Issue #79

Timothy E. G. Bartel

Triolet 6

I dreamed that she caressed me where I’m weak;
Her hair was dark, and we were poised midway
Between the foothills and the final peak.
I dreamed that she caressed me where I’m weak,
But I could not find strength in it. I speak
In dreams because of things I should not say.
I dream that she she caresses me when weak,
Her hair is dark, and we are poised midway.

Boyhood: A Dizain

And this was boyhood: sun-heat in the oats,
The hum of unseen planes in summer sky
And in the supermarket, synth that floats
From Jackson up to Lauper to the high,
Brash danger-zone of Loggins. What can die
In the imagination of a boy?
He is the maker of the wondrous toy
That all will want to buy from catalogs.
Anticipation is the greatest joy
As tadpoles struggle slowly into frogs.


Timothy E. G. Bartel is a poet from California. His poems have recently appeared in Modern Age, First Things, Cerasus, and Solum Journal, and his latest collection is A Crown for Abba Moses: New and Selected Poems (Solum Literary Press, 2023). Timothy currently lives and teaches in Houston.

Daniel P. Stokes

A Spur

To the east a spur of sandstone
thrusts its broken snout into the sea.
Blistered, bleak and arid. It may be
forlorn of all but scuttling things
but it’s not lonely.
Lonely is aware that it’s not wanted
and, bereft of function, left
to sift through memories
in an empty house
that no one wants to share.

Daniel P. Stokes has published poetry widely in literary magazines in Ireland, Britain, the U.S.A. and Canada, and has won several poetry prizes. He has written three stage plays which have been professionally produced in Dublin, London and at the Edinburgh Festival.

Caroline Adkins

Food

“No one bears witness for the witness”
–Paul Celan

I. Against my one wish I’m not alone with the seventh-floor window to the light-drenched night or my problem set or my scratch- paper at the library. Flowing are the words from the hands across from me. A document swells and wettens. I ride through a rougher time signature, digging through notes for a formula I will never remember. Didn’t you know? The final entropy is always greater than it was. The energy won’t destroy itself. It’s just the way it is. Click-click, go the handful of nails. Yes? Guard my laptop for a minute while I’m in the bathroom? Guard it? It’s the two of us. If you find a fork in it, you’ll know it was me. II. Gertrude and I gather at the restaurant. Six tea eggs, star anise and a pot of Oolong to share. We pour into white crockery. It’s a privilege to know you. So what is it they want from you? A piece of my heart. She raises her eyes towards me. Well do you have any advice? They don’t tell you when they’ll do it but they’ve done it before, dreamer If a bitch with a grapefruit spoon wants to unzip your hoodie you better run, dreamer There’s a man moonlighting for the sanctioner next to a bonfire the color of grieving— Just answer his questions with questions of your own and he’ll eventually give up on you, dreamer. Surrender is seductive but it left the gardener with a ventricle full of gray water, so you’ve gotta sink away from everything warm until you’re safe in the russet trees, dreamer. So what’s it going to be? You can stay and learn to fight or you can be something else. I want to be innocent. That was never on the table. Then I want to be something with wings. How about a fly? Something with bones. Something that sings. III. Sweet swallow of light, gaze down upon the gushing stream. There’s a boulder in the middle with a basket full of food that never expires just for you— canned worm, curdled cream, minced veal, congealed fish, gathered and rowed here by a yolk-orange soul, all for you. Sweet swallow of night, emerge from your canopy of crimson leaves for just a moment and eat. You have to. IV. Oh Gertrude. They can sunder my wings or sear my veins with rainwater but I won’t be caught dead ingesting any of this. Gertrude I’m floating back to sea level. I will rend my white tunic for that grapefruit spoon and we’ll return to the library and share a basket of tea eggs after that with whatever beating part of me is left.

Caroline Adkins is a proud alum of the University of Maryland and resides with her husband in Washington DC. Previous publications include the Folio Literary Journal, Havik Magazine, and Hevria.

Barth Landor

Native Language

When did my mother tongue disappear?
I would speak the words I’d always known,
spoon, bread, now, and others would look perplexed.
I’d use the phonemes and tenses and moods
I’d heard since birth, and they would say,
We no longer talk that way.
Sometimes I’d make the sounds of the old nouns
just to see if they were legitimate —
“Water”, “Bird”, “Nature” — but they never were.
I was unable to unlearn when I’d been taught at home,
and I recall with shame that day
I chatted with my neighbors over the fence,
my speech littered with bits of my native language,
grass, milk, justice, as their faces filled with dismay.
“What do you suggest I do?” I said to them,
and in one voice they strongly recommended silence.

Barth Landor has published a novel, A Week in Winter, as well as numerous essays and poems. He is a longtime Chicago resident.

