October 2019 | Best of Net nominee, nonfiction, poetry
Intersection
I.
He looks like a more drunk, shorter Santa Claus, minus the charm & good cheer
except he’s got a fresh gash under his left eye that’s bleeding Christmas red & every word from his mouth is buckets, & I mean buckets, of cheap fifths of gin. This white homeless man, first asking then demanding a dollar from me & the woman I love in front of the pharmacy on the corner of 8th & University. I raise my hand, silent apology offered
as we move toward the door to find a birthday card for a friend. It’s people like you,
he says, catapulting his five-foot-four-and-a-half-inch frame into a monument of self-
righteous fury, and I’m talking to YOU, he barks the spit-laced words, calloused index finger nearly touching the raw umber hue of my fiancée’s clenched jaw—You’re not even
human, he says, you fucking monkey.
II.
I knock him the fuck out—feel the sting
in my index & middle knuckles, relish
that crunch from when I sledgehammered
his jaw. His face becomes Mr. O’Reilly
telling me to stay out of trouble when
I came back to visit freshman year, it
becomes the mutiny of my body on
a dark street passing a man in a low-
pulled hoodie, it becomes my father’s
slight accent & my fifth grade friends
who giggled whenever he said the word
womens, it becomes my deeply buried
relief at knowing a cop protects me,
the time I carried my drunk hallmate
home in college, held her hair back
while she threw up for three hours, how
a hallway of mostly white faces still
assumes I fucked her.
III.
When I write the story
in my head, I am always
the hero. In the old ones,
I was always the victim.
IV.
I easily have twenty pounds of muscle on this dude, not to mention
thirty years, seven inches, & one less extended tour at war—
not to mention enough light-skinned privilege of my own, enough
class benefit-of-the-doubt. I could pummel him into a coma
with a gang of NYPD officers nearby, explain why & have them chuckle,
nod, & say, Don’t worry, pal. We get it. Just clean up afterwards.
V.
He follows us, my love in tears, as she retreats into the closest aisle.
I turn & face him: You just called my future wife a ‘monkey.’ Why?
You’re better than that. Imagine someone said that to a person
you love. And his eyes suddenly arrive—no longer
in Vietnam or his uncle’s basement in fourth grade chained
to a radiator or three decades’ worth of park benches—histrionic tears
start to drown the haphazard whiskers on his ruddy cheeks, as he pulls
sheets upon sheets of stolen frozen crabmeat from his tattered backpack,
his arms extended to her, offering them up as penance. The irony,
the allegory of this white man offering cold seafood to a Black woman
with a shellfish allergy.
VI.
A broken man has bullied the woman I love & anything I do will make me his bully.
I ask her, What would Darnell or Maurice do? What would Dr. King do? What would a ‘good man’ do? What should I have done? And again, the world demands answers from her but then mutes her response, silent as her voice in this poem, asking her to answer for something she has never owned nor sought. She’s between sobbing & punching the next man who talks, trying to busy her hands with Hallmark cards she can’t read through tears.
I imagine the scenario again, except this time while holding the hand of our six year-old
daughter & I am convinced that what just happened was either the bravest or most cowardly thing I have ever done.
VII.
I lie awake until we finally talk – she’s angry still,
the ache fresh as the gash on that hobo’s left cheek:
Honestly, fuck your social worker bullshit. He was
more important to you than me.
But, baby, what was I supposed to do? Beat his ass? What would that have done?
I don’t know, she says, I guess sometimes our options are only what is
least wrong.
Alive
At rest upon a body
of water without life
at the bottom of the earth
wedged between two peaks
in the middle of the Middle
East, serene resort
in the midst of a cluster
of ubiquitous crisscrossing
wars that are now just
landscape: two bodies
learn how to float again
for the first time. Two
best friends. Close
enough to the end to no
longer keep track of hours
or days. They carry
nearly two centuries
of stories and losses
and secrets between them
into this stinging cold
that refuses to let them
sink. Each refusing
to release the other’s
arthritic grip, knowing
they came here today to
let go—and so the lake
becomes a sea of schoolgirl
giggles hijacking their hoarse
throats, now laughing as
their scars make them
into glowing quilts beneath
the sheen of heavy salt. I see
only them in this sacred
pool that is closer to hell
than any other, called Dead
because nothing is able to
survive its grasp for too
long and yet here they are:
two old ladies who’ve defied
death rejoicing.
Carlos Andrés Gómez
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet and the author of Hijito, selected by Eduardo C. Corral as the winner of the 2018 Broken River Prize. Winner of the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, Fischer National Poetry Prize, Lucille Clifton Poetry Prize, and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry, his writing has been published, or is forthcoming, in the New England Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Yale Review, BuzzFeed Reader, The Rumpus, Rattle, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere. Carlos is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
October 2019 | poetry
Up shit creek (and assuming you stick with the
traditional story line) without a paddle. An ineffable
disaster, you surmise. Yet, it could be worse.
Suppose you no longer even have a canoe
and your only apparent option is to swim back
down this dystopian stream of sludge? Or worse
still, what if you’ve never managed to master the
art of swimming? But, not to worry. According to
the teachings of the dharma, all things in life are
impermanent, invariably subject to change. And
with the law of gravity in play, wouldn’t the
effluvium eventually begin to flow downstream?
Thus, if you stay right where you are, the upper end
of the creek might well begin to clear and those at the
low end of the runnel would be the ones with a problem.
