October 2016 | poetry
Arkansas, 1978
I rode hard the along the Mississippi,
a horse the color of the clay outside the house
where we listened to the car radio
come Friday night and danced on the hard red ground.
Through the ditches, down one side and up the other,
through the slurried water pouring toward the bean fields,
ran the red horse whose name was Fire
over the rise of the bank and down
into the flat again, the clumps of ragweed, rabbit tracks, bone-
ragged coyote.
Saturdays, one after the other, we shared a bath —
the water getting thicker with the red dust
that hennaed our hands, each crease
and around our nails, the cuticles.
The first time I was broken
I’d go to the closet, to smell her clothes
and then face the mirror
on the back of the door
to see I existed
without her. Even now.
A horse gets broken. The terrible way
they break a bottle of water against its forehead.
The horse will give up then
who knows what fractured or crazed.
The red horse broken. The way I ran him
hard, past the bean fields,
out alone into the open country.
El Paso, 1946
At night the wind blows in the streets
grit against your face,
in your teeth. It’s a long way
down to the dry bed
of the river. No one waits for me.
So I say yes. I’m pretty enough
and they want me.
I go to the truck stop bar —
there’s always someone there,
ask the bartender for quarters
for the juke box, play something
slow and sweet.
This is a border town.
I wear my bracelets. Alma
I say when they ask, Maria
or sometimes Eva. They nod
and turn my name
like a Life Saver on their tongues,
turn it softly while they watch
my eyes. I drink their beer.
In the bathroom in the cracked mirror
I put on my red lipstick
and make a kiss to myself. Maria, I say,
or Eva or Alma.
When I look at the cold ground
hard packed outside
I think she might be somewhere under it
no more than bones, her dark hair
blown off like the feathers
of dead birds, her fingers the claws
of skeletal animals long gone
from this earth.
I go with the men but it’s her I find
in their come-easy arms. In the hollow night
I’m alone again,
no more than a bright wound
small and silent
and far away from everyone.
Reno, 1952
Night after night the dizzying sky
swims with stars sanded bright by the wind.
Sunrise comes fast and hot.
He’s still asleep, so I find what I need,
make coffee, and sit on the doorstep,
put aside my memories and plans,
let the sun eat me up.
Inside the trailer light needles its way
through holes in the blind.
He groans, and his eyelids flutter.
I watch his face while I slide
his keys off the dresser.
I hear the gravel shoot away from the tires,
and something else—
his voice maybe, but I don’t look back.
I drive toward town, shadows to the west
of fence posts, pools of shade
ahead of each tumbleweed, the truck’s twin
running beside me on the dirt, near town
the new black asphalt.
Sun slams off the pavement,
so I wear my dark glasses. At the drugstore
I pretend to look at the display—
Breck shampoo and blue jars of Noxema—
while I scan my reflection.
Behind me I see a State Police car cruise
around the corner, the trooper’s head swivel
toward me as he drifts by. I turn away
from the window and walk toward the casino.
The desert light flattens things
like they’ve been pressed on an ironing board,
the buildings like sets. I’m walking
in somebody’s movie. I can feel the trooper
still watching, checking out
my ass. I walk faster, heading east.
At the intersection I start to run.
My legs are heavy and my head spins,
but I keep running. I hear the car turn
after me, but I don’t stop. I run
straight toward the sun, into the empty light.
Elizabeth Herron
Elizabeth Carothers Herron’s poems are forthcoming in Comstock Review, Free State Review and Lindenwood Review and appear in the current or past issues of West Marin Review, Comstock Review, Whistling Shade, Chagrin River Review and Reflections. She was shortlisted for both the Dana Award for Poetry and the James Hearst Poetry Prize in 2015. Her work has been supported by the San Francisco Small Press Traffic award, the National Endowment for the Arts Artists in Community, the Mesa Writer’s Residency and the Foundation for Deep Ecology.
October 2016 | poetry
Amy
You speak of Seattle,
branches of water
all green and far away
as your eyes on the skyline.
You speak of gems
your shaking hands
aren’t equipped to hold,
shattering into
red sparks.
You speak of your breath
turning blue, of smoke puffs
and a tent without a flashlight.
You speak of a purple sunrise
where you kiss me, but I keep
pulling the blanket
over my face.
Cocoon
moss climbs up the gnarled oak tree
an echo of a red swing
and fingers too small
to wrap around daddy’s hand
somehow spring keeps coming
hot water poured too quickly
over tea bags
taxes
quiet sex
and the sound
of a chainsaw starting
Insomnia
Viewing the world
through a stolen cigarette,
the covers clamor
to capsize my feet
like the stomach of some
horrible creature.
Your pillow is a second face
in the dim light.
Kaleidoscope
Your stubble against my raw cheek
makes me forget I’m finite,
nourishes like a tree growing
through earth, leaf green
against the breezy sky.
How does the medicine know
where to find the pain?
How do your hands know the certain spot
on my back that all tenderness
flows through? Prickling with magic.
Turning circles beneath a gray blanket,
you stamp my mouth with wet kisses.
My body knows how to find the gold.
Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a St. Louis poet who organizes her dreams in her sleep and struggles with being fully present. Keep up with her work on Twitter at @apoetrybomb.
October 2016 | poetry
Her glistening face was set with polished pools of brown, a slash of teeth below. A primal splash washed the air. In the pocket of a mountain lake, translucent drops of water ran across her olive skin, light sandstone framed the beauty of her form. Light was all that passed as her lash flipped a diamond, to spot an eye that said, “We are young and I am ready, because I love.”
