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.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
He steps outside of his putty house
and stares at the midnight sun;
catches flurries
of pastel colored barnacles on his tongue.
Candy-coated cigarettes, puffed in
rings of lavender scented mist toward the stars.
The humans make their way through slush
and liquid concrete.
Golf cart garbage men
slip between
alleys and nail polish junkies lounge against
fence posts. Their chests are closed, sewed –
bits of stitching here – and there.
In his restaurant, teetering
over a silken sea,
the hearts cook in pots of oil, thick
and oozing. Sizzle! POP!
They hiss like lightning,
tremble with birdsong.
“Order Up!”
Hollow wooden waiters serve them, still
beating on icy plates.
Grapefruit-sized holes gape
in each patron’s chest.
Their noses sniff, perk; not seeing
but still, the smell of warmth, touch.
Flesh.
Roses on Valentine’s Day and love notes,
familiar raised lines and loops –
like braille, flattened
by starvation.
Pink blood
spills onto the clouds,
(Cumulonimbus)
as they gobble with paws and claws.
He watches, as he does every day,
through glasses of mantis shrimp eyes,
and waits for sunrise.
—Gabrielle Tyson
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Symmetry
I look up at your face and can see
that you’re a little worried, too.
I know all about your oh-so-green dietary plan,
but in this bar
there isn’t even a salad.
What I really want is buffalo wings.
I swallow hard and do my best to smile.
You frown at the menu and finally gesture
for the waitress to bring a pitcher.
A date doesn’t require food.
Beer is enough,
right?
We lace our fingers,
tense around the glasses.
We have everything else in common,
everybody is always saying.
Our scuffed green Converse touch
as our heads bob like springs on our necks.
I resist the urge to differ on purpose –
“Oh no, I hate watching football.
So violent!”
But, I like football.
And cars and hikes and kissing in the snow.
I don’t mention that last one.
Not yet.
You go on about Queen and Zeppelin
and I wonder at how your lips shape words.
And I hope the beer is enough.
Heather
She sits next to me in class.
I feel her Tiger’s Eyes study
the pink warmth crawling down my nape.
She lounges at her desk, legs crossed,
leans toward me
possessively.
Her fingers wrap around my arm
and I imagine the heat
of her skin branding a scar.
But it doesn’t.
Not yet.
Her smile is eager. Feral –
a predator’s seductive smirk.
A distinctly feminine scent lingers
in my throat; burns
sweetly.
“I like you,” she says.
It’s that easy.
—Gabrielle Tyson
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
The burly bouncer, seated comfortably on a barstool,
mumbled with a sigh of boredom that he needed some ID.
I told him that, most certainly, all of us have needs;
food, shelter, and clothing are the most basic needs.
Love, companionship, and sometimes just someone to lean on
are other important needs.
I told him I needed a beer and a restroom; not necessarily in that order.
For me, both of which were important needs.
Completely unflappable, he still needed some ID.
Telling him that he could probably satisfy this need
by looking in his wallet ended our philosophical discussion.
I pissed in the dark alleyway behind the bar,
and after taking a beer from the open storeroom,
ambled off into the still early evening.
It was Saturday night; Monday morning seemed to me
to be as relevant as the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin.
—Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is retired from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Benefits Office and has been a voracious reader for 60 years. He has had poetry and flash fiction published recently in Burningword Literary Journal, Drunk Monkeys, The Screech Owl, Crack The Spine, and Lake City Lights.
April 2014 | back-issues, poetry
Drizzle
A fine drizzle softens the air
falls whisper-light
an almost-rain to glaze tired grass
and hard, cracked earth.
It lifts scents, musty cave odors
we love with our primal selves.
Earth stirs, the mist soft as a lover’s breath.
She sighs, content.
Drizzle
A fine drizzle softens the air
and falls whisper-light,
an almost-rain
enough to glaze tired grass
and hard, cracked earth
in denser shades of green and brown.
It wakes scents musty with the odors of earth.
She stirs under the touch, soft as a lover’s
breath.
She sighs, content.
no. 922
8 feb 14
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—Janet Butler
Janet Butler lives in Alameda with Fulmi, a lovely Spaniel mix she rescued while living in central Italy. “Searching for Eden” was published by Finishing Line Press in January, 2012, “Upheaval” was one of three winning selections in Red Ochre Lit’s 2012 Chapbook Contest. She recently placed, for the third year, in the Berkeley Poets annual poetry contest. She is moderator of the monthly Poetry and Prose at the Blue Danube in Alameda, and is a member of the Frank Bette Center for the Arts, where she will teach a poetry course and Italian language class this spring.
