SVR Suisun Valley Review the literary magazine of Solano Community College
Spring 2007 Issue #24
SVR Spring 2007 Issue #24 Established in 1980, the Suisun Valley Review is the student-edited literary magazine of Solano Community College. Each spring, students enroll in English 58 to study the craft of editing and publishing as they create anew their contribution to this long-running Solano Community College tradition. The Suisun Valley Review actively solicits submissions from all writers, and its editors strive to publish the best work received by first-time and previously published authors alike. 2007 Editorial Staff Amber Campana-Boardman Chelsea Chavez Toni Chisamore Ryan Craig Annika Jenson Lillian Nelson Nathan Norton Hailey Rathke Tina Ristine-Freethy Jennifer Robins Jeffrey Stewart Faculty Advisor Michael J. Wyly Cover Photo Chelsea Chavez The Suisun Valley Review accepts manuscripts in poetry, prose and fiction from January through March each year. Submissions should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope.
Suisun Valley Review
English Department Solano Community College 4000 Suisun Valley Road Fairfield, CA 94535
In this issue: October 6, 1834 ................................................................. William Doreski all the birds have flown but one ........................................... Evan Brengle Chiaroscuro .............................................................................Monica Storss They Were All Horizons.................................................. Jordan Reynolds everyone still hears ..................................................................... Lyn Lifshin Baptism ..................................................................................... Joshua Neely in the hospital barn at night ..................................................... Lyn Lifshin The Egret ............................................................................ Leonore Wilson lop-eared .................................................................................... e. bojnowski Malkin ................................................................................. Jordan Reynolds “Danger: words at play—” .......................................... Charles A. S. Ernst After Hours ....................................................................... Michelle Johnson Inventory ........................................................................... Michelle Johnson You Should Know ..............................................................Catherine Fraga The Charcoal Horse ............................................ James Arthur Anderson Windfall ...................................................................... Philip A. Waterhouse she loves coffee sarah does ..................................................... Judith Plank Politik ..........................................................................................Shea Garrity Parthenogenesis......................................................................A. J. Newman Last Writes .................................................................................Shea Garrity 1967, Detroit, Michigan ................................................. Henry Krusiewicz For Women Who Cannot Sleep ........................................ Alena Hairston Elegy ....................................................................................... Alena Hairston Karta in Exposition ......................................................... Richard Barnhart After “Happily Ever After” .................................................... Beth Franks children riding tricycles .............................................................. Ryan Craig Rooftop.........................................................................................J. L. Torres In Four Movements ........................................................... Taylor Graham The Clay Fraternity ............................................................. Brad Buchanan Gold Rush ............................................................................ Taylor Graham Napa Valley ............................................................................ Sophie Nogue Viva La Vida ...............................................................................Alan Bunch I Drop Ten Dollars ........................................................ Red Shuttleworth Historian .................................................................................. Alexa Mergen “indexed neatly by the inscrutable” .................................Noah Benjamin “deoxyribonucleic” .............................................................Noah Benjamin Trying to Get a Saddle on a February Sunday ........... Red Shuttleworth love at a distance, like/an assembly of fragments ............. Evan Brengle Offering ............................................................................... Toni Chisamore Bright Pillow ...................................................................................Tim Kahl Talking Carp Hunts ...................................................................Kimi Julian Erosion ................................................................................ Toni Chisamore Martyr......................................................................................... Elfie Nelson Haiku on a Plane ..................................................................... Joshua Neely
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[william doreski] October 6, 1834 The exuberance of Turner's second painting of the Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons excites me like the gesture of my father throwing kerosene on the fire he made of the pear trees that refused to exude more pears. Turner's splash of conflagration, chrome yellow with sunset orange, convinces me Parliament did well to burn with so excitable an artist to record it. Arches of the Westminster Bridge stand by, secure in their rough stone grace, the river splashed with little boats heavy with the usual gawkers, a crowd massed on the embankment. The river itself looks raw and sore, the firelight reflected so strongly it's almost dangerous to the eye. The surge of burning kerosene didn't trigger fear at the time but now I think my father risked too much, risked our hair and skin in a geyser of heat that thrilled us both and cheered the neighbors, their laughter and chat still trapped in the complex of my inner ear, Parliament still blazing and golden and a plume of blue smoke askew.
[evan brengle] all the birds have flown but one. children construct thin and flimsy bird houses like fortune cookies split to remove a tiny banner streaks useless chatter through the air. if you were here, i would ask you— . . .
