Chainsaw
When it stops I'm grateful,
both for the sudden quiet
and for the girl singing next door
whose voice rends the air
as if the air had begged for it,
but in a languorous way,
not the helpless way
quiet goads a chainsaw.
The girl wields her voice
like the man his chainsaw,
but recklessly, without fear of it
mutilating whatever it bites into.
She flings it into my yard.
It slices me clean through.
Michael Milburn teaches high school English in New Haven, Connecticut. The author of two books of poetry and a collection of essays, Michael's recent writing has appeared in New England Review, Onthebus, The Burnside Review, and Ploughshares.
Wednesday
The Last Predicta
...
Chad Davidson
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .At once a swaggering sensory jumble, a renewal of the urban pastoral, and a wise illumination of the everyday commercial ritual, Chad Davidson’s The Last Predicta invites its readers to find beauty where they least expect it: the franchise, the gas station, the cheerleader. In The Last Predicta, disaster is a place, and we’re standing on its corner. It is “a small store selling gasoline, / coffee, cigarette lighters, Starburst;” it is also “Like the American finch, building / its nest so tight its nestlings drown / in storms….” Splitting open the insides of Gold’s Gym and Target, Davidson reveals the sometimes elegant, sometimes gritty machinery of an urban life fueled by dollars and knickknacks: “the Milano-style whatnot” that is so familiar and so rarely examined.
. . . . .In some ways, The Last Predicta chips away at a literary taboo by opening the door on contemporary American capitalism without apology and without regret. The speaker in these poems is at once persistent and playful, facing the “dear church of the cherished storage bin, / dear Cheerios and the bowl to drown you in” head-on. Although the book will numb the reader with its brand names—the Maglite, the Chevy, the transfigured Predicta—it will revive the reader with its reverence for words, sound, and syntax. In “Diva,” Davidson writes:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . …I’d like to
. . . . . . . . . . . . . slip out and slide to the spout
. . . . . . . . . . . . . end of that buoy throatwise
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and risen to song. This is weird,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . I tell myself, by which I mean
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the Anglo-Saxon kind, which kills
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the very veery my heart adores.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Heart, if you have the heart,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . help me swing the dinghy round.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . We have but one tongue between us.
The tongue of the reader becomes the text of the speaker; moments of “Tequila-Sunrise sun” and “the iPod snug in its skin” reveal that the absolution for our spending and our Hollywood-ized melodramas is that by these we unearth new coincidences of adjective and noun that can further piece together the scraps of meaning we are given. Despite the hopelessness of lines like “the watermelon… / and the black seeds pregnant with possibility, / aching for their hour, which passed some time ago,” The Last Predicta is at best a starry-eyed cynic. It mourns lives that succumb to the malaise of consumption, but delights in that same act, which offers a new path for language.
. . . . .Perhaps the most concrete identity in The Last Predicta is the city of Los Angeles. Davidson often nods to the movie industry and the car culture so often associated with the California coast; in addition, his swift yet sprawling images and rollicking enjambment build a city of their own across the page: it mirrors the physical space from which the speaker watches “a new star scarring the night’s black bay / above Los Angeles.” Nature is not absent from L.A., but it is only a “forgettable desert,” one of the reasons The Last Predicta seeks new deltas of image and sound in glossy store aisles and the “warehouse sky.” In turning away from nature, Davidson often turns to the television—“the Brady Bunch who aged sixty minutes each week;” in short, towards the forced reality of entertainment. But does the glamorized cheerleader—whose choreography “is nothing / if not naked prophecy”—reflect Hollywood’s glitter, or does the Predicta simply capture and stage the consumer’s own complex patterns? It is a question that follows Oscar Wilde’s central paradox in “The Decay of Lying,” and one that Davidson argues both sides of. Los Angeles is a place where this can happen. Davidson uses the city for its vibrancy and re-shelves it at more intimate moments, when the landscape of The Last Predicta is undefined or scattered: it becomes any place where “The sun chokes on the fishbones of TV antennae.”
. . . . .In its later sections, The Last Predicta seems to grow older, calling up Byron and Eliot where before the reader met Sheila in the gym or a naked woman serving sushi. The language-games of the book’s earlier sections are pressed by the weight of titles like “The Divine,” “Advent,” and “Idol.” Yet the poems here still retain their earlier energy even as they turn towards more familiar literary spaces. In “The Death of Byron,” Davidson’s variation on his earlier themes is perhaps more somber or more introspective:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . The unpeopled landscape was that much more
. . . . . . . . . . . . . unbearable after we invented nature.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . We picked up our futures, what little we could
. . . . . . . . . . . . . find in the rumped commotion of the back-heavy,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . while entire pastures, whole heaps, waited for us
. . . . . . . . . . . . . where we had come from. Had you looked up then
. . . . . . . . . . . . . (I did), you would have seen the moon open its hinges
. . . . . . . . . . . . . like a jaw and shut. Shut up. Shut down.
Albeit without some of The Last Predicta’s initial spunk, the later poems gracefully consider questions first introduced wittily yet fleetingly. Here, Davidson gives the speaker more time to reflect on what before were joyful fragments: glass shards waiting to be softened by the ocean.
. . . . .The Last Predicta lets a little more light into the world we already are living in. It toys with the reader; it both offers up a new vocabulary and commissions it to build a town, towers and all. Davidson’s latest book sparkles and flirts, “mock[s] sacrificial rites,” and holds forth both the question and the answer in a voice at once challenging and wise.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Chad Davidson
Southern Illinois University Press, 2008
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .At once a swaggering sensory jumble, a renewal of the urban pastoral, and a wise illumination of the everyday commercial ritual, Chad Davidson’s The Last Predicta invites its readers to find beauty where they least expect it: the franchise, the gas station, the cheerleader. In The Last Predicta, disaster is a place, and we’re standing on its corner. It is “a small store selling gasoline, / coffee, cigarette lighters, Starburst;” it is also “Like the American finch, building / its nest so tight its nestlings drown / in storms….” Splitting open the insides of Gold’s Gym and Target, Davidson reveals the sometimes elegant, sometimes gritty machinery of an urban life fueled by dollars and knickknacks: “the Milano-style whatnot” that is so familiar and so rarely examined.. . . . .In some ways, The Last Predicta chips away at a literary taboo by opening the door on contemporary American capitalism without apology and without regret. The speaker in these poems is at once persistent and playful, facing the “dear church of the cherished storage bin, / dear Cheerios and the bowl to drown you in” head-on. Although the book will numb the reader with its brand names—the Maglite, the Chevy, the transfigured Predicta—it will revive the reader with its reverence for words, sound, and syntax. In “Diva,” Davidson writes:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . …I’d like to
. . . . . . . . . . . . . slip out and slide to the spout
. . . . . . . . . . . . . end of that buoy throatwise
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and risen to song. This is weird,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . I tell myself, by which I mean
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the Anglo-Saxon kind, which kills
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the very veery my heart adores.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Heart, if you have the heart,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . help me swing the dinghy round.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . We have but one tongue between us.
The tongue of the reader becomes the text of the speaker; moments of “Tequila-Sunrise sun” and “the iPod snug in its skin” reveal that the absolution for our spending and our Hollywood-ized melodramas is that by these we unearth new coincidences of adjective and noun that can further piece together the scraps of meaning we are given. Despite the hopelessness of lines like “the watermelon… / and the black seeds pregnant with possibility, / aching for their hour, which passed some time ago,” The Last Predicta is at best a starry-eyed cynic. It mourns lives that succumb to the malaise of consumption, but delights in that same act, which offers a new path for language.
