July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
(truth-harmony-beauty:
the necessary conditions
to create or perceive a Bonsai)
i
In Santa Monica, on a crowded Promenade
I stare at the tiny tree on the tilted cart
At the silent, knuckle-thick trunk
That angles impossibly down.
Bristlecone Pine. Cascading.
Dwarfed by pruning, training.
I have been told:
To see a Bonsai
Forget that branches have been wire-coaxed
That pea-sized lead has hung for years
Forget trimmed roots
Forget conifer tips
Plucked between ball of thumb and finger.
Forget the salesgirl who smokes a French cigarette
To spite her worn-out boyfriend.
He waits on the stool, my perfect mirror,
Staring into the crowd of unfamiliar faces.
His arms reach back.
Forget my mother in her bath, closing the door.
You’re too old now, she says with an awkward smile.
Or:
The hand of measured fingers
that hush the baby’s mouth –
small, noisy o.
Or her ping-pong fists, pounding at my chest.
ii
To see a Bonsai, shrink into
Its crafted grace, five-needled fascicles
Branches suspended as if draped over a ravine
As if you draped over that ravine.
Everything must go, they say.
Ignore:
The blue-gray light of television
Muted voices, costumes of the past
A family of three, watching wistfully.
On the other hand:
Here’s my father at my own boy’s arm:
Trying to wrest a towel my boy will not surrender.
I forgot those fingers.
How the unknown assaulted him by existing.
How much vengeance he hoped to extract.
At night, when no one was watching,
He grew very small.
Cut tongue. Stumped root. Chest of tools.
I watch him at the plumbing
Twisting against the unyielding world.
My own arms reach back
To the dinner where we talk about manners
But not the oak tree that fell in the storm
Exposing our academic life to the neighbors.
Faces screwed up from the inside.
Show of a smile
imitation of a perfect
imitation.
iii
To see a Bonsai, the Masters advise:
Don’t shake the tree loose of its crumpled form —
Shake the idea of the crumpled form loose from the tree.
As in:
My mother’s shroud draped across my face.
As if I agreed to pack
What we could’ve torched on any summer night.
I drive past my parents as they walk
Arm in arm. I call, but they do not
recognize my voice.
In the mirror, I watch them recede, vexed.
This is any summer night.
This is the overgrown pool, teeming with croaking frogs.
There is the real moon, deemed untouchable.
Like a cracked, windswept pine
at night on the cliffs
old, awake, alone—
There must be an original tree.
iv
If only the Bonsai remains
Who then is watching?
Or a handful of pale water
content to be held
content to flow.
Come, moon, patient and familiar
no longer cluttered with history.
My mother and father
One hand for each—
We’ll sing the old, rustling mantra:
Evergreen, evergreen, evergreen.
Here’s a quiet walk. Here’s a trackless forest.
Here’s a shakuhachi flute, unattended.
by Roger Soffer
Roger Soffer has written, and sometimes produced, miniseries and feature films for networks and studios, and is currently doing three bilingual animated features for China. His poetry has been Pushcart Prize-nominated and is featured or forthcoming in many journals, including Pennsylvania English, Spillway, Jet Fuel Review, and Euphony.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Let it burn
until all that is left
is a black crisp
of dehydrated exoskeleton jerky.
What do I care?
I did not create this place.
I did not ask to play this game.
I did not stuff the coal shafts.
I did not dig the oil wells.
I did not clamor for the goldmines.
I did not manifest destiny
across the desert
with a mind obsessed
on material diversions of the flesh.
Let it burn
until the stars in the sky
have nothing left
to shine down upon.
Let it burn
until the sun extinguishes
from its own
existential exhaustion.
What do I care?
I didn’t build the Model-T.
I didn’t pave the asphalt road.
I didn’t plan the concrete jungle.
I didn’t send the ships
across the sea
with hopes of New Atlantis
in the distance.
Let it burn
until Sherman’s fire
pales like a glow light in comparison.
Let it burn
until the Apocalypse
rises up in molten magma
through volcanic outburst tantrums.
What do I care?
I didn’t write the Holy Verses.
I wasn’t the one
inspired by God
to lie false prophecies
into the hearts and minds of Man.
I didn’t slaughter the natives.
I didn’t enslave other races.
I didn’t stomp on Pagan grounds.
I didn’t erect churches
atop conquered lands.
I didn’t start the wars.
I don’t need to finish the job
that other animals began.
Let it burn
until the flag is stripped
of blue and white stars and stripes
and all that remains is red.
Let it burn
as a beacon
atop the flaming hill
as a lesson about the fall.
What do I care?
I didn’t taste the forbidden fruit.
I didn’t kiss the serpent.
I didn’t fuck the liar.
I didn’t drink the venom.
I didn’t suck the poison.
I didn’t breed the cancer.
I didn’t dig the shallow grave.
Let it burn
until the bones are ash
and the marrow evaporates
into a chemical combustion revelation.
Let it burn.
Let it cry.
Let it whine.
Let it bitch.
Let it moan.
What do I care?
I didn’t promise it
a single damn thing.
I didn’t ask it to love me.
I didn’t need it to want me.
I didn’t beg it to birth me.
I didn’t buy the ticket.
I didn’t sign up for the ride.
Let it burn
until the plastic faces
are melted
on the Sunset Strip
and the haughty egos
catch flame on Boardwalk.
Let it burn
from the outside in
so the rotten core
is the last space to smolder into oblivion.
What do I care?
I didn’t come here to save the world.
I didn’t offer a quick fix resolution.
