January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Cormorants and Guillemots
Come with me to the Western waters
Where the waves lap a coarse kiss on the shore
And we can learn to love the silence
To give love and know the love of others.
For we are nothing, a scattering of dust
A fleeting spark of electricity;
And yet we feel the pull of the moon
Some sense of mystery, communion of souls
The subtle tugging of a distant star.
When sometimes our imagination leaps
To empathy, then we are unique
Embracing some other consciousness,
An elemental wildness deep within.
To some other alien heart betrothed,
Sensing the salt water on their beaks,
Their disingenuous curves of flight
The nuances of their transitory lives.
Then we are Cormorants and Guillemots
We are the brooding deep water whale
The swift to whom, the west wind whistles home
We are love, life indestructible,
Their grief is our grief, our souls are cleaved
As to the dreams of our sons, our daughters.
Masada
Here the soft flesh tone are tenderised
the assertive sprays, the gurgling spurts dry quickly
the haunches cook slowly on sun bleached stone;
see how the salty blood forms patterns, rivulets
from a warm, still wobbling heart?
At Masada the dying buried the dead
below circling vultures, eager to be known.
Resting on the high table of morality
the Hebrew God paused and blessed his own,
‘Blessed are the children slayers
the guardians of their sacred souls
securing death before dishonour.’
After the carnage only the sun gazed down
over the hillside, across the valley floor,
torpid in a summer heat wave to where,
the dead sea gazed back; unwavering.
—Jon Stocks
Jon Stocks is a UK based poet who has had work published in magazines worldwide. Recent credits include two nominations for the Pushcart prize and, in January 2011, the Mariner award for, ‘best of the best’ work in BwS magazine 2010. Recent poetry has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in The Montreal Review, The Dublin Literary Review, Candelabrum, The Coffee House magazine, The Journal, Burner, the Dawntreader, Coffee House, Pennine Platform, Littoral, Other Poetry, Manifold. Poetry Monthly, Harlequin, Tadeeb International (translated into Urdu), Taj Mahal review, Avacado, Involution, Interlude, and others.
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Streets like threads woven into the city
Knot at the harbor
Am I moving uphill or down?
Echo of my footsteps
Centimes in my pocket tap rhythm
Lost in the working class maze
Homes expand and collapse
Expelling screaming ghosts
With every yawn and step upon uneven stones
Piss in the same alleys as Napoleon
The pavement slippery with allegory
History hunches my shoulders
With its random weight
The light slithers in my eyes
As I lay back on the street
In the swirling green absinthe smoke
Will no one call the shore patrol?
The kiosk is toppled
Words tumble and twist and escape
on the push of winter winds
The men and police stand and stare
Like puzzled insects with sharp claws
To be behead enemies and lovers
Qui nettoiera ce désordre ?
The summit of an amazing canvas
Dancing headlights shop windows and beer signs
These blend into a divine ray
What time is it?
Watch ticks loudly and wakes the workers
Gut burns like a star collapsing
The man with two heads pushes his bicycle
His words are mush mouthed distant
My lips moves to speak
But I am without language
We are the only two stars out tonight
And yet we are silent to another
—Kevin McCoy
January 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Seated in the waiting room at the doctor’s office,
I am filling out a questionnaire.
I come to a question I am not sure how to answer.
Do they really need to know that?
I put the pencil into my mouth and bite down.
The feeling of the smooth paint crunching
and then giving way to the wood underneath
brings me back in time to another question
I didn’t know how to answer.
A blank sheet sat in front of me
at the kitchen table.
I couldn’t concentrate with my mom
looking over my shoulder.
“You’ve got to put something down,
everyone wants to be something when they grow up.”
Cursing the stupid yellow no. 2 pencil
for leaving my paper blank,
I put it in my mouth and clamped down.
“Don’t chew on your pencil,” my mother said,
“you’ll get lead poisoning.”
I chomped on the pencil even harder.
Maybe I would get lead poisoning.
The doctors would know that’s what it was
because my molars would have lead stuck in them, like fillings.
And there would be yellow splinters between my teeth.
“How could this happen?” my mother would demand.
The doctor would answer,
“Normally kids her age masticate pencils
because they have overbearing mothers.”
I tried to give my mother a look
that resembled Dirty Harry
when he asked the punk if he felt lucky.
But she knew I was out of bullets
because she stayed there,
hovering like a vulture
waiting for its dinner to keel over.
I failed the assignment.
In the waiting room, the pencil bows
under the pressure of my teeth.
I can feel my mom looking over my shoulder,
waiting to see what words will fill the blank lines.
The answers are supposed to be confidential –
the nurse said so.
But she doesn’t know my mother.
—Kathy Carr