M.J. Young

Ask me why you’re going to Hell

It’s hard to make out the winter sea this early in the morning and the darkness doesn’t help push away my thoughts of the sign I saw on campus last week that said Ask me why you’re going to Hell. I want to forget it, walk away, let it wash over me and mean nothing. The breeze-lifted spray makes me think heat might be nice, and then I feel guilty. Reminding myself not to be ashamed of things I can’t help, I ignore the voice that tells me to walk back to my car. If I’m going to do this I should listen to the wind whipping my shirt and take it off, then walk forward. There’s no one to see my weak chest here but I stand still, arms covered. Your sign felt presumptuous, but by my painted nails three months after Halloween and the pins on my backpack I can guess at what you’d say. Why would I ask when I’ve been orbiting answers since fourteen? I shiver, step forward. The sand is much more packed than the summer and I can’t tell if it’s cold or wet, if I’ve reached where I’m supposed to be. I thought this was supposed to be about love. A wave carrying foam burns my feet.What would it feel like everywhere? I read online that after swimming, because the water is colder than the air, it’ll feel euphoric, stepping back onto the sand. But I can’t make myself get in.

M.J. Young (he/ him) is a writer who lives in Florida. He is currently pursuing a degree in English from the University of South Florida with a concentration in creative writing. In his free time he enjoys listening to Philip Glass and exploring bookstores.

W.B. Lyon

BLIND

She leaves her awnings up, her curtains wide
so she can see the sky. She says My eyes
can’t give me much, now, but I still can see
that sky color, that real blue light, and when

it’s gone I don’t bother, now, with lamps—
the words are locked up inside my books, now,
sometimes I’ll listen to music, but
mostly I just sit—and sometimes I dream

that my fingers have brought me swift words again.
In most weathers she’s out in her lawn chair
which the super fiercely guards beside the door—
she knows us—mothers, babies, workers, all

by our shapes and smells, our voices, our gaits,
and greets us as we bustle off, wheeling
babies, clopping canes, talking on our phones—
I see you better, she says, the most of you,

than most of you see yourselves, and it’s not pride
but sorrow dry as fall’s leaves rustling.
Seeing us clearly enough, she smiles, nods,
then turns her face up, seeking a blue sky;

we rush away, not seeing we’re dismissed,
not knowing we enter those visions
she lights on her night-stained walls, but a few
of us guess; we see it in the darkness

of her windows at night and in her morning
cheer—how swiftly she turns from us to seek
a color of sky that fades on its way
through her eyes, stays blue on her dream-slick walls.

W.B. Lyon’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Across the Margin, The Anthology of Magazine Verse and Yearbook of American Poetry, Amelia, Grub Street, The Literary Review, and The Windsor Review. She enjoys volunteering her time teaching adults and children to read.

Jocko Benoit

At the Passport Photographer’s

Each face falls within a grid,
he explains with my son
in the screen’s crosshairs.
Every country’s grid is unique —
distinguished by millimeters
left or right, up or down.
He was a macro artist long ago,
making inches into miles of landscape —
the strange terrain of a golf ball,
or a button or a shingle. He emigrated
here, like me, and fell into passports
because everyone believes, like he did,
that somewhere else is where
their dreams are hiding.

But my son, between a bounce
and a jitter, stills his head
in this moment’s prison his smile says
he will be free from soon.
American about to add on Canadian —
he will never fully let those words
define him, and in the instant between
the shutter’s opening and closing
he will see inside the dark passive
machine so hungry for light.

Jocko Benoit is the author of three collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Real Estate Deals of the Apocalypse (Poems About Donald Trump). His poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, New Ohio Review, Rattle Poets Respond, Southern Poetry Review, Spillway and many other journals.

Simone Dozier

Identification

She left her fingerprints
Up and down
Either side of my spine
While she demanded, “Forget me.”

His hands
shaped my face
He must have been so
sorry.

If I move my body just (wrong)
I can hear the shape of them
Talking to someone else
within me

the verb touch
is not a toy
But how else can a gambler
Win back her money

Tide

livid red lip curling open
fang dripping like ice
I
miss you, oh God, how I miss you
the burn of salt, a crumbling story,
Held down against the melting sand—so you were more solid than the ground and
in the hidden grip where bronze and chipped red polish met,
I could hear something stirring like life in an egg.
Touch like gaze, and this crossroad of senses
lit a flare down the nearest dimension, as out-of-range sound
thrumming in our body. black skin, square nails, so fundamentally
human; and angry, furied, as if this were the place
to rip back what was stolen, a hissing whisper (of hope?)
and the roar, boundaries surrendering to coast
thrashing curving shimmering
Good. Bad. blackwhite the lap and the slap and the kiss of the water.
and that’s how you were able to do it: I swelled into the great grand ocean
as open as if I had a sea to lose. only after the sum ebbed back to separate
did I stumble through a stream of gray and fog to
slowly wake up:
somehow at some point you opened my heart like an oyster
wrenched and mindless
I never had a choice
it wasn’t that kind of
feast
Gorgeous in your cruelty, standing
over hollow, shrinking me—left. (those careless footsteps).
I cried, and begged the moon to hurry
[up and drown me]

Simone Dozier has been writing poetry since she was a kid, but only recently stopped hiding it from other people. She enjoys combining written words with abstract art, calligraphy, graffiti, etc. She lives with her bunny in California.

John Schneider

Counting Winter Stars

You can hear them, but a few miles on,
a distant constellation of train cars
streaking through their own long shadows.