. . . . .Perhaps the most concrete identity in The Last Predicta is the city of Los Angeles. Davidson often nods to the movie industry and the car culture so often associated with the California coast; in addition, his swift yet sprawling images and rollicking enjambment build a city of their own across the page: it mirrors the physical space from which the speaker watches “a new star scarring the night’s black bay / above Los Angeles.” Nature is not absent from L.A., but it is only a “forgettable desert,” one of the reasons The Last Predicta seeks new deltas of image and sound in glossy store aisles and the “warehouse sky.” In turning away from nature, Davidson often turns to the television—“the Brady Bunch who aged sixty minutes each week;” in short, towards the forced reality of entertainment. But does the glamorized cheerleader—whose choreography “is nothing / if not naked prophecy”—reflect Hollywood’s glitter, or does the Predicta simply capture and stage the consumer’s own complex patterns? It is a question that follows Oscar Wilde’s central paradox in “The Decay of Lying,” and one that Davidson argues both sides of. Los Angeles is a place where this can happen. Davidson uses the city for its vibrancy and re-shelves it at more intimate moments, when the landscape of The Last Predicta is undefined or scattered: it becomes any place where “The sun chokes on the fishbones of TV antennae.”
. . . . .In its later sections, The Last Predicta seems to grow older, calling up Byron and Eliot where before the reader met Sheila in the gym or a naked woman serving sushi. The language-games of the book’s earlier sections are pressed by the weight of titles like “The Divine,” “Advent,” and “Idol.” Yet the poems here still retain their earlier energy even as they turn towards more familiar literary spaces. In “The Death of Byron,” Davidson’s variation on his earlier themes is perhaps more somber or more introspective:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . The unpeopled landscape was that much more
. . . . . . . . . . . . . unbearable after we invented nature.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . We picked up our futures, what little we could
. . . . . . . . . . . . . find in the rumped commotion of the back-heavy,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . while entire pastures, whole heaps, waited for us
. . . . . . . . . . . . . where we had come from. Had you looked up then
. . . . . . . . . . . . . (I did), you would have seen the moon open its hinges
. . . . . . . . . . . . . like a jaw and shut. Shut up. Shut down.
Albeit without some of The Last Predicta’s initial spunk, the later poems gracefully consider questions first introduced wittily yet fleetingly. Here, Davidson gives the speaker more time to reflect on what before were joyful fragments: glass shards waiting to be softened by the ocean.
. . . . .The Last Predicta lets a little more light into the world we already are living in. It toys with the reader; it both offers up a new vocabulary and commissions it to build a town, towers and all. Davidson’s latest book sparkles and flirts, “mock[s] sacrificial rites,” and holds forth both the question and the answer in a voice at once challenging and wise.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Dear Apocalypse
...
K.A. Hays
Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .In Dear Apocalypse, nature is not the backdrop to a speaker’s narrative; it is the narrative, and K.A. Hays allows each hyacinth, each plot of earth, and each season to exist as it always will: in a fluid, halfway state. Here, an untouched garden is a site of action, where “soon, the rattler, tomorrow, will swallow us, / its skin first gold, then brown, then shed….” So often in Dear Apocalypse the landscape and the speaker blur or enmesh, a strange unity—as if the subject is the object—that the speaker pushes to its limit: “I want to see / as a garden would, in winter: the toad / under leaves, mapped in brown….” Here, in a world created by an “arbitrary crash,” living things must tend to or become each other as defense against an always immanent yet opaque unmaking, which may someday leave only “bugs who have no sense / of the tragic.” But though the speaker imagines “How brown it would be” to become a turtle and nestle in “the profound mud,” one fact denies that: while nature is content to bury itself and “hulk on,” the speaker must grapple with the patterns of this world, collecting and shaping them into moments rich with the about-to-be-losing, which Dear Apocalypse both mourns and rejoices in.
. . . . .Dear Apocalypse relies as much on sound as image to welcome in the reader. Many poems offer delicate rhymes that are as unexpected and necessary as rays of light, as in “The Way of All the Earth” (which will be included in The Best American Poetry 2009):
. . . . . . . . . . . . . When the winter of dust
. . . . . . . . . . . . . blustered sixty-four million years back,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the great beasts who stalked the land suffered
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and fell, their bulk heaving the hills—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . all of that was only a loud game of billiards
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the turtles, who sank down away from the light
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and let the arms and legs float in the waters,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . each belly atop another shell, the skin assuming
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the work of the lungs, so the lungs—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . as the earth above wasted and tore—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . might, through that din, be still.
Here, the sound-scape is crafted so carefully that the trail of vowel sounds seems to open up a new language or even new images for the poet to pursue. This is a music Hays often returns to: like the wren in her poem “But Then Again It Might Be Possible,” the speaker “has a double / voice, halftones and overtones, released / in the same moment.”
. . . . .The poems in Dear Apocalypse spend many lines imagining another existence, a sort of in-between space in which the speaker can reject the temporal, the limited, and the human by envisioning a role in nature’s careful repetitions. In “That Death,” the speaker admits the distance that exists between herself and a brush wolf:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . ...It loped,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . a line no longer than a hyphen,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and skimmed the scrub a half mile off,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . then sat, to make a silhouette
. . . . . . . . . . . . . of dog (but not quite dog). I sensed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . what it was, but did not want to come
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the fact (to touch the rib, to rub
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the raked fur at the crown).
The speaker hesitates in the moment before recognition, a tense deliberation that mirrors other moments in Dear Apocalypse: in “Hyacinths,” the speaker raises bulbs—“like ancient kiln-fired balls”—noting “A bulb will rot in water, / so it must sit, hanging over / what could end it.” The speaker makes dog from wolf; friend from predator, toying with the earth’s coincidences though they may become danger, apocalypse, the irrefutable ending so often hinted at throughout Hays’ book. To accomplish this wire-walking, the voice in Dear Apocalypse is often whimsical and bold. The title poem confides in the reader: “we had / a god who grumbled. . . .through us… / He was, like any other man,. . . .complicated.” In “I Don’t Believe the View from Here,” Hays writes of a whale’s baleen:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . How easy it would be
. . . . . . . . . . . . . if I had a filter like that for perception,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . so only, say, honeydew and the words of true prophets
. . . . . . . . . . . . . could rush in like nourishing plankton while my own death
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the suffering of others couldn’t reach me
. . . . . . . . . . . . . but were stopped just at the lip—
There is the sense that these speckles of imagining, this unapologetic frankness, this delightfully peculiar voice is constructing magic from the darkness, or—in the words of Hays—“doing what conditions urge.”
. . . . .Dear Apocalypse holds the world by the hand while allowing it to evolve and die. Its richness of image is like looking in a snow globe and seeing every memory in order; its prismatic voice is like opening the door to a mind and examining each thought as it strolls past. Hays’ book will both cringe at the apocalypse and write to it a letter, sharing such immediacy, such beauty, and such boldness that it—and us, the lucky readers—might be made to remember something of this world.
