July 2017 | poetry
If you wear a suit of bees
Through the Yale Art Gallery,
They will think you are misplaced art –
And exhibit you somewhere:
Artist unknown – you and your suit of bees will be.
You will buzz with acclaim,
The likes of (N.) will adore you,
You and your art: one substance –
Envy of Carrevagio, jealousy of Picasso.
Oh, avant-garde! Oh, expressionist absolutism!
Oh, you and your suit of bees
And a career flowing with milk and honey.
But somewhere after midnight
As you remain still on your pedestal,
You will hunger for beer and pizza,
Itch to see old episodes of Dr. Who,
Be desperate for her breasts and eyes
Turning toward you.
Mark Fitzpatrick
MARK FITZPATRICK is basically a poet although he has had fiction, non-fiction, and drama published. Among his credits are Parting Gifts, Oasis, The MacGuffin, Whiskey Island Review, The Small Pond Magazine of Literature, Oxford Review, Dramatic Shorts, Amarillo Bay and many others. His novel-in-verse was a finalist in the Tassy Walden Creative Writing for Young People contest. Two of his plays are in. He works as an ESL teacher with ELS schools at the University of New Haven. He worked as an ESL teacher in Brazil, Honduras, Haiti, and the Republic of Somaliland. Before he was a child care worker for over 20 years in a low-income, African-American neighborhood of Chicago.
July 2017 | poetry
Mine
I was in the yard working
when I heard, through the
open kitchen window,
my wife tap a spoon shank
on the edge of a cooking pot.
Of course, it was my mother I heard,
as if transported to years ago,
me a boy, playing in the yard, dusk falling,
my father clipping hedges,
my hunger just starting to gnaw.
Then one of my boys ran past crying,
“Mom? Is it dinner yet?”
and I, brought back to the present,
hedge clippers open wide,
knew that that boy—
not a duplicate of me
or owned by anybody—
was, nevertheless, in a living line
of felt continuity,
mine.
Jingle
I lean my elbows,
idly, on
an uneven café table
and everything
jingles—flatware
chinking, sliding saucer
tinkling ice cubes in a glass that
clinks a sugar dispenser—and I’m
awoken from
my sketchy, troubled, already-
vanished reverie of elsewhere,
my raised elbows
resettling—and resettling me to—
the durable
flatware, glass, saucer.
Mark Belair
Mark Belair’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, including Alabama Literary Review, Atlanta Review, The Cincinnati Review, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Poetry East and The South Carolina Review. His latest collection is Watching Ourselves (Unsolicited Press, 2017). Previous collections include Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015); Night Watch (Finishing Line Press, 2013); While We’re Waiting (Aldrich Press, 2013); and Walk With Me (Parallel Press of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, 2012). He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize multiple times. Please visit www.markbelair.com
July 2017 | poetry
Reversal of Fortune
That . . .
Today, I write:
no brain lock or writer’s block,
never idle or addled, plot upon plot.
Practical prompts, writing schedules,
I aspire − become renowned
as scribe of insightful stanzas,
presumptuous puzzles
toward tour de force status,
something deemed a Classic.
Endowing with endearing words
as adulating aficionados gnaw painted nails,
climaxing with thumbs-up . . .
verses no-doubt-deserving
a dedicated shelf in bookstores –
glitzy chain and Indy alike –
masterwork, magnum opus!
This . . .
Today, I fret:
soured lines glares back,
needing reweaving into resonance.
Fictions and goading prose whacked
into petite victories, hard to celebrate.
Suppress a passive verb.
Second coat of adjectives.
Laminate lame line with adverb.
Pious patinas . . . hocus-pocus. . . .
I declare to the image, make homage
to the muse, regret oft-committed sin.
Lesser pleasures depress ears,
joys chopped, smeared over tongue.
Eyes directed to shadowy things,
I re-pledge to slivers and scattered
scruples backsliding across my page.
On the Shelf
A single space gapes between
books on the shelf. Most fill
allotted slot unread, collected during
semesters, or cluttered years.
At attention behind framed photos
and dusty memorabilia, well-worn
volumes denote evidence of worthy
pursuits: immediate joys weighing
against passed lulls, token props
and notions. I shall vow to search
for another book to bridge the nagging
breach in my archive. Pillage boxes,
stacked and stored; or revive a weighty
transcript – not just a joyful passage –
one revered cover to cover. Drab
shrouds stare back, awaiting re-sorting.
Perhaps I could disguise the gap, dust off
a snapshot of a past-lover’s bleary smile,
on a blurry day: her unanimated eyes, our
overcast desire never dowsed, since hidden
spellbound in a drawer. Even a colorful vase
might stand in: yet bouquets become a nuisance
. . . the watering and required trims. . . .
Each shelf evokes slivers of the man I sought,
every boring binding a craving: pages
of extinct minutes, passed-on un-mended,
too easily supplanted with prattle. The gap
reminds me of my delinquent spaces
I must fill before true midnight turns,
reread awkward chapters only skimmed.
Revisit bookmarks, and retranslate
word by word to reckon a foreseen self.
Sam Barbee
Poems have appeared Poetry South, Crucible, Asheville Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology VII: North Carolina, Potato Eyes, Georgia Journal, Main Street Rag, Iodine, and Pembroke Magazine, among others; plus on-line journals Vox Poetica, Pyrokinection, and The Blue Hour. His fiction has been recognized by the Norfolk Society for the Arts and published in Atlantis. His Second poetry collection, That Rain We Needed (Press 53), was published in April of 2016, and a nominee for the Roanoke-Chowan Award as one of North Carolina’s best poetry collections of 2016. He was awarded an “Emerging Artist’s Grant” from the Winston-Salem Arts Council to publish his first collection Changes of Venue (Mount Olive Press); has been a featured poet on the North Carolina Public Radio Station WFDD; received the 59th Poet Laureate Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society for his poem “The Blood Watch”; and is a Pushcart nominee. Sam lives in Winston-Salem with his wife and has two children, and retired from his day-job of 32 years with the Winston-Salem Recreation Department. He is the 2017 President of the NC Poetry Society, and Past-President of Winston-Salem Writers.
