July 2016 | poetry
A Sudden Wind
makes leaves tremble,
bends branches,
lifts my hair, tangles.
Enters my nostrils,
steals my breath.
I turn
against its surge,
look down;
dust whirls upward,
blinds me,
grips my throat.
I taste it.
I am being whittled away
to join its force,
relinquish
resistance.
Guardian of the Night
An asteroid plowed
into Earth, belly-fire
and debris mingled,
coalesced into a sphere,
finding its orbit nearby.
The moon shines silver
or breathes sunlit gold,
peeks through darkness
into windows. Its glow
fills the hollows in my heart,
lights wings of imagination.
Guardian of my night,
continue your journey
an inch plus a year
toward the sun.
by Pamela Hammond
Pamela Hammond was born in Chicago, grew up in Southern California, and now lives in Santa Monica. For more than a decade, she worked as a Los Angeles-based critic for Art News based in New York. Her love of nature has led her to hike, backpack and travel, often to Northern California, and to Alaska, the Southwest, Hawaii, and New Zealand’s South Island, which became her home for almost a year. She completed two chapbooks, Encounters (2011) and Clearing (2012), produced by Red Berry Editions, Fairfax, California. In 2013, her work appeared in Forge, Assisi, Foliate Oak, Broad River Review, and Tulane Review. In 2014, her work appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Crack the Spine, Drunk Monkeys, Whistling Shade, Chaparral, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Westward Quarterly. In 2015, her work is forthcoming in Griffin and The Penmen Review. Her poem “Winter Walk” appeared in Crack the Spine’s Spring 2014 print anthology.
July 2016 | poetry
With only a pursed lip
and tone of crazed despair,
my body constricts itself,
the way a snake takes hold of it’s prey
right before the kill.
And you know the way
your throat closes and reopens
with the tangled sentiment of choked back tears?
No, wait.
That’s me, too.
And then the panic sets in-
the black of eyelids falling privy
to sudden heat, as it inches
as far as my fingertips-
where jagged nails are now
smooth and growing,
like the red dahlia stunted in shadows,
now blooms full with the sun.
I want to feel the freedom
of a criminal.
Send me away…
Anywhere, but here, I cry.
Anywhere,
but
here.
by Hannah Bushman
Self-proclaimed humanitarian, Hannah Bushman, is a lover of literature, music, and peppermint tea. She believes that the right song on a television show can make all the difference in the world. Hannah is a graduate of John Carroll University with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. In addition to poetry, Hannah revels in the creativity of photography and the logistics of psychology.
July 2016 | poetry
The days
nest—
precariously—
like empty
bowls.
*
A gold cigarette
butt, twisted
candy wrapper, discarded
plastic spoon, and dark,
flattened disk of gum
surround a blade
of grass growing
from a broken sidewalk,
the sprig seeming
a humble
probe of life
after
devastation, kindred spirit
to the tender
fleck of green
floating
on the quiet
pond in the spoon.
by 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 most recent collection is Breathing Room (Aldrich Press, 2015). Previous collections include 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 three times. For more information, please visit www.markbelair.com
July 2016 | poetry
Harried by the orange digits
on the dashboard,
I leaned in around
the steering wheel,
up too close
to cars in front, ripped
past gnarled clearcut
patches. My
ferry reservation
crumpled in my hand
five miles before
I waived it at
the ticket clerk–
‘I’ve got to get to a funeral!’
The ferry rolled forward
in the sun, chased
looping seagulls
across the straight.
By the window,
I stared into the water
until bald stumps
surfaced
in the green-grey foam.
Then the PA brought my head up–
‘Passengers, today is the Sea Carnival–
look starboard,
the clown craft race is underway!’
And there, a yellow submarine,
an orca whale, an ambulance
nudged through the waves,
while on the shore
the whole town
filled the piers to watch.
The mourners fought
for footing in
deep sand. Someone
offered
an inoffensive little prayer
but was cut short
by a shrieking chaos out
on the Straight.
Gulls fell frantic,
ravenous
on the herring bloom.
