Issue 5

Izzy

head like a poached egg settled deep in the neck: rings of wrinkles 

bury it,

eyelids closed and opening again like the automatic doors separating

the sidewalk from the produce section. I wonder if the skin

would be that shade of blue—a glow stick before it’s cracked—

if the WHITE ELECTRIC bulbs did not run the length of the tank.

she must sense the difference between filtered fluorescence and 

sunlight

floating through specks of sand.

the black rough splotches like leaked oil on a concrete lot dapple

every coursing foot—you’ve woken up, bubbles cling to the

tubule nose, to the pointed mouth—and the water gets pushed 

around.

my purple-polished finger gets you going following turning the eyes

to catch the next movement and I think, so elegant and so 

smart—that shell

merely covers one of those vacuuming robots that move about 

sensing

turns, edges, chair legs—but

You’ve charged me.

The mouth opens rubs against the glass flashing

A moment of no teeth just pink tongue—

Reminding me of an infant’s round toe.

Strawberry

A bitten-lip-red skin studded with seeds

Is bumpy smoothness when in contact with the tongue,

Detecting the sweetness of the point

Of the conical fruit once a small bite is taken.

Not to be gobbled down, but nibbled slowly,

Relishing the growing tart sensation as it sheds

Its red color, the white ring around the head of the berry

Steals attention away from the ridged leaves—relegating them

Merely to sparse, short handle. The addition of sugar

Is wasted; the sourness at the end of the sweet is meant

To remind us.

Summer 1962

 
That blistering summer that Aunt Bertha’s blueberry crunch pie

finished fourth in the national semifinal,

the one your brother threw down that ditch

just because.  Hot arid afternoons spent with Tom’s aging beagle

taunting that kid in a wheelchair,

combing in Paul’s Perfect Pomade in an effort to appear dapper
 

for the ladies.  While the sweat stained your dapper

white Hanes and you contemplated how pi

would actually affect your life, you rode the back of that wheelchair

during the boxcar derby semifinal,

the droopy-lidded beagle

nipping at your ankles.  That dirty ditch-
 

your first tits.  That dirty ditch-

dreams were made, bodies were snatched, panties were hung 

delicately by Dapper

Dave, the black aviators covering his beagle-

eyed gaze, the scent of chicken pot pie

perfuming the air over the din of the crickets.  It was your semifinal-

e, the almost-but-not-quite crowning achievement, next to stealing 

the cripple kid’s wheelchair.
 

You were so proud to possess that wheelchair

converting it to your easy chair while you ditch-

ed your friends during the semifinal.

“Donald Duck was never so dapper,”

a giggle and a smile, a taste of the cherry pie,

lavender and honey-vanilla in her hair, the coarse fur of the beagle

 
grazing her fingertips.  The soft pink beagle

tongue tasting her toes as they draped off the wheelchair

and the two of you discovered the mysteries of pi,

the romantic enclosure of the branches above the ditch

creating the perfect pristine moment.  You forgot your efforts to be 

dapper

as her soft skin and vanilla tresses tickled your tongue in the last 

round of the semifinal.
 

She motioned for you to take it slowly; “this is only the semifinal”

and so you take a breather, motioning for Johnson to take his beagle 

for a walk.  You comb your hair, straighten your collar while Dapper

Dave’s panties blow in the wind.  She straightens herself in the 

wheelchair

noticing the growing audience in your ditch,

Tommy Nelson eating the remnants of the sticky cherry pie.
 

And there it is: her loveliness against the harsh glare of the 

wheelchair,

the noise and crowd in the ditch

as the sun goes down with the sweet scent of pie.



                                                            Samantha Knapp

                        John Brown 
 
__________________________________________
 
76/5 Wood Street, Dublin, 1st April, 1901
 
 
A piece of leather held in his two hands

Would make the uppers of two boots.

He pulled at its edges, stretching it gently,

Rubbing the smooth hide with his thumbs, 

His forefingers feeling the velvet.

