July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
A Meditation
weakness never goes out of the body, we only learn how to use it.
*
death is built into us, it’s better that way:
we already have enough debt to repay.
*
what we really want is touch,
although, for mankind, it will never be enough
Cafe Life
coffee cups cream-purling with a swirl.
walls, milkweed-green and gray-naked against the dull-burnt blaze. a capped chap in a raincoat; tongue-rough.
some spots on the jotted carte; flecks on a wet-cedar bough.
from some youthful corner:
a radiation of red and a blueprint-blue tint shooting from screens.
against the pane-brace:
bristlecone sprigs scrapping themselves square: The world still asking us to watch.
there is faith here, too: a thing of gunk-strung feathers. this cafe life is life itself:
the host of hope and loss.
–C. Dylan Bassett is a poet and artist from Las Vegas, NV.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that lead to pain,
Drawn out from the plants and weeds.
Delinquent in the autumn breeze.
Corridors of burlap love,
Common clothed in revelry.
Corridors that feed an urge
And milk it, drain it, constantly,
Then carve it, broken, on the street.
These corridors of death and wine,
Corridors of ragged breaths
And stencils on an evening sky.
Corridors that coax you in.
Corridors that spit you out.
Corridors that command a break,
From synapse wars and obscured eyes.
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that have no names
And corridors that do.
–Matt Medved
Matt Medved is a recent graduate from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he majored in journalism, minored in political science and had a concentration in creative writing. Matt has covered stories in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Korea and Australia in the form of hard news and narrative features. He traveled to Harare to cover the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential elections and has written extensively on South African street children and prison gangsters. Matt is currently pursuing degrees in international law and international affairs at George Washington University.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Timothy Dyson
Blood pressure is low today
she wears bunny rabbit slippers to work
her shoes in a sack
and last night came the call
from her sister in Shenandoah
when she bailed Bud out of jail
he never came back
After eight hours
running the bottle cap machine
five minutes to clean up
before stepping into a dream
about five days in Niagara in 1963
full of ice wine and strawberries
February love frozen as cream
Turning the corner
her daughter with a black eye
and her suitcase
meets her halfway
between dinner and disaster
they have not spoken for years
but this day is different
one of them needs some tenderness
the other starts walking faster
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by Christopher Brown
When did the waves reach the cities?
I wasn’t aware the tides could topple our temples.
Is this the end of narcissism? Of pride?
It is a possibility, yet such a negative thought.
A nomadic lifestyle thrives upon the ego.
Weakness is simply a doorway to failure.
This is knowledge spoken by the lips of children.
Yet, as life decrees so often, I thrive on hesitation.
Costly, self-destructive, ignorant hesitation.
Chances gone as the winds of change scream through my existence.
This endless ocean of black and white thought,
These eternal fields of extremist figurative speech,
They entangle me in a past my future can’t explain today.
I have hope, and that makes everything surreal.
It’s a shame that life survives on the antithesis of dreams.
Hope has no place in a realists environment.
Dreams are homeless and abandoned.
Where did my arrogance go?
Where has my pride fled to?
Is this the struggle I am destined to inherit?
Questions are floods,
And I’m lost in a desert.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
by George Ovitt
The ‘F’ Word
Waiting in line with my children at the market,
A woman cradles a phone against her ear and
Pronounces alto voce the word that daily fills
The air like jagged hail or a plague of frogs.
In this age of loud voices only the buzz saw
Of vulgarity is audible—softer words are lost.
When my mother would burn herself on the range
She hissed “darn” or, in her black moods, “drat,”
And even then she apologized, warning us
Against cheap talk and reminding us that words
Are gifts that we give to one another.
My father said “damn” each Thanksgiving,
When he would burn the turkey,
Otherwise he was silent, knowing, I suppose
In the way that he knew that words are betrayals.
In my own dark moments, I too say nothing,
Pouring into the silence my hopes and curses alike.
To the woman on line I mouthed a quiet “please”
To which she says, unsmiling, that I should fuck myself.
Marriage
On the social page each Sunday I scan the faces of the long-married.
