October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Invisible Creatures
Orange laranjas, seis reais. The afternoon in Copacabana has sunscreen bottles and pharmacies. Near a tree, passengers wait at the bus stop. Secretly, I am naked in Portuguese. After a day at the beach, I drink coffee, and eat cheese buns. There is violence in Brazil, yes, but there is also so much more. Where I live, the snow falls occasionally, and the rain freezes my fingers. In spite of the dead trees, I desire the arrival of the summer, while I have fantasies of walking barefoot on soft sand, intimate with the invisible creatures of the heat. In that same life, I watch soap operas online and miss my family, when shopping in the organic supermarket. The privilege is to wish for tropical fruits while they still last. Hold onto the flavor as though they were pearls, unique and precious.
Latitude
The sun explodes in the canvas
of an unfinished painting,
a muscular entropy of the heart.
The brush is left alone in the dark,
as she lies naked in bed, empty
of imagination.
The latitude of an image
circumscribes the roughness of being.
Hunger for Tropical Things
She wakes up, acorda, with an intense necessity to devour tropical things. “In winter, the search for the sun is insana,” he says, finding it important to explain everything with statistics. “It is the foreigner’s syndrome,” he concludes, the paper in his hands. I don’t understand what you are saying. “If someone likes fruits, it is normal to miss pineapples,” she replies, “simple like that.” I feel much closer to myself when I have this conviction.
by Desirée Jung
Desirée Jung is a Canadian-Brazilian writer. Her work aims to stress the boundaries within languages. Desirée has published translations, fiction and poetry in Exile, The Dirty Goat, Modern Poetry in Translation, The Antagonish Review, The Haro, The Literary Yard, Black Bottom Review, Gravel Magazine, Tree House, Bricolage, Hamilton Stone Review, Ijagun Poetry Journal, Scapegoat Review, Storyacious, Perceptions, Loading Zone, and others. Desirée has participated in several artist residencies, including the Banff Centre, in Canada, and Valparaiso, in Spain. She worked with Canadian poet George McWhirter in her M.F.A in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Moreover, her research and Ph.D. thesis in Comparative Literature was based in the works of Canadian poet P. K. Page. More information can be found on her website, desireejung.com
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
I’d like a Sunday
like a Mary Oliver
poem, with a few
perfect words and
lots of white space,
and paper with
a high rag content
and maybe some
righteous soy-based ink.
It would be a leaf
in one of her spare
little collections, with
a fine old lithograph
from the public domain
on the cover,
one that recalled the idyllic
Transcendentalist woods
of Thoreau and Emerson
and John Muir.
I’d like to stare
at the few
perfect words
close up with
my glasses off
and appreciate the clean
edges of the fine
big print and feel
like I’m in church,
the good part, when
the church is empty
and there’s only
silence and the sound
of my own breath.
by Will Walker
Will’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alabama Literary Review, Bark, Crack the Spine, Forge, Passager, Pennsylvania English, Rougarou, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Slow Trains, Studio One, and Westview. His chapbook, Carrying Water, was published by Pudding House Press, and his full-length collection, Wednesday After Lunch, is a Blue Light Press Book Award Winner (2008). He received a bachelor’s degree in English history and literature from Harvard University, and over the last decade, he has attended numerous writing workshops with Marie Howe, Thea Sullivan, Gail Mazur, Robert Pinsky, Allen Shapiro, and Mark Doty. Will was also an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and when not putting pen to paper, he enjoys placing bow on string and playing the cello.
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Subtle Way
A wave does not regret crashing on the shore
and a lightning bolt does not care
which tree it splits in two,
the same way the river
never notices the hill
it has carried away,
or the fog
the ship it has led
to a rocky grave.
You,
you are a force of nature
that sweeps over me,
that buries me entirely
and like snow piled high
on the empty cabin’s roof,
you don’t even notice me
collapse under your weight.
Mondays
This morning,
a car horn screamed
from the street below.
Standing in my room
wearing a towel
and with a toothbrush in my mouth,
I screamed back.
by John Taylor Pannill
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Philosophy
I spoke to you of dirt
and broken thumbnails, of salt
in tears and potholes.
I spoke of popcorn
ceilings with sticky sheets
underneath.
You spoke to me of stars
and aether currents, of birds
on radio airwaves.
You spoke of treetop
houses with telescopes
to the sky.
The Electronic Age
We drove by dark and planet deities
Riding the road chasing down reason
Like some great thing.
We captured the sun in a fiberglass bottle
An electric ambrosia consuming sins
Like gods.
Pact
I think my drinking days are catching up
with me, the old man said and poured
more whiskey in his coffee pot.
The man shook. Under his feet
the cat lapped blood
off the floor.
The old man saw the stars of hell
hanging from the ceiling, sucking
out the color
from his hair.
Another week, another one to spill
into the kitchen sink, another
sacrifice to fight the stars
and pool under the floorboards
for the cat to drink.
by Nicole Kurlich
Nicole Kurlich is a student from Northeast Ohio. She is currently pursuing an Associate of Arts degree at Lakeland Community College.
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Temptation
Whenever he finds a spider
in the house he leaves it alone
life is tough enough
he reasons even for spiders.
But sometimes one will show up
in the bedroom
around bedtime
and his wife notices and says
“either that spider goes or I do”
So of course he captures it
releases it outside
where it belongs anyway
but honestly at times
he’s tempted to leave
the damn thing
right where she found it.
Glass
For obvious reasons the first rule in any art gallery
or museum is don’t touch the art
even if the works seem to be behind glass
Is that really glass he asks the guard
we’ve never seen that before and we’ve been
to the Louvre in Paris and the Guggenheim in New York
Yes the guard says folding his arms across his chest.
It’s expensive but we had to do it
there’s a 1/8th inch space
Between the glass and the painted surface
especially critical if we ship them—
wow so that really is glass he interrupts
Suddenly reaching out tapping the glass with his finger
of course he knows he shouldn’t
be touching the art in any way but seriously
The guard is standing right next to the painting
talking to him how the hell
could he not tap the glass!
by Michael Estabrook
October 2014 | back-issues, poetry
the wedding wrings
worry their arrival
they are not yet come
not even thought to
go forth to depart
from a heaven full
of wandering
yet i am to ready
the hall in a cloud
of flowers
the thief wings black
in the shadows behind
me
a golden chalice on the floor
filled with piss
i shoot at a slant
my bones are printed on
the ink of age and a waterfall
of popping haunts
me
i pray
i will be more
wither the hair on my head
parch the paper of my body
but don’t take me
a box of dust before
the saints
by Justin B Davis