The honeyed fumes of his wooden workshop filled him;

Strips and patches of golden skin breathing still.

The polished steel head of his little anvil caught the morning sun;

His hammers hanging on nails above the workbench.

They were still asleep upstairs.

He had a picture of Bridget in his heart;

The day they married in County Clare,

Her soft voice and eyes echoing, 

The lace she wore, down to her buttoned boots.

He kissed her lips like they were plums.
 

The kettle came to the boil and he lifted it from the stove. 

He made a pot of tea, heating two white tin mugs.

Climbing the stairs he could hear the girls stirring,

Richard mumbling something in his sleep.
 
                                                                                       

                
                                    Matthew Dowling

_____________________________________________________

 

39 St Martin’s Terrace, Chapelizod, Sunday 31st March, 1901

 

Bridget pulled the stool in closer to the square piano
Broadwood, supplied by J.B. Logier of Sackville Street
Fixing herself and turning the page over and back twice
She knew the piece well but these little rituals helped everyone settle down

Mathew turned down the wick on the second lamp
Checking with his raised eyebrows if her mother was all right
Mrs Gorman patted her lap with both hands
He gave his handlebars a little twist at their extremities
Tugged on his waistcoat and sat back into the chair by the fire

'Silent Oh Moyle be the roar of thy water'
They loved that one
The little key change at the end of the first line
It was such a sad little song, but so Irish
Lir’s lovely daughters or was it his lonely daughters?

He poked the fire and put another log on
The sparks were dancing now to Love’s old Sweet Song
‘Once in the dear dead days beyond recall’
He flipped the cover on his pocket watch
I’ll stretch my legs I think, he said
What do you think William?
Pulling the silver-topped cane out of the hallstand
They could hear his heels on the cream and wine tiles
Pulling the door of thirty nine behind him
Making his way to the Tap, for just the one

 

 
                                   John Drake
 
________________________________________
 
 
            Castleknock, County Dublin, 1st April 1901
 
 
 
The geraniums in the front porch were cut back to their bare bones
John Drake’s pig was huffing and puffing, trying to get comfortable
Mary Kate’s navy pinafore was hanging over a chair
Her boots parked neatly under her bed
The Stable Man was dreaming that a man and a boy had walked through his terraced cottage
In the front door and out the back, without as much as a word
They climbed with purpose out over the back fence, to pick wild mushrooms
 

                                                              Hay Machine (e)
 

You Are Sitting in Your  Room Again 
 
 
Your head is
Upside-down on
Your neck, yet
 
Out the open window
Behind you the railroad
Tracks recede
 
Neatly to their
Vanishing point
In the clouds.
 
You grasp a knife
And it’s clear
You’re not above
 
Anything that others
Might consider
Dirty tricks.  You
 
Gaze here and there
Through peepholes
In the frame
 
Of night, while
Out the door
A clear day takes
 
Different paths
To the same
Destination.
 


                                            Laura  Eileen Merleau

For Selwyn
 
Saw him quietly in the corner
of his train seat
coughing once in awhile
a burp now and then.
 
Later on I looked beyond his 
shuffle, the way 
he cradled his hand. 
 
A stroke? the boldness
of my question.
 
Yes, he answered shyly. 
I had one too, and 
our friendship began.
 
Off to Toronto, he says
words tumbling quickly,
to my son’s wedding. I’m from 
Yorkshire. 
Great country, Canada 
and 18 years later still  
huge to travel it all.
 
Tiredness soon captures 
his chatty voice, 
got to rest he says 
as the attendant approached. 
 
Selwyn orders a pillow 
and winks, good for hiding 
beer farts in the night. Know 
something? He’s right.
 


 
   

Tongue of my youth              
 
is a photo-copier of memory
remembers the taste of porridge, 
and cod liver oil, spinach too 
then corn flakes arrives, scrub ball 
in the backyard, even 
swimming in leech-filled lakes
 
now I am subdued in a fast 
lane of an Indiana 500 world, 
racing kites no longer an option
nor hurrying my canoe
through the slap of summer’s storm.
 
