A Retrospective

January 2013 | back-issues, poetry

“Energy is eternal delight.” – William Blake

At 4 years old I levitated

Locked my eyes and lifted from my bed

Floated through the house

Soared over mountains of crushed and flattened cars

I knew the golden flashes of the stars

The electric chanting of the air

The darkness of the universe

I knew invisibility

And on the stairs outside the kitchen door, I tasted endlessness

At 9 I pissed on my big sister who wouldn’t get off the pot

I squirted a gusher on that hapless, acne’d wretch

Soaked her chest, her lap. her thighs

That same day epiphany raged through me like an avalanche

The magnitude of death, end of consciousness, everlasting solitude

I shuddered, and shudder yet

At 13, my Bar Mitzvah year

I eavesdropped on my parents thrashings of desire

Ashamed, appalled, and beating off

And bragged about it to my friends

In my teens, (the young manhood of a Jew)

I bullied the weak, ridiculed the strange, shunned the lonely

and toadied to the crew I most admired.

I thirsted to become whatever it was I would become

I was a courtier in the courtyard of my life

At 21, the year I came of age,

In the spirit of equality I slapped a woman who loved me

Like Rimbaud, I turned away from rectitude, shunned all things familiar

Cheated my parents, they who seeded me, in the name of education

I enlisted in the Marine Corps in a dream of chivalry

Washed out quickly, my apathy intact

When no one was looking

I made babies cry and dogs whimper in pain

I was searching for an ethic of creativity, looking for a rose

At 31, appearing fully formed and fortunate

I was a husband, father, businessman in high regard

I walked upon the world intent on leaving footprints of achievement

I hankered after a baroque richness and a classical order

Doing what I had to do

I fleeced whoever trusted me, and bribed officials, and pimped my secretary

Along the way I cheated on my wife and gave her crabs

Kicked around my sons to ease my cares

Terrified my daughter to nurture her imagination

I paid no attention to the pageantry of time

No longer troubled to recall my dreams

At 40, aware of my impermanence

I’d learned that defeat and loss are the hyenas that feed upon us

And resilience is a lifelong obligation

I turned my lust to matters altruistic

Setting out to heal the sick at heart

I became the train that carried broken birds of passage

I listened to their cries at night and wailed into the night

In my envy I seduced the sad and lonely

Again and again my resolve to do some good unraveled into lassitude

My indifference sped desperate people to their ruin

Now, at 63, I bring you these bitter fruits, this litany of memories

The song of my self-loathing

I’m dedicated to a self-absorbed ideal of partial truth

I make no apologies

This is a cleaner work then what has gone before 

It redeems me by virtue of a half-assed honesty and graceful phrasing

I tell you I am joyful and unrepentant

I tell you these are the badges of my sainthood and mortality

I tell you I’m expanding as my world contracts

I tell you I’m a falcon rising

I tell you that I’m laughing as I gaze into my grave.

by David Lewitzky

David Lewitzky is a retired social worker/family therapist living out his sedentary life in Buffalo, New York. Recent work has appeared in Nimrod, Roanoke Review, and Third Wednesday among others and forthcoming work in Passages North, Clarion, Sam Smith’s Journal and Poetry Bus.

Looking for a Key

January 2013 | back-issues, poetry

The Dungeon, Midwest Books, Stoughton, Wisconsin

Confine me closer, little room of shelves,
And hold me in your mouth whose teeth are spines.
Your concave paper and your convex cloth
Collapse upon me. Drug me with the smell
Of mummied wood. The book I want is all
Ways hidden well: accept my captured hand
Into your close forgotten crevices
To touch the flesh the angle leaves unseen.

by Sara Bickley

Lemon Ice

January 2013 | back-issues, poetry

It was a sweltering summer day and

dripping with sweat I

popped over to Taylor Street,

ordered a lemon ice.

Waiting in line, my

phone buzzed it’s usual “hi,”

opening it

while taking an icy sip,

that’s how I

learned

that you’d died.

The sharp taste.

The sour taste.

The aftertaste

of lemon ice.

by Stefanie Lyons

Stefanie Lyons received her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a Chicago advertising copywriter by day, working on her great American novel by night. These poems come from a series of digital loneliness and anti-advertising pieces she’s currently working on. Oh, the irony.

Dionysiou Areopagitou Street

January 2013 | back-issues, poetry

ancient marble frames

wide cobblestone,

hills and trees

as if

a painting

enters life—

pink parasols twirl

in the breeze

and passers-by stroll on

past ice cream vendors peach parfait,

a gypsy violinist plays

on, as if

the song cannot end,

as if

this promenade 

exists beyond

September Sunday’s mid-day sun.

by Loukia Janavaras

Loukia M. Janavaras is from Minneapolis, MN but has been living in Athens, Greece for the past 10 years. Although she enjoys writing, it is never a choice.

Matt Hemmerich

January 2013 | back-issues, poetry

Blank/Space

the moon is some madness
those curl in

popping stars on the ceiling,
I burst apart stray thoughts

you keep the lights on
and drink in bed
praying the wolves will dissever

for they await at the blank/space
erasing histories from a page

if you lose my ember in your heart,
I cannot resuscitate its truth

we’ll wake in the morning,
perennial prey for the cruel

Lapse

you ascend
to a vortex in the fog

a half mast flag
towers the ashes
spread through Sutro Baths

the distant vocal of an engine
spinning in the sky,
spins in your direction

in an azure haze,
the clouds ruminate
with diamonds and stars
as you disappear in the
foreground

Hedestad

the weight of sleep breaks snow

a coat of paint
your face veiled white
in the thaw, a crown molds

tattooed by light,
your frozen river sweats

the brim of a crescent,
damned in fire,
glows technicolor
above vernal heights and broken bones

as the weight of sleep breaks snow

Lift

the fog burns off
shadows trapped in glass

a house on stilts creaks like a crate
six feet above
shark teeth skimming the bay

the bridge is a woman
iron and red,
bearing carriers into the Northwest

snowy plovers skirt
under a blue lunette
as you and I slowly forget
our crimes on the land’s end

the sun was a dying fire on the horizon

Hail

when wrath has bled
the feeling arrives

I cannot displace you,
frosted strife,
you divide my loves with a
jealous ire

no soul escapes your
spinning plates,
bitter spades

(her dress is draggled and I coil like a wounded fist)

a victor with still hands,
you carry me
downwards
away from her light

by Matt Hemmerich

Matt Hemmerich is a writer living in San Francisco’s Sunset District. He is currently working on a poetry chapbook and recording an EP.