July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
2:41 AM
We sat in a sun-stained booth
nibbling at lo mein noodles, and I
swallowed whatever ridiculous thoughts I could’ve spewed
to cure the disease that is vibrating silence –
like the story behind
the invention of doughnuts;
for some reason, that struck me
as something so significant that I felt
I had to tell you, had to bring it up,
but I never got the chance.
Squirming in the passenger seat,
I adjusted my position, crossing my legs and
staring at the sky for dear life;
my skinny fingers gripped the seat tightly,
imagining the windshield disintegrating
to mingle with that bleak, lonely-heart hue –
give a kiss and reassure
that you were being honest.
French manicures, eye paint,
and luxuriating in small talk over
chocolate delights
led into the moment when I noticed
my stomach pressing against my ribs
and I breathed ever harder,
staring out the blurred window –
it was so hard to concentrate
on distant train whistles and clutching my peace of mind
when I felt as though I could burst
into every piece I didn’t want you to see.
Driving home in the gray,
we were even less open than before;
your sleepless eyes focused ahead,
a tilted-head songbird
dispersing notes, stabbing the quiet
with self-isolating precision.
Clasped Tightly
the moon swam in
sticky shadows, tar ghosts
shivering against our backs,
and I tapped my fingers in
river rhythms to remind
your pulse of its
purpose.
High School
The tiles of the floor encase me
in scuffed beiges and pencil
smudges; pity there aren’t
cheat sheets for life tucked
in-between the cracks. All that
I can see are quadratic equations
and love notes in looping cursive,
telling me that this place is
no longer where I want to be.
April 2, 2009
We sat in the dark,
munching on popcorn on napkins
(with more kernels than not),
dark soda fizzing in
red plastic cups,
and Charlie Chaplin
blown out of an Alaskan cabin
on the television.
– Sarah Marchant
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Disturbed
They say I am mildly disturbed
I stay awake at night, have paranoid visions
Have no girlfriend, nothing
I scratch my head for no apparent reason
I talk to myself and laugh in mid-sentence
They say I am mildly disturbed
Like blue detergent flushing
Down a toilet bowl
I am not mildly disturbed
But I feel like a prisoner in concrete walls
I wish I had a friend I could talk to
I think that would make a difference
I wish I lived in a community
That was concerned about my welfare
A farm or something, and we could work together
And I don’t like carrying guns anymore
And I don’t even like rock n’ roll anymore
I have permanently turned off my television
Because I’m convinced it’s giving me cancer
I don’t really like machines that run on
Electricity, gasoline or other resources
Except my coffeemaker, I am a coffee addict
It’s getting out of control
If I was having sex every night
I would stop drinking coffee
Attention ladies, I like most of you
I would like to have a relationship with you
You can be the dictator every once in awhile
Let’s reproduce in the name of the anti-corporate regime
Let’s never make love in public places
Let’s burn all the porno houses down
And blow up every satellite dish
Together, we can put an end to sodomy
I Love You
My grandmother said, “I love you” on the phone
Every time we talked
After she was diagnosed with dementia
More times than I can count
More than any lover
More than any friend
She wanted those words to linger
Long after memory was erased
These days my grandmother
Doesn’t know who I am
She stares at me
As though I’m a stranger
Come to ransack the place
As a child, I imagined this world
As my permanent home
I had no idea we could
Travel to other places
Even disappear
Even while alive
I just want to say, “Thank you,” Grandma
My gratitude is immeasurable
For the comforts you provided
Just by smiling
I miss you so much it hurts
– Miles Liss
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
The lace was frayed at the edges
worn and old – yellow like the
books you were so very fond of
You had rubbed at the needlework,
running your fingers across the
embroidered lilies; your hands—
clammy and cold, had pinched
those petals; plucking them as if
they had been Real
I had mended your garden,
each time you came to me;
red faced, puffy cheeked,
tearful over the mess that
You had made, yet telling
Me to fix it – please
My eyes can no longer hold
the needle, thin and silver,
which you had watched –
enamored, as it swam
between the eyelets
I am too old, too liver spotted,
too wrinkled and grey –
and you, you’ve grown too
big, for the false flowers I had
sewn so long ago; You, the garden,
are Gone
– Alice Linn
July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Kerry Lanigan
Amy’s voice is on the line before Ellen even hears a full ring.
