Poetry
they are stashed everywhere
placed with no master plan
quite haphazardly
no collective time frame
for final resolution
I can hear them like
a schizophrenic orchestra
at night when I can’t sleep
tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick
tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick…tick
tick………tick………tick………tick……….
perhaps one is in a cupboard
another beneath the foundation
probably one is concealed behind a half-truth
another slipped between the veils of exaggeration
the only consolation may be that while
this field of imminent destruction is a composite of our lives
there is a certain security in knowing that each
little surprise package found its quiet private home
via our own pale, gentle hands
Clan Gathering
Timothy is taking photographs
Of Navajo Clans.
At the Edge of Water Clan
has a lot of faces present.
Annie Many Cows has so many secrets
she is laughing hard at the camera,
and not telling why.
Everything comes together in these faces
like the long slow bands of water
circling the planet, joining hands
in one blue current.
Some eyes are so old
they are filled with that place
where everything has a secret name.
I can’t go there, even though I want to.
Some faces say,
Listen to dust.
Some say
Listen to the shape of her hair
Or his hands.
Some faces say
Listen to these fingers
knucklebones of winter
I am holding in my lap.
This is a language I have never spoken.
Bloodroot or white sage
cedar branches opening above the earth
into Red Willow mind or
At The Edge Of The Water
heart.
Hard Choices
I could not decide if I wanted
to walk all the way to Wal-Mart,
or go sit in the park
next to the homeless camp,
where magpies act like they are the ones
who gave birth to men
and now regret it.
If I walked to Wal-Mart
I would have to go out
on the long highway
but I would be able to go past
those two wild horses stuck in their
stubble field,
who like to run along the barbed wire
beside me.
I could imagine I was going to ride them,
was going to have the heat
of their bodies, first the
black and white, and later
the red and brown, moving
like a hundred strong legs
beneath my hips.
We would ride far
into those purple mountains,
or maybe just to Wal-Mart,
But it would be a fine ride.
If I went to the magpie park
I could watch the green and blue color
in their tail feathers sting the air
and listen to them shout,
Hey, wake up, don’t forget
we made you and you are
a big disappointment to us.
Blue smoke would be drifting
up from the homeless camp
and time would collapse
inside me.
Loud Neighbors
Today is not tomorrow. If anything, it’s yesterday. It’s for this reason that I don’t brush my teeth; I’ve (secretly) trained a troop of spiders to pick them clean while I sleep. This is why my mouth gapes when my eyes close and I cough webs. But you and I both know I would never speak. Below us, people stick their noses in light sockets. This is why everything smells like techno. On Sundays, hear their bodies thump as Granma stands by the stereo trying to hear the gospel station, flicking the switch on, off, on, off, wondering why nothing happens.
CL Bledsoe
Magpies
All I’ve ever wanted is perspective, truth,
leg room. You have to be careful what you say
to magpies—they pick one shiny word out
and starve to keep it in their beaks. I want
to understand confusion so as to combat
the iterations of locked doors. Rust is a slow
friend, but dependable. It’s off-putting, how,
though I rarely battle water, even my largest
clothes shrink, and yet only my cutaneous
shell grows.
Underneath, something shimmers, but I’ve kept
it hid all these years. When you see me, marvel not
at the softness of my flesh,
but at the lack of beakmarks.
Hemispheric Divide
Vacationing in America, he squeezes bags of brown sugar
at the supermarkets. Inadvertently, fingernails break
through the plastic. Quietly, licks sweet off cuticles.
He returns home to La Mitad del Mundo, where monuments
mark the provenance of Latitude zero. He flashes through shops
and pokes each llama wool sweater with straightened index fingers.
The fabric sinks, a garbled response to equatorial pressure. He can’t resist
the sheared masses, spindled and dyed. He places woven finger puppets on each digit
to cease the craving, to twitter the carnival of animals – an equine metonymy.
The Beach
We four stand knuckles
on wet knuckles a chain
against the sea, whitecaps
blooming and crashing into
our line, toes digging in soft
sand, salty foam tickling the
girls’ chins, spilling through lips,
pounding at tight eyelid levees,
carrying a swell of little girl and
grown man laughter to the shore.
The next wave builds
and our line advances
united, white-knuckle
grip squeezing the mystery
out of the sea, unfounded
certainty in the girls on this
annual visit to the seashore,
a sense that our chain is
impenetrable,
immortal,
their battle cry: “Deeper!”
Clay Carpenter
Cicadas
dutiful in black loam nymphs wait
strapping on four-inch heels sucking
sap and counting minutes necks noosed
pupils hugged glassy wings at the ready
applying mascara a cocked eyebrow
a slap on the back
at evening instinct draws the army
to the surface confident as an
alarm clock teeming thousands
to the gates shedding golden skins,
sport coats airs to emerge into
the absolution of night singing
snoring summer
winter outside
indoors ambition
none
OCEAN MIST
What is it in the mist
That even ocean waves
Seems still as quiet windows
That dream beneath their blankets
Of dark on Sunday morning?
