ISSUE ONE: September 2013
As I publish this inaugural issue, I want to thank all the poets who believe in social justice and feeding people. They trusted me with their work and donated without any expectation of publication. I am humbled by your generosity and open hearts.
My gratitude to the guest editors for this issue: Martha Christina, Professor (retired), Creative Writing Program, Roger Williams University and Cindy Elder, Director of Communications, Rhode Island Community Food Bank. You both added your voices to the quality of this inaugural issue in a way that I could not have done by myself. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Also, deep gratitude to truly gifted Marge Piercy for her enduring talent and for her generosity in lending her voice to this cause, for her honesty and fierce commitment to justice. Ms. Piercy, your poem speaks the raw truth. I am honored to publish it and am ever grateful for the opportunity.
Barbara Schweitzer's poetry always takes my breath away with its intelligence and music. Thank you for lending your voice to the choir here in your provocative sonnet form, no less!
You will find hunger here in the form of food, focus, and love. Linger over the voices represented here. You will be glad you did. And celebrate with me that this issue raised $
161.00.
Yours in poetry and justice,
Kim Baker, Editor
Contributors in order of appearance: Marge Piercy, Barbara Schweitzer, Michele Cooper, Helen M. D'Ordine, Beatrice Lazarus, Julie Hassett, Nancy Cook, Lori Desrosiers, John Kotula, Kara Provost.
Statistics don’t talk loud enough by Marge Piercy
Millions of families with children
face hunger. Bureaucrats call it
food insecure. I call it pain.
I remember when we had only
beans and potatoes in the house,
I remember three weeks of oatmeal
for every meal, but at least
we had something to fill our
bellies. Over a vacation in college
I was broke. Made a stew.
By the fourth day I was eating
water and flour. People fast
voluntarily for health, religion.
But hunger eats you from inside.
After a while it’s all you think.
You want to sleep. You don’t
care what teachers say. You’re
hollow, empty of all but hurt.
Copyright 2013
Marge Piercy
Knopf published the paperback of Marge Piercy’s 18th poetry book THE HUNGER MOON: New & selected poems in November. Knopf has THE ROOKED INHERITANCE, THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE, WHAT ARE BIG GIRLS MADE OF and others in paperback. Piercy published 17 novels, most recently SEX WARS; PM Press just republished DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP and VIDA with new introductions. Her memoir is SLEEPING WITH CATS, Harper Perennial. Her work has been translated into 19 languages. She’s given readings, speeches, workshops in over 450 venues in the U.S. and abroad. PM will be bringing out THE COST OF LUNCH, ETC. a short story collection in 2014.
The Hunger Artist by Barbara Schweitzer
. . . and they buried the hunger artist, straw and all. Franz Kafka
I am the hunger artist starving to death,
Kafkaesque and cruel, letting slowly go
of everything that resembles excess
like loving you, my extravagant blow,
but glancing off your cheek, a clucking beam
that might capture a facet of light and change
it to an object with front, back, and seam,
a thread of which might have contained your name
if you had absorbed the ultraviolet.
What happened between us is only grief
and its repository of violence.
Leaving requires no more effort than sleep.
Hay covers the hunger artist in her cage
like disappeared words when you turn the page.
Barbara Schweitzer twice received RI’s merit fellowship for poetry. Her poetry is widely-published, and her first book 33 1/3: Soap Opera Sonnets (Little Pear Press, 2008) was selected as a Best Books of 2008 by the Providence Journal. Barbara’s essays are featured on NPR’s RI affiliate, WRNI’s This I Believe series and are available for listening at wrni.org. Her plays have been produced in regional theaters across New England as well as in the national Boston Playwright Theatre’s BTM Play Marathon. Leavetaking was a finalist for Miami’s Short Short’s as part of the Louisville Humana festival and published in an anthology of the BTM ten-minute plays. She adapted her murder mysteries featuring detective Cyjoe Barker for the stage at New Bedford’s Whaling Museum, 2ndStory Theatre, Hera Gallery, Black Box Theatre, Warwick. A Cyjoe Barker flash murder mystery, published in The Cortland Review, Issue 60, can be read online.
Flotsam at 6 by Michele Cooper
Children tumbling, falls softened
by torn leaves and aging rugs,
outdoor trees and bushes
a solid fence that keeps the yard in,
everyone else out.
