The RETURN OF POETRY
April 2013
E N H A N C E
Editor in Chief Sopphey Vance Literary Editor Lily Fleur Poetry Editors Brian Garrison Nathan Alan Schwartz
Letter From the editors Where have all the poets gone? And what are they dreaming about when they disappear into the folds of time with a pencil in hand? Where do their poetic muses go in this electronic age? It should be acknowledged that they wait to be track down by those who need more than canned laughter and flat scripts. Or like fairies, do poets lose their wings every time a gamer says: I do not believe. Fortunately for us, the poems in this issue are proof that the muse lives. It slaves away for its poet masters. Your reading replenishes the muse’s energy to create another poet’s day. Your reading ensures that our poets maintain the age-old tradition of lyrics, lines, and rhymes. The poets haven’t gone too far. They’re here in this magazine and around you scribbling away into the night. The Editors All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be reproduced or transmitted without permission of appropriate copyright owners. Enhance, On Impression, On Impression Books, and the On Impression Network are entities owned by Sopphey Vance. Visit www.onimpression.com for more information.
Con t e n t s
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Of Metempsychosis by Alyssa Moore The Emigrant by Ndue Ukaj (North from Thule) by Melanie Mattila Where I’m From by Josh Medsker Loss by George Moore My Oak Tree by Irena Minella Gjoni College: Images in an Aging Eye by Frank Cavano The Voice of Solitude by Bobbi Sinha-Morey Entropy of All Things by Hannah Cook Cross Out of Love by Phillipe Martin Chatelain Raffia Basket by Barry Spacks Joy by J.lynn Sheridan I am a Pilferer of Phrases by Rick Hartwell Mr Machinery by Helen Rhodes Planet America by Diana Durham Après L’Amour by Arthur Heifetz I Will Wait for You by Steven Kain
Of Metempsychosis by Alyssa Moore All I know is I’ve been on this Earth for longer than I can remember, every burst of red becomes sweeping cloaks, or sharp air, like blood battlegrounds, and camaraderie, waiting for the bus, waiting for my sandwich order I’m really half-waiting, detached from my life, waiting to catch a glimpse from this catalogue of memories that aren’t quite mine, that aren’t quite memories, aluminum dropping from my hands to the countertop is the clanging of dull steel meeting steel, I can spark a flame to fire, given flint and steel— and I’m not a Boy Scout, never was…. The pale yellow of sunlight that slipped in by morning, and blurred to burning gold the whole of our little room, whose sun was that, whose skin blurred to burning gold, mine or is was that feeling being banked for some future kid or no-longer-Prince to startle at my memory of you that October Saturday, your hair like orange-edged flames, eyelashes like fans. I’ve the recollections of people before me who I maybe could’ve been, son of a blacksmith, tax collector, Barra fisherman, cattle farmer sailor school teacher poet museum tour guide bartender, all in a rush of snapshots and pictures assembled from revelations that hit me with overwhelming affinity, turning sidewalks to the stone walls of a castle staunch and formidable and brilliant and blurry and vague, yet composed and whole and real and mine—pens are the shafts of feathers in my hands, ticking clocks are the hooves of horses pounding against packed mud…. Some nights I’m overwhelmed with the knowledge that there is somewhere else I used to be, somewhere I maybe should be instead of here, cheap wine from the corner store doesn’t help, it tastes of opulence, rich like burgundy down my throat, fence posts, even fence posts leaning sideways the slightest bit become teeth, crooked insistent disarming. I know whose they are I do I am just missing the name but everything else remains—a fire on the stove is a fire in the woods, I loved you fiercely, like a wildfire, burning and without reservation, and your flesh now would surely be an unfamiliar constellation, but rain without a jacket is my hands, bringing cold chainmail to your skin remaining too long for increments of time both of us would fail to point out after…. I loved you wholly, furious for it and burning and lambent, pale blue denim is your eyes, branding into me still, plaintive and watching me watch you in my last moments—I loved you eternally, desperate and burning and damned to wander the Earth with this freight. Burning is burning, my skin melting on a pyre.
