The Birth of Athena
Look at that spackled face. The starched curls. The lah-de-dah veiled hat. And that rose! That rose is a second entity, Athena sprung fully formed from Zeus’ head. That’s the way it is with roses. One second they’re as tiny as a baby’s puckered palm. But turn around to water the azalea, or admire a cardinal, and boom! There’s the rose already world-weary and reeking of perfume. Listen. Don’t admire the woman’s lace collar. Or her perfectly tailored jacket. Or the purse white-knuckled in her hand. Behold the blot of red that sits atop her lips like a bloated heart. There’s a smirk beneath that layer of paint. And it’s for you. Tina Barry Tina Barry is the author of Mall Flower, poems and short fiction (Big Table Publishing, 2015). Her work has appeared in The Best Small Fictions 2016, Drunken Boat, The Light Ekphrastic, and Nasty Women Poets: An Unapologetic Anthology of Subversive Verse, among other journals and anthologies. Barry lives with her husband and two cats in the village of High Falls, NY.
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Eighty-year-old Woman Living in Squatter’s Camp, Bakersfield, CA
Her hair has thinned, her round glasses low on her nose. I doubt she has many teeth the way her mouth is set. Yet, she has advice: “If you lose your pluck you lose the most that is in you.” She sits in a car. She is wearing a plaid dress with cuffs and wide collar. I would not want to tangle with her, although the man beside her probably has. He is in her shadow and I didn’t see him at first. I think of a long marriage, that he’s learned to give in. To live on the outskirts of town in a shack of tin. What do the wrinkles in this woman’s face reveal-- the death of a child, illness or the constant counting of change for bread and milk. She has one hand on her forehead shielding her eyes from the sun. She wants to see clearly what is before her. Gail Peck Gail Peck is the author of eight books of poetry. The Braided Light won the Leana Shull Contest for 2015. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Comstock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart, and her essay “Child Waiting” was cited as a notable forBest American Essays, 2013. Migrant Worker on California Highway
Caught in mid-step with many more to go. A hat to shade him from the sun. This man is carrying everything he owns over his left shoulder. Soon he will shift the bundle to the other shoulder. Dust settles on his clothes, his face, in his nose. Only a worn handkerchief in his back pocket to wipe away sweat. Soon he will shift the bundle to the other shoulder. Perhaps a car will come by, but they are usually laden with belongings and numerous children. He’s getting hunched from bending to crops, longs for the reach of apples and peaches, the shade of the trees. He doesn’t mind lying beneath the stars, the sounds of the insects. He’ll sleep from exhaustion, and dream. It is then the lost ones will return, picking up in mid-sentence. Gail Peck Gail Peck is the author of eight books of poetry. The Braided Light won the Leana Shull Contest for 2015. Poems and essays have appeared in Southern Review, Nimrod, Greensboro Review, Brevity, Connotation Press, Comstock, Stone Voices, and elsewhere. Her poems have been nominated for a Pushcart, and her essay “Child Waiting” was cited as a notable forBest American Essays, 2013. Hawk and Cardinal
One of the several billion deaths that occurred yesterday, this one more seemly than most, the photograph appalled me after I realized the victim was a cardinal. I put it away, but I kept on seeing it until this morning when the memory nagged me into looking again. For years now I’ve fed birds in my backyard, photographed them, savored the pretty ones like this lifeless female. This hawk is just another bird I’ve fed-- this is how I think now that I see how she turns from what she’s killed. Dead means more to me now that I’m well beyond my three score and ten and my mind lets me see my human body face up, eyes closed, arms splayed out, limp and absent from the world, senses discontinued permanently. The lesson here is that there is no lesson. The world is is both cruel and kind. Right now I take comfort from this. David Huddle David Huddle teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English and in the Rainier Writing Workshop. His fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Esquire, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Poetry, Shenandoah, Agni, Plume, The Hollins Critic, and The Georgia Review. His most recent books are Dream Sender, a poetry collection, and My Immaculate Assassin, a novel. With Meighan Sharp, Huddle has co-authored a book of poems, Effusive Greetings to Friends, forthcoming from Groundhog Poetry Press in the fall of 2017, and his new novel, Hazel, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2018. Ghost Ship
Mary Celeste you look adrift encompassed from keel to topmast of fibrous ivory linen tendons disheveled but seaworthy your last log entry was dated ten days ago personal belongings appear undisturbed where are your captain and his wife their two-year-old daughter the crew of seven at this moment there is no sign of wind approaching except for storm cloud grey azure water hash marked by brigantines are you there you are the banded hamstring connecting sky to water the space between them looks fathomable incalculable intelligence of ether and aqua somehow keeps you afloat how to measure it do they even touch do they interlace their fingers cup your keel in their hands from rudder to hull if you’re indeed wet do the sea salts and chill air surround you or slip through you are the heat and cold real riddle me this barrels of denatured alcohol and a crew composed of parallel arrays of collagen closely packed together elastin proteoglycans copper manganese calcium cartilaginous zones reticulin fibers vascular walls capillary membranes all are entangled in a sealed hold atoms are mostly empty space nothing stands still sinew is flexible but makes for inelastic bulkheads it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay your passengers may be simultaneously