K.A. Hays
Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2009
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .In Dear Apocalypse, nature is not the backdrop to a speaker’s narrative; it is the narrative, and K.A. Hays allows each hyacinth, each plot of earth, and each season to exist as it always will: in a fluid, halfway state. Here, an untouched garden is a site of action, where “soon, the rattler, tomorrow, will swallow us, / its skin first gold, then brown, then shed….” So often in Dear Apocalypse the landscape and the speaker blur or enmesh, a strange unity—as if the subject is the object—that the speaker pushes to its limit: “I want to see / as a garden would, in winter: the toad / under leaves, mapped in brown….” Here, in a world created by an “arbitrary crash,” living things must tend to or become each other as defense against an always immanent yet opaque unmaking, which may someday leave only “bugs who have no sense / of the tragic.” But though the speaker imagines “How brown it would be” to become a turtle and nestle in “the profound mud,” one fact denies that: while nature is content to bury itself and “hulk on,” the speaker must grapple with the patterns of this world, collecting and shaping them into moments rich with the about-to-be-losing, which Dear Apocalypse both mourns and rejoices in.. . . . .Dear Apocalypse relies as much on sound as image to welcome in the reader. Many poems offer delicate rhymes that are as unexpected and necessary as rays of light, as in “The Way of All the Earth” (which will be included in The Best American Poetry 2009):
. . . . . . . . . . . . . When the winter of dust
. . . . . . . . . . . . . blustered sixty-four million years back,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the great beasts who stalked the land suffered
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and fell, their bulk heaving the hills—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . all of that was only a loud game of billiards
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the turtles, who sank down away from the light
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and let the arms and legs float in the waters,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . each belly atop another shell, the skin assuming
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the work of the lungs, so the lungs—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . as the earth above wasted and tore—
. . . . . . . . . . . . . might, through that din, be still.
Here, the sound-scape is crafted so carefully that the trail of vowel sounds seems to open up a new language or even new images for the poet to pursue. This is a music Hays often returns to: like the wren in her poem “But Then Again It Might Be Possible,” the speaker “has a double / voice, halftones and overtones, released / in the same moment.”
. . . . .The poems in Dear Apocalypse spend many lines imagining another existence, a sort of in-between space in which the speaker can reject the temporal, the limited, and the human by envisioning a role in nature’s careful repetitions. In “That Death,” the speaker admits the distance that exists between herself and a brush wolf:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . ...It loped,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . a line no longer than a hyphen,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and skimmed the scrub a half mile off,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . then sat, to make a silhouette
. . . . . . . . . . . . . of dog (but not quite dog). I sensed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . what it was, but did not want to come
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the fact (to touch the rib, to rub
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the raked fur at the crown).
The speaker hesitates in the moment before recognition, a tense deliberation that mirrors other moments in Dear Apocalypse: in “Hyacinths,” the speaker raises bulbs—“like ancient kiln-fired balls”—noting “A bulb will rot in water, / so it must sit, hanging over / what could end it.” The speaker makes dog from wolf; friend from predator, toying with the earth’s coincidences though they may become danger, apocalypse, the irrefutable ending so often hinted at throughout Hays’ book. To accomplish this wire-walking, the voice in Dear Apocalypse is often whimsical and bold. The title poem confides in the reader: “we had / a god who grumbled. . . .through us… / He was, like any other man,. . . .complicated.” In “I Don’t Believe the View from Here,” Hays writes of a whale’s baleen:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . How easy it would be
. . . . . . . . . . . . . if I had a filter like that for perception,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . so only, say, honeydew and the words of true prophets
. . . . . . . . . . . . . could rush in like nourishing plankton while my own death
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the suffering of others couldn’t reach me
. . . . . . . . . . . . . but were stopped just at the lip—
There is the sense that these speckles of imagining, this unapologetic frankness, this delightfully peculiar voice is constructing magic from the darkness, or—in the words of Hays—“doing what conditions urge.”
. . . . .Dear Apocalypse holds the world by the hand while allowing it to evolve and die. Its richness of image is like looking in a snow globe and seeing every memory in order; its prismatic voice is like opening the door to a mind and examining each thought as it strolls past. Hays’ book will both cringe at the apocalypse and write to it a letter, sharing such immediacy, such beauty, and such boldness that it—and us, the lucky readers—might be made to remember something of this world.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Francis d’Assisi 2008
...
Poetry chapbook by Gary Metras
Finishing Line Press, 2008
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .In Gary Metras’s rich, chapbook-length sequence on the life of Francis d’Assisi, the reader is welcomed into a teaming, imagistic world where Francis “hear[s] God in birdsong” and is “the witness of a doe birthing a fawn / in a florid clearing....” An elegiac remembrance of the patron saint of animals and the environment, Francis d’Assisi 2008 traces the life of Francis from the beginnings of his religious awakening to long past his death, when his message still reaches “the beggar woman by Bernini’s fountain… the one with the lion in the cave of water....” As the sequence progresses, tension grows between the modern world (where “fathers…/ strap bombs to their daughters”) and Francis’ peaceful message. The two act as a counterpoint to one another, resolving finally in the sureness of a moment unquestioningly believed:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because a child ignores the tourists and only steps
. . . . . . . . . . . . . on the white stones to enter the cathedral
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because sheep graze the hillside
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because a woman loves you
. . . . . . . . . . . . . there is God
. . . . . . . . . . . . . There
. . . . . . . . . . . . . is.
. . . . .Despite the occasional condemnation of the modern world—which Metras represents as “the great age of global leisure”—Francis still has a place here: a beggar woman “lifted her face to me when I placed a euro in her hand….” At times fearful of the shifting face of religion and nature, Francis d’Assisi 2008 finds its stride when it allows the colors of the old and the new to run together in what becomes simultaneously an impressionistic elegy to simplicity and a patient urban pastoral. Ultimately, Metras’s careful craft and sensitive lineation paint the life of a familiar figure in crisp, evocative images. Both for spiritual refreshment as well as literary pleasure, Francis d’Assisi 2008 is well worth reading.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Poetry chapbook by Gary Metras
Finishing Line Press, 2008
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .In Gary Metras’s rich, chapbook-length sequence on the life of Francis d’Assisi, the reader is welcomed into a teaming, imagistic world where Francis “hear[s] God in birdsong” and is “the witness of a doe birthing a fawn / in a florid clearing....” An elegiac remembrance of the patron saint of animals and the environment, Francis d’Assisi 2008 traces the life of Francis from the beginnings of his religious awakening to long past his death, when his message still reaches “the beggar woman by Bernini’s fountain… the one with the lion in the cave of water....” As the sequence progresses, tension grows between the modern world (where “fathers…/ strap bombs to their daughters”) and Francis’ peaceful message. The two act as a counterpoint to one another, resolving finally in the sureness of a moment unquestioningly believed:. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because a child ignores the tourists and only steps
. . . . . . . . . . . . . on the white stones to enter the cathedral
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because sheep graze the hillside
. . . . . . . . . . . . . Because a woman loves you
. . . . . . . . . . . . . there is God
. . . . . . . . . . . . . There
. . . . . . . . . . . . . is.
. . . . .Despite the occasional condemnation of the modern world—which Metras represents as “the great age of global leisure”—Francis still has a place here: a beggar woman “lifted her face to me when I placed a euro in her hand….” At times fearful of the shifting face of religion and nature, Francis d’Assisi 2008 finds its stride when it allows the colors of the old and the new to run together in what becomes simultaneously an impressionistic elegy to simplicity and a patient urban pastoral. Ultimately, Metras’s careful craft and sensitive lineation paint the life of a familiar figure in crisp, evocative images. Both for spiritual refreshment as well as literary pleasure, Francis d’Assisi 2008 is well worth reading.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You
...
