by Kristin Bapst
My mom and brother can’t stand cigarette smoke.
He launches into asthma attacks;
she remembers the burn holes all over her mattress
and smokes long ago snuffed out – still longing for one
last cigarette.
I love the smell of Marlboros;
the salty acidic fragrance streaming
through my nostrils.
I remember my father’s white Beretta –
the scent of Gravity cologne
the soft feel of the red fuzzy seats
the seat belt scratching my neck.
He lit one up as he drove me to kindergarten –
I loved the pungent sweetness
of smoke and cologne.
We listened to classic television themes
and waved to the crossing guard
on Walnut & Lincoln –
coasting down the street,
his Marlboro weaving ghostly trails.
He blew out a stream of smoke
between buttery handfuls of popcorn
and sips of double-
We cheered on Hulk Hogan,
my mother scoffing as he snapped his lighter
and sparked another cigarette.
I took deep inhales and savored the fragrance.
At 62
he sat in a wheelchair –
broad shoulders shrunken
and hunched,
hair white and thinning.
He talked and I silently sang along
to the garble and slur of his favorite stories,
like a tape in his cassette deck
perpetually replaying –
But he still smoked Marlboros.
And I still love the smell.
If Sylvia Plath and L.L. Cool J. Had Gotten Down
by John Biscello
Don't call it a Comeback—
L.L. Cool J. wooing
Sylvia Plath in broad daylight
where they
dance
and get crazy theatrical
doing the Lazarus
(and doing it and doing it well)
Sylvia
telling L.:
You know, Cool J.,
I used to do it
so it felt like hell—
and L.L. laughed
and
laughed: Damn,
all you white women
are crazy and so
melo
dramatic,
especially the poets—
then
L.L. says: Queen,
L's gonna
teach you how to chill-
the oldskool way
—BOOM—
off comes L.L's
red leatherjacket and
white T-
twin-
and
Plath, tossing aside
her thesaurus, aaaaahhs
and ooooohhhs
and never having been done
by
a black dude before
she forgets all about
her old man
Teddy "Rough Rider" Hughes,
and
L.L. hittin that shit
hard-
your Daddy now, Who-
and Plath's fever
climbing
101, 102, 103,
till squeeeeeeee,
the kettle ready,
she peaks
and screams: Daddy,
Daddy,
you black bastard
I'm through.
by John Biscello
there were never any directions
so I invented zigzags and crossfades
cutting corners in places I have yet to come to
or leave behind.
And even if there had been directions,
a
neatly squared piece of paper with step-
say-
I wouldn’t have read them:
you know how stubborn I can be
when it comes to instructions or advice.
anyway, it’s all in the past,
no ticks spared Time’s nonstop flight:
from 8 to 18 to 33
to whatever then dead.
So, while I am alive and got your ear, I ask:
do you remember that time
we were separated—you pregnant, at your mother’s house,
several states and sunsets away,
and me, at home, mostly dark,
missing the hell out of you,
knowing fullwell the well’s bottom bonedry of water and wishes.
perhaps anxiety,
perhaps too many shades drawn at once,
perhaps, I don’t know, failure to breathe fully my own lungs—
in any case,
I would write and call
and you would write and call: broken-
yet threads of correspondence stitching
maps, prospects,
and that poem,
that’s what I wanted to ask you about.
that poem
scribbled rightquick sitting on bed
sustained passionate dash
sanctified by red wine
which I carefully spilled
upon the page
Pollock Rorschach design,
then, jerking off projections: you
red hair
sheets of snow
semen shooting lives
and stars
upon the wine the page.
I felt like jesus in a russ meyer film.
And the poem, sealed, was sent and you sent back word, saying—wow, that was different—
could almost hear you giggling—yes, it was different:
I loved you that much.
semen, wine, words,
love—all of it dries
and we are reminded it must be done all over again it must be done
one hand at a time,
many hands
bundlings straws into a chant: pleasing, writing, begging, spilling, fucking, writing,
pleasing, needing, writing, spilling:
love, love, love.
and so I ask, for old time’s sake,
what of that poem?
and my wine and semen
and love:
what of it now?
