Always a Door by Kim M. Baker
Welcome to our June 2015 issue. During this submission period, we opened up our donations. A poet may now donate to any place that feeds hungry people. I am awed by the generosity of the donations close to home and heart. Bless all of you.
Total Donations June Issue: $237!!!
Here is a great story about a unique way Colorado is helping feed children in its community. From Sandra McRae: "For my donation, I am giving . . . to a local food program a friend started at our church in Evergreen, Colorado . . . Mountain Backpacks. MB, sponsored by the local Rotary chapter, gathers donations and fills backpacks with a week's worth of meals for local school kids. The kids pick up their full backpacks at school on Friday, then bring the empty backpack to school on Monday, to be filled again on Friday. Facebookpage: https://www.facebook.com/groups/642687489172342/."
Now, to the poetry! This issue, I am honored and delighted to feature a poem by Sarah Browning. Ms. Browning is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War, she is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-host of Sunday Kind of Love at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. With Don Share, she edited a special Split This Rock issue of POETRY magazine in March, 2014. Browning has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and the Creative Communities Initiative and is winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize.
Other Divine Poetic Beings in this issue: Ruth Bavetta, Ron Montanaro, Sandra S. McRae, Michael Mark, Dori Appel, Stan Zumbiel, Susan Doble Kaluza, Robert Halleck, John Kotula, Regina Vitolo, Margo Lemieux, and Rita Brady Kiefer.
Happy June! And on to the poetry!
Kim
Foreclosure by Sarah Browning
Blind eyes to the street now.
Forgotten jump rope in the yard –
pink plastic handles turning
dusty in the summer heat.
Was it wrong to hope, to dig
a hole for the lilac bush now
struggling through its first season?
She hates herself when she does it,
but still she does: Walk the long way
to the bus so she can water the roots.
She can’t seem to let it die.
Sarah Browning is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War, she is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-host of Sunday Kind of Love at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. With Don Share, she edited a special Split This Rock issue of POETRY magazine in March, 2014. Browning has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and the Creative Communities Initiative and is winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize.
Going Home by Ruth Bavetta
When you come to the fork in the road
lean down and pick it up. Turn it over
in your hands, notice if it is silver or stainless
steel. Is it well used? Tines bent? Handle
skewed? Do you recognize the pattern? Raise
your head, look down the road, take the turn
that leads to the house with lights on,
roast chicken, bright with juice,
mother removing her apron.
Ruth Bavetta’s poems have been published in Rhino, Rattle, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, North American Review, Spillway, Hanging Loose, Poetry East, and Poetry New Zealand, among others, and are included in the anthologies Wait a Minute, I Have to Take off My Bra, Feast, Pirene’s Fountain Beverage Anthology, Forgetting Home, and Twelve Los Angeles Poets. She has published two books, Fugitive Pigments (FutureCycle Press) and Embers on the Stairs (Moontide Press.) A third book, No Longer at this Address, will appear soon from Tebot Bach.
Spark by Ron Montanaro
The fenced-in-horse-stands-motionless-staring.
It has forgotten something and the way to remember.
This statue life is not of his making.
Would a dream of the open range be a haunting?
Where are his
blessings?
Standing-empty-with-his-mate,
neither move.
Sometimes the power of the spirit just isn’t enough.
What good, four more legs
behind a fence?
Ron Montanaro began writing poetry when he was twelve. Writing helps him understand his ideas and feelings more clearly. In 1980, he self-published a collection of his poems, The Maze. Recently, he participated in the Poets Speaking Up series at the Contemporary Theater in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and one of his pieces was read at a Coleman Barks/Rumi event. As a retired teacher, it is his ambition to publish both written and audio books.
Call Now and Receive This Classic 4-DVD Set! by Sandra S. McRae
PBS wants my money
but Julia Child
wants my personal happiness.
Today, she would like to ensure it herself
by demonstrating, with casual but unmistakable skill,
how to achieve that classic of French simplicity
the two-egg omelette.
No fromage even…“no need for it.”
Simply eggs, butter, salt, pepper
and that most elusive of ingredients:
le technique juste.
Of course, once this timeless delight is plated
and sprinkled with fresh garden-grown thyme,
I’ll be implored to open my wallet
for public television and all this priceless programming.
And sure, I’ll fork over my share
to keep Elmo rocking for the young and tender,
but for now I’m plumb slack-mouthed grateful
as Julia swirls the eggs in counterclockwise syncopation
all the while urging me
to enjoy the good life, which
according to her
is as imminently accessible
as the gold just beyond that alabaster shell.
