April 2019 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
An I-40 Road Song
Rusting roof top words invite us
to change course and See Rock City.
On the radio, “American Pie” crashes into static.
I’m on my back in the back,
watching the traffic of tree branches pass.
Mom tells Dad to slow.
I-40 is an infinite list of options
that we won’t choose:
we will not stop for Casey Jones Village,
will not veer up highway 641 to catch
the Tennessee River Freshwater Pearl Farm.
We drive on by.
Tourist traps, Dad whispers, seemingly to himself.
It’s been too long since Mom has seen her Mom—
moms need their moms too, it seems
so we go on
through last night’s rain,
through Appalachian oaks,
through smoke-like fog,
through towns with crooked sheriffs
and newly constructed revival tents
through the silence between us
Finally, we arrive,
and after cursory greetings
and “you’re getting so talls,”
I find myself staring at the popcorn ceiling
from my grandmother’s couch,
eyes searching for passing trees
and signs for Hidden Hollow or The Mule
on the Cliff — Finding a shelf of unread books.
The Statue of Robert E. Lee Contemplates his Removal
When I see the forgotten,
the dirty ones pushing stolen
carts, their fingerless wool
gloves gripping tight to all
they have left, I find myself
thinking back to those
rat boiling winters
when supplies were short,
the mud was thick
and the men wanted to battle
only to pillage
blankets.
Standing atop this pedestal
overlooking my namesake park,
I’ve seen more than one mugging.
More than one poet penning metaphors
in a comp book. Protests, wedding ceremonies,
artists, rapes…
to me it all looked like
death and sounded like the
burning howls that have haunted
me since the Wilderness. Death
didn’t die in the fields of Slaughter Pen Farm
or the trenches of Richmond. It followed me
here. Just last week
I saw a car careen
and kill a child. The driver ran
around the wreck screaming,
it was all my fault! It was all
my fault. As if that chant
could change the choice.
I said the same incantation
at Gettysburg but learned
the dead stayed dead
and the dying kept dying.
I offered to step down,
tender my resignation
only to be refused so I
resigned myself to more
and more and I got so
Goddamn weary of it all.
Take me down.
For the love of God.
Take me down.
Scott McDaniel
The work of Pushcart Prize-nominated poet Scott McDaniel has been featured in Mad Swirl, Deep South Magazine, Oberon Poetry Magazine, Common Ground Review and The New Guard. He has read throughout his home state of Arkansas as well as Manhattan and Castletownroche, Ireland. Scott began writing poetry at an early age and was encouraged to do so by his cousin, award-winning inaugural poet Miller Williams. He lives and works in his hometown of Jonesboro, Arkansas; a city outside of Memphis that is highly influenced by the culture of the Mississippi Delta. His writings reflect the unique hues, quirks and broken promises of the modern south.
April 2019 | poetry
after Reginald Shephard’s “My Mother Was No White Dove”
I am not a Mom
yet Mom’s what they think.
I am a woman
and Mom’s what they see.
Adults write about their mothers
as if composing a greeting card.
Their mothers are kind, supportive
an inspiration even sixty years later.
People raised by troubled mothers
…those poems are rare.
Finally a poet whose mother was
“…the clouded-over night…”
When the young man returns my credit card,
says, Happy Mother’s Day! I am pleased
to think he does not know such darkness.
Mary C. Rowin
Mary C. Rowin’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Panopoly, Stoneboat, Hummingbird and Oakwood Literary Magazine. Recent awards include poetry prizes from The Nebraska Writers Guild, and Journal from the Heartland. Mary’s poem “Centering,” published in the Winter 2018 issue of Blue Heron Review, was nominated for the Push Cart Anthology. Mary lives with her husband in Middleton, Wisconsin.