Poetry chapbook by Diana RaabPlain View Press, 2008
Review by Rebecah Pulsifer
. . . . .Dedicated to the introspective diarist Anaïs Nin, Diana Raab’s Dear Anaïs captures with painstaking precision brief autobiographical snapshots of the poet’s own life. Memories heavy with the speaker’s relationship to her parents, drugs, death, and men vie for primacy in this warm collage, which utilizes a stark—almost journalistic—narrative style. The speaker’s reflections are sometimes unexpected and always highly personal, cataloging in relentless detail her skating lessons as a child, a road trip to Woodstock, and afternoon walks with an admired lover. At its best, Dear Anaïs offers a chiseled look into the making of a woman. The book’s opening poem, “Klein’s,” captures a surprising bluntness that Raab tames persistently with her photo-like images and glaring syntax. The poem is a rich description of the New York City of the speaker’s childhood:. . . . . . . . . . . . . ...until nighttime when we mount
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the same train back to our quiet
. . . . . . . . . . . . . neighborhood in Queens where the loudest
. . . . . . . . . . . . . sound you’ll hear is a cat crying in the
. . . . . . . . . . . . . dead of a hot summer night.
. . . . .The danger in this type of ruthlessly direct writing is that at times it wavers between honesty and flatness. In lines like “I hate how horses make me feel,” or “I live to write / so I shall not die,” the speaker’s dedication to detail and self-reflection becomes like a room without a door: the poem collapses into darkness; the reader gropes for a place to exist in a wash of literal language. Ultimately, Raab’s homage to Nin resonates with an unparsed honesty that offers a complete and unsparing story of a life. Dear Anaïs is a gift of complete admiration from one writer to another.
Rebecah Pulsifer is the Associate Editor of OT!M.
Saturday
Corey Mesler
The Ghost-Me
The ghost-me appeared in my mirror
while I was out buying groceries.
By the time I got back he had taken
my place in the living room.
Now, most nights, we play backgammon
or one of the ancient games.
The ghost-me takes his time with every
move. It is his studied silence
that unnerves me most. His silence,
his ingenuity, his book-smarts.
Yesterday he asked me to move out. I
have nowhere to go. I have no one to
take me in. The ghost-me doesn’t
listen to such negativity. He says I
am only as good as I pretend to be.
I hate his homilies, too. The ghost-me has
replaced me now from tip to toe.
He asked me to write this to you, my wife.
Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006). His first full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), is out from Foothills Publishing and his book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations, will appear in March 2009. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and one of his poems was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He has two children, Toby, age 20, and Chloe, age 13. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He also claims to have written “These Boots are Made for Walking.” He can be found here.
The ghost-me appeared in my mirror
while I was out buying groceries.
By the time I got back he had taken
my place in the living room.
Now, most nights, we play backgammon
or one of the ancient games.
The ghost-me takes his time with every
move. It is his studied silence
that unnerves me most. His silence,
his ingenuity, his book-smarts.
Yesterday he asked me to move out. I
have nowhere to go. I have no one to
take me in. The ghost-me doesn’t
listen to such negativity. He says I
am only as good as I pretend to be.
I hate his homilies, too. The ghost-me has
replaced me now from tip to toe.
He asked me to write this to you, my wife.
Corey Mesler has published in numerous journals and anthologies. He has published two novels, Talk: A Novel in Dialogue (2002) and We Are Billion-Year-Old Carbon (2006). His first full length poetry collection, Some Identity Problems (2008), is out from Foothills Publishing and his book of short stories, Listen: 29 Short Conversations, will appear in March 2009. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize numerous times, and one of his poems was chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He has two children, Toby, age 20, and Chloe, age 13. With his wife, he runs Burke’s Book Store, one of the country’s oldest (1875) and best independent bookstores. He also claims to have written “These Boots are Made for Walking.” He can be found here.
Sunday
Brittany Presley
And Then She Stabbed Him
I have to kill you, though I haven’t decided how.
Cancer, perhaps, sugaring your face in polyps,
the violins swelling behind your rickety hospital bed.
Or a gunshot to the chest, shattering your ribs
and the heart behind like a finch in a cage.
But you’re what my professor calls the protagonist,
which means you’re impervious to bullets and love,
free to die only in one of those wrong-place, wrong-time deals.
Maybe you’re a cutter—though the audience couldn’t know—
breaking the mirror in your too-clean bathroom,
shredding like cheese the skin at the bend of your elbow
where no one can see. I’d hate to jab an ice pick into your skull,
or a harpoon’s barb in your thigh right after you saved
so valiantly the aquatic animal named Jimmy.
But my professor harps my draft thirsts for conflict.
that it demands your baby’s mama, or Japanese ex-cons,
abortions and the stones thrown at the clinics.
Everyone loves a dead hero, though I have never loved you
that way. You could have delivered your saccharine thank yous
at the podium, stroking your trophy’s head like a little Buddha,
never noticing the curtain’s faint ripple, my hand disrobing
its knife or machete—something sharp and Hollywoody—
never noticing, as you lay there gasping, the Yes! cries
of my professor, capturing the roundness of her chest in flat palms,
or all the eyes of the cameras trained on me, and how I skirt around
your body, springing that note card from my waist pocket, flying off
the names of all the little people, your name, of course, first.
Brittany Presley lives in San Diego, California.
I have to kill you, though I haven’t decided how.
Cancer, perhaps, sugaring your face in polyps,
the violins swelling behind your rickety hospital bed.
Or a gunshot to the chest, shattering your ribs
and the heart behind like a finch in a cage.
But you’re what my professor calls the protagonist,
which means you’re impervious to bullets and love,
free to die only in one of those wrong-place, wrong-time deals.
Maybe you’re a cutter—though the audience couldn’t know—
breaking the mirror in your too-clean bathroom,
shredding like cheese the skin at the bend of your elbow
where no one can see. I’d hate to jab an ice pick into your skull,
or a harpoon’s barb in your thigh right after you saved
so valiantly the aquatic animal named Jimmy.
But my professor harps my draft thirsts for conflict.
that it demands your baby’s mama, or Japanese ex-cons,
abortions and the stones thrown at the clinics.
Everyone loves a dead hero, though I have never loved you
that way. You could have delivered your saccharine thank yous
at the podium, stroking your trophy’s head like a little Buddha,
never noticing the curtain’s faint ripple, my hand disrobing
its knife or machete—something sharp and Hollywoody—
never noticing, as you lay there gasping, the Yes! cries
of my professor, capturing the roundness of her chest in flat palms,
or all the eyes of the cameras trained on me, and how I skirt around
your body, springing that note card from my waist pocket, flying off
the names of all the little people, your name, of course, first.
Brittany Presley lives in San Diego, California.
Kenneth Pobo
Dominoes
Everything was a domino—
or a theory about them. I played dominoes
in my bedroom, fun for twenty minutes,
till I wanted to see Miss Jane chase Jethro
on The Beverly Hillbillies. My parents believed
in dominoes too: Viet Nam, Laos,
Cambodia, Thailand—then—
Mt. Prospect, Illinois, Ho Chi Minh’s men
hiding explosives in dime-store lockets.
A helicopter left Saigon.
A decade had gone.
I was in college, stadium rock and Camus.
Dominoes found me asleep
in my dorm, snuck in the window,
caged me—the dots fell off each one,
pinned me, prevented screams.
In 2008, WordTech Press published Kenneth Pobo's new book of poems entitled Glass Garden.
Everything was a domino—
or a theory about them. I played dominoes
in my bedroom, fun for twenty minutes,
till I wanted to see Miss Jane chase Jethro
on The Beverly Hillbillies. My parents believed
in dominoes too: Viet Nam, Laos,
Cambodia, Thailand—then—
Mt. Prospect, Illinois, Ho Chi Minh’s men
hiding explosives in dime-store lockets.
