October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
for Susan
It’s the voice that puts
me to sleep,
something like a waltz,
the dancing to the end of love,
Leonard Cohen’s hoarse slow
tempo moving through the heart
like streets without names.
At night I stumble
into other people’s dreams.
I could simply leave
through the keyhole
but there is food
on the table,
a woman combing
her hair who looks
so much like
my first love.
— Vladimir Swirynsky
Vladimir’s 20th book of poetry Poetry: The Tedious Mining Of The Words is due out in October from New Kiev Publication.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
For the Ghost in My Bed
Negotiating the sheets, playing my feet —
an instinctive prelude! You’d been once
a wholly authentic person: fingernails, aquiline nose.
Now there’s a chilling patience
to you: half-exposed, half-sparkling.
We build our nest like a sleeve of jazz. There’s company
and a cake and some words no one
means or hears. We speak a language
of soft bullets, a code of violet rats. Where truth
is not dissolved it is kept fuzzy. You (my soft friend)
watch me eat. Tonight overflows
with stars and wishes not for
the good to start happening but for
the bad to finish. The scary may remain
with a person (however
discreet). I’d been lonely
a lot as god sent
very little. There are those
in this bleeding world who need
ritual but now I have you
my ghost and we let
what’s terminal coexist.
Love
The night of the party, at three am, nobody knows if you’re using the bathroom or lying in a ditch five hundred miles away. You call 911 and hear she’s leaving home after living alone for so many years. You call Sanctuary but you can’t use electricity today. Shabbat Shalom. The ditch looks like you can fit two or three people inside. Writing this means you’re not healthy anymore. It’s a pretty good party. Everyone’s drinking gin buckets. The last time they made gin buckets you lost your underwear.
— Christine Reilly
Christine Reilly lives in New York and teaches writing at the Collegiate School. She used to work at Tin House and Gotham Writers Workshop. Christine has been published in over fifty journals. She received my MFA from Sarah Lawrence and my BA from Bucknell.
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
1. A Steinbeck Aha
Peering upward from the apogee
of infinite soaring mirrors
I watch you stray far off course.
Thus is produced an aha moment
as luck exits the equation.
You’re exposed like a water lily
that floats on thick firmament.
I fix my focus on
your dusty gray work shirt
as you stoop to pull chickweed
from ever widening cracks
in the pavement.
A bitter wind whips waves—
the lights of Seaside
cauterize Monterey Bay.
2. Transmogrified
He was kept after school
due to acute insubordination.
He fought substantiation,
a train at the roundhouse
getting loaded with coal.
He weathered transmigration
across riven continents
to make a stand as a race
that in time gained ground.
He tossed formulas down
crevices of secret canyons,
learned his lessons
devoid of impressions.
In accordance his teacher
made him recite ABCs
backwards endlessly.
3. Hat Trick
My shoulders pressed firmly
against the back wall
of McFly’s nightclub
on Saturday night.
Capitalist ESPN beams
Giants battling Dodgers.
Budweiser ubiquitous,
the assembly salubrious,
will reach fever pitch
once music commences.
Then a commercial:
the black bear
bounces a basketball
between its hind legs
like a Harlem Globetrotter.
The best mudder won
the Derby this afternoon.
Subway cars ramble,
rattle in my ears
like bulletproof cobras.
Predatory
There are quite enough scallywags
and false prophets among us
to swindle any god
out of every drop of blood.
We evidence ostentatious laissez faire
connoisseurs of exotic wines and fruits
along the palatine boardwalks
that span massive galaxies.
Surrounded by scoundrels, would-be
devils and and ghouls we’d just as well
skedaddle, lest lay black tracks
while evaporating in a vapor trail.
Resonance is tested as resistance
evinced by the rooster’s boisterous
cock-a-doodle on a dim chilly morning
when coastal fog gives up the ghost.
— Thomas Piekarski
October 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Dream On
Crisp blue dress shirt, matching tie, black over the calf socks; that’s it?
“What do you think you’re doing, Davis? Get some pants on right now.”
“Don’t worry, sir,” I reply calmly, “I think this is one of those really weird dreams brought on by frustrations with my work situation, coupled with some unresolved sexual issues.” I don’t know where the heck that came from. It sounded like I was quoting lines from an article that would be found in one of those cheap tabloids at the grocery store checkout.
“One of us sure as hell better be dreaming or you might be looking for a new job,” he snorted.
Just then, Jennifer, one of my co-workers, walked up to us without a stitch of clothing on.
“I’ll take it from here, Mr. Paine, you see, this is my dream. Come along with me, Bill, I need some help getting some things from the supply room.”
