October 2019 | poetry
Up shit creek (and assuming you stick with the
traditional story line) without a paddle. An ineffable
disaster, you surmise. Yet, it could be worse.
Suppose you no longer even have a canoe
and your only apparent option is to swim back
down this dystopian stream of sludge? Or worse
still, what if you’ve never managed to master the
art of swimming? But, not to worry. According to
the teachings of the dharma, all things in life are
impermanent, invariably subject to change. And
with the law of gravity in play, wouldn’t the
effluvium eventually begin to flow downstream?
Thus, if you stay right where you are, the upper end
of the creek might well begin to clear and those at the
low end of the runnel would be the ones with a problem.
So, keep the faith, friend. Between the wisdom of the
Buddha and Sir Isaac Newton, it just might be that your
luck is about to change.
Howard Brown
Howard Brown is a poet and writer who lives in Lookout Mountain, Tennessee. His poetry has appeared in Burningword Literary Journal, Tuck Magazine, Blue Collar Review, The Beautiful Space, Pure Slush Magazine, Poetry Super Highway, Old Hickory Review, Lone Stars Magazine, Printed Words and Devils Party Press. In 2012, he published a collection of poems entitled The Gossamer Nature of Random Things. His poem “Pariah” placed first in the poetry division of the 2015 William Faulkner Literary Competition sponsored by the Union County Mississippi Heritage Museum and Tallahatchie Riverfest. He has published short fiction in Louisiana Literature, F**k Fiction, Crack the Spine, Pulpwood Fiction, Extract(s) and Gloom Cupboard.
October 2019 | poetry
“It is a vestibule introducing one into the presence of the Good. Vestibule? Yes, and vestige, too, the trace in the multiple of the Good which itself remains in absolute unity.” Plotinus, The Intelligence, The Ideas, And Being
Not whole, but wholly striving, this Somali sambusa
confiscates
my taste buds. The way its lentil skates
toward higher stakes with kombucha
dominates the echoes and mirrors
of the Radiohead
cover band’s striving. Running for cover, we head
into the nearest tent; whatever echoes and mirrors
the rain is handmade
or not for sale in here. The scent of a baker’s
cake comes in and offers me its handsaw when my Baker’s
cyst elicits memory’s handmaid.
Fliers for performances of The Comedy
of Errors litter
the eye with glitter
redivivus, cupbearers and community.
For the essence of spiritual CBD
oil – if the expression is permissible –
Corri’s turquoise Hamsa charm fits the bill
to a t.
They call this pinot
“Moonlight in a Nightie.”
Running for cover with impunity,
blue jays point –
by the grace of God – to hardy fuchsias.
A sobering and drunken wind’s companion
anions
break this Saturday into a million cluster fucks.
But for all that, the Elf King’s roastery
clouds the thousand eyes of death, whose motley crew
of semi-arbitrary forces in J. Crew
will have a pretty good story
after today. Sitting tight, last year’s regatta
queen considers last year’s gold rush,
crying in her lap with thrush,
and sips a microbrew until last year’s forgotten.
“Beauty must forget itself to be itself”; a misbegotten
thought, which thinking, thinks, “Your rage agrees
with you, and rages.” By the grace
of this harissa’s miniature toccata
on my tongue,
gap-toothed memory gets around,
brings out the best bratwurst in the lost and found.
Angry it isn’t ideal, a scaredy-cat’s got my tongue.
Jake Sheff
Jake Sheff is a pediatrician in Oregon. He’s married with a daughter and six pets. Poems of Jake’s are in Radius, The Ekphrastic Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Cossack Review and elsewhere. He won 1st place in the 2017 SFPA speculative poetry contest and a Laureate’s Choice prize in the 2019 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. Past poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize. His chapbook is “Looting Versailles” (Alabaster Leaves Publishing).
October 2019 | poetry
Rarely do we tear off a wing
from our past bodies to feel alive
with each other, but it happens
enough that we need
some real wolves in the music
we listen to when the children
are sleeping. I sing to howl
without the substances
of our first life together. Emily,
she likes to close her eyes
& stand alone in the water
of her love for me. It’s a new
distance. We are dancing bears
that cannot understand
how we found our hind legs.
We are so many animals
that I do not understand
how these songs keep finding us.
