July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Husband
The better part of an acre of mortgaged lawn
demarcated by circular driveway, gravel paths,
boardwalk to pool deck, islands of
rhododendron, aspidistra, pear and cherry.
Four hours of mowing, on a good day.
Something he has insisted upon doing himself.
Not a bad workout in the magnificent heat.
But his mind, insufficiently engaged,
tends to wander off into the dogwood shadows
to witness flashbacks of infidelity, examine conjugal scars.
He lurches into the azaleas on the still wet slope.
As he pulls the mower from the hedge, he observes
that his throttle hand has snatched
a fistful of velvety blossoms, cool, pink and damp.
Yard Work
Having mowed the lawns from front to back,
Sam finds himself seated upon the low rock wall,
under the inconstant sun. Well, and so, what now?
Past silent, a hawk passes from left to right.
Sam considers that several people have died or left him.
He hadn’t hung on their every word.
Is sitting upon a rock wall after mowing the same as
soaring above a grove of fir trees to the river?
Is missing someone the same as loving her?
A dog howls, in a yard across the expressway.
Coyote answers, shyly, from cover beyond the tracks.
It is daytime, after all. Confusing.
Hawk returns from river whence.
About now, she’d be bringing Sammy a glass of wine.
by Ted Jean
Ted is a recently retired carpenter. In the past year, his work has appeared in Pear Noir, where it has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as well as DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, elimae, Magma, Blue Earth Review, twenty or more other publications.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I remember my childhood
late nights with my Father
talking for hours
more Him
than Me.
I miss those nights
spending time like
its your last two
dimes.
The urgency of the morals
told in a confession of
one Man’s life, intent
to create a Man of a
Son.
The details always blur
as if it mattered anyway
the story of a young Man
is always the
Wanderer.
The last we spoke
it was of your
Peace in Life
as we drank wine
at the tops of trees
lighting the stars
at Night.
I recall the strangest thing
as I was doing my wandering
just after the sun went down
I completely stopped, unaware
of the purpose for such a feeling;
an uneasy glow from my soul.
The Night turned to a
new dark I’d never seen
I imagine my subconscious
beaming like a dream;
my heart falling asleep.
a feeling so Pure
that it takes years
to feel anything
again.
My passion has suffered,
and my apologies are genuine
Father, what is a Man
once his wandering has
reached its end?
by Michael Golden
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Tick chicken, snapped bones with the marrow sucked out. America with stained lips, grinning. Florida tries to pull herself off the mainland, drifting into the Atlantic. A constellation falls from its proper place and collapses in the mind of Jupiter, lightning crushes a skull. We beat each-other with blunt objects and then fall forward into prisons where penance is expected but never given. Prisons are revolving until each prisoner reeks of freedom, makes the jailbird’s skin crawl. My limb departs like a parent. My skin unhinges like breakdown. I am six and stealing pencils to build fires, lead poison bloom. I am crossing over the border where the lockers hum and the dogs explode. A scissor cuts a sound from the air, like a chunk of flesh, it is cooked in a skillet until the pitch is golden and crispy. On a plate the sound is not thunder. On a table the sound is crashing into the porcelain beneath it, cracking the heirloom, ruining the dinner, bleeding into the cloth an orange stain.
by Sam Eliot
What Hunger Causes previously published in the Writebloody Press anthology, Aim for the Head.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
made the Snow in the
Mountain grow, and that
very graceful heart-shape vine
with heart-shaped leaves,
I believed called
Choke Weed
A delicate rose leaned
pink petals as in disbelief,
toward an unknown weed
with leaves the size of
dinner plates
by Carol Smallwood
Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012). Her poetry received a 2011 Pushcart nomination. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, with The Writer’s Chronicle editor as foreword writer is from (Key Publishing House, 2012)
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
It happens sometimes
That I look up at the clock
Just when the second hand
Pauses between one tick
And another
So that everything seems to stand still
In that moment
And I have enough time
To wonder
If the clock has not stopped.
It is amazing how much
Can go through your mind
From one second to the next.
And while clearly
A life cannot be lived
In such a pause,
Requiring time
To stretch itself out,
Memory can,
Requiring no more
Than a spark of light
To give a sign
That contains the whole.
by Fred Skolnik
The Second Hand was first published in Oak Bend Review, vol. 1, Issue 4, Jan.-Feb. 2009. Fred Skolnik’s novel The Other Shore (Aqueous Books) has recently appeared and I have published stories in TriQuarterly, Minnetonka Review, Los Angeles Review, Prism Review, Gargoyle, Literary House Review, Words & Images, Third Coast, Polluto, Underground Voices, etc.