That cove of water with reflective glints, of summer green and pale stones, held by steep hills of hardwood, was our castle for a little while. I was its king, and she was as ever mighty, as my queen. So immersed in a moment, that all could have been nothing more, the feel of her shoulder, the way that her breasts floated to, branded my soul. We were whole.
So long ago though it may seem to some, it could never be less than now for me. And for those who sometimes log such things, one time will always play, too nice to record, and put away. For they know that, though she has returned to all, she still remains. She is me.
Charles Hayes
Charles Hayes, a Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, and others.
October 2016 | poetry
what to do when the missiles come (at last)
1962
watch the moon through crystal skies one time,
telescope your life into the week it takes
to build a crisis into chaos,
then,
crawl beneath your desk,
press your head against your knees
and take up all the burdens of the world,
the weight,
slam the door just opened
and learn about equality
as suddenly as thunder,
then,
forget about your first steps into logic
and see the one great, simple truth:
reasons can be found for doing anything
to anyone,
in any way,
at any time;
there will be no quiz,
just a final
folded shirts, penknives
thoughts, folded, put away like clothing waiting to be worn,
tried on only when we are alone
and think that no one understands;
no one asks about the silence of our wisdom,
so it sits in dark like dated shirts
below the top drawer of the dresser and its stew of odds and ends:
a penknife that we had to have, once,
its reason long forgotten;
photos growing older every day
until the faces and the fashions fade,
like cars once new, now tired as an old idea;
watches stopped at random like friends who came and went;
a ring that once said everything,
silent now like books we thought we’d read;
all these things still moving like the steeple in the rearview mirror,
once the edge of everything, the front,
now fading back as we go ever on;
these things we’ve kept to save time in a jar
like fireflies when we were kids,
things we will not send out to the curb,
these salvaged words of life;
what do they say that we cannot resist?
is this our sad rebuttal to the reasoning of time,
or just our failed argument, the ‘you can’t have this’
markers from the road we can’t take back?
or are they like the folded shirts below,
baggage from the miles spent,
or provisions for some journey yet to go?
monologue
he was talking,
but he didn’t care who saw,
sitting by the flat gray stone
as if beside an altar,
white shirt brilliant,
red face torn,
careworn once again, anew,
six years since it changed forever;
legs stretched out
parallel with hers
as they always were,
side by side,
stride by stride
so many years,
there to share where words refused to go
though he was sure she heard;
“everything we say is talking to ourselves,”
he learned when he was young,
and so it was along that hill,
muted marble markers
warming in the sun
that cut into the letters, dates
carved upon the rocks
beneath the endless sky
that smirks at him,
at all of us
as it passes in its hubris overhead
Standing in Line
Moving forward toward the front, the edge,
wherever this is heading to,
this herd, a rosary
as fingers count the beads
leading to the draggle
of the crucifix;
impatient at the back
standing on our toes to see,
we peek beyond the queue,
jealous though we do not know
the space beyond horizon, shadow.
We do not know
what waits for us in front,
though we all will get to see it
soon enough.
John Kristofco
John P. (Jack) Kristofco’s poetry and short stories have appeared in about two hundred publications, including: Slant, Folio, Rattle, Fourth River, Santa Fe Review, and Cimarron Review. He has published three collections of poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.
October 2016 | poetry
There is something elegant
about the way the sun
kicks out over the horizon
with such agony, each morning,
and today I’ve seen
both its death and birth,
an entire lifetime
burnt away over
harsh landscapes;
everything is forgiven
when dawn pours out
over the hills—
when the first
dregs of light
skim over the treetops,
and they seem like
they are breathing.
Allison Taylor
A current poetry MFA student at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Allison’s poetry has appeared in Birch Gang Review, and she has studied writing under the mentorship of Renee Ashley, H. L. Hix, and David Daniel. She earned her undergraduate degree in computer science from Gettysburg College, and when she’s not writing and reading, she spends her time working in the publishing industry, tutoring math and English, and watching science fiction movies.
October 2016 | poetry
We barely took any space,
maybe a foot square, you
placing my hands where they go
and knocking my feet with your toes—
who dances like this, anyway
(as comets careen into their own ice)?
Your favorite story about me: I’m
chained, at 3, to a tree. When you
return, my uncle—fed up with my roaming
in his oil—stilled me that way and
you removed the loose chains, carried me
inside to scrub my body like a rescued pelican
awash in petroleum. It was California
in the 60s—your brother, my sitter,
not much more than a child himself
(the moon bright enough to be visible from Mars).
The dancing seems easy, step-turn,
step-turn, and your smile surprises me.
I knew, before my grade school dance,
I caught on quickly. Nobody danced
with me that night at school. But earlier,
you and I, turning and rocking,
prepared me, made ready for that nobody.
We danced, hand-in-hand, me a prosthetic,
you counting steps with whatever music was on
(scattershot lights everywhere in a moment).
Joddy Murray
Joddy Murray’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, The Broken Plate, DUCTS, Caliban Online, Existere, Lindenwood Review, Licking River, Meridian, McNeese Review, Minetta Review, Moon City Review, Moonshot Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Southampton Review, Stickman Review, and Texas Review. He currently teaches writing and rhetoric in Fort Worth, Texas.
