April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
I call my friend Alan to talk while I drive up the coast, past a friend’s house in Salem Center,
a friend I haven’t seen in almost a year. She is not dead, but I guess, I am dead
to her, or she to me since we only speak in space.
The Kernwood Bridge is up, letting a boat through on the Danvers River. I am stuck
by the street of another friend who’s gone and left, who lives across from a graveyard, honest,
no joke.
I ask Alan would it kill someone to jump off this bridge? No, but you might break a few bones.
How about the Beverly Bridge? It’s right there, up the river, all new sleek, it’s one of the few bridges left safe for me to
drive over. Yeah, that bridge will kill you. Once when we were all
friends, all alive, all clean, we ate at a clam shack there at the foot and saw the cops and
firetrucks
screaming to the high rails. That’s not how I’d do it, one of us said. And then we went back to
our chowder.
How about the Veterans’ Bridge over the Annisquam? I dreamed once my car drove right over
the edge, into that warm water that would take me out to Wingaersheek, and finally the Atlantic.
Oh yeah, broken into pieces, shattered. Like hitting cement, rock. But what are you going to do?
I want to keep asking him until I run out of bridges, all the way up to Maine, but the call drops
and my phone dies.
by Jennifer Martelli
Jennifer Martelli’s chapbook, Apostrophe, was published in 2010 by Big Table Publishing Company. Most recently, her work has been included in Bop Dead City, Cactus Heart, *82, and is forthcoming in Up the Staircase Quarterly and Jersey Devil Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant in Poetry. She lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts with her family and is an associate editor for The Compassion Project.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Her laughter escalated
into muted hysteria,
lasting a second too long,
like an unfortunate accident,
a gasp, an inhalation
with throat muscles constricting,
breasts heaving,
shoulders shaking.
A moment of mirth
escaped unawares,
triggered by happenstance,
initially apologized for,
then later
subtly savored.
by Gary Glauber
Gary Glauber is a poet, fiction writer, teacher, and former music journalist. His works have received multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. In 2013, he took part in Found Poetry Review’s Pulitzer Remix Project. He champions the underdog to the melodic rhythms of obscure power pop. His collection, Small Consolations, is coming from The Aldrich Press in 2015.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
Getting to know you
How do you feel about thunderstorms?
I realize I have no idea how you’d answer.
My cheeks burn;
the thunder cracks;
it must be a sign.
I miss a lover I don’t know
and the thunder is judging me.
Have you ever
tried to write a poem
and the poem won’t write
but its lines keep insisting themselves to you?
I’m being silly.
It’s storming and I’m blushing and
I don’t know you
but I know you don’t write.
The thunder snorts
and the poem about you keeps insisting itself to me.
burning.
when you kissed me,
did your fingertips
feel like lightning?
No,
i guess that was
just me.
Â
Thunder.
Shame on you for making me feel something.
Shame on me for thinking it meant something.
Â
So
how do you feel about thunderstorms
and relationships that won’t go anywhere
poetry
and me?
The thunder is crackling now,
cackling now,
but I don’t think it’s laughing at us.
by Daniele Walker
October sixteenth
The world in which I am living
is not the world in which I woke up
this morning,
because you are not in it.
The world is not the same,
and I didn’t even get to say goodbye
to it
or to you.
This kind of sadness is how I imagine drowning like you did.
And I wonder if it hurt.
And I wonder if you were afraid.
And I wonder
if
you knew
what was coming.
And I wonder if you knew that I loved you.
by Daniele Walker
Daniele DeAngelis Walker is twenty-three years young, but her soul feels much older. An avid lover of colors and words, she graduated from Drew University with specialized honors in creative writing. She works in the publishing industry and lives in New Jersey with the fiancée she never thought she’d have.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
when I close my eyes,
my bones quiver like I’m
the girl I was last summer,
waking up eighteen on
the banks of the river,
four inches deep in little boys
that press themselves flush
into the creases of my barefoot callouses
it’s there:
honeysuckle, rationed
single drop by single drop,
nectar touched so gently
by our green mother
that it’s bitter to my tongue,
pressed inside my cheeks,
to bite, to knead,
sewn into silk-hewn soil
that bleeds roots from seeds,
bursting leaves like sunburst skies,
like the amber-glossed eyes
of every horse I led to water
only to never let them drink
by Alora Ray
Alora Ray is 20, temporarily lives in Northern Virginia, perpetually lives in a state of denial, performs for whimsy, writes by necessity.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
flibbertigibbets
on pulpits,
lucid with bliss,
gold, crimson and chartreuse,
a tricky weave
in thatched looms,
chirps tuned
to dulcet grace,
coy as they syncopate,
fragile as a drizzle
of satyrids,
murmur of aria, whirl
and frond.
fantasia of mince,
lilt-borne chimes,
troupe
of felicity,
young as breeze,
buoyant with glee,
irresistible
aerial
delectable
playful
flight.
by Chris Crittenden
Chris Crittenden writes from a struggling fishing village, fifty miles from the nearest traffic light. He is pretty well published.
April 2015 | back-issues, poetry
i want to build you castles of words,
letters looping into stairs & banisters –
standing up billboards of breath
in a sleepless city lit by commas &
question marks. i want to sprinkle consonants
into your dreams & i want you to wake up with poetry
under your tongue. i’ll soften all the vowels
that dewdrop on the roses & i’ll sculpt
the adjectives into a vehicle
to the extraordinary. my fingers
may be feeble & my heart may spin
rambling novels before it’s through,
but i’ll keep restacking these bricks
and trimming these topiaries
until every last syllable
comes out right.
by Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a writer, poetry editor, and literary enthusiast living in St. Louis.
