January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Can’t Understand
when in the drowsy hours
you speak to me in tongues
I can’t understand,
is when I realize we must
be doing this for a reason,
to get to some end, or
to prove something lost,
and you wait patiently for me to answer
in huffy silence until you recall that I can’t
speak a bit of mandarin
and you laugh, a sweet,
funny kinda laugh before
you fall asleep and forget.
Fly
All this world out there
and you can’t reach
any of it, and neither
can I right now, Only
I know about it
you can’t even realize it,
even in the end,
this glass is ugly
people cough, piss & die
it’s reflected on me,
windows divide the cosmos,
the very black hole of reality,
you stick to it,
falling sideways,
crawling about my books.
by Thomas Pescatore
Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia, he is an active member of the growing underground poetry scene within the city and hopes to spread the word on Philadelphia’s new poets. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he’d rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia’s old Skid Row.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
“Energy is eternal delight.” – William Blake
At 4 years old I levitated
Locked my eyes and lifted from my bed
Floated through the house
Soared over mountains of crushed and flattened cars
I knew the golden flashes of the stars
The electric chanting of the air
The darkness of the universe
I knew invisibility
And on the stairs outside the kitchen door, I tasted endlessness
At 9 I pissed on my big sister who wouldn’t get off the pot
I squirted a gusher on that hapless, acne’d wretch
Soaked her chest, her lap. her thighs
That same day epiphany raged through me like an avalanche
The magnitude of death, end of consciousness, everlasting solitude
I shuddered, and shudder yet
At 13, my Bar Mitzvah year
I eavesdropped on my parents thrashings of desire
Ashamed, appalled, and beating off
And bragged about it to my friends
In my teens, (the young manhood of a Jew)
I bullied the weak, ridiculed the strange, shunned the lonely
and toadied to the crew I most admired.
I thirsted to become whatever it was I would become
I was a courtier in the courtyard of my life
At 21, the year I came of age,
In the spirit of equality I slapped a woman who loved me
Like Rimbaud, I turned away from rectitude, shunned all things familiar
Cheated my parents, they who seeded me, in the name of education
I enlisted in the Marine Corps in a dream of chivalry
Washed out quickly, my apathy intact
When no one was looking
I made babies cry and dogs whimper in pain
I was searching for an ethic of creativity, looking for a rose
At 31, appearing fully formed and fortunate
I was a husband, father, businessman in high regard
I walked upon the world intent on leaving footprints of achievement
I hankered after a baroque richness and a classical order
Doing what I had to do
I fleeced whoever trusted me, and bribed officials, and pimped my secretary
Along the way I cheated on my wife and gave her crabs
Kicked around my sons to ease my cares
Terrified my daughter to nurture her imagination
I paid no attention to the pageantry of time
No longer troubled to recall my dreams
At 40, aware of my impermanence
I’d learned that defeat and loss are the hyenas that feed upon us
And resilience is a lifelong obligation
I turned my lust to matters altruistic
Setting out to heal the sick at heart
I became the train that carried broken birds of passage
I listened to their cries at night and wailed into the night
In my envy I seduced the sad and lonely
Again and again my resolve to do some good unraveled into lassitude
My indifference sped desperate people to their ruin
Now, at 63, I bring you these bitter fruits, this litany of memories
The song of my self-loathing
I’m dedicated to a self-absorbed ideal of partial truth
I make no apologies
This is a cleaner work then what has gone before
It redeems me by virtue of a half-assed honesty and graceful phrasing
I tell you I am joyful and unrepentant
I tell you these are the badges of my sainthood and mortality
I tell you I’m expanding as my world contracts
I tell you I’m a falcon rising
I tell you that I’m laughing as I gaze into my grave.
by David Lewitzky
David Lewitzky is a retired social worker/family therapist living out his sedentary life in Buffalo, New York. Recent work has appeared in Nimrod, Roanoke Review, and Third Wednesday among others and forthcoming work in Passages North, Clarion, Sam Smith’s Journal and Poetry Bus.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
It was a sweltering summer day and
dripping with sweat I
popped over to Taylor Street,
ordered a lemon ice.
Waiting in line, my
phone buzzed it’s usual “hi,”
opening it
while taking an icy sip,
that’s how I
learned
that you’d died.
The sharp taste.
The sour taste.
The aftertaste
of lemon ice.
by Stefanie Lyons
Stefanie Lyons received her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a Chicago advertising copywriter by day, working on her great American novel by night. These poems come from a series of digital loneliness and anti-advertising pieces she’s currently working on. Oh, the irony.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Blank/Space
the moon is some madness
those curl in
popping stars on the ceiling,
I burst apart stray thoughts
you keep the lights on
and drink in bed
praying the wolves will dissever
for they await at the blank/space
erasing histories from a page
if you lose my ember in your heart,
I cannot resuscitate its truth
we’ll wake in the morning,
perennial prey for the cruel
Lapse
you ascend
to a vortex in the fog
a half mast flag
towers the ashes
spread through Sutro Baths
the distant vocal of an engine
spinning in the sky,
spins in your direction
in an azure haze,
the clouds ruminate
with diamonds and stars
as you disappear in the
foreground
Hedestad
the weight of sleep breaks snow
a coat of paint
your face veiled white
in the thaw, a crown molds
tattooed by light,
your frozen river sweats
the brim of a crescent,
damned in fire,
glows technicolor
above vernal heights and broken bones
as the weight of sleep breaks snow
Lift
the fog burns off
shadows trapped in glass
a house on stilts creaks like a crate
six feet above
shark teeth skimming the bay
the bridge is a woman
iron and red,
bearing carriers into the Northwest
snowy plovers skirt
under a blue lunette
as you and I slowly forget
our crimes on the land’s end
the sun was a dying fire on the horizon
Hail
when wrath has bled
the feeling arrives
I cannot displace you,
frosted strife,
you divide my loves with a
jealous ire
no soul escapes your
spinning plates,
bitter spades
(her dress is draggled and I coil like a wounded fist)
a victor with still hands,
you carry me
downwards
away from her light
by Matt Hemmerich
Matt Hemmerich is a writer living in San Francisco’s Sunset District. He is currently working on a poetry chapbook and recording an EP.
