April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Not Me
Who could have imagined
I’d be sitting here
on my numb ass
in this stuffy, gray, meeting room
hunched over
a big shiny boardroom table
discussing the customer response
to our security of supply
business continuity plan and rollout
instead of on the latest research vessel
out of Woods Hole collecting
phytoplankton and zooplankton,
jellyfish larva and sea urchin eggs,
like I was planning and hoping to do
way back in the beginning?
Who? Not me certainly. Not me.
Silly, naive girl
She rejected him, plain and simple as that,
when he moved in on her,
slid up against her
in the back seat of the car.
She nudged him away, firmly,
and moved in the opposite direction,
putting some space between them.
On this impulsive first blind date of hers
she had no intention, no inclination, no desire,
to engage in any romance whatsoever,
she had all the romance she could handle with me,
her real boyfriend at the time.
I suppose she was simply curious
about other guys and wanted to have some fun
at a ball game or the movies. Silly, naive girl.
There’s not a guy on the planet
who wouldn’t give anything
to get his hands on her.
Some fun at a game or the movies – HA!
I always tell you that
I watch you closely
from across the playground,
helping Brooke up the jungle gym
then back down again,
your black top and soft beige slacks
still brimming with beauty,
simmering with sensuality
even after all these years –
and you don’t even know!
I tell you of course, I cannot help myself.
But you are too modest to hear,
too modest to acknowledge my adulation,
reminding me, “Oh, you always tell me that.”
Yes, yes, I do. I do always tell you that,
can you blame me? Just look at you!
You are quite simply
the most beautiful woman I have ever seen
and I am now, as ever, ecstatic
that you are still mine.
But I cannot help wondering if suddenly
I were no longer around
telling you of your beauty, your sweetness,
your limitless sensuality,
and how important you are to me
and what a superlative woman you are,
would you miss hearing it? I wonder.
Would you miss me at all?
Michael Estabrook is a baby boomer who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “When the Muse Speaks.” Other interests include art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
our grave hearts crave in the dead night
old arms of night have taken our city abreast
our nameless faceless city
sweating/stinking
a broken-down mosaic
red rotting brick/dilapidated alleys
sheltering dark looms
drain pipes drip hot
fire-escapes uproot themselves
from failing architecture
music falls onto the street from open windows
a morose violin wheezes out
adolescent/untrained notes
lungs of animals
and men and women
expand and collapse
singing/speaking/crying/loving/hating
in this city/all cities
this throbbing/beating/machine-heart
in the infantile hours of morning
black money is changing hands
our grave hearts crave in the dead night
i wish i knew like the old trees
another first story of time
our morning street is warm
with the golden coming
from blood and a beating heart
life as it runs off the feet of men
and women singing
swelling undertones
harmonious high keys
distant sirens
lost in leaves
men like the grey trunks
overgrown, tired with hating
old men pedal past
flashing golden smiles
dry lipped
dancing
in dim daybreak sun
April 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Susan Gibb
I happened by your street last night, just as you were going out the door. I wanted to say hello but you seemed in such a hurry so I followed you instead, thinking that perhaps I’d catch you when you came to your destination.
It was an unfamiliar part of town–at least to me–so I parked several cars behind you. I waited a moment too long and you were out and up the stairs of an address I just scribbled down. A short while later you came out and a girl was a step or so behind you. Odd, you both got in your car.
You went to Antonio’s Real Italian Restaurant. Isn’t that funny–you and I went there all the time. I guess you must have really liked it there and hadn’t lied. I thought about going in and having dinner too, then I’d get a chance to talk to you and meet your friend. But honestly, I wasn’t very hungry.
She looked quite tipsy, your friend; was it the sauvignon? Or did you have the burgundy we always had with the lasagna? I deliberated and then decided that I shouldn’t approach you both just then. I’m sure she would have just been too embarrassed.
I waited for a long time when you dropped her off. Then I woke up in the morning and your car was gone. I would have liked to say hello and ask you if you miss me.
Susan Gibb, recently both recipient of the 8th Glass Woman Prize and a Pushcart nomination, writes one blog on literature analysis and another on hypermedia writing and reading. Her poetry, fiction, and digital art have been published in many fine zines. Her work is included in the “Valentine Day Massacre” chapbook (Cervana Barva Press). She wrote 100 hypertext stories in Summer, 2009, 100 flash fictions in Summer, 2010 and in 2011 she’s teamed up with an artist and writes one flash piece each day. Her work has been linked as a resource in Creative Writing courses in several fine universities.
April 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Christian Altamirano
A man got up from bed, went to his bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror. He saw people come in full circle and detach themselves. He saw a person use another’s authority for their own gain. He heard that its better that people should be described by their actions then their actions be described by those people. He learned he had a voice that could be felt by others. He realized that he isn’t the only siren that could be listened to. He met an enemy’s ally and made them a friend. He looked himself in the mirror and realized he was a monster. He began to listen to more sirens one ringing strongly while another hummed lower. The louder siren speaks of a place of fire where bad people live and good people visit. While the man speaks of an animal who doesn’t exist. He finds an angel who speaks of Milos and the man creates a sound of earth, but the louder siren speaks harder with a sound of retaliation, and after the loud siren creates a boom into the man’s ear, the man begins to see things differently not because of the boom but because of praise after. The man starts to see Messiahs being praised while saviors are being forgotten. The man starts to see people drown themselves on each other but no one flooding themselves on him. The man starts to hear people tell him his own flaws of being a monster. The man begins to be ignored by people who don’t want to hear his own voice. The man’s siren begins to not be listened to and feel worthless. The man’s enemy of his enemy becomes his enemy instead of his friend. The man starts to become nothing and his siren will soon wither and die. And along with the siren the man will die also, he begins to scream at himself in the mirror with what siren the man has left and his reflection shatters before he could realize that it doesn’t matter how many people love his voice but as long as one person holds the voice dear to themselves then no man or monster can be worthless. I then wake up and find myself broken, in the beginning of the circle, in “Ruin.”
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Michael Morical
Landscape
Between waterfalls
a poem written in moss
grows on stone.
Ferns sprout
from words intertwined,
twisted shaggy,
hard to define
in the mist sustaining them.
Under The Icy Ash
She walks her bike past
the dry spot where I sit.
We’re shaped the same,
man and woman,
lumpy and woolen.
She doubles back
and stops a few steps away.
Her breath unfurls as it fades
cloud after cloud out to the lake.
I open my mouth without a word.
We shade our eyes and squint
at the glare on the snow.
Michael Morical is a freelance editor in Taipei. His poems have appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, The Hardy Review and other journals. Sharing Solitaire is his first chapbook.
