Listen

July 2018 | poetry

Let the wolf metaphor stand. Must I heed what some editor says about cliché. They see them everywhere: tone deaf to the sounds of poems: their boxcar rhythm. Occasionally, they astound with a miraculously astute observation. For decades, I let them throw me into bouts of depression, for they were the only route. Was I cursed to be able to hear the world? Once for a week I was obsessed with the words of osteology: epiphysis, apophysis. I take words upstairs to empty halls where I let them echo. When Michael took sick, there was a polite buffer of silence between the world and me. I cared for him and felt guilty pursuing my passion for language play. When the morphine did little I knew what was coming. Each night I whispered to myself, God don’t let that happen tonight. I would read aloud to him at all hours of the night. Sometimes I would put my face up close to him and think, it’s still him. I couldn’t help but reminisce to myself about the stories he told of growing up, of his family living in an unfinished basement. My mind wandered madly. I doodled on my unlined journal’s pages: a cross within a circle with distinct dots around the circumference. It reminded me of Southwest petrographs, of our time exploring the spiritual sites of northern New Mexico. After he passed, I convinced myself there was nothing in creation that is a home. I took up sadness. It took a couple of years for language to speak to me again. One day huddled in a winter coat and scarf jotting down thoughts on a park bench I thought: at one time in this world it was alright to throw a kiss to a pretty stranger. This world speaks more than ever, and there has never been a time when there is so little rich language to hear.

—written from phrases and lines from the same page number of fourteen different books

by Marc Frazier

Marc Frazier has widely published poetry in journals including The Spoon River Poetry Review, ACM, Good Men Project, f(r)iction, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Slant, Permafrost, Plainsongs, and Poet Lore. He has had memoir from his book WITHOUT published in Gravel, The Good Men Project, decomP, Autre, Cobalt Magazine, Evening Street Review, and Punctuate. Marc, an LGBTQ+ writer, is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Award for poetry, has been featured on Verse Daily, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a “best of the net.” His book The Way Here and his two chapbooks are available on Amazon as well as his second full-length collection titled Each Thing Touches (Glass Lyre Press). Willingly, his third poetry book, will be published by Adelaide Books in 2019. His website is www.marcfrazier.org

The Walk to School

July 2018 | poetry

The chainsaw revs, wakes us to falling

limbs and pulping. Not the birch,

I pray, to what God of no

mercy, I know not. For it is the birch,

too close to the power lines, being

carved out. My son squeezes my

hand. People fear roots, I mumble—

which sounds creepy— maybe

the tree was sick, I add.

The comfort-lie, we both know— leaves

gusting down the picture-perfect block.

Joey told me entry-level jobs are being

replaced by artificial intelligence.

This shit is real, my son blurts.

(Joey: his best friend’s older brother.)

Typically, I would chastise this shit

is real. And lambast Joey.

Instead, I ruffle the top of his cherished

head. When did he start using hair

gel? My fifth-grader trying

to be tough, to take my eyes of what was

once my favorite tree, to comprehend

this irrational world. After drop-off,

I drag back home— only the trunk is left.

Goggled workers, in bright orange, feed

the silver branches to machines.

Someday, robots will do this. They will

also drive trucks cross country, scoop

ice-cream cones, walk our dogs.

The city trucks are a jolly green.

Emblazoned across their sides:

Yes, cultivation is good here.

by Rebecca Irene

Rebecca Irene is a graduate of Swarthmore College, and recently received her MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work is published, or forthcoming, in Eunoia Review, Sixfold, Amaryllis, Dime Show Review, and elsewhere. She received a 2018 fellowship from the Norton Island Artist Residency Program. A Poetry Reader for Hunger Mountain and The Maine Review, she lives in Portland, Maine, where she supports her word-addiction by waitressing.

Karla Linn Merrifield

July 2018 | poetry

Materials

The copper widow

offers a penny a thought

to fill her basket

with derivative fortune

cookie drivel of evil

~

The two-bit widow

dispenses small-time wisdom;

small-minded yokels

in small towns throughout the land

think me soothsayer gypsy

~

The très chic widow’s

custom-fitted tuxedo,

a George Sand number,

parfait with kitten-heel pumps,

and couture pop-art bow tie.

~

The watchful widow

on stake-out beyond the wake

of amplified loss

catches the constellation

Orion hunting me down

Zodiac Ripple

I was born on a full moon

a bad-ass moon

in Aries’s house

my sun sign in tight-ass Virgo’s

has a big bulgy ball of loosy-goosies

to contend with

some rules

apply

some rules don’t (as here)

fickle the application thereof

I know the rules

know which is which

a poker face doesn’t stand

a chance

you can’t

fake me out

the aggrieved

grammarian

prim-grim librarian

is off-duty tonight

my ram rises

for George Wolff

by Karla Linn Merrifield

Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. Forthcoming this fall is Psyche’s Scroll, a full-length poem, to be published by The Poetry Box Selects in June. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye. Visit her blog, Vagabond Poet Redux, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel; https://www.facebook.com/karlalinn.merrifield.

Feeding the Pup in the Early Morning

July 2018 | poetry

I love our pup, she whose DNA chooses to chew

the coffee table’s legs, any book, shoe or the pair

of reading glasses I left where anyone my age

would set them in case of fire, storm, the need

to finally pay a bill, much less an inappropriate

drop-in by someone you would never add to

your daughter’s wedding invitation list. However

it’s 7am and I must feed her. There’s a schedule,

a set of behaviors prescribed in validated tomes

by those who decided never to major in philosophy,

dance history, or literature. They opened their minds

to trial and error, determining a schedule is for sure

the only way to raise a confident and willing companion

who will at some unfathomable day give up dragging

anything dangling—bed spread, sweater, scarf, shower curtain—

who will come when called, sit, lie down, heel, fetch, love

me even when there is no treat. But it’s 7am and I

staggered to bed after meeting a deadline at 3am.

The schedule proclaims “Feed the pup at the same time

every day.” If she sleeps just a measly hour longer, do I

risk her turning into the neighborhood’s teeth baring

dingo who digs up Mrs. Phelps’s petunias, snarls

at the priest on his daily walk, steals the dump truck

from the sandbox down the street, snaps at the kid

selling magazines for a trip to Haiti? Will I be

the one whose best friend must be muzzled for

sleeping into just one more hour of just another day?

Do I take a rabid risk? Oh hell, God bless the kibble.

by Jack Ridl

Jack Ridl’s collection Broken Symmetry was named the year’s best collection by The Society of Midland Authors. His Practicing to Walk Like a Heron received the Gold Medal for Poetry from ForeWord Review/ALA, and his Against Elegies was chosen by Billy Collins for The Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize. He was named Michigan’s Professor of the Year by the Case/Carnegie Foundation. More than 90 of his students are now publishing their work, several of whom have won first book awards.