July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
These oppressively hot, humid nights,
alone
with my thoughts and the heat in this premature summer.
Thinking how friends continue to scatter,
progress, bloom
into adults.
And I’ve somehow failed to climb out
of the liminal tweens lifestyle,
eight years in the same city, vaguely grounded
yet stultified, underpaid, underwhelmed.
Balancing part-time work, half-heartedly
pursuing dreams, boyfriends,
life. Desperate for change
yet afraid to be hopeful. Treading water,
staying afloat but receding,
relinquishing days to inertia.
Wondering if I’m a traitor
to my sign. A Capricorn
is apparently industrious, ambitious, driven.
Yet we also do things on our own time.
Ah. I must be a late-bloomer, I am one of those
fragile, erratic breeds, prone to sickliness,
then unsuspecting growth spurts.
I’m subtly subverting tradition, waiting
to eclipse the heat, approach my own version of adulthood.
–Rachel Carbonell
Rachel Carbonell is a writer, artist and teacher living in Brooklyn, New York. She maintains a blog, and has been published in The Vagrant Literary Quarterly and accepted for publication to the shady side review and cliterature. When she is not writing or teaching, Rachel enjoys exploring NYC, biking, seeing live music and spending time with her friends and kitties.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Falling
falling
from a
height
is a kind of
f
light
where
your
desti
nation
is
your
self.
In The Spaces
(Why)
You can only speak your words (to me)
only in the spaces between
your utterances,
and (Why)
I can only write my words (to you)
only in the spaces between
my texts:
Do you know that I measure time
not by minutes, not by hours,
not by days or nights, but by the
duration of your glance?
And yet here we are, feeling intimacy
only in the way our backs touch,
our faces turning strange
not knowing whether to age or to
remain the same,
for our faces have not faced
since (when?).
If I dared to call out your name,
will you turn to me? Will you let me
be again? Or will you not hear me
because you perceive speech
not by words, not by phrases
not by sound, but by the
movement of my lips?
And you cannot see them,
because we love the way our backs touch.
It ends for us
not knowing whether to turn or
to remain this way,
for our faces have not faced
since (too long ago).
The Youth
And it bothers us how
those heroes, whose names
we couldn’t care less about
died for their mother
land
as if she ever did them any good.
Yes, we are children
with no navels, no mothers
who graced us with her milk
because she was too dry;
too incapable of nurturing.
In ancient Sparta, they
used to send weak offspring
to meet the elements.
These days we do that to our mother.
Gentle Things
I used to keep roses in my garden.
They were most wonderful:
luscious red petals
silky smooth against my fingers…
I also used to keep rabbits.
They were most gentle:
immaculate white creatures,
hopping about the yard;
free to taste the grass,
to smell the leaves…
but they only had eyes
for roses.
Surprisingly, they didn’t mind the thorns,
the risk of getting pierced was worth taking
for a taste of the nectar dripping
from red veins.
Obviously, I tried to stop them:
I carried the rabbits by their
hungry bellies,
and lifted them
to someplace else,
but they always returned
to where they’ve been,
gnawing and eating,
until what remained were
scraps of what was once
the crowning glory
of my garden.
My roses, killed by mere
gentle things…
Bonsai
Sturdy branches, destined
to grow tall, to bear fruit, to live life.
But the hand that feeds it takes from it
its destiny.
Oh, impaired child, what will she say
When your mother finds you,
Tiny and battered?
Oh, impaired child, what will you tell her
When she weeps for the death that you live?
Will you smile? Will you say you’re fine?
It’s a shame, but I think you will,
After all, you take pride in your
Bro
ken
limbs,
the ones disciplined
yet broken.
–Rina Caparras
Rina Caparras writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She is a senior student at the Ateneo de Manila University taking up Creative Writing. She also writes reviews for a local magazine.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Outside, herself again, effects of kill
and cure alleviated by the news,
she’s dancing early morning Braille grace notes
along the woodland ride. She pauses, high
on her consultant’s view, “Not visible,”
charmed by a ring-of-feathers fairy sign
against the broken stile. “Yon sparrow hawk,”
he answers to the question on her mind
as yet unasked; “her feeding post.” She knows
him from the local, captain’s chair, beer mug
above the bar; old gamekeeper, skin like
gnarled bark, wax jacket, corduroy, retired.