All I have to do is crack it open
drop those golden globes of pleasure
into the waiting bowl
and whisk my way to bliss.
With disarming enthusiasm,
Julia asserts that cooking isn’t complicated at all
but simply a matter of reaching for what we want:
a perfectly roasted côte du boeuf
a luxuriant stretch of phyllo
a basket of succulent chanterelles!
Violà: Earthly satisfaction.
I love Julia’s conviction
her sans-souci claim in nature’s opulent gifts.
I love the way every expert rotation
coagulating that sun
is a nudge in the ribs to care less. Indulge more.
I believe her unspoken assertion that
le paradis
is just one chopped chive garnish away.
So let us eat—yes!—with abandon
licking the frosting from the back of the spoon
nipping at the brandy
wallowing in the luscious gravy of life.
Lupini for Breakfast by Sandra S. McRae
for Clinio
Invisible face, I miss you.
I eat lupini for breakfast
snacking on their saltiness
the legume-y heartiness of them.
You used to sit across from me
at this very table.
We made attempts at knowing each other
across three languages
and this sticky vinyl tablecloth
peppered with bread crumbs
drinking from jelly jars
red wine hauled up from the barrel in the cellar.
Since you’ve gone, I am too terrified
to love anything up close.
I need distance to feel the sting of it.
Perhaps I am practicing for the inevitable
because, in the end, someone always
disappears in an elaborate three-day puff of smoke.
Holy or sane, there is no in-between.
Eventually one is left to eat lupini
popping the hard, smooth bean out of its slick jacket
crunching that salty yellow disk
with a vaguely disgruntled gratification
chewing those tears.
Sandra S. McRae teaches writing at Red Rocks Community College outside Denver, Colorado. She is the co-author of the bestselling cookbook Weber's Big Book of Grilling (Chronicle) and earned her Master's degree at University of Colorado-Boulder. Her work has appeared in print and online in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Poets Against War, Word Riot, Steam Ticket, Pure Francis, and elsewhere. She lives in the Colorado Rockies with her family, two dogs, and the occasional bear. She is never bored. Visit Sandra at www.WordsRunTogether.com.
Bearing Witness by Michael Mark
When a whale beaches itself,
camera crews arrive. For a
magnificent animal suffering,
we stop.
So I accept the role of witness
to my neighbor’s tree,
losing its leaves.
They shower down, each death
its own dance. Still, it’s sad
to think my poor memory
is all they’d have.
When it is lunch time, I hope the dying
will go on break too. The yard is
covered, but the branches remain
crowded. And I am very hungry.
The tree can always sip water
through its roots. I, on the other hand,
have to toast my bagel then wait
until it cools or the cream cheese
will melt.
The entire top must be covered
in white like waking up after
it’s snowed all night – the world
made even.
And then I put a thick circle of tomato
on each half.
I didn’t officially commit to this job.
Leaves fall, people rake and bag, and
the truck comes.
This is my thought on the way
to the kitchen, knowing
if I waited longer I’d be forced
to do what my mother did, regardless
of my gagging protests — take a
knife and cut away the green mold.
“Eat,” she’d say and stand over me,
watching.
Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Gravel Literary Journal, Lost Coast Review, Rattle, Ray’s Road Review, San Pedro Review, Scapegoat Journal, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Dream of a Kitchen by Dori Appel
I live here. Not the way I once did,
a student writing papers
in this room with the bleary linoleum,
coffee dregs in the enameled sink
merging with rust marks
by the drain. Now I am really here,
unloading shopping bags
on the table's scarred formica
while the future winks maliciously--
knocking the wheels from toys
and chipping plates.
Years pass, too much the same,
yet different. Struggling to rise
from couch or bed, I wonder
when the air became
so heavy. When I was a girl,
it didn’t pull me so.
Dori Appel’s poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies, as well as in her collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening. A playwright as well as a poet, she is the author of many published plays and monologues, and was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998,1999, and 2001. She lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon. http://www.doriappel.com/
Enough by Stan Zumbiel
It would have been enough
without the windmill, without
the lighthouse, without the
acres of sand and wheat moving
slightly in the wind. It would
have been enough with only
one woman walking up the dirt
path, her skirt lifted slightly out
of the mud. It would have been
enough without the bicycle
leaning against the plaster wall ready
to be ridden away. It would have
been enough without the sound
of the sea breaking in the
distance seeming to lure us
all. It would
have been enough.
