Issue 5: Spring 2018
Poetry
Daffodil Yawp
Tyler Dettloff
Every leaf is spirit
in retrospect. A flower can destroy
my frontal cortex. Wrecked spring
puddles in wretched rain drop
dew spots breathe hell toward
dawn. I'm melting. I'm melting.
Molting larva crept from mud,
the muffled insect crypt. Hallowed
gravel and hallelujah screams
grovel for snow banks to forgive
trash, needles, sand, and salt.
I've severed all but taproots.
Bacteriophage gnaw regardless
of salty soils from winter roads,
inflamed by sand scrapped
shovel scoops.
I'm only trying to compost myself,
to make the most
of myself, to choose
myself despite the piles of sweat
that stain my bed.
I'm yearning.
Hall’r like a trumpet, a daffodil yawp,
a crocus beaming. I awoke with dirt
in my eyelids but you let me call it soil.
Turn me to the wind, rain, lions, fog,
lambs. I roll with integrity, under
what you've named retrospect.
Tyler Dettloff is an Anishinaabe Métis, Italian, Cherokee, and Irish writer, musician, teacher, gardener, and water protector raised on the edge of the Delirium Wilderness. He currently lives in Gnoozhekaaning (Bay Mills, Michigan) and is an English Instructor at Lake Superior State University. He also teaches creative writing at Algoma University as an adjunct. He has earned a B.S. in English and a dual track M.A. in Literature and Pedagogy from Northern Michigan University in Gitchinamebineziibing (Marquette, Michigan). Mostly, he enjoys walking along rivers with his wife Daraka and his dogs Banjo and Fiddle.
Oh My Goodness
Ethan Phibbs
per ritual we deliver the pitcher distending all night
not bothering water
till it spills cloud traffic
forecast's no apropos birdswells
spokes in a chokehold spilt on the kitchen sill
dishes exist still
as pagoda eaves of worshipping turtles
eventually invisible in the swill
along with your narcotic trickle
light green heat lightning
trailing sage smoke out past my post
long absconded to trek your aquarium mythos
the inside of a pummeled bulb center ember ebbing
reverent to the sum of slumped shapes making up
the memory of distance sticking to near-sighted tributaries
& intermittent temples like branched bivouacs
i make my way forward & back
by carving myself out along the embankment
of clay & grass the elements of resolution
nearing home or so i pivot
with miles to go to a lifetime
when i find you face up the turbulence skimming
a birdbath divine hollow whistling
into the instrument of forever phenomena
i’ve been waiting for ever
before your estuary and ferns
i jiggle loose my last carved rib like a rare book
from the shelf of my body
an alms collapsing me into your index
of breathless names
Ethan Phibbs is a poet from Illinois, currently living & writing in Panama City, FL. His work has appeared in HeartWood Literary Magazine, Unbroken Journal, Eunoia Review and Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.
How to Wake Up
Brian Leibold
Swing your legs from mattress to carpet,
stand up, get dressed, move
from bedroom to kitchen,
light the stove,
fill the kettle with filtered water
and place it on the blue flame,
play a game of pinball with spinning eyes,
win by not spinning out
if you fail to light at once upon
the only needful thing in glass
this grave and early hour,
pour boiling water
over roasted grounds,
stir and endure
four long and forlorn minutes,
press the plunger, and now pour
the rich black coffee into the clean white mug,
never the red one that recalls
the rushed and grasped
after bliss you achieved
after all,
but unhappily ever after
those weak-kneed June mornings
when the force to swoon
was strong in you. This morning
is the single morning. You are, as of today,
alone.
Bring your mug to the desk
and rest it on steadfast wood.
Ignore the beginnings
of thought-indictments:
self for lack of steadiness;
soul for lack of evidence.
Remember wood rots,
and look out the window.
It may be winter; even so,
the slim ray of cardinal sky.
The slightly bitter brew you sip,
dark holy water for the body,
washing away the sins of sleep
from dead-tired red eyes.
Sleep no more, taste and see
how simple it is to hear,
to attend to the voice of a chickadee
that sends you outside with its song
and along with your seen breath
disturbs your half-sleep.
To wake in full
will take a life of meaning
made new each morning
at the desk
upon which your elbow leans,
on which your other hand,
long held sinister,
holds steady now.
Blank page, black pen, steam still from the coffee.
Empty mind blindly attempting to deter
any direct penned penetration
or sad-to-be-hidden side door entry
into its brittle pitiful cut-glass cage.
