October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The Missing Poet’s Lounge
In memoriam Weldon Kees and Lew Welch
In the missing poets’ lounge, a sad man
Tickles the piano, key by cold key,
Thinking, all the time, of his escape plan.
He spreads his long fingers into a fan,
Drops a chord, exhales smoke. He wants to see
What he’s missing. Poet’s lounge, young sad men
Looking too cool. One watched since he began
Playing. He snapped his fingers far too quickly,
Thinking in double time. He had his own plan
For getting out, he knew. The second hand
Ticks loud. He strikes a note. Could all these be
Missing poets? The lounge seemed sad. Each man
Speaking only to themselves as they scanned
The room. Alone, each one was sure that he,
Alone, was thinking up some escape plan.
He trills a slow riff. He stops and stands.
He bows. The faces tell him he is free
Of the missing poet’s lounge. This sad man’s
Thinking all the time. His escape is planned.
by Mark J. Mitchell
A Literary Myth
A dry pen
rolls down the table.
It teeters, momently,
on the edge
then falls
turning gymnastically
and lands point
down in the carpet
exactly like
a sword in a stone.
by Mark J. Mitchell
Mark J. Mitchell studied writing at UC Santa Cruz under Raymond Carver, George Hitchcock and Barbara Hull. His work has appeared in various periodicals over the last thirty five years, as well as the anthologies Good Poems, American Places,Hunger Enough, and Line Drives. His chapbook, Three Visitors will be published by Negative Capability Press later this year and his novels, The Magic War and Knight Prisoner will be published in the coming months. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the documentarian and filmmaker Joan Juster. Currently he’s seeking gainful employment since poets are born and not paid.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
But did he find the tribe
spat out of rock
below the cousin clouds
with sounding conch shells
between their ears?
They feed on everything:
metals, birdsong, saffron,
until what’s out and in
seem twin and one
like the dance of lesser
and greater dreamtime.
Social as termites,
they raise tower upon
tower, projecting
a blind, spiral god;
vicious as hornets,
they cultivate venoms and
enemies to die of them.
There’s less blood
painting and head polo
than their fathers knew.
Customs evolve as
killing grows easier.
They’d almost rather
track evil spirits
to their inmost cells,
corner them in forests.
Their stories tell both
of gates and pits,
how one can seem
much like the other.
Armed with a language
they speak forward slowly,
liable to lies
and misconstructions,
tending at times
toward the grotesque,
but hopeful at last
of their waiting name.
by James Fowler
James Fowler teaches literature at the University of Central Arkansas. His poems have appeared in such journals as Poetry Quarterly, Rockhurst Review, The Hot Air Quarterly, Amoskeag, and Parting Gifts.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Rift Time
A crevice spilling seconds
into the endless cup,
a whorl of glass so fine
as the film of saliva over lips
spun in the gasp of a moment,
tongue tucking back into its cave—
the cool stop-flow exhale,
waiting, weighting,
the mass of time
evaporates from the flesh,
swirling in the tangled ether,
sprouting from rooted breath;
the clock unfolds between lovers’ teeth,
blooming into a flower, its face
the weeping mask of an instant,
its hands two warm, slick leaves
reaching through white picket fences
to conjoin in the space between.
by Ross Moretti
Gravity’s Arrow
Gravity carries only one arrow in his quiver,
a bolt of blackened cypress salvaged from fire,
tempered in the warm ashes of sorrow.
It is fletched with red feathers, plucked
from a falling dove dyed in blood and cherries.
Platinum-tipped, it shines in the sun,
and in the darkness drips a slick glimmer.
This is all he needs to bring the world down,
to bring the moon to her knees
and make her sway with the ocean tides.
One arrow, fed through with steel cable
that he keeps in a coil on his hip.
With this, he will seize you by the heel, Achilles,
and drag you back from the far shores of Troy,
sparing you the final grief of heroism.
by Ross Moretti
Excelsior, or Lover Lost to an Overdose
Cellophane tensions
swelling;
pearled intoxicants
mixed in the dark:
we pumped
everything you never had
into that syringe,
sealed with a kiss
over the needle.
I pierced you with the feather
and you took wing
in the psychotropic aftermath:
fluorescent eclipse and
nectared aurora.
Mid-flight, you realized
my gold foil betrayal,
pretty in the sun, but
insubstantial,
the brass knuckle of my love,
and you flew skyward
through frosted cloud
and filament air
to dash upon the knife-blade stars,
leaving me to crystallize
amongst the raining
celestial shards.
by Ross Moretti
Ross Moretti is a first-year graduate student at Stanford University. An aspiring poet who originally hails from New Jersey, he was published several times in his undergraduate literary magazine, Lafayette College’s The Marquis. He recently participated in a poetry reading with Matthew Dickman, in recognition of one of his poems in Lafayette College’s annual H. MacKnight Black poetry competition.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
She is
there.