Did you save it:
are my love
and wine and semen
and words
catalogued in a dusty cardboard box titled—this way up—
and if so,
would you kindly give me directions
to those places I have yet to come to
or leave behind.
would you, please?
by J. Don Cook
the day is rumpled around the edges like the bed we made
love on last night but I made it this morning (futile nod to polite convention
because we just mess it up again, doing it mainly by chance a stray
visitor will witness our sheets in disarray and judge), just as we are scolded
by a mother in navy blue rayon with polka dots to never leave the house without
clean underwear, the white-
undies she refuses aid,
and we die with skid marks on our souls,
and by noon my third cup of coffee and ruminations
and sore nipples, the sun’s heat drips out the wrinkles
of the day, the wind a final ironing, starch optional,
washed clean by nocturnal dew,
the new day announces pristine possibilities
mocking me with strident enthusiasm like a blank
sheet of paper and the wide-
mesa boisterous flatiron cauldron, the black dot
circling guilt, turkey vultures circling my dying,
my dying, drying crumpled skin—
oh,
who will make me up,
merely to avoid
unnecessary embarrassment?
by Ian Forsyth
1.
When the gladiator Spartacus and his rebel slaves
failed to defy the Romans
They cutlassed them and captured six thousand
and crucified them along the Appian Way from Capua to Rome.
All blood flows back to Rome.
on that ancient highway, 350 miles long—
The bodies caking skin in the sun
dripping molded vegetables like the bloated tomato
slapped across their chests
And the nails that went between the eight bones
that built their wrists
In more ancient Greece you could measure the danger of a path
by the height of roadside cairns.
At first, traversing from Athens
even 20 miles
could bring to you the beasts or thieves
cleave yr feet or hoof yr hands
and down you’d shrink
to shade or satyr.
But stone by stone, travelers brave
placed these simple boons
So, grew confidence (y) and traffic (x)
and (z) the safety of congestion
And the institutionalization that square pillars
with face, beard, and erect penis
would replace outdated gathered stones.
But other Greeks castrated these road markers to say
they didn’t like the Tyrant of Athens
but also to say:
“Don’t let all roads gather blood, and point straight.”
Or at least I hope they meant to say that.
However morbid it may seem,
the Hermes boners to the crucifixions,
remind me of the modern billboard.
How myth begat advertisement
and how they’ve the same transfixion.
2.
Cristian, my Chilean hostfather, gave me a book
before I left in the night on my bus back to Argentina
about the people who lived here before roads.
And I read how
If someone had committed murder in the tribe
They’d have to march into the wild
and find a perfect shaped stone that
they could hold in their hand
and start to drill a hole in it.
It’d take at least six months away
and they’d come back to celebration
once they’d finished
and plopped that holed stone
into the open palms of
the dead’s loved ones.
Back along a river in Argentina
I found a purple stone slid
in the road—I unburied it
picked up the forty pounds
and walked a good five miles
before I rolled it off to the side
deciding I wouldn’t take it back to the cob cabin
I wouldn’t set it on the porch as a mark of my visit
and an offering—I’d let it roll down that
dusty pine needled hill until it kerplunked
into the blue river and washed itself clean
from three hundred years of foot travelers.
3.
When I returned home from Buenos Aires
my eyes realized I’d been lopping off
the tops of buildings in my town.
Walking past them more than once
I’d lost track of any hidden things
in my line of view.
If I were to switch with an Argentine
the dead black berries dried and shriveled
would be amazing
and the multicolored junk mail decaying with leaves
foreign
and the subgenres of walk-
mesmerizingly similar so amazing that
I’d see everyone just as a human
Before this and that
This country, that road, this alley.
And I’d turn into an alley
and, lose myself
in the newness.
5.
Alleys can be undiscovered things
if we’re trying to answer the ages old question
“Where is left to go?”
My father always says
“Americans hide everything they don’t want you to see in their alleys.”
Then, in my alley our homemade cairns are
dirty diapers, spoiled dinners, and extra transmission fluid.
One day, I was walking in my alley
around the edge of the Great Lake mud-
on a windy day, and I saw a plastic shopping bag.
Someone else saw it too, he was farther down
and the possessed thing floated between us
And we didn’t need telepathy to guess
We were both thinking the same thing
We’d seen this, and we’d already been asked to marvel
because what American hasn’t seen American Beauty?
and the creepy boy next door who videotapes
plastic bags like ethereal spirits rising
in the wind and machinery of a gulleted alley’s
sermon
But both knowing what each other was knowing
did we both even try to go further
to know more of a metaphor
or did we just keep a breathable plastic bubble
around our face
and keep breathing in recycled oxygen
watching how it mists,
in front of us
and not noticing how it goes into us
and affects us
and associates us to the world.
I still haven’t gazed deeper into the plastic bag.
I have a cairn of them wedged sideways between my fridge and the wall
from the prolonged influence of an Athenian marketplace.
and I never think to do anything with them.
Even if I was a sensitive
I couldn’t feel its rhythm
couldn’t know its past
Haven’t got the energy to know it.