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The Emigrant by Ndue Ukaj He has only questions, his answers so very timid In dirty pockets with concreted nostalgia. He has only memories that surround his neck Like the millstone they shake him one step forward and a few backward, While caressing in torrential waterfall, And kidnapping the time which he never sees. The time that he only dreams in endless nights. He is not one of those below the sky full of storms, Where he walks, where he eats, where he makes love and seating. The fatherland of birds is the sky Of the fish is the sea Of the emigrant is sorrow Which is multiplied like clouds in the turbulent sky. On the unknown roads, nostalgia shifts While searching for one amid endless zeroes. Odyssey’s testament is burning in his hand, And coal threaten fire; like tropical rays Toward the missed Ithaca he directs his eyes And he is exhausted day and night. He migrates on the roads of sadness And is covered with the quilt of Promised Land, And every night dreams the same dream. The return to number one. While the desert oasis swallows his aspirations, and memories. Causing deep desperation to the Emigrant. With the sack of sorrow travels through the roads of hope Awaiting decisions to become as number one, in the endless zeroes Every day waits for him the unknown in the forest of desires Where it is relaxing, the soft vision and the deep meditation. Like a freezing bird is searching the nest of hope. And is covered with the quilt of Promised Land. translated from Albanian to English by Peter Tase.
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(North from Thule) by Melanie Marttila I travel north from thule intrepid explorer vast ice fields and frozen wastes —our bed— untouched. you rest elsewhere on autopsy slab or mortician’s table cold. still. This empty bed is uncharted territory. I cannot scale those frigid peaks, cannot map dunes of snow that change with the wind. Without you. Tears are salt, will not freeze. in time, the ice will yield; then I will discover what lies beyond thule.
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Where I’m From by Josh Medsker I’m from polar fleece And four-wheel drive. Carhartts, not Prada. Dickies, not designers. I am from Aleyeska, To use the Aleut word. I’m from Talkeetna, and Tok, Chicken and Kenai. I’m from Anchorage, personally. Where Vietnamese and Korean kids Preen and strut at each other In the Taco Bell Parking lot on the strip, bumpin’ Jay-Z. Down the street, someone at the pool hall, Gets shot. I am from yellow snow and the Iditarod Every February. And the permanent fund dividend Every October. I am from surplus oil revenue for every man, Woman and child, and men with no teeth, Living in the shelter. I’m from trailer parks, where I wait for him To come home, Because I can’t go to my sister’s house, Because she’s at bingo, Or drinking, Even though she knows What he does to me, And everyone knows it’s A week’s drive to Seattle. And I don’t have enough money For a plane ticket. I am from multi-million dollar Waterfront houses Built on gravel and silt Washed away into Turnagain Arm When the next big earthquake hits. But would you look at that view? I am from the Last good place. I am from the Last Frontier.
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The land of the Midnight Sun. I am from the list of ongoing labels Old-timers slap on the place, but never truly Capture the Dichotomy in it. I’m from a village of twelve-year old girls drunk on Hairspray, scope, rubbing Alcohol and lighter fluid. Hey, It’s a dry village of Fifty people (or less, pick one) but we need to Party! I’m from “we don’t give a shit how they do it Outside” And “Welcome to Alaska, Now Go Home”. I’m from Rednecks, Bluenecks, Bulldykes, and Baptists, All loud, all proud to be Alaskan. This poem was published in a different form, as “Home”, in Occupy Poetry, August 2012.
Loss by George Moore In the postmodern world a woman writes a book of poems about loss the loss of her son not a poem but a book a poems emotional and relentless and her husband incinerates the bodies of three children he has accidentally shot in Iraq accidentally in a fit of passion burns them along with their home so that no one will know his loss her loss in the poems goes on and on the child does not come back but the children do at night while he is bivouacked on the sand counting the days he has left how many more of the many there will be before he can go home to his wife and child who is no longer but the book of poems the book of poems survives beyond the life expectancy of a single child the book with its cover on fire
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My Oak Tree by Irena Minella Gjoni You have the smell of an oak Where above you a bird with a human’s voice, Articulated the discourse Since there should have been raised an oracle to Zeus. You are alive in the oak’s soul Since the world placed the first stone. I eat thanks to you my Pelasgian God Almonds and juice from your dreams. Chew and grind them with the teeth of my soul In order to live thanks to your wheat And mixed the bread of the Sun. The scroll of the water’s creek, Are the tears of breath And the murmuring of your leaves, Which meditates even in the dead languages Hugs of branches and roots in the distance. And the articulated fate through their resonance, It says that even when you won’t be, You will continue to grind almonds of dreams with me And arrives with the odor of the oak… translated from Albanian to English by Peter Tase.