Mr. Paine stomped off. Or rather, he tried to stomp off. It’s hard to stomp when you’re wearing flip-flops.
The Audition
Casting sent too many again. I’ve got parts for three extras and they send ten actors. I haven’t got time to audition each one. I’m getting too old for this. So, I’ll sift and winnow.
“Okay, who wants to go to bed with me tonight?”
Three hands shoot up.
“You three can leave. Next time try to keep your hormones under control. Alright, moving right along, who likes jelly donuts?”
Two hands slowly snake into the air.
“Good, you’re Cashier One and you’re Cashier Two.”
“Geez Louise,” a frustrated whisper drifts from the back.
“That’s it; you’re Irate Customer. We’re done here.”
— Roy Dorman
Roy Dorman is a retired from the University of Wisconsin-Benefits Office. He has been a voracious reader for almost 60 years. At the prompting of an old high school friend, himself a retired English teacher, Roy is now also a voracious writer.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
He passes the old place daily,
The abandoned mill where his grandfather
Worked, made his livelihood
And sense of his life, making wood
Products, until the job went elsewhere.
He thinks about the old man now,
Several times a day sometimes.
His own father checked out early,
Disappeared, followed a dream
That didn’t include family.
His grandfather took him in,
Raised him best he could.
Good years, no matter what,
No one could take that away.
Now, his grandfather dead,
He’s on his own at thirty-eight,
On the road five days a week,
Selling party favors, cheap trinkets
Made in Thailand and China.
Party hats and blowers, confetti,
Candles that won’t blow out,
Napkins and plates with clown motifs.
Crap, every last bit of it,
All made by little kids worked numb,
Who never wear party hats.
He passes the old mill now.
He’s popping pills to stay awake,
Other pills to stay sane and numb.
He rolls down the window to smell
The field, the creek, the old mill,
He wants to scream but he’s too tired.
He’s already late for his appointments.
Venders depend on him, his party favors.
Many celebrations await.
by Christopher Woods
Christopher Woods is a writer, teacher and photographer who lives in Houston and Chappell Hill, Texas. His published works include a prose collection, UNDER A RIVERBED SKY, and a book of stage monologues for actors, HEART SPEAK. He conducts creative writing workshops in Houston at The Women’s Institute. His photographs have appeared in many journals, with photo essays published in GLASGOW REVIEW, PUBLIC REPUBLIC, DEEP SOUTH and NARRATIVE MAGAZINE, among others. He has completed a darkly comedic novel, HEARTS IN THE DARK, about a sociopathic radio talk-show host. His photography can be seen in his online gallery – http://christopherwoods.zenfolio.com/
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
The Western Hemisphere is asleep
with one great eye cocked open
fastened to the burning stars that used
to guide women and men to their future
and at first glance one may mistake
it for dead and not be far wrong
the body collapsed in front of a barren
library huddled under incalculable layers
of coarse blankets and buffalo hides, with
one prehistoric hand trust bravely forth
clutching an ash stick that looks more
suited for fertility rituals than walking
a cigar burns incongruously out the
side of the fertile mouth with lips
that bloom like wild mustard through concrete
and just to the north the obscene mustache
cured by the smoke and in danger of
catching fire itself or disappearing
and the beard, a dangerous whirl of knotted
wool and shadows is littered with objects
gathered off the street, flecks of leaves
and black earth, dried and brittle remains
of lottery tickets, chards of shell and bone
pages torn ruefully from literary magazines
some still smoldering as if recently issued
from a smoke stack, and if you look deeper
an underground canopy teeming with dark
insectile faces, a cosmos of imaginary life
and death, ten thousand years of tearful
wondering, bald eagle feathers, discarded
rattlesnake skins petrified by the vacuous
terror and loneliness in the one good eye.
by Stephen Moore
Steve Moore formally studied theoretical physics and abstract mathematics but now has no time for such nonsense. Since college, he has wandered restlessly about North America and Europe, and has lived in such disreputable places as Liverpool, England; Carrboro, North Carolina and most recently Carrollton, Georgia where he currently resides with his family. He is a now full-time student of urban planning and father of two precocious kids. His free time is spent working on his poetry, short fiction and long unfinished novel. His poem, ‘Love in the Time of Vinyl Siding’ was recently published in the 2013 edition of Eclectic, the Arts and Literary Magazine of the University of West Georgia. His short story, ‘Incident at Oscuro’, appeared in The Fabulist’s 2010 anthology, and his poem, ‘The Bride’, was one of the winning entries in the 2009 Cardiff Academy International Poetry Contest.
