July 2018 | poetry
Grievance is impatient;
Grief is patient.
On the sidewalk outside the Millgate Inn,
in a baseball cap, with a catcher’s mit,
it waits at 4:15 P.M. Father had promised
the dunes sculpted by wind and water
last summer and all autumn then
Persona of the displaced roots,
the tiding stem that broke ground
in winter before one last freeze,
Only a slip of a feral bud speaks
but the scent of its voice drowns
in the evening bustle of bawdymen
roughhousing toward homekept ladies.
On the pavement so many once like itself
spread from the factory gate like Jews
rushing from Cossacks; the furnace
of the mill is the eye and the heart
of the Czar. The feral bud
waits for the thick hand
of its planter to pluck it up
into the swirl of homerush,
the scent of its voice on the ear
of the old man whose grace
levels the pavement. Today,
it will say, will we go Dunes–
to the dunes and write in the sand.
A strange rough cloth stands behind
the bud; it is the messenger
who carries the charred boot.
Dew on the first petal of the flower;
winter comes again. The street
empties while the petals unfold.
The tiding stem woodens;
it is a line pointing, a ray outward
toward the center, pistil and stamen.
Like a lump of slag, the seed planter
in a steel vase is lowered, is planted.
The sapling headstone erect without word.
He had wanted no words on him.
Give me a tree on my chest; it is best,
for I have made roots where there were
once none.
So I shall stand forever in the tree,
in one place.
Sea-oats imported, planted on dunes
that had long squirmed like a worm’s
belly on hot pavement, going nowhere.
The sea-oats’ dying blackened dunes
with their dust; they have reddened
sunsets with pollen, done the work of ages.
The dunes are a place or remnant of place
before the sea-oats worked it, drained
the tidal pools, and flattened the world
as it was. The sea-oats shaded the grass,
nurtured the feral buds,
became food for trees.
Be no flower on another man’s lapel,
he had said; be a wild rose
thorny and elegant and wild
like the grass at the dunes
The trees became houses then homes.
History began in these homes,
repeated the world as it was,
and that world as it was then
became the world as it is now
The Dunes. Sculpted by wind.
The furnace fires.
My father’s tree,
my tree, its roots in place.
by John Horvath Jr
Mississippian John Horváth Jr publishes internationally since the 1960s (recently in Munyori Review (Zimbabwe); Broad River Review (print). Pink Litter, and Olentangy Review). After Vanderbilt and Florida State universities, “Doc” Horváth taught at historically Black colleges. Since 1997, to promote contemporary international poetry, Horváth edits www.poetryrepairs.com.
July 2018 | poetry
it’s near winter solstice;
I’m checking out
so I ask
what happens to them
they open the bags of seed
are there nests?
everywhere
in the metal rafters
and water?
they find their own…
these birds of Lowes
*
panoramic views,
surveillance
keep your hat on,
brim low
by Tom Lavazzi
Tom Lavazzi’s poetry and criticism appears in such journals as American Poetry Review, Postmodern Culture, Women in Performance, Performance Practice, Post-Identity, Reconstructions: Studies in Contemporary Culture, Symploke, Talisman, Midwest Quarterly, South Atlantic Review, The Little Magazine, Mantis: Journal of Poetry, Criticism, Translation; Rhizome: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, and Sagetrieb, among others. His work has been anthologized in Finding the Ox: Buddhism and American Culture, Volume I: Breaking Out: The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature (SUNY Press), Dialogism and Lyric Self-Fashioning: Bakhtin and the Voices of a Genre(Pennsylvania: Susquehanna University Press), Modernism and Photography (Praeger), Synergism: An Anthology of Collaborative Poetry and Poetic Prose (Boshi Press), Carl Rakosi, Man and Poet (National Poetry Foundation), Contemporary Literary Criticism (Gale), Poetry Criticisms 42 (Gale), and Jumping Pond: An Anthology of Ozark Poetry (Sand Hills Press), among others. He has published three volumes of poetry: Stirr’d Up Everywhere (collage poem/artist’s book, A Musty Bone), in collections at MOMA/Franklin Furnace, the Brooklyn Museum of Art (featured in recent group show, “Working in Brooklyn,” 2/3-4/16, 2000), Cleveland Art Institute, Banff Centre Library–Canada, Yale University library, Archive for New Poetry-UCSD, Rare Books–Columbia University, Poetry/Rare Books–SUNY-Buffalo; Crossing Borders (Mellen, 1996), and LightsOut (Bright Hill Press, ’05; BHP chapbook contest winner). A book of experimental critical performances, Off the Page: Scripts, Texts and Multimedia Projects from TEZ (a performance group he founded in 1995) is forthcoming from Parlor Press’s Aesthetic Critical Inquiry series. He is Professor of English at CUNY-Kingsborough.
