poetry | Burningword Literary Journal

Refracted Sonnets

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

Husband

The better part of an acre of mortgaged lawn

demarcated by circular driveway, gravel paths,

boardwalk to pool deck, islands of

rhododendron, aspidistra, pear and cherry.

Four hours of mowing, on a good day.

Something he has insisted upon doing himself.

Not a bad workout in the magnificent heat.

But his mind, insufficiently engaged,

tends to wander off into the dogwood shadows

to witness flashbacks of infidelity, examine conjugal scars.

He lurches into the azaleas on the still wet slope.

As he pulls the mower from the hedge, he observes

that his throttle hand has snatched

a fistful of velvety blossoms, cool, pink and damp.

Yard Work

Having mowed the lawns from front to back,

Sam finds himself seated upon the low rock wall,

under the inconstant sun. Well, and so, what now?

Past silent, a hawk passes from left to right.

Sam considers that several people have died or left him.

He hadn’t hung on their every word.

Is sitting upon a rock wall after mowing the same as

soaring above a grove of fir trees to the river?

Is missing someone the same as loving her?

A dog howls, in a yard across the expressway.

Coyote answers, shyly, from cover beyond the tracks.

It is daytime, after all. Confusing.

Hawk returns from river whence.

About now, she’d be bringing Sammy a glass of wine.

by Ted Jean

Ted is a recently retired carpenter. In the past year, his work has appeared in Pear Noir, where it has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, as well as DIAGRAM, Gargoyle, elimae, Magma, Blue Earth Review, twenty or more other publications.

On The Sad Height

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

I remember my childhood

late nights with my Father

talking for hours

more Him

than Me.

I miss those nights

spending time like

its your last two

dimes.

The urgency of the morals

told in a confession of

one Man’s life, intent

to create a Man of a

Son.

The details always blur

as if it mattered anyway

the story of a young Man

is always the

Wanderer.

The last we spoke

it was of your

Peace in Life

as we drank wine

at the tops of trees

lighting the stars

at Night.

I recall the strangest thing

as I was doing my wandering

just after the sun went down

I completely stopped, unaware

of the purpose for such a feeling;

an uneasy glow from my soul.

The Night turned to a

new dark I’d never seen

I imagine my subconscious

beaming like a dream;

my heart falling asleep.

a feeling so Pure

that it takes years

to feel anything

again.

My passion has suffered,

and my apologies are genuine

Father, what is a Man

once his wandering has

reached its end?

by Michael Golden

What Hunger Causes

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

Tick chicken, snapped bones with the marrow sucked out. America with stained lips, grinning. Florida tries to pull herself off the mainland, drifting into the Atlantic. A constellation falls from its proper place and collapses in the mind of Jupiter, lightning crushes a skull. We beat each-other with blunt objects and then fall forward into prisons where penance is expected but never given. Prisons are revolving until each prisoner reeks of freedom, makes the jailbird’s skin crawl. My limb departs like a parent. My skin unhinges like breakdown. I am six and stealing pencils to build fires, lead poison bloom. I am crossing over the border where the lockers hum and the dogs explode. A scissor cuts a sound from the air, like a chunk of flesh, it is cooked in a skillet until the pitch is golden and crispy. On a plate the sound is not thunder. On a table the sound is crashing into the porcelain beneath it, cracking the heirloom, ruining the dinner, bleeding into the cloth an orange stain.

by Sam Eliot

What Hunger Causes previously published in the Writebloody Press anthology, Aim for the Head.

The Rain

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

made the Snow in the

Mountain grow, and that

very graceful heart-shape vine

with heart-shaped leaves,

I believed called

Choke Weed

A delicate rose leaned

pink petals as in disbelief,

toward an unknown weed

with leaves the size of

dinner plates

by Carol Smallwood

Carol Smallwood co-edited (Molly Peacock, foreword) Women on Poetry: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing by Successful Women Poets (McFarland, 2012). Her poetry received a 2011 Pushcart nomination. Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing, with The Writer’s Chronicle editor as foreword writer is from (Key Publishing House, 2012)

The Second Hand

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

It happens sometimes

That I look up at the clock

Just when the second hand

Pauses between one tick

And another

So that everything seems to stand still

In that moment

And I have enough time

To wonder

If the clock has not stopped.

It is amazing how much

Can go through your mind

From one second to the next.

And while clearly

A life cannot be lived

In such a pause,

Requiring time

To stretch itself out,

Memory can,

Requiring no more

Than a spark of light

To give a sign

That contains the whole.

by Fred Skolnik

The Second Hand was first published in Oak Bend Review, vol. 1, Issue 4, Jan.-Feb. 2009. Fred Skolnik’s novel The Other Shore (Aqueous Books) has recently appeared and I have published stories in TriQuarterly, Minnetonka Review, Los Angeles Review, Prism Review, Gargoyle, Literary House Review, Words & Images, Third Coast, Polluto, Underground Voices, etc.

Jovan Vuksanovich

July 2012 | back-issues, poetry

deviant melody

I am a silver tongued devil
laughing shaman
thief of fire
provocateur
oracle of the absent present
conscience of the exception
wildflower seed
deviant melody
original voice
deep within this sacred body hidden
song ecstatic
irrational
erotic
whispering incantations
seductions
into every sleepy ear
pied piper of the delta tribes
uplifter of nightmare scenarios
nomadic madmen
defiant minstrel marauders of the unsaid
forever questing vigilant vagabond
serenading desert solitary
wandering exile in a garden of mortal flowers
agile dancer leaping precipices of abysmal absurdity
primordial pain pleasure principle
ancient lover of the infinite intimate
embracing prisoners fleeing the wilderness of echoes

dharma drums

anorexic idealists
anemic moralists
mummified dadaists
sterile surrealists
post modern hypochondriacs
mourning the death of an imaginary god