July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
Girls in Plum Sweaters
what can girls in plum sweaters
be expected to know of loss
as they pass the shovel among friends
unorated letters on pretty stationary drift
in the wind – as earth hard-hits the coffin
inside sweatered pruning friend on white satin
outside they, fresh as dropped stitches
from a single skein of yarn
creating a forever hole
in matching plum sweaters,
dirt under fingernails
cold wind in their fresh washed hair
Whorled
Here you are from womb whirling to mountaintop majesty
Wandering, wondering, wondrous, laughing, slip-sliding
Infant dimple fingered hold on that slice of eternity
In the years tumble, tempest-joy-uncertain-clear trek
Always in soft certitude of the light of stars – sparkling
With a clear true flame – born under, carried within and
yours to share – from first blink of fathomless eyes
reflecting the mountaintop from where you came, from
where you now stand, all pinpointed celestial eternity behind
ahead and shimmering within you, this day, as each day
forward flooded filled with all – from first drop of sweet milk
to sting of bitter herbs upon the tongue, whirling, floating
aquamarined waters to iced-arctic whitened snowflakes
whirling from infant milestones to the crack of a bat vibrating-
beasts gentle lumbering, emotion-swirl beginnings, incomprehensible
endings rolled in burgeoning intellect -until your own
first shimmering thoughts coalesced writ- read
reflecting something beyond, yet within, familiared comfort-clear,
life-love flowing up each step of whirling, womb-walk,
footfall steadied with each tumbled year, to stand here today
on the mountaintop eyes filled fathomless deep as at that first blink at the
whirling tumbled tempested wonder of it all spread before, around
and within you in timeless kaleidoscopic shifts of endless configuration
Enjoy the journey and the unexpected vision of mountaintops without acme
Revel in strong legs to climb, clear eyes to see, and the wondered whirl writ
in unique imprimatur whorled in your infanted dimpled fingered tip reaching
from then mystic manifestation, whirling through the considered now, into
this mindful moment – breathe the clear cool air of your mountaintop of your
horizonless forever
by Pearl Ketover Prilik
Dr. Pearl Ketover Prilik is a freelance writer/psychoanalyst. She has had three non-fiction books published, posts poetry daily online, and has online publication credits.
July 2012 | back-issues, poetry
The Study Of Latin
In Latin Club, we created togas
From bedsheets and translated Cicero,
Tales of the Punic Wars, how Caesar
Conquered all Gaul in three words.
Sang Dies Irae, Dies Ila.
The priest raised the chalice
To the crucifix over the altar
Where Jesus hung in ceaseless agony.
We stood, knelt, genuflected.
We blessed ourselves.
We, the Latin scholars, repeated
The beatitudes. Gloria in Excelsis.
The organ aired its tones
Like holy laundry.
In time the priest was turned around
Like a doll on a pedestal to face the congregation
And speak in their common tongue.
I’ve forgotten almost
All that Latin
Thinking how I could have
Studied Spanish and would now be able
To read Neruda in the original.
The Child Who Ate Words
Words.
Congealed, coruscated, corresponding
To a frozen branch overhanging barb wire
Blistered with teardrops. Or a redtail hawk soaring
Over winter-blasted pastures
Or the old oak flooring
Creaking its hundred year lament.
Vessels of phrases cascading
Like the lower falls of the Yellowstone
Or choked in retention ponds
To invite the drowning child
Or perpendicular as the hickories
Ragged as beggars. Or indiscreet
As a woman in a negligee
Watering the lilies.
Surrounded by taunters,
I licked my ice cream cone
A vocabulary of sweetness.
Acknowledged their cant,
You swallowed the dictionary
Vanilla, vermillion, vanquish,
Venomous, violent, vamoose.
Presentiment, palpable, precocious.
by Joan Colby
Seven books published including The Lonely Hearts Killers, The Atrocity Book, etc. Over 980 poems in publications including Poetry, Atlanta Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Epoch, etc. Two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards (one in 2008) and an IAC Literary Fellowship. Honorable mention in the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Contest—North American Review and the 2009 Editor’s Choice Contest–Margie, and finalist in the 2007 GSU (now New South) Poetry Contest, 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize, 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest and Ernest J. Poetry Prize Joan Colby lives on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois with her husband and assorted animals.
July 2012 | back-issues, fiction
I carve holes in the femur bone of my former enemy. I have sucked the marrow out and cooked his tender flesh for consumption. His organs and muscle I have ground into sausage. I cook the sausage and feed the homeless in Tompkins Square Park. The media heralds me as a generous hearted humanitarian. I am a minor celebrity in my community. I have eaten dinner at Gracie Mansion and have had my portrait done by famous artists that live in the city.
The holes are for a flute. I play strange and beautiful music through my enemy’s leg. The music is dark and sensual. The music is forty thousand years in the making. My Germanic ancestors carved similar instruments from the bones of bears. I am no different from them. There is no more dangerous animal than man.
I make another flute from my enemy’s other leg. The rest of his bones I grind into powder. I mix the powder with cocaine and snort my enemy into me. I absorb my enemy’s powers in this fashion.
I play passionate and sad music on my two red flutes and have no intention of recording my songs. Nothing is permanent. Change is the only constant. I exist in the ether; eternal and illusory.
His teeth I surround with oven bake clay, one at a time. I sculpt tiny animals with the clumps of clay and bake them. I create a glaze with some of the left over blood and all of the little animals are red. I surprise the neighborhood children with my gifts and their mothers adore me. I have two dates with divorcees next week and get away with murder.
by Michael S. Gatlin
Michael S Gatlin just finished his second novel and was recently published in Splizz, Dharma Lick, and Tomato-tomato. He owns a bar in Manhattan called Verlaine—because he couldn’t bare hearing people mispronounce Rimbaud.