July 2018 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Google News tells me academics in India are robbing literature of any personal touch. Poor literature breeds poor syllabus breeds poor literature, a vicious cycle while banner ads of Clarks walking shoes keep stomping across my laptop. Page down leads to Baltimore cops reading Plato and James Baldwin. Then: No bombs, no guns, just 90 minutes of football. As Google knocks, I learn that cinnamon may help attack fat and obesity. Scrolling up to schizophrenia, the subhed says angry avatars help people stop hearing voices by shouting at them. Meanwhile, Ohio State rallies past Michigan, Pakistani authorities order a media blackout and Easter eggs lay hidden in the new Senate tax bill. Are millennials narcissistic? The evidence is not so simple, says Google News. Silicon Valley, Black Friday, Donald Trump and the FCC. Badgers football, tobacco companies and the Pope in South Asia. I can still hear Google knocking. What to click? I choose the one that says Buddhism includes everything, even comic books.
by Gary Singh
Gary Singh was recently a Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. As a scribe, he’s published over 1000 works including newspaper columns, travel essays, art and music criticism, profiles, business journalism, lifestyle articles, poetry and short fiction. His poems have been published in The Pedestal Magazine, Maudlin House and more. For 650 straight weeks, his newspaper columns have appeared in Metro, the alternative weekly paper of San Jose and Silicon Valley. He is the author of The San Jose Earthquakes: A Seismic Soccer Legacy (2015, The History Press). http://www.garysingh.info
July 2018 | poetry
Plum light unfolded
between the dense brush
of my backyard
the morning
of the day
dad died.
The night before,
he refused
even one mouthful
of lemon meringue pie.
Words were stones
and old stories
were one-sided
casting an umbra
of gray-green.
That’s how I knew.
The outline of morning
broke the uneasy sleep
that formed between the memory
of years of tart pie
and seasons of losing
dad in the thickets
of dementia.
The sunrise’s glamour
that day glittered
off the world
in all its weightiness.
Shallow puddles
from a thundershower spread
across the thirsty dirt.
And the only hunger
that day
inched forward
between the ticks
of the clock.
by Teresa Sutton
Teresa Sutton is a poet and a teacher. She has taught at Marist College for ten years and high school English for 28 years. She lives in Poughkeepsie, NY and has two grown children. Her poems appear in a number of literary journals including Stone Canoe, Fourteen Hills, and Solstice. Her second chapbook, “Ossory Wolves,” was a finalist in the 2014 Bright Hill Press’ Poetry Chapbook Competition. Sutton’s third chapbook, “Breaking Newton’s Laws,” won first place in the Encircle Publication 2017 Chapbook Competition; it was a top-12 finalist in the 2015 Indian Paintbrush Chapbook Competition, a finalist in the 2016 Minerva Rising Chapbook Competition, and earned an honorable mention in the 2015 Concrete Wolf Poetry Chapbook Competition. One of the poems in the collection, “Dementia,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The final poem of the book, “Confiteor 2,” was honored with second prize in the 2018 Luminaire Award for Best Poetry by Alternating Current. The Poet’s Billow recognized her work as a finalist in the 2015 Pangaea Prize and a semi-finalist in the 2014 Atlantis Award. The Cultural Center of Cape Cod recognized her work as a finalist in their 2014 National Poetry Competition. Two of her poems won honorable mention in other poetry competitions: Whispering Prairie Press and California State Poetry Society. Sutton earned her MFA from Solstice Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College. She has a MA in literature from Western Connecticut State University and a MS in education from SUNY New Paltz. She earned her BA in English from SUNY Albany.
July 2018 | poetry
Growing and rising slowly
to the height above disbelief,
we may be touched by the sky.
Perceiving that words don’t tell
where angels dwell, it will be still.
What we heard, is a presence in itself.
Seven, Ten, Twelve –
let’s count our best blessings
and accept some ordeals or misfortunes.
Can we feel blessed indeed then
with plenty of things not happening to us?
But that’s no relief to lots of creatures far or near!
The swift and skittish starlings are heedless,
free? Well, at least we don’t need to eat worms.
A grasshopper drops by; they’re not in the past only!
And a tiny flower survives the mower.
So, many thanks for today, that may bring more.
No gloom, please; it seems to become wonderfully serene.
In the gleam of a durable sun
and ever-full moon, the swans fly this way.
They can lift their own weights, with those who participate.
by Arno Bohlmeijer
Arno Bohlmeijer holds an MA in English Lit, BA French, and is a bilingual author in English & Dutch. He is winner of the National Charlotte Köhler Prize, finalist for the 2018 Gabo Prize, and finalist for the 2018 Poetry Matters Project. Arno has been published in five countries.
July 2018 | poetry
It must be Spring.
The begonias are vomiting diesel
Again,
Leaf blowers are whining like scapegoats
Condemned to die
Again
In a swirl
Of garbage and leaves,
And I don’t feel like being alive today.
Why must I
Again
Salute the pilfered flag
That just yesterday I glibly waved?
Somewhere a monstrous, moody moon
Lingers like a flashlight in an empty street,
Ready to plunge her sequined syringe
Into my unwitting, smoggy veins.
Somewhere bird watchers
And gardeners
And beekeepers
Swoon like submissive violins.
It must be Spring
Again.
I am choking on the dew.
I am lost in a maze of barbed-wire-wool,
Still cold, lacerated, hemmed in
Again
Like a fiery torment of acid tears
Spilling into a perverse pool
Of my own making,
And I don’t feel like being alive today.
Who are you
To assure me
That life is regenerative?
Somewhere I know that you are right,
But I don’t care. Not now.
I am an oil derrick
Wheezing night and day;
My demise is bound up in my riches,
And I don’t feel like being alive today.
Somewhere it is Fall
And somewhere it is Summer
And somewhere it is Winter
And maybe here it isn’t even Spring:
How quickly, how often the seasons change!
I am sober. I’ve never done a drug.
But the begonias are vomiting diesel
Again
And I don’t feel like being alive today.
by Andy Posner
Andy Posner is a resident of Dedham, Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Culture from California State University, Northridge. He moved to New England in 2007 to pursue an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown University. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides small personal loans and financial coaching to low-income residents of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Florida.
