Crisp

April 2011 | back-issues, poetry

by Brett Devlin

the moon smiles down from

his cold sky

the limbs of the oak

like the fingers of an

ancient witch

The dark night smells

of the earth as

the trees burn with the

colors of autumn

decompose

decay

dirt

crisp

The Owl / The Rower

April 2011 | back-issues, poetry

by Megan Baxter

The Owl

I found one of the old night birds

in the trees above the sugar house, starving,

it refused the trap-killed mice I brought,

hunter, whistling weight in the dark.

I laid their bodies below the tree

until I came upon him, frozen

knocked from his perch by the wind,

hollowed, hardened by death and frost,

the thick black centers of his eyes

fixed past me, devouring the light.

The Rower

For Hannah, Age 15

You watch morning

come over the mountains

straining at the banks of night

as the shells

set out north up river,

breaking the surface ice of spring.

The hands blister and open

along the oar.

On the shores

we call out

as you pull into the final meter,

glowing with sweat,

blond as summer,

in the long light of sunrise

crowned by dark pine bows.

Megan Baxter works at a 40-acre organic farm in Vermont. A graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, she completed a BFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. She has been published in the Georgetown Review and was the runner-up in this year’s Indiana Review ½ 5K contest.

Richard Jay Shelton: poems

April 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Standing Upon The Sands

I cast my sinker

Deep into depths

Fishing for instructive humanity,

Fishing in a sea

Of sweat and abuse,

I spend my leisure hours,

Suffering,

As we all suffer together.

Never Reached

1

Seems in moments clearly sighted,

Far from damnable pride,

Seems I wished away my life

Wistful wishes without

a) result

b) because

I seem,

Now beneath the lens of sixty,

Less lent to fancies guide

Who fleetingly flew me

Where ill won’t usher,

Less today than yesterday,

Yesterday less than before.

Like the stunted tree,

The bonsai,

I reached out roots

To blind clay walls,

Aged and misty,

Aged beyond my wise,

Coarse beyond my hopes,

Steeps stretching past centuries

Aged and ochre

Too tall to see over or beyond.

Oh wonder killing wish of thunder

Rolling off a sleeve

While a lightning pen writes

In nights dumb darkness

Wonder,

Will inky storms

Soar me away

To future world’s gray praise?

2

Man I know can

c) become.

I know it happened before.

History need not lie!

Great men show their force of “will”

Then die (most)

Saturated with self satisfaction

Or least,

Feeling the wealth of their accomplishment

Some few, few believers

Offering wreaths at their altars.

So why not wish myself away

Into efforts beyond my reach?

Mighty efforts

Like the late great did seek.

Why not seek,

Each effort always more

Than that which came before

Seeking further reaches of the mind

Hoping walls enclosure not so coarse

It stifles my amour?

3

Oh but why,

I want to know,

Do efforts tumble down,

Back down to days before reach

Beneath me at a lesser steep

Leaving me wishing a way up

Or worse,

Wondering why,

Why reach,

Why climb at all

When faced with oh,

So steep a wall.

Richard Jay Shelton was born in 1946 on a navy base in Coronado, California, but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles. The six poems selected are part of three larger works titled “Carefully Chosen Words,” “Pathetic Poetics,” and “Apathetic Poetics.” His poetry has appeared in The Chaffin Journal, The Poet’s Haven, The Eclectic Muse, Pulse Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Down in the Dirt, The Homestead Review, and Willard & Maple.

Celeste Walke: poems

April 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Staking Claim

She brims with enamor over the notion

Of the rolling curves; the fat

Of the land.

She forages through the land’s lovely crevices,

Prospecting for the offering of its fallen fruits.

The pristine, primeval soil lays dormant.

Like her, its surface is only stirred by

Sporadic storms.

Unlike the beasts that ruled the land

Before the cruelty of humanity devoured it,

She scorns the challenge of brutish pursuit.

The land is her darling.

It never challenges her place to tramp on it.

It cannot threaten her with infidelity.

The supple, comfortable nature of

The fat of humanity repels her.

Its complexity, uncertainty,

And the manner in which it moves, thinks,

And refuses to regard her.

She reserves the right to sink her stake

Into the gritty soil, the unresponsive regions,

Of others.

And only into the parts that allow themselves

To safely be walked on.

But the soil shelters something,

Rooted far beneath the fathoming of man.

Beneath its layers that are marked by

Innumerable manufactured years,

Hidden within its body of powdery rock,

And profoundly inexplicable parts,

Which were fiercely forced asunder by the

Fervor of floods,

The icy blanket of inclement winters,

Slashed and scorched, but never consumed,

By ancient flame:

A secret.

She, a mere sliver

Of rapidly disintegrating sinew,

Will never know

That the dirt of the earth

Won’t be owned.

The Fool.

Foolishly lured by neon words.

A Psychic Readings sign.

The cards should be aligned;

And their meanings: cryptic, wise.

Instead, they pile and pile.

And I smile and smile

at this aimless act.

My charity is hers,

And hers is mine.

Do you have a boyfriend?

No.

You will! You will!

Do you have a job?

No.

Oh, but you will!

Do you have friends?

Not really.

Oh. But you will.

She has cast her wicked spell:

The old fashioned feeling of good will.

I step outside to sidelong glances;

The cheeky faces of two hip girls.

They scan me with pious surprise.

You have been scammed,

Cool eyes imply.

He likes you, I can tell,

one girl remarks to her forlorn friend.

Her words are free and flippant

as she flips her cool hair cut,

but mine cost twenty bucks:

I will find love,

I will find luck.

Celeste Walke is a writer, visual artist, designer, and musician. She is currently looking for agent representation for her first novel, “The Roar of the Dandelion”. Her passion for writing is equaled by her passion for the visual arts. After living in New York for six years, she now resides in Los Angeles. She has displayed her art in galleries in New York and Los Angeles. She loves to use rich metaphor to explore the internal dynamics of relationships and the human condition.

