October 2018 | poetry
they will not be delayed
stare down the tick
tock clock
or will be extended
graciously
summer’s tufting breath
i opened my hand
where are you?
come here now and kiss sky
cerulean pale cornflower whips
of blackbirds
these clouds only wisdom
years ago
drink with me and dance
jig waltz rondo mazurka polka
adagio or allegro anything
that moves
this place is safe
nothing but goodness
can envelop us
my arms are open
but quickly before they aren’t
by Heidi A. Howell
Working loosely in the range of experimental/ language/Black Mountain/ NY School traditions, Heidi A. Howell has published poems in online and print literary magazines, including s/word, Psychic Meatloaf, The Eastern Iowa Review, Otoliths, la fovea, What Light, So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, and the Washington Review, which nominated her work for a Pushcart. She holds an MFA from George Mason University, Fairfax, VA.
October 2018 | poetry
Bat shit
abusive
now after
upside down
battered twins
fêted
fetid star
mellifluous
obsequious
arch flatterers
melancholy
clump of gay
clay oxymorons
amputated –plug
pulled on bouquets.
by Gerard Sarnat
Gerard Sarnat won the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, has been nominated for Pushcarts and authored four collections: HOMELESS CHRONICLES (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014) and Melting The Ice King (2016) which included work published by Oberlin, Brown, Columbia, Johns Hopkins and in Gargoyle, Margie, Main Street Rag, MiPOesias, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Voices Israel, Tishman Review, Suisun Valley Review, Fiction Southeast, Junto, Tiferet plus featured in New Verse News, Eretz, Avocet, LEVELER, tNY, StepAway, Bywords, Floor Plan, Good-Man-Project, Anti-Heroin-Chic, Poetry Circle, Fiction Southeast and Tipton Review. “Amber Of Memory” was the single poem chosen for my 50th college reunion symposium on Bob Dylan. Mount Analogue selected Sarnat’s sequence, KADDISH FOR THE COUNTRY, for pamphlet distribution on Inauguration Day 2017 as part of the Washington DC and nationwide Women’s Marches. For Huffington Post/other reviews, readings, publications, interviews; visit GerardSarnat.com. Harvard/Stanford educated, Gerry’s worked in jails, built/staffed clinics for the marginalized, been a CEO and Stanford Med professor. Married for a half century, Gerry has three kids and four grandkids so far.
October 2018 | poetry
We
advertise, commercialize, consumerize,
supersize, downsize, computerize,
digitize, dot compromise,
televise superficial gals and guys,
so we can
fantasize, romanticize, glamorize,
tantalize, eroticize our hum drum lives.
We
monetize, industrialize, globalize,
monopolize, bureaucratize,
hire CEO’s that scandalize,
(steal $1thousand and we criminalize,
steal $1million and we penalize,
steal $1billion and we aggrandize).
We
militarize, destabilize, brutalize,
demonize, victimize,
it’s us or them dichotomize,
(that’s just how we Americanize),
elect politicians who tell us lies,
refuse to use our minds and eyes,
willingly de-democratize,
don’t ask any how’s or why’s,
do you want that with fries?
We
evangelize to Christianize
those heathen non-consumers
so as to legitimize
our greed in religious disguise.
Do we wonder why they terrorize?
Now we’ll always
fly unfriendly skies.
We
who would Wal-Martize
the earth until nothing
is left to franchise,
must realize
it’s humanity’s future we compromise.
Will our grandchildren
look back on us and despise?
by Michael Baldwin
Michael Baldwin is a native of Fort Worth, TX. He holds a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Library Science, and a Masters in Public Administration. He was a library administrator and professor of American Government until he wasn’t. He has been published extensively in poetry journals and anthologies. His poetry was featured on the national radio program The Romantic Hours and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He won the Eakin Manuscript award in 2011 for his book, Scapes. He won the Morris Memorial Chapbook Award in 2012, for Counting Backward From Infinity. His book of Texas poetry, Lone Star Heart, was published by Lamar University Press in 2016. Mr. Baldwin has also published a mystery thriller novel, Murder Music, and two collections of science-fiction short stories, Passing Strange, and Surpassing Strange. Mr. Baldwin resides in Benbrook, TX.
October 2018 | poetry
i carry infection in saliva
like a point of pride
see, my city reeks of bone
tall skeleton skyscrapers
i’m numb again
as dental drill enters me
year after year
what birthed my decays?
raised to desire new
wants every day
wanting even wanting
my dad worked at a ford factory
after the great depression
churned out a new kid
every few years
seasons of rust
spreading on steel
here’s the sunset
he’d wake us to say &
spend the days molding
the yard
rough hands on saw
that was satisfactory
to him
for me oaks are cold towers &
grass not godmade
took a clump in my mouth
from the graveyard as a child &
i swear i tasted
death
but could not digest it
i’m but a skeleton
all life’s experiences
slip through me
masticating childhood
no pondering
the future with mom and dad
scooping fries at ponderosa &
we’d always go for seconds &
mint ice cream after
by James Croal Jackson
James Croal Jackson is the author of The Frayed Edge of Memory (Writing Knights Press, 2017). His poetry has appeared in Rattle, Columbia Journal, Hobart, and elsewhere. He edits The Mantle, a poetry journal, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Find more at jimjakk.com.
