fountain
About Art - Armillary Sphere
Landscape architects for the company Lovejoy invited sculptor David Harber to create a focal point to enhance the main entrance of this prestigious, luxury development in Kensington known as The Philimores.
As a result, Huber created Armillary Sphere, a sundial that combines a magnificent 1.5 m armillary sphere with an elegant water feature at its base. He wanted to make a sculpture that would command a feeling of great presence without screening the view. David and his team and went on to oversaw the entire installation.
David Harber has earned an international reputation for creating innovative, contemporary designs paying homage to the past, and taking the marking of time as his inspiration. His work has an ethereal quality, drawing integrity from his commitment to using only the finest quality materials; beautiful, sometimes mysterious, always intriguing. Find out more at: http://www.davidharbersundials.com/corporate/zabeel.html
Landscape architects for the company Lovejoy invited sculptor David Harber to create a focal point to enhance the main entrance of this prestigious, luxury development in Kensington known as The Philimores.
As a result, Huber created Armillary Sphere, a sundial that combines a magnificent 1.5 m armillary sphere with an elegant water feature at its base. He wanted to make a sculpture that would command a feeling of great presence without screening the view. David and his team and went on to oversaw the entire installation.
David Harber has earned an international reputation for creating innovative, contemporary designs paying homage to the past, and taking the marking of time as his inspiration. His work has an ethereal quality, drawing integrity from his commitment to using only the finest quality materials; beautiful, sometimes mysterious, always intriguing. Find out more at: http://www.davidharbersundials.com/corporate/zabeel.html
About Books:Title: The Last 4 Things
Author: Kate Greenstreet
Description: Kate Greenstreet’s deeply elegiac second full-length poetry book The Last 4 Things is an expansive meditation on a life’s moments and memories flashing before one’s eyes, but very slowly, each one lingering. The tone, wounded without being outraged, urgent but not desperate, gives the sense that what is being described is from the deep past. Some of it may be, but much of it is reflection also of how life should be lived, present tense. While the speaker and the characters drifting through the poems are artistic, they are portrayed also as earnest and industrious. Passages feel like they are pulled from black and white snapshots, yellowed pieces of paper, American rural life. --- Dan Magers
Product details:
Description: Kate Greenstreet’s deeply elegiac second full-length poetry book The Last 4 Things is an expansive meditation on a life’s moments and memories flashing before one’s eyes, but very slowly, each one lingering. The tone, wounded without being outraged, urgent but not desperate, gives the sense that what is being described is from the deep past. Some of it may be, but much of it is reflection also of how life should be lived, present tense. While the speaker and the characters drifting through the poems are artistic, they are portrayed also as earnest and industrious. Passages feel like they are pulled from black and white snapshots, yellowed pieces of paper, American rural life. --- Dan Magers
Product details:
Printed: 7.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches, 104 pages
ISBN: 1934103098
Copyright: 2009
ISBN: 1934103098
Copyright: 2009
Language: English
Country: USA
Publisher's link: http://ahsahtapress.boisestate.edu/
About Music - Bruno Mars
After a string of behind-the-scene jobs -- everything from writing songs for Brandy to impersonating Elvis -- singer/songwriter/producer Bruno Mars put his name on top of the charts in 2010 by collaborating with rapper B.o.B for the single “Nothin’ on You.”
Born Peter Hernandez (born October 8, 1985) in Honolulu, Hawaii, Mars’ kicked off his career at the age of four fronting his uncle’s band as Oahu's youngest Elvis impersonator. Ten years later, he was impersonating the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, with the Legends in Concert show. After graduation, his uncle convinced him to move to the mainland U.S. and follow of his dream of becoming a singer. Months of frustration and going nowhere followed before he met songwriter Phillip Lawrence, the man who would convince him to try his hand at writing songs for other artists. The two would dub themselves the Smeezingtons and co-write “Long Distance,” which would be recorded in 2008 by R&B singer Brandy.
