July 2017 | poetry
Recalling a melodious pitch,
or forms of movement, thus
Swarms of creatures the mind adventures,
the swooning of the thrush
And while I beckon hitherto
ineffable thoughts I ponder:
the motive of a person’s word and deed
when that one says, what’s wrong dear?
Further, have I not known
the brilliance of mind on earth
The one that makes me move in glory,
and relinquish undue search?
If not, I will declare
I must continue onward
And love that which is from above—
those objects and things we ponder
Memories that wander
stay of place in some sweet nexus
a taste of pondering eminence
a taste of Nature’s Sexes
And while I sit, I wait
for Heaven’s inspiration
to be greater than the vile amorous
to rejoice in my long sation
Memories that wander
stay of place in some sweet nexus.
Lance Gracy
Lance Heath Gracy is a retired infantry Marine, current graduate student, teacher, and tutor. He received his B.A. in philosophy from the University of the Incarnate Word, and has published there in the local literary arts journal. He is in pursuit of an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Texas-San Antonio. He has a passion for evangelizing truth through various means, but has an interest writing poetry in particular. He lives alone with his German Shepherd, named Dennis, and enjoys reading, studying, running, gardening, and time with fellows.
July 2017 | poetry
The night breeze kisses the amber,
coaxing it to twirl and dance
A twinkling speck of rich medallion, melting
my fingers, warming
all these downtrodden
souls.
Faceless fields of fire, voices
both green and golden, crying
for the fall of a marionette
and her puppeteer
To snip off the poisoned strings, once
and for all.
A beautiful scene to be woven
in the lies of textbooks
Calm and serene, without a trace
of crimson, yet
Where has the marionette gone when
the denouement has come?
When will all the puppeteers in the world
be rid of, cast away with their
tarnished gold?
When will all fields, scarlet and marigold, be left
to rest in peace?
These still remain, unanswered
But the streets still blossom
into golden fields, ripe
with courage and ire
An eternal blaze, kindling inside
our palms
An angel’s tune charms the streets,
lingering, joined by voices
of fire
When sorrow hangs in my heart,
drop by drop
I rise in the morning hill and
learn a little smile 1
1 “Morning Dew” (composed by Korean singer Kim Min-gi), a protest song banned under President Park Chung-hee.
Soo Young Yun
Soo Young Yun is a student living in Seoul, South Korea. She has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, Origami Poems Project, Ann Arbor District Library, and Writing for Peace. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Aerie International, The Best of Kindness 2017, and the Austin International Poetry Festival Di-vêrsé-city Youth Anthology.
July 2017 | poetry
A few things you will seek
the morning after: wallets, words, contact
lenses, meaning, directions. Lessons
learned upon rising: kisses can complicate
as much as language, dividing desire
does not diminish desire, no victims
exist once the sun peels back darkness,
drink and decision. You will remember
what she was quick forget: boundaries
between teachers and students, rules
to minimise complication. You will stop
dressing up for her classes. You will not
feel the need to sit in front. But for years,
you’ll waste poetry on pointless questions,
never once raising your hand to ask.
Tania De Rozario
Tania De Rozario is an artist and writer based in Singapore. She is the author of And The Walls Come Crumbling Down, (Math Paper Press | 2016) and Tender Delirium (Math Paper Press |2013) – the latter was shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize. Tania was the 2011 winner of Singapore’s Golden Point Award for English Poetry, and is an alumna of Hedgebrook (USA), Toji Cultural Centre (South Korea), Sangam House (India), The Substation (Singapore) and The Unifiedfield (Spain). Her poetry and fiction have been published in journals and anthologies in Singapore, India and the USA, while her visual art has been exhibited in Singapore, the USA, Europe and the UK. She also runs EtiquetteSG, a platform that develops and showcases art, writing and film by women from and in Singapore. Founded in 2010, its current work includes the development and facilitation of art and writing workshops focused on issues of gender-based violence.
July 2017 | poetry
The Narcissist Hears What You’re Trying to Do There
Grabs your argument in a certain hand, clenches
your words in a fist,
spits
them back at you before you’ve decided
what you were even trying
to say. Perhaps
there wasn’t a manipulative germ
or any exhumed dirty word,
maybe
what he can hear and see
is the extent of it,
transparent,
but he’s perspicacious with a straight spine,
drawn to full height,
tongue
slashing, that dripping dagger
to remind
every syllable matters
in the way
it could possibly relate
to him. Admit
he wasn’t part of the intended audience,
meandering sentence
still unspooling from your lips?
Unthinkable.
Unforgiveable sin.
He has to stop you before you can begin.
Swing Song
Squeak creak squeal
squeak creak squeal: across the street,
a couple in their twenties
pumps long legs into glassy sky, bodies
flung nearly perpendicular
to the top of the bar, so high. Individual
horizons. Now she knows those sounds
last week at sundown
did not mean she was going to break
something.
How silly to think the weight
of forty-seven years means anything
to a swing
ready to squeak all comers into the clouds
and back to thirteen,
sullen, holding a Walkman
turned up loud, back to seven,
screaming in delight, pushed
so hard she had to hold on
tight. All the way home,
their palms will thrum
with effort while their minds
fly, worries having fallen
from their pockets like pebbles
into sand,
the smell of salty steel
still kissing their hands.
