January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Abaddon
“You wouldn’t abandon ship in a storm
just because you couldn’t control the winds.”
— Thomas More, Utopia.
Last call for the patriots,
last stop for all apostates;
the last train to freedom is
now boarding from Abaddon.
Every time it rains
the fixtures blinker out;
no coincidence, this:
the governance installed the sky.
There’s rows of voices
over all the houses;
advances in bipartisanation
amplifies people’s dependence.
No, this isn’t really hell,
they got it wrong, it’s overdone;
hell is a better composition,
its design is still untried.
If you read the manifestos,
it’s evident life’s counterfeit;
unknown ideals speak truth to practice,
panacea, comrade, can be obtained.
Now, this “perdition” is a travesty,
it’s ersatz, faux and fraudulent;
real hell’s supposed to purify,
not profit small-time bureaucrats.
They got their knobs, test-tubes and dials,
vast screens to engineer nightmares;
these are cheap tricks, mere brummagem,
effects lacking organic woe.
I want a hell that’s fair and square,
where punishment’s unbigoted;
I have it here, inerrable,
in documents, with principles.
If people would just cogitate
and sublimate their fallacies,
then they’d see this nether world
an apotheosis to behold!
Last call for provocateurs,
last stop for all demagogues;
the last train crash to eidolon
is boarding now from Abaddon.
Permanent Austerity
“These are the waning days
of aristocratic socialism,”
she lamented with a shrug.
“We heard the speeches
as the ice cubes melted
and I fear our marching orders
won’t resemble plangent posters.”
’Twas then the scullery maids and
stable hands dismantled chandeliers.
“I’m inclined to agree, dialectic theory
has devolved into a grotesquery
of polity,” I assented with a survey
from my broken monocle.
“We all embraced the slogans,
shibboleths as well as anthems
but, in practice, I concede, the enemy is us.”
’Twas then the valets and chauffeurs
voted themselves out of existence.
“It’s curious to note, if not
a little indiscreet,
Lenin in the Kremlin
has domestics and a chef,”
she said with minor malice
and a misanthropic laugh.
“The fastest telegraph in this umbrageous
Soviet transmits from servants quarters
of the General Secretary.”
“Marat, too, had his housekeeper,”
I noted cynically, “and why would we expect
dictatorship without starched collars
for a bureaucratic caste
‘engineering social progress’?
Sooner the state withers away,” I chuckled,
“the better chances for shareholders.”
’Twas then the doorman and au pair
quit their posts, with ready rifles.
Anatomy of a Catastrophe
“These are barbaric days,” she said,
pointing to the effigies
and criminals in the stockades
whose crimes were but a lack of rent.
“Tight credit is the cause of this,”
I interjected sententiously,
observing all the foreclosures
which turned the commons into sludge.
I shuddered at investments lost.
“I, for one, blame the court
for lavish wars which made a sport
of brinkmanship over rare gems
not worth their weight in guts,”
she said, and not without embarrassment.
“Yes, it’s true, diplomacy
has been misused by bunglers
who curdled treasuries in vain,”
I did rejoin, most ruefully.
“The problem, as I see it,” she continued,
“is this culture of ineptitude,
rewarding hordes of savages
who disrespect propriety.”
“Ah,” I nodded fatalistically,
“here is where I disagree:
the issue of the state’s decline
owes to factors of finance;
morality is petty cash.”
“This is where sexes diverge,”
she added with a mild reproach;
“business aims the industry
of state conquests, I will concede,
but first and foremost, I aver,
psychology directs commerce
and dominance is revenue.
Patrician excess, nonetheless
has made a botch of chancery.”
And so we stood, near pillories
where internees moan for reprieve
as soot enveloped villages
once renowned for piety.
These are dark days, and the malaise
owes to the government the most
we did agree, while neither side of the
debate could quite admit, the evil was
democracy.