CONFESSIONAL IS SO OUT
When I was eight years old I purposely slipped on the Cincinnatti ice.
I wanted to break a finger and I did.
The doctors gave me a splint
and my parents gave me a cocoa.
I sat inside drinking cocoa and watching The Price Is Right.
I was not a good guesser.
My father came home around noon each day for lunch.
Most of the time it was tuna salad.
I am a retired teacher and non-fiction writer. I have won awards for playwriting, teaching, and photography. Recently, I compiled 30 years of poems written to my wife and distributed 20+ of them in June and July. All of them were selected for publication, one of which is at Temenos. My poem comes from a larger collection entitled How To Be In Love, Forever.
Sociological Sweetheart
My thesis: To remain your conjugal companion
My model: To remain foot-note-fully yours
Please write me into your bibliography
and quote my love
without speculation,
"if then....however...and.....thus we see"
My final conclusions:
I love thee1
1always
ibid
ibid
op.cit
to wit
and smooch
can I come home with you?
KJ lives in Orange County, CA. He is currently working on other poems. Some of his publication credits include: decomp magazine, Ruthless Peoples Magazine, and why vandalism?. Check out his blog here: http://illegalfunk.blogspot.com. It wants followers and kind remarks. Feel free to say hello: khays45@gmail.com.
cloak and dagger
i.
At night when convention breeds isolation
there is time to tip and take, & not get
all worked up about such soft sandcastles.
I can hear earfuls of sea noises outside.
and it is not important whether I am
the castle or its grand creator. What
matters is that I knew of sands once.
ii.
that gives me the peace to look
inside my peculiar architecture
to see that air completes me, &
the great lancet arches stand
as the fluff that detracts from
the countless pinpoint crevices
that pencil me into existence.
iii.
sometimes i wish to rub out
the drafting to prove i have
the electric bravery to wait
to see how the fuzzy erasures
would prove to me how fearful
i'd be to see the cuspate tips of
her smile brazenly awaiting me
behind the flaxen cloak of her
hair on that white background.
iv.
when that hour comes &
the whole gestalt gets
stolen by sourish sea salt
as one draft of wind blows
the drawing of me away, away...
i'll suck back my snotty tears &
i'll ask what her face is still doing there...
MAXIM'S HAT (1)
May peace, mercy and love be multiplied to you
1
Dressed like another century,
the cardboard doorman
welcomes patrons off the street,
promising marvels
from his upturned hat.
2 shows a night, newsreel,
cartoons, and at intermission
magic will entertain the pack,
as if Astaire and Bogey, Dietrich
and Garbo would not do:
His moustaches glint, curl
to waxed tips, 1944, to humor
souls through their recuperations,
already a year in healing,
stateside, from the hearts
of newsreels, grateful
for the rabbits and colored silks
exciting air
between the features, for
these mind-readers
graced and knowing better
than to tell...
Maxim's Hat (1), pg. 2
1944.
And briskly, with cartoons,
we're under way,
with creatures drawn to play,
covering infield green and dirt
as you played then, sketched
as if they'd tapped a wild provenance,
to leap laterally, stab, pivot
and bullet-toss to first, allowing
the brute powers, the base-speed
nothing in their ranging,
Keck, J.R., seated before these flickerings,
leaving your dream with theirs
and this capacity 200s': 3 years
and 3 years healing! Leaving
the Kitty League to these and these
deferred from saving Europe,
the Major Leagues, it seemed,
peppered through Europe
and the East...
*
And to April's bride, wheeled
past the endgame of your treatments,
1946, what would you say to her,
discovering this need for caution
in deepest Upstate snow, to this
bride conceiving ways
she'll wheel her first born to spring fields,
where you'd delighted fans at short
and set your name beside his father's,
where you will walk unnamed,
(almost concealing your woodwork,)
remembering album days, when
southern scouts scavenged northern parks
for prospects, ran weekend camps
and sorted local also-rans
from hopefuls?
C.J. Opperthauser has been writing poetry ever since the fish in the lake told him to do so. He enjoys blues music and brisk runs, and plans to graduate from CMU in December of 2010 with a Bachelor's in English.
“An Evening Whittle”
The fire hisses and pops
beside the old man’s feet,
grass stained and
scarred.
His Swiss Army knife
sculpts a beautiful woman
between his
finger
tips.
The
toothpick in his mouth
twitches, but
his hands
do not.
He holds his woman out
over the fire. The flames
lick
the dry wood.
Steve Roggenbuck has poems published at BlazeVOX, Cricket Online Review, nthposition, and Word For/ Word. He lives in Michigan and blogs at steveroggenbuck.blogspot.com
from “The random walk”
what can we do with this
the 100,000 years it takes a photon
to reach the surface of the sun
- Peter Gizzi
2
someone beautiful cleaning pots in curb water. i walk this rain
This is how i am: a wagon full of petitioners.
