October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Café at Noon
A youth one might describe (if one noticed
him at all) as thin, delicate even, perhaps sensitive,
like a poet, or ascetic, like a monk,
steps into the midst of the afternoon
tables, his backpack laden
as one would expect of a young scholar.
The detonation, however, is a textbook
demonstration of pure physics. The shockwave
a wall of air compressed to the density of steel.
The phenomenon lasts less than a millisecond,
imperceptible to the mind.
Its effect on the body, profound.
The ones closest to the epicenter
are compressed so far beyond their physical
tolerances they explode,
are literally torn asunder.
In the aftermath, lumps of flesh
might be found up to a hundred meters
away. Flesh.
From the Old German fleisch,
as in the Word made flesh
as in the flesh sacrificed
for the atonement of sins
as in sins of the flesh.
by Eugene A. Melino
Coffee Shop on West Fourth & Mercer
Sitting in Swensen’s the lunch hour passed
I look up from my book black clouds unfurling
the plate glass window like a Gericault
all storm and swirl
sudden rain dousing the wet girls
I didn’t know how much I loved a storm
being dry and alone the place all to myself
quiet like a chapel the food an offering
the tepid coffee a libation
I never realized how much I loved chapels
hidden holy sanctuaries like the one in Antibes
where I saw the Guernica how I loved the screaming
horses the rage the sun the light the topless beaches
the girls bearing their breasts to the sun like desire didn’t matter
but desire was everything how I loved desire the ache and arc of it
forlorn and unrequited I lived to get my heart broken
the countless years spent falling in
and out of love I used to think how I wasted my life
but it was the best education
I like to count the women I made love to
not to keep score but to never forget each one
their bodies their love their charms
all I have left really so I count them every day
like a litany the first one that strange girl all arms
and legs how she liked walking in the cemetery
my arm around her waist so quiet and calm
I didn’t know how much I loved the wedge
of a woman’s hip in the cup of my palm
The rain sweeps across the emptied street
diminished Toyotas and Hondas wading along Mercer
their headlights like a funeral procession
for some silent era movie star
long reclusive but beloved in death
I never realized how much I missed American cars
the Electras and Eldorados Thunderbirds and Fairlanes
they lined the streets of my youth
stood background in all those pictures
my mother a beautiful young thing
my father looking handsome and heroic
my cousin Jim when he could still walk
our first college graduate poised and grinning
because he had the world on a string
had survived so much already
I never realized how much I loved those old songs
Sinatra on the stereo Saturday mornings
me sitting cross-legged on the floor a little boy
my father lounging long legged across
brand new Lionel trains deployed between us
slow on the turn don’t jump the track the best toy
ever with a headlight like a real diesel electric
I am the luckiest boy in the world
except the day President Kennedy is shot
no school no Popeye no I Love Lucy
Walter Cronkite so sad John Boy saluting his father
he was younger than me
I see myself in the clouded plate glass
still that same round face smiling at the lights
his grandfather leading him by the hand
flashing jostling circus fairway the clowns
the crowd the boy half running half skipping
tiny hand holding grandpa’s calloused finger
hanging on for dear life the bounding strides
I never realized how much I loved my grandfather
the black sheep his brothers called him
how he broke down our door that night
so drunk and angry at the world
grandma hiding with us when he found
her my father had to knock him down
I never realized how much I loved these people all
gone now common as salt strange as exotic birds
their hopes their sins their endless striving and falling
now the rain washes away all things cleansing
the world making it new and ready
by Eugene A. Melino
Eugene Melino lives and writes in New York City. He is currently a master class student at the Writers Studio, an independent creative writing school founded by the poet Philip Schultz. Eugene earned his graduate and undergraduate degrees at New York University, where he majored in English education. He also studied journalism, filmmaking, and art history. For many years, he worked as a corporate writer. These days, he devotes his writing efforts entirely to poetry.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
A Place For Everything (And Everything In Its Place)
Since it’s the time of day for tidying up
she takes pains to sort each of her words
into the appropriate category:
blue, red, yellow, sweet and sour, soft
and prickly, clean, dirty or just slightly off color.
Softly evocative, thuddingly utilitarian.
Love talk, hate speech, political diatribes,
rants, raves, angry spittle-flying denunciations,
baby-voiced endearments,
all put away now, well out of sight and mind.
And so we sit and stare at each other across
the dining room table, grimacing, shrugging –
blink hard once if you want the salt,
twice for pepper.
by Jeffrey Park
Long Flight
You just knew she’d
throw it a long, long way.
And she did.
It sailed out over the infield
further than all the others by
a full two meters
and stuck quivering
in the hard-packed sand
while the spectators clapped
and cheered and oohed
and aahed
but you could tell
really they were disheartened
by the sight of it
quivering like that in the
hard-packed sand
like a lightning rod
glaring up at a darkening sky
vibrating gently
to an approaching storm
unseen and quite
inescapable.
by Jeffrey Park
The Thrill Of The New
Why don’t you sit on down
and have a cup of coconut milk?
Get comfy, roll yourself up
in my Persian rug.
Try something new
for a change, like trimming the nail
on every second toe
just to see
what it feels like. Have sex
with a stranger
and tell him afterwards that you’re an elf
and you can prove it.