July 2017 | poetry
The rules are shaped and branded
On to genes, down generations,
Passed round in
Story and in song,
To make forgetting harder.
Ideas are bubbled up
On home-fired cauldrons,
Fuelled by a thousand years or more
Of thermal layered grievance
That have no taste, no smell, no colour:
Yet, still, they stink.
A virtual reality of light and heat
And sound that causes
Temperatures to rise and red mists form
Round ancient borders
Where battle lines are drawn
And citizens are armed against each other.
Upturned tables, scattered pieces
Mean no peace for people powered by hate.
The frenzied game plays on;
Until the victor stands elated,
Knows records are at last set straight
And neighbour’s scalps are buried deep.
He will not sleep,
For ghosts of so called civil war
Will always rise again, to haunt.
Caroline Johnstone
Caroline is originally from Northern Ireland, now living in Ayrshire, Scotland. She has just started writing poems again, and writes mainly on philosophical, political and life experience themes. She has been published in The Galway Review, Imagine Belfast and The Snapdragon Journal and was shortlisted for Tales in the Forest. She blogs for Positively Scottish, helps the Women Aloud NI with social media and is a member of the Federation of Writers (Scotland).
July 2017 | poetry
sometimes i’m wound tight
like twisted twine made of bungee rope
coiled like a rattler ready to spring
stretched taut by the finger of an archer
aimed to launch the lust of my overheated rage
then i wind my temper down
and i forgive my brother
for the robbery
for the rape
for the theft
for the murder
for the slavery
now with controlled disgust
i can explain why the “N” word hurts
although i should not have to
I can explain why “boy” does not work
although i should not have to
i can explain why “monkey” is not funny
although i should not have to
i can explain why your conscience is lost
if you are still comfortable with these terms
although i should not have to
Jerry T. Johnson
Jerry T. Johnson is a new writer to the Connecticut/New York area. Jerry began writing in the early 1990’s, had one poem published and then he took a 21-year hiatus to pursue corporate work overseas. In the spring of 2013, Jerry restarted his writing career. Since then his poetry has appeared in several literary journals and he published his first self-published poetry chapbook, “Good Morning New Year!” In addition to his written work, Jerry does poetry readings in a variety of venues in the New York City area. Jerry currently lives in Danbury, Connecticut with his wife Raye.
July 2017 | poetry
Highway billboard between Columbia and Kingdom City, Missouri
1.
“Hell” is on fire, flames throbbing, hotter
than the 98-degree day vibrating outside
my windshield. I’m not convinced the sign
is true. I’m one of the lost.
2.
Along an extravagant street in another country
I prowled the blue-lit windows, starved
as a stray cat licking its whiskers.
Each miniature world was illuminated
by its own bright sun, a magical point of light
that dazzled off facets, ricocheted from shaped links
and loops and ropes and polished chains
that I supposed would hold me so gorgeously
I wouldn’t try to slip through a carelessly open door.
I lusted after such opulence. Will that lust
drag me down to hell shimmering
like a pagan Christmas tree?
3.
Consider this harsh conviction in the context
of fidelity, a measured approach based on facts:
after whom one is lusting should matter.
Should a little debauched fun between friends
have such disquieting consequences?
Where is it written that lust has to end
after vows are said, children born,
a big fat mortgage added to the mix?
4.
I am the sort of woman who worries
about fitting in, being invited to bridge club
and to play tennis. The billboard is comforting.
Imagine a place where entertainments like lust
are the thread knitting everyone together.
5.
Have you been in hell? Tortured?
Hopeless? Eyes red and swelled
with tears that will not cease? Your heart
hammering? Have you lain down
with dread, awakened with it clinging
to your pillow? Tangled in your hair?
6.
There have been times when,
having indulged satisfactorily,
I considered the last two amber inches
in an exceptional bottle of single malt,
and didn’t stop myself from pouring
the last dram into my glass.
I’ve indulged in daylight sensuality,
celebrated its languid lustiness,
then napped late into the afternoon,
disinterested in further exertion.
7.
I envy sanctimonious do-gooders,
one brilliant success after another.
I delighted in my bad decisions,
did the ‘walk of shame.’ I still want
to dress up and strut around
with my head high, neckline low,
hoping some guy—much younger than me—
will eye me lustfully, providing an opportunity
to be dragged down to hell one more time.
Nancy Pritchard
Nancy Pritchard is a life-long St. Louisan. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals, including Natural Bridge, December, The Cape Rock, Mankato Poetry Review, PMS (PoemMemoirStory), Melic Review, Poetry Southeast, Fugue, and two collections of Harvest: Jewish Writing in St. Louis. She received an MFA at University of Missouri-St. Louis. She won the 2005 and 2006 Wednesday Club Poetry Contests (T.S. Elliot only won once) and the Arts in Transit award. She has taught poetry to middle school students in the St. Louis Public Schools for Springboard to Learning(www.springboardstl.org) since 2006. She is an avid traveler, athlete, and grandmother of 12. Although she is obsessed with reading the obits (especially in the New York Times) she hopes hers is still a long way off.
