January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Cormorants and Guillemots
Come with me to the Western waters
Where the waves lap a coarse kiss on the shore
And we can learn to love the silence
To give love and know the love of others.
For we are nothing, a scattering of dust
A fleeting spark of electricity;
And yet we feel the pull of the moon
Some sense of mystery, communion of souls
The subtle tugging of a distant star.
When sometimes our imagination leaps
To empathy, then we are unique
Embracing some other consciousness,
An elemental wildness deep within.
To some other alien heart betrothed,
Sensing the salt water on their beaks,
Their disingenuous curves of flight
The nuances of their transitory lives.
Then we are Cormorants and Guillemots
We are the brooding deep water whale
The swift to whom, the west wind whistles home
We are love, life indestructible,
Their grief is our grief, our souls are cleaved
As to the dreams of our sons, our daughters.
Masada
Here the soft flesh tone are tenderised
the assertive sprays, the gurgling spurts dry quickly
the haunches cook slowly on sun bleached stone;
see how the salty blood forms patterns, rivulets
from a warm, still wobbling heart?
At Masada the dying buried the dead
below circling vultures, eager to be known.
Resting on the high table of morality
the Hebrew God paused and blessed his own,
‘Blessed are the children slayers
the guardians of their sacred souls
securing death before dishonour.’
After the carnage only the sun gazed down
over the hillside, across the valley floor,
torpid in a summer heat wave to where,
the dead sea gazed back; unwavering.
—Jon Stocks
Jon Stocks is a UK based poet who has had work published in magazines worldwide. Recent credits include two nominations for the Pushcart prize and, in January 2011, the Mariner award for, ‘best of the best’ work in BwS magazine 2010. Recent poetry has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in The Montreal Review, The Dublin Literary Review, Candelabrum, The Coffee House magazine, The Journal, Burner, the Dawntreader, Coffee House, Pennine Platform, Littoral, Other Poetry, Manifold. Poetry Monthly, Harlequin, Tadeeb International (translated into Urdu), Taj Mahal review, Avacado, Involution, Interlude, and others.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Streets like threads woven into the city
Knot at the harbor
Am I moving uphill or down?
Echo of my footsteps
Centimes in my pocket tap rhythm
Lost in the working class maze
Homes expand and collapse
Expelling screaming ghosts
With every yawn and step upon uneven stones
Piss in the same alleys as Napoleon
The pavement slippery with allegory
History hunches my shoulders
With its random weight
The light slithers in my eyes
As I lay back on the street
In the swirling green absinthe smoke
Will no one call the shore patrol?
The kiosk is toppled
Words tumble and twist and escape
on the push of winter winds
The men and police stand and stare
Like puzzled insects with sharp claws
To be behead enemies and lovers
Qui nettoiera ce désordre ?
The summit of an amazing canvas
Dancing headlights shop windows and beer signs
These blend into a divine ray
What time is it?
Watch ticks loudly and wakes the workers
Gut burns like a star collapsing
The man with two heads pushes his bicycle
His words are mush mouthed distant
My lips moves to speak
But I am without language
We are the only two stars out tonight
And yet we are silent to another
—Kevin McCoy
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Seated in the waiting room at the doctor’s office,
I am filling out a questionnaire.
I come to a question I am not sure how to answer.
Do they really need to know that?
I put the pencil into my mouth and bite down.
The feeling of the smooth paint crunching
and then giving way to the wood underneath
brings me back in time to another question
I didn’t know how to answer.
A blank sheet sat in front of me
at the kitchen table.
I couldn’t concentrate with my mom
looking over my shoulder.
“You’ve got to put something down,
everyone wants to be something when they grow up.”
Cursing the stupid yellow no. 2 pencil
for leaving my paper blank,
I put it in my mouth and clamped down.
“Don’t chew on your pencil,” my mother said,
“you’ll get lead poisoning.”
I chomped on the pencil even harder.
Maybe I would get lead poisoning.
The doctors would know that’s what it was
because my molars would have lead stuck in them, like fillings.
And there would be yellow splinters between my teeth.
“How could this happen?” my mother would demand.
The doctor would answer,
“Normally kids her age masticate pencils
because they have overbearing mothers.”
I tried to give my mother a look
that resembled Dirty Harry
when he asked the punk if he felt lucky.
But she knew I was out of bullets
because she stayed there,
hovering like a vulture
waiting for its dinner to keel over.
I failed the assignment.
In the waiting room, the pencil bows
under the pressure of my teeth.
I can feel my mom looking over my shoulder,
waiting to see what words will fill the blank lines.
The answers are supposed to be confidential –
the nurse said so.
But she doesn’t know my mother.
—Kathy Carr
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
It Was Just a House
It was the year in which the plumbing went bad
That the beloved house, feeling perhaps neglected, began to reveal itself in ways
It had previously chosen to keep to itself, the dead, and the demented.
Redwood, granite, level-set oak floors and an emptied bedroom emanating puffs
of white smoke
Where the man who plowed the best break,
Seam
and furrow
Once lay,
Yellow teeth bared in the ineffable discomfort
Of Active Dying.
Where the gentlest woman had clawed
Him in the chest before being gentled off to a place notable for its nurses, her hair growing longer and whiter as out
Through the locks leaked the lady inside.
Observe (my brother and I) merely attempting to plug a leak above the kitchen sink.
In our Grandparents’ home.
It seemed to have sprung as a watery reminiscence from underneath
Green tile, the slab of cement, the redwood four by sixes.
