Welcome to Issue four of Word Soup. This issue's art includes photography by Rhode Island photographer Jan Armor. Jan has this to say about himself on his website: I am a fine art photographer and educator professionally involved for over thirty years. I love the medium as much now as I did when I was a teen. I have a seeking eye. I love beauty and form and shape and line and texture. I love motion; I also love symmetry. I love color and contrast: black and white, sharp and soft, happy and sad. I love thoughtfulness and intention. I love the effort to communicate something profound through photography. I am known for my easy going but fully committed teaching style. My workshops are informative experiences that will challenge participants. Contact me for details on a particular event, or to schedule a tutorial in your home or down on my lake. 8 Indian Trail North, Wakefield, RI 02879 Ph: 401-783-8232 [email protected] Jan is not only a superb photographer, but he is also a superb human being. These photographs were taken at his own expense to document the hunger problem in Rhode Island and to celebrate the folks who volunteer at the Rhode Island Community Food Bank to sort food for recipients. I love the camaraderie the photos illustrate. We are all together in this world. We must help each other with the basic human need for food. Thank you to Jan for his allowing me to use his work for this issue. Take a look at Jan's other exquisite work on his website: http://www.armorphoto.com/ and his exquisite slide show: http://www.armorphoto.com/-hunger So with no further delay, let's jump right into the terrific poems for this issue. Poets include Colette Tennant, Jeff Burt, Frank Geurrandeno, Richard Kempa, and Miriam Weinstein. Plenus by Colette Tennant I don’t want to see body parts on my food – no eyes staring blankly at the meringue ceiling, no tail missing its slow sway through salty water, no fins, directionless and still. No feet please, and no feather remnants or quills singed and sky-less. Even pigs, bless them, no snouts or curly tails tucked in plastic in the 70s Winn Dixie meat counter, no pig feet pickled away from the soft squish of earth, no concrete reminders of how much hunger costs. Colette Tennant’s first book of poems Commotion of Wings was published in 2010. Her poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, Southern Poetry Review, Dos Passos Review, and others. One of her poems is currently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. A Man Wakes to the Sound of the San Lorenzo River by Jeff Burt A man wakes to the sound of the San Lorenzo River and his second-hand sleeping bag moist and his face rancid from touching it and he doesn’t think of love, he doesn’t long for love, he doesn’t expect that love like a cutout on the page of life will be restored by a patch of paper fallen at his feet, he rises and wants a cup of coffee and a day-old bagel that hurts his teeth to pull and a dry pair of socks and a place to wash. He hears words of love gushing from the songs of singers, preachers, and advocates like rain from a roof with oversized gargoyles but love will not gush from anywhere for him, not in words and not in flesh but in the slight and offhand manner in which a society can afford to remember. Let me withhold words of love that are empty of it. Let me put my hand on his shoulder and steady his hands around the cup and say his name, say only his name. Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/user787213206/a-man-wakes-to-the-sound-of-the-san-lorenzo-river-by-jeff-burt Vapor by Jeff Burt His curled breath twisted into dawn, a writhing transparent vapor, told me he’d been working hard all night to stay warm, a cup of coffee would keep the shivers down he said, but he looked like glass that trembles when a door shuts, that keeps quivering until you touch it to still the visible vibrations, to quiet what one more hard slam will shatter. Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/user787213206/vapor-by-jeff-burt The Calling by Jeff Burt If I can plunk the planks like piano keys, make balance beams of iron tracks until the earth has lost its daily dances; if I can tramp the rail so far I’m alone to things; if I can make the string of boxcars on the spur like a home in the ubiquitous dark by squatting in the dust and rust and dirt of cold metal walls and wooden floors, curling like fingers to a palm for warmth and dream the locomotive of dawn, its bright celestial clack in the cold black medium of space, dream the dipper, the drinking gourd, the California here I come--when I wake and cannot see the sun can I not rise and walk and risk the heart to go out into confusion, and speak to crows, gather wild lilies, spiderworts, phlox, chicory, and ox-eye daisies, everything which grows toward me, shed the bondage and bandage of fear for the rapture and rupture of joy, burn as surrogate for the solar train, the raucous roaring delicious imbecility of creation, living an obligation to be light Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/user787213206/the-calling-by-jeff-burt Jeff Burt works in manufacturing. He has published in Thrice Fiction, Mobius: A Journal for Social Change, Star 82 Review, and other publications. Trinity by Frank Geurrandeno My mother must have drunk desert sand out of the tin flask in her black leather purse because the blood wouldn’t stop coming out of her mouth. She coughed and became a fountain of crimson red and spotted yellow. She was shaking and shaking and shaking her hands, as if begging to be set free. Perhaps, as she used to starve, it would be better than being here with us. Frank Geurrandeno is a Roanoke College undergraduate studying Creative Writing and a columnist for The Brackety-Ack newspaper. Early in his career, he has found success with poetry and short fiction in various print and online publications, including The Rusty Nail for his short story "The Interlock," Dark Matter Journal for his short story '"The Robin's Birth" and poetry in The East Jasmine Review, Haiku Journal, and 50 Haikus. Frank also is featured in the anthology Voices from Smith Mountain Lake. During his breaks from college, Frank resides at his sister's lake-house in Wirtz, Virginia where he experiments with his writing. Change in the Evening Commute by Mark Danowsky It’s that point in the evening commute where