April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
5:07 pm at coconut joes bar
Perched on the stool with my feet
hooked into the rounded footstep
I
am
Preened
eyes scanning quest
who suddenly appear
and I lock onto them in the cool Revo
shade of the liquored watering hole
displaying bleached fangs
at striking distance as
skweeking noisy groups
of twos and fours engage
in skittish gossip
I am base and knuckled and
primal – no affectation of
enlightenment, evolution, religion
or Gloria Steinem
technology ancient in
gelled hunt of perfect
savagery with a
denim cloaked tool
seeking prey
before closing time.
After a confidential word with the concierge
As I step down from the chicken fluttered bus
I’m hit with a blast of popcorn bag heat
opened directly into my face and I glide through
the cheek and jowl streets with
tangled knots of aromas from street market stalls
I feel life flow back into me(!) as I
grow nearer and remove my aviatar shades
perching them on my head with my left hand while
my right hand confirms a lump of faded colonial pointed nose men
aiming towards the bar recommended by the fuzzy diced
1995 caprice classic taxi driver with a broken air conditioner and
I see fleshy tropical shirted gringos appearing uncommonly popular
at Las Diablo.
She holds eye contact for 5 glorious seconds
and slides through perfumed air towards me
and I rewind to a time of
cars and lakes and
cascading hair
and beery mirth and
soft touches and the freshly packaged
newness of youth that the counsel of
my years will not surrender
and I become intoxicated by the whole
damn thing and soon we are
stumbling into the sharp edge of the city
through dying light
past corrugated iron and angry graffiti.
We are sniped by well aimed stares of
lost possibilities from women whose
arms are thick from lifting children.
Their eyes have no flicker.
These things cause
our buzz to fade a little
and we become less tactile as
we reach a concrete squared house with a
sleepy hammock and mongrels and dusty children kicking a ball
and a grandmother slowly and silently lifts her face
towards my mumbled greeting
but her hands continue their soapy toil.
I find myself in a bare bulb room with a
picture of Jesus that I remember from childhood Catechism
on the wall and an old iron post bed with thin sheets and soon
I see this:
The symmetry of her face, close up, is melting.
Her lip curves slightly up on the left side as
does the right. Matching almond eyes
with a brow of gentle waves and laughter that
occasionally breaks into flashes of
sadness.
A child is conversing in the
next room in animated tones playing with
a (formerly) blonde one armed doll who is
competing with a tube tv
broadcasting a Brazilian soap opera.
A rooster crows, a reggaeton
car thumps by and the
street noises converge
into a disquieting hum.
We shift from grip to grip to grip as
a tired oscillating fan moves slowly
left and right and left, as if
in disapproval.
by Tony Walton
Tony Walton is from the Cayman Islands. He graduated from the University of New Orleans. His most recent writing has been featured in Whisperings Magazine (Mountain Tales Press). He currently lives in the Cayman Islands where he manages real estate, writes, and travels the Caribbean as an amateur photographer.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Leaps
Free fall. A star
Flashing through the universe.
Arms spread to angel wings,
The ripcord at the last possible moment,
Then floating like an autumn leaf.
Or that umbilical cord,
Off a cliff headfirst the way a hawk
Dives for its prey. The bounce to signal
The end of adventure.
Surge of adrenalin. Veins rivering
In flood. Heart as full as love
Could measure. Every muscle timed
To perfection in the pit
Of the belly where cells muster.
Man on a bridge
Nervously pacing before swinging
A leg over the rail. Balancing precariously
As if considering. What thoughts
Race as he plummets knowing
No halo of salvation can open
Above him like a bright flower,
No stretch of imagination
To seize his ankles and hold him.
More Bad News
Here comes the Andromeda Galaxy
Destined to smash the Milky Way
In four billion years. One more thing
To worry about along with taxes,
Unemployment, college tuition, decline
Of the liberal arts, bankruptcy of Medicare,
Pension plans, Social Security, moral
Integrity, faith and love.
We lie awake in our white beds
Of starfall counting the disasters
About to befall generations
Still quivering in our cells. However,NASA
Predicts a merger rather than pure devastation:
Milkomeda, an enormous cow
Of a daughter chained to rock
But rescued by Perseus. So there’s always hope
That earth may be spared, though by then our sun
Is a cauldron filled with our ashes. Another thing
To trouble about as the skies pale
Behind the blinds.
by Joan Colby
Joan Colby is an award-wining writer who has been widely published in journals including Poetry, Atlanta Review, GSU Review, Portland Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, Mid-American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Kansas Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, Minnesota Review, Western Humanities Review, College English, Another Chicago Magazine and others.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
After Iowa flood:
New shades of brown.
First shade of brown: dead grass
Brunettes giving up
Lying prone in parks.
Second shade of brown:
Outdoor metals
Prisoners of iron oxide
And empty museums.
Dark second skins grew and spread
Into scar tissue.
Third shade of brown: the enemy itself-
The Iowa River.
Now the color of
Everything that wasn’t supposed to be there.
A tree lay on its side: roots unable to grapple
Earth aid.
Brown: the color of death.
Smell is alive and well.