April 2019 | poetry
it’s 1938 again, glass shatters
shards scatter, lives don’t matter
state sponsored murder sanctioned
and the constituents celebrate
and the constituents applaud
toxic rallies continue
hot coals are thrown into boiling
pots of ignorant meltdown ignited
and the constituents celebrate
and the constituents applaud
the fallout spreads
and the fallout is out of control
as ash and smoke hover like
low hanging clouds hiding our eyes
from daylight tempting us with madness
the morning sonnet of the Song Thrush
the nighttime chirp of crickets, the glitter
at dusk from fireflies are no longer only
cries of children cries of mothers
cries of fathers and weeping walls
blood runs in the street blood runs in the rivers
blood drips, drips, drips in the drains while mirth
reigns in chateaus, castles and towers tall, tall, tall
and the constituents are happy
and the constituents celebrate
and the constituents applaud
it’s 1938 again
Jerry T Johnson
Jerry T. Johnson is a Poet and Spoken Word Artist whose poetry has appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies. Jerry often features at a variety of spoken word venues in the New York City area and he currently lives in Danbury, Connecticut with his wife Raye.
April 2019 | poetry
In Whose Custody the Flags?
The flags are at full-staff
Though Jackeline is dead
Of dehydration
And the Guatemalan boy whose name
Has not been released
Is dead
Of the flu—
They died in our custody.
The flags remain at full-staff,
Their stars going dim with grief
As refugees beg
For a glass of water
Or a dose of Ibuprofen and Amoxicillin
On the kitchen counter,
Next to the bills and Church flier—
They died in our custody.
Just after Jackeline died
But before the Guatemalan boy
Whose name has not been released,
My son Richard was born
At a world-class hospital:
8 pounds 6 ounces. Apgar score of 8;
The birth announcement on Facebook
Garnered 160 likes and 47 comments—
They died in our custody.
In whose custody are these flags?
In whose name are they raised and lowered,
Repaired or replaced, honored or disgraced?
I ask because
Jackeline is dead
Of dehydration,
The Guatemalan boy whose name
Has not been released
Is dead
Of the flu—
And they died in America.
—
(Jakelin Ameí Rosmery Caal Maquin died at the age of seven on December 8, 2018
My son was born on Saturday, December 22, 2018
The Guatemalan boy died on Christmas Eve, 2018 at the age of eight. He was later identified as Felipe Alonzo-Gomez
Written Wednesday, December 25, 2018)
In Polite Society
In polite society we hold doors open,
Say thanks and please, wear crisp
Suits when we drop bombs.
In polite society we shake the hands
Of blacks and Latinos and native peoples,
Smile as we strip them of their rights.
In polite society we wear bright jewels
Mined by slaves, decry slavery,
Tip generously.
In polite society we destroy the Earth
To make us rich, create jobs
That pay the poor to be poor.
And in polite society
We are never rude, never mean—
We murder democratically.
The Gardener
We have pitched an innocent man against the
Thousand blades of grass.
Once a week the battle is waged;
Each green sword glints with dew.
But our man is well armed: we have given
Him motors, gasoline, blades faster
Than the wind, and so he goes trampling
Because our yard needs taming:
He leaves the lawn strewn with
Wilting corpses—their rot attracts
A pair of curious bluebirds.
For the moment victory smells like sprinklers
And empty fields.
For the moment our house is in order.
Then a rainstorm soaks the earth
Like an oil-well run amok,
Wreaks havoc on gutters and sewers,
Floods the streets, knocks down trees,
Holes us up in our homes,
Where through windows we observe
Hope erase carnage.
A week passes and the proud grass
Again waves beneath the wind.
The grass has a human spirit that
Grows endlessly, sprouts from the soil,
And wonders why we bother to hire
Mercenaries to fight a war
That must never come to an end.
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.
April 2019 | poetry
City highways take the future
around the bend of the river
of money. Women assume further control.
The next human world aims its nuclear
torpedoes, as transcontinental jets
haunt the place, taking off and landing
on autopilot. Sons decide they’re daughters,
while the compass spin undergoes
its heavy journey across the charred
proving grounds of spring. Beetles burrow
into trees high up, where winter ends
and may return less often. Alien weather
balloons crack into a dimensionless chill.