But we watched it billow and fall
Swirl up (nothing like the maple seeds/ who were baby birds from the nest/ taking a first flight/
But a last as well./ dervishing themselves to/ street and the curb/ they blew against as cars/
rumbled by.)
No, that bag is
a continuous deathlessness
No place to germinate—Have you
ever sucked one in yr mouth
the tasteless balloon
w/o a heartbeat
that blubs on yr tonsils—
The utter strange dead of the
thing
might be that polynomial on the
underside of the Buddha’s lip
wedged between that and his gum
while the bacteria builds up
and releases its yeast into our veins
(the way sea salt travels through the stomach of a whale
in the rhythm of a wave) and that bacterial prokaryote
numbs the pain that we won’t
end up
just like that floating bag….
no, we won’t.
We’ll all sag
and then,
we’ll sink.
by Maria Rachel Hooley
She’s barely twenty
And waif-
That she holds
While sitting in front of a run-
On a forgettable block.
She’s still wearing a maternity gown
Four months after the delivery because
It’s clean and has no rips.
It’s been a week since she’s even looked outside
Much less sat in the warmth of the summer sun,
And the dark circles under her eyes echo former bruises.
If you asked her, she’d tell you the walls did it
Or she fell.
Yeah, she fell, four years ago
When her mother told her if she
Couldn’t keep her legs closed,
She’d better not come home.
After all, nobody in her right mind
Wants to be a grandmother
“And I ain’t got enough money to
Take care of your problem.”
Six months later, a daughter flowed out
With a river of her blood.
Even after the episiotomy, the bleeding continued
But it came from her nose, her scalp,
Even her ears.
Two weeks ago the power winked out
Because her husband couldn’t pay rent,
And that night, she paid it with blood
And flesh that absorbed his semen,
Nurturing another egg that had no choice
But to blossom into a human.
by Maria Rachel Hooley
She leans over the tomato plant and mindlessly tugs
Weeds from where they have snuggled next to the plant.
Sweat spills down her forehead, her cheeks, her neck,
Dampening her shirt as the unforgiving sun burns into her back.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the scarecrow watching her,
The gaudy pink and blue ribbon adorning its neck flapping in the stilted breeze
And suddenly she remembers herself at five with golden hair tied in a ponytail
With a pink ribbon cascading amid curls, the swaying movements
So much like rippling wind that shakes that ribbon.
Despite the heat, she wears long sleeves and pants.
She stands stiff-
Hurts less that way.
And older scab beneath her hair itches as sweat soaks around it.
And her shoulders and chest ache-
Broken hurts worse.
She’d spent this married eternity broken in some way.
He’d been her husband a year before he noticed the blemish centered on her back.
“What is that?” he’d asked, hovering close to her.
“A birthmark,” she’d replied.
“Looks like damn bruise,” he’d said,
His fingers brushing the skin harder, trying to erase.
And he would know what those look like, she thought,
Remembering his hands balled into fists.
She closes her eyes and focuses on the far-
The long green vines drape a barbed wire fence just a few feet away.
He’d always wanted to kill the blossoms, but she somehow managed to excuse
Their frailty and beauty by saying she’d cut them back and
That they didn’t take up much space.
That spot of soil is clean again and she moves on,
Reaching for another weed and pulling
As if it were so easily extracted from a soil
Hardened with summer’s heat.
by Benjamin Nardolilli
I have brought these memories
Into exile again and again,
Sent them out to do labor,
To hold up the gaps in craft
With the glitter dust of emotions,
Using the broken to fill
In the cracks.
I have seen her face
Drift from body to body,
I should rejoice
That she can be found
So easily and at the ready.
The games with her name
Have all been played
All exhausted to the end.
The monikers were changed
Through the alchemy of cleverness,
And I have cried her name in purity
Of element and essence at night.
Her name has been hidden too,
Body described with no title,
Portrait made with no subject given,
Made into a tale swallowing itself.
The memories remain, the words
Still hold the pain,
I have squeezed the coals,
Why is there still burning?
Portia, how should I swallow them?
They are already inside me.
by Chris Nold
Centimeter slices of sunlight
inching across a frayed gray rug.
Blurred pupils, eyes half-
(& I never really knew
how to describe their color.)
Mother, look at your baby boy,
your pride and joy, arising from a bed of
scattered pine needles and oceanic blue sheets
in a dress of matching hue.
I wonder,
there must be some
skeletal chamber within Duke’s
library system where the collective,
catastrophic nights of its constituents
are catalogued.
I
Spilled garbage can guts.
