The Honey Land Review Spring 2011 Volume 3 Issue 2 by Anne Hasenstab

Spring 2011

Volume 3 Issue 2

Weeds by James Owens

Poetry Page 3 J.P Dancing Bear Cowgirl Guernica Page 5 Elijah Burrell Getting There Page 7 William Doreski The Brown Decades Page 9 Zachary Greenberg Nightblooming Cereus Page 11 Lois Marie Harrod Your Name Like Cutlery Page 13 Bill Hudson At Yellow Point Page 15 Joanne Lowery Fruit, Perhaps 1868 Photography Page 17 JosephEditor Somoza Equivalence Associate Editor Page 19 Barry Spacks Glass Boxes Theresa Bruzese Amy Page 21 Westphal Mark Allan Williams One or Two

Photography Editor in Chief

Cover, Page 6 James Owens AnneAliHasenstab Page 8 Wisch Page 10 Renee Mallett The Honey Land is a contemporary PageReview 12 Brian Betteridgeweb journal dedicated Pagephotography 14,18 Hillary to the poetry and of bothEvans emerging and established Page 16work that Ryan artists.We embrace pushesLuz the boundaries of art and crePage 22 Jacob Oet The Migrants Pink ativity and applaud risk takers. HLRCoat publishes online bi-annually

Photography by Ali Wisch

Alaska by Wanderings Photography byJames Ryan Luz Photography and welcomes submissions from across theOwens globe. Roil

Playground Studyspotlight Photography by Hillary Evans Graduate student Solitaire Photography by Renee Mallett IntoOld the Lake World Photography by Brian Betteridge Photography Photography by by Hillary Renee Evans Photography by Jacob Oet Page 24 Calvin Olsen BostonMallet University Page Honey 25-29 Contributors Bios Land Review All Rights Reserved

Poetry Page 4 J.P Dancing Bear Cowgirl Guernica Page 6 Elijah Burrell Getting There Page 8 William Doreski The Brown Decades Page 10 Zachary Greenberg Nightblooming Cereus Page 12 Lois Marie Harrod Your Name Like Cutlery Page 14 William Hudson At Yellow Point Page 16 Joanne Lowery Fruit, Perhaps 1868 Page 18 Joseph Somoza Equivalence Page 20 Barry Spacks Glass Boxes Page 22 Mark Alan Williams One or Two

Photography Cover, Page 7, 21 Page 9 Page 11 Page 13 Page 15,19 Page 17 Page 23

James Owens Ali Wisch Renee Mallett Brian Betteridge Hillary Evans Ryan Luz Jacob Oet

Graduate Old student spotlight World Photography by Jacob Oet Calvin Olsen Boston University

Page 25 Page 26-30

Contributors Bios

J.P. Dancing Bear Cowgirl Guernica for Barbara Shomaker you may have instigated the whole thing: you know: what with telling the cowgirls (half cow/half girl) to pay attention to the dwindling buffalo: it didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t take much: just one more loser cowpoke: staring at a nice set of udders: is all: they never saw it coming (againâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;too busy staring at udders): the CGs overtook the covered wagon: and the stage: all headed west: they shot the sheriff: AND the deputy: and burned down the town with the sunset: left a pyre of mannequins: over-proportioned Barbie dolls of objectification: bags of money in the back of the coach: like breasts: they could go to Hollywood: make a movie: live on the edge of the world: write a book: about rebellion: re-written into a screenplay: to take place in the glorious Western mythos

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Roil

Photography by Renee Mallett

Elijah Burrell Getting There Little Egypt cradles repellent charm like my own soiled roads back home; the sun behind a corn-stalked skyline in Illinois darkens to headlighted roadwork signs, grain blur. We’ve been sub-compact captives for days; her legs rub the dashboard, her sweat like liniment— solace, relief from blistering miles between the place I miss and anywhere but. When she rolls her window down, the breeze-blown scent is rich, humid like the dirt behind my Uncle Bud’s when he’d till it over and over before he fed it tomato seeds, packed it down with his shovel. She sleeps like I did when I was a child; I’d drift off in Bud’s living room to the loosestrung sounds of his Martin guitar, my pockets jangling sticky bottle caps from Sunkists I’d drank. She’s like the citrus-berry breath of that place long passed I’d like to catch in a jar and put up. The honeyland review 6