Stan Zumbiel taught English in middle and high school for thirty-five years and has had a hand in raising four children. He wrote his first poem in 1967 while serving in the Navy. He served on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center for twenty-five years. In 2008, he received his MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Previously, his poems have appeared in Poet News, Nimrod, The Suisun Valley Review, Primal Urge, Convergence, and Medusa’s Kitchen. He continues to write in his Fair Oaks home that he shares with Lynn, his wife of twenty-nine years.
Harvest by Susan Doble Kaluza
It’s not his face that startles me in the parking lot
where he waves me down outside the cart rack.
It’s his hands this late October evening that, lacking
gloves or even sleeves to cover, look more like scrubbed bark,
shrunken, fingers twisted like turnip roots.
I turn to fake a sneeze, but I’m caught like a trapped
rabbit recoiling as the springs release and split me open
from the outside in. My turning, my body language,
spells b-o-l-t n-o-w , but nothing is hidden
from his eyes that scope my face like a knife
slicing through pumpkin flesh, the hollow
swish, the evacuation of air, then nothing. I note
the flat forehead and filthy bandana,
the backpack that must weigh 70 pounds. My
mother urged me to pray when frightened,
rote prayers like the Hail Mary, which is a term used
in football for a play among an accumulation of other absurd drills
and ideas. I don’t count on Mary whom I suppose has long since
returned to dust and cannot even utter a thought much less
communicate it to my fear in a parking lot standoff
with a man whose hands are roots. But somewhere
in America someone builds the lighthouses
that warn the barges on the gray Columbia. That person
who knows light like his own skin, who swears by the
dimensions of his creations, who stakes his life
on certain towering truths, like time, weather, rocks,
is, if not a kind of savior, then at least sought out.
In this parking lot, startled by a stranger, I am speechless,
rigid, useless, which is why we, as humans, are potentially hazardous
to one another. When I fail to refute his story that he loves--
no, is in love with—his wife, when he produces a badly torn photo
of a woman’s face, her skin the blank white of a fish’s belly,
her eyebrows drawn into troubled furrows presumably
awaiting his long hike back, I rifle through my purse.
A thin cut in his forehead wrinkles in appreciation
as I deposit coins into the hollows of his palms scarcely
large enough to accommodate a dime.
Susan Doble Kaluza is a freelance writer and competitive runner. Her poems have most recently appeared in Rattle and Eunoia Review.
Everything in Its Place by Robert Halleck
Everything in its place and
the place for this was Dubuque.
Only in Dubuque with its
Catholic dominance could I
fall in love with her and
being Catholic had nothing to
do with it for the song was
the key. "Rockin Robin" and
the teen hop at Nativity.
A wild summer of drive in movies,
swimming in the Mississippi and
nights at Melody Mill.
We were caught in mystery and love.
I gave her my high school ring.
What lies you tell in the name
of love and we knew we would
for Catholics don't take rings
from Protestants in Dubuque in 1959.
It lasted until it was over and we
didn't kill it on our own.
There we were in her living room
listening to her mother talk.
Catholics, non Catholics, too early,
lots of time, give it time, and
her sobbing in the other chair.
Then I had my ring again. I knew
I had been successfully humiliated.
I had survived and could survive
anything life brought after that.
If Jesus had saved me, this was
one time I wish he hadn't.
Now I am old. All the women
I have loved are old and it
was a long time ago in Dubuque.
Memories are not equal.
My first love has no doubt
forgotten me and it was
a long time ago in Dubuque.
Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years. In between rejection notices, he has published three volumes of poetry, and his poems have appeared in a number of blogs, magazines, and journals.
When You Die in Ironton in 1918 by John Kotula
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
You don’t linger.
You’re a workingman one day; ten days later you’re dead.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
You’re twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days old.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
You’ve still got all your teeth,
But, truth be told, sometimes they hurt so bad,
You wish you were dead.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
You don’t outlive your passion for your young wife.
You want her everyday, and she wants you.
Even when the baby’s in the bed, you do it quick and quiet.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
At least you don’t die in a trench in France, your lungs blistered by mustard gas.
You didn’t go to the war, but maybe the war came for you.
When you live and die at Third & McGovney Avenue in Ironton,
There is nothing between you and the Ohio River, nothing between you and Kentucky.
When you die at Third & McGovney Avenue in Ironton,
They bury you in Woodland Cemetery.
You could hit it with a rock from your house.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
Your daughter is 9 months and six days old.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
You run a fever and your head is pounding, you have a rash across your ribs and belly, your teeth chatter, and your joints ache.
Your young wife walks the floor with the baby on her hip, singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
In your delirium, you dream you’ve hopped a ride on a freight train.
The wind blowing through the open door of the boxcar relieves your fever.
