October 2016 | poetry
All is quiet…finally
after the two sisters quit re-living the day
and drift into hide-a-bed snoring.
Until 4 a.m. when the brother
rattles the unfamiliar bedroom door knob
and slices light into the hall
where he bangs the bathroom light switch on
and spotlights my room like the cops
cornering an escaped convict,
and he stands there
suddenly unsure where the toilet is
or emblazoned by super nova flash
off white porcelain
like I am by his skinny ass in the doorway.
Eventually he slams the door shut
as I flip the blanket over my eyes.
He flushes that late-night roar
of water down the drain,
fumbles across the hall
before releasing his lifeline
on the bathroom light,
and I dream of watching
my morning TV show
at just the right volume.
Diane Webster
Diane Webster grew up in Eastern Oregon before she moved to Colorado. She enjoys drives in the mountains to view all the wildlife and scenery and takes amateur photographs. Writing poetry provides a creative outlet exciting in images and phrases Diane thrives in. Her work has appeared in “The Hurricane Review,” “Eunoia Review,” “Illya’s Honey,” and other literary magazines.
October 2016 | poetry
Let’s start with this coffee I just spilled,
stain spreading, steadfast as the walnut floorboards
that must still swell with moisture
in the room my family swarmed for dinner as a boy,
window shades filtering the adamant,
decaying sun of summer evenings.
I focus all attention on the earthy, robust smell,
that seems darker than the coffee,
and I refuse to recognize the way something dark,
and completely simple,
like this now half-cup of coffee, trembles,
then stills a second as I hold it,
and stare into it a long time,
until I am remembering that man¾
how heavy he was that morning
he dropped from the South Tower¾
and that house where I watched him on the television,
ten years old, with a certain sense, bewildering
and paralyzing as the takeoff of a plane is to a toddler.
And despite a looking back
that said goodbye before I could say anything,
and his deep breath, his wave,
he still turned carefully away, forever,
scrutinized the skyline, face tilted upward
as if supported by the feeble sunrays
girdering through the smoke,
and stepped off.
Like light he desired darkness.
Sometimes, when I try to imagine myself as that man,
I feel released for seconds,
and if that release persists, terrified.
And to be honest, as a child, I was terrified of everything:
clowns, bad grades, the filthy fingers of a family friend all over me.
But that other fear is different.
Even so, I thought I could forget that man
cascading through the chaos¾determined, free¾
and whether or not his fall was peaceful.
Bathed in the television’s tide of light, I sat,
a moth fixed to the flame of what it wanted,
and watched as the camera trembled,
going out of focus…
Then came a reporter, sweat glistening her forehead
as she talked, calm as habit,
the microphone shaking in her hands.
And all the youth I felt,
whatever left me in my nervous laugh,
did not return in the deep breath I drew in,
slowly, a second later,
the first breath of a young man.
And who knows where that boy went,
too numb to speak about what he thought
was only a someone’s cowardly surrender.
But maybe, after all, he’s here,
in this coffee stain on the carpet¾
its shape not a body flattened on concrete,
but only the random result of gravity,
a blind design whose silence and force
transforms everything.
Domenic Scopa
Domenic Scopa is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Johnson Poetry Prize and Garvin Tate Merit Scholarship. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His poetry and translations have been featured in Poetry Quarterly, Reed Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Belleville Park Pages, and many others. He is currently an adjunct professor for the Changing Lives Through Literature program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and at New Hampshire Technical Institute. His first book, Walk-in Closet (Yellow Chair Press) is forthcoming in 2017. He currently reads manuscripts for Hunger Mountain and Ink Brush Publications.
October 2016 | poetry
Teach me your ways,
O’ Mistress of Mislead Mystery.
How do I cloud my own
past and present without
walking straight into a
nightmarish field of peril?
“Forget all tension
stirring in your entire being.
Do not over analyze.
For once,
do not even utter a
single syllable.
Relax, my dear, and
love will show us how.”
Hark!
The celestial voice
hath spoken,
courageous cats of the cellar!
Bliss is on the other side when
Gaia’s work takes its course.
Your tantalizing heart has
the beat,
the rhythm,
the melody,
the lyrics,
like a fresh song!
Oh, my Good Goddess!
I can dance to this tune
for the rest of my life!
Care to join me in our
first waltz,
blushing pink rose girl?
Our bodies breathe in the
method of love.
What the world needs now is
love.
Do not forget this soulgasmic word:
love.
Can you feel it under your breath tonight?
Can you feel its prism-like presence,
floating gently towards the
candidate you have your eye on?
What the world needs now is
love,
harmony,
camaraderie.
Your
stable smile,
your
luxurious lips,
and your
voracious voice
turn this light bulb
all the way on!