So, keep the faith, friend. Between the wisdom of the
Buddha and Sir Isaac Newton, it just might be that your
luck is about to change.
Howard Brown
Howard Brown is a poet and writer who lives in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. His poetry has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Tuck Magazine, Blue Collar Review, The Beautiful Space, Pure Slush Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, Old Hickory Review, Lone Stars Magazine, Printed Words and Devils Party Press. In 2012, he published a collection of poems entitled The Gossamer Nature of Random Things. His poem “Pariah” placed first in the poetry division of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition sponsored by the Union County Mississippi Heritage Museum and Tallahatchie Riverfest. He has published short fiction in Louisiana Literature, F**k Fiction, Crack the Spine, Pulpwood Fiction, Extract(s) and Gloom Cupboard.
October 2019 | poetry
“It is a vestibule introducing one into the presence of the Good. Vestibule? Yes, and vestige, too, the trace in the multiple of the Good which itself remains in absolute unity.” Plotinus, The Intelligence, The Ideas, And Being
Not whole, but wholly striving, this Somali sambusa
confiscates
my taste buds. The way its lentil skates
toward higher stakes with kombucha
dominates the echoes and mirrors
of the Radiohead
cover band’s striving. Running for cover, we head
into the nearest tent; whatever echoes and mirrors
the rain is handmade
or not for sale in here. The scent of a baker’s
cake comes in and offers me its handsaw when my Baker’s
cyst elicits memory’s handmaid.
Fliers for performances of The Comedy
of Errors litter
the eye with glitter
redivivus, cupbearers and community.
For the essence of spiritual CBD
oil – if the expression is permissible –
Corri’s turquoise Hamsa charm fits the bill
to a t.
They call this pinot
“Moonlight in a Nightie.”
Running for cover with impunity,
blue jays point –
by the grace of God – to hardy fuchsias.
A sobering and drunken wind’s companion
anions
break this Saturday into a million cluster fucks.
But for all that, the Elf King’s roastery
clouds the thousand eyes of death, whose motley crew
of semi-arbitrary forces in J. Crew
will have a pretty good story
after today. Sitting tight, last year’s regatta
queen considers last year’s gold rush,
crying in her lap with thrush,
and sips a microbrew until last year’s forgotten.
“Beauty must forget itself to be itself”; a misbegotten
thought, which thinking, thinks, “Your rage agrees
with you, and rages.” By the grace
of this harissa’s miniature toccata
on my tongue,
gap-toothed memory gets around,
brings out the best bratwurst in the lost and found.
Angry it isn’t ideal, a scaredy-cat’s got my tongue.
Jake Sheff
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon. He’s married with a daughter and six pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate’s Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).
October 2019 | poetry
Rarely do we tear off a wing
from our past bodies to feel alive
with each other, but it happens
enough that we need
some real wolves in the music
we listen to when the children
are sleeping. I sing to howl
without the substances
of our first life together. Emily,
she likes to close her eyes
& stand alone in the water
of her love for me. It’s a new
distance. We are dancing bears
that cannot understand
how we found our hind legs.
We are so many animals
that I do not understand
how these songs keep finding us.
Darren C. Demaree
Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
October 2019 | poetry
A More Perfect Union
When children by gunfire die,
When the dreamer and the warden clash,
When statues betray the artist, we say
This is not who we are.
Who are we?
I take my chisel to Plymouth Rock
But the rock gives no blood;
Our history is like that stone,
Heavier than its weight…
Stood at a dank underpass, I rattle
A tin cup, wave a sign that reads
This is not who we are—
I can grow rich here, devote my life
To the pursuit of happiness…
It is said that upon his murder, Lincoln belonged
To the ages: Why do we wait for blood?
We’ve planted great forests of headstones.
I wander their lush paths, the sanguine streams,
And amidst this grandeur, this horror,
I glimpse both what is and what could be.
What of the Future?
I’ve been hearing Save the Rainforest
Since I was small enough to sleep
In the safety of my parent’s bed
Or snuggled with stuffed animals—
Pandas, giraffes, monkeys, frogs;
Since I lived for lullabies and storytime;
Since the world was as small as a crib
And as big as my imagination;
Since a nightlight could douse fears
And a drop of Tylenol could erase pain;
Since adults could assure me
That all was well and would always be well.
Now I hear that 20% of the Amazon is lost,
That the remainder is on fire,
That a tipping point may soon be passed—
All life in peril.1
Now I have a beloved wife, toddler, dog—
Great plans for our lives.
Now my parents are older, frailer.
Now, at thirty-four, I have traveled enough of life
To know that adults have always betrayed their children,
That absent drastic change I, too, will betray my child,
And that without a future for him
There can be no real joy or pleasure in the present.
1 Fisher, Max. Aug 30, 2019. NY Times. ‘It’s Really Close’: How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self-Destruct <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-fires-climate.html>
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
October 2019 | poetry
Those aren’t locusts
cascading from the sky
but paper confetti
cut from a hand-clasp
fanning of pretty patterns.
Up there, her silhouette
cast on the cardstock
moon, her wolf ear hood
accepted for gospel
glorying in the rituals
shedding like skin
with gusto, pasting
onto pages under plastic.
It felt like love just
to see it that one time.
Luanne Castle
Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her Pushcart-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, River Teeth, The Review Review, Broad Street, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com. She divides her time between California and Arizona, where she shares land with a herd of javelina.