The baby watches you as you are dying and dreaming of riding the freight train.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
The doctor comes to your house ten days in a row,
On the tenth day, he writes “typhoid fever” on your death certificate.
At least you don’t have to go back to shoveling coal at the forge.
That damn job put bread on the table,
But truth be told, sometimes it hurts so bad,
You wish you were dead.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three, seven months and 16 days,
You don’t know that your young wife will be dead within the year,
You don’t know your baby will be an only child, who will have an only child, who will have an only child, who will have an only child.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
Your sense of time expands infinitely.
It means nothing to you that ninety-six years pass before your grandson takes an interest in you and writes a poem.
John Kotula is a Rhode Island artist and writer who is currently a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua. He turned 70 on May 14th and is the oldest volunteer in Nicaragua.
Recipe for Love by Regina Vitolo
A sweet tangerine to balance the sour lemon,
a sprinkle of bitter herb to remind of fragility
a blend of candied brisket and yams for harmony
sprigs of parsley, pinch of basil, and dash of rosemary
for the road ahead,
a rum-based dessert to warm the heart,
an array of fudge squares to offer strangers,
a handful of pignoli nuts to nourish nights
with one’s chosen knight,
and the rich aroma of mudslide coffee
to keep love astir.
Above all, a family feast to remind
of embracing kinship,
ever changing recipes each day
to invest the future with fertility.
Regina Vitolo was born in Brooklyn where the Dodgers played in the stadium blocks from her parents’ house. She has always been hungry for love, with a bagel or two. A YA novel was published in 1984, Don't My Feelings Count?, as well as some poetry published. Regina has tasted both the bitterness of tragedy and the joy of being able to buy bagels. She wants to reach the age of her present weight.
Savasana by Margo Lemieux
Body in a neutral position.
Feet relaxed.
Let go, she says,
Let go whatever
Does not serve you.
My eyes close.
Whatever does not serve me?
Let me think.
The holes in the shingles
Where the birds nest.
The water in the basement.
I’d like coffee right now.
Buy dog food on the way home.
Oh, and get the oil changed next week
And a muffin, preferably blueberry.
Oh there was that time I missed
My submission deadline. The
Extra serving of ice cream I didn’t mean
To eat.
Let go. Let go whatever
Does not serve you.
Eyes closed, I smile.
All these silly things are flying away (except the coffee)
Savasana.
Margo Lemieux has been an artist since the first grade when she got into trouble with her teacher for “decorating” her workbook. Besides printmaking, she paints in oil, watercolor, and acrylic, and makes handmade books. She exhibited recently at Art Basel Miami, The Contemporary Art Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the Blanche Ames National. Believe in Water, a poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press, was published in 2013. She holds a M.Ed. degree from Curry College and an MFA from UMass Dartmouth, and is associate professor in the Art & Graphic Design department, Lasell College.
Sylvia Plath Revisits by Rita Brady Kiefer
“Spasmodic” they said of her rhythms, “eccentric.”
What I wouldn’t give to have been that red-head siren
from Amherst, to house my own wall-eye, not the perfect one
I was slated for, to choose earlier brazen Kurosawa shades,
not some pale version of woman. I should have
bartered the Thesaurus for my own bright Medusa.
I’ve lived with the sound of ripping: the first time
coming out of Mother with my fierce entrance. Later
wrong figures drove me: 36-24-36, appropriate
for the perfect-husband-babies-myth. I should have
refused the proper retort to their litanies. I should have
howled NO: no Superbowl cheerleader practicing splits
for the Muscled Elect, no female Isaac waiting
the Abraham stroke. Every woman needs
a flesh and blood horse to fly, every woman knows better
than to rely on wax wings
(we’re practiced spotting illusion
seven times seven times practiced).
In the end
we crave originals.
Fifty years later, I’m back to tell it right this time:
I never was one to put my head on the block
for any divine butcher.
In the end
I was just trying
to breathe in God’s Face from that oven.
Rita Brady Kiefer lives with her husband, Jerry, in Evergreen, Colorado where she continues to pursue her passion for shaping writing sessions at shelters for women survivors of domestic violence. Her work focuses on the suffering and courage of women survivors, a celebration of peace, revelations of institutional hypocrisy, love poems, and an attempt to tweak religious icons. Her published full-length poetry collection, Nesting Doll, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.
Total Donations June Issue: $237!!!
