Later—as if we were our own again.
Cut apart / then reassembled in the style
of a later decade—Klimt’s fin de siècle Vienna. You
were good—nodding head, arched fingers of a figurine,
fresh-lacquered & glossy in the light, your body’s hidden harp
intoning sweet thing, darling. . . There are poisons
in those perfume bottles. . .
See the caged girls as they contort and check
their watches / the cheap garter part of the fantasy
like that bored mouth, loose writhe of everyone out this late—yes, you are
the smooth apple always willing (whatever
the cock-red mouth, the manners) on the branch
his broken strand of pearls
And you have power: Judith with the head of
if you are willing to use it
while the music plays
Originally from Tallahassee, Lightsey Darst writes, dances, writes about dance, and teaches in Minneapolis. Her book Find the Girl was published by Coffee House Press in April 2010, and her awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She also hosts the writing salon “The Works”.
***
Renee Emerson
Heber Springs, 1996
Full suspension
and the hands glide
forward
twin fish smooth
in the water.
Cold current
then a colder.
Strange lake
muck
when toes touch
bottom.
Lithe usefulness
of the body.
Weightless
like a child's, like
a child's loved.
To swim is to want
to live,
head above water.
Renee Emerson has her M.F.A. from Boston University. She has published in Big Muddy, Tar River Poetry, The American Literary Review, and Crate, among others. Her chapbook, Something Like Flight (Sargent Press 2010) was released this past February and can be purchased at www.somethinglikeflight.wordpress.com.
***
Mark DeCarteret
The Routine
You’re inspecting me for ticks again,
their body-specks thrilled with my blood,
these asterisks reminding my skin
how it was made for many meanings.
All morning I had gorged on the sun
where the grass had forgotten its stance
giving in first to mud and then thicket before
seeing to where the berries filled up on themselves.
Now I look six with my socks like this,
like I’m somehow diminished, this hoax,
your fingers having found me out again,
legitimizing my place while they dwell on me
till I’m left to myself and that recovery of feeling—
the other poison of not having anything made of me.
Mark DeCarteret’s work has appeared in AGNI, Boston Review, Chicago Review, Conduit, Cream City Review, The Del Sol Review, Hotel Amerika , Killing the Buddha, Mudfish, New Orleans Review, Third Coast, and elsewhere, as well as the anthologies American Poetry: The Next Generation (Carnegie Mellon Press), Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader (Black Sparrow Press) and Under the Legislature of Stars—62 New Hampshire Poets (Oyster River Press) which he also co-edited. Last year he was selected as Portsmouth New Hampshire’s seventh Poet Laureate.
***
Andrew Kozma
Illusionment
…men do not really look like trees at all…
~Newly-sighted girl, quoted by Annie Dillard in “Seeing”
There’s no such thing as beauty.
Whose hands entomb my waist?
Snow is a rain of feathers
until the backdrop is lowered.
Whose hands entomb my waist?
I, too, am descriptionless
until the backdrop is lowered.
Before, there was no darkness.
I, too, am descriptionless.
Please, close my eyes.
Before, there was no darkness.
They said they gave me eyes.
Please, close my eyes.
Snow is a rain of feathers.
They said they gave me eyes.
There’s no such thing as beauty.
Andrew Kozma received his M.F.A. from the University of Florida and his Ph.D. in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Zoland Poetry, Subtropics, AGNI Online, Comstock Review, Quiddity, and a non-fiction piece has been published by The Iowa Review. His first book of poems, City of Regret, won the Zone 3 First Book Award and was released in 2007.
***
Teresa Leo
Virginia Farm Haunting
In memory of Sarah Hannah
Just when I thought I could take it,
put it away,
find some esophageal strength
to swallow it down,
her scarred image breaks through—
it can’t just rest
in the trachea, the back of the throat,
it has to rear up and swoop down
the way the hawk after last night’s rain
intended to grasp something running in the field,
but the field I see is charred and black;
even the cows are missing,
maybe loaded into trucks
to herd and wander elsewhere.
I’m left at this window in the barn
to watch the imperceptible blades
trying to push through again,
but know they’ll only get so far,
not even to the surface, let alone
to the compound’s wooden gate.
What tree could honor her?
Catalpa, dogwood, maple—
none could rise up far enough
to reach what’s left
of the dark, dark sky.
At home I could plant flowers,
perennials that double their presence
by coming back year after year,
gathering force in winter
to break spring’s hard ground.
