October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Nothing more than a beaten baby,
fleeing down the aisle in my
virginal gown of naivety.
He wore my hope proudly.
Pinned to his chest like a
red rose boutonniere.
Concluding whispers of the
tired and disillusioned
pursue me as I try to prove them wrong.
Oh! Oh, no. I’m not
the stereotype of predictable
failure to thrive.
Through gritted teeth, I
learn to duck
and stay up late
Learning the dangerous buttons
and resisting the desire
to push them.
With a light step and a
careful eye, I execute
years of delusional bliss.
Life inside a Stepford skin
wore down the glorious
angles of imperfection:
my birthright and bliss.
She came with a dagger
forged in the ecstatic
flame of unexplainable
familiarity.
Immediate love. Fierce
unexplainable connection.
She cut through the skin
freeing the woman. I
was meant to be.
Always was. Hidden
brief and singular,
willful and ignorant,
But no more! She
rescued me. And I
rescued her. And
I am she, and
she is me.
by Rachel Holbrook
Rachel Holbrook writes from her home in East Tennessee and is anxious to leave her mark on the literary world. She was previously unpublished.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Eloquent Insufficiency of Poems
—James Woods, The New Yorker
They may begin with a stutter and a pause—
the interruption grows,
reality first distends then explodes
in silence, like a spider’s web struck on purpose
by a trowel.
The sun isn’t better seen
by the shredding of the filmic screen
but the heat I feel more intently is like a burn
rubbed sore
because pain is such a pleasure.
In a delicate moment
the beautiful web is sundered, over-revised and gone;
you search for but can’t find
its worm-like thread on the ground
where the earth is turning the color of excrement.
The Free Market
What shall we eat—high carb or low carb?
I want to tell you something you already know
but don’t know how to say—
the uncommon speech of the everyday, always a new routine.
Science is so imperfect and cancer in our gut so common.
Here’s the pitchman selling his speech
his thoughts like a harvest of grain,
each stalk a new solution, each harvest the same.
The MRI says it all, our shrunken lobes paddling in CSF
like poisoned fish, unnaturally thin and swimming out of habit.
We will die on the coasts swelling with melted frost
one limb at a time, charity floating away on a raft
of good intentions. You speak and I hear the cant of can’t,
how hopelessness echoes from shore to shore.
It’s late in the day; the orange sun seduces the sailor
with its adjusted color and a heat hotter than hot
spelling frost. The commentaries you read and trust
are cold eyed. The damsel in distress at the countertop pulls on
a chemise that will make her thinner, even serene
and the would-be boyfriend thinks her a queen, not rot.
I’m standing against all advice, to make it new or do it again—
life caught in the net or, if literary, trapped in the seine.
We are baking lies like Christmas pies and eating them
like a drug. The Greeks fell for ambrosia not heroin.
by Michael Salcman
MICHAEL SALCMAN, poet, physician and art historian, was chair of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland. Recent poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Ontario Review, and Rhino. Poetry books include The Clock Made of Confetti, nominated for The Poet’s Prize, and The Enemy of Good Is Better (Orchises, 2011); Poetry in Medicine, his anthology of classic and contemporary poems on doctors and diseases has just been published (Persea Books, 2015).
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Take a bath, you filthy whore
And wash underneath your teats
Where the sweat tends to collect
And gel with cum lubricant.
Blow me off as we motor
Down Madison Avenue
Honking at every cab
And pedestrian alike.
We will piss on your sidewalk
And stack the trash on our curb;
Snickering at the tourists
We will insult the locals.
Letting cigarettes smolder
Between our fingers, we will
Make certain everyone
Breathes our polluting venom.
Now dress and join me, my love.
by Michael Gunn
Michael Gunn has previously published in Burningwood Literary Journal as well as Shotgun Honey. His country song, “If Her Grandma Didn’t Have a Kitty, I’d Take My Dog Over There”, continues to descend the charts.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Demo Tracks
They all want you to write
something sad about religion
where the train meets the rails
where the shaking knuckles
meet the trigger.
A handshake
(firm gripped) with God
that’s a shock to your system –
yeah, he gotcha good.
You’re still harmonizing with yourself
over some girl who never loved you
more than she loves her body, her womb’s
ability to conceive towheaded heartache.
The ghosts of your paintings
are crawling the walls
and your covers are quicksand.
Sometimes I see smoke but I can’t find
where the fire is. Sometimes
I catch you shredding yourself
but I don’t know how
to turn the machine off.
Even in my sleep, my teeth
are rotting out when we’re kissing
and there’s blood on your guitar strings.
When I wake up
my heart is pounding
like church bells.
Wet Graffiti
In this part of town,
the universe could be a girl
biking through brain waves in a tank top
or gas station soda
sticky on the bottoms of your shoes.
Your coffin is Ramen noodles;
your crown is a carton of cigarettes.
I am the advocate.
Snapping at sensitivity
until my jaw locks, clean.
I am the grocery store bouquet
and the toddler carrying the pink helmet
she’ll never wear in a two-fingered grip.
When you’re watching
the McDonald’s down the street
get demolished and picking yourself apart
at every stoplight,
a smashed skull
is a courtesy prize.
Bloodied Knuckles
Once we trailed after the same sunset
a parade of summer heat
but now we belong to warring tribes
painting our faces with each other’s frailties.
You’re running circles and I’m
dropping pebbles
to somehow keep myself centered.
You’re pitching up tornadoes and I’m
marking the sky
transmitting some sort of warning.
The river roars to life
a tumult of terror in my chest
as the battle reaches a fever pitch
and you stir up shards in your wake.
by Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a poet in St. Louis who struggles with being fully present.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
It’s To Die For
the beauty of
this night,
its strange glow
of light rising
after days
of heavy rain.
At nightfall
the sky is alight
with pink
and yellow fire—
owlet moths
that thought
they were hidden
are in a frenzy over
the last purple spikes
of catnip. You and I
walk without words
as rain returns,
darkness resettles.
I have finally
figured it out,
I say: the only
price we must pay
for all this beauty
is to die for it.
Mid-September
This morning I stoop
to pull wild grass away
from bleeding hearts
and columbine, untangle
iris from spiderwort.
Has it been since June
that I knelt upon this ground?
A summer overgrown
has choked the simple
beginnings of spring—
an elderly mother’s move,
repairs to a rundown home,
common occurrences of life
that like the sheaths
of lady’s thumb
choke, cover, obscure
adjacent bloom.
I weed along toward noon.
Sun lightens the delicate leaves
of coral bells, bare black
earth again revealed,
and I lean heavily on
soil scarcely redeemed.
by Judith Grissmer
Judith Grissmer’s work has been published in the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, the Golden Nib Online Anthology (2010 first place in poetry VA Writers Club), The Blue Ridge Anthology (2008/2010 first place in poetry, Blue Ridge Writers Club), The Alembic, Crack the Spine, Mikrokosmos Journal, and Schuylkill Valley Journal. Work is forthcoming in the Edison Literary Review and Penmen Review. She has attended poetry workshops and classes in universities and writing centers, worked independently with instructors at those centers, and has participated in writers’ critique groups for many years.