Run up the electric bill and
spread this good word to
your neighbor,
your master,
your sobriety,
your nobility,
your only grain of salt,
with the word of love.
The word of love!
The game of love!
The symbol of love!
The power of love!
The song of love!
The poem of love!
The dance of love!
The kiss of love!
The touch of love!
The ever-fruitful union of love!
We don’t need a
Merriam-Webster definition!
We just need a
vow, a
promise, a
confirmation!
We just need a
prayer, a
miracle, and an
entrance to
love itself!
Your love holds
no limits,
no laws,
no corny justification for the
gestating cynics of Pandora’s Box.
Your love reveals
your inner mind,
your inner senses,
your inner beauty,
which matters just as much
as an external shell.
Your love is a
once in a lifetime opportunity,
an infantile flower,
a privilege and an honor to be with you.
Your love climbs
hills of hilarity,
mountains of madness,
ladders of lurking lakes,
walls of waterworks, and
dimensions of delusion.
Your love reminds me of
a siren song.
Time ceases everywhere.
Stampedes rumble and cause the
earthy vibrations that happen
between the sheets.
Your love,
like a flask of fermented grapes,
doth not disturb the sweetness
that is preserved.
Dominance preludes to guilt, but on
occasion, eludes holy fantasies.
Your love cannot replace
our brightest star,
our fretting moon,
our beast with two backs.
Your love
dries away a monsoon,
clears away a mist,
melts away a blizzard,
liquefies a wildfire, and
shakes back an earthquake.
I would live for you.
I would call upon the fates for you.
I would set the sun for you.
I would bring the moon to you.
I would balance the chances for you.
I would change my name for you.
I would marvel at stones for you.
I would cross a line for you.
I would die for you.
I would take a bullet for you.
I would tiptoe on Mt. Everest’s peak for you.
I would set the world on fire for you.
I would walk on lava for you.
I would run swiftly a thousand miles for you.
I would do that and so many other
obnoxious obstacles for:
Your heart,
your hand and word,
your commitment and blessing,
your breath on my neck.
I live in and for the
State of Euphoria.
I live for the
End of Night Terrors.
I live for the
thrill of the future.
I live for the
hard times.
I live for the
paid off minutes.
I live for
life’s next day.
I live for
tomorrow because you are there,
waking up beside me.
I live for you!
I live for!
I live!
I…
Z.M. Wise
Z.M. Wise is a proud Chicago native, poet, co-editor and poetry activist, writing since his first steps as a child. He has been a written-word poet for almost two decades and a spoken-word poet for four years. He was selected to be a performer in the Word Around Town Tour in 2013, a Houston citywide tour. He is co-owner and co-editor of Transcendent Zero Press, an independent publishing house for poetry that produces an international quarterly journal known as Harbinger Asylum, with his dear friend and founder Dustin Pickering. The journal was nominated Best Poetry Journal in 2013 at the National Poetry Awards. He is also an Assistant Editor at Weasel Press with another dear friend, Weasel. He has published four full length books of poetry, including: ‘Take Me Back, Kingswood Clock!’ (MavLit Press), ‘The Wandering Poet’ (Transcendent Zero Press), ‘Wolf: An Epic & Other Poems’ (Weasel Press), and ‘Cuentos de Amor’ (Red Ferret Press).
October 2016 | poetry
Arkansas, 1978
I rode hard the along the Mississippi,
a horse the color of the clay outside the house
where we listened to the car radio
come Friday night and danced on the hard red ground.
Through the ditches, down one side and up the other,
through the slurried water pouring toward the bean fields,
ran the red horse whose name was Fire
over the rise of the bank and down
into the flat again, the clumps of ragweed, rabbit tracks, bone-
ragged coyote.
Saturdays, one after the other, we shared a bath —
the water getting thicker with the red dust
that hennaed our hands, each crease
and around our nails, the cuticles.
The first time I was broken
I’d go to the closet, to smell her clothes
and then face the mirror
on the back of the door
to see I existed
without her. Even now.
A horse gets broken. The terrible way
they break a bottle of water against its forehead.
The horse will give up then
who knows what fractured or crazed.
The red horse broken. The way I ran him
hard, past the bean fields,
out alone into the open country.
El Paso, 1946
At night the wind blows in the streets
grit against your face,
in your teeth. It’s a long way
down to the dry bed
of the river. No one waits for me.
So I say yes. I’m pretty enough
and they want me.
I go to the truck stop bar —
there’s always someone there,
ask the bartender for quarters
for the juke box, play something
slow and sweet.
This is a border town.
I wear my bracelets. Alma
I say when they ask, Maria
or sometimes Eva. They nod
and turn my name
like a Life Saver on their tongues,
turn it softly while they watch
my eyes. I drink their beer.