Here is a great story about a unique way Colorado is helping feed children in its community. From Sandra McRae: "For my donation, I am giving . . . to a local food program a friend started at our church in Evergreen, Colorado . . . Mountain Backpacks. MB, sponsored by the local Rotary chapter, gathers donations and fills backpacks with a week's worth of meals for local school kids. The kids pick up their full backpacks at school on Friday, then bring the empty backpack to school on Monday, to be filled again on Friday. Facebookpage: https://www.facebook.com/groups/642687489172342/."
Now, to the poetry! This issue, I am honored and delighted to feature a poem by Sarah Browning. Ms. Browning is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War, she is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-host of Sunday Kind of Love at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. With Don Share, she edited a special Split This Rock issue of POETRY magazine in March, 2014. Browning has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and the Creative Communities Initiative and is winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize.
Other Divine Poetic Beings in this issue: Ruth Bavetta, Ron Montanaro, Sandra S. McRae, Michael Mark, Dori Appel, Stan Zumbiel, Susan Doble Kaluza, Robert Halleck, John Kotula, Regina Vitolo, Margo Lemieux, and Rita Brady Kiefer.
Happy June! And on to the poetry!
Kim
Foreclosure by Sarah Browning
Blind eyes to the street now.
Forgotten jump rope in the yard –
pink plastic handles turning
dusty in the summer heat.
Was it wrong to hope, to dig
a hole for the lilac bush now
struggling through its first season?
She hates herself when she does it,
but still she does: Walk the long way
to the bus so she can water the roots.
She can’t seem to let it die.
Sarah Browning is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Split This Rock: Poetry of Provocation & Witness. Author of Whiskey in the Garden of Eden and co-editor of D.C. Poets Against the War, she is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-host of Sunday Kind of Love at Busboys and Poets in Washington, DC. With Don Share, she edited a special Split This Rock issue of POETRY magazine in March, 2014. Browning has received fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and the Creative Communities Initiative and is winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize.
Going Home by Ruth Bavetta
When you come to the fork in the road
lean down and pick it up. Turn it over
in your hands, notice if it is silver or stainless
steel. Is it well used? Tines bent? Handle
skewed? Do you recognize the pattern? Raise
your head, look down the road, take the turn
that leads to the house with lights on,
roast chicken, bright with juice,
mother removing her apron.
Ruth Bavetta’s poems have been published in Rhino, Rattle, Nimrod, Tar River Poetry, North American Review, Spillway, Hanging Loose, Poetry East, and Poetry New Zealand, among others, and are included in the anthologies Wait a Minute, I Have to Take off My Bra, Feast, Pirene’s Fountain Beverage Anthology, Forgetting Home, and Twelve Los Angeles Poets. She has published two books, Fugitive Pigments (FutureCycle Press) and Embers on the Stairs (Moontide Press.) A third book, No Longer at this Address, will appear soon from Tebot Bach.
Spark by Ron Montanaro
The fenced-in-horse-stands-motionless-staring.
It has forgotten something and the way to remember.
This statue life is not of his making.
Would a dream of the open range be a haunting?
Where are his
blessings?
Standing-empty-with-his-mate,
neither move.
Sometimes the power of the spirit just isn’t enough.
What good, four more legs
behind a fence?
Ron Montanaro began writing poetry when he was twelve. Writing helps him understand his ideas and feelings more clearly. In 1980, he self-published a collection of his poems, The Maze. Recently, he participated in the Poets Speaking Up series at the Contemporary Theater in Wakefield, Rhode Island, and one of his pieces was read at a Coleman Barks/Rumi event. As a retired teacher, it is his ambition to publish both written and audio books.
Call Now and Receive This Classic 4-DVD Set! by Sandra S. McRae
PBS wants my money
but Julia Child
wants my personal happiness.
Today, she would like to ensure it herself
by demonstrating, with casual but unmistakable skill,
how to achieve that classic of French simplicity
the two-egg omelette.
No fromage even…“no need for it.”
Simply eggs, butter, salt, pepper
and that most elusive of ingredients:
le technique juste.
Of course, once this timeless delight is plated
and sprinkled with fresh garden-grown thyme,
I’ll be implored to open my wallet
for public television and all this priceless programming.
And sure, I’ll fork over my share
to keep Elmo rocking for the young and tender,
but for now I’m plumb slack-mouthed grateful
as Julia swirls the eggs in counterclockwise syncopation
all the while urging me
to enjoy the good life, which
according to her
is as imminently accessible
as the gold just beyond that alabaster shell.
All I have to do is crack it open
drop those golden globes of pleasure
into the waiting bowl
and whisk my way to bliss.
With disarming enthusiasm,
Julia asserts that cooking isn’t complicated at all
but simply a matter of reaching for what we want:
a perfectly roasted côte du boeuf
a luxuriant stretch of phyllo
a basket of succulent chanterelles!