, i would ask you— . . . they hang us in the winter. calling us warm does not make us so. calling us dry. but the thought . . . it’s like molting. conversation is the dirt beaten from our tongues like rugs. blown away we do not miss it or ourselves are only increments. i shall call myself an inch. is that invisible enough? dying is the islands. they put his ashes in a tiny boat and set him out to sea. a place of which we speak. a place to which we would migrate if we knew the way as if such desolation were seasonal. you might say the inch takes a swim has a drink watches the sunset. or you might not. it would be senseless. i can't wait to go. in the summer they lay us down head to foot we form a line around the globe and further we find only inch after inch invisible as if a mile makes us bigger.
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or a lightyear. we launch bodies into orbit to know the distances that swallow us we feed insatiably to fill a void above us lesser than the one between we excavate ourselves for empty space. if you were here, i would tell you—. . . , . . . tell you— . . .
you take an inch of mine and i take an inch of yours. and perhaps we can be minutes as well and we'll pile ourselves under every increment we know until we cannot lift our hands to wave in gestures we couldn't see anyway and have already forgotten about.
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[monica storss] Chiaroscuro I have scratched something old and made an indelible mark But it's the train whistle that's long: Third street alleyways and half-shot lights, jump-up-and-kiss-me's Growing in-between the pavers, and sanguine sangria in back streets While the Hobo Express passes on by. Tiny paper lanterns were strung up in my hair, the air. Eyeliner on the ledges, mascara on the landings. Nothing flickers. The heat from your cheek is dangerous. It makes a fever in-between the open spaces of fish nets, The open spaces of ironwork. I can see it showing. Around the corner an art installation against bricks— Dismembered dolls stuck to the walls outside, Tiny pieces of plastic wedged into cracks, Spray painted gold. Butter yellow clouds tonight, driving up the 80, and for the second time An owl flew over me and my car. The first time It rained And the soot was washed away And the clabber moved without anyone there And the dogwood opened and the birdbaths were reckless. The sunlight came at an angle, and the crooked places were illuminated
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[jordan reynolds] They Were All Horizons They were all horizons and like any field the wash of sounds cleared the closer you came Colors were times shifted and thicked mountains framed with powdered leaves Yellow smacks above deep red maybe sea grass just right with the glancing of wind All of it at some point moving some pan simmering liquid bubbling and up turned pouring from the walls
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[lyn lifshin] Everyone Still Hears the rattle of street cars past sagging balconies One man says I left 24 years ago. I will never be from anywhere else. Cracked streets, the low smooth branches of oaks along the park. I remember the old lady making the sign of the cross near the Catholic Church. We were giddy when the hurricanes came
the wind howled, the windows burst. Then we played in the water. I remember it unchanged and yet something was always under the surface, falling apart. The thick beat, the mud, the bursting magnolias. I will, he says, never be from anywhere else
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[joshua neely] Baptism The font earthen and full of uprooted trees. A creeping redemption covered the land and cattle fled to higher ground and many more could not be saved. Roads disappeared from beneath our tires and no birds returned with beaks full of promise. A tractor became trapped and men were lowered from helicopters to help, momentarily birds themselves. The family photos rafted on curled, brown tongues. A sonorous bedlam, whole houses lifted up and drifted away, twelve year old girls hidden inside. Furniture bumped against walls, upstairs bedrooms offered a swaying asylum. And when the clouds finally scattered, when pressures low and high went their separate ways, a girl and her house crossed the horizon. She was already gone when the house settled and sagged, collapsed, without saying a word.
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[lyn lifshin] In the Hospital Barn at Night after the last ribbon of raspberry sky goes ink and the food buckets are still, the night air moves in under the door. A ventilator hums, an 11 day old colt gnaws a curtain. Smell the damp leaves. Night birds you don't know the name of. The plush of night like cotton batten around the alpaca with a baby that didn't know to nurse, wraps its velvet around a young bull castrated hours before and soothes the mare with a high risk pregnancy and the one who has just given birth. In soft dark behind a fence of get well cards and posters, Barbaro sifts from leg to leg
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[leonore wilson] The Egret He stood motionless. Where was he looking one couldn't tell, maybe outside everything, lifting his gaze, hesitating a bit, and the air was cool that morning on the world in late September, like the foggy almost impenetrable memories of childhood mornings when you would rise alone, inconsolable, having to go to the schoolyard where the cracks of boy-shouts injured the brevity of innocence tucked inside, (the luffing quiet, the God creaking at the gate . . . ) The tentative bird was far from shore, standing in the autumn pasture, milky as the sea where shadows end, under the tidal swirl of golden leaves, then blinded by sudden light, like thought at the beginning of time (or what the Gnostics perceive) mirroring the dissolution of hours or years as when a painter meshes himself into flesh and color, his brush eagerly capturing the last irrevocable moment, thought beyond language; hammer, anvil blazing in the fired creation like the curved hand of Eve reaching for the apple, or knowledge chugging like a steady locomotive behind the reddened eyes of that insomniac, Proust . . . How the egret lured you, closer and closer still, though you dare not move, not wanting to disturb his proximity, his winged finale, not wanting to see him fly distractedly beyond the weathered grass and the darkened hills, wanting to steady his form as if finding the hidden foundation of a buried cathedral or the first bubble of a thwarted spring, honeycomb lament of Barber's Adagio, restrained palliative of human grief.