In the bathroom in the cracked mirror
I put on my red lipstick
and make a kiss to myself. Maria, I say,
or Eva or Alma.
When I look at the cold ground
hard packed outside
I think she might be somewhere under it
no more than bones, her dark hair
blown off like the feathers
of dead birds, her fingers the claws
of skeletal animals long gone
from this earth.
I go with the men but it’s her I find
in their come-easy arms. In the hollow night
I’m alone again,
no more than a bright wound
small and silent
and far away from everyone.
Reno, 1952
Night after night the dizzying sky
swims with stars sanded bright by the wind.
Sunrise comes fast and hot.
He’s still asleep, so I find what I need,
make coffee, and sit on the doorstep,
put aside my memories and plans,
let the sun eat me up.
Inside the trailer light needles its way
through holes in the blind.
He groans, and his eyelids flutter.
I watch his face while I slide
his keys off the dresser.
I hear the gravel shoot away from the tires,
and something else—
his voice maybe, but I don’t look back.
I drive toward town, shadows to the west
of fence posts, pools of shade
ahead of each tumbleweed, the truck’s twin
running beside me on the dirt, near town
the new black asphalt.
Sun slams off the pavement,
so I wear my dark glasses. At the drugstore
I pretend to look at the display—
Breck shampoo and blue jars of Noxema—
while I scan my reflection.
Behind me I see a State Police car cruise
around the corner, the trooper’s head swivel
toward me as he drifts by. I turn away
from the window and walk toward the casino.
The desert light flattens things
like they’ve been pressed on an ironing board,
the buildings like sets. I’m walking
in somebody’s movie. I can feel the trooper
still watching, checking out
my ass. I walk faster, heading east.
At the intersection I start to run.
My legs are heavy and my head spins,
but I keep running. I hear the car turn
after me, but I don’t stop. I run
straight toward the sun, into the empty light.
Elizabeth Herron
Elizabeth Carothers Herron’s poems are forthcoming in Comstock Review, Free State Review and Lindenwood Review and appear in the current or past issues of West Marin Review, Comstock Review, Whistling Shade, Chagrin River Review and Reflections. She was shortlisted for both the Dana Award for Poetry and the James Hearst Poetry Prize in 2015. Her work has been supported by the San Francisco Small Press Traffic award, the National Endowment for the Arts Artists in Community, the Mesa Writer’s Residency and the Foundation for Deep Ecology.
October 2016 | poetry
Amy
You speak of Seattle,
branches of water
all green and far away
as your eyes on the skyline.
You speak of gems
your shaking hands
aren’t equipped to hold,
shattering into
red sparks.
You speak of your breath
turning blue, of smoke puffs
and a tent without a flashlight.
You speak of a purple sunrise
where you kiss me, but I keep
pulling the blanket
over my face.
Cocoon
moss climbs up the gnarled oak tree
an echo of a red swing
and fingers too small
to wrap around daddy’s hand
somehow spring keeps coming
hot water poured too quickly
over tea bags
taxes
quiet sex
and the sound
of a chainsaw starting
Insomnia
Viewing the world
through a stolen cigarette,
the covers clamor
to capsize my feet
like the stomach of some
horrible creature.
Your pillow is a second face
in the dim light.
Kaleidoscope
Your stubble against my raw cheek
makes me forget I’m finite,
nourishes like a tree growing
through earth, leaf green
against the breezy sky.
How does the medicine know
where to find the pain?
How do your hands know the certain spot
on my back that all tenderness
flows through? Prickling with magic.
Turning circles beneath a gray blanket,
you stamp my mouth with wet kisses.
My body knows how to find the gold.
Sarah Marchant
Sarah Marchant is a St. Louis poet who organizes her dreams in her sleep and struggles with being fully present. Keep up with her work on Twitter at @apoetrybomb.
October 2016 | poetry
Her glistening face was set with polished pools of brown, a slash of teeth below. A primal splash washed the air. In the pocket of a mountain lake, translucent drops of water ran across her olive skin, light sandstone framed the beauty of her form. Light was all that passed as her lash flipped a diamond, to spot an eye that said, “We are young and I am ready, because I love.”
That cove of water with reflective glints, of summer green and pale stones, held by steep hills of hardwood, was our castle for a little while. I was its king, and she was as ever mighty, as my queen. So immersed in a moment, that all could have been nothing more, the feel of her shoulder, the way that her breasts floated to, branded my soul. We were whole.
So long ago though it may seem to some, it could never be less than now for me. And for those who sometimes log such things, one time will always play, too nice to record, and put away. For they know that, though she has returned to all, she still remains. She is me.
Charles Hayes
Charles Hayes, a Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, and others.
