April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Chalisse Breeden
I scattered your ashes as you requested
on horseback
horse galloping in clapping rhythms
and with the free behind me
you asked for one verse of song
with all the love I could muster in my lungs
amazing grace
how sweet the sound
I sang loud enough for the wind to catch it and push it around
in hopes that along with it
it would take this pain u requested me not to feel
please save a wretch like you
like me
maybe i’ll tell myself you’re there in the violet hushes of the sunset
or that you’re watching behind the blinding heat of the sun
and that i hadn’t done what i had done
you hung on long enough for me to say the miscellaneous things
we held hands and glances before u let go of the world and me
you requested i make sure i never leave you to the shadows of misery
that i finish things when u grew weak
you didn’t want to hear and not see
or stare at mute things
or wobble without direction
or ache endlessly
and i promised but now this promise feels like murder to me
and i wish i would’ve thought to ask you to send peace
and mercy when you reach the King
now i’m on horse whose galloping
your ashes dancing in the wind ascending
the free behind as you requested of me
and a verse of song
amazing grace
please make a sound
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Mackenzie Slaughter
When I walk along the waterfront of west Michigan, I forget about west Michigan. I like that. I like the sense of limbo, that this convergence of sea and sand is neither all water, nor all land. Your will determines whether you choose to bounce on the beam of beach or edge into the surf. This is where I want my fresh corpse to be celebrated in true Viking fashion, my blazing body upon a wooden pyre, pushed off towards the horizon. It would be a funeral fit for Terry Malloy. You could be Terry Malloy. A contender. You could strike when the timing is right, block the blows bestowed you, and manage to rise to your feet when you’re a crumpled, bloodied mess.
No matter the performance of your roles, or the tenacity in your battles, your dream of immortality will asphyxiate under a marginal tombstone. Panic ensues. Run away. Road trip! We’ll raid the complacent bars of San Francisco; kneel before the spirit-dispensing altar. Our bartender, aglow, God-like in the neon light, fills up our empty mugs and souls. Desperate diversions rest in the tips of our cigarettes. In time, we’ll stagger intoxicated to Pacific Coast Highway One. To reach the summit, motions are of significance. Funny how such orchestration leads to a precipice. Behind Walgreens, in the dumpster, is where I want my ashes scattered. I want my bone cocaine to settle in the Galapagos oasis of solidified kitchen grease, mingle with the speckling of chicken bones. We all know the finality awaiting us – what does it matter?
Come, fellow lemming,
Mr. Caulfield saves those who
fall, not those who leap.
Mackenzie Slaughter is a student at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan. She refuses to let periods of drudgery smother her creative zest.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Elisabeth Dee
I get my best ideas while in the shower.
Plums are best when sweet and cold.
I faint at the sight of blood.
I don’t know what color my hair is,
I’ve heard it both ways.
I pick spiderwebs with bare fingers.
Trains mimic washing machines and lull me to sleep.
I always unintentionally burn the toast.
Insecurity haunts
Legs.
I hold a world record. Look it up.
I would have voted for Obama, if I was eighteen.
Unfortunately democracy only stems so far.
Nightly rituals are not to be broken;
Piece of chocolate, Italian soap.
I will listen to you, let you hit me,
Let you cry on my shoulder.
What are friends for?
I work to keep an open mind.
Laughter is like bells, shattering still air.
If I could, I would stand in sunshine and never move.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Brett Devlin
the moon smiles down from
his cold sky
the limbs of the oak
like the fingers of an
ancient witch
The dark night smells
of the earth as
the trees burn with the
colors of autumn
decompose
decay
dirt
crisp
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Megan Baxter
The Owl
I found one of the old night birds
in the trees above the sugar house, starving,
it refused the trap-killed mice I brought,
hunter, whistling weight in the dark.
I laid their bodies below the tree
until I came upon him, frozen
knocked from his perch by the wind,
hollowed, hardened by death and frost,
the thick black centers of his eyes
fixed past me, devouring the light.
The Rower
For Hannah, Age 15
You watch morning
come over the mountains
straining at the banks of night
as the shells
set out north up river,
breaking the surface ice of spring.
The hands blister and open
along the oar.
On the shores
we call out
as you pull into the final meter,
glowing with sweat,
blond as summer,
in the long light of sunrise
crowned by dark pine bows.
Megan Baxter works at a 40-acre organic farm in Vermont. A graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, she completed a BFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. She has been published in the Georgetown Review and was the runner-up in this year’s Indiana Review ½ 5K contest.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Standing Upon The Sands
I cast my sinker
Deep into depths
Fishing for instructive humanity,
Fishing in a sea
Of sweat and abuse,
I spend my leisure hours,
Suffering,
As we all suffer together.
Never Reached
1
Seems in moments clearly sighted,
Far from damnable pride,
Seems I wished away my life
Wistful wishes without
a) result
b) because
I seem,
Now beneath the lens of sixty,
Less lent to fancies guide
Who fleetingly flew me
Where ill won’t usher,
Less today than yesterday,
Yesterday less than before.
Like the stunted tree,
The bonsai,
I reached out roots
To blind clay walls,
Aged and misty,
Aged beyond my wise,
Coarse beyond my hopes,
Steeps stretching past centuries
Aged and ochre
Too tall to see over or beyond.
Oh wonder killing wish of thunder
Rolling off a sleeve
While a lightning pen writes
In nights dumb darkness
Wonder,
Will inky storms
Soar me away
To future world’s gray praise?
2
Man I know can
c) become.
I know it happened before.
History need not lie!
Great men show their force of “will”
Then die (most)
Saturated with self satisfaction
Or least,
Feeling the wealth of their accomplishment
Some few, few believers
Offering wreaths at their altars.
So why not wish myself away
Into efforts beyond my reach?
Mighty efforts
Like the late great did seek.
Why not seek,
Each effort always more
Than that which came before
Seeking further reaches of the mind
Hoping walls enclosure not so coarse
It stifles my amour?
3
Oh but why,
I want to know,
Do efforts tumble down,
Back down to days before reach
Beneath me at a lesser steep
Leaving me wishing a way up
Or worse,
Wondering why,
Why reach,
Why climb at all
When faced with oh,
So steep a wall.
Richard Jay Shelton was born in 1946 on a navy base in Coronado, California, but has lived most of his life in Los Angeles. The six poems selected are part of three larger works titled “Carefully Chosen Words,” “Pathetic Poetics,” and “Apathetic Poetics.” His poetry has appeared in The Chaffin Journal, The Poet’s Haven, The Eclectic Muse, Pulse Literary Journal, and is forthcoming in Down in the Dirt, The Homestead Review, and Willard & Maple.
