July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
In dreams or in sweaty moments driving, the classroom—
clarity spins away like water carving out a canyon.
I do not know when mind sinks into past crevasses
if it is Rumpelstiltskin padding down the dark hall
outside my room, or Captain Hook who will play
forbidden games.
These ill spirits are not poured from a bottle.
The hands sliding like serpents under the covers
are not healing. I go away and become a new
born, sleek baby seal swimming in arctic
waters with my mother. I nurse at her nipple,
the milk fat, hot, thick, nourishing, as she
protects me from those who would fill me.
This is the ocean womb, where I can take refuge
in shadowed canyons, hidden, watery valleys.
Safe from those who take away my blanket,
Nazis with lugers aimed at my being, panzer
hands driving their muddy tracks over my body.
Corrupted beyond their concentration minds,
deeper into shadow’s valley, I go to earth’s
heart beneath salvation’s waves.
This is the secret place that I prepare.
Here I will grow big, grow strong.
Here I will prepare for reckoning’s resurrection.
Here I will build the russet fire.
Here I will eat the hearts of men.
Ralph Monday
Ralph Monday is an Associate Professor of English at Roane State Community College in Harriman, TN., where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing courses. In fall 2013 he had poems published in The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Fiction Week Literary Review, and was represented as the featured poet with 12 poems in the December issue of Poetry Repairs. In winter 2014 he had poems published in Dead Snakes. Summer 2014 will see a poem in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology of Best Present Day Poems. His work has appeared in publications such as The Phoenix, Bitter Creek Review, Full of Crow, Impressions, Kookamonga Square, Deep Waters, Jacket Magazine, The New Plains Review, New Liberties Review, Crack the Spine, The Camel Saloon, Dead Snakes, Pyrokinection, and Poetry Repairs. Poet of the week May, 2014 Poetry Super Highway. Forthcoming: Poems in Blood Moon Rising. His first book, Empty Houses and American Renditions will be published by Hen House Press in Fall 2014.
July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
i.
Raise a flag, cast a glance,
and it’s all over now.
ii.
It was me. I triggered the mechanism
that cut off my own hands.
iii.
When I had the chance,
I should have kissed her
with conviction.
Should’ve slipped her poems
on folded paper,
the sweat from my palm
still lingering on the creases.
Should’ve bought her flowers
or some similarly obscene gesture.
Or left vivid lipstick prints
in the soft angle of her breast.
iv.
If I’d known that was a singular moment,
I would have devoured her –
no question,
no hesitation blooming
like a tumor.
A fish-eye gaze on that basement room,
the only two people in existence.
v.
Even though your ignorance was not permission,
your silence not a gesture inside,
I smuggled her heart for a little while.
And your heart may burn with love for her,
but my touch left her scorched through the skin
so deeply the marks cannot be washed away.
Sarah Marchant
July 2014 | back-issues, poetry
My surgical gown is green,
the room lit in grey gothic gradients.
The anesthetic is strictly local, you don’t want me to feel it,
but you want me to know you’re making the changes, taking titanium instruments and probing my skull, leading scopes and needles on an excavation of my inner ears
because you’re a tourist. Science is just how you build your frequent flier miles, and
I’m your trip around the world.
I’ve been damselled, holed up in a stoney rook.
The master plan: induce a blue screen of death, and create a new architecture on the reboot. Take my kidneys, put them in the new guy! I’ll be Igor-52
All twenty seven of your personalities agree, I am the deformed iron clad heart of Victor Von Doom, in need of shock therapy.
The palpitations send my eyes rolling like bowling balls down the alley. I gag and gurgle with the thunder. From the inside toasted brains smell like lemon drops. It’s all good, you say, I’m just acting, the cake is a lie, the cake is a lie, the cake is a lie. I don’t know what that means!
It’s my fault you tell me, if only I wasn’t so beautiful, if only I gave you more
attention, love is action not words.
The acid bath bubbles, the electric eels spin, and Igor 17 slips his hand under your dress and you smile, lips sharp as scalpels. Lips like a wicked boomerang, your words always come back to haunt me no matter how many times I ignore them.
You want me to do the laundry and hand wash the beakers,
stare stupidly when you make out with the henchmen.
Igor-2 is picking his nose with a dust buster.
There’s a frat boy swagger hidden in his
broken sway. Above him, Geiger conjured
dreams, not quite sexual machines coiled
like gray dreadlocks.
“The internet is a series of tubes!” He guzzles.
I cannot die fast enough.
Wait. Stop. , I’ll say you’re beautiful ten times a day even when you return from a sweat soaked night of grave robbing and say I’m lying because you’re a flithy disgusting fat cow, and I promise not to argue the point anymore and never say you’re beautiful and just nod my head like all the other Igors “yeah, you’re a fat cow” a bovine freak of recombinant DNA with a gaping hole in its third stomach.
My sarcasm does not amuse.
A black rubber glove reaches
to pull the lever one more time.
Bound by steel bars on a cold white slab like a giant tic-tac, I do not break eye contact.
You can’t hold me forever, nothing holds Boris Karloff forever. I won’t see you in hell, but I’ll see you in the sequel.
David Arroyo
David Arroyo earned an M.A. from Florida State University, but this is the least interesting thing about him. He is days away from solving the anti-life equation. Upon doing so, he will smuggle the code subliminally through his yet to be published chapbook, Secret Identities.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Savannah, Georgia
Ralph was a painter of
miniatures—
miniature couches, mostly.
