Fresh bread kneaded together.
Silk sheets against bare thighs.
But erratic days become too much and bring
hair pulling ENOUGH! That pressures
the twist of conflicted needs.
I learned to never trust you
and I am at fault for trying.
Immaculate Exception
another song for Ruben.
To this day
your heat is engraved
into the grooves of my fingers
Remember
we sang, Tomorrow!
Our eager dreams stretched
beyond the time you borrowed
This month. This hour
sorrow worships
all your names
And when this sour
thing
rubs raw young flesh
I don’t want to go on
and can’t . . .
Go on.
Oh to speak with you
One. Last. Time.
The only voice I hear is
my own darkness
Or worse. Nothing.
And I am sorry I never cooked you breakfast.
Joey DeSantis
Baby Names
Let’s call him Baby Doom
or maybe Tricycle Madness would better suit him
or Lester’s Little Secret, Braunze, Fire Catcher
Blood Drinker or The Dream Machine
Samuel is nice too, I know
but you ruled that one out months ago
You also ruled out Jacob, Peter, Daniel, Addison
and Joseph
which was my baby name brainchild but
oh well
You are right to want something flashier
like Superjerk, Gnashings St. Claire, Lydio
Brother’s Bane, Davidson
or even just Slice
He will go on to do great things potentially
Of this your blond-winged friend was certain
so long, he said, as we pick just the right name
And so we must ask ourselves
would Cookies N’ Cream rid the world of evil
or merely turn the other cheek?
Could an angry Clementine overturn a money table?
I think not, but Jesus might
Why not Jesus?
Or how about Jeezus
Now there’s a boy destined for something greater
a boy who could easily hold his own inside the ring
maybe an Italian with a great sob story
I can already see the headlines and the VIP tickets proclaiming
Red Foam Drinker versus Little Baby Jeezus
I see our root beer cups overflowing as our heavenly son
deals RFD a left hook for the ages
fated, unable to hold back, winning
all the fruits of our careful planning
Out of Time
My father is flowing clockwise
in a holiday sweater vest and a gold chain watch
He is down in the groove, swimming through
the electric grey rooms
kept warm by the stove light, and on the table
a bowl of ham and pea soup
Immigration was his grandfather’s story
yet he too finds comfort in the small
At night, laying himself in the arms of his armchair
he can at last afford to go nowhere
My mother is flowing counter-clockwise
still as beautiful as she was
fifteen years ago, twenty years
back when the sun and sky made a point
to match everything that she wore
I believe now that they even changed colors
for her secret moods
Had I known it then I might have seen her apart from me
Her jade necklace is timeless
Her laughter is timeless, his records and her red coat
that he gave her that she always wore
I grow
I am the clock–the testament to the full length of things
I tell it like it is
The dinner plates with the hearts on the rims, they are timeless
until another one breaks (not out of anger)
Not out of anger, I dropped it
Out of time
She asks, How many are left?
A wedding present, he says, it was our very first set
How many are left?
