July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The Study Of Latin
In Latin Club, we created togas
From bedsheets and translated Cicero,
Tales of the Punic Wars, how Caesar
Conquered all Gaul in three words.
Sang Dies Irae, Dies Ila.
The priest raised the chalice
To the crucifix over the altar
Where Jesus hung in ceaseless agony.
We stood, knelt, genuflected.
We blessed ourselves.
We, the Latin scholars, repeated
The beatitudes. Gloria in Excelsis.
The organ aired its tones
Like holy laundry.
In time the priest was turned around
Like a doll on a pedestal to face the congregation
And speak in their common tongue.
I’ve forgotten almost
All that Latin
Thinking how I could have
Studied Spanish and would now be able
To read Neruda in the original.
The Child Who Ate Words
Words.
Congealed, coruscated, corresponding
To a frozen branch overhanging barb wire
Blistered with teardrops. Or a redtail hawk soaring
Over winter-blasted pastures
Or the old oak flooring
Creaking its hundred year lament.
Vessels of phrases cascading
Like the lower falls of the Yellowstone
Or choked in retention ponds
To invite the drowning child
Or perpendicular as the hickories
Ragged as beggars. Or indiscreet
As a woman in a negligee
Watering the lilies.
Surrounded by taunters,
I licked my ice cream cone
A vocabulary of sweetness.
Acknowledged their cant,
You swallowed the dictionary
Vanilla, vermillion, vanquish,
Venomous, violent, vamoose.
Presentiment, palpable, precocious.
by Joan Colby
Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest–Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Girls in Plum Sweaters
what can girls in plum sweaters
be expected to know of loss
as they pass the shovel among friends
unorated letters on pretty stationary drift
in the wind – as earth hard-hits the coffin
inside sweatered pruning friend on white satin
outside they, fresh as dropped stitches
from a single skein of yarn
creating a forever hole
in matching plum sweaters,
dirt under fingernails
cold wind in their fresh washed hair
Whorled
Here you are from womb whirling to mountaintop majesty
Wandering, wondering, wondrous, laughing, slip-sliding
Infant dimple fingered hold on that slice of eternity
In the years tumble, tempest-joy-uncertain-clear trek
Always in soft certitude of the light of stars – sparkling
With a clear true flame – born under, carried within and
yours to share – from first blink of fathomless eyes
reflecting the mountaintop from where you came, from
where you now stand, all pinpointed celestial eternity behind
ahead and shimmering within you, this day, as each day
forward flooded filled with all – from first drop of sweet milk
to sting of bitter herbs upon the tongue, whirling, floating
aquamarined waters to iced-arctic whitened snowflakes
whirling from infant milestones to the crack of a bat vibrating-
beasts gentle lumbering, emotion-swirl beginnings, incomprehensible
endings rolled in burgeoning intellect -until your own
first shimmering thoughts coalesced writ- read
reflecting something beyond, yet within, familiared comfort-clear,
life-love flowing up each step of whirling, womb-walk,
footfall steadied with each tumbled year, to stand here today
on the mountaintop eyes filled fathomless deep as at that first blink at the
whirling tumbled tempested wonder of it all spread before, around
and within you in timeless kaleidoscopic shifts of endless configuration
Enjoy the journey and the unexpected vision of mountaintops without acme
Revel in strong legs to climb, clear eyes to see, and the wondered whirl writ
in unique imprimatur whorled in your infanted dimpled fingered tip reaching
from then mystic manifestation, whirling through the considered now, into
this mindful moment – breathe the clear cool air of your mountaintop of your
horizonless forever
by Pearl Ketover Prilik
Dr. Pearl Ketover Prilik is a freelance writer/psychoanalyst. She has had three non-fiction books published, posts poetry daily online, and has online publication credits.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I
And as it walks across the land
With bright sparking legs
The lightning leads the thunder
II
The static of lightning
Between two hands
And they cannot touch
A thing
III
The old oak tree still stands
Dark and slightly bent
From the crack of the lightning
IV
The animals know what it means
When the lightning comes
V
He strikes with lightning
Because then there is fear
Without a face
And with force
VI
It waits
Shooting among the clouds
The lightning baits its prey
As a cat
VII
As lightning does
Quick and brilliant
We have come
And we go
by A.M. Kennedy
A.M. Kennedy is a graduate of the University of South Florida. She lives in the perpetual sunshine of Florida where she enjoys writing a range of fiction from dystopian to horror. Occasionally she is aided by her two loveable muts and insidious feline.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
It won’t just be the handshake of the ocean. It will also be the empty string of the guitar. and a woman’s voice will sound like the skin of a turtle, wishing. She will not only be wishing but pregnant also. Along with a boy she will carry a marzipan apple and the island of Krk. They will travel out of her soft center to meet the busy sun.
