July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Wine Tasting
Breathe,
but don’t inhale.
Taste and swish,
but don’t swallow.
The experience
lasts a moment,
then discarded
into a silver bucket.
So dignified,
so proper,
delicate ladies
with perfect hair
spitting blood
red mouthfuls.
Falling in Love Outside a Ryan Adams Concert
Into a swirl of smoke and music,
awkward chatter fades away.
Cigarette smoke mingles with,
Just put your arms around her already.
A woman laughs.
Pretense of scalped tickets
falls away, as we move closer,
pressed together in the rain.
by Laura Baker
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Cove
Where the
Black rock
Is soaked
In silver spray,
Moonlit
My guttural baritones
Are
Bowed strings of longing
Come in to my cove,
My black wings
Encircling
I cannot
Promise
A halo
But you and I, we
Could circle the fire
Let the howl
Of the wild
Rip the skin
From the waters
It will never
Tear the tears
From closed eyes
So please,
Burrow
And Settle
In the crook
The cradled bay
And I will set us in stone
If you will stay
Silence
There is no better sound;
the greatest opus
The caught breath
between thrusts
As her father calls
from beyond the walls
And a gulp slips away down a throat
The smoking gun
A peeling onion
and the tears of realisation
tearing out the truth talking noise clutter
It is guilt.
Pulled through in puppet strings
A thread long
A tight wire – line straight, an endless
unravelling of the mind inside
It is the music of tension,
the eternity of waiting
It is taking
the talking for a talking to
Away beyond the sidelines
Downstairs behind the kitchen door
and out through the garden, the garage,
the secret corner and the sly cigarette your father
will never show unto your mother
It is the monolith
in white block
One giant eraser ready
for the painting over
The one coat non drip glossing over a canvas
A cosmic napkin wiping the crumbing
of the messy eating of language
and the swirling amateur chaos of colour mixing
A palette trashed
A square punch to a whiteout
A collapse from a breakdown
And the blurring, the peaceful nothing
Of a hospital bed in morphine
With a sawn off shotgun
and a hearing all sewn up
A hearing
O, finally a hearing
without a judgement;
A hearing we don’t have to listen to.
by Greg Webster
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A Borrowed View
In a borrowed room
the hitchhikers
share a diminished view
of the city at dawn:
the sunrise fractured
by clouds
and the Waffle House sign
and of course the interstate.
With blurry eyes
they can’t fully see
or remember which direction
they came from
or where they want to go.
Almost before
this experience is over
it has been added
to the other experiences
so similar in all
the important ways
that they run together,
which wouldn’t be so bad
if this moment of confusion
weren’t the only thing
they could safely rely on.
The Red Cedar
Every year someone drowns
in this river
which is named
for the cedar leaves
coloring its water.
It is always
a college student,
a dreamer or
outcast or sometimes
just someone
coming home from
the bar too late
with too much
on their mind.
No one is ever
sure of what drew
them toward the water’s
edge. Perhaps the way
ducks huddle against
the bank or tree roots
hang over the water
like a step,
like an invitation
to some unknown world
where movement is
a given and progress
and destruction
are often the same.
by John Abbott
John Abbott is a writer, musician, and English instructor who lives with his wife and daughter in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Potomac Review, Georgetown Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Arcadia, Atticus Review, upstreet, Underground Voices, Fast Forward: A Collection of Flash Fiction, and many others. His first chapbook “There Should Be Signs Here” is forthcoming from Wormwood Chapbooks. For more information about his writing, please visit www.johnabbottauthor.com
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Strange Trials
If you must drown or burn, please burn.
At some point, you must choose a scent
(ascent, descent) and go with it.
I’ve never seen why we shouldn’t put our bodies through
strange trials for no reason other than that freedom
is knowing perfectly and exactly all the walls of your cell.
Everything survives flames. Imagine
touching the nonexistent
top of the sky, your body in ashes on the wind’s wings.
Revelation, like all sensations
is for one person, time and place only.
If it is true, as Moses knew,
that the desert is God’s country,
the void speaks volumes.
The Visitation
In the event of a visitation—
some presumably all-knowing being
coming down to chat—my protocol
is to first ask, Is there a God?
So when God Himself appeared to me, I asked this
and He replied, in His unmistakable voice, No.
The sky turned green and chairs
collapsed under people all across the city.
All I could do to demonstrate my faith was walk
out on a frozen lake, tiny cracks following
my every step. Laws are governed
by miracles, and these can never be broken.
This was in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico
late November. What an unbelievable name.
People had thrown rocks onto the ice
some heavy ones even broke partly through.
When I stepped back onto the dock, my hero’s
welcome consisted of a black sun-abandoned line
of trees standing behind a field of yellow
grass poking curiously out of the snow.
by Dustin Junkert
Dustin started writing in order to impress girls. Most girls aren’t all that impressed by writing, he has found. But here’s hoping. Dustin lives in Portland, OR. He recently had an essay published in the New York Times, and poems in The Journal, South Carolina Review, the Minnesota review, Weber, Georgetown Review, GW Review and New Delta Review.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
If you murder, if you need help, if you get sick, my parents say but what not insane? why not gay, why not lesbian- why not college drop out, religious drop out- out of morals out of luck—sorry, blessings — what we do, what we choose, merits love, merits obligation- but what you are is Christian, is nice, is ambitious and going to school and write a book, write a novel- Lord forbid you be complacent. Lord forbid they should know- out of chastity, out of virginity, out of love- out half a closet why not him? why not her? In his car, in her bed, in his bed- in his mouth in her bra, Blood rush, tongue rush, hip thrust, lip sucking, hair damp, body heat, in heat, treated like meat. why awkward? why not just say cock and curve and clit and clip your teeth against his throat, head thrown back. back arched again-eyes closed again, tipsy again? curious again, happy again—
Passion. and harlot and scarlet letter, and floozy and slut and whore mongering temptress and in love again– and casual again. with consent again. Love won’t cover this again- Don’t have sex they say, don’t even think gay is okay they say, the Bible they say and listen they say. and yes sir and ma’am I say
my mind in the car, in his car in her car, the shoeprint on the ceiling of my car. They’ll love their kids no matter what, they say– they don’t know what what is, I say.
by Amanda Ramirez
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Thousands of leaves scatter toward us,
New Year’s confetti.
Icicles—test tubes,
bruised apples—a baby’s beating heart.
A needle pokes in and out in and out
sewing your name.
This is the season in between seasons.
Our paddles cut through water,
reminds me of my mother’s porridge
thick, lumpy, never the same consistency.
Your fishing line jerks, the fish escapes.
Your spinner stuck to a tree branch.
We had banged on the rack of bones that
was the canoe’s chest.
Mice ran out,
tiny blind bodies clinging to their mother’s
nipples, naked in the presence of the Red-Tailed
Hawk.
This is the funnel of nature.
I’m swept up between The Valley,
her hips straddling me
the explosions of artillery
from the Gap sound.
I feel the contractions
before she gives birth.
The earth’s blood pools
beneath my feet.
by Sarah Grodzinski
