July 2016 | poetry
Hurricane Girl
The hurricane expert
talked of wind speeds,
probable damage, sweeping
his left hand over a map of the
East Coast. Behind him, in
another room, in silence,
a girl in a red shirt,
her dark hair a ponytail,
gazed raptly before her,
her profile so still I thought
she was perhaps a picture.
As I watched, she swiftly
lifted her chin, turned toward me
(and the camera), and gazed
behind her, a look of loss and
puzzlement on her face. After
a moment, she turned back
to the screen, or whatever it was
that held her attention earlier.
Did she sense my gaze? Or was it my
gaze and the gaze of a million others―
the hurricane no longer of interest
(Won’t bother us, so the heck with it)―
that made us all see her, wonder who
she was, what her task, and why the
look of misery and resignation?
Visitation
The cat curls, a C of pale fur
with blue batwing ears, in my lap.
I’m reading in bed, tomorrow
a workday if there’s no blizzard.
I’m reading Atwood, or Coetzee,
or Munro. Behind me in dusty dusk
a sound, skitter, shiver of something
small and secret. The cat’s head rises,
eyes pools of suspicion. What is it,
I ask him, but he stares past me.
Suddenly the air is full of Old Spice.
The only scent you would use,
and then only in summer. I turn
to look at the bottle, still on the
dresser. It is closed. You hadn’t
opened it for two years, as you drank
and harangued yourself to stall
the stalking, eerily benign
knowledge of death. A week ago
I watched the cat reach up
into one of your coats,
following your scent.
My heart ached for his longing,
for his inability to know,
but now I realize
that even knowing is no solace.
Except for Joplin’s rag,
Solace does not exist.
by Gay Baines
Gay Baines lives in East Aurora, New York, and is a member of the Roycroft Wordsmiths. She has a B.A. in English from Russell Sage College and has done graduate work at Syracuse University and SUNY – Buffalo. She won the National Writers Union Poetry Prize in 1991, Honorable Mention in the Ruth Cable Memorial Poetry Contest in 1996, and the 2008 Mary Roelofs Stott Award for poetry, as well as other prizes. Her poems, essays, and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in over 50 literary journals, including 13th Moon, Alabama Literary, Amarillo Bay, Anemone Sidecar, Atlanta Review, The Baltimore Review, Bayou, Caveat Lector, Cimarron Review, Cloudbank, Confluence, Confrontation, Controlled Burn, Crack the Spine, Crate Literary Magazine, Dislocate, Eclectica, Eclipse, Edison Literary Review, The Evansville Review, Forge, Grey Sparrow, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, Jabberwock Review, Louisiana Literature, Nimrod International Journal, Oregon East, Phoebe, The Pinch, poemmemoirstory, Poet Lore, Queen’s Quarterly, Quiddity Literary Journal, RE:AL, Rosebud, Serving House Journal, Slipstream, South Carolina Review, Talking River, The Tampa Review, The Texas Review, Tiger’s Eye, Verdad, Westview, Whiskey Island, Willow Review, Wisconsin Review, and Zone 3.
July 2016 | poetry
Cruel April, February crueler yet:
Weary end of winter dark persisting,
The shortest month drags long along
Exhausted banks of brick-red mud-stained snow,
Crocuses entombed in superseding snowdrifts;
Spring robins held at bay by croaking crows.
The wind increasing, dark, and groundhog cold,
All to mock December’s bargain that the gleam
Of solstice bonfires will hasten back the sun.
I remember how the old Norwegians
Used to scoff away the icy clutch of winter dark:
“If you make it through December, you’ll live another year.
You’ll hear the meadowlark at Easter, smell the new-mown hay in June,
Drink chilled wine midsummer and savor in the harvest feast,
Celebrate midwinter’s night and dance the New Year in.
Take comfort in our promise and smile away your tears,
If you make it through December, you’ll live another year.”
As winter drags on deep and drear
From windblown snow to cold and clear
With icebound stars and frost in rings around the moon,
The sun a distant glimmer no warmer than a frozen rock,
And dark, the goddamned unrelenting dark, enduring,
Do not despair, but build again the bonfire in your mind.