by Gregory Zorko
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Victory
Couldn’t see.
Couldn’t move.
Paraplegic.
She kissed my body,
my clothes removed themselves,
he hummed “Crooked Teeth” while I cried silently
like I was at my own funeral,
wondering what I could have been,
how much time this was going to take.
She was going to be a writer, my mother would
hyperventilate, being the DJ to my death disco.
She was such a good girl, my dad would say,
not knowing that good
daughters don’t have threesomes.
I didn’t put up much of a fight,
just a few slurred Don’ts’, but don’t doesn’t mean won’t.
And I did, I really did.
I let them have their way with me like I was Thanksgiving dinner,
sweating turkey, panting gravy,
something that everyone could have a piece of.
I stared at the ceiling, 347 stars on one tile.
I couldn’t get my dad’s voice out of my head.
She was such a good girl.
I was such a good girl,
I am a good girl.
Jawed Decay
The happy days ended for you with your diagnosis
or maybe they ended years ago when your trailer
in St. Augustine burnt down,
when you had a kid and got married,
or when you started chewing the tobacco
that fast tracked you into chemo.
Remember how you pushed me into an ant hill
and my brother had to kick your ass?
You came over with purple eyes apologizing
for the bites,
bites that resembled the beginning stages
of the cancer spreading through your jaw.
If I had known then about your disease
I would have warned against using your jaw so much.
You could’ve saved it for more meaningful
conversations between you and your wife,
you and your baby daughter.
The happy days ended when you went
to the trusted family doctor who said you were fine,
he said there was nothing wrong with your jaw,
didn’t caution you to stop chewing
or quit smoking,
to go home instead of drive back to work,
or tell you that cancer is the leading killer of Americans
next to heart disease and stroke.
You carried on like any normal hypochondriac
for months before there was clearly something wrong
then you died in a hospital watching Happy Days,
wondering if you could have prevented this years ago
when you pushed me into that ant hill,
when you learned what sarcasm was,
when you started chewing.
by Jessica Farrell
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
your heart is a cracked accordion filling fast with salt – Patrick Rosal
My ex-wife called to tell me this.
Well, not exactly this. She called for money
I’d already paid. As an aside, in passing,
she added this: Our son cries.
He holds his face in his hands and sobs.
He stops by for food, cleansing, a couch
for sleeping on. He talks to himself.
He scratched the name “Jesus”
into his chest, says he’s fighting
the devil. He asked if he was adopted,
says Bob Marley is playing games
with his mind. His prescription
bottle’s full; he says the doctor is stupid.
Our son cries, she tells me in passing
after asking for money I’d already paid.
She cries, says she prays for magic.
I do not cry right there in front of her,
on the phone. Instead, I blink hard
and blink hard again.
by Danny Earl Simmons
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He has loved living in the Mid-Willamette Valley for over 30 years. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming in various journals such as Avatar Review, Summerset Review, The Smoking Poet, Toe Good Poetry, Pirene’s Fountain, and Burning Word. His published poems can be found at www.dannyearlsimmons.blogspot.com.