The gigs came in fast after that, and in 2009, when he and Lawrence co-wrote “Right Round” for rapper Flo Rida, they had their first number one hit on their hands. A year later, he would co-write and sing on B.o.B’s number one hit “Nothin’ on You,” and would do the same for Travie McCoy with his cut “Billionaire.” Also in 2010, he released his debut solo EP, It's Better If You Don't Understand, which featured more pop material mixed with the R&B. Later in the year he released a full-length album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans. The first single from the album, "Just the Way You Are," topped the Billboard Singles chart the week before the album's October 5th release. Find out more at: http://www.brunomars.com/
Scott Owens
Rails
Every child should have one, a pair, really,
a matched set, set apart just the right width
so that one foot pressed against each one
leaves you stretched out about as far
as you can go, unable to move, feeling
almost trapped, almost actually in danger.
And every child should walk them as if
that’s what they were intended for,
leading out of town, around the curve,
along the river, revealing the backsides
of people’s homes, clotheslines and refuse,
the yards you weren’t supposed to see.
And every child should learn to balance
atop the railhead without the constant
unsightly tipping from side to side,
should be able to step exactly the distance
between the ties consistently, almost
marching without kicking up ballast.
And every child should have a bridge
they go under to hide and look
at dirty magazines and smoke cigarettes
and place coins on the rails to flatten
and see if this could be the one
to cause the train to leap the tracks.
And every child should know the lonely
distant sound of late night travel
when bad dreams have kept them awake
wondering where they come from, what
they bring or take, and where when it’s all
done they might return and call home.
Stony Point
Crossroads where boulders rise
between Hodges and Ninety-Six,
Greenwood and Laurens, names
people might recognize, homage
to the quarry that kept three generations
of Garrisons, Harvleys, Hollingsworths,
microcosm of the American South,
Garrisons atop the hill, brick homes,
land left to woods or rented out,
worked by others, reaching
all the way back to the river,
managing schedules and paychecks,
sales and delivery, Harvleys half-way
down, wooden homes, on seven acres
they work to death for chickens and cows,
corn and the best tomatoes in three counties,
driving shovels and buckets, Hollingsworths
along the dusty road, a narrow strip
of land, two-room block homes
or later used trailers, drilling holes,
loading machines, setting charges
to break out proverbial hard places,
homes always half-empty.
Homeplace
From that hill I could see
the asphalt plant choking the sky,
the girl scout camp beneath the pines
that echoed laughter on summer nights,
seven acres of red cows and corn,
the highway’s red clay bank
leading the way to anywhere else.
Only in back the trees rose up,
a pine wall too thick to see
through, too tall to see over,
but quarry sounds kept imagination’s
beasts alive and creeping closer.
Why should this be home,
a place I lived only between
other homes, once a year,
a month at a time at least till 12,
a place where evening sang with voices
of the old, the unambitious,
the not-too-distant wild,
a place where dying had its own season,
and everything smelled like dirt.
A place is just a place,
one as good or bad as the other.
It’s the people you care for,
or hate, who keep you
coming back, or never let you go.
Vacancy
The poems are all asleep now,
bedded down beneath their blanket
of exhaustion, mental fatigue,
satisfaction. No one lives here
anymore, the old man and woman
both gone, children grown up,
caught up in other lives, grandchildren,
married off, moved away.
The hill is still there, of course,
and one house still sits upon it,
the other become a part of the hill
itself. There are still pecan trees
and stray flowers, and new rocks
rising each winter, and the pines have regained
half their height, but the cows
belong to someone else now,
an absent renter, and no garden graces
the hillside, as if the land could only
be used and never again possessed.
-all poems previously published at The Dead Mule
Rails
Every child should have one, a pair, really,
a matched set, set apart just the right width
so that one foot pressed against each one
leaves you stretched out about as far
as you can go, unable to move, feeling
almost trapped, almost actually in danger.
And every child should walk them as if
that’s what they were intended for,
leading out of town, around the curve,
along the river, revealing the backsides
of people’s homes, clotheslines and refuse,
the yards you weren’t supposed to see.
