July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
To wind that blows from better days
with the scent of mint and honeysuckle,
I thank you for this breath of fresh air
in weather long past prediction.
To sun that sets into the ocean
whose water does not dowse,
I warm my hands tonight
on the campfire you set today.
To rain that cleans and cools
the wounds and thirsts for more,
from cupped hands I drink
my limit of clear waterfall.
To all elements, all hungers,
may I learn to give what you need
and fair portion of what you want.
To the earth that bears us,
I mourn the scars of our legacy
but thank you for the home we share
atop your weathered body.
by Robert S. King
Robert S. King, a native Georgian, now lives in the mountains near Hayesville, NC. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Lullwater Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published three chapbooks (When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press 1976; Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications 1982; and The Traveller’s Tale, Whistle Press 1998). His full‐length collections are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both in 2nd editions from FutureCycle Press, 2012; and One Man’s Profit from Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
coffee ring residue
she said, lately i’m as comforting
as a cup of day-old, microwaved coffee
i told her, silly kitten – you don’t drink java
you’re missing the point
where were you saturday night?
why did you stumble home at 4:00 AM?
who were you with?
no one; no body (spoke Odysseus, the liar)
credit cards leave a paper trail
like little, extramarital breadcrumbs
she asked me, when was the last time
you were honest with yourself
or with me?
i shrugged and emptied myself into the drain
not my best
put the blue one on, she said
i like that one
she helps me
pull the windsor knot
taut
water on the stove
for coffee
don’t forget
cufflinks
i wasn’t feeling
my best
(not my best at all)
but she helps
me find the buttons
and keeps
my tie
straight
C Carol studied poetry under Diane Wakoski at Michigan State University and has been published in Empty Mirror (http://www.emptymirrorbooks.com/author/clcarol) and elsewhere.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
we were mistaken for sisters, two middle-school blondes,
glasses sliding down noses, volleying secrets
in whispers. winter storm clouds held the promise
of snow days; we crossed our fingers for blizzards.
years later, we sit in her parlor, discussing our lives.
we’ve forgotten much, but memories cut our minds
like dull knives – a butchery too eternal
to reconsider, too sweetly painful to pass by.
I drive away. the moon sags behind the sifting snow,
a frigid night so similar to the ones we used
to hope for together. old dreams are frozen through
from time and cold. what we need is a break in the weather.
by Katherine Vondy
Katherine Vondy is an LA-based writer and filmmaker. A 2009 resident writer at Wildacres, a 2012 resident artist at Starry Night and a 2013 artist-in-residence at the Vermont Studio Center, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Stickman Review, Toasted Cheese, Red River Review, Perigee, Dark Sky Magazine, The Oklahoma Review, Breakwater Review and short story anthology The Lover, the Lunatic and the Poet. Katherine earned a BA in English and Music from Amherst College and an MFA in Film & Television Production from the University of Southern California. Her blog of comedic mini-essays can be found at http://thewalkingdeadpan.tumblr.com/.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Fragments of Southwestern Youth
Stink beetles balance
beaks
on splintered porch.
Arizona daze,
San Francisco Peaks
sanctify.
Dragonflies flash blue
as jelly shoes.
Chicken-egg scoop
coop.
Sunflowers arch
rock-hunked roads
through ponderosa pine.
Jewelry-maker
neighbor, turquoise nuggets
machine drills, echoes.
Pine bough huts,
Sinagua potsherds,
black-on-white patterns
fragment underfoot;
daydreams dead awaken
earthen palms:
ontological monsoon.
No cell phone, no gps.
Sun out time: time-in
moon orb oozes behind
Mars Hill:
no ears ringing, no calls
from home or to home,
not in far-gone
forest of youth.
