VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3
SEPTEMBER 2013
VOLUME 3, ISSUE 3 September 2013
All work is the property of the attributed writers and artists. Copyright Š Loose Change magazine 2013 www.loosechangemagazine.org
This issue is dedicated to the winners, finalists and contestants of our first poetry contest. Congratulations, and thank you.
Editor’s Letter Jamie Iredell, Guest Editor
I knew immediately that "Littoral, Thalassic, Pelagic" was going to be my choice for first place when I read it. This poem is at once so tightly controlled, yet loose with reference and language, that it's a pure pleasure game to read and re-read it. Its title beckons you: you've heard these words before, but where? You know they're not geologic epochs, but they sure sound like they are. Just read the poem. "Pieces of sea drip from you; / the Pacific, the Gulf..." When I came to that first line break on "Gulf" (I mean, a line break on the word "gulf," come on, that's brilliant!) I knew what I was dealing with. The language and line play simply continue on from there: the repetition of scar, a rhyme—the truest rhyme being, of course, the repetition of the same damn word. The line break on "falling." Add to this the surreality of the speaker's situation: someone's told the teller a sea-tale of a burdened family that met its match with the elements. And yet, and yet, this is a sex poem. The sea imagery you might think a cliche. But this is beyond, a skilled poet handling the language's ins and overs to beachbreak you, give you science, reckon the ancient "Seafarer." Our selections for second and third place are poems that rival the winner's. I have not yet been able to shake the image of the parakeet's "fecal doughnuts" since I first read "Connections Made in Retrospect." And the almost-but-not-quite double sonnet structure of "Weeding" perplexed me—in a good way. Was the poet aware of the sonnet, and of the tradition of the "garden" poetry of the Early Modern Period, and simply fucking with us all with the erratic line lengths and proximity to sonnet structure? If anything, this contest and these poets have reminded me of how alive and aware poetry and its practitioners are in a land like America, despite our attachment to cable television, to our many digital devices, to our disconnection from the distinct and natural human voice. I was wrong. There is so much more, so much beauty still to come. I'm full of hope.
Editor’s Letter Erica Wright, Guest Editor
Since moving into my apartment on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, I’ve watched a high-rise emerge layer by layer out of a hole blasted into the earth. The construction workers—increasingly ant-like as the upper stories are reached—have contended with a variety of hostile conditions, including one tornadic afternoon last June. As twisters wrecked havoc in nearby Sandy Springs and Dunwoody, I watched a crane careen in circles, worried that it might drop its steel beam on the cars below. It didn’t, and the next day, workers resumed their progress. There is something about this battle between man and nature that has engaged writers for centuries, and our contest winners seem equally curious about what happens when we try to tame what refuses to be tamed. In “Littoral, Thalassic, Pelagic,” the poet gives us a lover who seems either mythological or mendacious: “you swear / that sailboat sank one night / with your whole family sleeping aboard / and resurfaced by morning.” There’s a stubborn refusal to admit that the ocean is more powerful than the addressee even as that person reveals various sailing scars. The bravado is appealing, not only to the lust-struck speaker, but also to the readers who root for them both. In “Weeding,” the stakes are not life and death, but present nonetheless as father and child try to clear their yard. At first, the scene is idyllic, beginning with the “perfect brown / of just-turned earth.” Soon, though, the futility of the family’s mission becomes apparent as a turtle eats their tomatoes and poison ivy invades their firepit spot. There’s a Romantic appreciation of nature here, but more importantly, a confession that it’s not always easy to love the thistle and muddy creek. And finally in “Connections Made in Retrospect,” we move even further away from the sublime; we move decidedly indoors. Nonetheless, nature still finds a way to plague the speaker by means of a pet parakeet, an unhappy reminder of a distant father. The poem’s punchline is the relief felt upon discovering the bird has died, “still as a potato, / in the bottom of the cage.” At first, it may seem as if humans have conquered nature, but this piece presents a claustrophobic picture of the interior. It’s hard to imagine anyone preferring this house to whatever is outside its windows. When Loose Change judges and editors met to discuss the finalists, we had a good-natured but lively debate about which three poems would snag the top honors. All nine had champions, and we congratulate the entries on their promise. We hope you will enjoy this work as much as we did.
Table of Contents Cover art, Ebony, July 2013, from the series Skinned, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones Dedication Editors’ Letters Table of Contents
Littoral, Thalassic, Pelagic, poetry by Jessica Temple, First Place Weeding, poetry by Hank Backer, Second Place
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Connections Made in Retrospect, poetry by Paige Sullivan, Third Place Wednesday, When I Called, poetry by Mac Gay, Honorable Mention Mercy Breakfast, poetry by Jessica Temple
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Trying To Be Noticed, poetry by Sara Hughes Skinned, collages by Kelly Kristin Jones
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Ebony, July 2013, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones
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Glamour, August 2013, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones
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South Magazine, June/July 2013, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones
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Vanity Fair, July 2013 (Male Skin Samples), collage by Kelly Kristin Jones Vogue, July 2013, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones Vogue, March 2013, collage by Kelly Kristin Jones
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Plants (0:15) (0:16) (0:05) (0:14), poetry by James Sanders Cleansing, poetry by Jessica Temple
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I Don’t Want To Be Loved By You, poetry by Amy McDaniel Contributors
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Littoral, Thalassic, Pelagic Jessica Temple
Pieces of sea drip from you: the Pacific, the Gulf of Mexico. The fishhook scar. The second scar from falling through the top deck to whatever is below. The way you swear that sailboat sank one night with your whole sleeping family aboard and resurfaced by morning, your things drenched and salty. The way you casually mention the mizzen mast and remember red on the right returning. The way, beneath me, your body turns to waves, your breath the roaring ocean in my ears.
