July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
tough guy in moonlight
in 7th grade he sat
last row last seat
head on desk asleep Sister
Cleopha slapped
his ear he laughed her face red
hand
trembling on the playground no one
looked him in the eye afraid
to wake his hands
two furious stones tearing
holes in God’s light
seven years later I poured
drinks in a seaside bar I’d learned
to know a little
about a lot
could talk to the toughest guy who’d
be in the Series where
to find parts for a ’63
Impala how
he knocked that motheringfucking
bartender from down the street flat
out I gave him free drinks
to cool
the bad drunks
now he leans
on a thick
stick worn
smooth by broken
hand & muscled
weight the woman the nuns
warned 7th grade
girls they’d become if
they danced with the tough guy holds
his empty hand full
moon sways
him to her
light
street preacher
when I close my eyes I hear
the father’s voice not
his son’s as he cautiously becomes
man not
the spirit’s tongue
of feathers & fire I hear
continents grind
time’s big drum the voice of no
not what could or should not
being’s eternal quarrel
but when I speak a starling
argues
with its own
reflection
I know
one day I’ll open
my eyes see
his voice a pillar
of sound my breath
braids around & you
will stop & you
you & you
will listen
–Frank Rossini
Frank Rossini has been published in various magazines including Poetry Now, The Seattle Review, and Wisconsin Review.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
(Notes on) A Suburban Landscape
Where dwelling is a mode
Of citizenship
Not self
Not text / landschaft
Because the world
Has been always
Made even not here
But the proprietary between-places
That poetry occupies
‘Filling [one]’—like Lewis or
Clark—‘with vague cravings
Impossible
To satisfy’
Privacy
Beyond the formal
Supervised
Without authority
The daft all-over metropoles
And their back-
Ground of ordinances
Gridding the rural
Mile square mile
Mostly what we notice mostly:
Slightly interesting events
Things to be scared of
Persons with dogs
Taking the place
Of reference anxiety
It’s true:
If the way through
Were not also the way in
We would be lost
Taking Turns
Soon I too will
Carry my string
Into the wilderness
Without
Useful language
Or handsome shadow
I know change
Is not easy
But I resent
The silence
My body makes
Space around it to live in
To have an ideal
When I get back there
To the terror I hope
That song
You used to sing
When you
Thought I wasn’t
Listening still
Has the old
Stardusted magic
–Eric Rawson
Eric’s work has recently appeared in a number of periodicals, including Ploughshares, Agni, and Denver Quarterly. My book The Hummingbird Hour was published in October.
July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Charles Rafferty
He stole the stars above her house, pulling them out with a claw hammer. She wouldn’t love him anymore, so he left her with a blue-black vault of night — the color of the grackles he used to throw rocks at as they crowded out the other birds around their backyard feeder.
He wanted her to see that the sky had been looted. She never noticed though, because already she had taken a lover, and why would she need the sky and its Rorschach of light when she had a man to pin her to the bed each night?
Meanwhile, the stars were back at his place. It was hard to sleep with the glow of them leaking out of his dresser drawers and the bed too big without her. So off he’d go to the couch, which at least reminded him of the times when she had lived there.
Some nights, he’d get up, walk across town, and climb into the crook of her backyard maple — the one with a view of her curtains and the shadow play of bodies.
One night he waited for the other man’s car to leave. Then he reached into his pocket for the pebbles. The first one hit the window and the light came on. She peered into the night, and didn’t seem to notice it was a tiny bit darker. He tried to order his loneliness, to give it a shape so it could fit upon his tongue, but it only slid back and choked him. Then the window came down with a decisive thud, and the light went off again.
He knew he’d be up in her tree forever, and for the first time since taking them, he wanted to return the stars, to make beautiful the sky he would wait beneath.
Charles Rafferty is primarily a poet. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker and The Literary Review. In 2009, he received an NEA fellowship. His most recent book is A Less Fabulous Infinity. Currently, Charles directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Those bright blue eyes
Rain.
I’ve seen how much she cries.
They drain her longing,
Desperate,
For what I don’t know.
But I showed her
Where to go,
Who to love,
How to be.
And she picked it up
Like no one I’ve ever seen.
She asked,
He answered.
I just saw the change in her
After
The fall before grace,
Fulfilled.
Those bright blue eyes
Rain.
She changes people around her.
Joyfully
Exploding
His love.
– Shawna Polmateer
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
At yon round table sprawls a rake,
A dissolute, belov’d by girls
Who cannot but great notice take
Of how that handsome flaunts his curls.
For nothing draws a maid like hair
On heads or chests or arms or cocks,
Or makes the fair sex wish him bare
So much as long and golden locks.
The lad kicks back and quaffs his wine
While ladies hasten to undress;
He’ll have them here if he’s inclined,
There’s not one craving he’ll suppress.
It’s almost midnight by the clocks
When he espies a spirited mare
Of ivory breast and ruddy hocks
And silken cheeks and ankle fair.
Soon thinks he of the sounds she’ll make
When once beneath him she’s supine:
Moans and sighs, she will not fake
The thrilling trembling down her spine.
But as he dreams, this other pearl—
Her hand maneuv’ring in his shirt
To toy with all his hairy swirls—
Does show herself a worthy flirt.
“You are some wench,” he says, “a fox,
I’d like you, both, I must confess,
And if I did not fear the pox,
‘Tis a desire I’d soon address.”
Thus Hogarth did with Beauty’s Line
Portray an Orgy for our Rake:
All youthful flesh, and joy divine,
And time well-spent for pleasure’s sake.
Why pass the time with other jocks
At checkers, horses, cards or chess?
This lad will say when old age knocks,
“I fondled girls, and thus, progressed.”
– Susan Pashman
The poem, “On Hogarth’s…” was composed upon viewing Hogarth’s “The Orgy,” from his series, “A Rake’s Progress.” Susan Pashman’s first novel, “The Speed of Light,” was published in 1997. In addition to novels. she has also published stories and essays in such journals as The Texas Review, The Portland Review and Dan River Anthology.
