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.
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.
