October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Dining Room Table
is the universal receiver of all
letters that will be answered and filed soon
and bills to be paid next month and the sprawl
of folders on diets and the health effects of prunes.
It’s the holder of everyday intentions
to make some sort of conscientious order
of what we’d forget if put away. The tension
of undone work turns a table into a hoarder
that could say, “I know it’s in here somewhere.”
Yet, the presence of some trivial burdens
are motes defining light-rays shafting the air.
These small tasks we see remain blurred on
the outer edge of our visual periphery,
to be completed by the vagaries of industry.
The Quart-Size Strainer,
having given up its childhood ambition
to be a catcher’s mask, still sees itself thrown
off ceremonially as the catcher runs to position
himself to snare a pop foul. Standing alone,
the catcher puts on his mask and squats behind
home plate.
How spaghetti’s rinsed with cold water,
so their strands won’t stick together, reminds
him that he is made of mere mesh; that order
of wires and space, with a handle of wood.
Yet under the faucet he feels the Zen
of being in the flow. He guesses it’s good
holding rinsed string beans for string bean julienne;
but to be a hero, no one can replace—
ah! to be a catcher’s mask and save a catcher’s face!
by Marc Tretin
Marc Tretin’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in Bayou Magazine, Crack The Spine, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Griffin, Lullwater Review, The Massachusetts Review, The New York Quarterly, The Painted Bride, Paperstream, The Penmen Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, The Round, Whistling Shade, Ghost Town Literary Magazine, and Willow Review, and he was the second runner-up for the Solstice literary magazine poetry prize in 2013. Conferences Marc has attended include 92nd Street Y, Colrain, and the West Chester Poetry Conference. He has studied with David Yezzi, Molly Peacock, Rachel Zucker, William Packard, and Emily Fragos.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
It should be Margaret Meade
leaving her barely palatable threesome
to figure it all out for me.
I don’t live on the banks of the Orinoco:
these rocks on the bottom are
all paved and worn with ruts.
I do want to know why
my brown eyes turned green after
fifty years, why Ancestry DNA needs
my saliva. Is there really no
First Nation in my children
or Swede in my black hair?
Come on, Margaret, crawl out
of that anemic bed and learn
my language, that secret ceremony
that should save me, again, again,
and never does. Tell me the meaning
of rituals I always answered with yes.
Why is time suddenly the last button
on a dress shirt; the half-ripped
left back jean pocket; I’m naked
wading to my waist in muddy
water, leeches threatening.
Just look at me, write it down.
by Karen Vande Bossche
Karen Vande Bossche has been writing poetry and short stories for decades. Some recent work can be found at Damfino and Damselfly. Karen is a hard core Pacific Northwest inhabitant who believes that sun is best delivered in liquid form.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I never told anyone but
I’ll tell you.
About the fire
Folding up my tongue,
The last counted hour
With my stomach shrinking
Toward my graveyard spine.
My body wanted to be pins
And needles,
Balancing voided meals with
Cigarettes. Burn marshmallow
Fat like burning up
S’mores,
Campfire chocolate,
Childhood knobbles
In my rounded knees.
My body was statistical.
It was burned and tarred
And feathered. Monster me,
An under-the-bed story.
Cool dinnertime untruths,
Tamed, lightheaded.
Bless
The daily dizzy shrivel, the
Ribby abdomen poke, the
Airbrush collapse. Spark,
Sear, scissor open
The new pack.
by Alison Lanier
Alison Lanier is a Boston-based writer and graduate of Wellesley College. She recently joined the editorial team at The Critical Flame. Her fiction, reviews, articles, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Atticus Review, Counterpoint Magazine, and The Wellesley Review, where she also served as editor.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The ticks I pick from your flesh
have the verve of John Donne’s flea
but much more adhesive
with the fervor of Lyme Disease.
The garden’s a death trap,
the primrose and forget-me-nots
funereal and dungeon-breathed.
Spreading composed mulch to conceal
the yawn of a hundred open graves
I tire of myself and slacken
almost enough to lie down
and allow the grubs to engage me
in their shy waxen petulance.
Meanwhile in pale innocence
you punctuate yourself with ticks
by kneeling to yank the weeds
eager to elbow out the flowers.
Something about our seasonal
bloodletting lingers. Sprains,
torn tendons, even broken wrists
spike the long dark winters. Blackflies
riot in spring, summer features
splinters from stacking firewood
to season before the cold arrives.
But the ticks linger all year long—
their hard metal bodies, springy
eight legs, driven by blood-thirst
ripe as a rage for celebrity.
Arachnids, not insects, they deploy
their motivation so adroitly
we feel them crawling through our sleep.
In the north, they gang up on moose
and kill with a quarter million
individual nibbles per pelt.
They stick to us both, but lately
you’ve been sporting them the way
ex-smokers sport nicotine patches
on parts of the body that matter.
I flush them into our septic tank
where they probably thrive and plot
a future so bloody no one
but ticks will survive, draining
the blush of sunset to leave
a fog-gray landscape writhing.
by William Doreski
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
She believes the snow is a mirror
Turned upwards toward her face,
A catalyst for the frigid light
Burning in the old, dappled pines.
She believes that love
Is one or two canoes
Drifting in soft degrees
Over dark, polished waters.
She believes the young boy
Carrying his notebook beneath her shadow
Is a lost star following home
Her wintry beckons.
She believes we will one day remember
Her cold serious heartbeat,
Sending up bright untethered rockets
She pretends are prayers.
by Seth Jani
Seth Jani currently resides in Seattle, WA and is the founder of Seven CirclePress (www.sevencirclepress.com). His own work has appeared throughout the small press in such places as The Foundling Review, The Hamilton Stone Review, Hawai`i Pacific Review, Gingerbread House and Gravel. More about him and his work can be found at www.sethjani.com.
October 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Her first word was material.
The adults wondered why she skipped
all the warm-up words like mama and daddy.
So odd, they commented.
Why did that word emerge first
from the buttery spread of childhood?
Her home smelled like codfish balls and beer.
The Mona Lisa, torn from a magazine,
hung on a wall.
Pickpockets and drunks stopped by
while her uncle looked for coins on the sidewalk.
Her other uncle worked nights as a jailer.
He locked up family members as a joke.
Her grandmother had no teeth.
Her aunt thought Jell-O was alive.
When the girl grew up, she seldom uttered the word material.
She did not build things or sew things.
She lived simply and was not materialistic.
Maybe as a child she knew that her family would provide
colorful material for her stories.
Maybe her first word was a warning to them to behave.
by Suzanne O’Connell
Suzanne O’Connell lives in Los Angeles where she is a poet and a clinical social worker. Her work can be found in Forge, Atlanta Review, Blue Lake Review, Crack The Spine, The Manhattanville Review, G.W. Review, Reed Magazine, The Griffin, Sanskrit, Permafrost, Foliate Oak, Talking River, Organs of Vision and Speech Literary Magazine, Willow Review, The Tower Journal, Thin Air Magazine, Mas Tequila Review, The Evansville Review, The Round, Serving House Journal, Poetry Super Highway, poeticdiversity, Fre&D, The Tower Journal, Silver Birch Press, The Louisville Review, Lummox Press, The Four Seasons Anthology, and Licking River Review. She was a recipient of Willow Review’s annual award for 2014 for her poem “Purple Summers.” She is a member of Jack Grapes’ L.A. Poets and Writers Collective.
