Lauren Jackson, Silence

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

the velvet softness

of the silence of Winter

(of Death)

impresses itself

upon my ears.

an inexplicable humming;

a throbbing lack of sound

forces its way

into me.

Rich Murphy: Inkwell Dilemma 9-10

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

From Pools of Thou

Towers of Babel bubble and lisp

on the surface of the collective
unconscious.

Primeval swamps possess urges

and gaseous ideas worth wagging tonsils
about.

The first stories inspire folk

to scratch their heads, clean their ears,

and build endless variations on a theme.

Mudslinging around the jobs becomes in bad
taste.

A Moses takes two tablets and is called

a doctor of theology in the morning.

Later comes exegesis, born by mezzanines

and crying in the winds.

And by the time the thirteenth floors are
added

science ties tongues into knots.

Astronomy’s gibberish = **+~x8#?

while biochemistry !:!:! with the finest
whine

and most specific grunt.

Struggling to memorize evolution’s book and
verse

and astrology’s articulate map,

the laborers of the construction site give
up

easily for the down of muck

and mire’s simple nursery rhyme

while gods from amebas goose each higher.

When the first I-beam falls, it isn’t
long

before girders, computer chips,

and invisible fields of energy tumble.

The moan of myth and murk tugs

at the confidence of worker As, Bs, Cs

to replace the birth of tomorrow

with the desire for fantasy of sleep.

With pay checks and a stick the residents

of thin air prepare for the backlash

of species hibernation: shape lips and
blow.

Wee

My concern was always for the nobody, the man
who is lost in the shuffle, the man who is common, so ordinary,
that his presence is not even noticed. – Henry Miller

Primal flux feeds eyes to flashing neon
lights,

landmarks, and foot prints from a pool.

The gumballs of young folk lend
themselves

to big bubbles when the flavor is gone.

Parental golf and meat balls
concentrating

on a night on the town bulge in the
cheeks

of regret. Nets set to ensnare anything
current

moving hoist humans behind fishing
trawlers.

The rug pulled out from under feet
defines

itself when each ass flattens on the
earth,

a shot above the head. Somewhere between

a second’s two slashes, solar systems
pass

with the slapstick routines designed to
mimic

the thrills. Under the nose of the serious
ambush,

the metamorphosis drags the chimera
across

waves and particles, always more than groped
for.

Mused

[H]is Muse has whored with many before him. -
Harold Bloom

Along history’s dark street the boys

who beneath a lamp mistake lipstick

for a smile engage in scribbling.

The 21^st Century readers
continue

to balance themselves on the edge

of their seats for the girls to explain

how it is they have come to write.

Perhaps it involves a pimp and his harem.

A repressed number of Yeatses throw

themselves across their beds – and raise

their pens red with passion. Which ones

will speak for the neighborhood, their
ages,

a culture? Each calligrapher wakes to

the goodbye note on the bathroom mirror

and his pants rifled through. Even big

shot Shakespeare! Somewhere in the ink

each quill wiggler knows it and worries

when. This penguin attempts to embrace

his echo of the past but she is rolled

over and still smoking. May sisters

and daughters have better luck with love.

Credits include the 2008 Gival Press Poetry
Award for my book-length manuscript “Voyeur;” a first book The
Apple in the Monkey Tree; chapbooks Great
Grandfather, Family Secret, Hunting and
Pecking, and Phoems for Mobile Vices, Rescue Lines;
poems in Rolling Stone, Poetry, Grand Street, Trespass, The
View from Here, New Letters, Pank, Segue, Big Bridge, EOAGH,
Fact-Simile, foam:e, and Confrontation; and essays in
The International Journal of the Humanities, Journal of the
Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning,
Reconfigurations: A Journal for Poetics Poetry / Literature and
Culture, Fringe, and Journal of
Ecocriticism.

Howie Good: Now That the Buffalo Are Gone

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

THE YELLOW PENCIL

No matter how loud I shout, my voice doesn’t carry.
Only in old movies do the lovers escape on an ice floe. The night
supervisor, his face curiously flushed, whispers something I can’t
hear to the new girl working the line in the family pencil factory.
Later, the worn rubber nub of a no. 2 pencil erases what has just
been written.

NOW THAT THE BUFFALO ARE GONE

We were fighting the Indians in Florida. You said a
joke without a punchline isn’t a real joke. Why I always carry an
arrowhead in my pocket, I said. Children passed over the hill, a
coffin covered with wildflowers, but Thoreau only came out when
there was a fire downtown. The tall ships of the China trade
returned empty. It was a sign of something, like a face shaded by a
wide hat.