A helicopter left Saigon.
A decade had gone.
I was in college, stadium rock and Camus.
Dominoes found me asleep
in my dorm, snuck in the window,
caged me—the dots fell off each one,
pinned me, prevented screams.
In 2008, WordTech Press published Kenneth Pobo's new book of poems entitled Glass Garden.
Stephen Black
Stars
Walk into the room of night sky and sit
. . . . . . .in the chair facing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the jagged trees until Orion rises,
fast as the world’s spin in a moonless sky, so fast
. . . . . . .you can’t walk across the floor
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the opposite wall
before the sky has changed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the hunter and his dog
. . . . . . .are far past zenith guiding you to a place
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . you know well,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . where everything you dread
. . . . . . .happens, their passage
through the air like a clang
. . . . . . . . . . . . . jarring you out of sleep,
. . . . . . .not needing any word from you as you stand
and walk out of the room,
. . . . . . .already forgetting
the stars in their fixed courses,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the certainty they warn.
Stephen Black was born in western Tennessee and currently teaches at Georgia Southern University. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in the anthology The Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses as well as Number One, The Magazine, Eagle Eye, and The Mindfulness Bell.
Walk into the room of night sky and sit
. . . . . . .in the chair facing
. . . . . . . . . . . . . the jagged trees until Orion rises,
fast as the world’s spin in a moonless sky, so fast
. . . . . . .you can’t walk across the floor
. . . . . . . . . . . . . to the opposite wall
before the sky has changed
. . . . . . . . . . . . . and the hunter and his dog
. . . . . . .are far past zenith guiding you to a place
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . you know well,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . where everything you dread
. . . . . . .happens, their passage
through the air like a clang
. . . . . . . . . . . . . jarring you out of sleep,
. . . . . . .not needing any word from you as you stand
and walk out of the room,
. . . . . . .already forgetting
the stars in their fixed courses,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the certainty they warn.
Stephen Black was born in western Tennessee and currently teaches at Georgia Southern University. His poems, essays, and short stories have appeared, or are forthcoming, in the anthology The Cadence of Hooves: A Celebration of Horses as well as Number One, The Magazine, Eagle Eye, and The Mindfulness Bell.
Cherri Randall
Language Poet
My fingers long to smooth supple skin:
Warm putty stretched over stone,
The beautiful lines across
A man’s forehead
When he is reading poetry.
Inside the brain pan, letters gallop and leap
Over bridgeless synapses and ideas burn
With meaning.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . I thought men,
Like different fonts, were mostly alike,
That their differences were all on the surface,
But I couldn’t speak the language, thought them
All predators or the occasional mangy coyote
With his keening note at night to unnerve.
I loved only dead men’s words:
Dear Heart, how like you this?
I settled for berries when thirsting
For the deep juice of melon,
Have known the congress of sparrows
While longing for the jaw of the wolf.
So fearful, not of darkness, but of light,
When all else cast a shadow where I stood,
This one waited patiently, listening for my breath,
And when it quickened caught me unaware.
Our poetry, he says, as I smooth his forehead.
The she wolf rolls over, exposes her throat,
Fearless with the alpha male, submission
To his fangs her chosen thrill. And finally
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am fluent.
Cherri Randall received her MFA in 2004 and her PhD in 2008 from the University of Arkansas. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Her work has appeared in journals such as Sojourn, Colere, Paddlefish, The Potomac Review, Permafrost Review, Bewildering Stories, Main Channel Voices, Paper Street Press, and others.
My fingers long to smooth supple skin:
Warm putty stretched over stone,
The beautiful lines across
A man’s forehead
When he is reading poetry.
Inside the brain pan, letters gallop and leap
Over bridgeless synapses and ideas burn
With meaning.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . I thought men,
Like different fonts, were mostly alike,
That their differences were all on the surface,
But I couldn’t speak the language, thought them
All predators or the occasional mangy coyote
With his keening note at night to unnerve.
I loved only dead men’s words:
Dear Heart, how like you this?
I settled for berries when thirsting
For the deep juice of melon,
Have known the congress of sparrows
While longing for the jaw of the wolf.
So fearful, not of darkness, but of light,
When all else cast a shadow where I stood,
This one waited patiently, listening for my breath,
And when it quickened caught me unaware.
Our poetry, he says, as I smooth his forehead.
The she wolf rolls over, exposes her throat,
Fearless with the alpha male, submission
To his fangs her chosen thrill. And finally
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am fluent.
Cherri Randall received her MFA in 2004 and her PhD in 2008 from the University of Arkansas. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. Her work has appeared in journals such as Sojourn, Colere, Paddlefish, The Potomac Review, Permafrost Review, Bewildering Stories, Main Channel Voices, Paper Street Press, and others.
Carolyn Helmberger
Uncle Herb’s House
In the painting,
Aunt Donna ignored
the three Peony bushes
in front of the house.
The eaves are brown
as in reality, but the door
was more cobalt than slate.
The shutters flapped
at any wind, as we ran
circles, chasing fireflies.
We hid behind the
Elderberry bushes
wearing boy haircuts
and raw knees. Dirt was
just a layer of clothing
for my sisters and me.
We made small forts between
the hedges, and disappeared for hours.
The shade from the house grew
moss instead of grass
and it soothed our bare feet
that sizzled from the asphalt driveway.
We blew bubbles of Ivory dish soap,
tiny rainbows on each one’s shell,
like oil shining on a puddle.
Uncle Herb must have had cats
because half empty bags of Whiskas
and Tender Vittles slumped
on garage workbenches, but no cat
would stay at the sound of
shrieking girls hiding and seeking
behind dusty toolboxes.
With his crooked walk
and occasional smile, he was
the hermit outline of Dad,
purring out of his drive way in a
1982 Volkswagen Rabbit.
After Uncle Herb and Marianne
divorced, he sold the house.
I didn’t know that Aunt Donna
painted until Christmas
when Dad unwrapped the painting.
It hangs in the office where sunlight
hits the wall through blinds.
Painted leaves turn their backs
to the light like a real Silver Maple
when a storm is whirling
in the clouds.
Carolyn Helmberger received her BA in English Literature from Creighton University in 1998 and her MFA from the University of Nebraska in January, 2008. Her work has been previously published in The Connecticut River Review, Pedestal Magazine, and is forthcoming in Cooweescoowee, Plainsongs, and elsewhere.
In the painting,
Aunt Donna ignored
the three Peony bushes
in front of the house.
The eaves are brown
as in reality, but the door
was more cobalt than slate.
The shutters flapped
at any wind, as we ran
circles, chasing fireflies.
We hid behind the
Elderberry bushes
wearing boy haircuts
and raw knees. Dirt was
just a layer of clothing
for my sisters and me.
We made small forts between
the hedges, and disappeared for hours.
The shade from the house grew
moss instead of grass
and it soothed our bare feet
that sizzled from the asphalt driveway.
We blew bubbles of Ivory dish soap,
tiny rainbows on each one’s shell,
like oil shining on a puddle.
Uncle Herb must have had cats
because half empty bags of Whiskas
and Tender Vittles slumped
on garage workbenches, but no cat
would stay at the sound of
shrieking girls hiding and seeking
behind dusty toolboxes.
With his crooked walk
and occasional smile, he was
the hermit outline of Dad,
purring out of his drive way in a
1982 Volkswagen Rabbit.
After Uncle Herb and Marianne
divorced, he sold the house.
I didn’t know that Aunt Donna
painted until Christmas
when Dad unwrapped the painting.
It hangs in the office where sunlight
hits the wall through blinds.
