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FROM THE EDITOR The title of this volume is Gurfa, an Arabic word for the amount of water that can be held in one hand. This is a beautiful idea. Hands vary in shape and size, and so must the size of the gurfa; however, it is still, always, a gurfa. Like hands, like each gurfa, the poems collected here to celebrate National Poetry Month are all different. The poets represented here provide a global perspective, showcasing poems of myriad styles and subjects. They are fluid. They shift, they move. They transform. To be appreciated, they must be held, a gurfa of words to nestle in the pit of your spirit. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading these treasures as much as I enjoyed discovering them.
Hunting With Masai) CHARLES BANE JR. Dawn is spear and shield and gun recklessly left behind. We move in a single line. Last night they chased away a missionary and we lay. Mine is the god of the Hebrews I explained, mountain born like N'gai. He is not desirous of you and only one of mine has seen his face. His mountain had boiled gravely and he built a vessel of lava rock for a climber overcome to voyage fire home.
TUESDAY’S LANDSCAPE) C.C. RUSSELL And you write to me from Portland. Two paragraphs – a simple synopsis of the crush and the weight it has left.
The Hittites Lived So Long Ago) WILLIAM DORESKI A half mile from the Black Sea you lounge and tan in your yard. Cruise ships gloat in the harbor. A rail line chuffs toward Russia with smug diesel effort towing white tank-car loads of chemicals. You’ve lived here long enough to forget how America shapes nature to fuel its contentment. I’m here to see the Hittite ruins, the local museum with bronze and ceramic shards, the ancient road still paved with rutted limestone. I didn’t expect you to recall our dazed afternoon in Vermont lying exhausted in bed while children percolated in meadow grass and deer from the Taconics browsed in the abandoned orchards behind your rented house. Now in Turkey, a woman living alone, you fret about nothing. You lack wrinkles, despite your age, and your body shines like a Richard Serra sculpture. As we chat about old times the trains rasp along their uneven track and a foghorn snorts in the harbor. The Hittites never saw women like you, but your Islamic neighbors wave and greet you with cheerful bursts of Arabic, which you return with local accent. The Hittites lived so long ago the planet barely recalls their presence. It won’t remember us at all, but the sparks we used to generate lit up much of the unknown world. Too bad we never explored it. The chemical cars rattle and clank and the salt-smell flavors our talk. When I leave to visit the ruins I’ll retain the impress of your pose and impose it on the ancient rubble like a dusty sun-colored kiss.
As a Man Lay Dying Scattered Last Words Aggregated, Collated, and Condensed into Something Transcendent ) R.L. BLACK A dying man on screen says, Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur, does nobody understand the ending? I can’t sleep. I’m cold here on the ground. I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies, but it’s a long time since I drank champagne. It must have been the coffee; now either this Indian moose wallpaper goes or I do. Put that bloody cigarette out. Arrange my one hundred and forty-four pillows. Turn up the lights, I want to take a great leap in the dark. Lord, help my poor soul, alive as a curiosity, but done, finished. I can’t go on spoiling life any longer. Go away, I’m all right. It’s all been very interesting, but I’m bored. I want the world to be filled with white fluffy duckies. A party, let’s have a party tomorrow at sunrise. Let us go, I did not get my spaghettios. The fog is rising and I’m losing it. Bring me a bullet proof vest. Kill me or you are a murderer. This is no time for making enemies. I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Now comes good sailing, my last voyage. Goodbye, kid. Hurry back. Take away those pillows, I'm going to the bathroom to read the dictionary. It is most beautiful. A certain butterfly is already on the wing. It’s time. I’d like to thank the academy for my lifetime achievement award and now for a final word from our sponsor … oh wow, oh wow, oh wow.