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College: Images in an Aging Eye by Frank Cavano Even from here, I can smell the days fresh with September. I see once again the hours smiling on souls set free from classes to spend the proximate hour in whatever the heart directs. Sit with a new friend to discuss Prufrock, take a walk, eat a plum, fantasize, ponder me. Even from here, I can recall the lovely lawlessness of pliant days. Pass each class. This alone, this alone. No other “musts�; nothing dictatorial. Free of home and regimental high schooling, something internal drank the days with an open mouth gulp. Drank in the days like a thirsty rose whose promise and perpetual bloom I now can see, even in the receding light, yes, even from here.
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The Voice of Solitude by Bobbi Sinha-Morey In the afterglow of the sun I listened to the stillness now that you’re gone. Without you there is no more love to light the way and the road to heaven has come to a dead end. The voice of solitude is so soft now that my heart must begin a journey alone. The shape of your smile is lost in the deep apricot of the sky, and whispers of smoky lavender can’t conceal the time you had been here. The oak outside my dusty glass window is holding back my twilit years.
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Entropy of All Things by Hannah Cook Cross Smashed frog, fresh roadkill raccoon, even once a dead goose: as a I kid I’d walk or ride my bike along our country highway and visit startling displays of dissolution. Each day I’d pass the same site and see time take its toll: stiffening then bloating of the body, maggots—eyeballs always went first— then deflation. Rain would intervene, matting fur and washing away its color until it was hardly distinguishable from the pebbly shoulder gravel. Eventually (after months, to my impatient child’s mind), the fur would coalesce into a thin blanket over bones as the skin disintegrated. In the end perhaps only the sunbleached skull would remain, fangs protruding, foreign to its formerly enfleshed shape, now picked and washed clean. Another child would have pocketed it as a souvenir, a curiosity to be later studied. Even now I see a little plump girl child with a tangle of yellow hair squatting by the road, examining day by day until nothing remained— bones scattered, fur blown away, gone and forgotten except for here, now, a bright flame of truth in the murky cavern of memory.
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Out of Love by Phillipe Martin Chatelain is love a renewable resource? if this world is ending, i gotta be sure to stock up. trust me, i feel i’m running out of this thing called love. and i want to just open a faucet and replace tears with the falling waters of utter devotion, to bathe in the showers of velvety, slick drips of love, the kind they sell on valentine’s, the kind that smothers, the kind that never lets go. or how about steal some of it from the ink signatures of those i-love-you-for-now lovers and give it to the i-love-you-forever lovers. those vegas bright light lovers who are just trying to chase the feeling they captured for an inebriated instant, but let go of so they could pop two pills the next morning to treat the severe headaches of the night before. maybe i’m too young to know love, but she’s a cougar and it seems like she’s pursuing me. i’m convinced i’m hunting her. but if I’m running low on love I can’t go to Costco and buy in bulk. i’m searching for what only you could give me. and this is not coming out of my heart, it’s not coming from my mind, or this pen, or these keys. i’m willing to give you the last bit of this love, instead of quenching my own thirst for it. and i’m doing it out of love. because of you i’m not running out of it, it’s running out of me.
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Raffia Basket by Barry Spacks An addict of bliss, trapped in a well (he tumbled in gazing down at his face) called to a girl passing by for help: “Please—lower your basket and winch me up!” The girl attached her raffia basket in place of the well-rope’s bucket; she cranked him slowly up and out. He left only a smile for reward, no surprise to her who’d saved so many well-gazers in love with their faces. It’s been her fate to rescue them, one or another a while, till they gaze down another girl’s well.
