This is not a rock-bottom poem but it was on the well-lit downward spiral

July 2020 | poetry

I remember I tripped

and skinned my knee on the curb,

beneath the neon signglow

and as my last bottle shattered

on the pavement beside me

and I looked at the hole

in my slacks and the wet bloodsmudge there

I said, interiorly, you clumsy fuck,

and exteriorly, just plain fuck.

Some pretty folks in day-glo evening dresses

looked on, judging a bit.

 

And as I sat there, failed son, spinning,

mad at my fingers for not being needles,

mad at my saliva for not being bleach,

mad at my feet for not being steady

(but how could they, really), mad at

my beer for not staying, miraculously,

in the bottle, I looked up at the

signs in all their bright rainbow,

and I remember tripping, dissociating,

thinking, interiorly- “I wonder what

the noble gasses make of it, being

caught in those tubes, hocking

beer for a living?” and,

exteriorly, just plain fuck.

 

And this led, inexorably,

to a little more negative self-talk

outside the bar, mad at my

creatively dressed audience,

for moving on, judgment complete,

and at myself again,

for not even knowing then

that there were blessings

that could be counted,

even while coagulating,

by whatever sordid light

there was to count them–

 

argon, like from the argonauts,

neon, sounds like Creon in a way,

xenon and on and on and on…

krypton, like from that Superman

stuff (wonder how he felt about

good’ol Jor-El!), radon, all the

nobles, Jay-San, no that’s not one,

all first-born sons probably,

debased into illuminating a

standard issue failing-to-please-

daddy-issue drunk thinking,

interiorly, how the nobles

have fallen so low, and finally,

exteriorly, a howl at the moon-

where is that spark

that will light me

up one night?

 

Michael J. Galko

Michael J. Galko is a scientist and poet who lives and works in Houston, TX. He has been a juried poet of the Houston Poetry Fest three of the last four years and is a 2019 Pushcart Award nominee. In the past year he has had poems published or accepted for publication at descant, San Pedro River Review, Gargoyle, Gulf Coast, Defunkt Magazine, Riddled with Arrows, Poetry WTF!?, and Sonic Boom, among other journals.

Anatoliy Anshin

July 2020 | visual art

In Meigetsuin Temple, Kamakura City, Japan

In Meigetsuin Temple, Kamakura City, Japan

 

Anatoliy Anshin

Anatoliy Anshin ( www.anshin.art ) is a fine art photographer who excels in the use of camera for depicting the beauty of Nature in a deeply symbolic way. Born in Russia, he lives permanently in Japan and his main work sites are old Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines where he can wander around for days in search for the picturesque blend of traditional culture with natural environment of perfectly maintained Japanese gardens. Some of the peculiar features of his works are breathtaking perspectives, extremely vibrant colors, nonstandard techniques such as blurring or shifting photographic subjects from the frame center that make his pictures all the more enigmatic and mesmerizing. Anatoliy’s distinctive personal style is based on the belief that postprocessing in photography is unnecessary – Nature has enough to offer us for appreciation and a beautiful photograph can be taken right in the moment the photographer triggers the shutter. His creativity is inspired by his profound scholarly background and physical training. A former university researcher, Anatoliy holds a Ph.D. in pre-modern Japanese history, is an author of a book and a number of academic articles, and is a teacher of Japanese swordsmanship, Kendo.

Resurrection

July 2020 | poetry

In January, we headed south.

First, a road trip, then a new place to live…

 

Never eat Chinese food

in Birmingham, Alabama was

one lesson learned.

 

At our destination, each of our myths,

so carefully curried, was sucked

into February, then disassembled

and poured, like an old man’s ashes,

into April’s mud puddles.

 

Unlike dear Lazarus, these were

ashes never to be resurrected.

There wasn’t enough love

in all of the world to make them

whole and bring them back to us.

 

Another lesson learned:

Sometimes smoke does not

indicate a fire.

 

We watched the souls of our loved ones

flow steadily from stubby Palmettos and

were introduced to insects larger than our

imaginations. Once, we saw geese in the sky

coming towards us and, once, in a park,

 

a swan bit my bare heel. The mark looked

a little like a lipstick imprint on the edge

of a glass. When I wrote to a friend

to tell her about the swan, she giggled,

“They are mean little fuckers, aren’t they?”

 

We felt 1000 spirits in the south, pleading

for bodies, longing to extend themselves

as soon as the signal was given. While we

waited for pulled pork at a barbeque joint,

the twilight grew gray and empty

 

and heat-treated rain began to fall.

