Monthly Archives: May 2018

13 May

Poetry: By Ann Schlotzhauer

Guadalquivir, by night

A thin man, bathed in unperturbed night,
Walks across a bridge
Spanning a river older than time
He has gray eyes
Like the sky
Over the ocean
After a storm has only just passed
And he walks, as I watch, hand in hand
With a boundless void in a bright sundress
And he smiles with his slightly crooked teeth
And his slightly too-large nose
As he tucks his arm around her so knowingly
And it pains me to watch but I cannot look away
As he is sucked in by the void
And I know in that instant that it is too late
But is the void to blame?
If it only wished to be near the people with the kind gray eyes
Is the void to blame?
If it warned him of the danger long before this moment
Is the void to blame?
He was thin, with gray eyes set in tanned smile lines
And his nose with that slight hook that he so hated
And the void so loved
And his teeth, once straight, just perfectly crooked
I set his face in my memory
I set it there to stay forever
To commemorate what happened
And now, because the tragedy has already passed,
I can pull my eyes from the bridge
And scanning the indolent river
My eyes alight on each pair of stars
That are commuters rushing home after a too-long day

Pasta Water and Music

You stand in the kitchen cooking
All the windows open
Pushing air from behind me toward you
As I watch you let the pasta boil over
Always the pasta boils over
And you let it
Like a ritual
And I breathe in the sweet air of springtime
But I wish I could smell you too
Over dogwood blossoms and pasta water
And there’s music playing
Because you can’t cook without music
I always forget music
When you’re away
I forget this simple pleasure
And believe I have to live my life in silence
Awaiting your return
I don’t know the song but it’s rhythmic
And interwoven now in the spring air that fights to enter our windows
And all I know
In this moment
Is contentment
I remember all the times before when such happy things hid from me
And all those harder, sharper memories
Make this new life even sweeter
I fill my lungs
To the roots
With this air and this moment
Hoping I can breathe deeply enough to infuse it in my bones
I want to be made of this moment
With pasta water on the stove
And spring air pushing music in to every corner
I want it to shield me from the darkness that I know will come again

Morning Tide

In the morning the tide comes in
And sweeps us away
And we let it
We let it carry us around the world
And back again when the sandwiches are ready
We bathe in the water that has touched all mankind
And returned lovingly to tell the tale
We are one with it all
Because it allows us to be
We are thankful

Guadalquivir, by afternoon

In the afternoons, when our classes were done
When we’d returned from the stone-faced university
And eaten a hearty lunch of fish we never could identify
When the sun became too hot to stay inside
Luring us, like long-lost lovers, to its rays
We’d walk along narrow sidewalks
Always pointed toward the water
Like birds with metal in our noses
Always pointed
We dodged past schoolchildren skipping home in uniform
And we talked so fast
Interweaving air with words
It’s a wonder our lungs kept up
And when almost to the water’s edge
We stopped
Because our trip needed something more
And we debated and argued and weighed pros and cons
But there were always only the two options
Churros con chocolate o helado
And once we’d decided
We’d rush to the nearest
The tingle of metal guiding us there
And we’d fill our hands with treats we’d done so little to earn
And then, finally, the river
Because there’s always been something about masses of water
Something about its slow, steady movement
That makes you believe your own life is marked by progress
That makes you believe worry is unnecessary
And all is as it should be
We’d sit in the shade of gently dancing willows
Then move to the sun then back when the sun offended
And our talking slowed and our breathing slowed
And in those afternoons that stretched longer than any others
All was as it should be

_______________
Ann Schlotzhauer is a Kansas City native currently residing in Wichita, Kansas with a small gray cat. She enjoys creative expression of all kinds and her fiction and poetry can be found in Junto, Foliate Oak, Cardinal Sins, and more. 

13 May

Poetry: Up From Small by Patricia L Meek

UP FROM SMALL
by Patricia L. Meek

For Emily Carr

I was born enlarged,
more complete

than my polite culture
could contain.

In order to survive,
I consented to fit
into a teacup.

I dwelled in that dark,
as small as I could
for one having such an ancient heart—
a mighty drum, drum.

It was my father
who cracked the china
when I was nine.
I was safe no more.