Fire extinguishers unleashed.
Phony false alarms.
II
Frost once wrote about travels through
the forest into darker woods,
a waking/dreaming life.
Pete is navigating through both tonight alternating,
outrunning phantom police sirens
on a daunting quest. The supernatural
supermarket where I once spotted a mirage
of Ginsberg spying Whitman
glows eerily ahead.
Meanwhile, Dave’s a camper captured
in Frost’s darker 2nd wood, pining for deliverance,
cringing nude,
shackled and paddled,
by a girl no one can describe
or prescribe for anyone.
III
At coordinates foreign at first,
daylight has a way of morphing
one’s wavering recollection into a reality
straddled by a buxom, leopard-
rose of Texas. An escapee clad in bicycle shorts,
an exodus across low-
districts wearing a knockoff African dashiki.
IV
A congregation of burnout angels huddled under
a Native-
strung-
room drenched and dripping in red. The window,
slightly ajar, puffs of smoke snaking
out and skyward, spirals illuminated in flickering
pale searchlight.
A strange camouflaged girl on her side, hand
on hip, her tongue curiously stroking inner ear.
She coos along with the turntable, her whispers
floating & swaying drug-
I shiver incessantly. There are no blankets but
I’m melting into her.
The needle spins in a perpetual groove as the
earth rotates into a dawn advancing. I’m stirred awake
by something, I can’t say what. The bulb has burnt out,
and the room possesses the chilled shade
of unpolished steel, a silent grey.
In some hazy resurrection I am alone.
V
Mysterious scrapes.
Awaking with bruises where
no bruises should be.
(a celebration of substance and sustenance)
by Chris Nold
times square scribe in digital age lawn furniture
a constant captured background photograph phantom
slow pitch penning a story lacking its end
harvest moon midnight high
rooftop champagne flow
rainbow luminaries
Italian exposure Irish blessing
vampiring again throughout 4AM schemes
arm in sling, switch-
the foreign diplomat spared my life in the crosswalk
I live on an ave. & a blvd. simultaneously
my st. suffers from multiple personalities
that even 125Th's bootleg metaphysics fail to explain
every van on the block is green and arresting
with memory rides elsewhere
rejuvenating smooth touch of porcelain dawn
unseasonably cool & still as winter carnival carousel
National Record Store Day
black vinyl fingertips grasping sound
the tallest man on earth
a dark face handcuffed to every
wrenching jukebox lyric
pendulum thoughts, waking & dreaming
bare mattress complications haunting
tupelo honey Rutili waltz
an album's orbit on the needle's kiss
snagging & unraveling my ghost's crimson sheet
the fleeting thread through my hands,
forever as the vinyl's closing groove
by Chris Nold
Where is home, you ask?
in red eyes, camouflaged by sunglasses, taking refuge
in want ads littered with prayers Thanks be to the saints!
and did my morning coffee just toss a wink at me?
in the trains birthed from metro-
emerging from thunderstorms
awashed in an august dusk that hugs the tenement buildings
and So. Bronx steeples.
in the extinction of New York stars
the weekend moon hangs midnight high, and accessorizes
the werewolves on parade in trafficlight tuxedos
in the static ‘tween FM stations of thought and regret,
where ghosts hang like chalkdust floating, remnants
of passion scribbled & haphazardly wiped clean
from a slate.
in those periodic driftings where in my mind I am again a spry
young fawn lapping up the shallow Clarion, cool and unimposing.
in other words,
I don’t know how to answer your question.
by Steven Richter
The days have long since passed away
As such should be from boy to man
And the laughter stretches far between
While swords gripped tight by callused hands
The crunch of frozen snow beats on
Our wearied feet march further still
This wars’ so long an hour
As seconds tick each battle field
These strong shoulders have slumped so far
And three fingers turned to black
A bugle sounds another charge
And shields meet as we attack
God is called from every side
Still we've yet to touch his face
Steam rises from the crimson snow
As souls escape the hell we've made
A second lingered here three days
I fear my breath may bare more stones
Is guilt a soldier's only creed
And our oaths all that we own
A piercing wind cuts through my armor
And the clouds break enough to see the sun
It's ray falls on my face
And a lost memory over-
When the smell of summer pines
Held on a warm evening breeze
My heart has quickened pace
Because I swear I hear her speak
"Would you like your tea out here tonight?"