Two girls, a boy, boy again,
mixed twins, mother getting thinner
every year, ground chuck in a pie pan
not going far for six and someone new
coming along in April.
She scans the garden every morning,
envies the weeds their sturdy insinuation
wherever fancy takes them,
coming with gusto for sun, sweet air,
rain baptizing every leaf and stem,
like her kids fueling up the best they
can, meat and pop, mashed potatoes from
the dwindling box, apples and carrots
when she’s watching, talking strength.
What can she bring them
with yesterday’s milk and bread?
Victory Sabbath by Michele Cooper
Like a drum deftly seasoned
by the patina of generations,
the stewpot sits on the stove,
handles holding her gallons
of broth and cooking stock,
her cups of barley and beans,
her diced potatoes,
apostrophic curls of celery,
snapped green beans,
pounds of legs and thighs,
necks, kidneys and hearts
wrapped in the same wax
in Grandma Lena’s icebox.
Thyme, pepper and dill
spread a wavy blanket
till they moisten and fall,
surround the soft tomatoes
trying to rest where they
join the community of days
in reds and greens,
oranges and white,
simmering after the boil
in a four-hour meditation
on the Litvak villages and Vilna.
Michele F. Cooper is the first-place winner in Poetry Canada’s Rhymed Poetry Competition and the TallGrass Poetry Competition, second-place winner in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, author of two books and numerous published poems, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone’s Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets. She won honorable mentions in the Emily Dickinson and New Millennium Poetry Competitions. Her book Posting the Watch (2008) was published by Turning Point, the narrative poetry imprint at WordTech. She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Contemporary Authors, and the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, among others. She moved from the edge of a small horse farm (not hers) to Providence, RI, and now to the Cleveland area, where she writes and works as a book editor.
u N F o c U S e d by Helen M. D'Ordine
Inspired by Picasso’s paintings of asymmetrical and dismembered body parts.
LOST spray-painted high on a building,
a rock growing bigger in a garden,
knit two, purl two for the ribbing,
highway cowboy dudes driving too fast,
little babies far, far from home,
four inches of Jockey underwear showing,
misplaced modifiers and mixed metaphors,
forms, funerals and fiscal angst,
realtors bringing strangers through,
groceries warming in a hot car,
dust, dirty toilets and drudgery,
bra closure plainly visible,
incomplete prayers for the sick,
cowgirl chicks driving while talking,
lacecap hydrangeas blooming.
(Poet's Note: Unfocused: euphemistically speaking - disorganized, disoriented, discombobulated.)
A retired teacher, Helen D ʼOrdine worked as an adjunct professor at RI College, is a RI Writing Project Fellow, member of the RI Writers' Circle, an Ocean State Poet and an Origami Poet. She's attended the Block Island Poetry Project, has numerous published poems, and a chapbook, Conclusive Illusions.
One Potato by Beatrice Lazarus
No one questioned when she emptied the potato sack of its raw
contents onto the kitchen floor. Or how she let them all roll away,
save one. Her husband found five sprouting under cabinets,
six sealing the crannies of the house with all those blind eyes.
She would soak and scrub them all for soup. But this one was saved
for the potato salad at the church picnic, she said, holding the
smoothest, roundest potato up to the light, her clear blue eyes wide open
as the sky. It was perfect, she thought. The most perfect she had ever seen.
Not dry or cracked or lumpy. Fresh as innocence. Oh, she could almost see
a face in it. This brown bundle held promise, like a fruit of Eden in her hands.
At first she thought it was the unblemished skin she loved, or the silky white
interior of angel wings hiding inside. Chastened came to mind.
Nothing crude or rigid in it. She imagined some farmer had discovered
the strange spoor curled into the nest of a bird, a cloud of iridescent
monarchs clustered around it. The next morning she woke up to find
her cat Daisy on the kitchen counter prodding the potato with a paw
like a dead mouse. The cat had pounced and pulled this prized thing
from the living! Unstoppable, Daisy dragged the potato through the yard,
its thick neck between hungry, protective teeth. It took her awhile
to realize it was just a limp potato. Urged by love, Daisy laid on the lawn
with its small body, fat and flower-stained, smelling of wind and
robin’s wings. The penitent cat brought the potato back into the house,
and released it, a devout offering, warmed by the sun. Its potato torso
crumbling, stuffed with bursts of woebegones, lost keys, a baby’s unused
shoe, bits of cork, rabbit fur and wildflowers, interwoven with nails
and chips of raw wood, torn pages of a diary, unraveled green
threads, the broken spring of an iron bed.