I point:
Two
We Can Sell the Antiques
On most East Coast beaches
the shorelines and their crowds tend to look the same
So long as you don’t look at either too long or too hard
or lift your eyes to see a lighthouse
twirling about in some other town’s coat of paint
you can fool yourself
There is a mansion in Asbury Park filled with junk you can never quite unsee
Six door knocker faces, a pair of red kissing manikin torsos, twenty-three beautician’s scissors
dulling in the back of your brain’s dark closet
sorry-eyed, turning undead
all of it grooming a monstrous shadow
until there might be anything in that house
and everything in there might remind you of it
Today it is crowded
on the beach where kids seem to have only one kind of scream
Small talk, heavy feet, dark eyes
She must know that she is not the one walking beside you today
but so long as she doesn’t risk everything with a look, two distressed searchlights, blue
she can fool herself too
Death Considers the Buttercups
One track, one mind
Death must glide along these buttercups
without pausing to consider them
even as they hug the train of his cloak
in their harmless fervor to be chosen
by truly anyone
And yet, in a small and secret way
hidden as his hands and feet
that are weary for their journey’s end
by the shed where his old man waits
still humming in his wife’s wide-brimmed hat,
Death does consider them
The buttercups, who let him go just as quietly, no thorns
leaving only a yellow signature (a suggestion) to be remembered by
He would have sucked them dry
or at least taken a few lazy, arching swipes at their heads
but it isn’t their time yet and besides
he still has a long way to go
On Lent
Low ceilings are still en vogue
as is setting aside money in small increments
to prepare for the wise and lonely years
We all at times need God’s wrath or a Great Depression
to keep our thoughts from becoming too silly or from towering precariously
I vow to not be so outlandish
with my spending
and to apply this kind of discipline to future relationships
so that one day I may find and keep true adult love
For Lent I used to give up red squash
which I hated just as much as the other colors of squash
the purple, the green, the blue
I still do
I regret the bacon bits that ended up on my salad yesterday
that were not supposed to end up there
I pray for the strength to avoid the near occasion of bacon bits
And to understand that true love is made up of sacrifices both small and silly
True love is unsexy and is nothing to be ashamed of
Last night I dreamed
that something surprised me so much that I
swallowed the whole world
Knowledge, Wealth, and Power drifted silently across a lake in
my belly
And while I considered hurling them back into the void
I was scared that I might start a new world war and possibly get shot in it
I had firmly resolved to never give up anything
when a searching voice called out my name from deep inside of me
and I felt a great relief at being judged
Cameron Price
Every Morning
New moons fade to longing,
filling the air with transfusions of autumn light.
In the crevices of sleep, the world dreams
of tossing a coin :
heads, we wake up // tails, we keep sleeping.
It is always tails, the doldrums of the covers.
(listen) every morning a clear white note
breaks out over the land : it’s the snap of a
dream sundering.
In that moment, everything wakes up :
moss undulates in a breeze that
is not there;
the mice collect twigs and hair
to build palaces;
the deer gather to search out the
most delicate rosebushes to plunder.
And then it ends.
Things revert to rising slowly, as from
a daze or stupor.
Some things feel more hopeless than others :
maybe your back aches mysteriously or you
worry habitually about the bills.
But yet there is still that moment, every morning,
when everything pulses at once, tributary to
one rhythmic source.
Don’t blink // don’t sleep.
We must try to rise and feel it every morning,
to remember who we are.
The Silence of The Dead
The final cessation is
a tomb, a stone cup, a chorus,
flung far into a dream
of black water and the rushing
of exhausted exits.
This is the hymn of listening,
a secret hid from the world.
In this cavern, cut smooth
by centuries of bitter water,
I find a pool of gaping shadow.
The bones of every being that came before me
sleep submerged and wait for a sign :
they, too, listen
for a revelation on the other side of the silence.
I tread the stones around the edge,
and watch the brittle hands of the dead wave
like kelp in a secret current.
I kneel and lean my face down to the water
to kiss the menagerie of bones
arranged in grooves of sleep.
A slender finger bent in cold yearning
reaches for my lips
and their memory of warmth :
a frigid caress.
The wait rolls on in constant flow,
in this tomb, this holy cup,
the chorus of the dead :
This is the hymn of listening,
A secret hid from the world.
Now I, too, wait and reach
for lips that come to kiss the dead,
the waiting,
waiting for the end of silence,
for the tomb to break open,
for hope to break open,
and breathe.
L’Ancien Chanson d’Hiver
A thousand yards of linen are not long enough to record this story,
written on the skins of onions in yellow thread,
sewn by fingers of light.
I am in a place, existing in liminal spaces,
like a shred of yesterday lingering in a patch of morning shadow,
fleeing the noon eye.
I am the concrete road, splayed like a compass,
pointing towards your future : walk on.
I am open, split like the gaping mouths of lions,
my strength laying in the multiplicity of my pieces,
the hydra of my being : I live.
Come to this place, warm and humming :
the perfume of a hornet’s nest in June,
the smell of honey in a tree, raw and woody.
Find me there, between the gaps of leafless trees,
waiting like the smell of smoke,
in dappled puddles on a wet path.
I wait there writing my story,
on the backs of beetles and the fingers of bats.
I am there singing this poem through the pores of a leaf,
the mouth of a dandelion.
I am there like a thought, the memory of a still pond in winter,
the sadness of the night passed away.
So wait : be my friend.
Sing this song with me in the hollow of my open hand.
