July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Dispersing Luck
April wind whips tumbleweeds
across the plains of Santa Fe.
Some wedge in barbed wire fences,
others bounce along I-25
like children playing hopscotch.
Maybe that is what happens
to the souls of the dead. They travel
unfettered, gather the detritus of life
as they journey from ocean
to mountain to desert.
What we call luck
might be what a soul grabs
from one person as it passes,
delivers to another on its way out of town,
the way tumbleweed disperses seeds
as it spins across the plains.
Since You Asked
You want to know why I don’t
watch the news. The anchor
lays out local stories the way
a casino dealer reveals
the house hand. Puppy attacked
by machete-wielding neighbor,
three children dead in house fire,
college lacrosse player murdered.
You want to know why I don’t
read the newspaper. Train derails
in India, more than 70 killed.
U.S. military dead in Afghanistan
hits 1,000. Robbers distract
victims at cash machines,
squirt them with feces
before stealing their money.
You want to know how I spend
my time. I listen to Simon and
Garfunkel in the car, read poetry
out loud in the evening,
line breaks punctuated
by the call and response
of songbirds in my back yard.
–Nina Bennett
Nina Bennett is the author of Forgotten Tears A Grandmother’s Journey Through Grief. In 2006 she was selected to participate in a master writer’s retreat with the poet laureate of Delaware, sponsored by the Delaware Division of the Arts. Nina’s poetry has appeared in publications including Drash:Northwest Mosaic, Pulse, Alehouse, Panache, Yale Journal for Humanities in Medicine, The Smoking Poet, Oranges & Sardines, Philadelphia Stories, Pirene’s Fountain, The Broadkill Review, and the anthologies Mourning Sickness and Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
A Meditation
weakness never goes out of the body, we only learn how to use it.
*
death is built into us, it’s better that way:
we already have enough debt to repay.
*
what we really want is touch,
although, for mankind, it will never be enough
Cafe Life
coffee cups cream-purling with a swirl.
walls, milkweed-green and gray-naked against the dull-burnt blaze. a capped chap in a raincoat; tongue-rough.
some spots on the jotted carte; flecks on a wet-cedar bough.
from some youthful corner:
a radiation of red and a blueprint-blue tint shooting from screens.
against the pane-brace:
bristlecone sprigs scrapping themselves square: The world still asking us to watch.
there is faith here, too: a thing of gunk-strung feathers. this cafe life is life itself:
the host of hope and loss.
–C. Dylan Bassett is a poet and artist from Las Vegas, NV.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that lead to pain,
Drawn out from the plants and weeds.
Delinquent in the autumn breeze.
Corridors of burlap love,
Common clothed in revelry.
Corridors that feed an urge
And milk it, drain it, constantly,
Then carve it, broken, on the street.
These corridors of death and wine,
Corridors of ragged breaths
And stencils on an evening sky.
Corridors that coax you in.
Corridors that spit you out.
Corridors that command a break,
From synapse wars and obscured eyes.
I tell you I’ve seen corridors.
More than many, fewer than few.
Corridors that have no names
And corridors that do.
–Matt Medved
Matt Medved is a recent graduate from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, where he majored in journalism, minored in political science and had a concentration in creative writing. Matt has covered stories in South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Korea and Australia in the form of hard news and narrative features. He traveled to Harare to cover the 2008 Zimbabwean presidential elections and has written extensively on South African street children and prison gangsters. Matt is currently pursuing degrees in international law and international affairs at George Washington University.