Migrants

Photography by James Owens

William Doreski The Brown Decades Fumbling for a slice of paper on which to scrawl the hasty notes that keep me alive. The office glooms in deep Edwardian browns. Lewis Mumford called that period the Brown Decades. No one survives from that era, draperies rotted and sprawled on dusty floors. Rats nest in horsehide upholstery, ghosts of watery old women prowl through the rubble. Albumen prints of Egypt and Yosemite, water-stained

At last I find a blank sheet and sit at the rolltop desk to recover the holograph that once informed me about the world outside the self. With a blunt pencil I scrawl “brown as rat-hide, brown as faded drapes,

beyond restoration, fade. But all these ruined townhouses now have restored themselves. Young couples with exaggerated incomes hog four and five-story buildings in the South End of Boston, Park Slope

brown as moonlight filtered through filthy windows.” The papers on the floor rustle as mice—not rats— nest with tiny cries of joy, and the tall windows doff their gaze as someone else draws the drapes.

in Brooklyn, Back Bay and Harlem. The ghosts have crumpled like tissue. The rats have died in toxic lairs. Only this office where I shuffle unusable pages in hope of finding a clean side to write on retains the sienna dark of an era best forgotten. Grim with purpose, I dump old files on the floor and root through them. Deeds, briefs, wills, affidavits. Who generated this legal gush?

Photography by Ali Wisch

Zachary Greenberg Nightblooming Cereus Already prone to disappearing I entered books. The first one said take your time, but go out and buy an axe. Chop the pain into planks, sand down the splinters. Now burn it. Now turn away. I relearned to lay down the I Ching stalks, and my first draw landed on Clinging, Radiance. The hexagram said something like: become the eye that demands to be opened, so will open. The pupil that hides is fragile, must blink as dry brush can avoid berries but not wind, as she who does not answer to the rudder will answer to the rocks. Drifting off with Cacti & Succulents tented on my bed like hands in prayer, the forgotten pose, my hands in prayer. But if you look closely they are unclenched, a nightblooming cereus, queen of the night, face pressed down beneath the candelabra cactus, vanished in such sleep.

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Graduate Calvin Olsen Calvin Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, ID. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University, where he was introduced to contemporary poetry. He recently received a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston University, where he is completing an MFA, and has recently traveled to the Iberian Peninsula to continue a translation project based around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of his work will appear in the forthcoming anthology Fire in the Pasture and Clarion. He currently lives in Brookline, MA, and works as an Editorial Assistant at AGNI magazine.

Solitaire

Photography by Renee Mallett

Lois Marie Harrod Your Name Like Cutlery There is hunger the thumb remembers, the heft of the handle, the narrow neck, my forefinger tracing the inside of the bowl. I saw my mouth falling like a seed. So the sun dissolves into husk and silk and each milky kernel finds a tongue to speak. We call this provender without utensil, and yet a knife and fork reminds us of sustenance: back, neck, prong, point, slotted root. Listen as nameless as you please and someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ear will confer a tang, a tip, a bolstered blade upon you. It may not be the cutting edge you desire, but it too can find its meat.

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Joanne Lowery Fruit, Perhaps 1868 Edgar, come back from the dead, from Paris, the Louvre, and café. For one hour again be Monsieur Degas and I will be the model turning from off the stool to hear you say my bottom is like a pear, that favorite fruit from life’s bowl defining the shape of my backside. With your brush restore the rough touch I have missed and the sense that someone with an unforgiving eye can look and see that however speckled and pastel, I am thin-skinned and delicious. Just from a slope, a stroke, your quick look, let me surpass Eve’s apple.

Playground Study Into the Lake

Photography Photography by by Brian HillaryBetteridge Evans The honeyland review 15

William Hudson At Yellow Point I like a lone place, where the low hum of a small plane draws your eye upward and you automatically scan till you catch the movement then the shape and you follow by instinct, tracking its progress across the emptiness till the distance is unmarked and still, as before.

