April 2019 | poetry
Carnival on Camac Street, Philadelphia
summer slides in hot & wet
drags with it the carnival that grows
on the empty lot on Camac Street
where O’Conner & Fink & I sometimes played
stickball & where I stepped on a bee
my first sting it didn’t hurt much
but the bee died
around the fallen insect
tents & rides booths & caravans
overnight seemed to spring from the ground
replacing the dry grass dead shrubs with
colored lights red white blue lining the
midway circling around & round the
Ferris wheel I was afraid to ride but if you
stopped at the top you could see all the way
to Birney School where I’d return in the Fall
but now I was free imagined running away
with the carnival because there was this
9 year old girl -my age- so pretty & different from the
Jewish girls I knew who were my friends & because her mother
told fortunes in a shadowy tent lit with candles & because
walking down the midway each booth promised another chance
to win a giant bear to give to my girlfriend if I could
knock down the bottles or break balloons or
throw rings over the pegs each try just
a nickle & ‘cause the carny smell led me to a
foreign land fried foods cheap hot dogs
pink cotton sugar balls spun about a paper cone & ozone
the spark of rides the Tilt-a-Whirl Bumper Cars The Whip
enter the House of Horrors seated snugly tucked
in a rickety car its metal wheels clacking sparking
hitting the metal doors with a stunning bang & you were
in a dark tunnel waiting for the witches skeletons
to attack spewed out the back with a whip-
like toss into the lights of the last fright –
the booth that sold tiny painted turtles 25 cents
that each year I prayed would live forever but
never did always dying as summer ended
Like Other People
a complex distortion
face strange enough to be sold
odd enough to be called freak
he found refuge among those
who display their difference
under banners at carny midways
the misfits grifters roustabouts
whose otherness was more easily hidden
his true name lost called by his shame
Jo-Jo the Dog Faced Boy a Barnum gift
The Human Terrier – the crowning mystery
of nature’s contradictions
normal folk felt better
knowing they were not him
Funicello made his misery a song
He starts to sing
Like a wounded hound
And the gals all screamed
And gathered round
everyone joined in the chorus
who cared there was a person
behind the hair
Bow wow, bow wow
Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy
Bow wow, bow wow
Jo-Jo, the dog-faced boy
the howl so human
he cried as he told his friends
the truth of his desire
Eyes bugged out
Through a patch of wool
His face hung down
Like a Boston bull
all I want
is to be like other people
Allen Plone
When Plone moved to San Francisco from Philadelphia, aged 19, to continue college, the first place he visited, on that first weekend, was Cannery Row, in Monterey. A voracious reader his whole life and Steinbeck one of his favorite authors, it was his trip to the Holy Land. He walked the streets with Doc, and met all his favorite characters. No mystery why he became a writer. Allen makes his living in the film and television production industry as a writer and director. He holds a Master’s Degree Comp.Lit/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and a PhD. History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Spent 9 years as a college professor, at San Jose State University and the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he taught Philosophy, Literature and Psychology and Creative Writing. He also taught screenwriting at University of Southern California, in their Graduate Writers Program before becoming a full-time writer/director. Allen’s passion is and has always been poetry and children’s stories. He’s combined the two in five of the children’s books he’s written; they’re all in rhymed couplets. He has published many poems in such journals as: Light Journal of Poetry and Photography, Moon Journal of Poetry, BTS Journal, The Sea Letter Journal, Celidah: A Journal of Poetry and others. He has also published several short stories, including “The Cowboy of My Heart,” which won the Rosebud Best Short Story award.
April 2019 | poetry
The empty prison in Lebanon has become the cold winter hotel
of women and children who ran away from the burning bullets,
the splatter of fire, the heavy bodies.
They have come to the only shelter that the torn curtain
(Sunni, Shiite, Christian)
can bring.
The children break down and cry for their lost fathers.
They cry for milk and warmth.
Here in Wisconsin the heavy, wet snow piles up, dripping water.
In the dark gray twilight I look out the window
while our Arbor Vitae sway with the gusts of wind.
There’s the drooping, mournful birch, the tired, brown oak.
A cable of black wire gives me light, and keeps our house warm.
Then the lights flicker and go out. The furnace stops running.
I sit in gathering dark
and I can feel the house getting colder and colder.
In Lebanon there’s little food and no promise of heat.
There is not much I will do. There is not much I can do.
John Sierpinski
John Sierpinski has published poetry in many literary magazines such as California Quarterly, North Coast Review, and Spectrum to name a few. His work is also in six anthologies. He is a Pushcart nominee. His poetry collection, “Sucker Hole,” was published in 2018 by Cholla Needles Press.
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.