Something about the atmosphere made me

feel tangled and more shy than ever. The

nights were ripe with nightmares and

visits from my dead father. The air…something…

 

In July, in yet another new rental, Barbara Goldberg’s

words sang out in every room: “The world is ripe with calamity,”

she said in a steady alto. Once the entire apartment

was taken over by beige and gray, we made our decisions

and drove back to Los Angeles—unfiltered, certain.

 

 

Martina Reisz Newberry

Martina Reisz Newberry is the author of 6 books of poetry. Her most recent book is BLUES FOR FRENCH ROAST WITH CHICORY, available from Deerbrook Editions. She is the author of NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (from Deerbrook Editions), and TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions). LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). She has been included in “The Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018” (Black Mountain Press/The Halcyone Magazine editorial staff). Newberry has been included in As It Ought to Be, Big Windows, Courtship of Winds, The Cenacle, Cog, Futures Trading, and many other literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is included in the anthologies Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Moontide Press Horror Anthology, A Decade of Sundays: L.A.’s Second Sunday Poetry Series-The First Ten Years, In The Company Of Women, Blessed Are These Hands and Veils, and Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.

Ache

July 2020 | nonfiction

A word was written on an overpass, 20 feet above the splashing cars, and rising diesel exhaust. Tucked beneath the shelf of the roadbed, it’s large letters sulked in the shadow of a rainy day. They were cored in black, outlined in white, and framed below the girders of green scissoring iron. They stood as tall as a man, rising, and presumably illustrated, from a slippery narrow flange.

My car was eastbound, traveling at 60 miles per hour, and a random look caught the tag head-on. But only for an instant. The dark wing of the overpass slipped across my hood and rooftop and quickly receded into the narrowing V of my lane. But I suddenly felt strange. I’d been nicked under that bridge, some small penetrating injury, and was trailing a thin line of guilt.

Ache was the word. Not ‘fuck’, or an angry scrawl. Not some unintelligible inside encryption. And not masterfully executed. But, amplified by these stylistic inversions the word stuck. And its placement on tired ‘60’s infrastructure was like a glimpse of an SOS.

It lodged perfectly, the proper screw for my specifications. In my professional life I have had a hand in a series of bland assaults: pooling of wealth, dimming the sun, warming the earth. A part of a collective worldwide lean. But, outside the muffled backslapping circle of industry, the sound of struggle still carried. It was in the headlines and sprinkled among the homeless tents in their tiny off-ramp wedges. It was in the storm drain run-off of needles, bottles, lottery tickets, and pain pill blister packs. It flew with monarchs and swam with salmon, chased receding snowlines, and sat quietly beside silent springs. All sounds of a world aching.

I don’t pretend to know what the tagger intended with this word. It could be a nickname, an inside joke at the local high school or an homage to the Irish tag artist, Aches. But I do know this: Someone identified a spot perched high above one of the busiest freeways in town. Then, under cover of darkness, felt the way over a guard rail and shimmied along a potentially wet, two-inch flange lubricated with bird shit and sheaved paint chips. Scrabbling blind above quivering calves and speeding lines of traffic, they clutched spray cans and reached out in broad gambling sweeps again and again, until the four tall letters stood, fully formed and outlined. All under conditions many free-climbers would never attempt.

My thoughts on poverty, environment, and the future are churning. But at their heart is a spectator’s wonder and guilt. Because one of us acted. Threw a leg over. Gripped and teetered in the footlights of vans and trucks. Then vanished into the night leaving the word to shimmer high above in an invisible haunting resonance. Leaving their work to be captioned by their risk and our conscience.

Michael Parker

Michael Parker is writing while living in complicated times, in Portland, Oregon.

My Veteran of Iraq

July 2020 | poetry

His heart gave out two nights ago

at 29, four years out of Iraq.

 

In war, with mangled vehicles,

mechanics strip the intact parts.

Fuel pump, clutch, perhaps an axle,

roof hatch, carburetor, clutch,

random gauges, a machine gun mount.

Whatever works.

 

Back home in Pinson

Tennessee, he heard cicadas

saw his head

around the clock.

A jobless drift of smashed chairs.

A son meandering the fence

around my sister’s yard,

tremors in his vision as he

spat accusations in the grass.

 

Meth: a gnashing chatter.

Heroin: molasses in a moan.

His Purple Heart

lying with its recovered bullet

in a satin-lined box.

 

A year of VA rehab lockdown,

with a Johnson City keyhole view:

him, his eyes lost in the mountains,

from a bench out on the lawn.

 

Two nights ago, his heart gave out

at 29. He’s on life support

until they harvest organs.

 

Eric Forsbergh

Eric Forsbergh’s poetry has appeared in The Journal of The American Medical Association, Zeotrope, Artemis, The Cafe Review, and other venues. In 2016, he was awarded a Pushcart nomination by The Northern Virginia Review. He is a Vietnam veteran.