The potato placed at the slippered feet of the woman
who lowered her nose to it, trying to capture the sweet damp wildness,
like wild love coming off it, swelling the air around it.
The Egg by Beatrice Lazarus
One day it appears, perfectly formed, warmed
in your hand, like a thought. No, a small
foul ball. Suspended. It needs you, you think.
Fine tufts like flowers grow from it.
And it begins squawking, weaving verses, as if for a valentine,
rolling around the hand, unfurling fingers,
no matter how troubled the terrain.
Then one day, the egg falls into place―in the garage
under the car’s hood, under mushrooms and lucky clover,
in cleats of mud, chasing you down the street.
Loose as a bullet it hops onto the train,
slipping into your briefcase. Unsuspecting,
you take it home, tucked away like a brown aureole,
thin-shelled and incubator-warm from the feathery
hips of a hen who will never lay another egg.
You will carry it, this fragile bursting thing,
whatever treads in its watery room. This,
something a woman understands,
and gently lifts.
Beatrice Lazarus’s poetry has appeared in Sou’wester, Poem, Clark Street Review, Pearl, The Lyric, JAMA, Plainsongs, The Iconoclast, and Small Pond Magazine of Literature, among others. Her poem “Break of Day” was awarded The Briar Cliff Review Poetry Prize, 2013.
Prayer of Loaves and Fishes by Julie Hassett
Even the dog needs special food this week.
Boiled chicken and rice, cooked one by one,
And my son, home from college,
What’s to eat? expects the lunch lady
to serve it up. He likes his burgers well-done.
My daughter, the vegetarian, can’t watch,
puts in an order for salad with that special
Caesar dressing only mom can make. My husband
will not stomach eggs, requires a low-fat
no-spice diet, and I
am planning to take the next flight west
to sit, for once, in the sun
beneath a plum tree fragrant with fruit
that will feed me like a blessing.
Where We Come From by Julie Hassett
Through the hot days of August
we eat from baskets
full of fresh bread and figs
breath taken from us at first
as cold water slaps our calves
We are all resistant
to the initial touch like the brush
of another’s hand against our skin
when we are not looking for it
but are discovered, anyway
among the mauves and oranges
indigos and violets on the beach
suck water down parched throats
as the noonday sun warms our arms
and we, each of us, fill to the brim
seal tight the tops of bottles
as we taste, first, our guacamole
then black beans and rice spiced with cumin
fragrant and messy.
Pear and peach juice
slicks our chins until we must
rush the ocean, whichever
we have chosen.
Back from our separate shores
we join now as one
pour the essence of our single lives
together again
give ourselves over to song.
Julie Hassett is a social worker in private practice whose recent publications include Blueline, the Philadelphia Review, the DuPage Review, the Naugatuck River Review, the Loft Anthology, Wickford Art Association, and Comstock. Her chapbook was published by the Newport Review’s collection of Premier Poets, and she won second prize for the Ocean State Review.
Irony at the Museu de la Xocolata by Nancy Cook
In Barcelona is a treat for hungry eyes:
rooms and rooms of delicate delicious sculptures.
Thick two-inch glass encrypts and captures
them, so grabby disrespecting hands may never
touch. In essence, it’s a sugar addict’s dream:
a museum dedicated to the art of chocolate.
Columbus bends his vagrant’s knee – dark chocolate --
and pleads the Spanish queen’s indulgence, mocha eye
to mocha eye; Quixote dreams impossible dreams,
tilts at windmills that seem a-spin with razor-sculpted
blades, trusts in kindness in spite of all the evidence, and never
doubts that the true heart of Dulcinea he will capture.
Foolish Obelix finds that he’s a druid’s lucky capture,
spellbound in a cauldron, a fondue chocolate
To the rescue, Asterix, his sweet compadre, never
melts or falters, you can see that in his eyes.
And now, I hear, the city plans to hold a competition: sculpt
(win big prizes!) the cocoaed, sugared vision of your dreams.
What do you see? What is your confectionary dream?
What can your robust imagination capture?
What can your sharp knives in melting candy sculpt?
What narrative can you portray in chocolate?