Period Sex c.1982 LISE COLAS You sent me a mixed tape to get me in the mood -- remember? Then a few days later, you saunter down the street and ring the bell. Shuffling your feet on the doorstep. The Strict Baptists next door twitch their nets, believing the Antichrist hath cometh in a black biker jacket and drainpipe jeans. I let you in, your grey eyes question mine -- Cup of tea? -- Please. You smoke a roll-up in the small upstairs kitchen. I try to open the sash behind the sink and you make your move, toppling over a bottle of detergent -- both your hands on my breasts, squeezing. -- I can’t, I’m on, I say. -- Doesn’t matter, you reply, as you kiss the back of my neck. I take you downstairs, to my dungeon bedroom thankfully gloomy, even in the day. You strip off everything and so do I -- a mad race to get under the covers (it’s cold and it’s February). Our kisses smother each other to death, almost. I come up to breathe, your hand between my legs. -- Fuck, forgot to -You find the string and start to tug at the bloody thing. -- Just a minute --- I scramble up and forage around for a plastic bag, pulling on the mouse’s tail I toss aside my royal red pellet. Good to go. I grab a hand towel and lay it on the bed like a picnic cloth -- your dick is thick by now and I recall your peculiar sigh as you press inside -- all that mucky stuff, clots of old blood and drizzles of fresh, your pestle mixing it up with my generous spread of damson jam. -- It’s quite safe -- relax, you whisper in haste. I wait for your climax. I fear mine is lost, but when you come, you come like a river of warmth bursting my banks, and it’s oh so nice, and there low-down, is a beat of tiny wings and my tongue chances a last dance inside your slack mouth, before you collapse on top of me and I feel you shrinking, slipping away. You push back, in order to check -- and curious, I rise up to take a look. Between your hands a detumescent single rose, a wilted valentine of sacrificial red, to be wiped ineptly on a corner of the towel. We flop down together once more, on our picnic cloth of blood and cum, content, with our arms around each other, gazing up through the filthy panes at the filtered grey light of afternoon.
Sera HARVEY SCHWARTZ Sera wipes the counter clean. A silhouette wanders through tuna fish casseroles drifts back to an empty home with just a note after three years. Sera. I look at her nametag. Do you pronounce that Sarah? She barely nods blue plate special heavy on her arm, notepad, pencil worn dress, white shoes, shrouded dreams lost behind coke bottle glasses. She squints at today while drifting out to vacant fields with empty barn eyes, lone wolf howling in the hills.
cruise-circuit du soleil JOHN MICHAEL FLYNN trippin’ elephant -phat trance-groove beats ash-lit milky hours-before-dawn in chrome-heeled ride… wheelin’ slick slurbs of industrial high plains gunfire cal-mex vato stucco slapped-fast -into edge-moraines gone ‘yonder where ghetto were wuz pre-masted super-lubed technicolor floatin’ jams here died now live 4-evr cool dim time once now bleak black vibe of flowers for dispatched sons and moons and looney tunes they come up just so from nothing melt down, melt down, melt down new who you are I mean you too
In Praise of Gears and Caterpillar Trains KYLE HEMMINGS She makes love to a not-quite-cripple in the cab of a ballast tractor or in the backseat of an abandoned Kaiser jeep. He tells her he can hear stray dogs on the moon whining to come home. Or how he remains sleepless dreaming about the arm bursting into fragments over a tiny village no longer on any map of Asia. When her eyes drift off, when she is too tired and empty handed to be impolite, he tells her how a bevel gear can be used for the sun and an anular one as the planet. Differentials are not hard to understand he says. She presses a finger to his lips and says "enough." She loves men who are good with hands and grease. and phantom whippletrees. And he is so obsessed with the passing of time, his heart could be a sundial. He could go on about the old Southern Pacific 4294, but he senses her body mechanics shifting into neutral.
What Goes Up ROBERT S. KING We learned to climb slick ropes of rain to the towering tops of clouds, but soon they’ll break our grip on the sky. We’ll dive in a swirl of water and wind back down the years we’ve climbed. None below will catch us but many will pass us by, they like us learning how but never why, rising and falling from their wobbling towers of Babel.
Rupture Marketing
PR
B.R. YEAGER How do we persuade consumers to fully integrate genocide into their daily lives? Make them relish it. Foreign meat. New and tasty. Teach them. Make them beg. Make it necessity. Make them suck between familiar muscle and cartilage for their bread. Make everyone beneath everyone and choke their air and soil. Make it luxury. Make it inescapable. And tomorrow we’ll all be rich sons of bitches.
FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE HURRICANE PAMELA HOBART CARTER Lovelier than murder livelier than torture mightiest loudest widest darkest I am all the plagues descending plagues descending in synchronicity Hell on your doorstep Hell at your windowsill Hell to remind you you cursed your cast-offs and sludge but I stir your boil and trouble stir the soup adore your ingredients a crispy bridge a lowing bovine an impoverished parish widest loudest mightiest darkest worship at slaughter time I topple hot headed governments rain down mightier than pens ships and kings nations collapse islands flee loudest lowing widest dark rain down mightiest collapse a hotheaded bovine on your troubled doorstep ships and bridges descending in synchronicity cursed in slaughter (flee) I am all the hothellheaded slaughtercollapse descending rain down mightier plagues dark castoffs and sludgeworship stir trouble in lowing synchronicity collapse dark slaughter cursed synchronicity hotheaded governments rain down mightier pens and ships and dark kings cursed nations collapse on your impoverished doorstep topple on your lovelier islands worship hell in darkest synchronicity worship an impoverished parish (worship) worship me!
