October 2016 | poetry
Teach me your ways,
O’ Mistress of Mislead Mystery.
How do I cloud my own
past and present without
walking straight into a
nightmarish field of peril?
“Forget all tension
stirring in your entire being.
Do not over analyze.
For once,
do not even utter a
single syllable.
Relax, my dear, and
love will show us how.”
Hark!
The celestial voice
hath spoken,
courageous cats of the cellar!
Bliss is on the other side when
Gaia’s work takes its course.
Your tantalizing heart has
the beat,
the rhythm,
the melody,
the lyrics,
like a fresh song!
Oh, my Good Goddess!
I can dance to this tune
for the rest of my life!
Care to join me in our
first waltz,
blushing pink rose girl?
Our bodies breathe in the
method of love.
What the world needs now is
love.
Do not forget this soulgasmic word:
love.
Can you feel it under your breath tonight?
Can you feel its prism-like presence,
floating gently towards the
candidate you have your eye on?
What the world needs now is
love,
harmony,
camaraderie.
Your
stable smile,
your
luxurious lips,
and your
voracious voice
turn this light bulb
all the way on!
Run up the electric bill and
spread this good word to
your neighbor,
your master,
your sobriety,
your nobility,
your only grain of salt,
with the word of love.
The word of love!
The game of love!
The symbol of love!
The power of love!
The song of love!
The poem of love!
The dance of love!
The kiss of love!
The touch of love!
The ever-fruitful union of love!
We don’t need a
Merriam-Webster definition!
We just need a
vow, a
promise, a
confirmation!
We just need a
prayer, a
miracle, and an
entrance to
love itself!
Your love holds
no limits,
no laws,
no corny justification for the
gestating cynics of Pandora’s Box.
Your love reveals
your inner mind,
your inner senses,
your inner beauty,
which matters just as much
as an external shell.
Your love is a
once in a lifetime opportunity,
an infantile flower,
a privilege and an honor to be with you.
Your love climbs
hills of hilarity,
mountains of madness,
ladders of lurking lakes,
walls of waterworks, and
dimensions of delusion.
Your love reminds me of
a siren song.
Time ceases everywhere.
Stampedes rumble and cause the
earthy vibrations that happen
between the sheets.
Your love,
like a flask of fermented grapes,
doth not disturb the sweetness
that is preserved.
Dominance preludes to guilt, but on
occasion, eludes holy fantasies.
Your love cannot replace
our brightest star,
our fretting moon,
our beast with two backs.
Your love
dries away a monsoon,
clears away a mist,
melts away a blizzard,
liquefies a wildfire, and
shakes back an earthquake.
I would live for you.
I would call upon the fates for you.
I would set the sun for you.
I would bring the moon to you.
I would balance the chances for you.
I would change my name for you.
I would marvel at stones for you.
I would cross a line for you.
I would die for you.
I would take a bullet for you.
I would tiptoe on Mt. Everest’s peak for you.
I would set the world on fire for you.
I would walk on lava for you.
I would run swiftly a thousand miles for you.
I would do that and so many other
obnoxious obstacles for:
Your heart,
your hand and word,
your commitment and blessing,
your breath on my neck.
I live in and for the
State of Euphoria.
I live for the
End of Night Terrors.
I live for the
thrill of the future.
I live for the
hard times.
I live for the
paid off minutes.
I live for
life’s next day.
I live for
tomorrow because you are there,
waking up beside me.
I live for you!
I live for!
I live!
I…
Z.M. Wise
Z.M. Wise is a proud Chicago native, poet, co-editor and poetry activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades and a spoken-word poet for four years. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He is also an Assistant Editor at Weasel Press with another dear friend, Weasel. He has published four full length books of poetry, including: ‘Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock!’ (MavLit Press), ‘The Wandering Poet’ (Transcendent Zero Press), ‘Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems’ (Weasel Press), and ‘Cuentos de Amor’ (Red Ferret Press).
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.