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[e. bojnowski] lop-eared In the scribble of a shrug, you are nocturnal. under the lame drape of dew, syrupy and meek, like soft pepper:
a calamity calmly riding on the back of a fever— freckles like bread crumbs, shrugged off all the moon dust and shunned to the far comer of a shadow: your voice is the most electric shiver raked the atmosphere and stitched it to the hem of a dress seldom paused to absorb.
and as their faces turned like a lazy susan As the bald moon curves around woolen branch in the sweet drip disdain gray azure silhouette— a mad duke in the bland eve: kettles shall surely coo. and as the cheeky sidewalk winds around your sorrow and smears the dull twinkle of porch light [you nose in the odd curve of a cliff, cheeks a soft pelt] you sleep only in the cruel din of cracked purple and tawdry star. you return all muscle, tendons flickering.
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flint for tall fires: a faint sketch of eyebrows the quiet loop of equinox the new gold— pumice a milky figure that rolls under infant quilts— shredded dandelion hair under his hat a lop eared rabbit. Drawn into the shape of an H and hung from telephone poles never surrendered to the slow flap of a bird or the accidental brush into another. you squeeze the city into a cacophonous orb of sounds and lights brights and louds and when the clouds are like cats liking blood from their mittens, he will sweat out all the chasms of love his heart a stiff chiseled rock face a sculpted shadow, faking sleep and bruised like a strawberry; He lulled around S's the healthy rain his swollen anchor caved and bled and in a hazel rage of flukes and eyes: succumbed to a mossy face.
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[jordan reynolds] Malkin Words are gathered Prodding rabbit skins through Cornstalks Chattered skins mist ceiling d grasses Furs hardening whispering to effigies of the animal Hair themselves Scare itself a hare Rushing crow keeper Potato sacked pursuit The twisted face Straw fingers remembering feet thumping cabbages un trodden ground ripe radish globes Some father s tattered shirt Maybe The fur bullets found a mother s apron grandpa s holes they d dug A dusty hat pair of feet We re still looking for the eyes firmly attached
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[charles a. s. ernst]
Danger: Words at play— Metaphor met-a-floozie. Tickled her fancy.
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[michelle johnson] After Hours If this sticky bartop could talk, it would share stories of nights spent here, breasting up to the counter, ordering sexy drinks all night. It would snitch, how after hours you let some name forgotten drunk l ift you up on that bar, gathering ashes and granules of margarita salt. How you let him drizzle Rumplemintz, spreading you open licking you clean. Your story would be out. You would witness your husband hear the news of how you said you were tending late, but you weren't. You were on the other side, here— licking the inside of your thumb and index finger, shaking the salt, sucking the lime to sour the burn of tequila, carrying you away from the lie. It would snitch how you leaned into the man next to you, young and strange, who you knew you would fuck because your marriage was old, lonely. Another shot would move your hands into his, and before you knew it the bar would close. You'd catch a glimpse of your face in the strips of mirror between dusted liquor bottles. You would see yourself as other because mothers do not service strangers on. countertops afterhours.
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If this countertop could confess, it would report the white lines you chopped and snorted, on the sly, off of tip trays between drinks and handjobs in the back. Because what the bar does not see, it hears. If this bar could talk, it would recount how pathetic you looked that night, pleading with him to take you home. Promising him it would be the last time. You would not show up on his doorstep, drunk anymore, not come into his bed and fumble with his sleeping cock. You would not if he would, just one more time, please. But he left you there, swaying unevenly, emptying another glass. Luckily for you, your stories are safe, wiped clean for the morning shift.
