Ivan Jenson

 

All Gone

they simply
stopped
stopping
by or calling
at ungodly hours
or demanding my
attention during
inopportune moments
asking for my advice
on street corners
they no longer
demand
to know how I feel
about them
pushing me up
against walls
pressing me
for promises
trusting me
with secrets
turning me onto
friends, songs,
or favorite haunts
they just don’t
bring me
into showers
with  them
anymore

Ball and Chain

when she was within
the jurisdiction
of your emotions
she often
attempted escape
from that medium
security
prism
and you would
search for her
with your
basset hound
eyes
until you
spotted her
unarmed
yet in the arms
of someone
who didn’t
sentence
her to
life
tethered to
passive
oppression

Giddy-up

and so
it was over
before it
ever ended
and it
could never
begin
to be the
fresh start
you were
hoping for
sometimes
it is best
to just
ride the
horse
midstream
through
your
midsummer
mid life
midnight
crisis


CP

Ivan Jenson is an artist and writer living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His work has appeared  in Word Riot, Mad Swirl, O and S Poets and Artist Magazine, Blazevox, and many others. More about him can be seen at http://www.ivanjensonartist.com/

C L Bledsoe

 

Air is Seen Through Motion, Not Form

You wake early to make her breakfast. This is what you are supposed to do, and so you do it. You hesitate before getting up and lie beside her, waiting for the alarm. She sets it for radio. This doesn't wake her up. You know this. This is control.

You lay without moving for two minutes, counting it out on the ceiling. Planes take off from the airport a couple blocks over. Alarms start through the walls in other apartments. You lay there and listen, thinking; this is the horizon. This is what you've been looking towards.

She wakes in a false start and turns over. You rise, go to the kitchen. The morning belongs to waffles, not anger. Fruit, not syrup. You hear water running in the bathroom. Radios come alive below you. Cars start. Sirens. There is a paper in the hallway. You heard it thud into the door at 3:17. She will be late. She is always late. You will be on time. You are crossing the mountain, that ridge that is forever receding into the distance. You are on the tip, leaning over. And all you see ahead is fall. Waiting for you.

CP

C L Bledsoe is the author of two poetry collections, a fiction collection, and two chapbooks. More about him at his blog: http://clbledsoe.blogspot.com.

Daniel Ames

 

Twisted Salvation

I like the twisted type of salvation
where sin and redemption weave
a thick rope tossed over burning beams
singe morning’s teary-eyed regret

I appreciate the beauty of dogged prayer
with the stench of last night’s smoke
still fresh in my nostrils and the stains
of midnight gorging glowing on my lips

the leap is brief and thrilling
the fall with smashed shoulder blades
and lungs shot forth with heavy breath
stunning as the weight of bedrock

every time I reach for her the awareness
hits me like a hand raised to strike
the eyes like handholds, clinging
and then we’re on our way down

Acceptance

it warms the soul, the opposite of no
causes the sun to burn the cloud
and fill the field with light

when the door opens,
you burst with speed toward it
not noticing the welcome mat

and how worn it is


CP

Daniel Ames lives in Michigan. His work has appeared in Magnolia, Merge, Bijou Poetry Review, Edison Literary Review, Tonopah Review, Iodine Poetry Journal, among others.

Christina Murphy

 

End of Summer

The sunlight changes with the end of summer
into something softer, making simple scenes
into Impressionist paintings of modulated
light and images. When fall starts, the colors
will be sharper—the deeper pigments of
dying leaves and trees seeking dormant
winter lives. We will delight in those colors
but remember with fondness the softer lights
of one season giving way to another, one sun
shining in memory of an intensity that once was

Watching

Large black birds circle the river
We thought they were hawks until your niece,
the veterinarian, told us they were raptors
What? we say. Buzzards.
We watch them through our binoculars, noting
their graceful form and beautiful beaks
We wish they were hawks. It is so hard to
surrender an illusion


CP

Christina Murphy lives and writes in a 100 year-old Arts and Crafts style house along the Ohio River. She continues to be amazed at how the Arts and Crafts movement found such artistic integrity (and solace) in straight lines and simple (yet complex) forms. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in, most recently, ABJECTIVE, A cappella Zoo, PANK, Splash of Red, LITnIMAGE, Blue Fifth Review, POOL: A Journal of Poetry, MiPOesias, and Counterexample Poetics. Her work has received two Editor’s Choice Awards and Special Mention for a Pushcart Prize.

