July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Gravel
I should have let my hair go gray,
the color of plain river rocks,
which either sit or roll
with currents rolling them.
I can’t stand upon a stump
of old and worn eraser heads.
Walk/dissolve have equal signs
between the words,
between the efforts tied to them.
I swallow gravel spits of pills, dreaming
moss in blankets over aging brick—
undress myself while I still can.
Two surgeons spend the afternoon
trying not to break the news.
There’s nothing left that we can do:
three diseases in your back;
your shoulder’s shot, unfixable.
I tell myself it’s just a squirt gun;
bullets in my flesh aren’t real—
avoid by husband’s lowered eyes,
the sad reflection, sand in mine.
Both his knees are dribbling like basketballs.
He knows I’m now a water glass
slipping from his soapy hands.
Everyone is stuffing tears the size of plums,
even nurses I don’t know.
There’s no such thing as Holy Grail,
not here, today, not in this place.
I play the stone, swallow gravel carefully—
pretending it is only ice, that it will melt—
play the hose that saves the house
when flames are licking at the door.
by Janet I. Buck
Autumn Sometimes Comes in June
I am weak old grocery bags—
jealous of the Calla Lilies,
thick and strong, waving
green accouterments,
bulging scarlet saxophones.
I’m the anxious Chevy truck,
stalled at stop signs, sitting here.
Bulging at the wishing seams,
wanting to be whole again,
fondling the garden soil.
Beatitude grows paper thin, photos torn
too quickly from the album’s page—
the snow of scraps, now freezer burn
from hanging on, white knuckling.
Remember breaking chicken wings?
Giving up the bigger part, so one of us
who needed luck the very most
could sack it for a stormy day,
hold it in a cross of gold.
Sisterhood should be the wind behind a back.
I made that up, merely felt
the hint of breezes in my sleep.
I’m awake, curled up like going shrimp
beneath the blankets piled high,
the tail of a squeaking mouse,
its stringy fabric caught between the door and jamb.
Yesterday, I tried to walk, failed
with old batteries that disappoint a ticking clock.
I slipped on last year’s autumn leaves.
I’m broken and I break again
each time I sense I’m pepper flakes,
something to dislodge or dodge—
hornets at a barbecue.
Like lovers dumped, I stare at voids,
twist a curly lock of hair until it snaps.
Glued to silent telephones.
by Janet I. Buck
The Rocking Bench
We’re in a park where ducks
dip noses in a pond—
considering the songs of swans.
Pressed together on a bench,
stiff as terracotta pots,
I feel the cracks inside my bones.
Clouds of starched white taffeta
line an endless sky of slate.
It’s getting dark, darker than it’s ever been.
Two surgeons gave us awful news.
I dream of gophers digging holes,
crawling into all of them.
Facing this is more than
ogling double chins.
It means complete paralysis—
compared to how I penciled life.
I’m useless as wool cardigans
in summer heat, useless
as a spoon without a handle there.
My husband pats the rug burns
on my only knee. I flinch, retreat.
Just when does one ask graciously
to be the limping horse they shoot.
Brahms lullabies are crackling fires
on stereos. Embers of what used to be
are red with heat—pale as a peeled potato
headed for the boiling pot,
I can taste the ice cream cone
of leaving earth; any flavor’s doable.
I take a quarter from my purse,
whisper in my husband’s ear:
“Heads mean go; tails mean stay.”
He turns his face away from mine,
watches ivy scale a wall—
says he spots a hummingbird,
even where there are no flowers.
The silver circle on the ground
is one he plans to leave behind.
by Janet I. Buck
The Locker Room
Painted toes in neon thongs
shuffle through the locker room—
conversation: casual, a cranky child,
a manicure that drew a tiny spot of blood,
a cruise gone sour because of rain.
They spot my stump, a crayon stub,
pale peeled potato white beside
their legs of solid bronze.
Someone smacks the locker door,
my old prosthesis up against the edge of it.
Down it goes: a thunderbolt, echoes
of a hundred crystal goblets jostled off a tabletop.
They shatter, split, then crush again,
as women step all over this with gaping eyes.
No one has a broom that works, including me.
They stare at what is left of failing body parts.
There isn’t much unless they count
rows of scars, bags of skin, open sores,
bruises of deep burgundy.
I’m some disease they might have gotten,
but they didn’t. Fingers cross around the room.
I’m templates for a tragedy. Did you know
that poor girl has seven, count them, seven
joints replaced, on top of losing her leg.
