April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Waterfall
Breaking before our eyes into a sound,
as whoosh and swish of the ocean tide.
In constant as rhythmic strokes
branches crack and are thrown into the stream.
I stood among the trees and watched,
immobile in the cooling shade,
the leaf surfaced, face up beneath the bridge.
Woooh, the wind howled,
Cut limbs falling, the crack they make,
each dropping from its trunk as though for once
the last branch of winter made us trim.
Lost for violence of mid-air branches,
soft current dragged on as wind chimes
blew at the stretch of the dam.
Wading water into land, downward
as the deep blue sea, at times where
the light reflected a bend.
Slowed the surface calm waters,
evergreen trees lined the banks of river,
as natural forces contained the seed of life.
Collapse
The windows are blown out.
Abandonment offers silence,
our yard grown wildly immeasurable
in green, red, yellows, and browns.
Long recollection of a story roars out.
Sagging doors creak, left ajar, stuck in hinges,
we meet halfway.
Closing the door to those that left for good,
ways of going away, leaving our forsaken home.
We used to have our meals and slept upstairs,
the wooden floor makes hisses at us.
Spiral staircase leads us nowhere now,
quiet whispers we murmured before bed,
shhh – everything is truly silent.
by Samantha Seto
Samantha Seto is a writer. She has been published in various anthologies including Ceremony, Soul Fountain, Blue Hour, Carcinogenic Poetry, and Black Magnolias Journal.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
you are
the spring in my limp
the depth of my shallow breaths
the shattered melancholy
of my being broken
memories
from before I knew you
sweet smoke
my dad loved to hide behind
dark eyes of an early crush
summertime grass warm
against my bare feet
first real kiss
black-veiled mourner
standing alone
beneath gray rain
clenching teeth and fist
dropping muddy earth
into my grave
smearing what’s left
across your face
hiding your crying
downcast eyes
enduring the disappointment
in all that I am not
by Danny Earl Simmons
Danny Earl Simmons is an Oregonian and a proud graduate of Corvallis High School. He is a friend of the Linn-Benton Community College Poetry Club and an active member of Albany Civic Theater. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals such as Naugatuck River Review, Avatar Review, Burningword, Pirene’s Fountain, and Verse Wisconsin.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
[what you’ve done here]
what you’ve done here,
you’ve done in the rain.
bitter, brick building,
the rapture of memories:
old and young men.
you cried on the stairs,
listened in the lobby,
kissed by the narrow back door.
they settle into mildewed
hardwood floors
walk the grass, oak trees,
soggy mulch in empty flower beds.
what you did there,
you did in the presence
of a thousand leaves.
We Were Nuclear, Darling
I got fixed up at the barb shop, the ink
don’t fade anymore than on paper, a thousand
satin-faced silhouettes I drew on résumé linen,
watermark strapping mouths like duct tape,
our words keep us down like soot always falls to the bottom
of bourbon, unfiltered eight-year brew.
We saved the needle for another day,
ascended onto high stools and hummed unversed jazz in the lamp lit corner.
Eleven beers sent us straight down the bent road,
the alley out back where steam crept under the doors
of a hundred bistro’s kitchens. Somewhere, we got hassled
by lipsticked strangers prying answers in the street—but none to go around, gave
a litany we swapped words to recall, gapping episodic
memories from Catholic childhoods.
I’m just this decade’s lost and lonely boy,
too far from Portland—where The Sex Pistols hang like opiate in fixed-up long-gones
the punk underground of fame where Caruso’s still a legend for
I’m in love with you in love with me.
We were nuclear,
split atoms on the freeway,
burned down towns just out past train tracks,
memories of unfulfilling midnights and unsolved rhythms in Radiohead songs,
how we stepped on one too many cracks in the concrete
and you remarked that all the dirty bums looked like sailors.
Again, we saved the needle for another day, put it in my pocket for some late second,
too late to call the decade a waste of our predictions, on the damp lit street,
the savor of places that are gone, places that I barely remember.
Drunk in the City, Remembering Home
My dad talks too much when he drinks,
and the pain I’ve felt is feeling
like a child, asking a hundred questions.
how can I judge when a man’s
become another man?
I threw him every wrench.
We found our only common ground in the bottle
and motorcycle. We’ve got leather vests
could keep out all the things we feel.
Nothing’s as sweet as feeling nothing
Papaw died two years back
and we still cry
never together
but in the lull
that falls at night,
three in the morning
when I’m drunk
and he’s driving to grab coffee
before work.
We dance,
in some ways, in some lives, we’ve lived
more than most. He’s shrunk four inches
slaving in the plant. I’ve shrunk too,
forgotten the way
a shingle scalds my hands, how
a twelve hour shift burns the ends of cigarettes
down to filters, down to the only life
we’ve got left
by Benjamin S. Sneyd
Ben Sneyd is a writer an assistant editor at The Tusculum Review.
