January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Phantom Limb
It still twinges
on cold nights,
and itches from imagined
insect bites.
Sometimes, I expect
to look and see it
still attached
to me.
I still pull blankets
over it at night,
and see its outline
beneath the cotton sheets.
I still feel
the blood coursing
through non-
existent capillaries.
I scratch
to find out
where it really is.
My nails find nothing
to scrabble at.
I am still counting
the hours
of separation:
How long
since amputa-
tion? It left
while I was asleep.
I am left
with echoes
of its departure.
It has preceded me
to the grave.
I am dying
by install-
ments.
Desert
(for Kristoffer Ian Villalino — the morning after, March 9, 1997)
it is too much for us, the fantasies,
the mirages founded on empty air,
the groping and walking in circles,
finding nothing solid in outstretched hands.
the purple tongue protruding through cracked lips
rasps the soft skin and rasps the soft skin off.
then boneless, the skeleton of lips
protests the passage through uncertain sands,
and reaches ends too tired to feel relief.
it is too much for us, the long dry coughs,
bringing nothing up but the salt of phlegms —
hands tearing at the throat to reach within —
we choke on hands that try to give us drink.
—Alexander N. Tan Jr., M.D.
Alexander N. Tan Jr.,M.D. graduated from the University of the City of Manila (Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila) with a Doctor of Medicine Degree. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy degree from Our Lady of Fatima University. He was a fellow at the 36th Dumaguete National Summer Writers’ Workshop (1997). His short stories and poems have been published in several literary journals throughout the Philippines and the United States. He is a member of MENSA Philippines. A practicing physician and physical therapist, he writes and lives in Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
What Are You Doing, Sheryl?
Moms unload their kids
for Kiddee Day on the midway.
Cheap rides to kill an afternoon
so hot us ride jockeys get away with stripping
down to muscle shirts. Nobody
shirtless on the job, that’s the rule.
We watch the moms watching us
behind their sunglasses. Bringing Johnny
back and back in line, making longer
conversation at us the longer
we let Johnny ride. Till it comes time
to run him back home, him screaming
he’d had way too much and wants more.
Near dusk just the moms and their best
girlfriends come strolling out of nowhere
all made up fresh. Nothing else that late
but stall till closing, set the ladies sidesaddle
on the merry-go-round, bum their smokes,
and let ‘em circle us all they need for free.
On the beach after we shut down,
we sit around a stick-fire,
passing 20s of malt liquor, inventing
who we are one lie at a time.
Laughing too loud and louder
the more we get twisted.
What are you doing, Sheryl? says
a tall man who’d walked up behind.
We all stand and puff our chests
like we’d defend her. Hubby
backs off weak-kneed on his own,
and Sheryl does right, walking away
and letting him chase her.
Another rule: If outside trouble finds you
don’t bring it home. There’s Sheryls
out there everywhere, some willing
to drive and try us again next town.
We don’t want no bad mess.
Though it’s fun sometimes to get cozy
and push up real close by.
The Pie Lady
Her pie wagon steamed early mornings
—far end of the midway—
with smells of home-baked sweets.
She chose me, of all the ride-jockeys
who schemed for a slice of her,
to drive her every few day for sacks of flour
and apples she could have managed
easily on her own. And we’d ride laughing,
two carnies shoved up in tight spaces
who never minded sitting close by.
I was just a kid, mostly, back then.
Saved up wages and bought new jeans,
light blue, almost white. Ruined them
first day with a smear of axel grease
across my thigh. Upon which the Pie Lady
gladly set to scrubbing me with a wet rag
and her own brand of miracle problem solver.
She worked and worked unstaining me.
Take ‘em off, she said and I did,
while the ovens bubbled with pie.
—Lowell Jaeger
As founding editor of Many Voices Press, Lowell Jaeger compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.
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