by Craig Kurtz
Craig Kurtz resides at Twin Oaks Intentional Community where he writes poetry while simultaneously surviving the dream. Recent work has appeared in The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Conclave: A Journal of Character, Danse Macabre, Drunk Monkeys, East Jasmine Review, The Kitchen Poet, The Literati Quarterly, Maudlin House, The Recusant, Teeth Dreams, Three and a Half Point 9, Tower Journal, Veil: Journal of Darker Musings and Zouch Magazine.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
the clear blue sky a hovering Narcissus
sets cerulean shapes undulating the whole estero
winking the sun seducing my eyes sweet waters from the land
pulsing into salt ocean slipping its way onto the land I sit on one bank
looking across wobbling yellow slits tight to this shore reflect cliffs
behind me opposite shade shines down liquid black sandy shore and open
water giving way to dazzling light in action
dark underwater blues deeper browns to fertile marsh
brown pelicans fly low fall in akimbo tripping over feet out taut
large floating group some drop half-folded wings loose skin cups air against
water not piston-swimming white pelicans herding fish this a rhythmic applause
varied, playful stops for silence fellow pelicans take up a new patterned patter
making a community music none feed, listening to each other’s versions—plaintive cry
a gull’s—pierces a long pelican pause leaving rings of room around its sound
more pelicans splash in, their own are clapping back more gulls kee-een into the
next rest pelicans wait and syncopate clap-cuba-tap-africa gulls scree-ee
each species receives the other’s new offering never in my thirty years here
over the minutes, the hour the numbers and sound expand birds
hundreds, a thousand their mass louder penetrating gull chorus shrieking
pelicans slapping raucous cacophony pushing out all silence,
enveloping me unease replaces my relaxed wonder mind
taken from me I turn my body away
a skinned stick rosy hint of sunset dancing on it
bright towers waver from now golden
cliffs on the other side about my time
to leave I notice from the quiet
time has moved on so have
the pelicans and gulls I am
only soft again a fresh-
feathered first-year curlew
in the landscape a
waterborne gull makes
wake swimming toward me
winds and currents push west
toward the sea, the sun at the end of day
massed wavelets bunch higher shift shadows, turn darker
I look back to the east the water is calmer oddly more filled with light farther
from the sun. a distant invisible fountain pouring upward tiny scintillations
here the sun is closer streaming directly at me begins to look night
all around a paralyzing beam’s dark halo the known world so
close and closing only the tkk’ings of a bushbird a bee
bumbling for gold come across on the still air
by Jen Sharda
Jen Sharda lives in the San Francisco Bay Area—its fine community of poets, easy access to nature, and liveliness in the arts nourishes her writing. Her work is forthcoming in Forge, Marin Poetry Center Anthology and Spillway. She attended Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s in 2014 and has attended the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference since 2010, working with Jane Hirshfield, Major Jackson, and twice with Arthur Sze. Jen joined David St. John’s Cloud View Poets classes in 2013. Jay Leeming and Carolyn Miller were early teachers.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Frenzy and folly,
Gaudy music and fantastic dancing,
A moving party of
Scarlet, orange, golden, green, blue, and purple.
Glittery “dames”,
Circuit swells,
Fashion fancies,
And erect wantons
Step stately and deliberately out of bounds.
Security within,
The eccentric takes care of the bizarre.
For sixty minutes during the sixth month,
A dense crowd of friends,
Gay and straight,
Are entertained
And inspired by a life of courage.
—a mashup using words only found in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death (1842)
by Dennis Bensie
Dennis lives in Seattle and works professionally in theatre. He has two books published through Coffeetown Press (Shorn: Toys To Men In 2011, and One Gay American In 2012) as well as numerous short stories and essays around the web. The piece included in this issue (73) of Burningword Literary Journal will be part of a 40-poem anthology entitled Flit: A Gay Man’s Poetry Mashup Of Classic Literature, which will be released by Coffeetown Press in October 2015.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Dancing water sloshed
At the edge of gray
Slate, weary and washed
By a thousand coins, as the day
Gaped from the gap above. Broken
Floor-to-sky foundation, tired cracks.
Steady toss-chip-tumble tokens
Dug in deep. The architect’s facts
Ignored wish-fueled erosion, material
Chosen to swallow the glaring sun
Lies brittle and dry, a burial
Of whispered aspiration. One by one,
Tiles seep and shift to press
The tidal drag. Ten thousand cubic feet
Lost to ceramic distress,
Once upon a time wet and neat,
Now caged by empty glass walls
Mocked by ill-timed, temperate rain.
With dreams of glossy waterfalls
Intact in crass inscription, will it train
The eye and ear and heart
On what’s no longer within reach?
The wishing fountain wills itself a part
Of resurrection from the unintended breach
Of contact. At the center, a boat
Or a paper plane in copper, brushed.
Postmodern misdirection left to gloat
Over snap of sealants and lazy work of grouters, rushed.
by Meryl McQueen
Meryl McQueen is an American writer living in Sydney. Born in South Africa, she grew up in Europe and the U.S. Before turning to writing full-time, she was a social worker, counselor, college professor, researcher, and grant writer. She earned her doctorate in linguistics from the University of Technology, Sydney, her master’s in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and her bachelor of science in education and social policy from Northwestern. Meryl speaks several languages and has lived in seven countries. She loves to play piano, sing, hike in the woods, and cook. Her poetry has been published in Blue Lake Review, Clearfield Review, Crack the Spine, The Critical Pass Review, Dunes Review, Ginosko, Ozone Park Journal, Phoebe, RiverSedge, the Set Free Anthology, The Tower Journal, Town Creek Review, Vanguard in the Belly of the Beast, and Yellow Moon.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Tulips
for my sister (Hep C Series)
Just as they have aged,
seven days within the vase,
Just as yellow turns
onto itself
to view the summer’s
guttural dreams,
And red has let loose
its fiery skill,
turning heart’s layers
to flames and film,
They now curl up
as most delicate friends,
or fingertips brushing
within a woman’s drawers
against that which lives
clung to skin,
Or the fine
dust layering a crystal
bowl left for weeks,
then months, then years,
within a womb of mahogany.