Ralph wore thimbles, like rings &
wore one too many watches, which is to say, two watches, one on each wrist &
sometimes if you listened closely, and you likely listened closely, you could hear that subtle subtle ticktock coming from his ankle. But he wouldn’t dare
cuff his khakis & you
wouldn’t dare drop a dime, half
accidentally, to snoop.
Ralph watched
creepshows and peepshows and couldn’t tell the difference
because really what’s the difference
& he only knew George, and George
knew everybody, yes everybody, and George: he made his own paper.
George’s car was only fancy from far; it was covered in duct tape &
the duct tape was covered in sludge,
the kind of sludge that comes from duct tape, & mud
the kind of mud, a tire
might kick up, or down, in Georgia.
Those willows were deceptively weepy.
They’d be just fine & so would Ralph.
Poor George, now that’s another story.
Train tracks & neon signs,
Open late
Open late
Open late.
Thimbles
And when the trampoline started to sag, & the sheds became infested with bats and/or the idea of bats, & when the chandelier became a warped and golden spider in its reflection in the spoon, and when the piano bench broke a tendon, and then another tendon, and the thimbles, all the thimbles fell, but did not break, & the banister bore splinters, and the cold from the window, turned the books that were up against the window, blue—that’s when they knew it was time to raise that glass, and strike that match, and burn it burn it burn it all. And wouldn’t it be something? Just to burn it all? Wouldn’t it be dangerous, not to?
—Molly Schulman
Molly Schulman is a poet; she was born in California; she grew up in New York; and now she lives in Georgia. She has many brothers! She has many sisters! She has a crush on most things. After receiving her BA in Creative Writing from The New School in 2009, she went on to work in the publishing industry as an assistant and in-house editor for Molly Friedrich at The Friedrich Agency. She left the agency in October 2013 to pursue her own writing. She is currently working on a book of prose poetry/performance piece called ONE-OF-SIX: A STORY IN HOUSES.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
In which the poet confesses a love too real
In words too plain
In which he recalls a social services waiting room,
stolen star wars action figures therein.
In which he laments his inability to time travel
In which he records his voice for his father imprisoned,
whom never relates the conditions thereof.
In which he boasts his ability to perfectly love rabbits
to her, whom he considers a perfect rabbit.
In which the poet attempts to strangle his heart shut
as it bleeds out into his words.
In which he confuses himself for Tom Petty
In which his father hangs a Skip Barber poster
while the poet sleeps on the floor of his office,
drinking tea and reading sutras beforehand
In which his child dies
In which the child’s mother sleeps with his best friend
while he spends three months in Spain learning to drink,
learning to dream in new languages.
In which his next lover shreds his passport
In which he performs yard work in exchange for drugs hard and soft
In which the FBI kicks the door in on the poet at six years old
In which a female FBI agent tucks the poet into bed
In which he holds his children and sings
In which he loves too much
In which he confesses he can’t stop
He is lost.
—Adam Tedesco
Adam Tedesco has been reading and writing poetry for a long time. Some of his poems and criticism have been published. He once ran to the top of the tallest building between Manhattan and Montreal. His lungs turned black.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Morning
The sun spins silk over
gold threaded hills that ebb
and roll and spill back onto themselves
while the morning mist lifts
like a loomed lace mantilla revealing
slivers of ecru, lavender, moss ~
that cast shadows of what
seem like a million horizons.
Cypress meander like drunken crusaders,
grapevines stand steadfast, shackled
in rows. Olive trees bend gnarled in low
genuflection, like women in church
who’ll both gossip and praise.
And on the ledge of a hillside basilica
the birds line up like notes on a staff
and open their throats to trill
morning lauds ~ as the sound
of a clock tower thrums overhead
and trumpets me into a glorious dawn.
The Roseate Scarf
It’s the one you bought
from the milliner just west
of the train station even though
it was August. We had paused
at the storefront to remove sand
from my shoes, a vanilla Coke
and a knish still in hand from the guy
who sold lunch out of a shopping
bag to the strollers and fishermen
on Sheepshead Bay. You threaded
the wool under my hair, wrapped it once
around my nape, drew me in like a cigarette
and exhaled my name upon the wind.
I came across the scarf again a week
or so before you left. It had weathered
sixty summers and countless stares
from others who thought it odd attire
for the time of year. And on your final
day at home I wheeled you down
the length of our sidewalk, seared
my name into your mind burnt black,
and wrapped you lovingly into its soft,
exquisite fringe.
Waltz With the Tempest
Some slammed their shutters
to keep out her fury, I all
but sent an invitation.
I welcomed her rigid ribs
pressed hard against mine,
the steady hum of roots
rocking beneath my feet.
Watched as leaves fell up
like kites toward heavy-lidded clouds
lined with soot, plump with rain.
I nodded to the knowing of
a rage that could shake the last
gasp of autumn between its teeth,
whip limbs like wet hair
across barked shoulders.
She bellowed like a baritone
down the necks of oaks,
their fingers twined and trussed
to frame the ghost-eyed moon.
—Brie Quartin
Brie has been published previously in Freshwater as both a poetry contest winner and general poet and is currently struggling to complete a collection of poems worthy of publishing as a chapbook.
