April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
But tomorrow I’m going to take Durer to lunch again.
He won’t sit still. He’ll be interested in the supermarket
down the block and traffic, well traffic–it took about
an hour for him to try out all the adjustments on
the seat belt. He doesn’t like cars much, though.
The surfaces are too flat and shiny. He misses animals.
I take him to the Farmer’s Market, where the Amish
hang calendar pictures of fine horses and speak to him
in old Deutsch. He sketches a black woman at the counter.
He measures my palm against the length of my face.
He is agitated by fluorescent lighting. We stand outside
in the cold and count starlings. I give him a little rice
to throw. He decides to wait for spring before we go
out again. I understand. He’s pretty heavy to carry.
Too many pages and colorplates and indices. I didn’t
really mean to get him so wet.
by Kelley Jean White
Kelley’s writing has been widely published since 2000 in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Friends Journal, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, the Journal of the American Medical Association and in a number of chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently Toxic Environment from Boston Poet Press, Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community at Canterbury, NH, from Beech River Books, and “In Memory of the Body Donors,” Covert Press. She have received several honors, including a 2008 grant for poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Coffee House Get-Together With An Ex
We meet in a coffee house
after ten years apart.
In our conversation,
those ten years
and our two together
jostle for attention.
You’ve met someone.
You’ve settled down.
But you still love Hendrix.
And the beach remains
your Mother Earth.
Meanwhile, I’ve remarried.
No kids so no need to bore
you with their details.
We have our own home.
Your meager apartment gets a complex
so I stay away from how many rooms,
the size of our backyard.
We don’t touch upon
why it didn’t work.
We just extract moments
from when it was working,
pretend that was all of it.
And the intervening times
catch a break.
No imagining what it
would be like if we had shared them.
Despite the laughs,
an occasional tear,
those ten years remain intact.
You look older,
slightly wiser.
I’ve some gray
to give my heartbeat pause.
I’ve enjoyed this time together.
If I could turn back the clock,
it’d be the one on the wall.
Beyond The Wish List
The last year was murder.
Every night, another argument,
two heads going at it,
two hearts begging for mercy.
Weary, one of us would walk,
one drive, at a good pace
in opposite direction,
until sleep hauled us back
to be temporarily communal.
By day at least, we kept
ourselves at arm’s length.
I worked the factory
with radio at full blast,
one heavy metal
in deafening conflict with another.
You tended a second hand book store,
selling rough copies of
Dos Passos and Fitzgerald
between sipping lattes
from the coffee house next door.
Without the other around,
we could work on strengthening our cause.
I saved one photograph from the dumpster,
two of us on a beach,
me rubbing oil into your back.
Now my fingers are on the east coast,
your shoulder blades keep to the west.
But just the other day,
I saw someone who looked like you.
I thought that was your job.
And your yearly email,
I read at least three times.
I give you an 8 out of 10 for happiness.
My mark is roughly 7.
To be honest,
without lawyers and wedged apart
by flyover country,
we’re actually quite a couple.
Not that I wish us back together.
But there’s other wishes where that came from.
by John Grey
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Eleven, your age of sleeveless sparkle tops and sundown
sneakers, even the lemon of the walls in your home
couldn’t tell you which way little sister should hit
the piñata, or how much corn from the can mom would slip
on your dinner plate. Dad still combed his hair to the left,
talked Nixon and Watergate like the wood cabinets
were listening, and you were pushing the peas to the edge
of the China dish as he said, Son, couldn’t you wear
a baseball jersey instead of them dandy sparkles,
and the shaggy mutt next door sang to the rooftops
of other dogs. You tilted your head to sister playing
with the cheeks of her dress, thought about all those gummy fish
she hopes to find when she hits the belly of a hanging horse,
and how she’ll kneel down with graveled knees and scarlet
fingers to gather what she can in the small of her arms. You
dosey-doed from your plate up to the staircase, lifted
the dirt-painted horse from your sill. Mom taught you once
how to ride, but you only remember the earthquake of your legs
and the ground crumbling like an unfinished jigsaw. The posters
of baseball brilliants, the stars of other stars, were not tacked
into place by calloused hands of your own, but instead
melted into the wallpaper as models for who you could be. Just look
at them son, you could be all that they are, you could
even be more. You moved your horse around the bedpost,
made trotting sounds with your teeth and your tongue
as the greats hung like ghosts on the wall.