They all speak
quietly within the room,
of riotous life
and boisterous boom,
of raucous youth and blooming
almost off the stem.
So hard it was
to be contained.
So now, dear sisters,
let me near
to see grace swirl,
then rest
into a withered edge,
How its deepening
bends each head
on stem,
how green thrusts summer
against each bloom,
then dances, childlike
in the air.
I’ll stay, I promise,
as each petal turns
into closed hands
and prays for sleep,
so soft, so real,
Forgets all form
before this.
POEM 2014
There is no escaping—
wine glass
shot glass
poem.
You walk down the hall
to the chair
to the door
to the chair
to the bed
eat some fruit
glass of wine
poem.
Birds are cackling
giddy beaks
rays of late
it is spring
a plane-
like bird
flight unseen
only heard
blue sets its hem
fading silk
along the seam
of the hill.
Legs up now
bent at knee
rocking back
to the heart
and then forth
the one pump
that can keep you
in place.
A ticking like the lost
owl in the pine
every night
every hour
sending blips
desperate search
for a mate.
You cannot be contained
nor released
cocktail glass
Lexapro
tongue now numb
house asleep.
Find a pen
then poem.
by Jean C. Howard
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, performance poet Jean Howard resided in Chicago from 1979 to 1999. She has since returned to Salt Lake City. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Off The Coast, Clackamas Literary Review, Harper’s Magazine, Eclectica Magazine, Eclipse, Atlanta Review, Folio, Forge, Fugue, Fulcrum, Crucible, Gargoyle, Gemini Magazine, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Painted Bride Quarterly, decomP, The Tower Journal, Minetta Review, The Burning World, The Distillery, The Oklahoma Review, Pinch, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Penmen Review, Pisgah Review, ken*again, Chronogram, The Cape Rock, Quiddity Literary Journal, Grasslimb, Rattlesnake Review, Concho River Review, Spillway, Spoon River Review, Verdad, Wild Violet, Willard & Maple, Wisconsin Review, Word Riot, and The Chicago Tribune, among seventy other literary publications. Featured on network and public television and radio, she has combined her poetry with theater, art, dance, video, and photography. A participant in the original development of the nationally acclaimed “Poetry Slam” at the Green Mill, she has been awarded two grants for the publication of her book, Dancing In Your Mother’s Skin (Tia Chucha Press), a collaborative work with photographer, Alice Hargrave. She has been organizing the annual National Poetry Video Festival since 1992, with her own award-winning video poems, airing on PBS, cable TV, and festivals around the nation.
January 2015 | back-issues, poetry
My grandfather snapped
fish spines off the coast of
Tel Aviv. Slick carcasses
slipping through his coltish
grip as though they were still alive
and thrumming, kicking in the Adriatic.
Latent instincts for survival sparking through
the only dormant muscles in the desert.
Stripped to his tawny chest he would wade
knee-deep in the algae & water pooling
under the orange groves, catch the rainfall
of citrus in skyward arms.
His soles thickened to leather from
skittering across the baking streets,
parched & shriveled like denied lips.
In the gravel he gathered you,
palms coarse, desiccated, groping
for your final strains. You escape
in relieved exhalations, lifting from
the earth at intervals wider than
floodgates.
Saba tugged Shoshana’s umber
plait, twined it around his enchanter’s
finger. They were twelve when they met—
she, staggering in from Jerusalem, caked
in Masada’s dust. Eighteen when they
holstered guns & swallowed smoke.
I do not know this place, embedded
as it is with the bodies of my ancestors
& their enemies, dyed in blood hot,
livid from the midst of battle. I scrawled
my prayers once on notepad paper
& twisted it within the crevices of the
Wailing Wall but can’t remember its contents
or whether it rests there still, atrophying.
I do not know this place, though I
am derived from its crumbling dirt
as my classmates do not know my
name was snatched from a city
on the West Bank, not from Plath poems
& air spirits, though sometimes I wish
that were the case.
I will not tell them.
Mother caresses my chin to tell me
I am my name—Ariel, the Lion.
Yet my grandparents’ steps
still thump in my ears, the bombs
will always shudder and rattle
my white-washed bones. I dart
back into my burrow, and I know
their smoke lingers.
by Ariella Carmell
Ariella Carmell is a senior at Marlborough School in California, where she is Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine and Head Copy Editor of the newspaper. A Foyle Commended Poet of the Year and a recipient of Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, she has work published or forthcoming in Cadaverine, Crack the Spine, Vademecum, Crashtest, Eunoia Review, and Canvas Literary Journal, among others. She also blogs for The Adroit Journal about the intersection of film and literature. Come next fall, she will attend the University of Chicago.
