October 2016 | poetry
what to do when the missiles come (at last)
1962
watch the moon through crystal skies one time,
telescope your life into the week it takes
to build a crisis into chaos,
then,
crawl beneath your desk,
press your head against your knees
and take up all the burdens of the world,
the weight,
slam the door just opened
and learn about equality
as suddenly as thunder,
then,
forget about your first steps into logic
and see the one great, simple truth:
reasons can be found for doing anything
to anyone,
in any way,
at any time;
there will be no quiz,
just a final
folded shirts, penknives
thoughts, folded, put away like clothing waiting to be worn,
tried on only when we are alone
and think that no one understands;
no one asks about the silence of our wisdom,
so it sits in dark like dated shirts
below the top drawer of the dresser and its stew of odds and ends:
a penknife that we had to have, once,
its reason long forgotten;
photos growing older every day
until the faces and the fashions fade,
like cars once new, now tired as an old idea;
watches stopped at random like friends who came and went;
a ring that once said everything,
silent now like books we thought we’d read;
all these things still moving like the steeple in the rearview mirror,
once the edge of everything, the front,
now fading back as we go ever on;
these things we’ve kept to save time in a jar
like fireflies when we were kids,
things we will not send out to the curb,
these salvaged words of life;
what do they say that we cannot resist?
is this our sad rebuttal to the reasoning of time,
or just our failed argument, the ‘you can’t have this’
markers from the road we can’t take back?
or are they like the folded shirts below,
baggage from the miles spent,
or provisions for some journey yet to go?
monologue
he was talking,
but he didn’t care who saw,
sitting by the flat gray stone
as if beside an altar,
white shirt brilliant,
red face torn,
careworn once again, anew,
six years since it changed forever;
legs stretched out
parallel with hers
as they always were,
side by side,
stride by stride
so many years,
there to share where words refused to go
though he was sure she heard;
“everything we say is talking to ourselves,”
he learned when he was young,
and so it was along that hill,
muted marble markers
warming in the sun
that cut into the letters, dates
carved upon the rocks
beneath the endless sky
that smirks at him,
at all of us
as it passes in its hubris overhead
Standing in Line
Moving forward toward the front, the edge,
wherever this is heading to,
this herd, a rosary
as fingers count the beads
leading to the draggle
of the crucifix;
impatient at the back
standing on our toes to see,
we peek beyond the queue,
jealous though we do not know
the space beyond horizon, shadow.
We do not know
what waits for us in front,
though we all will get to see it
soon enough.
John Kristofco
John P. (Jack) Kristofco’s poetry and short stories have appeared in about two hundred publications, including: Slant, Folio, Rattle, Fourth River, Santa Fe Review, and Cimarron Review. He has published three collections of poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.
October 2016 | poetry
There is something elegant
about the way the sun
kicks out over the horizon
with such agony, each morning,
and today I’ve seen
both its death and birth,
an entire lifetime
burnt away over
harsh landscapes;
everything is forgiven
when dawn pours out
over the hills—
when the first
dregs of light
skim over the treetops,
and they seem like
they are breathing.
Allison Taylor
A current poetry MFA student at Fairleigh Dickinson University, Allison’s poetry has appeared in Birch Gang Review, and she has studied writing under the mentorship of Renee Ashley, H. L. Hix, and David Daniel. She earned her undergraduate degree in computer science from Gettysburg College, and when she’s not writing and reading, she spends her time working in the publishing industry, tutoring math and English, and watching science fiction movies.
October 2016 | poetry
We barely took any space,
maybe a foot square, you
placing my hands where they go
and knocking my feet with your toes—
who dances like this, anyway
(as comets careen into their own ice)?
Your favorite story about me: I’m
chained, at 3, to a tree. When you
return, my uncle—fed up with my roaming
in his oil—stilled me that way and
you removed the loose chains, carried me
inside to scrub my body like a rescued pelican
awash in petroleum. It was California
in the 60s—your brother, my sitter,
not much more than a child himself
(the moon bright enough to be visible from Mars).