Why oblige this gaunt and ingrown
mass of sundown groaning
that was never designed
to design the way out.
Resisting its resistance
is a soundless, stilted dance,
motionless funeral waltz
between the pair of chaired shadows
and the standing stunned widow,
shut window beside her stressing
by transparent reflection
her God-given isolation,
powerless
to dress up or redress
its viewed truths: it is dark
outside; she is, as of tonight,
alone.
You are, as of this morning,
at work, the door closed
until the silence strikes
your ears open, and you hear
the green river that livens
and flows through
this withholding cloud
of a book-racked cell.
Remain here, and walk
through this desert,
lie in the dry wash,
lay down your arms
to the earth,
place your hands
on the burro’s bones
by the cottonwood tree,
hear your heart beating hard
into the heat of sunned stone,
sense the small
sand-colored lizard crawl
down your legs to your feet as they sweat
a good foot under golden expanse.
Dive into your thirst
like this, and dig down.
Remain here, below ground,
until the hour strikes
your ears open, and you hear
the flow you need, the life
you only can hear
from beneath, deep beneath
the thirst-stilled land,
the sound
of water.
For this, the only need,
your eye sharpens,
your hand holds steady,
and your mouth closes,
for now.
Brian Leibold is a writer who was born and raised in Virginia. He holds a degree in Wilderness Therapy and Creative Writing from Prescott College, where he wrote and edited for the school newspaper, The Raven Review. He recently returned from a month of doing hurricane disaster relief work in Puerto Rico, serving as an Americorps member for the Great Appalachian Valley Conservation Corps. Brian enjoys running at dawn, dancing at night, and listening to the wind in the trees in the time in between.
Original Rain
Gail DiMaggio
In one version,
the first water on earth is still
the only water on earth,
alien molecules, carried
from the stars by asteroids
and transforming ever since:
vapor to ice, broken to healed, pure
to poisoned. Back again.
But in another version, rain began
with Eve beside a river
we can’t find anymore. Eve,
who understood her choices
and wanted wilderness.
So God, in a fury,
made a storm, let it pour, and Eve
lifted her face
into His new, original rain,
so she could brush from her lashes
the same cold drops that course
the back of my neck. That bead
our hair, streak
our beloved’s arms, drip
from the tips of our children’s
fingers. Today, almost-snow
coats the road,
and over the rush and drum
of the river, I tell my daughter
Eve’s riddle:
What stays sweet till
the first bite, costs a little more
than you’ll ever own? What is that
pecking at the dream-ground? Sleek,
black wings. Glittering eye.
What Eve Might Say
Gail DiMaggio
the prophets say sinful
meaning me
meaning I am full of sin
because I didn’t obey and trespassed
and gorged on all that fruit
they hate the thought of it
the juiciness the syrup
running down my chin
and then they tell each other
about the snake about my lust
for the snake
the way I let him
enter me with his words
my loins loosened
at the sound of him,
they say
I wanted his narrow words
licked his sleek scales
truth is I barely saw
that mottled creature
blinking stupidly in the sun
what if I told them, what if I said,
I lust all right
but for a man, for a man’s voice
shoulders hips hands
sweet knowing hands
what if I said the snake
never spoke a word
and I
stole the fruit anyway
Gail DiMaggio lives and writes in Concord NH. Her work has appeared most recently in Salamander, Slipstream and the Tishman Review. In 2017, her book, Woman Prime, was chosen by Jericho Brown for the Permafrost Poetry prize. It has just been released by Alaska University Press.
The East Monbo Kids
Joyce Compton Brown
could crawl
all over the river rocks
while their mamas
worked as weavers
and spoolers while
their daddies slept
for third shift
in row houses
with fans running
to keep out the noise
and stir the heat
and the kids stayed
outside at the river
or in the cool red
clay under the tall
stilt houses and
they could run like
one big family and
if anybody wanted
a real Coca Cola
they’d walk right
in the mill where
cotton floated hazy
in the heatwave air
looms hummed
and clacked their
mamas coughed
spit out the window
and told the kids to
get on out of there fast
as they ever could
and not come back
Joyce Compton Brown has published in several journals, including, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Kakalak, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and Ponder. She studied poetry at Hindman Institute and Wildacres, and won the 2017 poetry competition. After teaching language and literature at Gardner-Webb University, she now concentrates on poetry. Her chapbooks are Bequest (Finishing Line Press, 2015) and Singing with Jarred Edges (Main Street Rag Publishing, 2018), a finalist in the Cathy Smith Bowers Chapbook Contest.