And as we trudged off,
some birds heaved
their heavy stomachs and
floated drunkenly away,
while the cloud of ashes
billowed wider
just under
the waves.
by Jonathan Cooper
Jonathan’s poems and essays have appeared in various publications including The New Plains Review, Cirque Journal, The Statesman Journal, Houseboat Literary Magazine, and Poetry Pacific. He lives with his family in Vancouver, Canada.
July 2016 | poetry
Young girls make me smile
And cry at the same time
They are a bundle of dynamite
And a hurricane rolled into
One
But she just sits with a
Book as we’re passing
By a river
She reads while I look at that
Redhead of hair she owns
I think about her perfect tits
Hiding under her t-shirt
I want to take her hand
And whisk her off somehere
Make the time roll back
I watch her right resting
Still as a prayer
by Erren Kelly
Erren Kelly is a Pushcart nominated poet from Los Angeles. Erren has been writing for 25 years and have over 150 publications in print and online in such publications as Hiram Poetry Review, Mudfish, Poetry Magazine(online), Ceremony, Cactus Heart, Similar Peaks, Gloom Cupboard, Poetry Salzburg and other publications.
July 2016 | poetry
The Students Write Poems for Their Teacher
The students write poems
like they are painting
in the filtered dust of a late-night studio.
They fling glorious globs
of paint on a canvas
they imagine.
It is abstract.
It is realistic.
It is impressionistic.
They don’t need to find language;
the paint will do it for them.
Yellow will scream metaphors;
brown, onomatopoeia.
Thick black lines are symbols;
red, the gash of simile.
On parent’s night
I hang them up,
(their poem-things)
and their parents respond viscerally
In the gallery of words theirs say
“This is what I mean”
inferred by the yellow stroke that leaps
from thought to word,
invoked by the word
that lolls on the black line of comprehension.
Incised by the red connection
linking me to you.
Seem Bright
Between
Thigh-light ellipses
To and for America
Eat mac ’n’ cheese
Or grilled cheese on
Pleather
Young mother
Makes living
Seem bright
Okay here in USA
Clownish gyrations
Young girl with urges
Slinks toward
Mayhem with child
Tell her, stop, and
Check with
Lauren Bacall
Later, breast
Nipple
Hard and drifting
Through years of
Soft dancing
Snake beads under
Skin that hungers toward a mouth
Slink back, sling out
When feet slide into scripted shoes
They yell for free farm love
To Le-Ann, Who Had a Heart Attack
On New Year’s Eve
My student
Legally blind
Had a heart attack
But that was after her eviction
Now she’s in rehab
Submitting her Master’s Thesis
To me for
Our sixteenth iteration
To Le-Ann, who had a heart attack
On New Year’s Eve
Who has more fight in her
Than a drill to the earth
Whom I carry like a wounded sack
Of mashed-up innards
Who will finish
Or finish me
To Le-Ann, berating me
Commanding that I read
Reread, re-tread, explain
Why I can’t make the world right
Why she is blind
Why her daughter’s on the spectrum
Why her veteran status
Can’t save her from the streets
Why Schlossberg’s theory of transition
Means shit in real life.
Should I Care
If an ambulance just
Cruised up my neighbor’s driveway
With flashing red lights
And no noise?
Yes,
But still
My night goes on
Maybe my neighbor
Will die like my husband did
Right there in the home
Right there on the couch
Slumped over
In the midst of eating some pineapple
We are all stopped short yet
Think the tune will carry us
by Barbara Tramonte
Barbara is currently a professor at SUNY Empire State College, where she teaches in the school for graduate studies. She worked as a poet-in-the-schools in New York City for ten years, and formerly owned a children’s bookstore in Brooklyn Heights. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Boston Review, The Alembic, The Binnacle, Black Buzzard Review, The Chaffin Journal, Confluence, Crack the Spine, Dos Passos Review, Drunk Monkeys, Edison Literary Review, Eleven Eleven, ellipsis…, Folly, Forge, FRiGG: A Magazine of Fiction and Poetry, The Griffin, Hiram Poetry Review, Home Planet News, Illya’s Honey, Juked, Kaleidoscope, Monarch Review, New Letters, The Old Red Kimono, Pearl, Phantasmagoria, The Pinch, riverSedge, Sanskrit, Serving House Journal, Slipstream, Spillway, The Tower Journal, Tulane Review, Westview, and other literary and academic journals.