Recall the solstice bargain and its promise through your fears,
If you make it through December, you’ll live another year.
by Michael Patrick Emery
Michael Patrick Emery’s poetry collection, Ask the Mad Poet: Observations From My Homeland in a Time of Convoluted Realities, was published in 2015. His poetry has also been published in The Zuni Mountain Poets: An Anthology, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Sanskrit Literary-Arts Magazine, Crack the Spine, Westview, and Querencia. He has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and philosophy from Occidental College and a doctorate in clinical psychology from Teachers College at Columbia University. Now semi-retired from his career in forensic psychology, he lives near the small artist colony of El Morro and is fortunate to be able to read most Sunday mornings with the Zuni Mountain Poets.
July 2016 | poetry
Curving, climbing, descending
On steel tracks, the moon keeping pace,
While in ten thousand little towns
The sleepers sleep in the earth.
In ten thousand furious days,
Men, machines, explosives
Blast through the mountains,
Hard labor building highways: The age
Of the motorcar has come and must
Be accommodated. But there are
No real rules yet, and whether
In a plush Pullman smoking car or a flivver
In a field, men will hop up, pulling
Long and deep from jugs of corn whiskey.
The ten thousand days diminish one
By one, and trains, men, swaying,
Drunk, join the sleepers of the little towns;
Sleep, while mountains and fields
Shift and change from what they once
Knew them to be, and cannot, even now,
In their stertorous breathing, imagine
The stranglehold to come.
by Christopher Kuhl
Christopher Kuhl has been published in Big Muddy, Crack the Spine, OVS Magazine, Euphony, Prairie Schooner, The Anglican Digest, Ensemble Jourine, Inscape Magazine, Kane County Chronicle, Mississippi Literary Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Zzbaggins Poetry Victims, Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Thin Air Magazine, Tulane Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Alabama Literary Review, OxMag, Superstition Review, The Griffin, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and The Critical Pass Review. His short story, “Wade,” was named the Annual Editor’s Choice of Best Work in Fiction by Inscape Magazine. In 2014, five of his poems were selected to be published as an individual chapbook by Red Ochre Press. Kuhl’s self-published book was awarded an honorable mention in the poetry category in the Writer’s Digest 15th Annual International Self-Published Book Awards, and he came in 10th in the Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards. He also placed first for my poem, “Agon,” in the Mississippi Poetry Society competition.
July 2016 | poetry
The evening beryl blue
A wavy horizon puffing out clouds
Sanguine in her lasting coffers
My heart lies silent at the bottom
Of the jar of peace.
Ears lounge on sand,
Coarse as they may be
Toting cottony waves
And their aimless niveous roars
The wind lifts my hair
Levity sinks in the sand
A shell upturned, burnishing a golden
Corals stray awash unshapely
Yet their randomness beholds a design
Woven in the blindness of foaming waves
Warily retreating into the belly
Of the gurgling sea
I lift my chin, scan them accede
My sights lock as colors riot deep
Into my fist wet sand intrude
As my toes surrender deep
A sombre wave romances my chin warm
Then rushes to bathe my dazed soul
That time too shall come
When my ashes they douse
Harboring them in their sojourning fold.
by Sudha Srivatsan
Sudha was born and raised in India. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Commonline Journal, Tower Journal, the Germ Magazine, Carcinogenic, Indiana Voice Journal, Bewildering Stories, Leaves of Ink, Mused Literary Review, Subterranean Blue, Corner Club press, BlazeVox among others. Her work was also selected to be part of Storm Cycle’s 2015 Best Of anthology.
July 2016 | poetry
Only the best trickster gods
have wings. Beating away at
the dried browned grass,
they knead the air and earth together
in the stone bowl of a yeasty, wet spring,
fooling us with movement and stories
that only let us see shadowy parts of things.
There are layers and layers
of air and birdsong and grass
that only a woodcock can lay claim to
strutting in that flat dinner plate of prairie.
For us, each step closer is a snap of grass,
but the only way to know it is to lie on it
and to feel it’s sharp ceramic crack underneath you.
I can stand still, feel my feet in the fragile brotherhood
of all the things in motion—
fluid wings, the unsettled earth, the ungrown grass,
a frog-chorused April dusk against
that fluttery squeak of flight,
which is not so much an awakening,
but the audible refilling of the haunted earth.
by Paul Wiegel
Paul Wiegel is a Green Bay native and now writes from his home near the upper Fox River in Wisconsin. His work is forthcoming in The English Journal, Eunoia Review, and Hermeneutic Chaos Journal. He is the 2015 winner of the John Gahagan Poetry Prize.