Perhaps the flooding was — in truth — the final rusted fountain of memories we sought
To contain between our wet fingers
We couldn’t get at the pipes; each fat inch of wall so cemented — the facts
Obscured by the forgotten rose garden,
The desiccated orange tree, bark falling off in
surrendering strips
Distributing a few final white petals
About the bronzed lawn.
It was just a house–blessed with a solidity we each still sought
And rusted pipes elusive as cats. (What plumber
Could we have called?) Stopping ourselves short of prying up the floorboards,
Surreptitiously a large luminousness crept in: the leak sprung to provide proofs of what was essential if not entirely enduring.
Tall, ladylike poinsettias bursting crimson by the white double-hung dining room windows,
Big beamed redwood. Granite, horse-carted down from high mountains to pillar
The place.
Cigar smoke off the back porch, fresh squeezed lemonade, cherry pie cooling on the sill,
White bathrobes, Pendleton caps, bamboo fly rods, five irons, Saturday morning Pancakes from scratch and just the four of us in a tidy yellow kitchen.
No sound but the sound of batter bubbling quietly to itself.
Such a Fish
Do you remember the big trout
You caught that summer afternoon
Out on the little lake, hardly more than a
Pond of green and sweetly susurrous waters
In the mountain valley, we had
A small wind, a hot sun, an aluminum row boat your Dad
Could barely manage but
Our lines were tight
Your fine blonde hair lifted by that small wind
Suddenly your slender arms strove
As the rod doubled over and the fine feathery line
Ran like an excitement off the reel and all three hearts beat and once
He even leaped into our world,
Clear of the water
Red and silver and shining like someone’s future
When you were seven and I forty two and we had tight lines
When
Small girls could be happy for hours
After catching
Such a fish.
I Watch You Rise
Now, fifty summers behind me,
I come, at last, to worship you.
From my narrowed kitchen window
I watch you rising in ever higher,
Ever-reaching ranks, Tai Chi to the wind.
I see only now what has long been written:
That you leap back
Ever green, ever graceful
No matter how flattened
No matter how fierce or feral
The hammering of the wind;
That your roots snicker at stump grinder, axe,
Poison, pesticide, salt, even the casting of spells;
That excavation will be as foolish a pursuit
As imprisoning wind. You,
(One of three friends in winter,
Sanctuary from evil)
And the woman inside you
Await, a still field of fallen snow,
Your sole exuberance of flowering.
If but one fine fingerling
Of root remains
Up you jump:
Rising ineradicable and readied,
Supple and slender-leafed,
Reaching to hook the sky,
As I brew the morning coffee, bamboo.
—Ian D. Campbell
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
What shall comfort us creatures
and offer salve to our sorrow now?
Never those pubescent-speaking
military men who merely glance
in lieu of glaring. Never those
revolting, crippling contrivances
that never set eyes on spirits on
solid ground, nor infantries, trust-
worthy, uninformed in uniforms;
infectiously inexperienced.
Corruption begets corruptions,
atrocity reciprocates atrocity.
What prevailing evil winds &
complicitous joining of forces
might accomplish, alleviating
the longings of the pauperised
for despots to transfer loathing
into power, we will never come
to fully comprehend.
Hell! Even Mephistopheles lurks
in some shadow of doubt. Our
peripheral vision is veiled if we
fail to wince, hesitate to take
a breather, ruminate, and look at
the larger panoramic view.
Everything is labyrinthine.
All seems crooked, convoluted.
Nothing at all is ever deliberately
straight forward.
—Gregory Wm. Gunn
Gregory Wm. Gunn grew up in small towns throughout Ontario before moving to London in 1970. Writing for over thirty years, he is most passionate about poetry. To date, Mr. Gunn has had poems published in Inscribed Magazine, Green’s Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly, Yes, Poetry, Wordletting Magazine, Songs for Every Race, Ditch Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Steel Toe Review, Carcinogenic, The Light Ekphrasic, Cyclamens and Swords, et al. Also published are five collections of his selected poetry.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
There are some days when more strength is needed than others
and today is one of those days.
I do not know
why it happens but sometimes I awaken
and feel that Hell
is at the cusp of my bed,
And if I step too hastily I shall fall
for millions of miles
into the mouth of the nether-gods.
So I tiptoe around it.
I stand and I stretch
as though I have the limbs of a giant.
Yes, of a giant—but I shall need those limbs
today, because today is one of those days.
I forgo the oatmeal
and drink dragon’s blood instead,
“Yes, there it is,” I say, taking it from the cupboard,
in the canister behind the herbs
labeled The Blood of Dragons.
I tread lightly to the basin
and brush my teeth with Caligula’s ash.
I shower in the spittle
of an ancient deity (though choosing
one is always the difficult part).
I go to my closet and open the heavy doors hewn
from blackened wood and choose my armor.
For I must wear something that withstands
the fire of negativity;
the sharpness of stupid tongues;
the putrid mind; the living World.
I flank myself in an armor stitched
with Medusa’s hair,
and my helmet, usually made of wool or felt, is
now made from the bone
of Pegasus’s skull.
I go to my looking glass
and behold the wonder I have made
of myself.
I forgive the spectacle
of it all,
“Because I shall need it much,” I say.
I decide to forgo my vitamins
and down a handful of fingernails
pulled from the hand of Richard III.
This dissolves well, I find,
with a shot of Shakespeare’s bile.
Yes, I think, now I am ready
to face the day!
But before I pass over the threshold,
I stop and do the sign of the cross
thinking it can’t hurt. After all,
I shall need it much today.
—Gabriel “G” Garcia