Buy a pack of chewing gum
and don’t wait for your change. Drive
a slow car
real fast.
Say something snide
about the person you love
and let your eyes show that this time
you really mean it.
by Jeffrey Park
Your Reflection, Distorted
I draw my dirty
claws
across the surface
of the water,
see your reflection
in the broken glass,
your hand
extended toward me.
No matter
how frantically I scrape
at your image,
you continue to smile
and oppress me
with your terrifying
generosity
of spirit.
by Jeffrey Park
Baltimore native Jeffrey Park currently lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school and teaches business English to adults. His latest poems have appeared in Requiem Magazine, Curio Poetry, Danse Macabre, scissors and spackle, Right Hand Pointing and elsewhere. Links to all of his work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
her wail so fiery
and tender all
a sugary bird
gone hoarse
sliced by guitars
surrounded by drums
a tussle
resurrecting memories of
nails cut and painted plum
head cocked just so
aimed at who else
glossy raven bangs
brushing above
seething indigo eyes
rolling over themselves
as they do now
while this precious song is
stolen from a gorge
two decades deep
when such things
fused my soft skull together
despite ditching and driving
hitting mock-one
at residential fifty
with this song
this song whose sounds
unfurl out of
my turd-yellow Datsun
like vapor
getting tangled in
every lucky tree
this precious loot
now exploited
by some little shit
half my age
making triple my salary
who figured out
the demographics of SUVs
by Lisa Kaitz
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
I did not know
the lighthouse was white;
it always seemed gray,
like the cold empty sea
to which it stood sentinel.
But, once, the sun danced
through the clouds
and the lighthouse beamed –
adagio of glow upon stone.
Soon, the tide ebbed;
bitter clouds closed in;
things returned to gray.
I am lonely, fearful of storms.
by Danny Earl Simmons
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Avatar Review, Summerset Review, Burningword, and Pirene’s Fountain.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Hitchhiker
I’d seen him an hour or so earlier,
outside of Medford, before the
rain set in, and I’d hunkered down
at a truck stop to ease the dizziness
in my mind and the queasiness of an
empty stomach, too many cigarettes.
Must have gotten a ride soon, then
passed me when I was off the road.
Here he was once again; suede coat
now soaked to a seal-skin sheen.
His dog was soaked too; black lab,
no leash, sitting next to the bedroll.
That was about all I took in before
eased the gas and onto the shoulder.
I don’t know what possessed me.
Normally I don’t pick up anyone.
Something about his reappearance
perplexed me and needed an answer.
It was kind of a closed-in, dreary day,
a day when you look for company,
good or bad, just to share the rain
and the half-full bottle on the seat.
He didn’t run to the truck when
I stopped a bit ahead of him,
as a young man might do, but
merely bent full from the waist,
retrieved his pack, tipped down
the brim of his hat a lower, and
started forward with a purpose.
The dog came too, of course,
perhaps adding to my belief
in this man’s native goodness;
I can usually rely on dog sense.
Whatever the reason, I decided
to pick up this soaked hitchhiker;
he and the dog grew larger in the
right hand mirror, as did the knife.
by Richard Hartwell
Leavings
Four – or is it five? – lonely leaves
left dangling from the apricot tree;
wrinkled, yellowed ancients of the
ravages of late fall, early winter.
Seems sort of forlorn to be the
last ones left hanging around
when all the others have left
hurriedly, in the wind, weaving
away to the far side of the yard.
Leaves and fruit bunch together,
huddled communally, windrows
against the base of the wall as if
in group therapy they organize
to rout the wind and restrain the
ravages of snow, rain, and ice.
by Richard Hartwell
Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember, the hormonially-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California, with his wife of thirty-six years (poor soul, her, not him), their disabled daughter, one of their sons and his ex-wife and their two children, and twelve cats. Yes, twelve! He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing poetry, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.
October 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Your mother attempts to clear the bushes
A first infant taste of lunacy
that made me think I could jump the
4-foot porch over the thick hedge
into the yard, scratchless, blameless.
Kid, you’ll be jumping any day now.
You’ll get to know them folks,
them fellas, them naysayers.
You’ll see what I mean:
Always the wide- mouthed expressions,
always, “Are you serious, kid?”
when you come up bleeding
and mount the porch again.
But had you cleared the bushes,
toes in grass, knees unscathed,
family behind you on the porch, cheering,
that’s when you’d have given up jumping.
So anyway, what I mean is, though it
pains me to say it: jump. I still do.
With any kind of luck, eventually
we’ll both make it over.
by Lauren Shows
“Free canoe. Not seaworthy.”
The ad suggested that it could be used
for a sandbox, a planter, decorative piece
but no one, not those you hated most
should peer out to sea from its unworthy hull.
“I will help you load it.” We made the call,
joking as we bobbed down SR 343
then pulled in, gravel skipping, pack of dogs barking
and walked up in the dusk and no-see-ums hover.
We should have listened. The mosquitoes grieved
over a still black pond. We bit back laughs
as the red-faced man said, “Ain’t good for shit,”
and scratched his chin, days and days unshaved.
What else can we do? As the sound of water
enters our ears, our shoes, the pockets of clothes
we unmoor it from the porch, and the rain abides.
Step in. Hope the old man knew he was wrong.
by Lauren Shows