Kasandra Larsen
Kasandra Larsen’s work has appeared in Best New Poets, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Into the Void Magazine, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Two Hawks Quarterly, and others. Her manuscript CONSTRUCTION was a finalist for the 2016 Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry; her chapbook STELLAR TELEGRAM won the 2009 Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook Award. She is a two-time Pushcart nominee.
July 2017 | poetry
Scientists call it the measure of the disorder
or randomness in a system.
Too abstract?
Then reduce it to this: it’s hard,
very hard, to make things better
but it’s always possible to make them worse.
Thus relationships, children, companies, countries.
Entropy is the clock that forever
runs forward and down until it no longer
resembles a clock at all.
Meanwhile the love leaks out of marriages
one molecule at a time,
airlines beat passengers in their seats
and drag them screaming off the plane,
and we drop bombs on our enemies so big
they dwarf our own disorder, or so
we think, or would think, if thinking were something
still within our grasp.
I must make time in my desert of a day
to visit the grave of Robinson Jeffers and tell
his silent stone that our republic
no longer shines as it perishes
and entropy is the reason.
I’m sure that will comfort his departed shade,
long since dissipated into millions of strange shadows
by that other, more efficient entropy, death.
Kurt Luchs
Kurt Luchs has poems published or forthcoming in Former People Journal, Into the Void, Minetta Review, Poydras Review, Triggerfish Critical Review, Otis Nebula, Sheila-Na-Gig, Right Hand Pointing, Roanoke Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Crosswinds Poetry Journal, Grey Sparrow Journal, Noctua Review, Quail Bell Magazine, and Antiphon, among others. He founded the literary humor site TheBigJewel.com, and has written humor for the New Yorker, the Onion and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, as well as writing comedy for television (Politically Incorrect and the Late Late Show) and radio (American Comedy Network). In September 2017 Sagging Meniscus Press will publish his humor collection, It’s Funny Until Someone Loses an Eye (Then It’s Really Funny).
July 2017 | poetry
Swimming Laps
crawl up 1 crawl down
2 up 3 down 4 up 5 how
many minutes how fast the heart
rate down 6 the second hand do-si-do-ing with the minute
hand of the big wall clock the beat of the rock-a-billy on
the boom box up 7 breaststroke down 8
up 9 down 10 flip turn up 11
backstroke down 12 butterfly up 13 down
14 sidestroke 15 16 how long? long enough
next crop of legs dangling swinging impatient on
the ledge, lanes a blur up down up down bathing caps goggles
you know/don’t know men women counting strokes times
laps minutes days (how many this week) (not enough) hot pink/
slate black FitBits blinking/sleeping pulses (up, down) calories in out…
You know nothing about the people in these bodies. Only
their swimsuits, sliding jumping climbing getting in/out. You say hi
to the red bikini. To the floral board shorts. You/they hustle to the showers,
to the lockers, to the hairdryers. Presto! Ms Bikini perfect in Givency suiting.
Spiked Prada’s. Mr. Board Shorts casual Armani all the way. The stay-at homes,
the techies, the mommy/daddies, the laid-offs, the bigwigs, the retirees – headed out
in their yogapants grungy sneakers /crocs, toting their Lululemon/Nike/no-
name duffel bags off to the parking lot. Remotes awakening their shiny Masaratis
their slightly dented Kias, their ‘50’s Corvette convertibles, lovingly restored.
Their Honda minivans moving forward backing carefully anonymously into the world.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Again.
Suffering, Medicalized (in the ER on a Friday night)
On a scale of 1 -10, where 1 is no pain and 10 is the worst you can imagine, how bad is your pain?
10.
How would you describe it? Check two:
Burning ☐
aching ☐
stabbing ☐
shooting ☐
lacerating ☐
piercing ☐
pounding ☐
radiating ☐
throbbing ☐
stinging ☐
crushing ☐
Two isn’t enough choices
Sorry, that’s all the computer gives you.
How is your mood? Remember, just check two:
happy ☐
unhappy ☐
angry ☐
miserable ☐
anxious ☐
terrified ☐
hopeless ☐
hopeful ☐
depressed ☐
suicidal ☐
Thank you. Take a seat in the waiting room, and fill out these other forms. The doctor will see you in order of the time of your arrival. Or maybe the nurse. Or maybe the intern. Someone, at any rate.
May I have your insurance card while you are working on the forms?
Oh – your card has expired. Come back when it has been corrected. The 800 number is on your old card. They open at 8 AM on Monday.
Goodbye, have a nice weekend.
Marian Kaplun Shapiro
Marian Kaplun Shapiro is the author of a professional book, Second Childhood (Norton, 1988), a poetry book, Players In The Dream, Dreamers In The Play (Plain View Press, 2007) and two chapbooks: Your Third Wish, (Finishing Line, 2007); and The End Of The World, Announced On Wednesday (Pudding House, 2007). A Quaker and a psychologist, her poetry often embeds the topics of peace and violence by addressing one within the context of the other. A resident of Lexington, she is a five-time Senior Poet Laureate of Massachusetts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2012.