In the domain of aging years  
I am like a voyeur astride roads,
slower in the seasons of life. I am a 
trickle of the greater one 
I once was. 


                                                                       

                                                    Richard L. Provencher

            

     Letter to My Long-Term Husband

                   Written at a writing conference and never sent.

 

I want you to wait under our Oak trees,
water my tomato plants, pick the last peony
and miss me like Donald Hall misses Jane.

I want you to remember
this isn’t the first time I have left you
And, Honey, remember the body that carried your children,
the breasts that no one else has touched in thirty some years,
my office with its piles of papers
never to be sorted in the way you think  right,
my purple clematis brought from the old house,
my grandmother’s thimble,
your mother’s wedding ring in my drawer,
her ashes in the gold and green box on your closet shelf,
the children we almost has, our children,
my hair in the sink, on your brush, your pillow,
the Christmas cactus that was my mother’s,
O, visit my mother she forgot my name Thursday.

Remember the room where we first made love,
the tangled sheets, the slant of sun,
my body young as yours-- remember

I want you to remember, because
if you block my sun again;
I will leave you with the ashes and Oak trees.
This time I really will.


                                                   Linda Leedy Schneider

Previously published in:

Not A Muse, The Inner Lives of Women, A World Poetry Anthology (Haven Books, 2009)

And grandma, what sharp teeth you have...

How will you gather your food today;
If you threw a spear in the fridge
Would it hit anything worthwhile?

Have you wondered
What it might be like to wear woad
Into work this week,
And drink mead from the hollowed hoof of a reindeer?

Are those really your friends;
Would you eat the weakest one in winter
And throw their bones to your dog,
If it came to that?

When was the last time
You picked up the phone for joy,
Or felt truly afraid?
If the lights went out for good
What kind of parent would you be then?
What kind of man?
(Could you find your morals in the dark?)

Inside you is another -
Sharper of tooth,
With muscles that twitch -
If you had the will,
You could be at the front of the queue
Right now.

Apples

The voice that bubbled up from deep
Surprised me,
And I had to keep
Blinking at the apples
To make sure they were there.

Fingers roughly took my arm,
Itched a bit to do me harm,
And I had to keep calm by
Blinking at the apples
To make sure they were there.

‘We’re closing up, you’re going home.’
No room for waiting in his tone,
Yet I yearned to be alone,
Blinking at the apples
To make sure they were there.

I felt that
If I moved my feet away
From all the perfect neat
Apples
They would disappear,
And I felt they felt this, too,
And kept me near.

                                               Sid Sherwin

Re-minded


I’m reminded to write what
happens to me.
It happens to be
Bernadette
reminding me from her
book of sonnets written
       far and
               long ago.
Sounds like a song
blowing in, and because the wind is
calm I hear it
and because the sun is
tempered by leaves
I stay to listen
because the neighbor’s dog stopped
barking to be petted,
being like the rest of us
       only more so, or what’s this
sound my pen makes
if not
       loving barks?
I question mark.
I scribble sounds
my mind decides on, my mind
the judge
I trust.
Don’t let me down, mind,
I hear my mind
tell me to say,
and I obey.

Home


Why after reading the phrase
“going home” did I
picture a wet, uneven
sidewalk—
       that back street
south of the hotel the night
after a rain we
       ended up . . .
                       where?

The rest of the evening’s
               forgotten.
Only those moments walking
       carefully
to avoid slipping
in the dark, our
arms linked,
               excited
to be alive together in a
foreign city
       with no sure
destination, no one
whom we knew,
       ourselves only
       to rely on—

like the first time we
found each other
and discovered,
       finally,
we were
comfortable in the world.