An exhibition of indigenous fields of corn whiz past,
past forests once filled with so much song, past
slow-motion mountains rising heavily from the earth

like a father, past all these unfinished conversations
with night and history yet again drunk on itself.
Steel on steel, quiet rumblings. An air horn sweeps

the track clear of deer and children planting
coins and bottles to experiment with ruin.
From smudged windows, a kaleidoscope

of faces, fragments of lives, framed figures
foreign yet recognizable as sepia family photos,
we are left to nourish our narratives

of each other, alone, searching the never-
empty sky for new stars that might outlast
us, for even a single song to fill our mouths.

John Schneider’s debut poetry collection, Swallowing the Light (Kelsay Books, 2022), is Pinnacle Book Achievement Poetry Best Book winner 2023, NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite in 2023, International Book Awards Poetry 2023, and nominated for the Hoffer Award. His poetry is a finalist in Atlanta Review’s 2023 International Poetry Competition.

Jennifer Maloney

Stolen Time

These days
are not. Days
have unscrewed from night
like bulbs from sockets,
hours unhook
like a scarf unravels,
fast and thorough,
a sudden puddle of colors
and kinks. Sometimes,
time slides downhill,
a slow-moving waterfall,
or rises around us,
a flooding summer lake,
ankle-deep right here, wade in.
It tickles.

I feel good, he says,
I feel, you know, like I got
a second chance,
he says, watching
the seconds captured
by store surveillance jump
and tremble in his hand—
here is what happened—here is what did not
happen—
here he is, onscreen—

taps the counter, talks,
face turned slightly away,
a pencil-sketch beard
traces the angle of his jaw,
erases clean at his neck—
his neck, his pulse—

Adam’s apple bounces,
tumbles like a stone,
his hair a crown,
braided coils spring up, fall down.
Just another day at work, another day

describing movements,
jewels, carats, metals, another day of

would you like to try it on?
would you like to see another?

and he bends behind the case, unlocks it, slides—
time

smells like lilacs,
sometimes.
A purple sweet enough to eat.
Bury your nose in it, braid it
like hair, shiny filaments gathered,
twisted, tied. Dropped. It falls,

unrolls like a bolt of cloth,
a satin sheet upon which lovers ride,
a tablecloth with fruit
and bread and honey heaped,
a shroud,
wound around the body
of what once was—
all the things we did
and will never do again—
kiss, shop, talk, make love—it’s all happening here—
in what is not happening here—

the loudest sound he’s ever heard, it knocks him down,
he falls, it misses him, zings past an ear, burns
his soft uncoiling hair. This is not happening,

it’s happening, what’s happening?
Onscreen, today,
last week, right now,
it misses him,
it hits,
it misses. Again he bends.
Unlocks, slides, watches

as he falls onscreen, sees the noise
that knocks him down, the loudest sound,
so loud it knocks the breath from him,
and
he
stops
breathing—
on the ground not breathing—

and this is the fulcrum
upon which the lever turns,
the center point
around which the hands are spinning,
the moment that is happening—
is not happening—might be happening—

today,
on what is just another day,
movements, metals, moments roll, unscroll,
like a game,
sidewalk hopscotch,
careful squares and tumbling numbers,
tossed stones, skipping feet, bouncing braids

that smell like lilacs.
A sun-squint smile.
Time
resides
in the space a tooth once lived.
Floods a summer lake,
tickling your ankles.
Time is seconds,
chances,
time unlocks,
it bends and slides, time,
the loudest sound you ever heard,
you jump and tremble
in your own hand,
you fall. Onscreen.
You fall.

I feel good, he says, I feel, you know,
like I got
a second
a second
a

second

Jennifer Maloney is a disabled woman writer whose poetry and fiction can be found in Synkroniciti Magazine, Litro Magazine, Literally Stories, and many other places. Jennifer is the author of the Next Generation Indie Book Award nominated chapbook Evidence of Fire, Poems & Stories (Clare Songbirds Publishing, 2023).

John Paul Caponigro

Licking Icebergs

Part of the thrill is getting this close.
My challenge is staying still; let the waves do the rocking.

           Taste an ancient azure sea, frozen
           millions of years ago, now in the current.

Taste mountain minerals suspended,
a salty terroir no longer present.

           Taste ancient atmospheres, not much nose,
           bubbles effervescing in slow motion.

Taste clean up front, no fruit, clear at the back, no tannin,
a long, long finish, not long enough.

           Hope there’s no dinosaur virus
           undoing its suspended animation.

I’m quenched, but I keep on drinking.
Add a dusting of powdered snow, pale sugar from heaven.

           The different temperature delivers less flavor
           making me more aware savoring is also texture, pressure, smell.

My tongue gets stuck
not because it’s cold.

           But because my eyes can’t pull themselves away
           from unbelievable blues;

electric aquamarines, erubescent sapphires,
ecstatic incarnadines, thundering indanthrones.

           My Zodiac’s driver drags me away
           and on to the next delicacy.

John Paul Caponigro is an internationally collected visual artist and published author. He leads unique adventures in the wildest places on earth to help participants make deeper connections with nature and themselves creatively. View his TEDx and Google talks here..