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Joy by J.lynn Sheridan The river in my teacup frolicking waves of warmth a sip of cream and a new tattoo— love is close behind
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I Am A Pilferer of Phrases by Rick Hartwell I am a pilferer of phrases. I pluck and pick from What I hear of others’ speech. I rob the twists and turns of language, Tales told by idiot others, Dialects of disturbance, the Gushing guttural of teeming crowds. I try to listen carefully, but My ear is not crystalline and clear, the Muddled speech I hear becomes Polyglotted on paper. This clash of sound in text, Sonorous to me as melodic whisperings, Coos and cuddles in quiet corners, from which I sip and suck and masticate, until I swallow constantly the Plunder of words in my inner ear. I push them down with the Undulating muscles of my mind; I digest them, processing them internally, Making them mine, turning them to energy. Periodically the gorge will rise in my throat, Vibrating my vocal cords and, Unable to maintain my internal silence, I spew them out into the open, Staining the ears and eyes of others, With regurgitated meanings.
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Mr Machinery by Helen Rhodes I am a labourer, I am a minority, I am a voter in a compliant democracy. I am a carer, I am a constituent, I am a self assessed, tax confessed legitimate. I am a label, I am a patient, I am a part of the 30 plus market segment. I am an audience, I am a figure, I am something that will make someone snigger. I am a signature, I am a passport, I am sometimes what some would call a turning point last resort. I am a certificate, I am a license, I am an affiliate mate with a left or right stance. And M&S pants. But what I… I am a loyalty, I am a medium, I am an advocate of speech having freedom. I am a client, I do consume, I have a lifestyle that’s contained in one Ikea room. I am a NI, I am a freelancer, I am eligible for an interest free balance transfer. I am a creditor, I am a debtor, I am a black listed, checked, scored letterer. I am a .co.uk, I am a coordinate, I am a social and professional subordinate. I am a tipper, I am a twitterer, I am a comment on the blog that makes life less shitterer. Or more bitterer. But what I really… I am a receipt, I am a ticket, I am a loyal tea dunker to a biscuit. I am a horoscope, I am a brand, I am a reference number to The Man. I am a reader, I am an IP, I’m a scuzzy fuzzy image on CCTV. I am a neighbour, I am a downloader, I am a potential apathetical voter. I am a passenger, I am a subject, I am a macroprudentialist budget. I am a measurement, I am a code, I am a burden on the systematic load. So the figures showed. But what I really am… I am a listener, I am a lender, I am a bums on seats cultural renderer. I am a producer, I am a witness, I am a potential risk contractor of sickness. I am a cause, I am a striker, I am a conscientiously forced recycler. I am a them, I am a they, I am a source of finance for someone else’s pay. I am a trend, I am a populator, I am a genetic, ancestral propagator. I am a permit, I am traffic, I am the BBC’s 9pm target demographic. And a natural prophylactic. But what I really am is me. Deal with that, Mr Machinery.
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Planet America by Diana Durham as the plane lowered through clouds, they swirled for a brief moment open above the Manhattan fuel cells, the banked, captive conglomeration sprawl, Queens, but I didn’t know it, had not driven yet through the urban highway inter-sections called centers, had not left the train, walked for doughnuts the dust blank hostile main street of Jamaica Plains, where the girl, two decades younger, four plus-sizes older, spooned six heaps of sugar in her coffee, but I got a feel of vastness, of something measureless that she might be lost in, where dimension works differently, like those special effects showing endlessness—druid armies, metropolises— some huge system anyway was opening up its hatches, guiding me in, when they closed over the former world would pass away, this wasn’t just another country I was coming into, but another planet with structures and substructures beyond my frame of reference, and I felt more tired than excited, holding my baby girl in my arms, felt as if this might be a lot more than I had bargained for, that all the old small ways of seeing could falter, and I would have to make the culture of meaning over again, and when later on I tried, found different ways to blend people were kind to the promise in my daughter but couldn’t see where we had come from, not sure how relevant to raw main-stream America and it was difficult amid the skyscraper chasms, the status smiles, the frantic serious pace, to measure anything, to find proportion, explain why small town views aren’t wise enough either—one gun shop, eight selectmen and a church— or tell the mad tea-party why it was too much, too sweet, too big, too empty to ever be filled. A long time afterwards I landed, warmed on sun— bathed stone, soothed by bright dark snowmelt shining over smoothed out granite slabs, my kids playing in the pools and water curtains, knowing there was not just one mountain range but thousands their rivers, regions emptying out around, felt how this land might be made from extremes, how its local largescale expanse makes us view difference, gives us space to be new, held the mica-flashed stones, pink, pale aqua, honey owned in this generous nature an abundance I had called for all my life waiting for me felt how emptiness can only be filled from within.