Well, I know these processes, conching, tempering; I have an eye
for molding. So maybe I will try my luck, never
mind the odds. Why not? I imagine what has never
yet been done. I have in mind to fabricate a dream-
like urban soup kitchen; Or a beggar with accusing eyes
at a crowded street café, loitering so that he can capture
diners at their repast, positioned to annoy the chocolate
tourists, his pleas for their indulgence craftily sculpted.
Or this is a tableau I might sculpt:
a mother picking through the trash to retrieve a never-
opened cereal box, or a decomposing chocolate
bar, or overripe tossed melons her children only dream
about – yes, that’s a scene that I might capture.
I am an expert confectioner in many people’s eyes,
yet, I know I will not craft the images I dream --
for all my skill can’t capture, never can quite capture,
a beggar’s chocolate
hollow
eyes.
Nancy Cook writes poetry in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bitter Beets by Lori Desrosiers
Some days life is bitter beets
like the white ones I thought were red
so cooked them up anyway
but the bitterness colored everything.
I no longer know what I’m hungry for.
Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/lori-desrosiers/bitter-beets-by-lori
Lori Desrosiers’ first full-length book of poems, The Philosopher’s Daughter, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. A chapbook of poetry, Three Vanities, a chronicle of three generations of women in her family, was published by Pudding House Press in 2009. Her poem “That Pomegranate Shine” won the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts award in 2010. Her poetry has been published in New Millenium Anthology (a finalist in their contest), BigCityLit, The Smoking Poet, Concise Delights, Blue Fifth Review, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Common Ground Review, The Smoking Poet, Pirene’s Fountain and many others. An original prompt appeared in Wingbeats, a book of writing exercises from Dos Gatos Press. She publishes Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College in New Hampshire, where she studied with Anne Waldman, Joan Larkin, and Jeff Friedman. She also sings and had a CD of original music published in 1998. Her current work is focused on the relationship between poetry and music.
Cielo by John Kotula
In Spanish cielo means
Both heaven and sky.
It’s a smoke ring word.
Say it with a Cubano
Between your teeth.
A ring of cloud
Floats toward the sky,
Toward the heavens above.
Guillermo died in Honduras.
I helped carry his coffin.
His brother unscrewed the face plate.
We said good bye through
A plastic window.
Reflections of clouds and sky
Floated over his face.
Cielo y cielo. Cielo y cielo.
In the dirt school yard,
Boys climb the flagpole.
Thirty feet up,
They become
Skinny silhouettes
Against el cielo.
As close to el cielo
As a hungry ten year old
Can get.
John Kotula is a writer and artist who lives in Peace Dale, Rhode Island. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras from 2005 – 2007. He goes back to Honduras as frequently as safety conditions in the country allow.
His Kitchen by Kara Provost
First he turns on the gas,
hissing blue snake tongue--
singes his fingers on the match--
sulfur smell, thin trail of smoke.
Cooking to him was a love song a safari
jazz improv in an intimate club.
Entering his kitchen, I’m sucked into
his intimate rhythm, mesmerizing mojo.
A dancer, a martial arts expert, he moves,
mixes, wheels, chops in fluid motion.
He scatters spices in a pan with oil,
stirs until it turns smoky--
dips his finger in the sauce,
licks it off, crooning
spark of lemon
try this…yes--
he puts a morsel on my tongue
and the flavors speak to me,
tasting of hunger, something dark and rich,
his singed fingers.
Listening to Mysteries by Kara Provost
She was always listening, ears
like radar dishes;
always looking—sneaking peeks
into her sister’s intricately folded notes,
books with taboo topics in their titles
or The Family of Man with its black and white photos
of naked bodies and a sailor
twined around a woman, kissing
or even her mother’s journal--
guilt and fear burning her fingers
as she touched the page’s secrets.
She heard the records her parents played
leaking mysteries and bittersweet music--
Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky,
its cover of clouds and empty blue;
Harry Chapin’s voice graveling
about divorce and absent fathers;
The Band and their burdens.
Her sister played Shaun Cassidy
on her turntable over and over
and over, plastered walls
with slick posters: his smile, his hairless torso.
She vowed inside, I’ll never make a fool of myself that way
over someone who doesn’t even know I’m alive.
She was all sticks and twigs
looking at her sister’s lovely curves
with hungry eyes--
some spirit trapped
in this duckling. No one
took her seriously.
