April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
could have seemed more mundane
than an accidental Safeway run-in
after you simply stopped your pursuit
and, instead, went after groceries.
You wore brown, reminding me
of New Yorkers I used to watch,
in grey flannel flesh,
seemingly unfamiliar with sun.
Nothing more mundane.
Just grey and brown and we had to,
or I did, speak. You had been the sun,
the foreign flare, bursting last time
we met with life.
You saw me again and your hands
hung from your jacket
like leaves dead early on branches
in another fall. Nothing of life
was left, neither precious gold or warmth,
or Spanish rhythm. Only packaged meat
and bagged produce. Hands off,
and an explanation I had to buy.
by Alita Pirkopf
Alita’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Alembic, Caduceus, The Chaffin Journal, The Distillery, The Griffin, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Harpur Palate, Illya’s Honey, Lullwater Review, Quiddity, RiverSedge, Ship of Fools, Westview, and Willow Springs Review.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Boom!
Rivets from the 50-foot distillery tank busted from the flimsy
metal sheets exploding with molasses onto Boston’s North End.
The two million gallon wave thrashed people
into billiards, freight cars, and stables.
Children who had once collected the seeping sucrose off the tank for
suckers were trapped under its girth and met their gooey graves.
Teamsters and librarians on their noonday lunches sitting in the balmy
climate were strangled by its syrupy brown glaze and swept under it like trash to a dustpan.
The trotting of horses through the city hauling goods came to a stop –
their hooves stuck to the street as bugs to flypaper.
Houses and stores didn’t go unscathed either – being wrenched from their
roots and ensnaring electrical poles, trucks, and the firehouse in its glutinous wake.
Twenty-one died and another 150 injured, but to this today
the air still lingers of the sweet smelling
molasses.
by Arika Elizenberry
Arika Elizenberry is a native of Las Vegas, Nevada. She has been writing poetry for over ten years; some of her favorite writers are Richard Wright, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin. Her work has appeared in the Silver Compass, Neon Dreams, Open Road Review, and East Coast Literary with forthcoming works in ZO Magazine, 300 Days of Sun, Blue Lyra Review, and Aspirations. She currently has an A.A. in Creative Writing and is working on her B.A.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this
corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become
impossible to write poetry today.”
-Theodor Adorno
Follow me,
from fields of white Asphodels,
to Tainaron’s gate,
now open like Hades’ heart.
Hopeless darkness,
fires at our heels,
the brass walls of hell sweat
bullets when we flee,
Me from you, you,
my Eurydice
And if all my love could not turn back
to see such beauty, then I am ghost,
I breathe the airs of hell.
Turn back, turn back, I wish to see
the beauty of Eurydice.
No longer can I write poetry
for all my loss
has stopped my hand just inches from the
parchment. And the songs,
once played for all,
have been lined up, and
damned, one by one,
to the pits
below.
With all my heart I plead
To take back Eurydice.
No Virgil can help my art start bleeding
from the lands I’ve once known so dear,
Mount Helicon’s foot.
In that hell where ash rained
like sand in time,
I try to free myself
from Eurydice.
by Nicholas McCarthy