Elk herds edge north, as the north pole
down-drains into newly claimed shipping
lanes. Parabolic receivers scan for eyes
of doubt over ends and their means.
Blue-suited company men gas up directly
removed from undead talk of extinctions.
A long hot kiss familiar with liberated
hip bones wavers before the collapse
of procreative love. Forebears continue
to break up and drift off from work shoes
and overcoats. Habits that grew out of fear
into lifestyles refuse to reveal their North
American arrogance in its rainwater
spend-drift street-carried flatness
under shirts and blank-slate asking
for reassurance around petroglyphs
that dwarf the possible ways to feel.
James Grabill
James Grabill’s work appears in Caliban, Harvard Review, Terrain, Mobius, Shenandoah, Seattle Review, Stand, and many others. Books – Poem Rising Out of the Earth (1994), An Indigo Scent after the Rain (2003), Lynx House Press. Environmental prose poems, Sea-Level Nerve: Books One (2014), Two (2015), Wordcraft of Oregon. For many years, he taught all kinds of writing as well as “systems thinking” and global issues relative to sustainability.
April 2019 | poetry
Please Hold Your Answers
“…the answer to the future will be in knowing how
to ask the right questions.” –Quentin Hardy
Answers are finished, washed up.
Once the noble deep-sea creatures
who fought until you reeled them in,
now they flop like beached alewives
expiring in the sand and seaweed.
You—did you spend your capital chasing
schools of teasing, thrashing answers,
filling your nets and holds, steaming forth,
unaware that the spoils go to those
with questions, not answers; to those
who ask, Are we asking the right questions?
and other such admired interrogatives?
We stay afloat on whys, a gratuitous
“excellent question!” like a safety vest;
and as for you, weighing us down
with answers, answer, answers,
overboard you go in your cement-shoes!
A corporate suit hooks jacket over shoulder,
marches to a window, turns theatrically
and asks, What message are we sending?
in such a way that boardroom fannies shift
on swivel chairs to stir up yet another question
like morays rooting in the turbid shallows.
Meaning of a Dish Sponge
Your dish sponge—floral-scented,
spanking new, but oh how quickly
it will age from the moment you free it
of its cello-wrap and turn it over,
one side soft and baby blue
the other tough as calloused fists.
How it swigs the suds! Slides like
a lover over porcelain. See it slaughter
the cowering grease!
But soon—so soon—the breakdown;
baby blue goes brown and gnarly;
pots and pans that couldn’t last
one round with Tough Side
easily shred its spavined body; and
finally the stink—Old-Sponge smell
from this simulacrum of its youthful self,
to remind us of our own mortality.
Oh—sorry; but had you never sussed this
meaning? In all the nights you bent your
bones over the sink, hands already shaking
as you squeezed and felt the tears flow?
Outgoing Voicemail from My Ex-Muse
If this is you calling I have to tell you
I’ll be out of town a few weeks
to visit an old friend of mine who
well I won’t lie to you it’s a new friend
who’s been invoking me at a time
when I need the kind of invocation
you once composed to summon me.
Hopeless were your verses, but not
your supplications, all those O‘s
to me so sweet so yearning,
we had a beautiful thing until you
cheapened it with half-heartedness—
no more O Divinely Gifted One
barely an O practically a Hey You.
Perhaps one day that tin ear
of yours will sense the difference
between lute and second fiddle—
which this muse does not play.
Yet I admit
I can’t help wondering where
those pretty Os are going now
now that anyone can see you’ve
been invoking someone else
and probably that imposturing tramp
judging by the even more godawful
crap you call inspired.
Arthur Plotnik
Better known for his prose works, including two Book-ofthe-Month Club selections, Arthur Plotnik is a late-emerging poet who has appeared in Brilliant Corners, Rosebud, Harpur Palate, THEMA, Comstock Review, The Cape Rock, Glass, Edify, Off the Coast, Kindred, and several more literary publications. Formerly editorial director at the American Library Association, he was a runner up for the William Stafford Award and a finalist in other national competitions. He lives with his wife in Chicago.