Dream   Walk   Return


In this recurring dream—dream

of a dream, or dreaming

that I dreamt—I’m

leaving here, you, this night, having

decided I will walk

to Chicago, across, first, empty fields but,

then, at a cliff’s edge overlooking

water, no place to

step but through a kitchen,

apologizing to the people whose

children show me their kittens, eyes

still not open; then, continue

through the living room and

out to where there’s

space, finally, a street,

but then remember that it’s

night, moon glistening on dark water,

a canal I need to cross near

oil tanks, tiny lights on top and

refinery metallic superstructures

like in New Jersey childhood, try to

remember how I crossed it last time—

(was there a narrow bridge?)   because past

the canal and beyond oil tanks are

city lights, Chicago, though where, what

street, which dim-lit building with steps

climbing to the door—knowing

I don’t live here any more yet

confident that walking long enough

along enough apartments, alleys, streets I’ll

find a door I’ll know is

right to enter.

Kicking Sand in the Face of Indolence

 
It sits, like a wet cotton ball.
Covered with dust, hair,
and false starts.
 
Hours have dropped from the clock,
the insolent wind has carried them away.
But time still goes, and goes, and goes.
 
The cotton ball? It lies, it lies,
it stays put. Festered. Festering.
Willful, but left without device.
 
What’s been muddied in the mind of it?
How many tires have squealed by
and yet it does not flinch?
 
It is restless, waiting for a wave to crash,
to wash away the washed-up rhetoric
which convinced it it had nothing left to say.
 
To leave its dead crab countenance
on the shore of this black-ink sea—
And my brand new feet come by
 
and kick on it the white sands.
To cover it. To bury it.
To see it dead, and something new arise.
 
 
                                                              Jason Sturner

           Warning (or The Martian Chronicles) 
          He came in a metal thing that glittered in the sun.
                                ~Ray Bradbury 
 

Not ice storms. Not thunderstorms. 

Not monsoons, tornadoes, or snowstorms.

Solar storms, they don’t bother me.
 

Maybe it’s because the radio says buy

water in jugs or cans of baked beans

and THIS IS A WARNING FROM YOUR…
 
Sirens circle every fifteen minutes 

but nothing ever touches down.

The red banner announces: no work, 

no school, the city has surrendered 
 

to the chaos of snowflakes and ice.

River water climbs into fields, roads, 

a university. All of us swallowed by rain.
 

Maybe I should shudder or sob 

or carry cyanide in a hollow tooth

or get in the car real quick and drive 
 

for that one thing I’m going to need

when the electric lines loop through the garden

and drape on the neighbor’s swing-set.
 

Even now I watch the trees gutter

and the wind tongues the house.

I can almost hear the words, something like:

The Martians have landed. You’re free.




After Watching a Martian Marathon on Cable

 
I don’t know what Martians eat. They might eat

potatoes or human caviar. I don’t know 
 

what they wear to dances or how they move 

their limbs in gravity or if beats propel them 
 

to sway, gyrate, and touch. I don’t know 

what I’d do if Martians arrived at my door 
 

or melted through the walls or crawled inside 

me, turning me into a them. If they called, 

 
I’d probably not answer because of the number,

thinking it was that automated voice
 

to tell me, again, my warrantee is about to expire,

when I know my 1991 car doesn’t even start.
 

If area 51 and Roswell are big lies, I don’t know,

or Devil’s Tower or boys on bicycles who fly
 

mid-air with one in a crate. I don’t know 

if they abduct us to cut into our inner worlds. 



The Trouble with Martians is They Don’t Fit In

 
On the playground, they’re the ones in the sandbox

full of cat turds. In the office, no birthday cards
 

decorate their cubicles, and at lunch, they sit alone

by the microwave. At parties, they’re not spaced-out
 

wallflowers. They’re the cluster of green bodies

gyrating ahead or behind the beat. They’re in line 
 

for the cash bar and clasp half drunk domestics.

They’re the few who sidle up and make small talk
 

with the neurotic seven grade school teacher

or the nurse who covers the nightshift at the ER.
 