“don’t promise me any thing,
i want to feel valid again like rainfall
This is why,
every day, i walk on the sidewalk and i think, there is no better thing to do than this.
i will come back tomorro, o beautiful o beautiful
3
“wow, you have a smock on,” someone says,
but I don’t.
4
“[h]ere are some of the slow-driving tips that have worked for me” (babauta 140) a garage full of baseball bats and brass trophies:
we are so dark in this place
GRANT: i think four days ago i had a car in there.
i thought this would be easier to remember: the clapping, the pianokeys, the flame on the bus:
i think we had a flame on the bus:
MARISSA: and you came here looking for a reason— a parlor —a fire.
/ / /
“I would do ne-thing
like this gurl does it,
she just does ne-thing!” (Poe 8, 12, 17, 78, 321).
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Alan. I Chew a Rubber Hose Until It Breaks into Another Piece: Selected Tweets, New York, 1820.
/ / /
GRANT: I call you, the phone clicks I thought it was your mother. I guess not, she is dead.
I thought you knew this.
I thought you belongd here with me dropping rose petals. I thought we knew this: pages of ripped poems.
pages of ripped poems
Dawn Sandahl is a senior at CMU, studying creative writing. She was born in 1988 and at the age of seventeen, she discovered that she was a writer and that she makes her own good fortune.
The Code of Hammurabi
“If a builder build a house for someone and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built fall and kill its owner, then that builder shall be put to death.” –Law 229
My father roofed houses one summer.
Under the sun I baked mud pies in and warmed
washtubs for makeshift swimming pools,
his arms and neck bubbled and burned
deep brown, as dark as the cracked shingles
he pried loose and flipped to the ground,
his hands toughening to the grain
of the new bundles of sixteen hogtied rectangles.
I visited him once that summer with my mom.
He was working on top of an empty new house,
crawling on hands and knees, an apron ripe with tinkling nails
hugging his hips. I squinted as sunlight beamed through his hair,
still thick and brown, the same brown
as mine, glowing red-gold in the sun like a halo,
like a reminder that autumn is coming.
I circled a sapling tree while my parents talked,
my mother blocking the sun with her hand.
This day my dad wears a mustache,
the final hot weeks before he shaves it for good,
like a costume in my memories
of watching Bobby’s World together on the brown living room carpet
in that cigarette-burned floral comforter
and playing Skyshark on the Nintendo.
“Watch how it’s done,” he’d say, my brothers and I
leaning forward.
That summer my dad became a volunteer firefighter,
which meant a muttering radio and Dad putting on jeans
in the kitchen at bedtime, looking for his keys
while we wore our pajamas.
That Fourth of July summer ended
in an ambulance racing
past fields of yellow knee-high corn.
At the Green Bay hospital
I drank gritty, vending machine hot chocolate
and I told my dad I loved him the only
time I remember.
A week later he came home
and could not stand without tipping,
every floor a slanted roof.
He sat in the blue living room chair,
his brown skin fading and the sun burning above our roof untended.
I would creep up to his bad side and stare,
cropping my breath and hanging it,
my eyes dry and exhausted before I left, knowing
he couldn’t see me.
I was tempting the gods
and their blind justice.
Peter Schwartz's poetry has been featured in The Columbia Review, Diagram, and Opium Magazine. When not dreaming of literary conferences he?s writing or taking photos or thinking of who he should get for the next issue of DOGZPLOT, where he is art editor. His third chapbook 'ghost diet' will be out at the end of 2009. Learn more about his work at www.sitrahahra.com.
public apology (or, why most people hate monks)
I want separate twilight
a room with no candles, plates, phones or music
a glass ceiling to smash when my head's full
I want tiny hand-
painted stars, not the endless, drifting milky way
I have no desire to put my eye up to
any telescope or to
understand how
a digital clock survives on 50 to 60 hertz
which trust me isn't much, a flicker
at the next rest stop if you're some-
body who counts miles
I'm not you and I'm not
a scientist, I need my little kingdom of sleep and pretzels
more than the whole world
my supernatural bed
no matter where it is, floating down some rain-
made river or being carried in pieces up mountains
on the backs of monks;
I am sorry
sorry that my obligation is so
rooted to this room, and that I'll never govern anything
unless you include this absence, but
you must know
somewhere, you had
this choice too.
Rae Spencer is a writer and veterinarian living in Virginia. Her poetry has been published in The Healing Muse, Bolts of Silk, Autumn Sky Poetry, Emprise Review, and other journals.
Adam Wassil is an undergraduate double-majoring in History and Anthropology, but poetry is never far from his heart.
Pillow Talk
I’ve got goosebumps –
The air is still, but cool and stale
And nipping, nipping at my
Wet, white skin.
From the bed,
She watches me towel-dry my hair,
Wrapped only in the shroud of steam
That stepped out of the shower behind me.
She smiles.
I think you’re sexy.
I don’t.
I think you’re wrong.
Still smiling, she says,
I don’t care.
Still not, I say,
I know.