both alive and dead I fear unresolved suspicions your inconclusive nature fosters mystery false details of methylated spirits and fantasy in a state of quantum superposition dense irregular sheaths connect to random subatomic events that may or may not occur show me truth both sacred and profane open your hatch Amy Baskin Amy Baskin’s work is featured in What Rough Beast, Fire Poetry Journal, The Ghazal Page, Postcards, Poetry & Prose, Dirty Chai, Panoply, Riddled With Arrows, and more. She is a 2016 Willamette Writers Kay Snow Poetry award recipient for her poem “About Face.” harbingers T concerned for U V W-X riffed no notice plucked from farm of cube signs dark days had come Z peering over partition hoping alphabet coup Orwell said of the work [ R E D A C T E D ] & now mad scramble N’s in with 2’s & U’s doubled over into T’s sector labial glubs & fricative grit of drowning sailors doomed aboard capsized ships fled as emptiness floods each tight compartment none part of today’s tomorrow’s stenciled crate Whole lotta H C J K 3 left on everyone’s mind & What can be spelt without U’s V’s W’s X How language dies & dies & dies again entombed in letter setter’s inconvenient box lost Ask hard questions close eyes camera moves in hear hard answers cringe while the other side faces to the floor hide single U V W-X Tony Brewer This poem was first published in Bobo Books: 1.1.1: Vol. 2. 2017. Tony Brewer is chair of the Writers Guild at Bloomington, Indiana; executive director of the Spoken Word Stage at the 4th Street Festival; festival director of Slam Camp at Indiana University; and one-fourth of the performance troupe Reservoir Dogwoods. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016 and he has 3 books: Hot Type Cold Read (Chatter House Press), Little Glove in a Big Hand (Plan B Press), and The Great American Scapegoat (self-published). Student of Philosophy 1926
Once you are known as the kind of man who asks questions and who expresses his opinions freely, you are the kind of man who is followed wherever he goes. There are no definitive answers to the problems a perpetual student poses. In a world where everything is brown or yellow, this is a dangerous path to follow. When they shoot him, they will do it twice to make sure he is dead. Alan Catlin Alan Catlin has been publishing for five decades in all kinds of styles, voices and subjects. He has published several collections of ekphrastic poems including Effects of Sunlight on the Fog from Bright Hill Press and American Odyssey from Future Cycle Press. Future Cycle Press will publish his book, Wild Beauty. Alabama Tenant Farmers –Walker Evans (1936) Frank Tingle Family, Mills Hill, AL They are not smiling this Alabama family photographed in sepia. There are five shabbily dressed figures on a shabbily built porch. Rocks hold up one section slats are jagged and gap holed dust everywhere heat everywhere a dog on its side mouth open to catch the closed air. The father is absent from the picture. Only his arm resting on a tenuous wooden support shows, yet he is the focal point for four of his children who gaze at him off to their right. They are all shaped by the dirt drained by this life. The eldest daughter dark haired like her siblings, tilts her head as she prettifies herself by running fingers through her hair. There’s an essence of sensuality. She peers at the photographer. She is marked by her part in this history. Amy Phimister After a long corporate career, Amy Phimister has returned to writing full time. She graduated from St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN with a B.A. in Creative Writing. She also has an MBA and an MA in Education. A member of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets, she is currently working on a chapbook of her poems. Grey Days
after Helen Levitt’s Seven Young Boys It’s black and white, this snapshot I can’t shake off. Young boys, ranging five to eight, I would guess not from height but seriousness, wafer-thin, in smudged shirts ragged as the crumbling curb they idle near. One tyke stands in the garbage-strewn gutter as a neighbor boy pedals a dented tricycle into what seems a mirror at the centre of the grimy sidewalk. What sorcerer props up this illusion? A frame minus its mirror, no reflection, unadorned life itself, the kid leaving behind one reality for another. At his back, Walter Quay Hand Laundry. In his sights, a cohort out on the street. This is 1940, post- Depression and before the ensuing war. Mere boys, too young for the draft, caught between causes. Margo Davis Margo’s poems have appeared in Light: A Journal of Photography & Poetry, Wisconsin Review, Midwest Quarterly, Slipstream, Agave Magazine, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Forthcoming poems are to appear in Misfit Magazine, Civilized Beasts, Vine Leaves Literary, Burgers and Barrooms Anthology, and Echoes Off a Canyon Wall, an ekphrastic photo / poetry exhibit. Have you ever wanted
to rise up on the balls of your feet lengthen your arms and dive through silken air backward in time curling at the last minute to land feet first? toes then arches then ankles would sink through sunbaked sand to tickle at the timeless cool lying just below the surface your scratch on the time-space continuum an unimportant glitch in the geologic span of beach sands there you might find your mother barefoot on the beach posing for a picture her face alight hands curled coquettishly at her chin her waist cinched in an emphatic silver buckle you might put your arm around her shoulders and laugh and soak in the sameness of your bodily frames your interchangeable parts you might drink in the scent of her skin salty sandy in the mexican sun you might ask to meet her friend you might laugh some more giddy and weep and wonder at how you can be so close in and so far away and know her so little and so much Elizabeth Burnside Elizabeth Burnside lives in Georgia and works in higher education. Her recent poems have been published in the I-70 Review and Fourth River. She finds herself returning to themes of memory and landscape in her writing. |
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