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.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
It’s cigarettes and coffee
between worries and words.
I could be talking to you
instead of myself,
but you’re allergic to smoke
and I can’t step outside
every 10 minutes.
It’s winter in New York City.
I won’t make any sacrifices.
I’ve come far enough in life
to know when to give in
and I won’t give in to you.
I don’t have to.
The thing inside of me
that can radiate for miles
will bestow its warmth
only on the hands of those
who know how to touch it.
And it shifts.
It twists and turns and
sits angrily deep within me.
It rages against the lampshade
I’ve been living under
since I came back home.
It curses the shade’s weight
and girth, and then
it shakes.
And the only thing I can do to still it
is find a worthy pair of hands,
or bathe in the sun.
But it’s fucking winter in New York City.
So it’s cigarettes and coffee, then,
and conversations with myself.
by Tonianne Druckman
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
0
Geometry of motion: the pinpricks of stars behind
moving clouds reforming into instants of fungus.
World’s tallest building in the revolving foreground.
1.
Player piano script unrolled on the green park bench
near boulevard Magenta. Strawberries for sale in the market,
three coins a pound. The butcher is disassembling a leg of lamb:
his left hand is a hook. Still lifes of meat in the window.
2.
“. . . in the grotto of Our Lady of the Cripples, a girl
placed a plastic rosary around a statue’s wrist
that melted in the hot light of the votives. Her prayers–
balls of burnt wax at the figures’ unclothed feet.”
3.
Maps to everywhere lead to nowhere where there’s
the always of never, never again. Cave housed
with bats unfolding like tricky scissors, or airs of night time.
4.
Stamps on a letter canceled by mascara.
5.
Black and white of a photograph of the canal
and the train station behind. The engine house switching
round like the handless arms on a watch.
6.
On the inside cover of a matchbook there’s
an advertisement for a new set of teeth;
dentures sent through the mail, echo of Van Gogh.
7.
Woman at a loom weaving a canvass of henbane. The spool
turns and flax is taken up onto wooden beams. The thread
passes between her lips– dragon flies land ringleting the pond.
7.1/2
Stitchwork of concentric circles left by the skipping stone . . .
by Philip Kobylarz
Philip’s recent work appears or will appear in Connecticut Review, Basalt, Santa Fe Literary Review, New American Writing, Poetry Salzburg Review and has appeared in Best American Poetry. His book, Rues, was recently published by Blue Light Press of San Francisco.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Old trees in the winter are like wizards
clean shaven or white beards hanging,
you can see the 60s and 70s in them,
not far off at all, right there even,
if you look closely. You could even see
other decades that you wish you lived in,
like the, 40s? I don’t know, I don’t look for
the 40s when I look, but
these trees are the ones, with that grainy gray
winter film on them: where the sticks come from
that crack under our feet when we walk together
through the woods towards the giant wind turbines
we’ve always wanted to stand at the base of,
just to see. Walking towards a brand new thing
like you and I, through the Scots pines, Silver maples,
Old things, trees
at home in yards: the ones creaky old rocking chairs
are made from, newly made even, I could make one
right now, lubed up and stained fresh,
but if I used that old thing out there, like a giant’s tibia
preserved from some other decade,
it would creak, crack, cold and crisp with gray
outside like this portion of the world’s schedule
the sun just couldn’t buy its way into:
“Sorry Mr. Sun, sir. The sky is booked. It’s not that
the rain will be using it, it’s just that you can’t.”
That kind of gray, more refreshing to wake up to
than orange juice, gray dancing in a line around
November through February and the trees—
branches dead enough to let me climb them
to their tip top, but snap anytime I try sitting
up there awhile and watch me fall, all the way
back onto the grass, back on the grass,
breathing in the smoke smell from a bon-fire
two houses down, burning old creaky things,
old creaky things burning.
by Andy McIntyre
Andy’s poetry and fiction have been published in Hard Freight, a Penn State literary journal, and two of my original plays were also there produced during my time there as a student.
January 2013 | back-issues, poetry
It began as easily
as the opening of a flower.
A parfait of feelings,
sticky confections
enjoyed together;
an ache in the marrow
when they were apart.
They went to dinner and films.
They danced at clubs and balls
dressed up in the costumes
of fairy tales.
Then came the camping trips,
and visits to theme parks.
And they got an apartment,
dividing rent, utilities,
groceries and chores.
Soon, they met the parents
with mock chastity,
sleeping in separate bedrooms.
It was a predictable dance.
Tacit understandings.
Compromises.
Accommodations.
Expectations.
A diamond ring
to close the deal.
They sat together on the couch
in their bathrobes by the flatscreen TV.
Between them was a bowl of buttered popcorn
to share on movie night.
As he listens to Andy Dufresne and Red
talk about escaping from
Shawshank State Prison,
all he can think about
is how to say goodbye.
by William Ogden Haynes
William Ogden Haynes is a poet and author of short fiction from Alabama who was born in Michigan and grew up a military brat. His book of poetry entitled Points of Interest appeared in 2012 and is available on Amazon. He has published nearly forty poems and short stories in literary journals and his work has been anthologized multiple times. In a prior life he taught speech-language pathology at Auburn University and authored six major professional textbooks.