Then, in some slip of day,
I drew MY rage.
Allowed myself to step into BIG.
Up from small.

Up from small
the mighty oak cracked
the acorn of its knowing
that it must push upward
or die.

Up from small,
I pushed upward
until I became the entire mountain
of my destiny.

Up from small.
Let no man constrain, tether, or tie
that which is God’s bidding to grow.

Up from small.
The grasshopper must leap forward
every day into blinding light.

That sunspot.
The quickening face of God.

______________
Patricia L. Meek won AWP Intro for Fiction, “The Crucified Bird,” and “Weather” was a 2016 finalist for Rita Dove Award in Poetry. Author of Noah: a supernatural eco thriller, All Things Matter Press. Other work published by Natural Bridge, University of Missouri; Euphony Journal, University of Chicago, Puerto del Sol; REDUX #59; Sunstone Press; and The Penman Review. She taught English composition and creative writing, and holds a BA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University, an MFA in Creative Writing from Wichita State University, and an MA in Counseling from Southwestern College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is currently a medical integration clinician (LPC) in Southern Colorado.

Website: patricialmeek.com

13 May

Poetry: By Biman Roy

BLUES QUEEN

When they moved her down the stairwell
Step by step, halting and panting, on a stretcher,
The pavement was heated up by then.

Jimmy was playing the lonesome blues somewhere.
A note from the wayward sax kept rolling down
As she moaned in pain—
A sharp stab at the edge of her rib cage
That holds at bay a mottled liver,
An estranged spleen
And a love-struck heart as well, for years.

When she was lifted into the ambulance
Droplets of sweat clustered around the lids,
The street empty of desire,

The howling of blue wind made her lips crack
And as she entered the ER with sunken cheeks
And half-closed eyes, she wanted two things dearly,

A sip of cold white rum
And Jimmy playing Leroy Carr—
“How long, how long has every train been gone?”

A FERRY RIDE ON THE CIRCLE LINE

On the shiny breast of undulating water
A shadow green and broken up
The iconic Mother of Exiles

The boat shifts in its passage
We lean back on the seats in taut air
And clutch at the edge of our jackets

There has to be an Ellis Island in heaven—
You say
Yes I nod as long as there are
Refugees of heart
You smile lavender scented

Beyond the ultramarine shores
Of Lesbos in olive gardens
Immigrants become migrants
And their despair runs into the streets
As blood runs into sand

How the words change their meaning
When you choose to be silent
Known becomes unknown

Yet we know grief is not a winch
And a groggy unkind night
Is safer than a shrapneled day
As they wait near the gate

With anger spreading in the chest
To guard against
A vainly barking tongue

Now we have come full circle
Stepping on the West Side Highway
You say
As you cut rose bushes harder
They blossom more

ONLY HERE

Superheroes are born in New York
Because of skyscrapers and elevated rails
As I have been told

Most of them have Jewish immigrant parents
And a phosphorescent crowd hunting excitement

When I walk in the shade of a side street
A pizza deliveryman bicycles past my dreaming self
With a red-and-blue cape and a young woman
Wearing a blooming magnolia blouse bends over
Through her second-floor window and reads
From Finnegans Wake loudly to the crowd below

A man walking in front of me calls his dog Robin
And waits until he is done and wraps it in polythene
Like precious Kryptonite and at Union Square
The new mayor promises the world to his citizens
Despite war and Washington

The boy is Albanian and the girl only speaks Creole
And they meet for the first time in the E train from Queens
And on a day when trees on the sidewalk turn color
He holds her close looks up at the sky and says
Help us Superman
And the girl’s singing breasts

Far more sweetsounding than a lyre

Golder than gold

**(Editor’s Note: Due to the formatting of our website template, the last lines of this poem were unable to be printed in the format that they were submitted.  Included below is a photograph of the last stanza in the format that the author intended.)

POET AND THE PREGNANT WOMAN

Across from the Plaza Hotel
Where a bronze horse leaps into air
A boy in blue jeans maps the sky.

Lifting up their rears
Black ants take shelter
Under pages of the New York Post,
On its top a homeless man darkens the cloud.

