July 2020 | poetry
This season is a
power wash for my arteries,
I am washed clean
and hung to dry on the clothesline.
Father doesn’t work, he sits
on the veranda, smoking a bidi,
his friends bring him bottles of
home-brewed wine.
Arrack: they brew it with petrol
and ash, they slice some fruits,
add lizards to the pot
boil them to a sozzle-blitz.
I watch my neighbours stir it
with blood-shot eyes.
Amma kills my pet chickens every day,
Mary, Martha, Kunju have all been
cooked with spices ground at home.
Men look at amma’s blouse
as she bends down to serve them.
on a plantain leaf. They smack their
lips savouring spices, looking
at her melons and at times, at me.
Amma has purple patches all over her face,
she snores into her dreamless land.
I feel two hands pull me up by my feet,
peel off my petticoat.
No one hears me in the night
when pain washes my heart clean.
I soar up with the wind
watch my friends smile
in their sleep dreaming
of angels like me.
I dry out day and night
on the clothesline
washed clean from
pain and shame.
Babitha Marina Justin
Babitha Marina Justin is from Kerala, South India and a Pushcart prize nominee, 2018. Her poems have appeared in Eclectica , Esthetic Apostle, Fulcrum, The Scriblerus, Chaleur Magazine, Into the Void, Trampset, Inlandia , The Paragon Press, Adolphus Press, The Punch Magazine, Rise Up Review, Constellations, Cathexis NW Press, Silver Needle Press, About Place Journal, The Write Launch, Trampset, The Four Quarters Magazine, So to Speak journal, Kritya and Journal of Post-Colonial Literature. Her first collection of poetry, Of Fireflies, Guns and the Hills, was published by the Writers Workshop in 2015. She is also waiting to debut as a novelist with ‘Maria’s Swamp’
July 2020 | poetry
In January, we headed south.
First, a road trip, then a new place to live…
Never eat Chinese food
in Birmingham, Alabama was
one lesson learned.
At our destination, each of our myths,
so carefully curried, was sucked
into February, then disassembled
and poured, like an old man’s ashes,
into April’s mud puddles.
Unlike dear Lazarus, these were
ashes never to be resurrected.
There wasn’t enough love
in all of the world to make them
whole and bring them back to us.
Another lesson learned:
Sometimes smoke does not
indicate a fire.
We watched the souls of our loved ones
flow steadily from stubby Palmettos and
were introduced to insects larger than our
imaginations. Once, we saw geese in the sky
coming towards us and, once, in a park,
a swan bit my bare heel. The mark looked
a little like a lipstick imprint on the edge
of a glass. When I wrote to a friend
to tell her about the swan, she giggled,
“They are mean little fuckers, aren’t they?”
We felt 1000 spirits in the south, pleading
for bodies, longing to extend themselves
as soon as the signal was given. While we
waited for pulled pork at a barbeque joint,
the twilight grew gray and empty
and heat-treated rain began to fall.
Something about the atmosphere made me
feel tangled and more shy than ever. The
nights were ripe with nightmares and
visits from my dead father. The air…something…
In July, in yet another new rental, Barbara Goldberg’s
words sang out in every room: “The world is ripe with calamity,”
she said in a steady alto. Once the entire apartment
was taken over by beige and gray, we made our decisions
and drove back to Los Angeles—unfiltered, certain.
Martina Reisz Newberry
Martina Reisz Newberry is the author of 6 books of poetry. Her most recent book is BLUES FOR FRENCH ROAST WITH CHICORY, available from Deerbrook Editions. She is the author of NEVER COMPLETELY AWAKE (from Deerbrook Editions), and TAKE THE LONG WAY HOME (Unsolicited Press). She is also the author of WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions). LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press). She has been included in “The Sixty Four Best Poets of 2018” (Black Mountain Press/The Halcyone Magazine editorial staff). Newberry has been included in As It Ought to Be, Big Windows, Courtship of Winds, The Cenacle, Cog, Futures Trading, and many other literary magazines in the U.S. and abroad. Her work is included in the anthologies Marin Poetry Center Anthology, Moontide Press Horror Anthology, A Decade of Sundays: L.A.’s Second Sunday Poetry Series-The First Ten Years, In The Company Of Women, Blessed Are These Hands and Veils, and Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts. Passionate in her love for Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband, Brian, a Media Creative.
July 2020 | poetry
His heart gave out two nights ago
at 29, four years out of Iraq.
In war, with mangled vehicles,
mechanics strip the intact parts.
Fuel pump, clutch, perhaps an axle,
roof hatch, carburetor, clutch,
random gauges, a machine gun mount.
Whatever works.
Back home in Pinson
Tennessee, he heard cicadas
saw his head
around the clock.
A jobless drift of smashed chairs.
A son meandering the fence
around my sister’s yard,
tremors in his vision as he
spat accusations in the grass.
Meth: a gnashing chatter.
Heroin: molasses in a moan.
His Purple Heart
lying with its recovered bullet
in a satin-lined box.
A year of VA rehab lockdown,
with a Johnson City keyhole view:
him, his eyes lost in the mountains,
from a bench out on the lawn.
Two nights ago, his heart gave out
at 29. He’s on life support
until they harvest organs.
Eric Forsbergh
Eric Forsbergh’s poetry has appeared in The Journal of The American Medical Association, Zeotrope, Artemis, The Cafe Review, and other venues. In 2016, he was awarded a Pushcart nomination by The Northern Virginia Review. He is a Vietnam veteran.