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Après L’Amour by Arthur Heifetz You’ve already left for work when I awake, embracing the empty air and breathing in your dimestore perfume that everyone mistakes for French. “Après l’amour” sings Aznavour the tousled sheets still bear the imprint of our bodies. I can still feel the frisson of your breasts brushing back and forth against my chest like light riffs on a snare drum, the touch of your fingers cradling my sex as if it were a small lost bird. The first time in the Rockaways The Drifters were singing “Under the Boardwalk” in four-part harmony as we fumbled at zippers and hooks, our hurried climax taking us by surprise and dampening our clothes. Après l’amour we shared a menthol cigarette and strolled hand in hand along the midway, burying our flushed cheeks in mounds of cotton candy. We paid a buck apiece to see a tatooed lady with a giant cobra draped around her neck. We could have touched her skin and felt the cobra’s oily scales but that cost a dollar extra and we were young and broke.
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I Will Wait for You by Steven Kain While the worst of friend’s superglue the dead leaves back on the noon November trees The heavy holding body architects do pull ups on the half hanging moon Bringing it down for the teenage Latino skaters to use as a half pipe The mother’s milk their spirits for their husbands, children, strangers Until their bones are weak and fragile As the intellectuals become so self aware they forget who they are And everyone around me tries to fill the void with God Love And or Sex drugs death emptiness chaos chaos chaos The old men linger at the pretty young waitresses they are too late to fool I will wait for you as the fly stuck in the cobweb waits for peace of mind In the amount of cigarettes it takes to give one hundred hopeless French lovers lung cancer In an hour glass large enough to hold all the sand on the earth
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About the Authors Frank Cavano is a retired physician who attempts to say something about the human condition in most of his poems. Although he writes for the joy he experiences in doing so, he finds the process to be a healing one as well. Some of his efforts have appeared in The Penwood Review, vox poetica, Blood and Thunder, visions with voices, Indigo Rising and cell2soul.
the hormonally-challenged?) English teacher living in Moreno Valley, California. He believes in the succinct, that the small becomes large; and, like the Transcendentalists and William Blake, that the instant contains eternity. Given his “druthers,” if he’s not writing, Rick would rather still be tailing plywood in a mill in Oregon.
Phillipe Martin Chatelain is a poet from the Bronx and editor of In Parentheses. He prides himself on finding a balance between crucial self-reflection and expressions of awe or disgust toward the outward world. His biggest astonishment is the seamless unity of existence connecting all living things. His plight with humanity stems from their role in obstructing this unity. His work is forthcoming in Praise Writer, Blast Furnace, and Rockett Review.
Art Heifetz teaches ESL to refugees in Richmond, Va. He has had over 60 poems published in the U.S., Canada, Israel, Australia, Argentina, and France. A sampling of his work may be found at polishedbrasspoems.com
Hannah Cook Cross is a poet-mom living in Arizona. Her work has appeared in Poetry Midwest, The Chaffin Journal, Limestone, and various anthologies. She is also the editor of One Trick Pony Review, and online poetry journal. Irena Minella Gjoni was born in Saranda. Received her Ph.D. with focus on Albanian Literature as well as Master of Sciences from the Department of Phylology at the University of Tirana, Albania. Gjoni has also earned a B.A. in Albanian Literature and linguistics. For a number of years has worked as a journalist in a number of newspapers and TV stations. Currently serves as an adjunct professor in the University of Tirana, Saranda Campus and Literature Professor at the “Hasan Tahsini” High School. She is a member of the Albanian Association of Writers and Artists. Is a member of the Society of professional Journalists and Vice President of “Ionian Club of writers”. She is the editor in chief of a cultural magazine, entitled “Ionian Art.” Is a member of the Art and Culture Committee in the Town Hall of Saranda. Since her studies in High School she has constantly pulished poetry, literary prose, as well as book reviews and scholarly articles in many newspapers in Albanian and Foreign Language. Has participated in many conferences at home and abroad. She is an active participant in a number of poetry festivals in various European countries. Gjoni has been published extensively in a few Anthologies of international poetry. Rick Hartwell is a retired middle school (remember,