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Weeding Hank Backer
I. And suddenly, a toad I’d never have seen had he been still, the perfect brown of just-turned earth. And the riot of birds with the wind, how it must partition the sky into bulbs and chutes, and how vacant the ground below them, how sky-ending. The toad winks into grass and is gone. A skull-sized box turtle pokes through the edge of the lawn. Weeks ago, Dad caught him at our tomatoes, put him in the backseat of the Camry and drove him to the other side of Brightleaf. Still, three days later the tomatoes were pecked again into tapered hearts. II. Mustard plant, dandelions—stalks wide as my thumb droop their tiny flowers from the wheelbarrow, where the dirt rattles off their roots into dust. The compost, caged in dog-fence, bakes under a crust of flies. I toss the weeds in, then start on the Asian pear, lousy with thistle. Dad’s fruit trees grow out of their intended row—the cherry’s gnarled limb propped on a 2 x 8. The spot we cleared for a firepit is now a bramble of wild rose and poison ivy. Beyond that, the creek works its muddy channel through the forest: on a slab of limestone, the curled etch of a mollusk fades.
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Connections Made in Retrospect Paige Sullivan
I. Books were for hiding: Dad’s very own catacombs. He did pushups to forget the months that fit in his single sentence. I learned the art of forgetting by making stacks of his letters, hiding the origami of apologies. II. A few years before, he bought us a parakeet that I hated for the fecal doughnuts sprinkled wherever it perched. I was relieved, then, to find it dead one morning, still as a potato, in the bottom of the cage.
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Wednesday, When I Called Mac Gay
When I look two wives back I see now she always was one husband short. The one there now is five feet four and gone five days a week. In his truck, that phone book he sits atop has myriad numbers written in his hand. Hell, the old gal’s girlish leg was snakebit from the start. So Wednesday when I called to try again to make amends, she, softer than expected, softened me enough to see the sorry vacuum of my years— throughout which, round and round, I chased my tail, and others’, too. At last, almost in charge, I hope I’ve finally fired myself from foolery, leaving the mirror in my locker for the next narcissist. Lukewarm father, piss-poor spouse, don’t get me wrong, I chose to have my cake and eat it, too. Yet I do regret while screwing, strewing sad, delicious chaos all around, I didn’t, like Larkin, strew amongst my stacks of naught a few more decent poems.
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Mercy Breakfast Jessica Temple
After my mother died the Styrofoam cups lasted six years. People we barely knew offered casseroles and buckets of chicken, paper plates and cases of coke. Since my sisters could not fill them out, most clothes came to me. We practiced braiding her wig, made it mat and tangle I don’t know what happened to her smooth prosthetic, its flat side shining like the layer that gets skimmed off when chicken boils. I starched shirt collars, wrote notes on lunchbox napkins. I already knew how to separate the delicates, how to slide an egg over the edge of the pan while it’s still frying.
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Trying To Be Noticed Sara Hughes
I was wearing a slinky dress, outside a slinky bar. I’d lied to my husband again, and felt low. The steamy night was a dark throat. Then, a stranger hovered beside me. Sister, he said, why you trying to be noticed? My dress shimmered like a chandelier. I’m not, I said. The holes in his moccasins winked. He said to be dressed so fine, I must have a husband who loved me very much. I said I must. I had that kind of man once, he said. He gave me this. The stranger flashed his gold watch. And this. He removed his camel knit cap. The six-inch scar snaked over his ear and shined in the streetlight.
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Go ahead, he said. Touch it. Feel how much he loved me. I didn’t know how to say no.
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Skinned Kelly Kristin Jones
Standing in line at the grocery, I grab at magazines lining the aisle, willing myself not to become impatient with the slow-moving line. Not long ago, for the first time, I began to actually see the women featured. I saw their manufactured bodies and tweaked coloring. I added a pile of magazines to my basket and hurried home to deconstruct the offered pages of these "women's interest" magazines. Sampling from the advertisements and content of popular women's interest magazines, I build collages offering up the coloring of all of the female bodies. Cuttings are taken of the true shade portrayed in the photograph with extreme shadows and highlights avoided. The size of the circular clipped skin corresponds to the size of the offered body. Out of context these “skinnings� offer a new perspective on who is included and what is deemed most beautiful.
