April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
The air has split
open, and
the townspeople
are dropping
in heaps.
They’re falling
asleep:
belly-down
on swings,
splayed on
the sun-specked
riverbank,
hunched over
on park benches.
Snores push
upwind, around
the brick
outhouse, onto
the streets. No
one’s awake to
notice.
Outside a house, sixteen tiny flags still line the front lawn,
leaning in the wind like sixteen tiny matadors
swaying, not stepping, on beat.
Inside, a baby sits before a silent television,
crumpling a newspaper in her fists just for the sound.
From afar, the town is a nova crackling,
almost vanishing, reappearing, on the horizon.
—Mia Hood
Mia Hood is a doctoral student and graduate instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Practice at Relay Graduate School of Education. She teaches teachers. Previously, she taught middle school students how to read better and write better. She keeps a blog called Dinosaur Sweaters.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
On a Chilled Wind
Winter comes to tell us to be still,
to stand and look out windows
onto landscapes scrubbed barren
by winds that scrape away the excess,
to watch snow laid down piece by piece
on the smallest twig
as scraps of the discarded, imperfections,
are gently smoothed into graceful curves
by chills that tingle toes, crisp ears,
push us back into places
where blankets and warm drinks
invite us to sit down.
What Once Was
An old photograph,
a startling scent,
a hesitant moment
of almost recognition
draws my finger tips
to the shallow pool
of that other time,
and it’s colder
than I remember,
the liquid clutches,
pulls to stay with me
for a moment,
loses its grip and falls,
sending ripples
through the memory
of the me that once was
who knew the you
that no longer exists.
there is a place
there is a place between
awake and conscious
that is not easily torn
a place encircling
intent and movement
that clings to stillness
a place connecting
forgiving and forgetting
that slips thoughts
where we get caught
in the light of dead stars
thawing
the first sighing movements
heralding a breeze,
yielding of the night’s
warbling notes
as winter’s first tear lets go,
brush of a reach
in the womb,
sparrow caught
in an updraft,
until a waver
brings a chance
and we can, for a grasp,
feel the earth rolling
—Jamie Lynn Heller
Poetry is Jamie Lynn Heller’s caffeine. She is a mother, wife, and high school counselor who gets up before the house starts to stir to write. She has pieces published or accepted at Prairie Schooner, Tule Review, The Main Street Rag, Noctua Review, Gargoyle, Earth’s Daughters, Flint Hills Review, I-70 review, Avocet, Storyteller Magazine, Little Balkans Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Diversion Press, KC Voices Magazine, KC Parent Magazine, The Whirlybird Anthology of Kansas City Writers, and many others.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Why can my life
from time to time
not fade
to black?
I long for a certain sort of reprieve,
for the baritone aspects
of a relief
that seems final,
but which you can come out of
once you’re ready
for more of
whatever the world
doles out.
The closest I’ve gotten
is an overslept
morning,
but even that
was filled with strange dreams,
irregular breathing
and a sharp diagonal
light. Still in bed
I look out my window,
the height from the street
momentarily lends
a mild vertigo.
I just want the night to last
a little longer,
I think,
trying to go back
to sleep
and failing.
—Anton Frost
Anton Frost has appeared in Parcel, Verdad, The Bacon Review, Grasslimb, and elsewhere. He lives in Grand Haven, Michigan.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
N’Djamena, Meaning ‘We Will Rest’
The day the looters broke into our house was the shot fired
as my father yelled and the fear that came with it, the window
darkened by the men looking in and the scuffing of sandals on
a packed-dirt yard, the grind of metal loosened, the voices
between walls, the bullet that never came, and the hack job that
never was by a drunken soldier wielding a machete under-
oiled and over-used on thickets by roads and rows of bodies.
I waited for an execution like at my friend’s house two years
before when a rebel was found hiding and forced to kneel,
a bullet to his brain. I waited against the wall seeking flatness,
transparency, hoping the shadows never recede. This was the end
of going to bed with no thought of fear, the beginning of chilled
sweats, the beginning of sounds signaling the departure of a place
once known—the sound of curtains riding wind, ceiling fans beating
air, the sound of opened bags and belongings strewn across the floor,
of receding taillights and a street littered with empty shells.
Origins
Sky dark when she goes to work
and dark when she returns, Fatima
picks her kids up from school
and picks her groceries up late
and picks herself up when the length
of day wears her. Her boys make faces
and talk with strangers, and they don’t know
the face of their father or fathers,
knowing only to eat, sleep, wake
the bus will get you soon,
come in the dinner gets cold,
don’t play ball in jeans on wet grass—
the stain will not come out. It’s all right,
it’s all right, she still sings at night,
folding laundry to the tune of a Bantu-
laced language and hoping that her children
will hear her as they sleep and wake up
speaking anything but English.