Matthew Walz: Traveling Home Poetry

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

The Last Remaining Ghost

The last remaining ghost

In a world bald and gone wrong,

For no one wants to stay,

And no one wants to play

With all the children snug in the night,

While their parents cap the evening

And peacefully drift toward the dark.

No one is judging them,

Everyone is judging them,

They can’t be themselves with the ghost in the room.

“Stop staring,”

“I heard a sound,”

Litter lines the cracks in the floors,

The wood creaks and squeals.

Snug in their beds they look to the north,

The winter breeze shreds their fleece.

But children, don’t be scared;

There is no monster in your closet,

There is only the chill of the night,

But it cannot be seen,

Not by them or by him.

Nevermore

Drop the anchor on the shore,

For we shall leave here nevermore;

It’s paradise that’s in store.

The trees bloom fruit tender and sweet,

As all the life we generally meet;

To awaken the seed that’s what’s in store,

For we shall leave here nevermore.

Obscenity

Obscenity twists the knife in the heart of the town,

Day by day they go around falsely amused.

Dubbing the houses and roadways to the stillness of sound,

Living a life of stone.

The day Nick Adams fell into the lake,

Fundamentality went with him.

The day Nick Adams was burned at the stake,

Obscenity lifted the veil.

Thunder struck the tip of the church’s cross,

Through mud and dirt and spirit.

Burning a piece of nothing-a-loss,

A crack in the stone was found.

Foaming crowds in the night lit scene,

Their spirits lifted and smiles cracked.

The harmony changed from silence to obscene,

The falsely amused no longer false.

The Eye is a’ Coming to Seize You Again

He crept the morning stairs,

Each creak weeps frightful sighs.

Afraid of gathering glairs,

With engraved hatred in both eyes.

A shiver crept down his spine,

To awake and douse in history.

The cries of innocents unknown,

A bleak truth pawn to misery.

His conscience sighs for a goal,

He sees the withering of the mass.

Another mode of stiff control,

No spirits grave for none shall pass.

A city of wine and gold now bust,

A land now barren, lost, and slain.

One man, one power, now who to trust,

As the eye is a’ coming to seize you again.

All trampled and torn his body molds,

Contorted as each of the worlds go.

Fewer are left the further it unfolds,

What shall be done my companion, my bro?

On this day he sees this worldly truth,

But hides the real from the guilt and the shame,

The dead in the world corrupting the youth,

With powerful hands our masters to blame.

Aran Donovan: Poems

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Owl Dad Tells a Dragon

no you may not come in

there is still one left

king, he bars the doors

against the night

guards still on either side

keep watch and look

if a moon too appears

see their spears in its light

but shields to cover heart

this you need always

he says in closing

the book, turns lights

out overhead

and down the dark night

dreaming she lay safe

outside pining in the wind

a claw and cold breath

in the branches caught

and choking at what throat

the night has yelling

do not let it in, do not let it in

Alfred Stieglitz Shoots the Clouds

I struck at it for years. Hands raised,

I hollowed out the form,

the photograph, took all

reference away: no tree branch,

no birds frozen

in the scraping stroke of a wing,

nothing to say here or when.

But the tools weren’t right. The empty blue,

emulsified, was too pale, too light

to hold this weight. Clouds

I set into it burst and sank.

Until I felled it, found

the solution that turned the bright day dark.

Emotion without scale or form,

an absence trapped

between paper and glass,

they hang on walls as testament:

I stood alone and looking up

put words into the mouth

of the terrible, of the speechless sky.

When I Say Romance

When I say romance, I do not mean romance, not

at least, as you intend, do not mean

the quilled yellow throats of songbirds,

their fat, banded wings and black eyes, the notes

of their song. When I say love, understand

I mean the word far or along, see

the streets of Venice, its lagoon, the flat stones

over the water making a way.

So we strike and miss: shoot darts whose steel tips

kiss at their soft target. Words

that would promise or presage but cannot hit

their mark, our wit. I listen for you but it is an arrow

dropping to earth, a pipe of bone, the crow’s voice

clicking like cold stones, that I hear.

Terremoto de Valdivia, 1960

I held my mother’s hand as we walked towards the bright

display case, stacked with croissants, tiny cookies,

its tall cakes frilled like Easter dresses, tarts tucked

with dark berries, each facet of the raspberry gleaming.

Cautioned not to touch, I waited. She went to the counter

for my father’s cake, laughed with the shop girl

who folded its cardboard carry-out box.

Red body of it startling under pale frosting, his favorite.

Mine, the light meringue, its egg whites whisked to peaks,

baked at a low heat until dry and sweet, nearly nothing.

Pastel, they sat in ordered rows. I leaned

towards them, my greedy palm printing the glass.

I can still hear the patterned floor as it split,

see the flat shelves, so cared for and so careful, unsettled now and shifting.

How the great case faltered, its four feet unsteady,

the cakes tilting forward, their sugared skins smearing

its clear window with pink roses, birthday wishes.

Thinking first, It is my fault. Then, I am falling.

How to feed them by hand

Begin slowly. Arrive in the early hours when,

in the near light, everything is yet possible.

Let them see you. Then leave.

The next day, near dawn, stand by the feeder,

hold yourself still. Show yourself part

of that scenery and fade. Later and again,

offer only your hand, the striped seeds

in your palm, hot from a wool glove.

They are hungry, will take what

you give. You have wondered, have watched,

heard through the glass, their din-to have them close

and delicate, their pronged feet round

a finger, blunt beaks at your skin:

is it like flight, their rush of blood?

Bright burgundy brushes past, just beyond you.