October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Academic Retreat
bland ennui
podium drones
chittering cadres
splintering styrofoam
blank figures
tedium’s bones
self-referential
legume enumerators
blunt stylus
medium’s cones
somnolent sputter
dreary enervation
by William B. Robison
Divine Confection
Once my mother made a big plate of divinity
and I said to my brother, bet you can’t eat just one.
Well, we fell out laughing, thinking about the time when
we bought a bag of chips from the sexy checkout girl
and kept making jokes coming home from the grocery
cracking up and wondering how the Lays lady lays
with a cautious nod to the copyright attorney
and all due apologies to Mister Bob Dylan,
though a man who makes his living from clever wordplay
can hardly complain whenever it crops up elsewhere.
That’s especially true because he dropped his real name
for his birth certificate reads Robert Zimmerman
and I wonder: what if his favorite poet were
Robert Frost instead of the thirsty Dylan Thomas,
unstoppering by a snowy wood when he got dry?
Would he now be Robert Robert, and wouldn’t people
have confused him early on with Robbie Robertson?
Or perhaps to avoid that, he would have a nickname:
not Boss or King or Slowhand, but something evoking
a singer of poetry—maybe Oral Roberts
But, oops, that would be even worse because there is that
pompadoured Oklahoma preacher, once the healer
of arthritic elbows and the occasional plague
of boils afflicting the odd Old Testament martyr
to whom Bildad appeared with a shopping cart laden
with lizards, locusts, and stinging scorpions and said
Take this, Job, and shove it, but the tiny wheels bogged down
in sand, leaving him lamenting to leprous laymen
I’ll bet you this never happened to Jeremiah!
Meanwhile, in the eighties, Dylan found the messiah
But it was floral moral Oral who said he saw
a hundred foot Jesus saying: raise me more geetus.
Now, I’m no dyspeptic skeptic, but I’ve never seen
Jesus at all, though I feel his presence at Christmas
Still, if his standing height in yards was the same as his
age when he hung on the cross, you could get him to hold
up your TV antenna, and I’ll bet you would get
immaculate reception. Of course I’d be cautious,
though I’m not sacrilegious, about standing too close
for fear of the lightning . . . but really I’m not worried
If God hurled thunderbolts like mythical Zeus, He might
take a shot at preachers for profit, who fudge truth and
fiddle the books like Nero selling fire insurance
But God lets us make our mistakes and have some fun, too
Ben Franklin, our frequently foundering father, said
beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us
to be happy, and I would hasten to agree, though
Franklin’s faith was not my own, for he was mere Deist
not a Eucharistic fellow with chips for his brew
and thus never tasted my Mother’s divinity
by William B. Robison
Dry
boney anorexic soul has no breath
no intake at all, its exhalation
is only the gasp of the punctured corpse
stake in the breast of the vampire yielding
a pitiful puff of fetid staleness
even the putrefaction half-hearted
too little essence for a full-fledged stink
skin like the sun-dried membrane of bat’s wings
stretched out thinly over bones so tightly
that a pinprick, unleashing fierce surface
tension, might fling fleshless flaps skittering
o’er skeleton, ripped cello-wrap beating
hasty retreat from desiccated meat
balloon stuff fraying round a vacuum void
vaporless vault of the leathery shrew
no sweat, no tears, no mucus, no moisture
none of the warm wetness of womanhood
blood congealed, condensed, evaporated
even her venom a fine dry powder
her slithering the sound of sandpaper
scraping crass across a rough surfaced stone
so little like women damp with desire
or kissed with chastity’s milder juices
lachrymal in laughter, languor, or lust
dabbed, licked, lapped up, but never wiped away
unafraid to lactate, expectorate
perspire, no bleached sinews or oil-less hair
breathing visible heat in the chill air
tiny droplets of spirit escaping
ectoplasm distilling its essence
lovers soak up this liquor like sponges
in the meantime, seedless, the arid husk