The light
she deranges
is her
as she is, her-
self, there,
where she bends
and frets the sun.
Rubens,
you got it right.
A body’s weight
is weightless
there
where
it is all
weight,
where
it warps
the air.
by David Kann
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Café at Noon
A youth one might describe (if one noticed
him at all) as thin, delicate even, perhaps sensitive,
like a poet, or ascetic, like a monk,
steps into the midst of the afternoon
tables, his backpack laden
as one would expect of a young scholar.
The detonation, however, is a textbook
demonstration of pure physics. The shockwave
a wall of air compressed to the density of steel.
The phenomenon lasts less than a millisecond,
imperceptible to the mind.
Its effect on the body, profound.
The ones closest to the epicenter
are compressed so far beyond their physical
tolerances they explode,
are literally torn asunder.
In the aftermath, lumps of flesh
might be found up to a hundred meters
away. Flesh.
From the Old German fleisch,
as in the Word made flesh
as in the flesh sacrificed
for the atonement of sins
as in sins of the flesh.
by Eugene A. Melino
Coffee Shop on West Fourth & Mercer
Sitting in Swensen’s the lunch hour passed
I look up from my book black clouds unfurling
the plate glass window like a Gericault
all storm and swirl
sudden rain dousing the wet girls
I didn’t know how much I loved a storm
being dry and alone the place all to myself
quiet like a chapel the food an offering
the tepid coffee a libation
I never realized how much I loved chapels
hidden holy sanctuaries like the one in Antibes
where I saw the Guernica how I loved the screaming
horses the rage the sun the light the topless beaches
the girls bearing their breasts to the sun like desire didn’t matter
but desire was everything how I loved desire the ache and arc of it
forlorn and unrequited I lived to get my heart broken
the countless years spent falling in
and out of love I used to think how I wasted my life
but it was the best education
I like to count the women I made love to
not to keep score but to never forget each one
their bodies their love their charms
all I have left really so I count them every day
like a litany the first one that strange girl all arms
and legs how she liked walking in the cemetery
my arm around her waist so quiet and calm
I didn’t know how much I loved the wedge
of a woman’s hip in the cup of my palm
The rain sweeps across the emptied street
diminished Toyotas and Hondas wading along Mercer
their headlights like a funeral procession
for some silent era movie star
long reclusive but beloved in death
I never realized how much I missed American cars
the Electras and Eldorados Thunderbirds and Fairlanes
they lined the streets of my youth
stood background in all those pictures
my mother a beautiful young thing
my father looking handsome and heroic
my cousin Jim when he could still walk
our first college graduate poised and grinning
because he had the world on a string
had survived so much already
I never realized how much I loved those old songs
Sinatra on the stereo Saturday mornings
me sitting cross-legged on the floor a little boy
my father lounging long legged across
brand new Lionel trains deployed between us
slow on the turn don’t jump the track the best toy
ever with a headlight like a real diesel electric
I am the luckiest boy in the world
except the day President Kennedy is shot
no school no Popeye no I Love Lucy
Walter Cronkite so sad John Boy saluting his father
he was younger than me
I see myself in the clouded plate glass
still that same round face smiling at the lights
his grandfather leading him by the hand
flashing jostling circus fairway the clowns
the crowd the boy half running half skipping
tiny hand holding grandpa’s calloused finger
hanging on for dear life the bounding strides
I never realized how much I loved my grandfather
the black sheep his brothers called him
how he broke down our door that night
so drunk and angry at the world
grandma hiding with us when he found
her my father had to knock him down
I never realized how much I loved these people all
gone now common as salt strange as exotic birds
their hopes their sins their endless striving and falling
now the rain washes away all things cleansing
the world making it new and ready
by Eugene A. Melino
Eugene Melino lives and writes in New York City. He is currently a master class student at the Writers Studio, an independent creative writing school founded by the poet Philip Schultz. Eugene earned his graduate and undergraduate degrees at New York University, where he majored in English education. He also studied journalism, filmmaking, and art history. For many years, he worked as a corporate writer. These days, he devotes his writing efforts entirely to poetry.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
her wail so fiery
and tender all
a sugary bird
gone hoarse
sliced by guitars
surrounded by drums
a tussle
resurrecting memories of
nails cut and painted plum
head cocked just so
aimed at who else
glossy raven bangs
brushing above
seething indigo eyes
rolling over themselves
as they do now
while this precious song is
stolen from a gorge
two decades deep
when such things
fused my soft skull together
despite ditching and driving
hitting mock-one
at residential fifty
with this song
this song whose sounds
unfurl out of
my turd-yellow Datsun
like vapor
getting tangled in
every lucky tree
this precious loot
now exploited
by some little shit
half my age
making triple my salary
who figured out
the demographics of SUVs
by Lisa Kaitz