But I’m here, the place
where we first met,
and I look perhaps too closely
at each mockingbird or blue-tailed skink,
the dragonfly that hovers
at the picnic table
as briefly as a slap across the face
brings blood beneath the skin
to one place, then retreats
without a trace. Suddenly
the field is green again,
the cows back at the fence.
Tonight, I’ll wait by the gazebo for her
long after everyone goes to sleep.
Each tree makes its futile attempt,
in every turning leaf I hear her name.
Teresa Leo is the author of a book of poems, The Halo Rule (Elixir Press, 2008), winner of the Elixir Press Editors’ Prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Women’s Review of Books, New Orleans Review, Barrow Street, The Florida Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has been a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Vermont Studio Center, and has received fellowships from the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the Leeway Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She works at the University of Pennsylvania.
***
Jason Mccall
Job Description for Potential Hero Applicants
It’s temp work, really, no benefits
or schedules. At any time, we may discontinue
our offerings to the gods or build a computer
that will surely go rogue and threaten humanity.
You will not be consulted on these decisions,
but we expect you to respond to them immediately.
It can be hard, but you’re an orphan—
more likely than not—so roughing
it shouldn’t be anything new.
If the forest is safe and that weird
cloud does not turn out to be an alien
assault armada, don’t expect to hear from us.
We’ll keep your name on file, though, scribble
it on neighborhood walls in case
anyone needs a hydra removed on short notice.
And if a job comes along and you manage
to save our town with your army
of gadgets you haul from quest
to quest because only full time
members of society have storage privileges,
we will give you a pat on the back
with the same hand we reserve for garbage
men and janitors. We don’t value you enough
to offer you a stable position, but don’t give up.
Keep that sword strapped to your back;
keep waiting for us to remember your name.
Jason Mccall is from the great state of Alabama, where he currently teaches English and Literature at the University of Alabama. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami, and his poetry has been or will be featured in The Los Angeles Review, Cimarron Review, New Letters, Mythic Delirium, Fickle Muses and other journals.
***
Jake Ricafrente
Fayette County, Texas
Past the bale-stippled fields beside
71; the roadside stall
Where clover honey and bread-
And-butter pickles, vacuum-sealed in Ball
Jars, are sold; and the red
Barn at the Frerich family farm—the leaves from the tall
Pecans on my mother’s father’s mother’s land have died.
Conveniently, I conclude. Inside, she tells
Me, per usual, pulling out two sets
Of dominoes to play,
How much I’ve grown. “My little…”—she forgets
So many things these days,
But smiles as if to say, Such as it is, or, Let’s
Move on. She offers a cinnamon roll, which smells
Of Southern self-indulgence—lard,
Brown sugar, and butter—but then she serves me
Shit-on-shingles, pan
Gravy on toast. It isn’t breakfast, though we
Act like it is: a man
And forebear playing little games. When she moves, her knee
Crepitates, sounds like a neighbor raking up his yard
Or an old-fashioned rub-board. The pips
Aren’t adding up. So “Maybe tic-tac-toe
Instead?”— a game with rules
She can remember: an X and then an O
In turns until she fools
Me with a win, then four, then sixteen in a row.
“Seen Alma lately?” I ask. She licks her waxen lips.
“Came Friday.” The words come especially slow.
It’s late and the sun is setting behind
Some nearby cypresses.
She says she misses everyone and wouldn’t mind
Seeing me more. She presses
A letter into my hand. It’s clear. In games, we find
The terms: bones, rules, and a neatly penned xoxo.
Jake Ricafrente holds an MFA from The Johns Hopkins University and is pursuing a PhD at Texas Tech University as a Chancellor's Fellow. He will spend the next year in residence at the
University of the Philippines as a Rotary Scholar. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cincinnati Review, South Carolina Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. His work will be included in the Best New Poets 2010 anthology.
***
David Salner
For Ralph Dickey in the City of Poets
You came from the Motor City, driving a T-bird off the line,
arriving in Iowa, in the city of poets. At your first party,
you played jazz on the piano and wore a derby. Afterward,
we walked outside—two city boys, the small-town night.
The drunken halos of the street lamps—Van Gogh moons—
buzzed on and on, on that still street, lined with parked cars,
sleeping poets, and the spot where the T-Bird should have been
left empty by the repo man. “I made that car, and yet”—
you paused, deadpan—“They expected me to pay for it.”