She walked hours through trees
by the muddy river musing
on death and friendship, war and love
and who would care for the earth
and would it still be there, green and living
when she was gone.
Kara Provost has published two chapbooks, Topless (Main Street Rag) and Nests (Finishing Line), and five micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems project. Her poems appear in numerous journals, as well as in The Loft Anthology: 2012 and In Praise of Pedagogy, edited by David Starkey and Wendy Bishop. Kara teaches at Curry College and lives in Barrington, RI.
Copyright 2013
Word Soup
One-time publishing rights. Copyright and publishing rights return to poets upon publication.
Millions of families with children
face hunger. Bureaucrats call it
food insecure. I call it pain.
I remember when we had only
beans and potatoes in the house,
I remember three weeks of oatmeal
for every meal, but at least
we had something to fill our
bellies. Over a vacation in college
I was broke. Made a stew.
By the fourth day I was eating
water and flour. People fast
voluntarily for health, religion.
But hunger eats you from inside.
After a while it’s all you think.
You want to sleep. You don’t
care what teachers say. You’re
hollow, empty of all but hurt.
Copyright 2013
Marge Piercy
Knopf published the paperback of Marge Piercy’s 18th poetry book THE HUNGER MOON: New & selected poems in November. Knopf has THE ROOKED INHERITANCE, THE MOON IS ALWAYS FEMALE, WHAT ARE BIG GIRLS MADE OF and others in paperback. Piercy published 17 novels, most recently SEX WARS; PM Press just republished DANCE THE EAGLE TO SLEEP and VIDA with new introductions. Her memoir is SLEEPING WITH CATS, Harper Perennial. Her work has been translated into 19 languages. She’s given readings, speeches, workshops in over 450 venues in the U.S. and abroad. PM will be bringing out THE COST OF LUNCH, ETC. a short story collection in 2014.
The Hunger Artist by Barbara Schweitzer
. . . and they buried the hunger artist, straw and all. Franz Kafka
I am the hunger artist starving to death,
Kafkaesque and cruel, letting slowly go
of everything that resembles excess
like loving you, my extravagant blow,
but glancing off your cheek, a clucking beam
that might capture a facet of light and change
it to an object with front, back, and seam,
a thread of which might have contained your name
if you had absorbed the ultraviolet.
What happened between us is only grief
and its repository of violence.
Leaving requires no more effort than sleep.
Hay covers the hunger artist in her cage
like disappeared words when you turn the page.
Barbara Schweitzer twice received RI’s merit fellowship for poetry. Her poetry is widely-published, and her first book 33 1/3: Soap Opera Sonnets (Little Pear Press, 2008) was selected as a Best Books of 2008 by the Providence Journal. Barbara’s essays are featured on NPR’s RI affiliate, WRNI’s This I Believe series and are available for listening at wrni.org. Her plays have been produced in regional theaters across New England as well as in the national Boston Playwright Theatre’s BTM Play Marathon. Leavetaking was a finalist for Miami’s Short Short’s as part of the Louisville Humana festival and published in an anthology of the BTM ten-minute plays. She adapted her murder mysteries featuring detective Cyjoe Barker for the stage at New Bedford’s Whaling Museum, 2ndStory Theatre, Hera Gallery, Black Box Theatre, Warwick. A Cyjoe Barker flash murder mystery, published in The Cortland Review, Issue 60, can be read online.
Flotsam at 6 by Michele Cooper
Children tumbling, falls softened
by torn leaves and aging rugs,
outdoor trees and bushes
a solid fence that keeps the yard in,
everyone else out.
Two girls, a boy, boy again,
mixed twins, mother getting thinner
every year, ground chuck in a pie pan
not going far for six and someone new
coming along in April.
She scans the garden every morning,
envies the weeds their sturdy insinuation
wherever fancy takes them,
coming with gusto for sun, sweet air,
rain baptizing every leaf and stem,
like her kids fueling up the best they
can, meat and pop, mashed potatoes from
the dwindling box, apples and carrots
when she’s watching, talking strength.
What can she bring them
with yesterday’s milk and bread?
Victory Sabbath by Michele Cooper
Like a drum deftly seasoned
by the patina of generations,
the stewpot sits on the stove,
handles holding her gallons
of broth and cooking stock,
her cups of barley and beans,
her diced potatoes,
apostrophic curls of celery,
snapped green beans,
pounds of legs and thighs,
necks, kidneys and hearts
wrapped in the same wax
in Grandma Lena’s icebox.