Violà: Earthly satisfaction.
I love Julia’s conviction
her sans-souci claim in nature’s opulent gifts.
I love the way every expert rotation
coagulating that sun
is a nudge in the ribs to care less. Indulge more.
I believe her unspoken assertion that
le paradis
is just one chopped chive garnish away.
So let us eat—yes!—with abandon
licking the frosting from the back of the spoon
nipping at the brandy
wallowing in the luscious gravy of life.
Lupini for Breakfast by Sandra S. McRae
for Clinio
Invisible face, I miss you.
I eat lupini for breakfast
snacking on their saltiness
the legume-y heartiness of them.
You used to sit across from me
at this very table.
We made attempts at knowing each other
across three languages
and this sticky vinyl tablecloth
peppered with bread crumbs
drinking from jelly jars
red wine hauled up from the barrel in the cellar.
Since you’ve gone, I am too terrified
to love anything up close.
I need distance to feel the sting of it.
Perhaps I am practicing for the inevitable
because, in the end, someone always
disappears in an elaborate three-day puff of smoke.
Holy or sane, there is no in-between.
Eventually one is left to eat lupini
popping the hard, smooth bean out of its slick jacket
crunching that salty yellow disk
with a vaguely disgruntled gratification
chewing those tears.
Sandra S. McRae teaches writing at Red Rocks Community College outside Denver, Colorado. She is the co-author of the bestselling cookbook Weber's Big Book of Grilling (Chronicle) and earned her Master's degree at University of Colorado-Boulder. Her work has appeared in print and online in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Poets Against War, Word Riot, Steam Ticket, Pure Francis, and elsewhere. She lives in the Colorado Rockies with her family, two dogs, and the occasional bear. She is never bored. Visit Sandra at www.WordsRunTogether.com.
Bearing Witness by Michael Mark
When a whale beaches itself,
camera crews arrive. For a
magnificent animal suffering,
we stop.
So I accept the role of witness
to my neighbor’s tree,
losing its leaves.
They shower down, each death
its own dance. Still, it’s sad
to think my poor memory
is all they’d have.
When it is lunch time, I hope the dying
will go on break too. The yard is
covered, but the branches remain
crowded. And I am very hungry.
The tree can always sip water
through its roots. I, on the other hand,
have to toast my bagel then wait
until it cools or the cream cheese
will melt.
The entire top must be covered
in white like waking up after
it’s snowed all night – the world
made even.
And then I put a thick circle of tomato
on each half.
I didn’t officially commit to this job.
Leaves fall, people rake and bag, and
the truck comes.
This is my thought on the way
to the kitchen, knowing
if I waited longer I’d be forced
to do what my mother did, regardless
of my gagging protests — take a
knife and cut away the green mold.
“Eat,” she’d say and stand over me,
watching.
Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer and long distance walker. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Diverse Voices Quarterly, Gargoyle Magazine, Gravel Literary Journal, Lost Coast Review, Rattle, Ray’s Road Review, San Pedro Review, Scapegoat Journal, Spillway, Tar River Poetry, Sugar House Review, and other nice places. His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
Dream of a Kitchen by Dori Appel
I live here. Not the way I once did,
a student writing papers
in this room with the bleary linoleum,
coffee dregs in the enameled sink
merging with rust marks
by the drain. Now I am really here,
unloading shopping bags
on the table's scarred formica
while the future winks maliciously--
knocking the wheels from toys
and chipping plates.
Years pass, too much the same,
yet different. Struggling to rise
from couch or bed, I wonder
when the air became
so heavy. When I was a girl,
it didn’t pull me so.
Dori Appel’s poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies, as well as in her collection of poems, Another Rude Awakening. A playwright as well as a poet, she is the author of many published plays and monologues, and was the winner of the Oregon Book Award in Drama in 1998,1999, and 2001. She lives and writes in Ashland, Oregon. http://www.doriappel.com/
Enough by Stan Zumbiel
It would have been enough
without the windmill, without
the lighthouse, without the
acres of sand and wheat moving
slightly in the wind. It would
have been enough with only
one woman walking up the dirt
path, her skirt lifted slightly out
of the mud. It would have been
enough without the bicycle
leaning against the plaster wall ready
to be ridden away. It would have
been enough without the sound
of the sea breaking in the
distance seeming to lure us
all. It would
have been enough.