Riding Lawn Mower
Denton Loving
After the first small-engine repairman
tells me five miles are too far for a house call
or a pick up, the second repairman tells me
I should disassemble the mower myself,
bring him the offending portion.
Lincoln said his father taught him to work
but never to like it. My father taught me
to work on lawn mowers. Naturally,
I think about buying a new machine.
Instead, I crawl onto summer-warm grass
like my father taught me. I pull
S-pins and retaining springs, freeing
suspension arms and the anti-sway bar,
separating clutch rod from clutch lever.
I mechanic my way beyond my skill set
until the mulching deck falls limp.
A pneumatic drill unlocks frozen, broken
blades turned upside down. New ones
hex bolt on, naked edges glinting in the light.
I reverse engineer, reattach metal to metal,
secure it all with a taut pulley belt.
Such unbindings and rebindings are common.
This tractor and I will again tame briar hells
of blackberry, wild rose. We will battle stones
rising quietly in the pasture at night like ghosts.
There is no choice but to keep going,
to keep working until the final, unfixable end.
Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collection Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and editor of Seeking Its Own Level, an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks). Follow him on twitter @DentonLoving.
Two Christmas Stories
Jeffrey H. MacLachlan
I.
Firewood ignites in a burst of classifieds.
Marijuana joint-ends appear and vanish
in the air with fireflies while clouds arch
like surprised eyebrows and stars
close like bruised eyes.
The small fire reveals mountains
of fentanyl and paper
bills. Three men drag
a body into the water in a hush.
II.
A woman waits for her teenage
son who walked with his step-
brother at dusk to their father’s across
the lake for matches. Her womb
feels empty and she worries of spending
the rest of the night alone.
Fireworks shatter in the sky
as their twins decorate
the dark waves.
Jeffrey H. MacLachlan also has recent work in New Ohio Review, Columbia Journal, the minnesota review, among others. He teaches literature at Georgia College & State University. He can be followed on Twitter @jeffmack.
Inmate Work Crew
Ace Boggess
Amid tall grass & wildflowers in the median,
orange-vested over orange—one shade a warning
not to run them over, the other just a warning:
danger. Watch them stagger their uneven path,
freed from cells, not free.
They look like zoo beasts loosed by a storm:
feral, strange. They don’t belong.
They make of this landscape a painting
that features forests set ablaze.
With their sticks, they pick up fast-food sacks,
soda bottles, plastic shopping bags, &
cigarette butts they slip into pockets
after guards have turned away. Treats for later.
Little escapes. What there is in a world
where even weeds smell like bleach &
stand up straight, mimicking prison bars.
My Father’s Music: The Oak Ridge Boys
Ace Boggess
in his baby-blue pickup with bench seats
no shoulder straps or cellphones
restricting contact like glittering cages
I’d lean against him while he drove
close enough that I could smell
his English Leather & feel oscillations
thrumming as he sang
along in almost-harmony
El-vi-ra El-vi-ra his voice wavering
like a foghorn between baritone & bass
I could sleep then on a long drive
my childhood lullaby
a country choir in the fading light
Ace Boggess is author of three books of poetry, most recently Ultra Deep Field (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2017), and the novel A Song Without a Melody (Hyperborea Publishing, 2016). His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.
Abandon
Julia Klatt Singer
We fill the house with birds.
Turn shadows whole.
Wear them like skin.
Life, in abandon, is a beautiful mess.
No picking up.
No putting back.
The emptiness the sun finds--
we climb into,
make it our bed.
Julia Klatt Singer is the poet in residence at Grace Neighborhood Nursery School and a rostered artist for Compas. She is co-author of Twelve Branches: Stories from St. Paul, (Coffee House Press), and author of three books of poetry; In the Dreamed of Places, (Naissance Press), A Tangle Path to Heaven, and Untranslatable, (North Star Press). She has co-written two dozen songs with composers Tim Takach and Jocelyn Hagen. Ms. Singer’s son likes to describe her as a long-haired, sweater-wearing poet and thief.
Snakeskin Revival
Paula Kaufman
Homecoming Court: King Coal & Queen Shale Biscuit
Prince Crazy Quilt & Princess Buckwheat Pancake
Ramp Parade—sweet & skunk
Pepperoni Roll Band sponsored by Patriot Coal & Justice
“West Virginia Water Smells Like Licorice”
Fire blooms rainbows
above silver-stemmed plants.