What an inspirat…
They don’t bother whispering.
I can’t finish listening.
I sense their bouts of nausea—white-knuckling
the luck they own—I’m the kettle whistling dry
that ruins perfect glass-topped stoves.
My artificial leg makes noise with every step—
peach pits in disposal mouths of kitchen sinks.
I don’t mean to be the wilting centerpiece.
When I arrived the sun was out,
a lemon plopped across a cerulean sky.
As I leave, the clouds are gauze—
no tufts of sweet alyssum seeds
a quiet breeze will send away.
by Janet I. Buck
Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of three full-length collections of poetry. Her work has won numerous literary awards. Janet’s most recent work has appeared in BLUE PEPPER and Boston Literary Magazine; more poetry is scheduled for publication in forthcoming issues of Offcourse, Mistfit Magazine, Antiphon, PoetryBay, and other journals worldwide.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I went wandering again last night
through the submerged trees
caught in a summer flood
half delighting in their watery feet
and though the forest was submerged
by some trick of the dream
my path was clear and bright
a winding sunny way through
wild flowers and buzzing bees
the occasional dragon fly
zooming through emphatically
like a winged exclamation mark
delighting in its own beauty and speed
and as I walked, I wondered
where my path was leading
the dream was not clear
at this point — colours fused into green and blue
my walking became floating
my hands became leaves
and my feet moved like branches
caught underwater
flowing in a weedy elegance
all emotion channeled into being
nothing more than a tree
in the flooded forest
filled with the dream of light in water
fulfilled by being –
no purpose, no hesitation
just gratitude and
leaves in prayer
reaching upward
touching the sun
by Seamus Brady
Seamus Brady lives and works in Dublin Ireland. Publications include Dark Mountain Journal and in an upcoming edition of the Trumpeter Magazine (Deep Ecology).
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Track
This track is bloated with the grotesque and mad
in their low-wage dresses and top-dollar perfumes,
whoring their hearts for Vegas magic
as angels trumpet perverse songs of praise
for the thoroughbreds racing through the crimson mist.
But under these halogen skies
my faith is restored by the men of the raceway
and their eternal recklessness,
carrying oxygen tanks like embattled soldiers
stepping through a nuclear blast,
kissed by the sun’s flame
and sculpted by a forgotten God
into the last lineage of the holy and sane.
Gut
Under these gaslight lamps marauders plot and pivot and hustle,
starving for the invention of disorder,
speaking with corroded tongues. Indigo bubble vests
thick as whale blubber on the stoops they perch
amidst this decaying paradise of lost souls and poverty
and lucid dreams of journeys through place and time
where men like this cease to exist and are replaced
with inanimate objects born of crest and creed. For the quest
goes without saying and such is evident by the strollers
occupying the crumbled lots and resurrecting their walls
with disdain and merry and lies through the ears of those
not born with reserves nor a gambler’s eye
but rather see this conquering of lands as a black hole
that only grows deeper for the void of life it creates.
by Rit Bottorf
Rit Bottorf lives in Brooklyn, New York with his wife and daughter.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
the window is open
to the sound
of the water
sighing
the light
from the waning
moon
speaks softly
to the corner table
you left
a glass by
the kitchen sink
pale pink tracing
the line
where your lips
had been
by A.M. Clarke
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Everything
A woman in Frankfurt whisked me
off Taunusstrasse when I was eighteen,
vowing that if I bought her a drink,
we could go directly to her room upstairs
and “do everything.”
Though I knew little then of the expanse
being offered, what crisscrossed
the hitherto lofted mind were the likes
of bodice and orifice, syrup and stirrup,
cold cuts, no buts and eyes shut,
sauerkraut and thereabout,
tether, feather and fur.
So, after a shot each of Jägermeister,
when she asked did I want another,
I assured her that no, no, I was quite ready
to retire to her fine apartment
and do everything.
To which she replied,
as if we had no understanding at all,
that just one more beverage
would put her in the perfect mood.
In due course, I bought her Liebfraumilch
and Riesling; Schnapps; Sekt and Apfelwein;
Löwenbräu and Doppelbock;
Kirsch; Bellerhof and Bärenfang;
coffee and tea; soda-water with lime.
I kept paying even after it was clear
I would run out of deutsch marks long before
glimpsing even the mirage of an areola.
Kept paying, giddily at first,
then the way Vegas junketers do,
though in the end it was hard not to think
of my great aunts and uncles
behind all that barbed wire, how they
kept working and praying.