Painted leaves turn their backs
to the light like a real Silver Maple
when a storm is whirling
in the clouds.
Carolyn Helmberger received her BA in English Literature from Creighton University in 1998 and her MFA from the University of Nebraska in January, 2008. Her work has been previously published in The Connecticut River Review, Pedestal Magazine, and is forthcoming in Cooweescoowee, Plainsongs, and elsewhere.
Veronica Fitzpatrick
Kiss and Ride
When Tiffin and Natalie laughed at the sign
they were implicating kisses,
those clammy undoings
native to the back four seats of the bus.
Only I understood
how ride was twice as dirty,
having read my father's
double stack of Mayfairs several
weeks before.
In the hours my parents spent
browsing at Magruder's,
I re-read the readers' letters, absorbing
new erotic verbs: ride, as in
to ride a hot rod, which requires
one to arch and writhe,
a repertoire of measures I would
later explain
and ultimately demonstrate
secluded in the den,
imagining the tartan slipcover
as a velvet quilt,
pleased I knew enough
to be the boy.
Cochlea
flush light cavity,
petal canal
I have built boats
dispatched them
down your
drowsy channel
swabbed in circles
at your innermost
wall, I have panted
out coordinates
disbelieved
resistance
fancied the tunnel
a constant conch
and tightened
and tightened
this
smallest screw
Veronica Fitzpatrick grew up in Virginia. She holds a BA and MFA from Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame, respectively, and is also an alumna/apostle of the UVa Young Writers Workshop. She currently lives and teaches film in northern Indiana.
When Tiffin and Natalie laughed at the sign
they were implicating kisses,
those clammy undoings
native to the back four seats of the bus.
Only I understood
how ride was twice as dirty,
having read my father's
double stack of Mayfairs several
weeks before.
In the hours my parents spent
browsing at Magruder's,
I re-read the readers' letters, absorbing
new erotic verbs: ride, as in
to ride a hot rod, which requires
one to arch and writhe,
a repertoire of measures I would
later explain
and ultimately demonstrate
secluded in the den,
imagining the tartan slipcover
as a velvet quilt,
pleased I knew enough
to be the boy.
Cochlea
flush light cavity,
petal canal
I have built boats
dispatched them
down your
drowsy channel
swabbed in circles
at your innermost
wall, I have panted
out coordinates
disbelieved
resistance
fancied the tunnel
a constant conch
and tightened
and tightened
this
smallest screw
Veronica Fitzpatrick grew up in Virginia. She holds a BA and MFA from Michigan State University and the University of Notre Dame, respectively, and is also an alumna/apostle of the UVa Young Writers Workshop. She currently lives and teaches film in northern Indiana.
Damon McLaughlin
Cushion
My body prepares for the fall of planets
by holding one imaginary globe
in place of another. Its brain
skims paperback Shakespeares
so that also has something to consider, the pleasure of last twilight,
again and again.
Into memories of birth the knees smile
like mitts into slow-balls, the femurs, fibulas, tibias
all sticks that must persist the burning of souls
in their pit outside King’s Canyon, the sap sizzle, the pop.
On Yucca Mountain, genes like ash clouds deposit
in case survivors—
And the right and left hands shake on it, reconciling years
and years of estrangement. Believe me, the mind’s considered
everything, never well-enough prepared as muscle for that first falling star,
first sequoia to snap loggers’ chains out of its desire
for neck and shoulder, which it would shear like a train.
For that eraser-sized fingertip that does, and delicately,
that doesn’t ask for resignations but positions
the back of this skull
into a flatter pillow, thanking something as it does for its failures
of insight: who will catch the first stone, first flowers, first waves
of brilliant new light. Preparing, simply
preparing, bears such gifts as these.
Disclosure
Hardest snowstorm we’ve ever seen—
. . . .a weighted fist
. . . . . . .on a woman’s sunken
chin. On the floor
. . . .this light bulb’s delicate
. . . . . . . all-of-me
is how
. . . it will happen: filament at our feet
. . . . . . .ear of the world
hanging on
. . . .this ring our bodies crack: what now?
. . . . . . . The ear waits.
First this is
. . . .the answer.
Damon McLaughlin's work appears in various web and print publications including Stirring, Pedestal Magazine, and The North American Review; his first collection, Exchanging Lives, debuted last spring from The Backwaters Press. Damon lives in Tucson.
My body prepares for the fall of planets
by holding one imaginary globe
in place of another. Its brain
skims paperback Shakespeares
so that also has something to consider, the pleasure of last twilight,
again and again.
Into memories of birth the knees smile
like mitts into slow-balls, the femurs, fibulas, tibias
all sticks that must persist the burning of souls
in their pit outside King’s Canyon, the sap sizzle, the pop.
On Yucca Mountain, genes like ash clouds deposit
in case survivors—
And the right and left hands shake on it, reconciling years
and years of estrangement. Believe me, the mind’s considered
everything, never well-enough prepared as muscle for that first falling star,
first sequoia to snap loggers’ chains out of its desire
for neck and shoulder, which it would shear like a train.
For that eraser-sized fingertip that does, and delicately,
that doesn’t ask for resignations but positions
the back of this skull
into a flatter pillow, thanking something as it does for its failures
of insight: who will catch the first stone, first flowers, first waves
of brilliant new light. Preparing, simply
preparing, bears such gifts as these.
Disclosure
Hardest snowstorm we’ve ever seen—
. . . .a weighted fist
. . . . . . .on a woman’s sunken
chin. On the floor
. . . .this light bulb’s delicate
. . . . . . . all-of-me
is how
. . . it will happen: filament at our feet
. . . . . . .ear of the world
hanging on
. . . .this ring our bodies crack: what now?
. . . . . . . The ear waits.
First this is
. . . .the answer.
Damon McLaughlin's work appears in various web and print publications including Stirring, Pedestal Magazine, and The North American Review; his first collection, Exchanging Lives, debuted last spring from The Backwaters Press. Damon lives in Tucson.
Marc Hudson
Above the Gunnison
. . . . . . . . . . . . August 2008
We climbed in a grey wind,
you my barefoot, pigeon-toed
daughter, contemplative like me,
pausing now and then
to study the workers
toiling by an ant-hill
or the glitter of a far cliff
emerging from a cloud.
We climbed steadily
toward a radio tower
with its array of microwave antennae,
wind-warped chain link fence
and signs warning
of dangerous frequencies
as in another age
pilgrims might have climbed
to a wayside temple
and a sacred pool.
We said little,
sharing the ample stillness
of a mountain afternoon.
An ease crept between us,
we who often find words
too difficult.
And so we paused, drinking in
the wide green valley of the Gunnison,
the muted silver of the river
and the shadows of the mountains
beyond the clouds. Their shoulders
held in the light, unseen,
I felt, palpable enduring rock.
As we started down, we heard
far thunder, and then
a volley of nighthawks
swept over us, crying fiercely.
I said, “They are fleeing
the storm.” “No,” you spoke
in gentle correction,
“They’ve come to hunt
in the early darkness.”
Down the mountain
we made our slow
descent, me occasionally
stumbling on loose stones,
you, more sure-footed behind me,
careful of the small
toilers underfoot, collecting seed
at the end of summer.
Marc Hudson teaches creative writing, medieval literature, and much else at Wabash College. Recent poems are forthcoming in Salt Hill and Sewanee Review. His most recent book of poems is The Disappearing Poet Blues (Bucknell UP).