“Thank God you called. I’m at my wit’s end today, Ellen – he is On. My. Last. Nerve.”
Ellen sighs into her receiver; in her ear the air reverberates with a harsh blast. “What time did he wake you up?” She pinches the bridge of her nose between her eyes, pulls her hand slowly across her temple.
“Six-freaking-AM! He wanted waffles. Wouldn’t stop yelling until I made some waffles and then he knocked over the bowl of batter and it went everywhere. He spread it around the table with his hands; it was a fabulous freaking mess.”
“Did you try playing that puzzle that I sent you a few weeks ago? Sometimes if you can get him to do something constructive with his hands—”
“I tried the puzzle! He kept getting up from the table and getting into the cupboards instead. He’s going through everything, pulling out papers and silverware and…” Amy’s voice is thick and wobbling as it trails off, fat clouds of tears gathering, ready to open and pour. “Jason can’t stand it. He can’t sleep either and then he yells at me and…I don’t know if our marriage can handle this.”
“I’m sorry. I know it’s hard.” Ellen bites the inside of her cheek, a raw, smooth, sweet-tasting spot that she’s been making worse all month, an aching worry stone for these daily phone conversations with her sister. “Maybe it’s time to consider some other living arrangements for him.” There. It’s out.
Amy is silent in her ear, only breathing. Then a sniffle, a shaky breath. Ellen listens hard, her body clenched, waves of energy pulsing toward the phone in her hand. Finally: “Maybe.”
“Poor dad.”
“Yeah. Poor dad.”
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Transcendental Love
Apparently, our love
has been reading Emerson
and believes it is self-reliant.
We, who have been part and particle
of each other, daily, nightly,
minutely merging (your hair covering
my skin, my tongue speaking your thoughts,
your oversoul in my underwear,
my hammer on your anvil and your foot
in my stirrup), now sit rooms apart
and prefer not to
Will you assume
what I assume
as I celebrate myself and sing myself?
Do your atoms, belonging equally to me
as mine to you, resonate with the same frequency?
Or does your heart vibrate to that iron string—
trusting yourself, exploring the sacredness
of your own mind, your own body?
If we must each triumph in our own
principles, can we not yet hope
that Whim will lead us each
through each
other, that the
currents of the Universal
being will circulate your Not Me
through the not me
of my own body,
once more?
The Empty Set
I am still only conjecturing that
spending the night with you last night is what
did not happen, out of the set of all potential
events that did not happen between us all
night. But the graph seemed to me to lead to
your bed (which, as you recall, was just two
feet away, with the blankets thrown back).
Yet our evening was a demonstration of Zeno’s
Paradox—we could not cross the distance
to the bed because we forever had first
to cross half the distance.
When I think about that missed intersection,
I think about plotting the slopes of our lives, the route
we each took to meet in that room, and how
any previous meeting would have already
been too late for us to reach that bed;
how we would have needed to have exactly
our same experiences leading to this
precise moment together, but without
ever having passed through those other points
on the graph, that intersected with those other husbands
and wives and children. Those trajectories
are defined by the impossible—they are mapped
in imaginary space only, when we subtract
our families from our lives and take the square
root of our resulting negative selves.
Other people, I think, can compute this, but
it was a math too radical for me.
– Suzanne Lane
Suzanne began as a fiction writer many years ago, but for short forms, she has been increasingly drawn to poetry. In addition to writing poetry, she is also writing a mixed-genre memoir, All over the Map, about my experiences growing up as a military dependent, and an academic book about the rhetoric of antebellum slave narratives. Suzanne has taught literature, creative writing, and composition at Harvard, Cal State, San Bernardino, and BU. She currently teaches rhetoric and writing at MIT.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Her vitriol is shocking
like the unfounded kick
to fat puppy
though He reacts in
teeth gnash
rabid snarl
the mean passion
of that same
fat puppy reared
on a diet of
no love and
meager bones.
Like me,
He has pissed
on the Persian rug,
shit on the carpet,
and chewed
something worth
raising Her voice.
But when She calls He
still comes running,
the calm dog who
needs a particular touch.
– Tyrel Kessinger
Tyrel lives, eats and breathes Kentucky air and work in Louisville as a Braille transcriber. He is the recent recipient of the 2011 Literary Louisville LEO award and his work has been published in the LEO magazine.