I had come here in particular
to ask big questions of history,
make inquiries of guilt and forgiveness.
Yet as I stumbled from Bar Karl-Heinz
into the dusk of a world still combing
its anger and shame, I saw that
even though everything
had stepmother eyes and woodcutter hands,
hair the color of Eva Braun’s before the bleach,
I wanted it,
wanted it fondling the buttons of a blouse
rummaged from a corpse, wanted it in a room
with lampshades and ashtrays, wanted it
drinking cut booze while doubling mine,
wanted it just for a moment,
but wanted it all.
Edith Did
During Geraldine Ferraro’s run for vice president
as a congresswoman from Queens in 1984,
one burly heckler on the campaign trail questioned
how Archie Bunker had ever elected her,
to which she replied, “He didn’t; Edith did.”
Which happened also to be my mother’s name,
and when Edith Baines took sidestage
in the top sitcom of the seventies, Edith Lang
sat right beside her, making it easy for us
to notice what they didn’t do: object or judge
or burst balloons, say this is what I want
or say no to their outrageous men,
hide the racing form from their fathers,
or miss Days of our Lives. Instead
they wore their brassieres, practiced being
unembarrassed, learned to type, played canasta,
and boiled the parts of meat that could be eaten
no other way. And they understood.
The black neighbors, the lesbian cousin,
their hairsprayed heads would not be pictured
on the book jacket for The Greatest Generation.
Their superpower was not invisibility,
but optimism; Fred and Ginger twirling in air,
that cigarette ash on top of the scrambled eggs
always pretending to be a cherry.
Long before all of which, the sailor my mother
had met in an ice cream parlor prewar
came back dirty, darkened, craving a son.
And although the odds clearly favored delivery of
another just like him—man with two separate hearts,
one to love her and one to deny her—
when he insisted she don his favorite nightgown
(the chiffon of lace yoke and floral applique),
with one dry eye and a cauldron of hope,
Edith did.
by Ken Haas
Ken’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Amarillo Bay, Alabama Literary Review, Caesura, The Cape Rock, The Coachella Review, Crack The Spine, Existere, Forge, Freshwater, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Healing Muse, Helix, Lullwater Review, Moon City Review, Natural Bridge, Pennsylvania English, Pisgah Review, Quiddity, Red Wheelbarrow, Rougarou, Salt Hill Journal, Sanskrit, Schuylkill Valley Journal Of The Arts, Soundings East, Spoon River Poetry Review, Squaw Valley Review, Cottonwood, Stickman Review, Studio One, Tattoo Highway, Whistling Shade, and Wild Violet. His poetry has been anthologized in The Place That Inhabits Us (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010) and the Marin Poetry Center Anthology (2012, 2013). Ken has participated in the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, where he studied with Bob Hass, Brenda Hillman, Dean Young, Lucille Clifton, and C.D. Wright, as well as numerous other workshops led by Sharon Olds, Dorianne Laux, Joe Millar, Ellen Bass, and Richard Jones.
July 2015 | back-issues, poetry
The Bedside Book of Antique Maps
We all fray and tear a bit,
our bodies more
and more like maps
with worn edges,
that crazy serpent that threatened
the world,
now a sketch
threatened by the margin’s
inward drift,
that erosion,
that whole world pushing back
into us.
We now know that eating lemon pie
with a sadist
was a mistake.
Each line we crossed seemed part
of some great voyage
or awakening
or initiation.
We were kids,
for Christ’s sake.
We assumed all hurt
was academic,
a break in the routine and open
for discussion.
How yellow are my teeth?
How monstrous can I get
before you’ll stop
loving me?
A Brief History of Philosophy
The rain comes down. The neon sign outside blinks its otherworldly “VACANCY.” No one notices the snake nest underneath the sign where the hiss of gas through the fabricated glass tube is both a voice of reason and a mistake. It happens this way in any small town where intellectuals meet in secret to compare notes. The rain continues. In the motel’s difficult mirrors, philosophers cut themselves shaving.
She Lives in a Terrible Blue Never
knowing that you and I are taking
a break to smoke and make
tuna salad for lunch.
There is a new juniper branch
therapy. A new ape.
A million new ways
for the world to shame a voice-
over actress into taking
a bigger role.
by Glen Armstrong
Glen Armstrong holds an MFA in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and teaches writing at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan. He edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has a new chapbook titled Set List (Bitchin Kitsch,) and two more scheduled for 2015: In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press.) His work has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Conduit and Cloudbank.