Soon it will rain.
A very pregnant woman
Flaunts her belly swollen as Hudson Bay
And waits for the light to change,
So also a poet,
Who does not have to cross
This street or any street for that matter—
Waits for words to rain
In thunderous silence
That will run wild and naked
Through their veins
Giving birth to another Apollinaire.

THAT SEPTEMBER

At Ferry’s Landing—
Cranks of machines cracking marrows
Of American lindens
Fill the air
And at Ground Zero, the eternal digging.

No one knows
Who tends the cattle in Ithaca
Or who serves coffee in the downtown Starbucks
At these hours,
When wind is still as a stroke victim.

The soggy September trench coat
Folded as memory of troubadours
Left close to the street sign bent backward
And a stench pooled around the hydrant.

Walking into the troubled night
Under a traffic-less sky,
I notice on dank pavement a half-rotted root
Sinking its teeth into the marrow of Manhattan.

______________
Biman Roy has been writing poetry for past three decades and has been published in various literary journals in US, UK, Canada and India. These poems are taken from his manuscript, “Geography Of Bliss”, a collection of poems based on his interactions/reflections/interpretations of New York City, both as a physical and mental space/entity.
13 May

Poetry: By Stephen Massimilla

ASCENT
-After Neruda

On the ladder of the earth, I clambered
through the atrocious thicket of forsaken forests
up to you, Machu Picchu.

Lofty city of stone stairways,
finally a dwelling where the terrestrial being
did not hide in her nightclothes.
In you, as in two parallel lineages,
the cradle of lightning and that of man
rocked together in the bristling wind.

Mother of stone, spindrift of the condors.

High reef of the human aurora.

Trowel abandoned in primordial sand.

This was the dwelling, this is the place:
Here the large grains of maize swelled
and fell again like roseate hail.

Here the golden wool of the vicuña was spun
to cover the loved ones, the barrows, the mothers,
the king, the worshippers, the warriors.

Here the feet of man found rest by night,
beside the talons of the eagle in the high
meat-strewn aeries, and at dawn
they stepped thunder-shod through the rarefied fog
and touched the soil and the stones
until they recognized them in the night or in death.

I gaze at the rags and the hands,
the trickle of water in the sonorous hollow,
the wall softened by the touch of a face
that with my eyes gazed at the earthly lanterns,
that with my hands oiled the vanished
planks: Because everything—clothing, skin, pots,
words, wine, loaves—
was gone, fallen to earth.

And the air entered with its orange-blossom fingers
over all the sleeping dead:
a thousand years of air—months, weeks of air—
of azure wind, of iron cordillera,
that were like soft hurricanes of footfalls
polishing this solitary precinct of the rock.

WHAT ENDURES
-After Neruda

Oh you dead of the lone abysm, shadows of one chasm,
of such depth, as if rising to the measure
of your magnitude—
the true, the most consuming
death, and from the quarried rocks,
from the scarlet turrets,
from the staggered stairways of the aqueducts,
you tumbled down as in the autumn
of a single death.
Today the hollow air no longer cries,
no longer acquainted with your feet of clay;
the pitchers that filtered the firmament
when the blades of a sunburst spilled forth
are already forgotten,
and the mighty tree was swallowed
by fog, struck down by gusts.

Suddenly, from the highest summits, the hand
that it held up toppled
to the end of time.
You are gone now, spidery fingers, delicate
filaments, interwoven mesh;
all that you were has dropped away: customs, unraveled
syllables, masks of resplendent light.

But there was a permanence of stone and word:
The city, like a cup, was uplifted in the hands
of all—the quick, the dead, the silenced—sustained
by so much death, a wall; out of so much life, a hard blow
of stone petals; the sempiternal rose, the traveler’s abode,
this Andean breakwater of glacial colonies.

When the clay-colored hand
turned to clay; when the diminutive eyelids closed,
crammed with coarse walls, crowded with castles,
and when the whole of man lay ensnared in his small hole,
exactitude remained there waving like a flag:
the high site of the human dawn.
The loftiest vessel ever to contain the silence;
a life of stone after so many lives.

CLIMB UP WITH ME, AMERICAN LOVE
-After Neruda

Kiss the secret stones with me.
The torrential silver of Urubamba
sends pollen flying to its yellow cup.