volume bottlenecks But today without honking or that guy who yells (though no one ever responds) Today there is no loud music with the wrong words or feel or the maddening unpredictability of hearing only the yeller or yelled at on the phone Today the man on the highway median stands taller, his eyes less vacant-- still, he bears a scrawled sign HOMELESS VET – NEEDS FOOD – GOD BLESS Today is different because all drivers slow down and one after another hand this man a folded bill Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/magikmark7/change-in-the-evening-commute Pride or Prejudice by Mark Danowsky After days, then years watching bodies headless and armless rifle through dumpsters I carefully package goods in a brown paper bag staple it shut write “FREE” in bold then leave it nearby the dumpster, as if this makes it obvious this is almost trash but not for you by which I mean it’s for you but it’s trash for me and then surprised no one opened it no one dared to like the sealed box marked “Home Depot” must have fallen off a delivery truck and passersby passed by even me, who can’t let go managed to let it remain a mystery but wasn’t that the point in Mulholland Drive? probably no one knows except maybe my old neighbor who said she was an original Gray Panther, prowled nights setting up makeshift housing for strays in the worst of winter, like the retired tenants in Four Freedoms who fed local strays and still feeds them even after the one year management tried to stop them by poisoning a whole litter Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/magikmark7/pride-or-prejudice Mark Danowsky’s poetry has appeared in Apiary, Alba: A Journal of Short Poetry, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, Red River Review, Right Hand Pointing, Snow Monkey and The New Verse News. Originally from the Philadelphia area, Mark currently lives in a van down by the Susquehanna River. He works for a private detective agency and is assistant copy editor for the Schuylkill Valley Journal (svjlit.com). The One Among the Many by Richard Kempa I’m striding across the main room in Penn Station to get a bagel and coffee for the train ride home when a voice, made familiar by my weekend in Manhattan, falls upon my ears: “Any change to spare, sir?” The answer’s out before I even see him: my hand a shield between us, “sorry buddy, not this time,” and then I see him: brown curls framing a thin nose, pinched cheeks; clear forehead, clean eyes, pink lips-- like the John the Baptist painting in the Met, I think surely the one among the many I should give to! But my feet, not having slowed one bit, have past him. I’ll catch him on the way back, I resolve, but of course two minutes later on the way back he’s gone. In and out the ticket lines, bathrooms, phone booths, shoe-shine stands I weave, the silver hot in my pocket. Oh, I’m ready to give. Where are you when I need you? But nowhere in the vast antechamber can I find any of the wretched of the earth to indebt themselves to me. Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/rick-kempa/the-one-among-the-many-by-rick?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=email Rick Kempa lives in Rock Springs, Wyoming, where he teaches writing and philosophy at Western Wyoming Community College. For additional information, please visit rickkempa.com We Called Them Bums by Miriam Weinstein When I was young, the misfits scattered around town. Caught, occasionally, sleeping during the day on a park bench, spotted slipping at dusk into the forest-like swath of land brushing the railroad tracks, emerging at daybreak to pick through trash, scavenge in the alleys, appear out of nowhere, and ask: loose change? Today, the hopeless and the homeless are a regular sight, at street corners, store fronts, and freeway exits. They stand silently, hold cardboard signs with penciled appeals and God Bless signatures. This morning, the thermometer registers minus three degrees. Stopped at a traffic light, I look at a man standing on a strip of trampled snow four feet from me. Middle-aged, balding and bare handed, he clutches a sign written in a child-like scrawl: Hungry-- Homeless—Anything Helps. His eyes meet mine. I reach for my bag, hope the light will turn green. Extending my arm, I offer a few bills. Thank you ma’am, almost lost, between the rumble of idling engines. Best Friends by Miriam Weinstein 1 Whose idea was it to open that new box of felt tip Magic Markers? I yanked out the red one, Sally pulled at the blue one, then, all the markers slid onto the floor of the Ladies Room, and in a frenzy of fun we decorated the toilet stalls: Sally loves Joey with a big red heart around the letters and an arrow piercing it. True Love with an identical design. Oblivious to the commotion we caused, who heard the door fly open, who saw the uniformed clerk enter. Marched up stairs to the manager, told: Actions have consequences. Mom, so ashamed, I never expected such behavior from you. It was clear Sally was the problem. Actions have consequences buzzed like an angry bee all night long. Saturday morning at Woolworth’s, cleaning supplies in hand paid for with next week’s allowance money, we scrubbed the entire bathroom, all signs of our pre-teen love gone. 2 Sally went on to meet trouble. With boys, with alcohol, with work as a stripper at a bar across town. Sally went on to forget actions have consequences. Plagued with an untethered temper, she turned friends and fellow workers to foes; plagued with untreated mental illness, she fueled fires in her family. When Sally took unpaid leave to care for her terminally ill mother, she was terminated. Sally flared, raged out of control and plunged. Fifty dollars left, she told me last week. Eligible for disability, she never applied, eligible for social security, she’s clueless what to do. Food stamps won’t pay for toilet paper. Awake before dawn I see Sally homeless and on the street. Shards of glass surround her feet. Miriam Weinstein has had poems published in the anthology The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home published by Holy Cow Press, The Chinook Book, and "The Quotable", Issue 11: Memory. She is a recent graduate of the Loft Literary Center (Minneapolis, MN) two-year apprenticeship program in poetry and her mentor was Jude Nutter. |
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