And every child should learn to balance
atop the railhead without the constant
unsightly tipping from side to side,
should be able to step exactly the distance
between the ties consistently, almost
marching without kicking up ballast.
And every child should have a bridge
they go under to hide and look
at dirty magazines and smoke cigarettes
and place coins on the rails to flatten
and see if this could be the one
to cause the train to leap the tracks.
And every child should know the lonely
distant sound of late night travel
when bad dreams have kept them awake
wondering where they come from, what
they bring or take, and where when it’s all
done they might return and call home.
Stony Point
Crossroads where boulders rise
between Hodges and Ninety-Six,
Greenwood and Laurens, names
people might recognize, homage
to the quarry that kept three generations
of Garrisons, Harvleys, Hollingsworths,
microcosm of the American South,
Garrisons atop the hill, brick homes,
land left to woods or rented out,
worked by others, reaching
all the way back to the river,
managing schedules and paychecks,
sales and delivery, Harvleys half-way
down, wooden homes, on seven acres
they work to death for chickens and cows,
corn and the best tomatoes in three counties,
driving shovels and buckets, Hollingsworths
along the dusty road, a narrow strip
of land, two-room block homes
or later used trailers, drilling holes,
loading machines, setting charges
to break out proverbial hard places,
homes always half-empty.
Homeplace
From that hill I could see
the asphalt plant choking the sky,
the girl scout camp beneath the pines
that echoed laughter on summer nights,
seven acres of red cows and corn,
the highway’s red clay bank
leading the way to anywhere else.
Only in back the trees rose up,
a pine wall too thick to see
through, too tall to see over,
but quarry sounds kept imagination’s
beasts alive and creeping closer.
Why should this be home,
a place I lived only between
other homes, once a year,
a month at a time at least till 12,
a place where evening sang with voices
of the old, the unambitious,
the not-too-distant wild,
a place where dying had its own season,
and everything smelled like dirt.
A place is just a place,
one as good or bad as the other.
It’s the people you care for,
or hate, who keep you
coming back, or never let you go.
Vacancy
The poems are all asleep now,
bedded down beneath their blanket
of exhaustion, mental fatigue,
satisfaction. No one lives here
anymore, the old man and woman
both gone, children grown up,
caught up in other lives, grandchildren,
married off, moved away.
The hill is still there, of course,
and one house still sits upon it,
the other become a part of the hill
itself. There are still pecan trees
and stray flowers, and new rocks
rising each winter, and the pines have regained
half their height, but the cows
belong to someone else now,
an absent renter, and no garden graces
the hillside, as if the land could only
be used and never again possessed.
-all poems previously published at The Dead Mule
Vicki Thornton
No Black For Monet
beneath this foreign northern sun
we wander the cobbled lanes
of Giverny
buy Spanish oranges and Dutch cheese
from a girlchild on roller skates
we sit in Monet’s garden
while bumble bees
drone like Volkswagens
and try to capture this moment
create an impression
with digital clarity
amongst his palette of pure light
gardens of scorched orange day lilies
roses bursting in salmon pink
cadmium yellow pansies
and cobalt blue Canterbury bells
where black is forbidden
and shadows are merely
the darkest of purples
-previously published in Fly Magazine
A Storm At Bay
Clouds rain in from the south, tumble and swirl
reducing the sun to mere memory. Blue-green sea
dissolves to gull-grey while dancing white crests
become frenzied, tossed with salt licked winds.
Corrugated tides tear at the foam spewed breakwater
lash at moored boats that pull at their tethers
aching to be free. Men rush with sand stung skin
squint through the rain beanied heads bent
to claim what’s theirs. Clawed hands
frozen and numb pull at ropes
grapple with the wind as cray pots
skate across watered decks. Stinging rain sweeps
across the bay etching out passageway.
Waves slap the rocks wind cuts through the pines
the world disappears into a monotone mosaic
of sound and vision.
