July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
1.
A man in Houston tossing his laundry to the street from a third floor window, shouting, “If we
want to go back to Nature, for God’s sake, we can’t go in these.”
His underwear raining onto a small spruce tree, then, for days, hanging there limp, like fruit,
or words.
2.
The unbreakable babble of a river at rest.
Then, during heavy rain, how the same river will awake, screaming.
“Even if you can’t understand it,” Michael’s father told him, standing on the bank of the Red,
“you should still listen for a while. Just shut up and listen.”
by Travis Vick
A recent graduate, Travis Vick has spent the past years studying poetry beneath B.H. Fairchild and Bruce Bond.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Ancient Lullabies
1
Dew-wet grass glistens under pink morning sun,
and a bee, that liberated prophetess of old,
now silently hovers in the air above, conceiving
of all the truths that are yet to be told.
2
The full-grown, ripened tranquility lingers
where honeysuckle spills over and blankets
one section of rusty wire fence, half-fallen
to the ground; the grass softly sighs.
3
The time of longer days has bared its noon,
pure, naked whiteness languorously awaiting a silver
moon that sits high on a coral horizon: Don’t
try to sketch an outline, but let it paint itself.
4
Empty lots; July’s saccharine kudzu chokes all
that’s in its path as afternoon thunderstorms
spur the vines on to wilder and yet more
uncontrollable growth; autumn will halt the onslaught.
5
Choruses of ancient lullabies wait in shadows
here, where childhood secrets and open sky
declaim in verse, unsung yet clear, the stories
learned by Devorah when summer’s grass blades bent low.
Before The Wind
soliloquy uprising power of words
they slam, one into the other
tossing echoes virginal sound deflowered
heather-ish whole but sparse
bluing purpling graying
spilling over everything carrying character
and then burning spinning flames yarns
folk tales too they tell secrets floating in empty space
Beginning Midway Through
A cardinal hovers in the garden’s lacy air.
The desk, laden with paper, typewriter and books,
shivers under the machine’s mild drone.
A young father’s image flashes in the dormer; he clutches
his briefcase and his baby as
the postman rides by in his jeep. Wake up!
You’re lying on the beach when you open your
eyes, the antique sunset giving a patina to your blisters,
the pus encrusted like pearls on your cherry-wood
skin. I, too, have slept the afternoon
into obscurity, arising confused at first.
Where were you, if not with me?
I hold out my hand, in a silent Come here
plea. We’re still in love—but this happened
long ago. Over and over in my mind, I review
what I can recall in a desperate effort to reconnect
to that easiness we seemed to find so readily before;
maybe I’m crazy, though—maybe this is all in my head.
Looking out the window, there’s a blur
of red. The cherry-wood desk nestles
in one corner of our home. And, on
the projector screen, you pose with Michael James
in 1958. Even when you’re here, you’re not always with me anymore,
but, at night, I still fall asleep dreaming that our life together is as it was.
Eye Of The Storm
When whispering palms sway in a sustained, even tempo,
and eucalyptus branches crack in a rush of air,
when Red Howlers moan and wail with monkey madness,
and neighborhood dogs bark and bay in eerie ferocity,
when all of the world outside is tinged with gray—
even blood-scarlet sorrel bushes and green vines, grass, trees—
and radiates a pearl-pink afterglow,
then I know a storm approaches—
with torrential tropical gusts and slapping sheets of water,
descending and swirling from a once-cloudless blue sky.
Soldier-Child
Kudzu
jungle in my backyard—and I
am soldier,
a reverse-
victim of the battle I know
at home.
Margaret Adams Birth has previously been published in such journals as Riverrun, Ship of Fools, The New Voices (Trinidad and Tobago), Aldebaran, Atlantic Pacific Press, The Poetry Peddler, Purple Patch (England), White Wall Review (Canada), Green’s Magazine (Canada), Shawnee Silhouette, Mobius, Black River Review, Potpourri, and The Wild Goose Poetry Review; her past work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
The sky’s crisp blue curls through me,
Drawing these words
From the chaff of the world.
I’m tossing through my past’s what and when;
Trying to rejoin its parts;
Wondering whether this maple’s shade
Will ever cool me.
I breathe deeper, pause; try to patch
Past lives together; erase chance; but so much
Remains shapeless, strewn.
Perhaps it’s best not to reweave frayed skins.
But I’m trying to gauge the wealth of these days.
Is it high or low?
I’m also looking ahead,
Wondering which part of beyond, if any, I’ll share;
Or whether the shadow of this maple
Fits the tree.
by Joseph Murphy
Joseph Murphy has had poetry published in a number of journals, including The Gray Sparrow, Third Wednesday and The Sugar House Review. He is also a poetry editor for an online publication, Halfway Down the Stairs.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
For my nephew, Absalom H., Jr.
