January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
While you were gone
We talked
We touched
We slid melting
Ice cubes over
Sweat slick thighs
While you were gone
We danced barefoot
To the little radio
In the kitchen
Naked
Ate chocolate chip
Cookies and licked
Crumbs off our faces
Together
While you were gone
We laughed
Softly and hard
As the light fell
We sat face to
Face and fingered
Eyelashes
Until
With an unwarning whir
You returned
In blaze of light and
Blaring voice
And caught us
In reimpowered
Sixty inch eye
Shamed separate
we covered ourselves
And resumed
Our silent watch
Power restored
by Pearl Ketover Prilik
Pearl Ketover Prilik, freelance writer/psychoanalyst, is a believer in the spark that flickers within each and connects all. She has three nonfiction books published, was editor of a post-doc psychoanalytic newsletter and lately, editor/contributor of two collaborative international poetry anthologies.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Her love is binary
off or on
yes or no
zero or one
but if she could rest
in the untapped mantle
between extremes
or even possibility
there is acceptance
and tranquility
like liquid tangibility
no tears or lament
just a trace of light
enough to see
a love that is
one more than one
and two more
than nothing
at all.
by Richard King Perkins II
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Loose steps lead down to the dusty porch
surrounded by the graffitied stone wall
I watch the sun rise from the lawn chair
paces from the small bungalow where we lived
sharing cinnamon rolls, spaghetti, lemonade
all of us stuffed in tight
the blue coat of paint on the house so worn
we see rough splintered wood underneath
the shutters squeak in the wind
the roof leaks and my father curses, puts
back the split shingles and reseals them
the sun high and hot over the flagstone path
the front door with the torn screen
my grandmother grows tomatoes along that walk
near the boulder left sometime after the last ice age
I imagine its ancient world when dinosaurs
and woolly mammoths roamed among the trees
now the lawn is crushed by dandelions
and giant ragweed bushes stampede across
red tailed hawks screech in wheezing oaks
as my heart sinks with the sun on the planks
and I slip into a place of buzzing voices
my brothers plead
and my mother bangs the car keys on the table
The driveway up front by the big willow
points away from the house onto the broken road
with millions of hairline cracks
like fault lines to other houses, other families.
by Alison Carb Sussman
Alison Carb Sussman’s chapbook, On the Edge, is scheduled for publication by Finishing Line Press in May, 2013. Her poetry has appeared in The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Eclipse, Slipstream, and elsewhere. She currently studies at The Writers Studio under the direction of Philip Schultz.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Up
A crystal shaped tear fell and shattered on the floor,
tiny pieces flying all around.
She became dizzy with pain as she inhaled the sweetness
of the ninety-nine cents cinnamon candle.
Because one footstep did not precede the other at the right moment
and her walls fell apart.
A coffee mug flew off the breakfast table
and out of the window,
onto the streets.
She closed her eyes although she could not see
where it would fall,
from where she stood.
Amongst all the chaos, she forced her arms up,
but their heaviness made her fall back.
They had red marks all over them, and she could feel ropes
cutting through her skin.
But when she looked at them,
she saw nothing.
Nothing,
as her skin dissolved into tiny particles of powdered soap
and flew up and up, nonstop,
up towards the ceiling.
Her heart pounded rhythmically, like a tambourine, against her chest,
and her breasts jiggled,
and the jiggle made her laugh.
And eventually she woke up,
yawning in the laundry room.
Palm Trees
The milky sunlight pours down from one of the clouds,
and bathes the palm trees.
The clouds sigh in slow motion, as they watch drops of sunlight
cling to the leaves.
As they watch my curtains dance,
but no one sings.
These drops of sunlight splattered on my face,
and then became the freckles on my cheeks.
And the clouds keep sighing,
as the crayon-colored cars race through a highway
that looks more like a bridge.
As the people driving them scribble in their minds
the grocery list;
and change the radio station,
looking for someplace better.
Someplace where they can rest their faces on their hands,
wrap themselves in clouds and slide off mountaintops,
but feel no pain.
Someplace where they can swim in sunlight, smell of kiwi,
and throw faded songs away.
Someplace where they can walk with their heads,
and knit the missing pieces of their childhood together,
to never forget.
Pieces of Dust
The room was two spoonfuls of shadows and one tablespoon of light.
I could see pieces of dust floating in the air, shining under dim lights.
The music, which infiltrated the room from every crack and every corner, began to sound
distant.
The pieces of dust floated and I followed their every movement. I saw their smiling faces
hanging from each piece of dust, calling out my name in disharmony.
But I snatched my name off their tongues and put it away in my pocket, so they could
never call me again.
The way they pronounced the ‘a’ and their sing-song tone of voice, tasted of relish on a
vanilla ice cream cone; like an illegal lullaby sung to a newborn.
I wondered if there were cowboys in China, and if they rode ponies instead of horses. But
the blonde lady with the bulging ice blue eyes entered the room, hammering her heels
into the ground.
But my shift was already over and I ran to the back door, tripping on a girl who hadn’t
been there a second ago. And as I fell on the floor, my cellphone slipped from my hand
and I saw it land on the ceiling, like gravity was nothing but an old man’s joke.
My heart raced and the world became a blur, and I choked on my pink tears and wished
that the room wasn’t dusty anymore.
by Laura Rodriguez
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Most mornings alight on my bones this way—
The shadows of the leaves of a tree rising
And falling like a ship on a sea, upon my windowpane
That glowed with the golden light of Saturday.
But today, the window was a silent nothing—
When I woke, the shadows had gone away
To stretch big and heavy, to trespass rooms
And hearts and dull their landscapes.
I lay on my bed, still, with a blanket to my chin—
Nursing a loneliness a dream had awakened.
Out the other window, the stone wall glistened dark
With water from the distant, distant heavens.
by Katrina A. Madarang
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Sleep,
a place for magic tricks and dreams
and romance after yes stands a
chance hearing.
Sounds in Shuffled Minor, a Three-girl-Monte,
we dance to b -flat cries,
keep the us pressed together/awake,
in places bed.
The marriage of our AM bodies parallel now,
two bullets awake,
our shared spotlight softens us to
packing, hugs and snacks for daughters,
sliding a curved heart across tables,
past our eyes,
we press send.
To separate buses,
go Daughters, go
grooming for distance,
hearing no in subjects Magic,
they learn to pull missiles
out of a hat.
We hang on
to hoops and rings
still-worn,
vanished,
our open circus stilts carry
us in years,
we romance in hallway plaque.
Transcripts in places bed silent,
kept pond-safe as our Forward Daughters
march the us to
sleep.
by Jamez Chang
Jamez Chang’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in FRiGG, Prime Number, Lines + Stars, Boston Literary Magazine, Poydras Review, Marco Polo, and Yes, Poetry. After graduating from Bard College, Jamez went on to become the first Korean-American to release a hip-hop album, Z-Bonics (1998), in the United States. He lives in Englewood Cliffs, NJ with his wife and 3 daughters. Visit www.jamezchang.com