. . . . . . . . . . . . August 2008
We climbed in a grey wind,
you my barefoot, pigeon-toed
daughter, contemplative like me,
pausing now and then
to study the workers
toiling by an ant-hill
or the glitter of a far cliff
emerging from a cloud.
We climbed steadily
toward a radio tower
with its array of microwave antennae,
wind-warped chain link fence
and signs warning
of dangerous frequencies
as in another age
pilgrims might have climbed
to a wayside temple
and a sacred pool.
We said little,
sharing the ample stillness
of a mountain afternoon.
An ease crept between us,
we who often find words
too difficult.
And so we paused, drinking in
the wide green valley of the Gunnison,
the muted silver of the river
and the shadows of the mountains
beyond the clouds. Their shoulders
held in the light, unseen,
I felt, palpable enduring rock.
As we started down, we heard
far thunder, and then
a volley of nighthawks
swept over us, crying fiercely.
I said, “They are fleeing
the storm.” “No,” you spoke
in gentle correction,
“They’ve come to hunt
in the early darkness.”
Down the mountain
we made our slow
descent, me occasionally
stumbling on loose stones,
you, more sure-footed behind me,
careful of the small
toilers underfoot, collecting seed
at the end of summer.
Marc Hudson teaches creative writing, medieval literature, and much else at Wabash College. Recent poems are forthcoming in Salt Hill and Sewanee Review. His most recent book of poems is The Disappearing Poet Blues (Bucknell UP).
Letiţia Ilea
. . . . . . . . . . . . Translated by Adam J. Sorkin and Elena Nistor
a day in my life
i’m moving ahead full of compromise unpunished imposture
i’m missing i miss myself i miss the vigor of grammar
i can’t get enough of talking about myself
luckily no one’s listening
i’m like a smeary snapshot
the road goes on and on it’s tough going everyone’s breathing carefully
watching warily something’s going to happen
i might smash the mirror its shape would explode this premonition’s suffocating
between me and myself lies the entire history of a dead language
i’m still speaking syllable by syllable i’m poisoned blood that water can’t wash away
i crawl on i shout
my home’s so far away i’ve lots of time i write poetry on the bus
maybe my books will come out while i’m standing clutching the handhold
for me they cut down the woods
my offspring will have nowhere to hide
nowhere for sunday outings
they’ll grill garlic sausages in the library
the ecological balance is going to hell because of me
i’d better start writing palimpsest-poems or learning to crochet
my former friends have children and all kinds of monthly bills
i have wrinkles deadlines and a typewriter
and they say i don’t know what i want i don’t know why
every poem is an organ removed and the surgeon’s drunk
a beautiful spring day. on the field.
i lost then laughed then cried
then i stood up punched my fist into the wall slammed
every door behind me raked the dead leaves
threw away the rags straightened out my desk
turned the radio on stared at the ceiling—war
was about to break out in the gulf the dog begged for food
everyone had something to do the phone rang—it was
the wrong moment it was evening the next day
i was supposed to return some books to the library
pay my taxes i had plenty of reasons—
it was my best friend “i don’t want to live this way any longer.
why should i.” “don’t be a coward. life’s beautiful. in two days
you’ll get paid. so what if she left. we’re not designed
for happiness. we have different parameters.” “you’re right.
call you again.” he hung up i stared at the ceiling
i was a hypocrite i closed my eyes
my room smelled good the hemlock had blossomed
about leaving
as if suddenly it were evening and very cold
you can’t find your way back
(a boring book a film you’ve seen before
the temptation to find parallels with what happens to you
discussions about responsibility and lack of it
you light another cigarette to make your presence felt
you strive to take part something inside you
prevents you from speaking from justifying yourself you react
slowly as when on the street someone asks you
the time little clouds of smoke weave
recent happy events wonderful events)
the sensation that you’re being led by the hand
a state of artificially-induced wakefulness
umbrellas neon lights cab drivers drunks
you dig for another coin a terrible mood
for big words and definitive gestures
to leave to stay
as if suddenly it were evening
but at the other end of the line morning
Letiţia Ilea is a young, increasingly important Romanian poet from Cluj-Napoca in the region of Romania known as Transylvania. She has published three books of poetry, the most recent of which is A Serious Person (O persoană serioasă) (2004).
Elena Nistor graduated from the English Department of the University of Bucharest, and she is a lecturer at the Bucharest University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine. She is currently a PhD student, working on a thesis on contemporary British women poets and a member of the Centre for the Translation and Interpretation of the Contemporary Text, University of Bucharest and the translation project poetry pRO in the U.K.
a day in my life
i’m moving ahead full of compromise unpunished imposture
i’m missing i miss myself i miss the vigor of grammar
i can’t get enough of talking about myself
luckily no one’s listening
i’m like a smeary snapshot
the road goes on and on it’s tough going everyone’s breathing carefully
watching warily something’s going to happen
i might smash the mirror its shape would explode this premonition’s suffocating
between me and myself lies the entire history of a dead language
i’m still speaking syllable by syllable i’m poisoned blood that water can’t wash away
i crawl on i shout
my home’s so far away i’ve lots of time i write poetry on the bus
maybe my books will come out while i’m standing clutching the handhold
for me they cut down the woods
my offspring will have nowhere to hide
nowhere for sunday outings
they’ll grill garlic sausages in the library
the ecological balance is going to hell because of me
i’d better start writing palimpsest-poems or learning to crochet
my former friends have children and all kinds of monthly bills
i have wrinkles deadlines and a typewriter
and they say i don’t know what i want i don’t know why
every poem is an organ removed and the surgeon’s drunk
a beautiful spring day. on the field.
i lost then laughed then cried
then i stood up punched my fist into the wall slammed
every door behind me raked the dead leaves
threw away the rags straightened out my desk
turned the radio on stared at the ceiling—war
was about to break out in the gulf the dog begged for food
everyone had something to do the phone rang—it was
the wrong moment it was evening the next day
i was supposed to return some books to the library
pay my taxes i had plenty of reasons—
it was my best friend “i don’t want to live this way any longer.
why should i.” “don’t be a coward. life’s beautiful. in two days
you’ll get paid. so what if she left. we’re not designed
for happiness. we have different parameters.” “you’re right.
call you again.” he hung up i stared at the ceiling
i was a hypocrite i closed my eyes
my room smelled good the hemlock had blossomed
about leaving
as if suddenly it were evening and very cold
you can’t find your way back
(a boring book a film you’ve seen before
the temptation to find parallels with what happens to you
discussions about responsibility and lack of it
you light another cigarette to make your presence felt
you strive to take part something inside you
prevents you from speaking from justifying yourself you react
slowly as when on the street someone asks you
the time little clouds of smoke weave
recent happy events wonderful events)
the sensation that you’re being led by the hand
a state of artificially-induced wakefulness
umbrellas neon lights cab drivers drunks
you dig for another coin a terrible mood
for big words and definitive gestures
to leave to stay
as if suddenly it were evening
but at the other end of the line morning
Elena Nistor graduated from the English Department of the University of Bucharest, and she is a lecturer at the Bucharest University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine. She is currently a PhD student, working on a thesis on contemporary British women poets and a member of the Centre for the Translation and Interpretation of the Contemporary Text, University of Bucharest and the translation project poetry pRO in the U.K.