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Into the Lake

Photography by Hillary Evans The honeyland review 15

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Photography by Ryan Luz

Joseph Somoza Equivalence That little thought-current that occurred to me, or in me, while walking from shower to bedroom, that has now disappeared—though maybe just flowed downstream and I can retrieve it later. That’s how these Ravel piano pieces strike me—like the trickle of snow-melt down a hill, trills lit by sunlight flowing over obstacles, drawn invisibly. Like the flow of this moment to this.

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Spotlight Graduate Mark Allan Williams One or Two

Scarecrow Calvin Olsen

Two hands too tall to scare We scale adultery like a fence— the birds catching at footholds, (are they scrabbling to a straddle, awake taking in a view or not) stand still of the next neighborhood. to Calvin watch Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, In one rush we see our new the sun ID. He received a B.A. inunits English from Brigham air conditioning nestled begin to Young burn. behind someone rosebushes, University, whereelse’s he was introduced to A boy last year’s patio contemporary poetry. Hefurniture recentlystacked received a below next toGlobal a strange garage. from Boston Pinsky Fellowship itsRobert feet hasUniversity, come Wewhere recognize weed-eateranscars, theand he isthe completing MFA, to see checker-patterned lawns, the broken thewill corn be traveling to the Iberian Peninsula this open like blackbased eyes. before summer tomailboxes continuehanging a translation project We hop down gingerly— the corn around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of will not Honey, I’m home. lethis him work will appear in the forthcoming anthology But often we get beFire seen. in the Pasture. He currently lives in Brookso turned around He’s tried as an Editorial Assistant at so line, long MA,inand all works the straddling and to AGNI touch magazine. keeping our eyes shut that the hands we get off on the wrong side (awake or not) of the fence and stroll that touch away unknowing, the birds forever walking new neighborhoods the clouds expecting the old driveway. the stars that move so slow The honey land review up there.

Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool located above to enlarge this poem for reading.

The Pink Coat Alaska by Wanderings Photography James Owens

Photography by Hillary Evans Old World Photography by Jacob Oet

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Barry Spacks Glass Boxes All these glass boxes in the world filled with whatever’s dear: miles of silence, a lover’s shirt, a sharky ocean, a quested scent, (the shows of familiar things: the way a pen lies aslant across an ashtray, the risk of a reach toward anyone’s touch...) and what if your crucial, most intimate box, should shatter its diorama glass (at last it must) -- will a Genie appear, a grantor of wishes in golden turban, great body emerging clad in silks, to lavish on you grand offerings... or maybe no more than a sigh of air to tell you you’re lonely and free?

The honeyland review 20

Spotlight Graduate Mark Allan Williams One or Two

Scarecrow Calvin Olsen

Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool located above to enlarge this poem for reading.

The Pink Coat

Photography by James Owens Old World

Photography by Jacob Oet

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Mark Alan Williams One or Two We scale adultery like a fence— catching at footholds, scrabbling to a straddle, taking in a view of the next neighborhood. In one rush we see our new air conditioning units nestled behind someone else’s rosebushes, last year’s patio furniture stacked next to a strange garage. We recognize the weed-eater scars, the checker-patterned lawns, the broken mailboxes hanging open like black eyes. We hop down gingerly— Honey, I’m home. But often we get so turned around in all the straddling and keeping our eyes shut that we get off on the wrong side of the fence and stroll away unknowing, forever walking new neighborhoods expecting the old driveway.

The honeyland review 22

Spotlight

Graduate

Scarecrow Calvin Olsen

Two hands too tall to scare the birds (are they awake or not) stand still to Calvin watch Olsen was born and raised in Meridian, the sun ID. He received a B.A. in English from Brigham begin to Young burn. University, where he was introduced to A boy contemporary poetry. He recently received a below Pinsky Global Fellowship from Boston itsRobert feet hasUniversity, come where he is completing an MFA, and to see thewill corn be traveling to the Iberian Peninsula this before summer to continue a translation project based the corn around the poems of Alberto de Lacerda. More of will not lethis him work will appear in the forthcoming anthology beFire seen. in the Pasture. He currently lives in BrookHeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tried so line, long MA, and works as an Editorial Assistant at to AGNI touch magazine. the hands (awake or not) that touch the birds the clouds the stars that move so slow The honey land review up there.

Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool located above to enlarge this poem for reading.

Old World

Photography by Jacob Oet

Spotlight Two hands too tall to scare the birds (are they awake or not) stand still to watch the sun begin to burn a boy below its feet has come to see the corn before the corn will not let him be seen heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tried so long to touch the hands (awake or not) that touch the birds the clouds the stars that move so slow up there.

Scarecrow

Due to the unique layout of this poem please use the zoom tool located above to enlarge this poem for reading.

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Contributor Bios

Featured Poets J.P Dancing Bear J.P Dancing Bear’s tenth collection of poems,

Family of Marsupial Centaurs, is forthcoming in 2011 from Iris Press. His most recent published collections, Inner Cities of Gulls and Conflicted Light, are available from Salmon Poetry. He is the editor of the American Poetry Journal and Dream Horse Press, and also hosts the poetry radio program, Out of Our Minds, on KKUP FM and available in podcasts.

Elijah Burrell Elijah Burrell is working toward his MFA in the Ben-

nington Writing Seminars. His poetry has been published in The Sugar House Review, Swink Magazine, The Country Dog Review, Muscle & Blood, The Penwood Review, Blast Furnace, and Under One Sun. Burrell was the recipient of the 2009 Cecil A. Blue Award in Poetry, and a finalist in the 2010 Pinch Poetry Contest. He resides in Jefferson City, Missouri with his wife and two little girls.

William Doreski William Doerski is a Professor of English at Keene

State College (New Hampshire) where he teaches creative writing, literary theory, and modern poetry. Doreski received a Ph.D. from Boston University and has published several collections of poetry, most recently Waiting for the Angel (Pygmy Forest Press, 2009) and Another Ice Age (Cedar Hill, 2007), and three critical studies—The Years of Our Friendship: Robert Lowell and Allen Tate (University Press of Mississippi, 1990), and The Modern Voice in American Poetry (University Press of Florida, 1995), Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors (Ohio University Press, 1999)--and a textbook entitled How to Read and Interpret Poetry (Prentice-Hall). His critical essays, poetry, and reviews have appeared in many academic and literary journals, including Massachusetts Review, Notre Dame Review, The Alembic, New England Quarterly, Harvard Review, Modern Philology, Antioch Review, Natural Bridge. In 2010 he won the Aesthetica prize for poetry.

Featured Poets Zachary Greenberg Zachary Greenberg is an MFA candidate in

Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University. A California native, Zachary has worked as a counselor at a substance abuse treatment center in Los Angeles, and as a mentor for students with learning disabilities in Monterey. Currently he facilitates creative writing workshops at the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center for cancer patients and survivors. His poetry has appeared in Off The Coast, Tabula Rasa Medical Arts Journal, and Xylem Magazine. He is co-founding editor of Nashville Review.

Lois Marie Harrod

Lois Marie Harrodâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s 11th book Brief Term, poems about teaching, was published by Black Buzzard Press (2011), and her chapbook Cosmogony won the 2010 Hazel Lipa Chapbook contest (Iowa State University). Her chapbook Furniture won the 2008 Grayson Press Poetry Prize. Previous publications include the chapbook Firmament (2007); the chapbook Put Your Sorry Side Out (2005); Spelling the World Backward (2000); the chapbook This Is a Story You Already Know (l999); Part of the Deeper Sea (1997); the chapbook Green Snake Riding (l994), Crazy Alice (l991) Every Twinge a Verdict (l987). She won her third poetry fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts in 2003. Over 400 of her poems have been published online and in print journals including American Poetry Review, Blueline, The MacGuffin, Salt, The Literary Review, Verse Daily and Zone 3. A Geraldine R. Dodge poet and former high school teacher, she teaches Creative Writing at The College of New Jersey.