Gary Moshimer

 

Dead Letters

He glanced again at the stack of letters from the attic. He’d only gone up there because Ruth was dying, to get affairs in order. Now he laughed bitterly about that: affairs in order, because the letters were chronological. The box had been locked, but he found the key under the curled paper lining her nightie drawer, because now he changed her nightgowns. And now that her mind was gone he would get no explanation.  He could not confront her; she could not defend herself.

The letters were from a man named Paul, starting the year after Carl and Ruth were married. Carl couldn’t remember any Pauls. In every one Paul loved Ruth forever. He was fruity, used words like “blazing comet…” In every one he said, “What will we do with that husband of yours?” Carl had stayed in the attic reading, sitting on a box until his legs were numb. It took him an hour to get up, and then he fell and knocked over a bookcase.

Eventually he brought the letters down, intending to read them out loud to hurt her, but he didn’t. He stayed away from her. He sat in the corner where her flicking eyes couldn’t find him. He sat on the porch and smoked one after another, branding the railing with the tips and even his own hairless legs. He burned letter edges and blew them out so they looked like maps of unsolved mysteries. The last letter was recent, five years old. I’m going now, but I’m not suffering. I’ll meet you. How could the bastard not be suffering, that blazing comet of unrequited love?

He stayed away until he heard her cry out. When he finally touched her, after so many hours, she arched her back. Cold sweat beaded on her brow. Her eyes opened wide on the window. In the dusk a fog settled over the pond and the light was strange, slanting horizontally, as if a well lit doorway had opened in the woods. There was a long shadow, a tree or a man. Carl felt her pulse slowing.  She pulled her hand away and her body stiffened and seemed alert. He almost expected her to sit up. The shadow moved, and Carl knew it was him, waiting.

At the end she was looking for Carl’s hand, fingers crawling along the sheet, but he kept it from her until she was gone, and it was too late, and then he reached.

CP

Gary Moshimer works in a hospital. He has stuff in DecomP and Night Train, among others.

Ross Eldridge

—Photo by Ross Eldridge

MY LOTTO DREAM

When I win the Lotto  I would almost certainly buy a large home with lots of space between it and any neighbours. But I would have people living in it with me (a valet, cook, maids, and a gardener) and be open to visitors. Come and spend the summer. The winter. And I know just the place.

On a hilltop above the Northumberland seaside village of Alnmouth there is a very large and rather antiquated building that has some history. It has been a private home, a club, a small hotel, and it is now a friary. The Friary of Saint Francis is a retreat for a better class of retreater, I’m guessing, having seen some awfully posh sports cars on the gravel in the forecourt. The few friars wear long, brown, monkish robes and sandals, but look quite well-off, a better class of friar.

The Friary building has been added upon, and there are portions with a religious flavour, but it is, at heart, an enormous country house overlooking the north end of Alnmouth Beach. There must be four floors and masses of windows facing the North Sea. The view alone would be worth a small fortune. When I win the Lotto, and I have a large fortune in mind, I would make the Friary an offer so enormous that they could not resist.

I’d leave the basic outside structure of the Friary unchanged, but I would remove all of the Christian iconography. The inside would be completely renovated. I’d want my visitors to have all the comforts of a hotel on Park Lane, luxurious accommodation with a spectacular view. And when the storms rage in from the North Sea, my winter guests might warm themselves at an open fire and watch the surf smashing onto the beach and WW2 fortifications below, or read in a recliner chair, a blanket over the knees for extra warmth. One miniature dachshund to maintain order. Two to run riot.

I might be some measure from the nearest house, but with my Lotto money I could bring the neighbourhood inside, bring my friends in. There would be a level of comfort, some nice touches: art, music, books, fine food, company, and conversation.

I’d move my mother (who has been a ghost these past 18 years) into my Lotto Dream home. It would be nice to have her in the flesh, but with time and times rolling on, her spirit would be welcome, perhaps walking a gallery. Calling out, as she did when she was ill and worried in bed: “Ross! Ross! Are you there?” I’d tempt her ghost with a dish of bread-and-butter pudding into a well-lit room overlooking the Sea. I’d read a book, and my mother would stand at the window for a spell. A magic spell. The sun shining through her. And a mini-bus load of friends arrives that evening. Dinner, then charades, perhaps cards or Scrabble, and somebody will play the piano and sing something by Cole Porter. “The girls today in society go for classical poetry. So to win their hearts one must quote (with ease) Aeschylus and Euripides...”

We could all sing along, quite loudly, because the neighbours are far down the hill, and the neighbours are us.

CP

Ross Eldridge lives in a tiny North Sea town on the coast of England near the Scottish border. He reads a good deal, has a go at photography, and researches family history. Ross has written a weekly newspaper column, but is now content to blog at http://barkingmadinamblebythesea.blogspot.com/, dedicated primarily to his little dog, Cailean.