Darren C. Demaree
Darren C. Demaree is the author of eleven poetry collections, most recently “Emily As Sometimes the Forest Wants the Fire”, (June 2019, Harpoon Books). He is the recipient of a 2018 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louis Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Managing Editor of the Best of the Net Anthology and Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.
October 2019 | poetry
A More Perfect Union
When children by gunfire die,
When the dreamer and the warden clash,
When statues betray the artist, we say
This is not who we are.
Who are we?
I take my chisel to Plymouth Rock
But the rock gives no blood;
Our history is like that stone,
Heavier than its weight…
Stood at a dank underpass, I rattle
A tin cup, wave a sign that reads
This is not who we are—
I can grow rich here, devote my life
To the pursuit of happiness…
It is said that upon his murder, Lincoln belonged
To the ages: Why do we wait for blood?
We’ve planted great forests of headstones.
I wander their lush paths, the sanguine streams,
And amidst this grandeur, this horror,
I glimpse both what is and what could be.
What of the Future?
I’ve been hearing Save the Rainforest
Since I was small enough to sleep
In the safety of my parent’s bed
Or snuggled with stuffed animals—
Pandas, giraffes, monkeys, frogs;
Since I lived for lullabies and storytime;
Since the world was as small as a crib
And as big as my imagination;
Since a nightlight could douse fears
And a drop of Tylenol could erase pain;
Since adults could assure me
That all was well and would always be well.
Now I hear that 20% of the Amazon is lost,
That the remainder is on fire,
That a tipping point may soon be passed—
All life in peril.1
Now I have a beloved wife, toddler, dog—
Great plans for our lives.
Now my parents are older, frailer.
Now, at thirty-four, I have traveled enough of life
To know that adults have always betrayed their children,
That absent drastic change I, too, will betray my child,
And that without a future for him
There can be no real joy or pleasure in the present.
1 Fisher, Max. Aug 30, 2019. NY Times. ‘It’s Really Close’: How the Amazon Rainforest Could Self-Destruct <https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/30/world/americas/amazon-rainforest-fires-climate.html>
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
October 2019 | poetry
Those aren’t locusts
cascading from the sky
but paper confetti
cut from a hand-clasp
fanning of pretty patterns.
Up there, her silhouette
cast on the cardstock
moon, her wolf ear hood
accepted for gospel
glorying in the rituals
shedding like skin
with gusto, pasting
onto pages under plastic.
It felt like love just
to see it that one time.
Luanne Castle
Luanne Castle’s Kin Types (Finishing Line Press), a chapbook of poetry and flash nonfiction, was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. Luanne has been a Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside. She studied English and Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her Pushcart-nominated poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, River Teeth, The Review Review, Broad Street, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com. She divides her time between California and Arizona, where she shares land with a herd of javelina.
July 2019 | poetry
“The breaking of so great a thing should make a greater crack.” – Shakespeare
The power of fire is not that it burns
But that it distracts:
We save what burns because it burns.
What goes up in flames comes down in ash,
And ash is cremation:
We do not want to die.
There is no suffering in wood, stone, glass,
No Resurrection in their rebuilding:
Only flesh, blood, and bone feel pain.
Never has a candle saved a life,
And though the thirteen-ton bell rings clear
And the stained-glass awes,
Injustice has neither ears nor eyes:
The centuries grow heavy with war, revolution, poverty,
Buttressed only by a sanguine belief in tomorrow.
When the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris was ablaze
I did not cry. I was already sad, already felt the flames
Of great things breaking all around me.
I only wanted to ask the firefighters:
Could you have as quickly, desperately,
Brought clean water to the poor?
To ask the billionaires:
Did you sell your yachts, your cars?
How did you spare so much money so fast?
And to ask the leaders of the world,
The priests, the mourners, the press,
The Parisians, the tourists, the public:
In lighting myself on fire,
Might you be similarly moved?
And what if Notre Dame,
Old, venerable, and angry,
Had intended to burn to the ground
As you watched with awe-struck eyes?
Sunday, May 5, 2019
Andy Posner
Andy Posner grew up in Los Angeles and earned an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides financial services to low-income families. When not working, he enjoys reading, writing, watching documentaries, and ranting about the state of the world. He has had his poetry published in several journals, including Burningword Literary Journal (which nominated his poem ‘The Machinery of the State’ for the Pushcart Poetry Prize), Noble/Gas Quarterly, and The Esthetic Apostle.