The dancing seems easy, step-turn,
step-turn, and your smile surprises me.
I knew, before my grade school dance,
I caught on quickly. Nobody danced
with me that night at school. But earlier,
you and I, turning and rocking,
prepared me, made ready for that nobody.
We danced, hand-in-hand, me a prosthetic,
you counting steps with whatever music was on
(scattershot lights everywhere in a moment).
Joddy Murray
Joddy Murray’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in over 70 journals, including, most recently, The Broken Plate, DUCTS, Caliban Online, Existere, Lindenwood Review, Licking River, Meridian, McNeese Review, Minetta Review, Moon City Review, Moonshot Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pembroke Magazine, Southampton Review, Stickman Review, and Texas Review. He currently teaches writing and rhetoric in Fort Worth, Texas.
October 2016 | poetry
They rarely snapped apart,
those French Gothic cathedrals,
encrypting clotted earth
as they sailed toward endless sky.
Occasionally one collapsed,
like Beauvais, from trying too hard,
or, like Saint Maclou, cluttered
and confused its lines, losing
the impossible coupling of soil and sun.
But most, hunkered down, buttresses flying,
opened their core to rainbowing light
as they set about piercing heaven.
Chartres did it best. Resolute and
grounded as a twin-peaked mountain,
it told its tender stained-glass stories
well enough to make a peasant weep.
It flouted abstract symmetry, one spire
staunchly romanesque, the other
soaringly flamboyant. One said,
My presence here is God in stone,
the other, I am the earthly gone to God .
Its vaulted center held, however,
and still, and still, is holding.
Lynn Hoggard
Lynn Hoggard has published five books: three French translations, a biography, and a memoir. Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, The Alembic, Atlanta Review, The Broken Plate, Clackamas Literary Review, Concho River Review, Crack the Spine, The Delmarva Review, Descant, Forge, Edison Literary Review, FRiGG, The Healing Muse, The MacGuffin, New Ohio Review, Sanskrit, Soundings East, Summerset Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Tower Journal, Weber: The Contemporary West, Westview, WestWard Quarterly, Wild Violet, and Xavier Review, among others.
July 2016 | poetry
New Orleans broke my heart. So did Utah.
I’m the son of both and neither.
All these places break boys’ hearts.
Send them crying to their rooms on Sutter.
When I was young my dad collected frogs.
He dissected them. Kept them in glass jars.
Pressed quarters in my palm to love me.
The frogs stared at the world, unblinking.
I walked to town in roadwork season.
Smelled the bitumen and gripped the coins.
Love was the soft road leading from my father’s den.
I’m older now and I preserve things too.
Here’s the glass. Crystal’s my formaldehyde.
Tonight a man will come and kneel before me.
I’ll push his head back, trace his throat, and kiss him.
Then I’ll take the straightedge from my chest.
The scalpel stolen from the box below the frogs.
I will cut him open. Save him from New Orleans.
And Utah. The fog swirling outside the window.
by Graham Coppin
July 2016 | poetry
(a Tom Waits kind of drunk poem for
a poet friend who calls himself Moonface)
Sing Motherfucker! …Sing!
Like Moonface in the dark, in the cold,
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
Nah, funerals ain’t funny,
but ya gotta laugh,
‘cause he ain’t had nothing from nobody
‘cept Sally once, or maybe Sue–
there’s two women with wishes
for more than the dishes
that just got old
cold Moonface
…with his long-johns on
Yeah, Sing Motherfucker! Sing!
–like the devil saying he’s sorry
after all these years
‘cause that Jack’s off the track
he ain’t never coming back
…he had his long-johns on.
by William Waters
William Waters is an associate professor, associate chair, and director of composition in the Department of English at the University of Houston Downtown. Along with Sonja Foss, he is coauthor of Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation. His research and teaching interests are in writing theory and practice, the history of the English language, linguistics, and modern grammar.