Let it burn.
The Phoenix is waiting in the wings.
by Scott Outlar
Scott Thomas Outlar survived the chaos of both the fire and the flood…barely. Now he spends the hours flowing and fluxing with the tide of the Tao River while laughing at and/or weeping over life’s existential nature. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Dissident Voice, Yellow Chair Review, Calliope Magazine, The First Line, and Harbinger Asylum.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
A straightened line of cold rounded
sand still manifests itself in a
circular formation of lost
privileges and guarded chances,
falling, tumbling, surrounded in a
broken mist of past ignorance, sealed
by hot assurances of desire and want,
hidden by incremental degrees of solitude
and hope.
by Joseph Buehler
Joseph Buehler lives in northern Georgia with his wife Trish. He has published three short stories in the “Kansas Magazine” and a short story in the “Canadian Forum” long ago and three poems in “Bumble Jacket Miscellany” and a poem in “Defenestration” in December 2011 and have an upcoming poem in the spring/summer 2012 “Common Ground Review” and poems in “Theodate”, “Mad Swirl”, “Indiana Voice Journal” and other places.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
and green and fresh as a cucumber pickle,
sharp in the mouth, and soft green too,
soft and new as the sweater you bought me,
holding me young.
As young as love, a humble sip,
the smallest sip of warm green tea,
grounded like gymnasts learning to stick
fast to the landing.
As young as a flock of parakeets,
chattering green, holding us up
to the air, clumsy blunders of green,
dashed into shivers.
As young as green in the eyes of a cat,
the eyes of a cat eternity’s green,
what we take with us after we’ve shed
what’s left of our thunder.
by Gwen Jensen
Birthright, Gwendolyn Jensen’s first book of poems, was published in 2011. Her second book, As If Toward Beauty, was released in 2014. The print and online journals where her poems and translations have appeared include The Comstock Review, Harvard Review, Salamander, and Stickman Review.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
This blood is a waltz at dawn.
A soul splinters on the ground,
a thousand red vessels smashing
to pieces. The doctors take pictures
instead of putting it back together.
A human soul—the honeysuckle
leaking out. The janitor comes
instead, leaking capillaries brushed
away beneath a Bauhaus mop.
by Ruohan Miao
Ruohan Miao lives in Arizona. Her work can be found in Cicada, Aerie International, Cargoes, and Navigating the Maze. When not writing, she can be found marveling at the vastness of space.
July 2015 | back-issues, nonfiction, poetry
The Dying Sister
You fell in slo-mo like a mimosa petal caught in a small breeze, sprawling, nearly soundless, on our parents’ speckled linoleum. I, five years younger, didn’t know you held your breath to make yourself faint. I didn’t know you’d whittled yourself down to taut skin over sharp bones by spitting meals into your napkin. I cried because I thought you had the “C” like Aunt Ceil. When you slept until 4:00 p.m. and Mother put a mirror to your parted lips, I never expected breath. Those “slashes” on your wrists, grazes that didn’t need stitches, healed to pearly stripes.
Black widow spider, you wove us all into your worry-web, yet went on to outlive a husband and three live-in men. How old were you when you first fell in love with death?
Somewhere I remember you and me leaping from your twin bed to mine, the bottoms of our nightgowns ballooning, your chestnut hair flying up from your shoulders. You, airborne, born of air. We had to grip your arms to stop you from throwing yourself into Father’s open grave.
When a doctor would tell you to see a psychologist, you’d switch your doctor. I changed my phone number, returned your letters unopened. Then Mother would say, “But she’s your sister.” I would phone, and soon your silky thread would begin to spool itself around me.
Hatching your latest death, you bought a mobile home in a trailer park smack inside a hurricane belt. I startle at loud noises, as if your house had just blown here from Florida and thunked down in my yard.
Last night I dreamed you were laid out in a coffin on palest blue satin, your hair in tendrils on the lace-edged pillow. Dry-eyed, I felt myself take full breaths.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Eating With Ghosts
Here I am, eating with my son, daughter, husband,
reminding myself to chew, to not cup my hand
at the rim of my plate to shelter my food,
as if my dead father could reach for it again.
In Russia, he sucked on bark, even stones.
Here I am, asking everyone about their day,
leaving some food on my plate
to please my mother’s ghost.
“This way you won’t get broad in the beam.”
Her hand pinches the small fleshy roll
at the waistband of her girdle.
At night, when everyone is in bed,
you can find me in the dark kitchen,
bending into the open fridge,
the glow of its cold bulb,
eating leftovers with my fingers,
choking on unchewed food.
Shh, don’t tell.
by Rochelle Shapiro
Rochelle’s novel, Miriam The Medium (Simon & Schuster, 2004), was nominated for the Harold U. Ribelow Award. Her short story collection What I Wish You’d Told Me (Shebooks, 2014) is just out in audio. She’s published essays in NYT (Lives) and Newsweek-My Turn. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines such as The Iowa Review, The Doctor TJ Eckleberg Review, Stone Path Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Stand, Inkwell Magazine, Amarillo Bay, Poet Lore, Crack the Spine, Compass Rose, Controlled Burn, The Griffin, Los Angeles Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, The MacGuffin, Memoir And, Moment, Negative Capability, The Louisville Review, Amoskeag, Pennsylvania English, Rio Grande Review, RiverSedge, Peregrine, Gulf Coast, Existere, Passager, and Willow Review. Her poetry has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, and I won the Branden Memorial Literary Award from Negative Capability. Currently, she teaches writing at UCLA Extension.