Thyme, pepper and dill
spread a wavy blanket
till they moisten and fall,
surround the soft tomatoes
trying to rest where they
join the community of days
in reds and greens,
oranges and white,
simmering after the boil
in a four-hour meditation
on the Litvak villages and Vilna.
Michele F. Cooper is the first-place winner in Poetry Canada’s Rhymed Poetry Competition and the TallGrass Poetry Competition, second-place winner in the Galway Kinnell Poetry Competition, author of two books and numerous published poems, founding editor of the Newport Review and Crone’s Nest literary magazines, and of a chapbook series, Premier Poets. She won honorable mentions in the Emily Dickinson and New Millennium Poetry Competitions. Her book Posting the Watch (2008) was published by Turning Point, the narrative poetry imprint at WordTech. She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Contemporary Authors, and the Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers, among others. She moved from the edge of a small horse farm (not hers) to Providence, RI, and now to the Cleveland area, where she writes and works as a book editor.
u N F o c U S e d by Helen M. D'Ordine
Inspired by Picasso’s paintings of asymmetrical and dismembered body parts.
LOST spray-painted high on a building,
a rock growing bigger in a garden,
knit two, purl two for the ribbing,
highway cowboy dudes driving too fast,
little babies far, far from home,
four inches of Jockey underwear showing,
misplaced modifiers and mixed metaphors,
forms, funerals and fiscal angst,
realtors bringing strangers through,
groceries warming in a hot car,
dust, dirty toilets and drudgery,
bra closure plainly visible,
incomplete prayers for the sick,
cowgirl chicks driving while talking,
lacecap hydrangeas blooming.
(Poet's Note: Unfocused: euphemistically speaking - disorganized, disoriented, discombobulated.)
A retired teacher, Helen D ʼOrdine worked as an adjunct professor at RI College, is a RI Writing Project Fellow, member of the RI Writers' Circle, an Ocean State Poet and an Origami Poet. She's attended the Block Island Poetry Project, has numerous published poems, and a chapbook, Conclusive Illusions.
One Potato by Beatrice Lazarus
No one questioned when she emptied the potato sack of its raw
contents onto the kitchen floor. Or how she let them all roll away,
save one. Her husband found five sprouting under cabinets,
six sealing the crannies of the house with all those blind eyes.
She would soak and scrub them all for soup. But this one was saved
for the potato salad at the church picnic, she said, holding the
smoothest, roundest potato up to the light, her clear blue eyes wide open
as the sky. It was perfect, she thought. The most perfect she had ever seen.
Not dry or cracked or lumpy. Fresh as innocence. Oh, she could almost see
a face in it. This brown bundle held promise, like a fruit of Eden in her hands.
At first she thought it was the unblemished skin she loved, or the silky white
interior of angel wings hiding inside. Chastened came to mind.
Nothing crude or rigid in it. She imagined some farmer had discovered
the strange spoor curled into the nest of a bird, a cloud of iridescent
monarchs clustered around it. The next morning she woke up to find
her cat Daisy on the kitchen counter prodding the potato with a paw
like a dead mouse. The cat had pounced and pulled this prized thing
from the living! Unstoppable, Daisy dragged the potato through the yard,
its thick neck between hungry, protective teeth. It took her awhile
to realize it was just a limp potato. Urged by love, Daisy laid on the lawn
with its small body, fat and flower-stained, smelling of wind and
robin’s wings. The penitent cat brought the potato back into the house,
and released it, a devout offering, warmed by the sun. Its potato torso
crumbling, stuffed with bursts of woebegones, lost keys, a baby’s unused
shoe, bits of cork, rabbit fur and wildflowers, interwoven with nails
and chips of raw wood, torn pages of a diary, unraveled green
threads, the broken spring of an iron bed.
The potato placed at the slippered feet of the woman
who lowered her nose to it, trying to capture the sweet damp wildness,
like wild love coming off it, swelling the air around it.
The Egg by Beatrice Lazarus
One day it appears, perfectly formed, warmed
in your hand, like a thought. No, a small
foul ball. Suspended. It needs you, you think.
Fine tufts like flowers grow from it.
And it begins squawking, weaving verses, as if for a valentine,
rolling around the hand, unfurling fingers,
no matter how troubled the terrain.