Stan Zumbiel taught English in middle and high school for thirty-five years and has had a hand in raising four children. He wrote his first poem in 1967 while serving in the Navy. He served on the board of the Sacramento Poetry Center for twenty-five years. In 2008, he received his MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Previously, his poems have appeared in Poet News, Nimrod, The Suisun Valley Review, Primal Urge, Convergence, and Medusa’s Kitchen. He continues to write in his Fair Oaks home that he shares with Lynn, his wife of twenty-nine years.
Harvest by Susan Doble Kaluza
It’s not his face that startles me in the parking lot
where he waves me down outside the cart rack.
It’s his hands this late October evening that, lacking
gloves or even sleeves to cover, look more like scrubbed bark,
shrunken, fingers twisted like turnip roots.
I turn to fake a sneeze, but I’m caught like a trapped
rabbit recoiling as the springs release and split me open
from the outside in. My turning, my body language,
spells b-o-l-t n-o-w , but nothing is hidden
from his eyes that scope my face like a knife
slicing through pumpkin flesh, the hollow
swish, the evacuation of air, then nothing. I note
the flat forehead and filthy bandana,
the backpack that must weigh 70 pounds. My
mother urged me to pray when frightened,
rote prayers like the Hail Mary, which is a term used
in football for a play among an accumulation of other absurd drills
and ideas. I don’t count on Mary whom I suppose has long since
returned to dust and cannot even utter a thought much less
communicate it to my fear in a parking lot standoff
with a man whose hands are roots. But somewhere
in America someone builds the lighthouses
that warn the barges on the gray Columbia. That person
who knows light like his own skin, who swears by the
dimensions of his creations, who stakes his life
on certain towering truths, like time, weather, rocks,
is, if not a kind of savior, then at least sought out.
In this parking lot, startled by a stranger, I am speechless,
rigid, useless, which is why we, as humans, are potentially hazardous
to one another. When I fail to refute his story that he loves--
no, is in love with—his wife, when he produces a badly torn photo
of a woman’s face, her skin the blank white of a fish’s belly,
her eyebrows drawn into troubled furrows presumably
awaiting his long hike back, I rifle through my purse.
A thin cut in his forehead wrinkles in appreciation
as I deposit coins into the hollows of his palms scarcely
large enough to accommodate a dime.
Susan Doble Kaluza is a freelance writer and competitive runner. Her poems have most recently appeared in Rattle and Eunoia Review.
Everything in Its Place by Robert Halleck
Everything in its place and
the place for this was Dubuque.
Only in Dubuque with its
Catholic dominance could I
fall in love with her and
being Catholic had nothing to
do with it for the song was
the key. "Rockin Robin" and
the teen hop at Nativity.
A wild summer of drive in movies,
swimming in the Mississippi and
nights at Melody Mill.
We were caught in mystery and love.
I gave her my high school ring.
What lies you tell in the name
of love and we knew we would
for Catholics don't take rings
from Protestants in Dubuque in 1959.
It lasted until it was over and we
didn't kill it on our own.
There we were in her living room
listening to her mother talk.
Catholics, non Catholics, too early,
lots of time, give it time, and
her sobbing in the other chair.
Then I had my ring again. I knew
I had been successfully humiliated.
I had survived and could survive
anything life brought after that.
If Jesus had saved me, this was
one time I wish he hadn't.
Now I am old. All the women
I have loved are old and it
was a long time ago in Dubuque.
Memories are not equal.
My first love has no doubt
forgotten me and it was
a long time ago in Dubuque.
Robert Halleck is a hospice volunteer and retired banker. He has been writing poetry for over 50 years. In between rejection notices, he has published three volumes of poetry, and his poems have appeared in a number of blogs, magazines, and journals.
When You Die in Ironton in 1918 by John Kotula
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
You don’t linger.
You’re a workingman one day; ten days later you’re dead.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
You’re twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days old.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
You’ve still got all your teeth,
But, truth be told, sometimes they hurt so bad,
You wish you were dead.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
You don’t outlive your passion for your young wife.
You want her everyday, and she wants you.
Even when the baby’s in the bed, you do it quick and quiet.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
At least you don’t die in a trench in France, your lungs blistered by mustard gas.
You didn’t go to the war, but maybe the war came for you.
When you live and die at Third & McGovney Avenue in Ironton,
There is nothing between you and the Ohio River, nothing between you and Kentucky.
When you die at Third & McGovney Avenue in Ironton,
They bury you in Woodland Cemetery.
You could hit it with a rock from your house.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
Your daughter is 9 months and six days old.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
You run a fever and your head is pounding, you have a rash across your ribs and belly, your teeth chatter, and your joints ache.
Your young wife walks the floor with the baby on her hip, singing "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three years, seven months and 16 days,
In your delirium, you dream you’ve hopped a ride on a freight train.