July 2018 | poetry
The Slush-Yo-Mouth truck pulls up
in the magic half-hour between
softball and baseball tournaments
with cobalt blue paint chipping off
as the truck bounces off the potholes
and split-in-half bats left on the dirt
road leading into the park from the
county highway. A Snow Cone in
purple parachute pants, no shirt,
and oversized aviator sunglasses
riding a neon green and burnt
orange skateboard is painted
to the right of the serving window,
using a mini version of itself as
a microphone while Wu Tang Clan
screams they’re nothing to fuck with
from the open back doors, singing
along but quit when the youth pastor
walks by, terrified he’d tell our coach
and we’d have to run laps around
the field. The younger kids pull chunks
of paint off and throw them at each
other when the games start back up
and their parents turn back to watch as
the pitcher panics about the left-handed
batter who just moved to town. We
watch and throw hunks that missed
the intended kid back into the impromptu
fighting pit to see how much more
chaos we could cause. We wait in line
behind the kids who run up with a couple
of dollar bills in one hand and boiled
peanuts in the other even though
they’re still sticky from their morning
moon pies and R.C. colas, covered
in stains from the black sand we called
dirt and clay from the unfished ball field.
We change behind the Port-a-Jons that
smell like weed, Ax body spray, and puked
up corndogs from our cleats into flip flops
and softball pants into cheer-shorts, ignoring
what our mothers said about how girls
who roll their shorts more than once
end up like Glenda the hooker.
by Betsy Rupp
Betsy Rupp’s previous work appears in Emrys Journal and has been accepted for presentation at the Southern Writers Graduate Conference. She is currently working toward completing her MFA in Poetry at Florida State University. Previously, she earned her MA in English Literature, with a concentration in Poetry, from Mississippi State University. She focuses her work on exploring the beautiful strangeness of her small Florida hometown.
July 2018 | Best of Net nominee, poetry
Waking at Night
Such a short distance between genius
and shit. Take those elephant turds
Bruce Nauman (1991 Walker Art Center)
stacked in piles on the floor, soft cannon balls,
so appealing to some humans, something we can
all relate to. In my claustrophobic little corner
(compared to the Milky Way) I am happy,
moon-devotée that I am with a rag of the ancient
floating first hand outside my window. Take
these lines written in the darkness around
my bed. I hope they don’t cross
over themselves creating rows like il-
legible barbed wire some French girls
stood behind at the end of a world war,
brunette and blond collaborators
whose hair was shorn, the sign for bedding up
with a Wehrmacht man who gave them cognac
and nylons they could sell on the black market.
The girls’–women’s– heads, skulls, spat upon,
cross-and-bones thin, reviled little female
christs. It’s just dizziness. It’ll pass. It’s just this
time of night and the room so small. There
are bad dreams and then it’s over and they/
we can go back to sleep again.
But why would anybody
take this shit from the elephant kings,
their balls. Even the elephants were
astonished that their turds
were sold with their ivory.
Their leftovers.
We Missed the Boat
after Brave Irene by William Steig
Never compare yourself to another,
especially when she’s Irene Bobbin,
at the door to her mother’s little yellow
parlor with its pictures and mannequin.
“Bye! I’ll deliver the gown to the duchess.”
Mrs. Bobbin, a single mom, brimming
with exhaustion called from her bed,
“Don’t go, Irene. A storm’s in full swing.”
But Irene set off with gown in box,
into the darkening winter afternoon.
(You and I set out, too, on a mission.)
Even though the wind tore open
the box, even though the snow
was hip high, even though Irene
thought she was lost, maybe going
in circles, she struggled on.
(Did we quit too early?)
Somewhere past Farmer Bennett’s
pasture the wind was so strong it
blew away two tissue paper ghosts
that sheltered the beautiful pink,
sparkly dress. And the dress, too.
(What went wrong for us?)
Irene had a mission for sure.
She was focused on succeeding,
a matter of food for the cupboards,
wood for her mother’s cold stove,
and something for the pot on it.
(We could’ve tried harder, I guess.)
Irene‘s tasks doubled: now
she must find the lost gown.
Through gangly, primordial woods
where there’s no sense of direction,
she stumbled on, snow blind, from tree
to tree until her little legs protested
they could lift themselves no more.
But there! At wit’s end, there was
the dress, plastered to a tree,
decking the trunk out for a party.
(Maybe the Fates were against us.)
A sight indeed for sore eyes.
And not much farther on, an amber
window light spilled out over the snow.
The palace! Irene huddled before the door.
Like a snow sculpture, but she’d made it!
(And if she hadn’t? That happens, too.)
All good things followed: the Duchess’s
pleasure at the gown, the warm ballroom,
the delicious feast an absolute joy
for porridge-fed Irene. And best of all,
a purse full of money for her mom. The end.
(It almost hurts, others’ triumphs, they feel so good.)
by Sharon Chmielarz
Sharon Chmielarz has had eleven books of poetry published, the latest, “little eternities,” in Sept. 2017. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize seven times and five of her books runners-up for literary awards. Kirkus Reviews named her “The Widow’s House” one of the 100 best books in 2016. She was born in South Dakota but has spent her adult life in Minneapolis, MN.