Adam J. Sorkin's recent books of translation include Ruxandra Cesereanu’s Crusader-Woman, translated mainly with Cesereanu (Black Widow Press, 2008) and Mariana Marin’s The Factory of the Past, translated with Daniela Hurezanu (Toad Press, 2008); two 2007 books, Magda Cârneci’s București: O colecție de mirosuri / A Collection of Smells, translated with Alina Cârâc—photographs by Dan Hayon (Romanian Cultural Institute Publishing House), and Radu Andriescu’s The Catalan Within, translated with the poet (Longleaf Press); and three 2006 books including Magda Cârneci’s Chaosmos, translated with Cârneci (White Pine Press) and Mariana Marin’s Paper Children, with various collaborators (Ugly Duckling Presse). He was awarded the 2005 Translation Prize of The Poetry Society (U.K.) for Marin Sorescu’s The Bridge, translated with Lidia Vianu (Bloodaxe Books, 2004), and was Regional Editor for Romania and Moldova of the recent New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008).
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller
October opening like a flower on a highway;
. . . . . . . . .“My life was still a mansion to be filled;
. . . . . . . . .now it is an overstuffed trunk I’m scared to open.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lauren Hannon
We are sitting on the beach
along the cliff of falling rocks
guessing at our futures when
a man comes along and tells us,
“The area of falling cliffs is off-limit.
That piece of rock you are sitting on
was attached a week ago.”
And sometimes we are not sure
if we are the cliff-face or the rock.
Black hole and event horizon.
In space, linear momentum is maintained,
until acted on planets continually fall
toward the sun (sunward)—
witness a giant object such as a star contract—
This is for Lauren whose absence
is an absence in my own presence.
This is for Lauren
whose future is my enclosed space—
Sometimes I think the world rests
on your back alone, (as in the time in Jersey
your shower caved in,)
and sometimes you are the star contracting,
gravitational attraction
like nights we drink wine on the beach
because judgment is the first thing to go
but then you still have everything else,
put yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time,
we could see the space of us contracting—
the way an explosion is really a series of explosions.
Internal pressure, a mechanical process, almost as if
forecasting itself. Marvel at the first surprise:
the astrononomic evidence of us—
we have too much luck to spare—
so often we confuse two things
for what they really are.
And this is our future, we are,
There are some dying languages
where there is no future tense.
The closest we could come is
the last words of a lost people:
“as into the darkness of a storm.”
A star contracts, we are that star
the space around that star contracts.
(We are.)
Joshua Gottlieb-Miller has been published in Innisfree Poetry Journal, If Poetry Journal, Prairie Margins and Avatar. Most recently he received a fellowship to attend the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. To his long-lasting pride and embarrassment, he was the 2004 Bethesda Youth Poetry Slam champion.
how I would like to crush the blossom of this month.
Fall splits in two.
You are the definition of joy.
I compare you to the light glinting
off the bridge, the glass
on the shoulder of the highway.
Every stupid song on the radio.
You be the sun this time.
Try me day in and day out,
and night, like alternating currents.
18,000 chord progressions—
an infinite number of tones.
The spark isn’t gone, the spark doesn’t go anywhere.
The shock of first touch
remembers itself; the way lightning travels up.
When we beat the spark into life.
When we warm it with words.
When it grows to a flower,
how surprised we are.
How easy love is.
October gets on with its self,
color draining from the leaves,
as if beauty is a trick of the light
returning.
Gravitational forecasting
Fall splits in two.
You are the definition of joy.
I compare you to the light glinting
off the bridge, the glass
on the shoulder of the highway.
Every stupid song on the radio.
You be the sun this time.
Try me day in and day out,
and night, like alternating currents.
18,000 chord progressions—
an infinite number of tones.
The spark isn’t gone, the spark doesn’t go anywhere.
The shock of first touch
remembers itself; the way lightning travels up.
When we beat the spark into life.
When we warm it with words.
When it grows to a flower,
how surprised we are.
How easy love is.
October gets on with its self,
color draining from the leaves,
as if beauty is a trick of the light
returning.
Gravitational forecasting
. . . . . . . . .“My life was still a mansion to be filled;
. . . . . . . . .now it is an overstuffed trunk I’m scared to open.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Lauren Hannon
We are sitting on the beach
along the cliff of falling rocks
guessing at our futures when
a man comes along and tells us,
“The area of falling cliffs is off-limit.
That piece of rock you are sitting on
was attached a week ago.”
And sometimes we are not sure
if we are the cliff-face or the rock.
Black hole and event horizon.
In space, linear momentum is maintained,
until acted on planets continually fall
toward the sun (sunward)—
witness a giant object such as a star contract—
This is for Lauren whose absence
is an absence in my own presence.
This is for Lauren
whose future is my enclosed space—
Sometimes I think the world rests
on your back alone, (as in the time in Jersey
your shower caved in,)
and sometimes you are the star contracting,
gravitational attraction
like nights we drink wine on the beach
because judgment is the first thing to go
but then you still have everything else,
put yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time,
we could see the space of us contracting—
the way an explosion is really a series of explosions.
Internal pressure, a mechanical process, almost as if
forecasting itself. Marvel at the first surprise:
the astrononomic evidence of us—
we have too much luck to spare—
so often we confuse two things
for what they really are.
And this is our future, we are,
There are some dying languages
where there is no future tense.
The closest we could come is
the last words of a lost people:
“as into the darkness of a storm.”
A star contracts, we are that star
the space around that star contracts.
(We are.)
Rane Arroyo
All I Know About Mathematics
Odd: a scarecrow in the city,
on a raw rooftop of someone’s
simple-minded home of brick and
sweat equity, a scarecrow in
blue jeans and a red shirt able
to veil vague distances arrived.
The clouds add the white needed
to make these moments an abstract
American flag.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .A week later:
the scarecrow is gone—Canadian
winds? new ideology? My steps
lead to my address suddenly bare,
gravitas gone slumming. High school
never explained why zero was
invented. The Bible did say:
Just try to add one cubit to yourself.
Giants use a simple math: all mine.
Sometimes I read a young poet
and I’m jealous not to still be that
young. I used to be addicted to
words like piazza and worked
for years to get my heart broken
in one. I did it. So many words and
adventures were still ahead of me.
Let the young “stitch the broken
world” for its their enemy and
not mine. I’ve been on top of
a lover and conjugated Spanish
verbs and I’ve borrowed a truck
to follow the moon into a poem.
Be glad the young are dangerous
as they learn the world is full of
wild mirrors that can be shattered.
Rane Arroyo’s latest poetry books are The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press) and Same-Sex Séances (New Sins Press). He lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. He can be contacted at www.ranearroyo.com.
Odd: a scarecrow in the city,
on a raw rooftop of someone’s
simple-minded home of brick and
sweat equity, a scarecrow in
blue jeans and a red shirt able
to veil vague distances arrived.
The clouds add the white needed
to make these moments an abstract
American flag.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .A week later:
the scarecrow is gone—Canadian
winds? new ideology? My steps
lead to my address suddenly bare,
gravitas gone slumming. High school
never explained why zero was
invented. The Bible did say:
Just try to add one cubit to yourself.
Giants use a simple math: all mine.
Piazza
Sometimes I read a young poet
and I’m jealous not to still be that
young. I used to be addicted to
words like piazza and worked
for years to get my heart broken
in one. I did it. So many words and
adventures were still ahead of me.
Let the young “stitch the broken
world” for its their enemy and
not mine. I’ve been on top of
a lover and conjugated Spanish
verbs and I’ve borrowed a truck
to follow the moon into a poem.
Be glad the young are dangerous
as they learn the world is full of
wild mirrors that can be shattered.
Rane Arroyo’s latest poetry books are The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems (University of Arizona Press) and Same-Sex Séances (New Sins Press). He lives and writes in Toledo, Ohio. He can be contacted at www.ranearroyo.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