Emptiness flies from the creeping vine,
the petrified plant, the hardened garland,
over the silence of the mountain coffin.
Come, miniscule life, between the wings
of the earth while—cold and crystalline in the pounded air,
extracting battered emeralds—
wild water, you gush down from the snow.

Love, love, until the sudden night,
from the reverberant Andean flint
down to the red knees of the dawn,
contemplates the blind child of the snow.

Willkamayu of resonant threads,
when you whip your linear thunder
into white foam like wounded snow,
when your precipitous storm winds
sing and flagellate, waking up the sky,
what language do you bring to the ear
hardly uprooted from your Andean froth?

Who seized the lightning from the cold
and left it chained in the heights
divided into glacial tears,
shaken into choppy rapids,
striking its embattled stamens,
carried on its warrior bed,
bound to its rock-tumbled finality?

What do your injured flashes say?
Your secret rebel lightning:
Did it once travel thronged with words?
Who keeps smashing gelid syllables,
black languages, gold banners,
fathomless mouths, muffled cries,
in your tenuous arterial waters?

Who goes reaping floral eyelids
that arise from the earth to gaze?
Who hurls down the dead clusters
that dropped into your cascading hands
to thresh their threshed night
into geologic coal?

Who flings down the linking branch?
Who again entombs the last goodbyes?

Love: Don’t touch the border,
don’t worship the sunken head:
Let time fulfill its high stature
in its salon of broken fountains,
and between quick water and the great walls,
gather the air from the narrow pass,
the parallel plates of the wind,
the blind channel of the cordilleras,
the crude greeting of the dew,
and climb, flower after flower, through the thicket,
treading on the serpent hurled from the cliff.

In this precipitous region of crag and forest,
green stardust, clear jungle,
the Mantaro valley explodes like a living lake
or like a fresh level of silence.

Come to my very own being, to my dawn,
up to the crowning solitudes.
The dead dominion still lives.

And over the sundial, like a black ship,
the predatory shadow of the condor crosses.

THROUGH ME
-After Neruda

Rise up to be born with me, my brother.

Give me your hand out of the most profound
reaches of your wide-sown sorrow.
You will not return from the rocky bottom.
You will not return from subterranean time,
You will not return with your hardened voice.
You will not return with your deep-drilled eyes.

Look at me from the depths of the earth,
farm laborer, weaver, silent shepherd,
keeper of the tutelary guanacos,
mason of the faithless scaffold,
water-carrier of Andean tears,
lapidary with well-worn fingers,
farmer trembling over the seed,
potter fallen into your own clay,
bring your ancient buried sorrows
to the cup of this new life.
Show me your blood and your furrow;
tell me: Here I was whipped
because the gem didn’t sparkle or the earth
didn’t yield the stone or the grain on time.
Point out to me the rock on which you fell
and the wood on which they crucified you;
spark up the old flints for me,
the old lamps, the whip-lashes stuck
to your wounds across the centuries,
and the axes with their glitter of brilliant blood.
I come to speak for your dead mouth.
Across the earth, unite
all the silent wasted lips,
and from the depths speak to me this whole night long
as if I were anchored here with you.
Tell me everything, chain by chain,
link by link, and step by step,
sharpen the knives you kept below,
thrust them in my chest and in my hand
like a river of flashing yellow rapids,
like a river of buried jaguars,
and let me weep: hours, days, years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.

Grant me silence, water, hope.

Grant me struggle, iron, volcanoes.

Cling to me, bodies, like magnets.

Hasten to my veins and to my mouth.

Speak through my words and my blood.

 _________________
Stephen Massimilla
A poet, scholar, professor, and painter. His multi-genre volume Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo, 2016) won the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the IAN Book of the Year Award, and several others. Previous poetry books include the The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (an SFASU Press Prize selection); Forty Floors from Yesterday (winner of the Bordighera/CUNY Prize); Later on Aiaia (winner of the Grolier Poetry Prize); and a critical study of myth in modern poetry. He has recent work in hundreds of publications ranging from Agni to Poetry Daily. Massimilla holds an M.F.A. and a Ph.D. from Columbia University and teaches at Columbia University and The New School. For more info: www.stephenmassimilla.com and www.cookingwiththemuse.com