STILL BURNING

I pass an hour rearranging chunks of the alphabet.
Distant tramping rattles the window. I wave to our mailman. He
doesn’t wave back. The furniture scuttles sideways in any room the
squad enters. They take away the neighbor who mowed his grass at
night. Buildings are still burning. I should think about something
else – island women, naked to the waist, kneeling down to bathe
their wounded eyes in the river of dreams.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO

The farts of a hopped-up Mustang echo down the
street. Sam Houston could use a shot of mescal right about now. His
hand trembles like a courier with urgent news. Under the tent, the
strongman lifting a barbell grunts. He doesn’t wish to discuss
anymore the dissonant modernism of his early work. Agents in belted
raincoats watch the border from nearby doorways. Although the sun
is out, the nine-spotted ladybug crosses undetected.

Howie Good is the author of a full-length poetry collection, Lovesick, and 21 print and digital poetry chapbooks. With Dale Wisely, he is the co-founder of White Knuckle Press.

Ines Rivera Prosdocimi: Poems

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

Sitting in front of the pharmacy bar, he leans

his weight on the red countertop, one arm slung

over the top of his thigh, the other bumps

the stamp machine that promises to ring; tokens

he’ll use to pay the paper angels singing carols

down at him. Below the florescent light cutting

the tiled floor, the boxes within boxes, the small

thing he feels when the cotton of his hat

sinks down on his ears. He looks to the right, wanting

to see his face in the display case, alongside

the tiny porcelain figurine of a dog –

to be that small, that contained.

Brother Door

There are no hands tallying on the clock;

no train of interlocking gears pushing forth

when your palm slams hard, thrusting splinters

beneath the door to your room.

I gather pieces of glass, of mirror, imagine

your feet, the tiny silver blades in your soles, then look

through the key hole of this door and another and another,

until I can see: the pink of your mouth,

two porcelain birds still on your tongue.

Remember, when we were little, and bathing

together traced mole constellations across our backs?

Tonight, I’ll sleep at your door, rest at you feet.

Island lizards clawing the chipped white walls.

Rob Nadolski: No More

January 2011 | back-issues, poetry

No more hiding behind horsehair and wool,
thick as thieves. No more scratching obscenities into frosted
windows. No more teeth biting holes into our cheeks, chattering
away in a Morse code, damning the cold. Let us emerge from cabin
fever and pale skin. Let us absorb ultraviolet exaltation and
synthesize vitamin D.

A quick equinox, a simple solstice and we’ll
make a memory of bare foliage, colorless vistas, ice related death.
We’ll meet in a park and together burn our mittens, scorch tinsel
and garland glittering with smug holiday joy, shred furnace filters
and dance around all their flying bits.

Winter, you tried to kill me didn’t you? You
came without warning and brandished a predictable arsenal. Ah, but
your frost is no match for spring’s relentless onslaught of floral
plumage and sweet air, moist as pound cake.

No more. No more knit hats and heavy boots.
No more dead batteries and slick sidewalks. Let’s send microchips,
send satellite dishes spinning into the night. Let’s find reasons
to be lakefront, hillside, streetwise frontiersmen and
petticoat-clad pioneer women.

You are banished. Pack your things and scat.
May your exile be longer than elephant memory. Long and complete.
And while you’re away, we will be picnicking on checkered blankets,
oblivious as trees. We will be searing flesh, fish and mysterious
tubed meat on smoky grills. We’ll be pitching tents and raising
flags and launching rockets from bottles. We’ll be Japanese
gardening and beer gardening and laughing righteously.

So please, enjoy your respite. No more
breathing solids into the thin cosmos, no more zero visibility. Go
away and only come back when I’m ready for you.

Derelictions

October 2010 | back-issues, poetry

The Digital Conversion box in my head

Gets distracted by errant traffic upstairs.

Keith David: Narrator of all our lives,

pleasantly reciting all our yesterdays, for the right price.

Ken Burns all around. Ubiquitous. Educating Me.

Helping me think American.Now that the sun, having indeed set, I

no longer a true Englishman.Having learned to be a stars and stripes liberal. Now I know all about

Baseball

The civil war

our national forests

World War Two

Jazz

Abraham Lincoln

Louis Armstrong

The faces of critics and experts. Their wiseness.

Stanley Crouch’s football head.

The nasal whine of Gary Giddins: (His voice which reminds me of a kid I punched for no reason whatsoever in school one day, because the timbre of his enunciation just irritated me)

Thank you all!I now own the boxed set. The book. The soundtrack. It’s like I know Hank Gates and Simon Schama. Now I can say, sincerely, at cocktail parties, with a straight face, that the two greatest betrayals of the Twentieth Century were The Pact of Steel and Dylan at Newport. Now can we all hold hands

Shake our bling and sing

“This Land is Your Land!!”