by Lauren Weiler
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
Harangue
He is a hard sell
A man who knows what he doesn’t want
Ranting on and on
Appealing to his senses is useless
Neither hot nor cold
Gone is his sanity
Under his hat
Enters the green dragon
Rattle
She was one piece
Hanging together like
The skeleton in the closet.
Each bone attached with hooks
Rattling at the least breeze
When the door opens.
Words clatter around in her skull
The marrow eaten away
Flesh is a remembrance.
Each line put together
With bits of bone.
by Cynthia Eddy
Cynthia Eddy lives and writes on the eastern shore of Virginia. The quiet village sustains her sense of neighborhood and belonging. She holds a BA in Art History. She has been published in Third Wednesday, Eunoia Review, Epiphany Magazine, Zombie Poetry, Deep South Magazine, Forge Journal, the Black Lantern Press and in Emerge Literary Journal. Poetry creates a chord between reader and poet. That chord remains long after the reading. Every poem reaches into the reader and brings forth an understanding, a moment of ‘I’ve been there’.
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
1. The First Day
Cubette manacled, beslacked
and boringbuttoned to the neck,
flogging freeways towards debtless hope –
I’ll be cubed like cheap ham at a salad bar,
smiling behind circuited gallows,
noose in a half Windsor,
not without doldrumming dress heels
typing into sterile carpentry.
Hairsprayed stare to spread bullshit like butter,
one foot on the bottom rung,
the other in quicksand security,
I folded like a clothrusted hide-a-bed
forgotten under days
2. Co-workers
Poloshirted, hunching
future quasimodos, pocket change tolling
in vending machine spires,
window-staring champions
tanning fluorescent, clockwatching
heartbeat swimming in coffee regimen,
keyboard galloping in protocol to ratatat ringtones –
the break room oasis warmed by
that sweet droning, the choral hum
of iridescent glucose
3. Medication
and I dream of weekends like I dreamt
of middle school crushes in math class –
blessed by hallowed Friday night,
whiskey caress reaches till Sunday,
inviting Mondaybound hangovers, with
docile lights roaring between the calm
slaps of lukewarm caffeine and the
respiratory embrace of nicotine;
I take my fifteen to paint porcelain
the colour of one-too-many and remember
I am 2,080 hours richer
than a life I might actually enjoy.
by Michael Harper
Michael Harper fled to Oregon right after getting a degree in English & Comparative Literature from one of those biggish schools in Southern California. His work has been featured in Dash Literary Journal, Hibbleton Independent, Lexicon Polaroid, New Verse News, Origami Condom, and Verdad. He now lives beneath your couch, hoping you won’t look under there too often. You can find more of him or ignore him at openmikeharper.com
April 2013 | back-issues, poetry
I dropped your mother’s
mirror. A horse reared: I spilled
hot coffee on your lap in Amish
country. I walked under three
ladders to get to the office every
day. I hid a small black cat in
the front bedroom. You hated
cats. I was busy hating myself
by Kelley Jean White
Kelley’s writing has been widely published since 2000 in journals including Exquisite Corpse, Friends Journal, Nimrod, Poet Lore, Rattle, the Journal of the American Medical Association and in a number of chapbooks and full-length collections, most recently Toxic Environment from Boston Poet Press, Two Birds in Flame, poems related to the Shaker Community at Canterbury, NH, from Beech River Books, and “In Memory of the Body Donors,” Covert Press. She have received several honors, including a 2008 grant for poetry from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