Add to my fullness, find me in the ancient song of winter:
Attende-moi, aime-moi, et chante, mon cher, cher ami.
David Walker
Sestina for Housesitting
Don’t you feel like the forgotten piece
of luggage? The product of heel-
scraping left on the rug before
they all go off to forget
the humdrum. Bottle
of cleaner in hand
like a sidearm weapon, you finger
the trigger. It brings you peace.
Much more than that bottle
of Jack. Far from healed,
you just want to forget
the mess you found just before
you went to bed. You think of before
all this, when “scrubbing on hands
and knees” was only a forgetful
turn of phrase acquired piece-
meal from easily-healed
fairy tale characters bottle-
necked into life-lessons. You think of the bottled
up frustration that needs outlet before
they return, the time you had to walk heel-
to-toe along a night-lit road, arms
outstretched like traipsing. Piece
of cake, you boasted, forgetting
this cop had no sense of humor. Forget
drinking yourself numb. You need to bottle,
compartmentalize each and every piece
of envy you have of them before
you snap and decide to hand
the dog off to the heels
of a stranger. You say he’s a good dog. Heel,
you demonstrate, hoping the dog didn’t forget
that command. Seal it with a shake of the hand.
Good riddance. Instead, you grab the bottle
of cleaner again and spray. You knew before-
hand that you would be leaving pieces
of yourself scattered around like shattered bottles
and they would come home and say, “Before
you leave, just so you know, you forgot a piece.”
Helen R. Peterson
Ablaut
In the company cafeteria the man
murmurs a tune to his daughter,
alone except for a woman
reading a book by the window.
The toddler rings back the words
out of tune. He rocks the child,
diverts her attention to the tvs
the fact that they’re all on CNN
makes her giggle.
He is relieved to quiet the song
until a photo of a child, newly dead
flashes on screen. “Look Daddy.”
his daughter cries, attracted
as children are to people
their own age. “Yes, very pretty”
The father says, and rocks his child
“Isn’t she a pretty girl?”
Mageirocophobia
When grunions make their run to mate
the
male sliding his body around the female, her tail
dug deep in the sand, they are unconcerned
about the parasites slipping between their scales
the scummiest of waters flowing through their open mouths
and seeping, filtered, from their gills. They don’t know
salad bars are more likely to make a body sick than sushi,
or that Aunt Mae will someday scrape the mold from their bodies,
bury them deep in a tomb of batter, fry them crisp
in oil that will leap at her wattled arms.
Contributor Notes
Jim Pascual Agustin writes and translates poetry in Filipino and English. He grew up in the Philippines and now lives in Cape Town with his Canadian-born wife and their twin daughters. His recent poetry books, Kalmot ng Pusa sa Tagiliran and Sound Before Water, were simultaneously published in 2013 by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House in Manila. Due for release by USTPH is his new poetry collection, A Thousand Eyes.
Jose A. Alcantara lives in Carbondale, Colorado. He started writing poetry four years ago after a quasi-mystical experience in a graveyard involving Dante, a dead woman named Guadalupe, melting frost, a raven, and some church bells. He was the recipient of a 2013 Fishtrap Fellowship in Poetry and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
David A. Bart is a writer from Arlington, Texas. His poetry appears in the journals Poet Lore, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Margie, Cider Press Review, Illya’s Honey and The Weight of Addition (Mutabilis Press).
Therese L. Broderick has spent many years serving her poetry community in Albany, New York, as an open-mic reader, teacher, contest judge, Board member, classroom guest, blogger, and Poet Laureate of a local tavern.
Hannah Callahan was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of four. She studied literature and printmaking at Bennington College in Vermont, and currently resides in Asheville, North Carolina. Hannah is a writer, collage artist, and extremely amateur thereminist. She is also the co-founder of falconswithcaps.tumblr.com. Her loftiest dream is to walk across country to Roswell, New Mexico to find a UFO.
Monika Cassel is the English department chair at New Mexico School for the Arts, a statewide public arts high school in Santa Fe. With the support of the Lannan Foundation, she has developed a successful creative writing minor at the school. She is working on a manuscript of poems on her German family’s WWII history; her translations of the poet Durs Grünbein are forthcoming in Asymptote and Structo Magazine.