October 2018 | poetry
Bat shit
abusive
now after
upside down
battered twins
fêted
fetid star
mellifluous
obsequious
arch flatterers
melancholy
clump of gay
clay oxymorons
amputated –plug
pulled on bouquets.
by Gerard Sarnat
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, Margie, Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Tiferet plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast and Tipton Review. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day 2017 as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids and four grandkids so far.
October 2018 | poetry
they will not be delayed
stare down the tick
tock clock
or will be extended
graciously
summer’s tufting breath
i opened my hand
where are you?
come here now and kiss sky
cerulean pale cornflower whips
of blackbirds
these clouds only wisdom
years ago
drink with me and dance
jig waltz rondo mazurka polka
adagio or allegro anything
that moves
this place is safe
nothing but goodness
can envelop us
my arms are open
but quickly before they aren’t
by Heidi A. Howell
Working loosely in the range of experimental/ language/Black Mountain/ NY School traditions, Heidi A. Howell has published poems in online and print literary magazines, including s/word, Psychic Meatloaf, The Eastern Iowa Review, Otoliths, la fovea, What Light, So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and the Washington Review, which nominated her work for a Pushcart. She holds an MFA from George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
October 2018 | nonfiction
All your friends have older brothers–some in jail, some in Vietnam. But Nancy’s brother is a cop. He works nights and sleeps days, so he’s always snoring in the back bedroom when you play at her house.
Nancy is a tomboy. She likes to play Matchbox cars. She always chooses the cop car and makes the scary siren sound–rrrrrrr rrrrrr–as she rushes the black and white car marked POLICE across the worn carpet.
You’re not a tomboy. You want to choose the turquoise Bel Air convertible so you can pretend you’re Miss America being driven down the street in a parade. But you always choose the ambulance and follow the cop car across the carpet, because when there’s a murder, somebody’s got to clean up the mess.
One day Nancy’s mother goes to a wake and leaves you in the house with just the cop brother snoring in the back.
Do you want to see my brother’s gun? Nancy asks.
You don’t really. But you know it’s polite to say yes.
She drags a chair over to the wooden cabinet in the front hallway, climbs up, and takes a pistol out of a leather holster.
She points it at you.
You stare into the dark hole of the barrel.
You better put that back, you say, or else–
Else what, she says.
Else I’ll tell your mother, you say.
She shrugs and puts the gun back in the holster.
You don’t tell her mother. Or your own mother. And you keep playing Matchbox cars just like before. But for weeks afterward when you go to bed and mumble now I lay me down to…, you hear Nancy making the scary siren sound–rrrrrrr rrrrrr–before you fall into the dark barrel of sleep.
by Rita Ciresi
Rita Ciresi is author of the novels Bring Back My Body to Me, Pink Slip, Blue Italian, and Remind Me Again Why I Married You, and three award-winning story collections, Second Wife, Sometimes I Dream in Italian, and Mother Rocket. She is professor of English at the University of South Florida and fiction editor of 2 Bridges Review.
October 2018 | poetry
We
advertise, commercialize, consumerize,
supersize, downsize, computerize,
digitize, dot compromise,
televise superficial gals and guys,
so we can
fantasize, romanticize, glamorize,
tantalize, eroticize our hum drum lives.
We
monetize, industrialize, globalize,
monopolize, bureaucratize,
hire CEO’s that scandalize,
(steal $1thousand and we criminalize,
steal $1million and we penalize,
steal $1billion and we aggrandize).
We
militarize, destabilize, brutalize,
demonize, victimize,
it’s us or them dichotomize,
(that’s just how we Americanize),
elect politicians who tell us lies,
refuse to use our minds and eyes,
willingly de-democratize,
don’t ask any how’s or why’s,
do you want that with fries?
We
evangelize to Christianize
those heathen non-consumers
so as to legitimize
our greed in religious disguise.
Do we wonder why they terrorize?
Now we’ll always
fly unfriendly skies.
We
who would Wal-Martize
the earth until nothing
is left to franchise,
must realize
it’s humanity’s future we compromise.
Will our grandchildren
look back on us and despise?
by Michael Baldwin
Michael Baldwin is a native of Fort Worth, TX. He holds a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Library Science, and a Masters in Public Administration. He was a library administrator and professor of American Government until he wasn’t. He has been published extensively in poetry journals and anthologies. His poetry was featured on the national radio program The Romantic Hours and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He won the Eakin Manuscript award in 2011 for his book, Scapes. He won the Morris Memorial Chapbook Award in 2012, for Counting Backward From Infinity. His book of Texas poetry, Lone Star Heart, was published by Lamar University Press in 2016. Mr. Baldwin has also published a mystery thriller novel, Murder Music, and two collections of science-fiction short stories, Passing Strange, and Surpassing Strange. Mr. Baldwin resides in Benbrook, TX.
October 2018 | poetry
i carry infection in saliva
like a point of pride
see, my city reeks of bone
tall skeleton skyscrapers
i’m numb again
as dental drill enters me
year after year
what birthed my decays?
raised to desire new
wants every day
wanting even wanting
my dad worked at a ford factory
after the great depression
churned out a new kid
every few years
seasons of rust
spreading on steel
here’s the sunset
he’d wake us to say &
spend the days molding
the yard
rough hands on saw
that was satisfactory
to him
for me oaks are cold towers &
grass not godmade
took a clump in my mouth
from the graveyard as a child &
i swear i tasted
death
but could not digest it
i’m but a skeleton
all life’s experiences
slip through me
masticating childhood
no pondering
the future with mom and dad
scooping fries at ponderosa &
we’d always go for seconds &
mint ice cream after
by James Croal Jackson
James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Columbia Journal, Hobart, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle, a poetry journal, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Find more at jimjakk.com.
