January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
You swing the scythe in washed out flaxen fields
You may hear the blade against the dried out stalk
It is a sweet sound if the cutting edge is thin
You will listen for that faultless cut, it is a veiled thing
It will hide in the murmur of starlings and six-row barley
You will swing and scare the murderous crows
In repetitions you swing with the turning of your hips
They are never the same, form of swing or ting of blade
The light will fail and you will walk home under cast out corncrakes
By turf lit doorway you will sit and spit then drag the whetstone
You will smother the wicks and set loose the hungry tomcat,
Evicted field-mice are suing for recompense.
by Alan Donnelly
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
The Dungeon, Midwest Books, Stoughton, Wisconsin
Confine me closer, little room of shelves,
And hold me in your mouth whose teeth are spines.
Your concave paper and your convex cloth
Collapse upon me. Drug me with the smell
Of mummied wood. The book I want is all
Ways hidden well: accept my captured hand
Into your close forgotten crevices
To touch the flesh the angle leaves unseen.
by Sara Bickley
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
ancient marble frames
wide cobblestone,
hills and trees
as if
a painting
enters life—
pink parasols twirl
in the breeze
and passers-by stroll on
past ice cream vendors peach parfait,
a gypsy violinist plays
on, as if
the song cannot end,
as if
this promenade
exists beyond
September Sunday’s mid-day sun.
by Loukia Janavaras
Loukia M. Janavaras is from Minneapolis, MN but has been living in Athens, Greece for the past 10 years. Although she enjoys writing, it is never a choice.
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.