Men with thick hair and wide lapels, with, I imagine, cigarette packs
In the starched pockets of their shirts, their new brides holding lilies
Or roses, wearing crosses on their thin necks, smiling into the future.
Sailors, soldiers—sixty years ago was the War—brides wooed on liberty,
Hasty weddings before shipping out, a way, I suppose, of betting on living;
As they have, see, here they are now, thicker, with tired eyes, as if this
Ancient face were a mask placed over the young and hopeful one,
As if the years hadn’t passed, the nights spent arguing or making love,
Pacing outside hospital rooms or sitting bored in church, taking long
Walks on empty beaches, remembering or trying to forget, growing
Apart from one another, growing apart, finally, from one’s self.
This moment, just now, sitting in the studio, squinting into the lights,
Pressed together, afraid—but who isn’t—of who you would become.
George Ovitt lives in Albuqueque with his family. He is an Army veteran and has worked as a cook, beer truck driver, and guitarist in a rock band. He still plays blues guitar, teaches high school, and writes short stories and poems.
April 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Blue Suns, Yellow Skies
At six, my sister claimed she remembered birth,
that moment the scalpel sliced across our mother’s abdomen
and pried open the flesh to expose
her miniature body held inside.
The first thing you know
is how cold the world feels,
she said, nestled inside a sleeping bag
covered with blankets, gripping
her stuffed lion,
You either have to find that warmth again
or try to forget it.
Maybe that’s why she curled into
her first boyfriend’s body
at fifteen, a question mark in darkness,
until she felt an oppressive heat,
kicked the covers off both their bodies,
and told him she needed to get out,
though when he threatened
to leave permanently, she only said, But I need,
I need, through tears.
Or perhaps it explains how her rage
started to match our mother’s
as they rolled on the kitchen floor,
clenching hair, slamming each other’s heads
against the wooden cupboards,
my sister crying out,
bitch, fuck-up, I hate you—
words my mother had slung
at her as long as she could remember—
red faced, scrunched and screaming
as each blow drove them farther from
that first trapped dependency.
I pick up one of the books she wrote
when she claimed her keen memory—
misspelled words scrawled in crayon
beneath suns colored blue and skies colored yellow,
and even the book itself, inverted,
so you had to turn it backwards to begin,
as if my sister always knew
that to understand anything,
you must distort your normal perceptions,
start at the end,
and painstakingly search for the beginning.
The Side Of The Road
A deer, writhing
by the side of the road,
neck arched up and twisting,
as if pinned by some invisible hand—
we stumble upon it
dumbfounded as we confront
its mashed organs,
a red juiced glaze
on the concrete.
The fur’s matted with blood,
torn apart like cloth ripped
open by a pair of urgent hands.
(Do all things have this dormant
force beneath surfaces,
waiting to explode?)
Grotesque,
hard to sustain even a glance,
which is why we look away,
avoid what’s inevitable,
though we can’t now,
can we?
The deer lifts
its head, mouth agape.
I didn’t expect silence,
thought it would scream
a cry akin to human grief.
What do we do?
You shrug. What is there to do
but leave it here to die?
I put my head on your shoulder.
(How many times have I sought
solace there?) I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I cry.
How can you turn away?
It’s not the deer anymore, is it?
Just look into the terror-stare of those
black eyes, the trembling
torso, immobile legs collapsed
like a puppet tossed aside—there will never
be a time when love is easy for us again.
I put my hand in yours, Please, Do I need to say it?
Do you need anymore proof
that we’re past the point of miracles?
There will be no resurrection today.
Please… You flinch, jerk
your hand from mine,
You can’t ask me to do that.
Perhaps you’re imagining
the grace of the deer in the woods
before all this, its body springing
from the slightest sound, its sprint
through the brush, leaves trampled
like petals scattered at a wedding march.
Perhaps you need to hold that image a moment
before you can reconcile
what must be done. But there’s no time,
we can’t let it linger. If you’ll just
hand me the gun, then I’ll do it.
I’ll shoot it for both of us.