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net net
hoss-eyed
knock knock
hoos
candy caught dream ing in fur clichĂŠs
embles
not about that
kaldor-hicks patina
mauve starlight or unbetad
the ice blacked out of the voice
polyannasmed
yesly
instead of reading this part of the poem call me at 404.964.6025
deeyed back out
computersicling
veining with something that isn’t receptive
optigrins
in extra consonants
ustain
slinks cued privacy
this is one poem less
glass itched into glass
iota or mesa
but extroverted bodyelsewards
mostly horizontal caesura
to a roomful eyebath
schwas ebb shooks
together as halftones
portrait to pour schwa ussed in rayoff adulting coriolus smells bells assist as-is serial schwas with its glacial yowsa cielingless preens into enkelp or reface octaved meh-orbit the oh-bit equinet over all the (detail hothing and yens decimal mina asultry me-caulk that scanty claus outrun of pronouns nooks thru to take mayonnaise yesses apart or may not
Plants (0:15) (0:16) (0:05) (0:14) -DPHV 6DQGHUV
For Amr Asaad entering perhaps this self portrait so that entering it as it bends can entering then narrate the emphatic parts exiting slightly ciliated like what you just did entering there when you read entering that you did that and exiting each time plushed apart entering from the sync and exiting frolic or paraphrase exiting foliage
Cleansing Jessica Temple
I know the man in my dreams. He shows up there unexpectedly, inappropriately. In dreams, he eats at my table, leans far back in my chair. Stands too close in my closet. In real life, he's never seen my apartment. But in dreams he is haunting me, like the word loam. I have heard loam five times this week, maybe never before. It started ordinarily, in poems, a gardening magazine. But then, loam on the radio. Overheard as the punchline to an elevator joke.
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To rid myself I make it my own, send loam back underfoot. Tramp it hard with my boot. Pass over it. Pass this over to the man.
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I Don’t Want To Be Loved By You Amy McDaniel For a fifth time I apply the same treatment. Not that it helps, but for all I know it keeps the virus from catching, from blooming. Oh sure it keeps me up nights. Like Marie Antoinette you appear comically out of touch as you wreck the good lives of strangers. As if you can invite them to a rooftop barbecue, when the building is aflame. We know smoke from haze, even if it’s the same word in some deep language. Moreover there are kinds of terrible. How can you bargain when nobody has correct change. I’m sorry, but this change is incorrect. Nobody wants your money here. This was already going to be the hardest thing, and then you showed up. The chicken here tastes hungry, a martyr without a cause.
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Contributors
Hank Backer is currently pursuing his Ph.D in creative writing at Georgia State University, where he's edited for both Five Points and New South. He's been published in The Rectangle and Sixty Six: The Journal of Sonnet Studies. Mac Gay is the author of two chapbooks and a current graduate student at Georgia State. He teaches at Perimeter College, and has three kids, four dogs, and one great third wife. Sara Hughes is a graduate student at Georgia State University, where she is pursuing a Ph.D in English with a concentration in poetry. Her poems and reviews have been published in Rattle, Reed, Rosebud, right hand pointing, Ouroboros Review, Red Clay Review, Umbrella Factory Magazine, West Trade Review, Old Red Kimono, and Arts and Letters, among others. Jamie Iredell is the author of the essay collection I Was a Fat Drunk Catholic School Insomniac, The Book of Freaks, and Prose. Poems. a Novel. In 2014, Aqueous Books will publish his novel, The Lake. He serves as fiction editor of Atticus Review, and was a founding editor of New South. Kelly Kristin Jones, an Atlanta-based fine art photographer, earned her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In May, she completed a Post-MFA Faculty Fellowship at the University of Georgia. She is a recipient of the James Weinstein Memorial Fellowship (2012), The Union League and Civic Arts Foundation Prize (2011, 2012) and the Municipal Art League Fellowship (2012). www.kellykristinjones.com Amy McDaniel lives in Atlanta with her dog, Annette. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in Tin House, PANK, The Agriculture Reader, Saveur, H_NGM_N, and elsewhere. Selected Adult Lessons, her chapbook, came out in 2010 from Agnes Fox Press and promptly sold out, but recently there have been rumors of an updated reprint. Now she is revising a novel about cheese, wine, and coincidences. James Sanders is one of the few surviving members of the Atlanta Poets Group. His most recent book is Goodbye Public and Private (BlazeVox). The University of New Orleans Press also recently published the group’s An Atlanta Poets Group Anthology: The Lattice Inside. www.atlantapoetsgroup.blogspot.com. Paige Sullivan was born and raised in Monroe, Georgia, and recently graduated from Agnes Scott College with a double major in creative writing and psychology. She is a new MFA student in Georgia State University's creative writing program and happily resides in the Oakhurst district of Decatur, Georgia.
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Jessica Temple earned her BA from the University of Alabama and her MA from Mississippi State. She is a Ph.D student at Georgia State University, works for the poetry radio show Melodically Challenged, and reads for New South. Her chapbook, Seamless and Other Legends, is available from Finishing Line Press. Erica Wright is the author of Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press, 2011) and the chapbook Silt (Dancing Girl Press, 2009). Her debut crime novel, The Red Chameleon, will be published next year by Pegasus Books. She is the Poetry Editor at Guernica Magazine and has taught creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College and New York University's continuing studies program.
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