"So we can watch the children play"
She sits down close beside me
And we watch the last light of day
A golden hew across the sky
Lulls us into a long embrace
My son's laughter has a sing song tone
That pulls a smile across my face
My daughter steps with her mother's gait
Self assured in graceful time
She sits on my lap, head on my chest
Is that her heart beat, or is it mine
My wife kisses me softly on the cheek
She whispers quietly in my ear
"You've said you’d like another child"
"Well, I'm sure one will soon be here"
I look deep into her ever-
I've seen that sparkle twice before
I'm sure that sometime after Christmas
We'll make room to love one more
The sun has finally sat tonight
Because I can barely see her smile
The news has made it hard to breath
As soldiers pass me single file
by Justin Swink
I. Mythos
The head purloined from the giant’s shoulders,
Bathed in shadow, steady in the boy’s grasp. Fissures
Of fate carved into the face as redacted
Utterances fall drooling from the lips. David
In rapture dangling his trophy like a carrot
Before the Philistines, balancing the blade
That snuffed out a myth, upon shoulders
Tender as veal.
II. Logos
Scattered rhythmically about the scene, culled
From Caravaggio’s feathered sword,
Shades split the light of glory more cleanly
Than the hand that wielded the crucifix blade,
Weaning wine from sacred blood,
Bread from earthly body: knowing from
Nothing. The face of the poet
Of paints, humble in humor, dressed
Over Goliath’s skull, mocking,
Begging the audience ‘insert face here.’
by Justin Swink
Warm wind upon open water dings
the buoy, back and forth, chasing
its shadow amongst the waves.
Men’s minds lost at sea arrested
by the buoy’s bell, counting down
the maritime minutes till hope,
or death, peaks from the horizon.
Brine, salt and stench bathe the blistery
cracked feet, longing to walk upon
beaches that haunt their dreams.
Young minds stir in old boys’
bodies, waiting. Bronchial breath
pushing and pitching for sound, yet forming
no words.
by Justin Swink
Night trains are heard
in antique stores, between
the smells of tea and age.
Cold tracks upon
every shelf lead a mind
nowhere, but back,
to claustrophobic summer nights
beneath dim street lamps waking
unto children still at play, juicing
the day like a ripe orange.
Later they lay awake between parents
sleeping, listening to night sound,
unsure if the murmurs they hear
are from without,
or something inside-
like a locomotive flung
from rails too feeble to carry
the weight,
pressing down.
by Justin Swink
Between the Zippo clack and rustle of rosary
beads, blue smoke spider-
between us, you tell me you’ve traveled and seen
the chambers of men’s hearts as well as their guns,
firing off the only two feelings self-
fear and faith.
Biblically erudite and sharp
as a 90° angle, we drink
each other’s words and piss
them out as fast. Greeting one another
with smiles hiding
fangs we bare only in parting,
once again we’re caught
in the revolving door with no exit
Like a jackass who feels
a notion to move somewhere
other than where it is,
and can’t, or the mayfly
that kamikazed into my bath, believing
it would help its situation
but didn’t: I can’t figure a way to turn
this poem as quickly as you
turned your back on me.
by Larry D. Thomas
For hours now,
the landscape’s become
increasingly horizontal,
flattening like the pulse
of a patient whose heart’s
giving out, a thin, flat line
disturbed at lengthening
intervals by the frantic
verticals of distant buttes
and mesas, crumbling
toward oblivion, privately
owned, out of reach, safe
from my feet and fingers
as the abstract elements
of an artist’s dream, an artist
flawless in her arrangement
of texture, line, shape and color
with no other meaning,
immaterial out here
as my ego
seeping through my skull
like the colors of sundown
sucked into the indigo
depths of darkness.
Suite 1700: Gynecology & Obstetrics
by Darah Wraine
"Listen," I say, "Can you put on a magic show down there?
Maybe make a dove fly out
of my womb? Something beautiful,
something to take away the pus and grit and grease
of my body?"
He smiles, this doctor, a practiced face behind prudent, quiet eyes.
He
is old, weathered, like an ancient church
the devoted still crawl inside to give
their prayers.
He must have been examining vaginas during the height of Rome
when women
opened their legs routinely for more than inspection.
For more than safety.
His hands
are rough, lacking empathy,
I think of a hungry peasant
rummaging through a potato
sack.
but I do not complain.
It is rare for men to act as anything else.
This is your
body at its most alive
when it becomes a battlefield
and you learn about open wounds,
internal machinery,
how to bury your dead,
nurturing those parts that still remain,
watching
them like newborns, like time.
What sun-
Look at this, my indignant beak."
This is how we learn to survive, cell
by cell.
When blood turns to water,
when our bodies flush their unwanted out
like sediment
churning in a riverbed.
The skin is an orphan,
discovering new parents every day.