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Melanie Marttila is an epic fantasy novelist-inprogress. Previously published in several poetry anthologies, her short fiction has won several prizes and appeared in the flagship issue of Parsec Magazine. She lives ad writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada and blogs as Writerly Goodness: http://www.melaniemarttila.ca Alyssa Moore is an undergraduate student currently pursuing her passion of creative writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. George Moore has published poetry with The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, North American Review, Colorado Review, and internationally, with Blast, Dublin Quarterly, Antigonish Review and others. His fourth collection, Children’s Drawings of the Universe (Salmon Press) will be out this coming spring. George has also been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best of the Web and Best of the Net Awards, and have been a finalist for the National Poetry Series, Brittingham Award, Anhinga Poetry Prize, Rhysling Poetry Award, Wolfson Prize, and others. He teaches with the University of Colorado, Boulder (visit his website: http://spot.colorado.edu/~mooreg/Site/About.html). Bobbi Sinha-Morey is a reviewer for the online magazine Specusphere and a poet. Her poetry has appeared in places such as Plainsongs, Taproot Literary Review, and Pirene’s Fountain, among others. Her latest book of poetry, Rain Song, is available at www.writewordsinc.com. Visit her website: http:// bobbisinhamorey.wordpress.com. J.lynn Sheridan writes in the Chain O’ Lakes of northern Illinois in a very ordinary house, but she’d rather live in an old hardware store for the aroma, ambiance, and possibilities. She has recently been published in Beyond the Dark Room and Storm Cycle
Enhance Deadlines & Guidelines 2012, also at Em Dash Literary Magazine, and Four and Twenty Literary Journal. She is currently working on her first novel. Find her at writingonthesun.wordpress. com and @J.lynnSheridan.
Issue No. 15 Poetically Inclined (Poetry Only Issue) Submission Deadline: March 6 Reading Period & Notifications: March 7-April 5 Publish Date: April 6
Barry Spacks has taught writing and literature for many years at M.I.T. and UCSB. He’s published individual poems widely, plus stories, two novels, eleven poetry collections, and three CDs of selected work. His first novel The Sophomore has just been brought back into print in the Faber & Faber Finds series. His most recent poetry collection (Cherry Grove, 2012) presents a selection from ten years of e-mail exchanges with his friend Lawrence E, Leone. It’s called A BOUNTY OF 84s (the 84 being a stanza limited exactly to 84 characters, echoing the traditional notion that the Buddha left us 84,000 different teachings because humans have so many different needs, are all of them so differently the same).
Issue No. 16 Words in Images (Artwork Heavy Issue) Submission Deadline: June 6 Reading Period & Notifications: June 7-July 5 Publish Date: July 6
Udue Ukaj (1977) is Albanian and Swedish writer, publicist and literary critic. He was member of several editorials literary. He has also been editor of the magazine for art, culture and society “Identity” that was published in Pristina. Ukaj is included in several anthologies of poetry, in Albanian, and other languages. He has published five books, including “Godo is not coming”, which won the national award for best book of poetry published in 2010 in Kosovo. He has also won the award for best poems in the International Poetry Festival in Macedonia. His poems and texts are translated into English, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Finish and Swedish.
Issue No 17 Fictioneers (All fiction issue) Submission Deadline: September 6 Reading period & Notifications: September 6 October 1 Publish Date: October 6 We only accept submissions via e-mail at enhancemag@onimpression.com. Please include the word “Submission” in the Subject. All mail without Submission in the subject will be mercilessly ignored, deleted, or both. Submit original works only! Only three submissions per person. You can submit two short stories and a photo or any other combination! Minimum word count for prose is 600 words and Maximum is 2,000 words. (Note, word count does not apply for all-fiction issues). Submit your work as attachments in either Word for all literature and JPG for all images. Submit a short biography with links and/or a photo. We’ll only be accepting published works if the last publication date exceeds three years. For example if JournalA published your poem PoemX in 2008, then we won’t be able to accept it as a submission until the year 2012. We ask that Enhance and On Impression published authors take a 8 month break between submitting to Enhance.
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