Heart Rate Monitor LARYSSA WIRSTIUK October is the best month for distance runs, but I never really know what’s best for me until I’ve run away from it. Confession: I hate running alone, so if you’re going to stay over, you better be prepared with sneakers to do my scenic, three-mile loop. You’ve all been faster than me, sprinting uphill while I amble at least fifty feet behind, knowing my shins and hamstrings will hurt the next day. You all do it without even trying, traversing sidewalk cracks, even at early dusk: my blindness. The sweetest gesture any of you ever made for me was cleaning my wounds when I fell, palms forward, as if to signal, “No, I don’t need you. Stay away.” Any man would start pushing himself after a display like that, reaching new miles while I remain faithful to my heart rate monitor, never overstressing the steady syllables of my vital organ, always asking: challenge, or betrayal?
What it was, what it is YONI HAMMER-KOSSOY a gray PVC pipe given to me by a ConEd man blue hard-hat one summer day he climbed out of a hole in the street was there with a few others laying cable he winked he smiled how'd you like your own piece of New York City I was holding my mother's hand walking to a bus stop must have been three or four years old at most it was a dinosaur bone a race track an ancient trumpet my prized trophy sat in the back of my closet kept me safe from nightmares was a bad telescope couldn't see things far away like the moon or the future got lost during one of many moves but I'm sure could work now maybe not for seeing the future but definitely the past
LAST LINE TOM PESCATORE I am writing anywhere carrying and placing mugs, leaving rings of condensation, atomization around tired eyes, staring out into light polluted skies no STARS! My God! No Stars! NO FUCKING stars! blankets of purple clouds unfurled, beyond that unearthly opaque blackness, like skyscraper windows unframed, hell, and ah! shit, expletives and what-ever-have-you-not watch this thing unseen, it's video-logged to you head linked directly to the brain, layered like cake, thick and creamy icing spread between pink naive wrinkles and synapse, LOOK, I only write what's behind my iris, see? didn't you know? I got hazel eyes, two colors unfold, you'll be wondering, we'll be gazing, face to face, sight line switches between pupils, dilating—if only there were enough words to get it— but there's too much—Aww~! you know, too much too much, I only have one line left.
Torrential Vacuousness GRACE BLACK A rusted-bottomed bucket will not collect the rain. It can, however, fill at an alarming rate. The cold innards may retain some memory of the acid wash. There may be physics involved, but I can't recall the equation. Either way, letters or numbers, words or calculations, you can’t collect the downpour and expect to keep it, with oxidized veins.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS Charles Bane, Jr. is the American author of The Chapbook ( Curbside Splendor, 2011) and Love Poems ( Kelsay Books, 2014). His work was described by the Huffington Post as "not only standing on the shoulders of giants, but shrinking them." Creator of The Meaning Of Poetry series for The Gutenberg Project, he is a current nominee as Poet Laureate of Florida. Read more about him on his website at http:// www.charlesbanejr.com. C.C. Russell currently lives in Wyoming with his wife, daughter, and two cats. His poetry has appeared in the New York Quarterly, Rattle, and Whiskey Island among others. His short fiction has appeared in The Meadow as well as on Kysoflash.com and MicrofictionMondayMagazine.com. He holds a BA in English from the University of Wyoming and has held jobs in a wide range of vocations – everything from graveyard shift convenience store clerk to retail management with stops along the way as dive bar dj and swimming pool maintenance. He has also lived in New York and Ohio. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in The Best Small Fictions. William Doreski's work has appeared in various e- and print journals and in several collections, most recently The Suburbs of Atlantis (AA Press, 2013). R.L. Black writes flash fiction and poetry. She is editor of Unbroken Journal and a reader for Freeze Frame Fiction and The Riding Light Review. Find out more about the author and her publications at rlblack.weebly.com. Lise Colas lives on the south coast of England and writes poetry and short fiction. She has a BA (Hons) in Fine Art and used to work in the archive of Punch Magazine. See her poetry/art blog at goodtemperedpencil.tumblr.com. : Harvey Schwartz learned Americana