July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
I’ll Not Pay The Piper
I’ll not pay the piper
Nor shall I sing
And forget about
That long flung shout
Which makes a man feel dumb
Have a little care
The grave is just down there
and with but a stoke
Of dumb luck or perhaps a joke
Pinch a penny and drag a shoe
There is much we ought to know
Just in time to get on by
And past the day or time we die
What Are You Thinking
(Bev asked me)
I am so glad that you are you
And I am so glad you are you
I am just so dang glad
As well as happy too
And in as much as that may bore you
I will tell you again and true
I am so glad that you are you
And I am so glad you are you
I’ve Got A Smile On My Face
G David Schwartz
I’ve got a smile on my face
And I take it every place
Every single place I go
–G David Schwartz
Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write. His new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be ordered.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
tough guy in moonlight
in 7th grade he sat
last row last seat
head on desk asleep Sister
Cleopha slapped
his ear he laughed her face red
hand
trembling on the playground no one
looked him in the eye afraid
to wake his hands
two furious stones tearing
holes in God’s light
seven years later I poured
drinks in a seaside bar I’d learned
to know a little
about a lot
could talk to the toughest guy who’d
be in the Series where
to find parts for a ’63
Impala how
he knocked that motheringfucking
bartender from down the street flat
out I gave him free drinks
to cool
the bad drunks
now he leans
on a thick
stick worn
smooth by broken
hand & muscled
weight the woman the nuns
warned 7th grade
girls they’d become if
they danced with the tough guy holds
his empty hand full
moon sways
him to her
light
street preacher
when I close my eyes I hear
the father’s voice not
his son’s as he cautiously becomes
man not
the spirit’s tongue
of feathers & fire I hear
continents grind
time’s big drum the voice of no
not what could or should not
being’s eternal quarrel
but when I speak a starling
argues
with its own
reflection
I know
one day I’ll open
my eyes see
his voice a pillar
of sound my breath
braids around & you
will stop & you
you & you
will listen
–Frank Rossini
Frank Rossini has been published in various magazines including Poetry Now, The Seattle Review, and Wisconsin Review.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
(Notes on) A Suburban Landscape
Where dwelling is a mode
Of citizenship
Not self
Not text / landschaft
Because the world
Has been always
Made even not here
But the proprietary between-places
That poetry occupies
‘Filling [one]’—like Lewis or
Clark—‘with vague cravings
Impossible
To satisfy’
Privacy
Beyond the formal
Supervised
Without authority
The daft all-over metropoles
And their back-
Ground of ordinances
Gridding the rural
Mile square mile
Mostly what we notice mostly:
Slightly interesting events
Things to be scared of
Persons with dogs
Taking the place
Of reference anxiety
It’s true:
If the way through
Were not also the way in
We would be lost
Taking Turns
Soon I too will
Carry my string
Into the wilderness
Without
Useful language
Or handsome shadow
I know change
Is not easy
But I resent
The silence
My body makes
Space around it to live in
To have an ideal
When I get back there
To the terror I hope
That song
You used to sing
When you
Thought I wasn’t
Listening still
Has the old
Stardusted magic
–Eric Rawson
Eric’s work has recently appeared in a number of periodicals, including Ploughshares, Agni, and Denver Quarterly. My book The Hummingbird Hour was published in October.
July 2011 | back-issues, fiction
by Charles Rafferty
He stole the stars above her house, pulling them out with a claw hammer. She wouldn’t love him anymore, so he left her with a blue-black vault of night — the color of the grackles he used to throw rocks at as they crowded out the other birds around their backyard feeder.
He wanted her to see that the sky had been looted. She never noticed though, because already she had taken a lover, and why would she need the sky and its Rorschach of light when she had a man to pin her to the bed each night?
Meanwhile, the stars were back at his place. It was hard to sleep with the glow of them leaking out of his dresser drawers and the bed too big without her. So off he’d go to the couch, which at least reminded him of the times when she had lived there.
Some nights, he’d get up, walk across town, and climb into the crook of her backyard maple — the one with a view of her curtains and the shadow play of bodies.
One night he waited for the other man’s car to leave. Then he reached into his pocket for the pebbles. The first one hit the window and the light came on. She peered into the night, and didn’t seem to notice it was a tiny bit darker. He tried to order his loneliness, to give it a shape so it could fit upon his tongue, but it only slid back and choked him. Then the window came down with a decisive thud, and the light went off again.
He knew he’d be up in her tree forever, and for the first time since taking them, he wanted to return the stars, to make beautiful the sky he would wait beneath.
Charles Rafferty is primarily a poet. Recent poems appeared or are forthcoming in The New Yorker and The Literary Review. In 2009, he received an NEA fellowship. His most recent book is A Less Fabulous Infinity. Currently, Charles directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
Those bright blue eyes
Rain.
I’ve seen how much she cries.
They drain her longing,
Desperate,
For what I don’t know.
But I showed her
Where to go,
Who to love,
How to be.
And she picked it up
Like no one I’ve ever seen.
She asked,
He answered.
I just saw the change in her
After
The fall before grace,
Fulfilled.
Those bright blue eyes
Rain.
She changes people around her.
Joyfully
Exploding
His love.
– Shawna Polmateer