1
First, I find, learn the effing clinical skill of saying no—
to others, to yourself; this is also the skill of self-editing,
which is nothing more than observing boundaries, or not.
Case Study #17:
Listen, Kingpin—I had a story accepted for publication in
an on-line “lit mag”; there, I encountered for the first time
the capriciousness of MFAs, as they vetted my story twice,
then, in galley proofs, questioned my “tense structure”
and asked me to insert a character—out of whole cloth—at the very last minute.
I said if their “concerns” constituted a deal-breaker
they could kiss my damn ass and give my story back.
Not a deal-breaker, they said.
However, for the stalwart, rejections will be ongoing,
so avoid hearing no unnecessarily. Por ejemplo, Junior,
don’t make the novice mistake of sending a story too soon
after first acceptance—it’s greedy, and you will be told no.
2
What they told you about the three-part cover letter—
– hook
– body of work
– personal bio—
that was a lie propagated by business professors
who still think the split infinitive is a cardinal sin,
but typographical stunts are, passively, allowed.
3
Of course, don’t be anyone’s martyr—your own or theirs.
Love isn’t a march to victory, so I’ve heard poets grouch,
and I want to believe them, although I’m ruined for religion.
Case Study #26:
At a party for writers, I meet this woman who’s recently
graduated with, yes, an MFA degree, and by way of introduction
she recites the names of all the hotshots she’s studied with at college.
Like I give a composting crap, I want to say,
but I don’t want to be rude, so I reply in kind
by naming the various people I’ve worked with
on construction sites, in warehouses, and in offices.
The woman nods her head knowingly, as if the names
mean something to her, when, clearly, they couldn’t
mean a flying shit whatsoever. Then I say to her,
“Do you ever cry during the act of composition? I do.”
She is smarter than I: so she backs off to mingle elsewhere.
I enjoy lime-infused guacamole and blue organic corn chips
as I watch her exchange important names around the room.
4
“Avoid adjectives of scale,” counsels the poet, et al,
handbook advice with which even the MBAs concur,
but try convincing them the concept of enjambment
might comport with profit—you’ll get nowhere quick.
Writers, though, must be contrary, swiping Rorschach-like across the grain;
therefore, I say that writing in perfect anonymity is a great vantage
best given up for any number of worthy, if not excellent, alternatives.
5
NEVER—as in Joan-Crawford-no-more-wire-hangers-
kind-of-NEVER—listen to the maudlin Gymnopédies
of Erik Satie as background music while you write.
6
For writers, and only writers, going insane for the right
reason is preferable to remaining normal for the wrong
reason. Shake and stir until you achieve insouciance.
But even if you do go crazy, please don’t use phrases like
fictive universe or argot of the academy; for these vocal tics
there’s no medication or therapy, only regret delayed by ten years.
Case Study #50
Take note—merit trumps talent, unless you’re Melville,
and if you are Melville incarnate, then you will certainly
go unrecognized, work as a mindless clerk, and die
discounting eternity, just before some hack academic,
citing merit, makes tenure re-discovering your work.
7
Selah, wrote the psalmist eighty times, rounding up,
and three millennia hence, even the Elect will grant,
the cockeyed theologians can’t translate the word.
by Martin Barkley
Martin Barkley lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, and works as an independent writer and editor. Recently, his fiction has appeared in The Threepenny Review. Martin also has stories available on-line for open viewing at ChamberFour, The Texas Observer, and the Good Men Project.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
We Are Burgeoning Like We Always Thought We Would For Our Individual Selves Seeking Truth As We Know It To Be, Surveying The Course We Surmise Each Should Go
Come here!
I’m not going over there!
Beneath The Dust And On The Shelves In A Warehouse In Wayne County Sits The Bitter Humiliation, Disconsolation, Nightmare and Violation of Thousands of Daughters; Dumped In Forgotten Boxes; Some Exposed To The Elements Of The Building
Folks were killed
while those men
ran free.
The Ritual Of Breakfast Steers Me To Coffee, Mostly For The Effect Of A Chemical; But Also To The Hunt Of A Singularly Wrapped And Seldom Stocked Chocolate Chip Cookie Held Together With Calories And Potato Starch
Why aren’t I
buying by the case?
by Kobina Wright
Kobina has written for publications such as LACMA Magazine, The Daily Titan, and CYH Magazine. In 2004 she wrote her third volume of poetry titled, “Say It! Say Gen-o-cide!!” − dedicated to the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. In 2009 she co-authored a volume of nuler poetry titled “A Crime And A Simplification Of Something Sublime.” In 2010 she wrote a volume of nuler poetry titled, “50.”
