April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Exploit the Masses
Anyone who violates any of
The exclusive rights of the copyright
Owner as provided by section One-
Oh-Six through One-Twenty-Two or of the
Author as provided in section One-
Oh-Six A(a) is a low down liar.
I will see him at dawn, see him at ten
Paces. This is not Garfield’s dog, it is
Jacko’s ceramic chimp. This is genius.
While I am not prepared to call it best,
Honesty is quite a good policy.
It ranks with making the trains run on time,
With eating vegetables, with not spitting
Into the wind, or with not stepping on
Cracks, breaking backs, breaking banks, or banking
On much coming of it. So eat your soup,
Drink your tea, dot your I. Honestly, you
Have to stop meeting me like this. I can’t
Keep hearing about your kids, your childhood,
The curl of your pubes or the squeal of your
Sex. I do not even know who you are.
Your name rung no roseys, and your poses
Are way too familiar. They are hung in
All of America’s dorm rooms. Let’s go,
Then, you and I, our separate ways, horse
Knows the way to carry the sleigh, so ease
On down the road, oh, ease on down the road.
Jenna Jameson Says The First Thing That Comes Out Of Her Mouth Is Right.
She said at last that his penis was just
Too small and let’s go to the video
O she says o o uh ah uh er…
Pat Summerall is dead! (what’s one more voice
Not to say through the uprights or it’s in
Or time taken or now a word from
CNN says he was a dark-skinned man
Says next time on Daddy I’ve had to kill
Says last week on May I Fuck Your Daughter?
On that note may I fuck your daughter? She
Is something I hear Dandy Don chime in
And she should cook now from the makers of
The Anarchist Cookbook ISBN 1607965232
Tagged “education” on Amazon tick.bomb
How we like explosions explosioner
How ready rowdy are all my friends to
How Joe Theisman’s leg breaks time and time and
Time again small bones small and very small
You Will Go Blind
Before drinks even arrive, she howls,
Screams she’s never been much afraid of clowns
Or public speaking, even marionettes
We wake to find dangling overhead. In her
Profile she calls bungee jumping a “passion.”
It’s bullshit. I hope there is less to life.
All I ask is a healthy respect. Order
House salad, the table wine. Oil light red
Pull over, please. Use before use-before
Dates. More than two taps is playing with it.
It’s not a toy. This is no joke. What’s more
I don’t recall asking. Look. Time for bed.
R&D is on it, I hear, to weave
A harness and shock cord, Kevlar, snug. It allows
Freedom to move you never much had, breathes
Like boxers, supports like tighty-whiteys
Brings out the jock in you, your vertical
Infinite provided (naturally) it’s down.
—Brian Cooney
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
She Takes the Bus
I’m watching her eat, gathering soup with a spoon from the far side of the bowl, a precise calculation, is she educating me? But I’m remembering it wrong, when did we order soup? Was it the chicken soup I placed before her at my kitchen table, under the grandmother curtain, the night she needed soup, or in the loud bar that late evening when she was hungry, I was hungry and the weather was changing, and the soup wasn’t good, but maybe hot enough. Another time I made soup from the bone broth in my freezer. I put a clump of fresh thyme tied with string, and left it in too long, and the watercress turned to slime, along with the parsley, but the carrots were memorable, she winces at my telling her this, the thought of those living greens turning, is she seducing me? I’ve a steaming bowl of wanton soup in front of me now, which I won’t finish, she’ll be eating it tomorrow reheated, and I’ll pick up her bus tickets from my rug.
She Leaves Antiperspirant Residue
On my bathrobe. It’s a one-size I purchased from a Salvation Army, the same one Magnum P.I. wore, I imagine. I bought it in Hawaii, too, and now I put it on after the shower and catch the scent from which I comprehend actual time-release. And I suspect she isn’t bothered by the word extreme when choosing the items she consumes. It’s all part of a tapestry of surreal negotiations of trust. It’s all part of a quilt of conscience she is making.
She Handles Extraordinary Impasses
With the skill of a faith healer. She embraces what another manufactures for themself and relates to that fabrication, which is only a contrivance in the personality of the Original. In this case the Original is her faith in the authenticity of that personality. That personality was manufactured from the start by the Original. And now she is castigated for not breaking through to an underpinning, not shattering the mirror she didn’t know she needed to shatter. But then she didn’t want to yet.
She Bakes Flourless Cakes
There are bags of pulverized everything on the shelves which she can use to make a cake. We wander opposite ends of a supermarket: I in the dim-lit bottles section, seeming to subsist on cheap red wine, while she in the vegetables selecting mounds of wet leafy greens. We will spend too much anyway, and I will make a fuss before the magic happens. She never makes a fuss until the magic is spent. Her fortitude is in the suspense. Her resolve lies somewhere between the magic and her imagination.