The problem is, wherever they congregate, the humans
disperse like roaches caught in 5 AM kitchen light.




                             Enemy Mine

 
Though the film isn’t set on Mars, the Martians tremble.

They ask, why the humans shoot missiles at enemy ships,

 
why the explosion of a vessel promotes cheers, why

the only woman of color in the whole movie incinerates 
 

within the first five minutes. They fidget over death scenes, 

over crash landings, over the pistol, knife, and laser gun. 
 

They ooh and ahh at the crescent moons, the meteor showers,

at the landscape of red. They whisper to each other, Home.  


 

The Martians Order 
 
new shoes. Six pairs 

of sandals arrive 

in pastel and brass 

 
with cork foot beds.

Their three-toed feet 

slip inside to test 
 

the hallway catwalk. 

Galoshes appear

in another box. 
 

Rubber knee-highs 

that suction 

to the linoleum. 

 
The Martians giggle,

and dash into the rain

to puddle jump 
 

slugs and night crawlers

aligned on the sidewalk 

like trails of falling stars. 


                                                         Laura  Madeline Wiseman
                  

Noam Baruch lives in San Francisco, CA. He is currently attending the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts in the Creative Writing program. 

Clive Birnie lives in Portishead in SW England. He has recently had poems published in Popshot and Snakeskin Magazines.

Michele K. Johnson  will be entering her senior year at St. Mary's College of Maryland in Southern Maryland. Another poem of her poems will be published in the forthcoming fifth volume of the Ampersand Review. Michele loves writing about things in a way that surprises people and helps them to look at something familiar in a different way. Besides writing, she loves rock climbing and cooking. Michele is currently mulling over pursuing an advanced degree in creative writing.

Samantha Knapp is a student at Hofstra University, graduating this May.  She is an English-Literature and Creative Writing major, with a poetry concentration and have been writing for over ten years.  Samantha's work was featured in Hofstra's literary magazine, Font, and as a featured poet on "Calliope's Corner" radio program.  She is taking next year off to contemplate her future and decide between academia or law.  

Ron Ogilvie is a member of the Deal Writers Group in Kent. Ron is a Scot by birth but has been out of Scotland since 1984. He is a husband and father and trained as a scientist. He now works in the pharmaceutical industry. Ron has been writing poetry since he was a lad and has grown in confidence since joining the group in Deal in 2008. 'Horses' is a recent piece, written on Islay in the Hebrides in August 2009.

Richard L. Provencher was born in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. His writing combines a love of the outdoors with contemporary issues. Many years ago, his dad once said, ‘Don’t spend so much time in the woods, you’ll turn into a tree.’ Richard believes writing is a global adventure in a land without borders. He has work in Hudson View, Short Story Library, Ottawa Arts Review, and others. Richard and his wife, Esther, live in Truro, Nova Scotia. 

Joseph Somoza was born in Spain and grew up in New Jersey and Chicago.  He received an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1973 and moved to New Mexico the same year, where he taught at New Mexico State and was poetry editor for PUERTO DEL SOL.  He's published 4 chapbooks and 4 full books of poetry, the most recent book being SHOCK OF WHITE HAIR (Sin Fronteras Press, 2007).  He lives in Las Cruces with wife Jill, a painter.

Linda gives readings often and was recently featured at The Saturn Poetry Series, East Village NYC. The Back Fence, NYC, The Bowery Poetry Club, NYC, Peter Chelnik’s Prairie Fire Series, NYC and The Print Gallery, Southfield Michigan sponsored by Springfed Arts: Detroit Metro Writers. Linda believes that a regular writing ritual leads to authenticity, personal growth and even JOY.

Sid Sherwin has worked at thirty jobs in the last fifteen years but the writing is the glue that holds it all together. He has nearly finished first novel but is primarily a poet who also likes to perform. He lives in rural Dorset  which is not all bucolic and lamb-lovely (but it suits him).