Then one day, the egg falls into place―in the garage
under the car’s hood, under mushrooms and lucky clover,
in cleats of mud, chasing you down the street.
Loose as a bullet it hops onto the train,
slipping into your briefcase. Unsuspecting,
you take it home, tucked away like a brown aureole,
thin-shelled and incubator-warm from the feathery
hips of a hen who will never lay another egg.
You will carry it, this fragile bursting thing,
whatever treads in its watery room. This,
something a woman understands,
and gently lifts.
Beatrice Lazarus’s poetry has appeared in Sou’wester, Poem, Clark Street Review, Pearl, The Lyric, JAMA, Plainsongs, The Iconoclast, and Small Pond Magazine of Literature, among others. Her poem “Break of Day” was awarded The Briar Cliff Review Poetry Prize, 2013.
Prayer of Loaves and Fishes by Julie Hassett
Even the dog needs special food this week.
Boiled chicken and rice, cooked one by one,
And my son, home from college,
What’s to eat? expects the lunch lady
to serve it up. He likes his burgers well-done.
My daughter, the vegetarian, can’t watch,
puts in an order for salad with that special
Caesar dressing only mom can make. My husband
will not stomach eggs, requires a low-fat
no-spice diet, and I
am planning to take the next flight west
to sit, for once, in the sun
beneath a plum tree fragrant with fruit
that will feed me like a blessing.
Where We Come From by Julie Hassett
Through the hot days of August
we eat from baskets
full of fresh bread and figs
breath taken from us at first
as cold water slaps our calves
We are all resistant
to the initial touch like the brush
of another’s hand against our skin
when we are not looking for it
but are discovered, anyway
among the mauves and oranges
indigos and violets on the beach
suck water down parched throats
as the noonday sun warms our arms
and we, each of us, fill to the brim
seal tight the tops of bottles
as we taste, first, our guacamole
then black beans and rice spiced with cumin
fragrant and messy.
Pear and peach juice
slicks our chins until we must
rush the ocean, whichever
we have chosen.
Back from our separate shores
we join now as one
pour the essence of our single lives
together again
give ourselves over to song.
Julie Hassett is a social worker in private practice whose recent publications include Blueline, the Philadelphia Review, the DuPage Review, the Naugatuck River Review, the Loft Anthology, Wickford Art Association, and Comstock. Her chapbook was published by the Newport Review’s collection of Premier Poets, and she won second prize for the Ocean State Review.
Irony at the Museu de la Xocolata by Nancy Cook
In Barcelona is a treat for hungry eyes:
rooms and rooms of delicate delicious sculptures.
Thick two-inch glass encrypts and captures
them, so grabby disrespecting hands may never
touch. In essence, it’s a sugar addict’s dream:
a museum dedicated to the art of chocolate.
Columbus bends his vagrant’s knee – dark chocolate --
and pleads the Spanish queen’s indulgence, mocha eye
to mocha eye; Quixote dreams impossible dreams,
tilts at windmills that seem a-spin with razor-sculpted
blades, trusts in kindness in spite of all the evidence, and never
doubts that the true heart of Dulcinea he will capture.
Foolish Obelix finds that he’s a druid’s lucky capture,
spellbound in a cauldron, a fondue chocolate
To the rescue, Asterix, his sweet compadre, never
melts or falters, you can see that in his eyes.
And now, I hear, the city plans to hold a competition: sculpt
(win big prizes!) the cocoaed, sugared vision of your dreams.
What do you see? What is your confectionary dream?
What can your robust imagination capture?
What can your sharp knives in melting candy sculpt?
What narrative can you portray in chocolate?
Well, I know these processes, conching, tempering; I have an eye
for molding. So maybe I will try my luck, never
mind the odds. Why not? I imagine what has never
yet been done. I have in mind to fabricate a dream-
like urban soup kitchen; Or a beggar with accusing eyes
at a crowded street café, loitering so that he can capture
diners at their repast, positioned to annoy the chocolate
tourists, his pleas for their indulgence craftily sculpted.
Or this is a tableau I might sculpt:
a mother picking through the trash to retrieve a never-
opened cereal box, or a decomposing chocolate
bar, or overripe tossed melons her children only dream
about – yes, that’s a scene that I might capture.