parches in her non-porous poverty
by William B. Robison
ethicist
the woman drinks milk
in a Chinese restaurant
says Derrida is
becoming an ethicist
barely touches her
dish of spicy lobster sauce
crawfish and onions
deconstructed for nothing
by William B. Robison
Shroud
At dusk
in the dirt
near the mouth
of the tomb
lie
the wrappings
of Lazarus
abandoned
in ecstasy
A slight figure
scurries
whisks them
away
scrubbing
in the current
till fingertips
are sanguine
spreads them
on a rock
to dry
in the morning
Later she
laves
her brother’s bowl
rinses
the cup Martha
left
on the table and
sweeps
up the crumbs
spilled
by her visitor
by William B. Robison
Troubadour
The troubadour has got no horse
so he rides to his gigs on a minstrel cycle
to fortnightly ovations and
all the roast meat he can carry on a dagger
The acrobats hang upside down
tumblers half fool, naked juggler vainglorious
fat clowns send up tight wirewalkers
the ragged trampoline springs a trapeze artist
In the land Budapest controls
at a mineral spa for well-hung Aryans
Dan’s ignoble Lord of Gdansk
shows his steps to ill cons on Lion Tamer Lane
Full tilt a whirling dervish
curves nervously, swerves, observes no perversions but
ecdysiasts in Gaza strip
and Persian rug rats scare Indian elephants
Through the door comes the troubadour
jester in the vesture besmirches the churches
misrule measures its meter but
the inverse poet is averse to reverses
by William B. Robison
William Robison teaches history at Southeastern Louisiana University; writes about early modern England, including The Tudors in Film and Television with Sue Parrill; is a musician and filmmaker; and has poems accepted by Amethyst Arsenic, amphibi.us, Anemone Sidecar, Apollo’s Lyre, Asinine Poetry, Carcinogenic Poetry, decomP magazinE, Forge, Mayday Magazine, On Spec, and Paddlefish.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The Beam Of Blue Light
Will devour
The yellow glow
To create
A zone of
Green light
Imitating
The stars
Which always
Say Here I am
Until they bounce
Off the Earth
With quark-size
Images
Of you and your shadow
You did not know it
But there you are
In the universe
Riding some beams
Of light from Earth
Next to a moth & some rust
By John McKernan
Things Live Inside My House
Besides
Me
And move at night
With the silence
Of a spider web
I want to hear
The mouse trap snap
And not listen to the color yellow
In a thimble full of cheese
The fish in the tank
Are swimming too quietly
I want them to wake me up
Crunching the skull
Of a drowned fly or a cockroach
By John McKernan
Under The Stone Moon
Shadows
Multiply In West Virginia
On the dark side
Of this black walnut
Leafless in March’s iced lilac midnight
Miles beneath my feet
Sleek new Japanese half -track Cats
Chew a new seam of old forest
High-sulfur New jersey power-grid light
The fossilized eyes
Of extinct birds & flying fish
Embedded in chunks of coal
Roll their stone retinas
Into the floodlights of Wolf Pen tipple
By John McKernan
John McKernan – who grew up in Omaha Nebraska in the middle of the USA– is now a retired comma herder after teaching 41 years at Marshall University. He lives – mostly – in West Virginia where he edits ABZ Press. His most recent book is a selected poems Resurrection of the Dust. He has published poems in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Journal, Antioch Review, Guernica, Field and many other magazines.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A Heart After Childhood
Grainy snaps show her circled by smiles,
sons and local spirits, with ample hoist
through the hot effulgence of summer light.
Photos did no justice to her knotted neurons.
She quit childhood too early with a heart
like an empty sack. A girl, she abjured thought
of her future, as short on time as expected.
A photo cache weighted forgotten albums.
Marriage scarred her edges: her dissonance,
her children entertained her. So often weather
lilted curls, muted voice, or silenced evening wings.
History in song and pictures passed around her.
After barren years, she saw better how
things should have gone, but she did not act:
new generations grew smiles amid the old.
All around her bore the pall of somber fate.