Visitor at Tsaile Lake
It’s dry as drought. A freckle-face cow startles the way, horns point tips to hip. Sun bleached tree limbs strew land all over the place like moo bones. Indian paint brush flame. Grasshoppers buzz the path, streak sand with dot lines, sashaying among piñon pine and juniper to a clearing. Clouds smile wisping turquoise sky, reflecting Tsaile Lake. Horsetails, four, dance lyrical. A pale pony, muscle-legs shades of sage, ignores, mane and tail, ink-black as raven wing shine, tendril a bellowing sky. A pitch-black horse, white splotched down its sides like a painted on saddle, skedaddles. Albino stallion, eyes lined pink, bucks. Hoofs tread coral sand amidst thickets of sea-green sagebrush: itch, itch, I itch, sneeze, wheeze. Wind blows a current to a reddish mare grazing a frenzy feed of native grass. All the wild horses I pass. Folks at lakeshore tug trout while bridal-white pelicans rise, rise. A truck of boys get stuck today–muck spins wheels, stop again, again spin, at lakes end. Navajo women in a pickup pull up, say: “Are you from around here?”
Wendy Sue Gist’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Dark Matter, New Plains Review, Oyez Review, Pif Magazine, Rio Grande Review, RipRap, The Chaffey Review, The Fourth River and Tulane Review for your consideration.
July 2013 | poetry
I shake the leash
hoping the vibrations
loosen your bladder
I hold you
over a bush
beside a hydrant
and next to a tree
yet you refuse
We keep climbing
the hill
We reach the top,
our home entangled
in the ghetto
below, you decide
you’re ready and
let loose a stream
of neon yellow,
a small puddle
trickling along the
sidewalk
You’ve finished
but we stand here
The wind forcing
air into my
nostrils, your nose
perked up
Both searching for
our scent in the
city surrounding
the hill
by Ryan Hammond
Ryan Hammond is previously unpublished.
July 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Let us lie
underneath a coffee stained sky
blend the brown of our skin with the brown of the earth.
Moist, fertilized, this is a reincarnation.
So that’s the poem, what do you think? He asks with half rhymes dangling from his tobacco tinted tongue. I shrug and frown that’s how New Yorkers respond. Feels like he wrote this before, serenaded an ex girlfriend who sat unaware of the effort it took him to come up with an ending. Yeah this is déjà vu. Dangerous déjà-poetics that paralyze right hand impulses but still we pop E pills, fill our E tanks with fuel for love. He was from the Boogie, I from Brooklyn, yet we spoke the same language. Keep reading.
I’m almost there.
Let us lie
among the singing crickets, crack their crispy green scales
during public love making sessions. God is watching
and she’s listening intently as we orchestrate nature.
We are the music.
His poetry is like the salsa songs I grew up on minus the congas and timbales, like hip hop legacies minus Run DMC, like Adidas shell tops minus the stripes, like the Apollo minus the lucky tree stump. Still it’s good background noise as we tweak. Its 2:15 in the morning, but my neighbors don’t sleep and neither do we. Pass me a cigarette, will ya?
I’m almost there.
Let us lie
in bed sheets that change colors, sweat through pores that change motives,
and penetrate tonight until tomorrow is born. One day we could be
lovers. But for now, I just want to count your goose bumps,
hundreds of them, and give each single one a reason to exist.
Newports shrink in mouth-aided bear hugs and ashes falls through gaps in the fire-escape. We stand there squinting as the sun taunts us with her bright slutiness. The darkness is almost over, paintings on the wall lopsided and his poetry subsided. “You should write about this moment”, I tell him. Love poems are overrated so we kiss, spit, and blink.
I’m still not in love. Go figure.
by Maria Billini
Maria Billini is a New York City born and bred poet with an MFA in poetry from The City College of New York. Previously her work has been published in Shakefist Magazine and the Promethean. She is currently working on three chapbooks, Beautiful Mentirosa, Cuchifrito Dreams and Gentleman Prefer Virginia Slims. Recently, she had the pleasure to perform in the Show N’ Tell Em showcase, Nuyorican Poets Café, MFA Reading Series at Bar 82 , the CUNY Turnstyle Reading Series, and the SpeakUP showcase at the Sofa Lounge.