Christina Olson

POEM I WOULD RATHER YOUR MOTHER NOT READ

We are walking the fields behind the farm,
you and I and your brother. Ahead of us
the dogs are running the cows’ trampled brown paths

and somewhere your mother stands in her kitchen
checking a roast in the oven. We are climbing
over piles of frozen shit, throwing occasional sticks

that the dogs, both sporting breeds, never bother
to retrieve. Your brother looks like the last photograph
taken of him, white shirt and thick glasses, though

my brain’s lent him a jacket. It is December.
We don’t say much, except to make fun of the dogs,
mine in particular, who is fond of rolling his head

over piles of droppings. This is how I am,
up north with your family, always
too quiet and wanting a beer, instead asking

after the horse, the power plant on the bay
whose stacks we see from the dining room.
I want to ask Jonathan why he couldn’t just have

waited until after high school to kill himself,
I want to say Everybody wants to die in high school,
you just needed to get to college, because

this is true. I want to ask him why two days
before Christmas, and why
nine days into his eighteenth year,

and exactly how he went, because even you
do not know. I have him in a jacket and hat
because I want his wrists covered,

his skull’s great red hole hidden. The dogs bark,
they have found something burrowed, and their howls
tell me it is dead. From her house on the hill

I know your mother is watching three dark
figures walk away from her, her fingers
resting on the cool pane that holds us.

—winner of The Dirty Napkin 2008 Gerald Stern Poetry Prize



CP


Christina Olson was born in Cincinnati in 1981. She received her MFA from Minnesota State University, and her work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, Puerto del Sol, and The Best Creative Nonfiction, Volume 3. Her first book of poems is Before I Came Home Naked (Spire Press, 2010). She lives online at www.thedrevlow-olsonshow.com

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz

we are

you and me we
are rabid wanderers comic
strip bubbles shouting i love
you me we
are giraffe-twisted
balloons that refuse to burst echoed
prayer our own
language a jubilant
drum strength invisible-spider-
web strong we are mouths
meeting in quiet song
bone-felt jazz and a drop
of the blues we are you are
me we
are
oh, yes we are

CP

Gwendolyn Joyce Mintz lives and writes in New Mexico.  She also designs and handsews teddy bears and blogs about it at www.teddyhugsandthings.blogspot.com.

Kjersti Furu

 

Steadfast Tin Soldier

There are days when you wish you hadn’t bothered to wake up at all. Days when the bedsheets smell so comforting and you don’t need the telly, you don’t need anything to distract you from the badly painted ceiling and the fading daylight casting animal-like shadows over your thighs. The vacuum of smelling the pillows and imagining that kissing them would make him reappear. Would make you not hate yourself, would make you not turn your back on him because you can’t stand having him this close, can’t stand anybody touching you in that way and still there is nothing you yearn for more than for someone to run their hands over your body, someone to desire you, someone who’ll just hug you and hold you close, tell you that you are okay, that things will be okay. And eventually you need to get up, get dressed, get drunk, and hopefully, by the time night falls, or some time before the sun rises again, you will fall asleep on top of your duvet, still wearing your clothes even if they’re wet from the rain, leaving them to dry over night but when you wake up they'll still be damp and sweaty.

CP

Kjersti Furu lives in Norway and enjoys lying on the floor listening to music in headphones. She started writing down stories when she was six and hasn't stopped since. It's all about making sure you'll never run out of ink. Or eyeliner. Every now and then she'll post stuff at http://kissingpillows.wordpress.com/

Diana Rosen

 

Music from the bandoneon

paints the air

under this ebony sky
with the sadness of
love lost.

My partner steps back, pulls
me into a volcado:
I lean into him

my extended leg sweeps
the floor where once
he stood.

Heartbeat to heartbeat
we meld into the sound of
melancholy.

A slight nod
a whispered
gracias.

I linger
in the fragrance
of embrazza

the connection
of tango
where the soul

trembles.

Afterthought, Afterward, After All

He's always just about ready
to say something pithy, witty
wry, when the impulse subsides
re-emerging too late, an
Esprit d'escalier
"the wit of the staircase"
another frozen step through
a no-risk life stymied silent
with toes-in-the-water hesitancy;
no crashing, wave-splattering
belly flop, no elegant swan dive
into the deep waters of life,
no soaring up to face the sun.

CP

Diana Rosen's work has appeared in the anthologies Kiss Me Goodnight, Those Who Can...Teach, and Bold Ink plus the journals Lucidity, convolvulus, and RATTLE, among others.