Twin
He had invited me over for coffee, and so we sat
sipping clear glasses—the way he always made it
syrup-sweet, sludge-thick so that it burns the throat.
We sat in his one-room mud house, on a flowered rug
shuttled across oceans and deserts to reach us
on the Saharan edge, windswept and forgotten.
I watched him heat coals in a brazier, place them
in an iron and hover his hand over its surface,
judge it ready to press fresh clothes.
I watched as he spread his shirt across the rug,
brush it with heat until it lost its wrinkles,
then fold it with a hand, his only good hand,
which had survived a botched birth, broken
in his brother’s wake and set by a marabout
tying it too tight with unskilled hands—
the arm still twisted eighteen years later,
a reminder of the mother who died giving him life
and the brother, unblemished, whose prospects
are as clear as the skies emptied of harmattan rain
when his own cloud over, doomed to watch others
drive the herds out in the morning or mount
the market trucks as hired hands. I know he irons
every Saturday. He sprinkles water on a pair of pants,
picks up the iron, brings it down, presses and repeats.
—Aaron Brown
Aaron is an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Maryland and the author of the poetry chapbook Winnower (2013) as well as the novella Bound (2012), both published by Wipf and Stock. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Warscapes, The Portland Review, North Central Review, Saint Katherine Review, The Penwood Review, Polaris, Illya’s Honey, and The Prairie Light Review.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Like a Grasshopper in a May Meadow
So much life,
so much green,
so much dew on my feet,
so much eye-squinting sunshine
and hot wafty
late morning melancholy
that keeps me from sailing
the effervescent puffs of white.
So much wanting
to leap and never
come down. So
much lush. So much
thick. So much rain.
So much not knowing
how brief a spring can be
and how little there is to be
gained by bouncing
from here to there
and, in no time at all,
becoming a wingless,
dry, empty thing
lifted by a mockery
of wind and so much
insignificance.
by Danny Earl Simmons
Ghazal: Brimstone
Sometimes I wonder if hell is less fire than brimstone.
Maybe it’s like taking your phone into the shower with you.
Her perfume is right where she left it, infused into her pillow
where it insists on bringing up old worn-out conversations.
Is there air enough in hell for the moaning of dirges
or is it more like staying up late for a little peace and quiet?
She was at the grocery store the other day picking out avocados.
I smile at the memory of guacamole and that she wasn’t really there.
I hope hell has horses for carrying lost souls through the thick black
to the pretty yellow bonfires and the warming of hands with old friends.
I wish she would have just slapped me hard and told me to go to hell.
Instead, all I have is this ugly red stain and the moldering of day after day.
by Danny Earl Simmons
Drama Queen
for Mat
One hand goes directly to his chest,
clutching. The other hand is outstretched,
beseeching something unknowable. He wobbles,
staggers backwards, collapses in a heap.
He listens for shouts of 9-1-1 and sirens,
hears none, begins to moan and pant.
He winces, glances sideways hoping
for a rescue and a little mouth-to-mouth.
Still alone, he struggles loudly to one knee
before allowing gravity to grab him
by the collar and introduce his face
to the cold reality of the hard gray ground.
The red of his life begins to pool,
rutilant beneath the ache in his head,
as a dizzy contentment warms
his drifting away into sleep.
He awakens gagging, squinting
against a blurry brightness, confused
by the high-pitched din of urgency
and his being unable to swallow,
then smiles around the hard plastic tube.
by Danny Earl Simmons
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His poems have appeared in a variety of journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Off the Coast, Shadow Road Quarterly, Grey Sparrow, and Verse Wisconsin.
January 2014 | back-issues, poetry
He gets confused sometimes—
gets up, walks a few steps,
–pauses–
looks blankly ahead
then turns around,
sits back down
slowly.
The doctor says it’s dementia;
it’s just the beginning, really.
It’s in his eyes, though:
everything.
He’s not forgotten
anything;
I’ve not, either—
not the way he sat
with me quietly
through the years:
my parents’ divorce,
failures
in efforts that could’ve given me
a way out,
losing my grandmother,
missed opportunities
that might’ve mattered.
He’s been there for all of it—
the last eleven years that settled me
into adulthood.
He’s graying now;
the black hair he had once
has lightened around his chin
and above his eyes.
He’s handsome as ever, though,
when he grins,
and that’s what makes it
alright—
his aging.
We’ve been happy
along the way,
me and Dylan.
He’s been a good dog.
by Rachel Nix
Rachel Nix is from Northwest Alabama. Despite an irrational fear of frogs, she’s declared herself pretty content with living in the boonies. Her previously published/forthcoming work can be found at Spillway, The Summerset Review, and Bop Dead City.