“Whole different world,” to poison, trap or shoot
all compromises to his grand design:
“I’d bide nest-side for hours, stock still. One day
she lighted on my gun, dark mantle, wing,
locked feet, mere inches from my gaze.” He peers
behind her fear-crazed eye and reads her pain,
admires her pulsing breast, life force within.
“I let her be that spring. Next year? Lord knows!”
–Peter Branson
Peter Branson has been published or accepted for publication by journals in Britain, USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Magma, The London Magazine, Iota, Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, The Recusant, South, The New Writer, Crannog, Raintown Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood, The Able Muse and Other Poetry.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
human sky
tendrils of flaxen wind dance
unbeknownst,
billows & curls into incandescent
orbs, blinded-
blinks, and heaves open
the mouth and its million raindrops,
faint caress of song lingers, a heavy fog;
and shoulder blades beg to beat
faster
to the tune of flight, arms flail solo-
a slow push and legs swim
amid stratus
as naked moons peek toward a sunrise,
hail intensifying the mien.
holiness hurts
night and her mortifying
caress,
beautiful lightening-
I am lonely child
deserted and small,
insignificant to your power,
crouched without morning’s touch.
–Christina Borgoyn
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
When you breathe,
I see the map materializing
like it’s a cold day in winter.
I pluck it from the air,
and I am finally able to hold distance in my hand.
It’s a delicate, beautiful flower,
though poisonous to ingest.
But when I set the flower on the road,
it blossoms into mileage⎯
millions of feet of choking vines
sprout between our feet.
And it occurs to me that you’re breathing
an hour into the future,
five away from me.
And I want nothing more
than to lie tangled naked in the vines
and swallow the distance
until it kills me
–Sirenna Blas
Sirenna Blas’ short story “Maps & Men” was published in the 2011 winter edition of the Rose & Thorn Journal. Her poem “Paradelle for the Poet” won first place in humorous and satirical poetry in Purdue University Calumet’s Stark-Tinkham writing contest, and “The Sky Swallows Us All” won second place in their short story category. She is a freelance nonfiction writer, as well as a peer tutor at Purdue Calumet’s Writing Center.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Dispersing Luck
April wind whips tumbleweeds
across the plains of Santa Fe.
Some wedge in barbed wire fences,
others bounce along I-25
like children playing hopscotch.
Maybe that is what happens
to the souls of the dead. They travel
unfettered, gather the detritus of life
as they journey from ocean
to mountain to desert.
What we call luck
might be what a soul grabs
from one person as it passes,
delivers to another on its way out of town,
the way tumbleweed disperses seeds
as it spins across the plains.
Since You Asked
You want to know why I don’t
watch the news. The anchor
lays out local stories the way
a casino dealer reveals
the house hand. Puppy attacked
by machete-wielding neighbor,
three children dead in house fire,
college lacrosse player murdered.
You want to know why I don’t
read the newspaper. Train derails
in India, more than 70 killed.
U.S. military dead in Afghanistan
hits 1,000. Robbers distract
victims at cash machines,
squirt them with feces
before stealing their money.
You want to know how I spend
my time. I listen to Simon and
Garfunkel in the car, read poetry
out loud in the evening,
line breaks punctuated
by the call and response
of songbirds in my back yard.
–Nina Bennett
Nina Bennett is the author of Forgotten Tears A Grandmother’s Journey Through Grief. In 2006 she was selected to participate in a master writer’s retreat with the poet laureate of Delaware, sponsored by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Nina’s poetry has appeared in publications including Drash:Northwest Mosaic, Pulse, Alehouse, Panache, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Smoking Poet, Oranges & Sardines, Philadelphia Stories, Pirene’s Fountain, The Broadkill Review, and the anthologies Mourning Sickness and Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS.