-previously published at PV Review
Louisa May
You were a silent woman
kept a silent house
we intruded
with heavy footsteps
down linoleumed halls
our voices piercing
your stillness.
I remember the picture
of Jesus and his
bleeding heart
the rosary that swayed
above your bed
each time we ran past your room.
The vulnerable pink skin
beneath the white hair
you tumbled into a bun
bleached blue eyes
and lips pursed
in continual disapproval.
Yet at your knitting
there was a beauty
a rhythm
to the pull of yarn
round and over
under and through
the tug of wool
on needle
your hands creating a grace
I never knew existed
in you before.
After
when they asked what of yours
I would like as a memento
I chose your needles.
Tortoiseshell.
I can’t use them
never being as silent
as you were.
-previously published in Land Lines: Anthology of Regional Poets
Bliss
is five foot seven
achingly thin
strawberry plump lips and mirror eyes.
She keeps her dreams
in a mahogany chest
by the bed
and casts her thoughts
as easily as dealing cards.
She lives in a palace
of crystal promises
all too aware
of their sharp intent.
At night the mattress
dips and sways beneath her
as her husband’s paws
land on breast and thigh.
Snuffling kisses down her neck
begin his dance of love
his quickstep.
After
as she listens
to his deep breath
turnings of a snore
she decides that happiness
is a state
like Queensland
overrated
and too expensive to live in.
-previously published in Divan
No Black For Monet
beneath this foreign northern sun
we wander the cobbled lanes
of Giverny
buy Spanish oranges and Dutch cheese
from a girlchild on roller skates
we sit in Monet’s garden
while bumble bees
drone like Volkswagens
and try to capture this moment
create an impression
with digital clarity
amongst his palette of pure light
gardens of scorched orange day lilies
roses bursting in salmon pink
cadmium yellow pansies
and cobalt blue Canterbury bells
where black is forbidden
and shadows are merely
the darkest of purples
-previously published in Fly Magazine
A Storm At Bay
Clouds rain in from the south, tumble and swirl
reducing the sun to mere memory. Blue-green sea
dissolves to gull-grey while dancing white crests
become frenzied, tossed with salt licked winds.
Corrugated tides tear at the foam spewed breakwater
lash at moored boats that pull at their tethers
aching to be free. Men rush with sand stung skin
squint through the rain beanied heads bent
to claim what’s theirs. Clawed hands
frozen and numb pull at ropes
grapple with the wind as cray pots
skate across watered decks. Stinging rain sweeps
across the bay etching out passageway.
Waves slap the rocks wind cuts through the pines
the world disappears into a monotone mosaic
of sound and vision.
-previously published at PV Review
Louisa May
You were a silent woman
kept a silent house
we intruded
with heavy footsteps
down linoleumed halls
our voices piercing
your stillness.
I remember the picture
of Jesus and his
bleeding heart
the rosary that swayed
above your bed
each time we ran past your room.
The vulnerable pink skin
beneath the white hair
you tumbled into a bun
bleached blue eyes
and lips pursed
in continual disapproval.
Yet at your knitting
there was a beauty
a rhythm
to the pull of yarn
round and over
under and through
the tug of wool
on needle
your hands creating a grace
I never knew existed
in you before.
After
when they asked what of yours
I would like as a memento
I chose your needles.
Tortoiseshell.
I can’t use them
never being as silent
as you were.
-previously published in Land Lines: Anthology of Regional Poets
Bliss
is five foot seven
achingly thin
strawberry plump lips and mirror eyes.
She keeps her dreams
in a mahogany chest
by the bed
and casts her thoughts
as easily as dealing cards.
She lives in a palace
of crystal promises
all too aware
of their sharp intent.
At night the mattress
dips and sways beneath her
as her husband’s paws
land on breast and thigh.
Snuffling kisses down her neck
begin his dance of love
his quickstep.
After
as she listens
to his deep breath
turnings of a snore
she decides that happiness
is a state
like Queensland
overrated
and too expensive to live in.
-previously published in Divan
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