The wind blowing through the open door of the boxcar relieves your fever.
The baby watches you as you are dying and dreaming of riding the freight train.
When you die in Ironton on October 23, 1918,
The doctor comes to your house ten days in a row,
On the tenth day, he writes “typhoid fever” on your death certificate.
At least you don’t have to go back to shoveling coal at the forge.
That damn job put bread on the table,
But truth be told, sometimes it hurts so bad,
You wish you were dead.
When you die in Ironton at twenty-three, seven months and 16 days,
You don’t know that your young wife will be dead within the year,
You don’t know your baby will be an only child, who will have an only child, who will have an only child, who will have an only child.
When you die in Ironton in 1918,
Your sense of time expands infinitely.
It means nothing to you that ninety-six years pass before your grandson takes an interest in you and writes a poem.
John Kotula is a Rhode Island artist and writer who is currently a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua. He turned 70 on May 14th and is the oldest volunteer in Nicaragua.
Recipe for Love by Regina Vitolo
A sweet tangerine to balance the sour lemon,
a sprinkle of bitter herb to remind of fragility
a blend of candied brisket and yams for harmony
sprigs of parsley, pinch of basil, and dash of rosemary
for the road ahead,
a rum-based dessert to warm the heart,
an array of fudge squares to offer strangers,
a handful of pignoli nuts to nourish nights
with one’s chosen knight,
and the rich aroma of mudslide coffee
to keep love astir.
Above all, a family feast to remind
of embracing kinship,
ever changing recipes each day
to invest the future with fertility.
Regina Vitolo was born in Brooklyn where the Dodgers played in the stadium blocks from her parents’ house. She has always been hungry for love, with a bagel or two. A YA novel was published in 1984, Don't My Feelings Count?, as well as some poetry published. Regina has tasted both the bitterness of tragedy and the joy of being able to buy bagels. She wants to reach the age of her present weight.
Savasana by Margo Lemieux
Body in a neutral position.
Feet relaxed.
Let go, she says,
Let go whatever
Does not serve you.
My eyes close.
Whatever does not serve me?
Let me think.
The holes in the shingles
Where the birds nest.
The water in the basement.
I’d like coffee right now.
Buy dog food on the way home.
Oh, and get the oil changed next week
And a muffin, preferably blueberry.
Oh there was that time I missed
My submission deadline. The
Extra serving of ice cream I didn’t mean
To eat.
Let go. Let go whatever
Does not serve you.
Eyes closed, I smile.
All these silly things are flying away (except the coffee)
Savasana.
Margo Lemieux has been an artist since the first grade when she got into trouble with her teacher for “decorating” her workbook. Besides printmaking, she paints in oil, watercolor, and acrylic, and makes handmade books. She exhibited recently at Art Basel Miami, The Contemporary Art Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the Blanche Ames National. Believe in Water, a poetry chapbook from Finishing Line Press, was published in 2013. She holds a M.Ed. degree from Curry College and an MFA from UMass Dartmouth, and is associate professor in the Art & Graphic Design department, Lasell College.
Sylvia Plath Revisits by Rita Brady Kiefer
“Spasmodic” they said of her rhythms, “eccentric.”
What I wouldn’t give to have been that red-head siren
from Amherst, to house my own wall-eye, not the perfect one
I was slated for, to choose earlier brazen Kurosawa shades,
not some pale version of woman. I should have
bartered the Thesaurus for my own bright Medusa.
I’ve lived with the sound of ripping: the first time
coming out of Mother with my fierce entrance. Later
wrong figures drove me: 36-24-36, appropriate
for the perfect-husband-babies-myth. I should have
refused the proper retort to their litanies. I should have
howled NO: no Superbowl cheerleader practicing splits
for the Muscled Elect, no female Isaac waiting
the Abraham stroke. Every woman needs
a flesh and blood horse to fly, every woman knows better
than to rely on wax wings
(we’re practiced spotting illusion
seven times seven times practiced).
In the end
we crave originals.
Fifty years later, I’m back to tell it right this time:
I never was one to put my head on the block
for any divine butcher.
In the end
I was just trying
to breathe in God’s Face from that oven.
Rita Brady Kiefer lives with her husband, Jerry, in Evergreen, Colorado where she continues to pursue her passion for shaping writing sessions at shelters for women survivors of domestic violence. Her work focuses on the suffering and courage of women survivors, a celebration of peace, revelations of institutional hypocrisy, love poems, and an attempt to tweak religious icons. Her published full-length poetry collection, Nesting Doll, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.