She sulked. She raised intolerance in status.
She bored her friends, off center of respect.
At last, she lined her walls with mollusk shells
sent her to excite the hollow breath of song
and sat alone until her body in disuse ached.
She wanted much more, but pretended less.
Until she dies, this account is unauthorized.
by Keith Moul
Painted Face
Like a planet in a cold orbit, rarely
did he need the sun. Stay on course,
rotate at an awful pace, shed your ice
into the unlived silence of black space.
He fished catfish to see them dangle
helpless on a line. Waste their fish souls,
eat them panfried, wash them down with beer.
At private moments, with his lover in his arms,
he dreamed punishments for enemies.
Pile them on a heap, take your spoils,
mark your face with battle blood you won.
Passing within a whisper of home he did not hear.
Coming into old territory, he did not veer.
Leaving his mark on bushes, he felt gods in stars.
Steal children in pairs, in ritual gag them, then watch.
by Keith Moul
Rebellion Takes Up Conspiracy With Mankind
Howard Thomas had grown engagingly human.
He nurtured Harry S. Truman, his heretical cat.
Howard, who had many, often invited
friends to visit him for bracing conversation
about what it meant to be engagingly human.
Howard provoked his friends to act feline;
occasionally, his friends engaged with claws.
More than ten feline friends are hard to herd.
But Howard rationalized that his humanity
could resist even the bloodshed of rebellion,
that as long as his friends stayed in his parlor
and did not spread their cat insurrection outside
the rest of Mankind would embrace their differences.
Harry S. knew better. Harry S. would have preferred
that his instincts led the cat skirmish, from atop a cabinet,
a favorite place. Harry S.Truman got exact terms
he wanted when human rebellion
took up conspiracy with Mankind.
Afterwards, Howard came to believe
that humanity will not be engaged
nor be well served by soothing purrs.
As a hermit, Howard expanded
the biography of notable cats.
Harry S sought other comforts.
by Keith Moul
Keith’s poems have been published widely for almost 45 years. Recently two chaps have been released: The Grammar of Mind (2010) from Blue & Yellow Dog Press and Beautiful Agitation (2012) from Red Ochre Press. He also publishes photos widely. In fact, in 2010 a poem written to accompany one of his photographs was a Pushcart nominee.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Goodbye sound of sliding screen door, and the look of your skin under those lights, dainty and dangling overhead, blues fading green and soon, or at least I thought, soon—you’d come waltzing out to that song we always play, always sing, always saying remember this one, and take from me the last I have to give.
Goodbye sweat-born ache, small apartment smelling of iridescence, and goodbye hand on my chest, slap across my face, kiss on the lips when I ask for one on the cheek.
Goodbye, goodbye, like a hymn, something slipped from the side of my mouth as I’m pretending not to watch you change. Nothing explicit, no nudity or pale revealing under shaky lamps. No, I’m often with my fingers before my eyes, you’re half spread just beyond me, like we’re dancing two separate edges of the night.
Go on now, pull closed the window, check the locks tight, until morning there’s only cool reflections across the pavement; go on now, good night, ease under your sheets, keeping time like a train station, and soon there’s only secrets left floating, a journey out of sync, I hear you whispering one step ahead of me,
Soon you’ll be calling to ask where are you now? Soon there’ll be nothing to explain, to mumble; nothing to slip beneath the cracked door.
Goodbye back stairs, natural curve as we pressed our mistakes together; goodbye look in your eye, sting of poison, shaved ice and two fingers vodka in a rocks glass.
Goodbye, soft call into the empty night;
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye—
by Douglas Sullivan
Douglas has returned to the West, after years exploring the South and Northeast coasts. Besides a Bachelor’s degree in English, his experiences range from managing a boutique coffee shop to fitness video production. He prefers not to be in one state for too long, and maintains a keen respect for accuracy of statement. He has recent fiction publications in: Crime Factory Magazine, Sleet Magazine, and with Vagabondage Press.