Bill Hudson Bill Hudson was born in Arkansas, grew up in Illinois,

lives now in Spokane, where he is employed by a community action program. His work has appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Review Americana, The Other Journal, Shaking Like A Mountain, Willowsprings, and elsewhere.

Featured Poets Joanne Lowery

Joanne Loweryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poems have appeared in many literary magazines including Birmingham Poetry Review, Rattle, Slant, Cottonwood, and Poetry East. Her most recent collection is the chapbook Scything published by FutureCycle Press. She lives in Michigan.

Barry Spacks

Barry Spacks earns his keep teaching writing and literature at UC Santa Barbara, California, after many years of the same at M.I.T. Heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s published poems widely in journals paper and pixel, plus stories, two novels, ten poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work.

Joseph Somoza

Joseph Somoza retired from teaching at New Mexico State and editing with PUERTO DEL SOL a few years back to have more time for his writing. He has published four books and four chapbooks of poetry over the years and lives in Las Cruces with wife Jill, a painter

Mark Alan Williams

Mark Alan Williams is a doctoral fellow in Rhetoric and Composition at the University of Louisville, where he is writing a dissertation on embodied practice in contemporary religion. His poetry has appeared most recently in the Tulane Review, and he has a forthcoming essay on Lord Jim in Conradiana. He is grateful, as always, for the opportunity to share his work.

Featured Photographers James Owens

James Owens lives in New Carlisle, Ind. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, stories, translations, and photographs have appeared widely in literary journals. He walks in the dunes along the southern shore of Lake Michigan and watches the waves and the gulls. He never poses photographs, preferring his work to be a continual call-and-response with the quick, nerved edge of what happens to happen.

Jacob Oet

Jacob Oet is 17 and lives in Solon, Ohio. He has loved writing and making images since he was little. Jacob’s poetry and images appear in Cicada Magazine, Straylight Magazine, The New Verse News, The Jet Fuel Review, Superstition Review, H.O.D., and OVS Magazine.

Renee Mallett

Renee Mallett collects old cameras and puts them to work again. She has a BA in Creative Writing and is the author of several books, all available or forthcoming from Schiffer Publishing. Her next book, Dia de los Muertos covering the art and traditions of Mexico’s Day of the Dead holiday, will be available in 2012. You can visit this artist online anytime at ReneeMallett or in person at Western Ave Studios in Lowell, Massachusetts the first Saturday of every month.

Ryan Luz

is a poet and photographer. He is a second-year student in the University of California at San Diego’s creative writing MFA program. His poems appear in the current issue of Hot Metal Bridge and his photography can be found at ryanaluz.

Featured Photographers Ali Wisch

Ali Wisch is a twenty-five year old writer, artist and photographer. She has been writing since 2004 and holds a degree in Professional Writing from Champlain College. She has published two plays, “25 Squirrels” and “The Hot Pink Meltdown,” both of which have been produced. She has also worked as a producer in the theatre industry and has been published in Sports Illustrated, Resource Magazine, Points In Case, Inscape Literary Magazine, Boxcar Poetry Review, eHow and The MacGuffin.Currently living in Cambridge, MA with her boyfriend, Adam and her two cats, Henry and Lillian and working on her book Memoirs of a Twenty-Five Year Old plus writing for eHow.

Hillary Evans

Hillary Evans grew up in Northern California in a family that loved photography. She can recall the sour scents of chemicals that permeated the dark room her father built in the garage and has countless memories of posing so her mother could practice with light and color. Now she lives in the Los Angeles area where she oversees a program that provides supportive housing for the formerly homeless.Photography, travel and writing provide her balance. Hillary workshops weekly with a group of local writers, focusing on creative non-fiction, and has submited work to be published. An essay about her experiences with the poor of Sierra Leone and her photographs were featured in Geez Magazine’s Spring 2010 edition.“Alaskan Wanderings” was taken in Junea, Alaska. “Into the Lake” was taken in Lake Tahoe, California.

Brian Beteridge

Brain Beteridge is a Philadelphia-area photographer. His work has been featured in the Berkeley Fiction Review as well as numerous other print and online journals.