In San Francisco, you lived in a warehouse with a roll-down door,
put a chair on the sidewalk, read novels in the original German.
I’d stop off after work on the docks, and you’d show me
the translation of Celan you’d been polishing for years—
and a poem with a story too dark for me to understand.
When they shut off your lights, you worked by the sun, such as it was.
When the rent ran out, you put your notebook under your arm
and tipped your derby, like you were getting ready
for something easy. They found you on a park bench in the East Bay,
no T-bird, no jazz, only that line from Celan: the black milk.
David Salner received an MFA from the University of Iowa then worked for 25 years as an iron ore miner, furnace tender, and machinist. His second book, Working Here, won the Rooster Hill Press 2010 competition and is now available. His poems have appeared in recent or forthcoming issues of The Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Fourth River, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. He lives in Frederick MD with his wife, Barbara Greenway, a high school English teacher.
***
John L. Stanizzi
Mock Crash
VLADIMIR:
That he'd have to think it over..
…Before taking a decision.
ESTRAGON:
It's the normal thing.
VLADIMIR:
Is it not?
ESTRAGON:
I think it is.
VLADIMIR:
I think so too.
Silence.
Samuel Becket, Waiting for Godot
If you're capable of believing
in a God who knows all,
sees all, plans all,
quaquaquaquaquaqua
then you're capable
of believing this:
I saw Him practice once
before taking a decision.
7:40 a.m.
Two cars placed together
head on
in front of the school,
members of the Drama Guild inside,
flopped, drooped,
lollygagging
made up with theater blood,
rubber scars.
The alarm sounds
this sunny May morning
and the entire student body,
a little groggy,
vaguely interested,
is traipsed outside to watch.
Police cars bolt to the school,
all lights and noise,
followed by two ambulances,
tires wailing.
The students move in a little closer,
interest turning to fascination
as the actors,
playing hurt,
playing dead,
are removed from the broken cars
by the Jaws of Life.
Then the snarl of Life Star
kicks up sand, candy wrappers,
discarded assignments.
One actor is placed in the chopper,
two in the ambulances.
Then amid the dust,
the chafed voices of walkie-talkies,
the whole frenetic display,
a hearse comes slithering in
black and shiny,
slow and silent,
glides up to the actor
placed on the pavement
and covered with a blanket.
He has hit his mark perfectly
and is absolutely motionless.
They place him on a stretcher,
slide him into the hearse.
Later, someone would say
they heard Matt whisper to Chuckie
Sucks to be him.
The students are then herded
into the damp auditorium
to watch the faces of dead kids
projected on a screen
while their sobbing mothers
beg the audience
for the implausibility of caution.
Next morning.
7:40 a.m.
Two cars smashed together
head on
in front of the school,
four kids inside,
flopped, drooped,
bloody.
The alarm sounds
on this sunny May morning
and the entire student body,
a little groggy,
barely notices
as another day in high school
grinds to a start.
Police cars bolt to the school,
all lights and noise,
followed by two ambulances,
tires wailing.
Danny runs into my room.
“Mr. Staniz, did you hear that crash?
It sounded nasty.”
My interest turns to fascination.
Outside, kids and teachers
are running to the front of the school
where the Jaws of Life are.
Then the snarl of Life Star
kicks up sand, candy wrappers,
yesterday’s memories.
One kid is placed in the chopper,
two in the ambulances.
Then amid the dust,
the anxious voices of walkie-talkies,
the whole fantastic affair,
death comes slithering in
black and shiny,
slow and silent,
glides up to the kid
placed on the pavement
and covered with a blanket.
He has been hit perfectly
and is absolutely motionless.
He has slipped away.
It’s Matt.
The faces of dead kids
are projected in my mind,
their sobbing mothers
begging for the implausibility of caution,
as the last words
I think about Matt saying
flicker over and over
on the dark screen of my memory.
John L. Stanizzi’s first book, Ecstasy Among Ghosts, (Antrim House Books), is now in its 3rd printing. His second book, Sleepwalking (also with Antrim House) was released in October, 2009. Poems have appeared in Passages North, The Spoon River Quarterly, Poet Lore, The Connecticut River Review, Stone Country, The New York Quarterly, Tar River Poetry, Rattle, Hawk & Handsaw, Freshwater, Gutter Eloquence, and SNReview, and many others. He was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and is a former Wesleyan University Etherington Scholar and Poet in Residence at Manchester Community College and the Middletown Public Schools. He teaches at Manchester Community College.