Export: future tall tales
Import: snake, oil, revival
A demitasse rim is too small for mind
post disaster,
don’t slip on frog egg jelly,
walnut-trip, paw-paw-stumble
sleep on a boat in the River Styx
forever seining pomegranate seed ghosts.
At the Rock & Gem Show
kids eagerly carve soap stone
finger grab bag
split geodes
genuine Shark’s Teeth: 5 for $1.00
pyrite
fool’s gold
dendrology and gold flaked off Capitol Dome
breakfast-panning for a river’s suture & soul
mouth of opioid mountain
deer antler cataract.
Wanted: A date to the snakeskin revival
under cinnamon banjo moon wearing lichen-fringed boots & fish bone.
Swing lantern so ancestors can find ways home.
Drink: sassafras & elderberry.
Entertainment: puffballs releasing dreams in rain.
Time: labradorite moonfog.
Tune: Wooden spoon castanet and hop tatt until
twig shavings whittle backwards
into forest.
Paula Kaufman published her first poetry book, Asking the Stars Advice in April, 2018. She works in the Planning Department in Kanawha County, West Virginia and has spent the last six years traveling, studying and teaching in Palestine, Japan and Holland.
Spaceman in New York
Dilantha Gunawardana
Your pal for the happy hour, the bartender,
Pours you a Scotch, so smooth, you forget
You are all alone, searching to paste yourself
On a stool or a booth, to collide with a world different
To yours. You wear a space suit
That keeps you a voyager, passing planets,
That ate in their own trajectories and speeds
Some like Saturn or Jupiter crowded with
Satellites, near and far, while others are searching
For the meaning of amity, of being connected
In shoulder-armistices, absented of heart matter.
Still you’re in constant danger of losing yourself,
To a woman who unfastens your helmet,
Untangles your tether and makes
You float in strange places. And still, nothing beats solitude,
That strange locality, only you can
Enter or vacate, a spaceship made for one being,
That you sit on, as you take a sip of
Scotch in, knowing that in this strange town,
Which is lost it ‘Amsterdam’ to become ‘York’,
Everything comes in journeys, to planets, even galaxies,
So unlike yours. Aliens that stop you
On the track, with a stare or a glance,
Or brush against your pacing clavicle,
As you rush past, a bag around your shoulder,
On your way to the underground subway system.
And solitude is just insatiable skin,
And an indiscreet heart, which together search high and low
For a satellite like the moon – Selene.
Perfect as a circle on one day,
And toying with imperfection on others,
Summoning you like a space lighthouse
For you travel to the moon and back
Once landed, you vacate your space suit. In that instant,
Selenography translates to loon.
Dr Dilantha Gunawardana is a molecular biologist, who graduated from the University of Melbourne. He moonlights as a poet. Dilantha wrote his first poem at the age of 32 and now has more than 1900 poems on his blog. His poems have been accepted/published in Canary, Forage, Kitaab, Eastlit, American Journal of Poetry, Zingara Poetry Review and Ravens Perch, among others. He was also awarded the prize for “The emerging writer of the year – 2016” in the Godage National Literary Awards, Sri Lanka for his first collection of poems (Kite Dreams – A Sarasavi Publication), while being shortlisted for the poetry prize. Dilantha is a dual citizen of Sri Lanka and Australia, and shares his experiences from two different cultures. He blogs at – https://meandererworld. wordpress.com/
The art of having an ending
Milla van der Have
- is not hard. I for one
like to think of a garden
preferably in the morning
the trees still forming
in the light.
The air is fresh, even cold
so that my lungs spring
to life as they once did,
sucking in that never-
ending pattern
and partake in it.
There may be a pond
and the still life of birds
or better yet, a lake.Things
end so much better
near lakes.
They are wilder and brooding,
like a bohemian lover
you can never quite fathom.
Her darkness, the promise
of entrance
the things that may wait for you.
Milla van der Have (1975) is a Gemini. She writes poems and short stories and is currently knee-deep in a novel. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust+Moth, Mud Season Review, Bird’s Thumb and Timberline Review among others. She is the author of Ghosts of Old Virginny (2015, Aldrich Press), a chapbook about Virginia City, Nevada. Milla lives in Utrecht, The Netherlands, with her wife and 2 badass rabbits.