I am an expert confectioner in many people’s eyes,
yet, I know I will not craft the images I dream --
for all my skill can’t capture, never can quite capture,
a beggar’s chocolate
hollow
eyes.
Nancy Cook writes poetry in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Bitter Beets by Lori Desrosiers
Some days life is bitter beets
like the white ones I thought were red
so cooked them up anyway
but the bitterness colored everything.
I no longer know what I’m hungry for.
Audio version: https://soundcloud.com/lori-desrosiers/bitter-beets-by-lori
Lori Desrosiers’ first full-length book of poems, The Philosopher’s Daughter, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2013. A chapbook of poetry, Three Vanities, a chronicle of three generations of women in her family, was published by Pudding House Press in 2009. Her poem “That Pomegranate Shine” won the Greater Brockton Society for Poetry and the Arts award in 2010. Her poetry has been published in New Millenium Anthology (a finalist in their contest), BigCityLit, The Smoking Poet, Concise Delights, Blue Fifth Review, Ballard Street Poetry Journal, Common Ground Review, The Smoking Poet, Pirene’s Fountain and many others. An original prompt appeared in Wingbeats, a book of writing exercises from Dos Gatos Press. She publishes Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from New England College in New Hampshire, where she studied with Anne Waldman, Joan Larkin, and Jeff Friedman. She also sings and had a CD of original music published in 1998. Her current work is focused on the relationship between poetry and music.
Cielo by John Kotula
In Spanish cielo means
Both heaven and sky.
It’s a smoke ring word.
Say it with a Cubano
Between your teeth.
A ring of cloud
Floats toward the sky,
Toward the heavens above.
Guillermo died in Honduras.
I helped carry his coffin.
His brother unscrewed the face plate.
We said good bye through
A plastic window.
Reflections of clouds and sky
Floated over his face.
Cielo y cielo. Cielo y cielo.
In the dirt school yard,
Boys climb the flagpole.
Thirty feet up,
They become
Skinny silhouettes
Against el cielo.
As close to el cielo
As a hungry ten year old
Can get.
John Kotula is a writer and artist who lives in Peace Dale, Rhode Island. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras from 2005 – 2007. He goes back to Honduras as frequently as safety conditions in the country allow.
His Kitchen by Kara Provost
First he turns on the gas,
hissing blue snake tongue--
singes his fingers on the match--
sulfur smell, thin trail of smoke.
Cooking to him was a love song a safari
jazz improv in an intimate club.
Entering his kitchen, I’m sucked into
his intimate rhythm, mesmerizing mojo.
A dancer, a martial arts expert, he moves,
mixes, wheels, chops in fluid motion.
He scatters spices in a pan with oil,
stirs until it turns smoky--
dips his finger in the sauce,
licks it off, crooning
spark of lemon
try this…yes--
he puts a morsel on my tongue
and the flavors speak to me,
tasting of hunger, something dark and rich,
his singed fingers.
Listening to Mysteries by Kara Provost
She was always listening, ears
like radar dishes;
always looking—sneaking peeks
into her sister’s intricately folded notes,
books with taboo topics in their titles
or The Family of Man with its black and white photos
of naked bodies and a sailor
twined around a woman, kissing
or even her mother’s journal--
guilt and fear burning her fingers
as she touched the page’s secrets.
She heard the records her parents played
leaking mysteries and bittersweet music--
Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky,
its cover of clouds and empty blue;
Harry Chapin’s voice graveling
about divorce and absent fathers;
The Band and their burdens.
Her sister played Shaun Cassidy
on her turntable over and over
and over, plastered walls
with slick posters: his smile, his hairless torso.
She vowed inside, I’ll never make a fool of myself that way
over someone who doesn’t even know I’m alive.
She was all sticks and twigs
looking at her sister’s lovely curves
with hungry eyes--
some spirit trapped
in this duckling. No one
took her seriously.
She walked hours through trees
by the muddy river musing
on death and friendship, war and love
and who would care for the earth
and would it still be there, green and living
when she was gone.
Kara Provost has published two chapbooks, Topless (Main Street Rag) and Nests (Finishing Line), and five micro-chapbooks with the Origami Poems project. Her poems appear in numerous journals, as well as in The Loft Anthology: 2012 and In Praise of Pedagogy, edited by David Starkey and Wendy Bishop. Kara teaches at Curry College and lives in Barrington, RI.
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Word Soup
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