growing up on the east coast. He unlearned it at Woodstock, a hippie commune, and during extensive hitchhiking. A long chiropractic career offered another perspective. He’s been published in The Sun, Clover, and Whatcom Writes. Bellingham Repertory Dance and Snowdance Film Festival have featured his work. John Michael Flynn is currently an English Language Fellow with the US State Department in Khabarovsk, Russia. His most recent poetry collection, Keepers Meet Questing Eyes (2014) is available from Leaf Garden Press (www.leafgardenpress.com). Find him on the web at www.basilrosa.com. Kyle Hemmings lives and works in New Jersey. He has been published in Your Impossible Voice, Night Train, Toad, Matchbox and elsewhere. His latest book is Father Dunne's School for Wayward Boys at Amazon.com. He blogs at http://upatberggasse19.blogspot.com/. Robert S. King, a native Georgian, now lives in Lexington, Kentucky. His poems have appeared in hundreds of magazines, including California Quarterly, Chariton Review, Hollins Critic, Kenyon Review, Lullwater Review, Main Street Rag, Midwest Quarterly, Negative Capability, Southern Poetry Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review. He has published four chapbooks (When Stars Fall Down as Snow, Garland Press 1976; Dream of the Electric Eel, Wolfsong Publications 1982; The Traveller’s Tale, Whistle Press 1998; and Diary of the Last Person on Earth, Sybaritic Press, 2014). His full‐length collections are The Hunted River and The Gravedigger’s Roots, both in 2nd editions from FutureCycle Press, 2012; One Man's Profit from Sweatshoppe Publications, 2013; and Developing a Photograph of God from Glass Lyre Press, 2014. Robert’s work has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of Net award. He is editor-inchief of Kentucky Review (www.kentuckyreview.org). B.R. Yeager lives with his fiance in Western Massachusetts, where he attends a reasonably-priced community college for a degree he should have gotten out of the way years ago. He harbors deep fear towards teenagers and his family's history of Alzheimer's. Yeager's work has appeared in FreezeRay Poetry and Mixtape Methodology, and is forthcoming from Cheap Pop and Cartridge Lit. Read more about him at http://bryeager.wordpress.com. Pamela Hobart Carter's Seattle nest has emptied of all but husband and dog. Last June, after thirty years teaching, she quit to write full-time. Life has grown much quieter but no less busy. In February she launched No Talking Dogs Press, short books in easy English for adults, with Arleen Williams, an ESL instructor. Her work has appeared in Teaching Young Children, Learning about Language and Literacy in Preschool, Recovering the Self, The Seattle Star, Barrow Street, and Halcyon, and on several Seattle stages.
Laryssa Wirstiuk lives in Jersey City, NJ with her miniature dachshund Charlotte Moo. She teaches creative writing and writing for digital media at Rutgers University. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Crab Fat, Gargoyle Magazine, East Coast Literary Review, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. You can view all her work here: http://www.laryssawirstiuk.com. Originally born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Yoni Hammer-Kossoy has been living in Israel for the last 16 years with his wife and three kids. His work has recently appeared in The Harpoon Review, The Jewish Literary Journal, Stoneboat Journal and Bones Haiku. He also writes on Twitter as @whichofawind, where he experiments recreationally (but responsibly) with various short poetic forms. Tom Pescatore grew up outside Philadelphia dreaming of the endless road ahead, carrying the idea of the fabled West in his heart. He maintains a poetry blog: amagicalmistake.blogspot.com. His work has been published in literary magazines both nationally and internationally but he'd rather have them carved on the Walt Whitman bridge or on the sidewalks of Philadelphia's old Skid Row. Just another writer wearing down lead and running out of ink, one line at a time. Coffee refuels her when sleep has not been kind. Grace Black writes poetry and flash fiction and has been published in Three Line Poetry, 50 Haikus, 50-Word Stories, 101 Words, and 101 Fiction. More of her writing can be found on her blog http://graceblackwrites.com.
Pidgeonholes, Volume 1.5, Copyright Š 2015 Pidgeonholes and individual authors. Contents may not be used or duplicated without permission from all parties. Learn more at http://pidgeonholes.com/ Typefaces in this volume are entirely free: Umbrage by Vic Fieger Gravity by Vincenzo Vuono Edited by Nolan Liebert