—M. D’Alessandro
M.D’Alessandro is a writer, teacher, publisher and printer. He edits the semiannual literary journal swap/concessions, and is the founder of bedouin books. He has been published in various journals and is the author of two books of poetry.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
An aspen or
two hundred and fifty blurred nymphae,
of these I dream in a coarse habit
and wake gasping,
convinced of the withering performed
by dew and a thousand sediments.
Shaken roughly at matins,
and rolling nearer the scorched logs,
you murmur sleepily, “This is only artifice.”
And adding after taking glasses
from the bedside table,
“Soon to burst above the mere:
an orange tongue of flame.”
—Harrison Montgomery
Harrison Montgomery is an undergraduate at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. He is studying poetry and music composition and is involved with the Kenyon Review.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
For most,
night was bleak,
day was sleep,
For him,
dark lit sky, same as it all
A single glare, and revolving glass
A bed warmth,
Through blackness,
Lying under,
A triumphant yellow,
For him,
night was light,
day was black.
For him,
blues were a loss,
whites were his home,
yellow a guide,
—Daniel Wallock
His creative non-fiction has published in San Jose State University’s The Bolt Magazine.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Standards
The dust of the standards that used to hold this body
There was always something here that talked and kept talking, that warmed its way around.
It used to make me believe
It used to make me believe that people were always supposed to evolve into something particular, something sound.
I wonder about that, now.
I wonder about whether the standards that used to apply to what a body turned into have weathered away, and whether the expectations have woven themselves a new frame?
I wonder how many other people feel the same way I do?
When the motions of time and the strength it takes to hold a body together find themselves twisted.
There have been times when I have been afraid I would break, or bend, or be useless.
I convinced myself over time that all I needed was a will strong enough.
Determination would fix everything.
I now think it is a matter of perspective. That those who have had to dig and restrain for the energy for life find themselves in a different place, in a different manner altogether, from those for whom life molded easily.
I think it is a matter of shape, circumstance, and beginnings. And they are different for everyone. Although for some, it is more tumultuous than others.
Trusting the Dark
Trusting the dark
Running into frames of uncertainty
Turning through the rapid motions of someplace I never thought I would be
What is the synonym of description?
When I have run through the gates, certain I knew my calling, only to find myself astonished by the lessons left.
There was a place I did not know, though I thought I had already been there.
The parameters were set in my head, I thought I knew the expectations.
What does one do when the form changes again? The form of how I walked through the mist, feeling the vapors mix themselves with my nerves, tantalizing the air through and around me. I had thought it would make better sense by now. I had born myself into the experience of being reformed, internally and externally. I knew it extended even more so and took shape in the air around.
At the time, I thought I had a glimpse of what the form would come to be. I thought I knew what to expect in time to come, not in direct vision, but in certainty of fearlessness and what the past had shown about the future. I guess I thought the past was going to indicate the future, or at least bring hope. I thought the past was a direct correlation for what the future would look like, in pain being used in purpose and wrong deeds illuminating freedom for others as it had for me.
Now I am in a tide that seems to stand still in time, but requires the energy of anticipating the moves I will need to stay in it. Even while it is not moving. It feels as though it may stay stationary for a time that I can’t predict, and I have to have the strength to churn it until it moves in a way that makes sense again. And the tide does not feel like the vapor had. It is a different season, or at least feels that way.
I am not sure whether the vapor changed, or my perception of it. Or at least the way that I walked with it in me and through me. It seemed like it would only solidify further and make better sense, but how it has felt has changed, and I’m not sure why.
—Lisa Wick
Lisa Wick is from Southern California, where she currently resides and works. She loves writing poetry, and is working on a novel. Lisa’s poetry has not before been published.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
White warriors posted in the wind,
arms moving like synchronized swimmers
to a symphony of corn husks and diesel engines.
I see them towering in the distance like watchful
giants of a fairy tale once told. I am so small
and insignificant when standing next to them,
these monoliths woven into the heartland’s quilted fields.
You laugh at my imagination, I am silly you say.
They are our instruments of servitude, our slavers
built in dirt. They are our prophets, our masters,
our gods divined of necessity.
Three arms that go round and round like a prayer
to a trinity, a hallmark of destiny-
too fast for Quixote, not fast enough for dead dinosaurs.
—Sonya N. Groves
Sonya Groves is a teacher of English and History in San Antonio. She has published a short story in the Abydos Education Journal and has poetry publications in La Noria, The Voices Project, Aries, and Cliterature. Also, she has been a conference presenter at the East Carolina University Multi-Cultural Literature Review Conference. Currently she is pursuing her Master’s degree in English at Our Lady of the Lake University.