So much dankness. Which sounds like stank.
Being green is too much work.
The sun, so uncaring.
by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens
Jennifer MacBain-Stephens is an emerging poet who was recently published in Issue #10 of Superstition Review and has poems forthcoming in Emerge Literary Journal , Red Savina Review, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine and The Apeiron Review.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
mid century
novelty shifts the angle
of what passed for innovation
and libels the new millennium
in shades of modern avocado
and simple teak
what was a keen nostalgia
for an egg shaped elegance
and those clean primary
reds is now a blink
in the machinery of connection
a paper lantern nodding yellow
concessions to the exposed
beam of your adolescence
as if lighting up all that spent
relish will leave you no choice
but to lean into the pecan wood
console and lift the sound arm
to retire that wall of 33⅓
memos to yourself
track by track
Haunt Me
Half a century gone
and the Ouija board is still
uncertain. As if the whole
neighborhood of ghosts
traversed my geographic
map from outset to reason,
exiting its own expired alphabet.
Power of Attorney
I don’t think we should speak
until I can shore up my resolve
against the optimism that rides
me like a shadow, loots my own good
sense and folds a feeble charm
into my reply. This repudiation
is overdue, but what should ring
like iron truth pitched against your latest epic
fable falls to a silent incantation,
a hiss in the apparatus
of our conversation, a grace note harmony
to the myth you love to repeat.
That you now hold the lady in the tower
is new to both of us and though I cannot weave
her escape into any believable advantage, I see
now that you are a fairy come to defraud me
in both worlds and I must be Switzerland,
chilly, dispassionate and unarmed.
by Sara Clancy
Sara Clancy is from Philadelphia and graduated from the writer’s program at the University of Wisconsin long ago. Among other places, her poems have appeared in The Madison Review, The Smoking Poet, Untitled Country Review, Owen Wister Review, Pale Horse Review and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She lives in the Desert Southwest with her husband, their dog and a 21 year old goldfish named Darryl.
April 2013 | back-issues, fiction
You said you felt under the weather. I suggested soup and you replied tomato. Tomato with grilled cheese. While I blanched them, you put on Van Morrison and scrolled through my songs. You considered yourself an expert.
“You need to clean your music library. Doesn’t it annoy you? How do you know what you have, what you don’t have?”
I shrugged.
“Why don’t you at least keep the genres organized?” you pressed.
“Why put songs in boxes? Why label them?” I was being ornery.
“Angel Pop? What the hell is that? Rainy Day Rock? Sci-Fi? What kind of musical genres are these?” You sounded sick.
I shrugged. It was all downloaded. Some legally, some not. The music came from pretentious blogs and Russian websites and some place called torrent. Data mountains from Korea, Morocco, mouth-breathing basements.
“You know that’s stealing,” you lectured.
***
It was Veteran’s Day when we decided to call it quits. It was raining. We called it quits, whatever ‘it’ was. We had never labeled it.
“I can’t make you happy,” you said.
“I can’t give you anymore,” I said.
You got out of bed, even though you hate the rain. I started scrolling through the songs by genre.
Afropop, Avant Folk, Crossover, Death Electro, Ethnic, Forgiveness Rock, Future Roots, Gracenotes, Merengue, Mexican Summer, Noise, Progressive, Surge, Trip-Hop, Tropical.
I x’ed out. There was no use. You took everything and left me with a head cold.
by Sonya Bilocerkowycz
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
“Anything goes tonight, my girl. Come on,
have another. What are we here for, dear lady?
Copulation is the only philosophy and
carnival its enabler. If you promise
not to move I’ll get you another flute
of champagne. My dear, we can leave.
I know a charming place just behind
Hackescher Markt. This is Berlin, you know.”
A Pierrot sways against the door frame,
stares drunken desire, mouth bent
into predator’s disappointment,
leans over the railing and vomits the first half
of an unsuccessful night.
Endless festing before Ash Wednesday –
nights of excess. The windows drip
yellow light and blue notes.
A tall Columbine clatters down the stairs
wrapped in a cape made from starlight.
She is running now, her high heels impeding
a fast getaway, her tracks clearly visible
in the first snow. No taxis anywhere.
She slips and slides towards the snow-decked
fire hydrant, its plump little arms outstretched
in a gesture of expectation. As her head
cracks open like a ripe fruit broken,
her purse spills condoms and pepper spray.
The snow reddens around her face.
Very slowly she relaxes.
The best party ever.
by Rose Mary Boehm
A German-born UK national, Rose Mary Boehm, short-story and novel writer, copywriter, photographer and poet, now lives and works in Lima, Peru. Two novels and a poetry collection (TANGENTS) have been published in the UK. Her latest poems have appeared – or are forthcoming – in US poetry reviews. Among others: Toe Good Poetry, Poetry Breakfast, Morgen Bailey, Burning Word, Muddy River Review, Pale Horse Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Other Rooms, Requiem Magazine, Full of Crow, Poetry Quarterly, Punchnel’s, Avatar, Verse Wisconsin, Naugatuck River Review, Boston Literary… For her photographs see: http://www.bilderboehm.blogspot.com/