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[michelle johnson] Inventory (after reading Dorianne Laux's “What I Wouldn't Do”) First it was Dairy Twist. All the softserve I could consume. Greasy smells of fries and onion curls soaked through my pores. Lovestruck teens swapped spit & bubble gum while waiting for their afterschool shakes. After that it was Kids Country Careland, cleaning after a 100 preschoolers. “Free-art” debris sprinkled wall-to-wall. The afternoon snacks—regurgitated—in the carpet. Bartending was fine, blending lime Margaritas, pouring sugary Manhattans, chilled Cosmopolitans, and another shot for the bartender. I drank and packed my nose from job to job: the Hacienda where I wore a sombrero and swallowed too many Tequilas, too many men. Gernot's Schnitzel Haus, with the oom-pa-pa bands, dark warm beer and married insurance salesmen. Omaha Johnny's Steak House, where I served corn-fed beef and rooster fries on a wet leaf of bleached lettuce. I liked 1-800 Holiday Inn reservations best. Grave shift, alone in a corner cubicle, surrounded by the quiet hum of resting computer terminals, radio tuned to KGOR and my journal opened, ready to record another life, not my own.
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[catherine fraga] You Should Know When I finally tell you about the night I never answered your knocks, we are both years away from that Seattle brownstone off Pike Street, the neighborhood my father labeled borderline during his only visit in my four years living there, when he went to Save-Mart and tossed T-bone steaks and whole salmon and jars of marinated artichokes into the cart —you have to eat— and you came downstairs to say hello after your acrylics class, we stuffed ourselves until we could not move. Now on my doorstep, you have bicycled all the way from Santa Cruz, over 100 miles to my new home in Sacramento, a quiet tree-lined street where old people crawl on hands and knees around their front lawns, grasping nail scissors, trimming crab grass, those nasty dandelions, you're smiling, sweaty, asking if I am surprised to see you. Moments later, you gulp dark beer from the bottle and I decide my new shrink is probably right, I should tell you about that night, the time I left for a few minutes just to buy a diet Coke and Jiffy popcorn, the kind you said always burned, but I never entered the store, I could see it from the middle of our alley, the knife's blade grazing my throat, my breasts—you bitch—bumps of concrete pressing into my skull—look the bitch wants all of us to do her— the night I passed out in the tub, startled to wake sitting in cold blood water and your knocking, knocking your nightly check-in, your is everything okay see you in the morning.
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[james arthur anderson] The Charcoal Horse Once again I lead this journey as I feel the tug upon my reins. My somber step before the hearse, a clip clop on the cobblestones in an ancient death trot rhythm. Another passage to the chapel; silent voices pray behind the wooden coffin, carved and ready for the freshly hollowed grave. The grim procession follows slowly in an ageless, steady line. Once again I lead this journey. Once again I mark the time.
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[philip a. waterhouse] Windfall Almost no one uses the word “peripatetic” now, they say, Never mind the fancy stuff, the guy's a bum— bum being a local male who gets by without regular employment, mooching. Peripatetic: a transient male. Here today, gone tomorrow. Bum not so romantic a term but in use a lot longer—easier to spell. Not many likely to give a fig about the distinction. Nothing in particular distinguished about a bum or a wanderer. “Give a fig” . . . there's a saying sounds like it's from Biblical times. Once overheard a peripatetic say, Keep your (fig) leaf in place until I get back, honey, if you get my drift.
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[judith plank] she loves coffee sarah does she loves coffee sarah does she drinks it like i drink my milk glug glug two glugs its gone glass is empty thats how she drinks her coffee that sarah sometimes she burns the roof of her mouth sometimes her tongue then she sticks it out at me as if to play but i know shes airing it out like she airs out her clothes she shakes it and sucks air too like when she makes the bed chewing bubble gum grapes her favorite she sucks air to get a bubble going she laughs too at the same time and thats hard to do you know laugh and blow bubbles its like sneezing can you sneeze with your eyes open i cant so sarah blows bubbles and laughs shes not very good at the bubbles but she can laugh i make her laugh all the time sometimes wiggling my ears sometimes telling stupid dirty jokes i get from the man next door I can never remember the punch line that makes sarah laugh more sometimes sarah holds her chest when shes had too much coffee she says theres pain i tell her coffees not good for you she says i know everytime i tell her coffees not good for her sometimes sarah sits on the big red chair her fat legs rolled up under her looking very uncomfortable but shes trying to read and she holds a big book i looked at the cover once sometimes its shakespeare sometimes its readers digest anyway i can see through her panties only i pretend to be looking for cockroaches ive seen a few you know sarah swore at me when i told her once but i swore back and said i did and i told her to shutup and she did that made me happy anyway ive taken to looking for cockroaches quietly now she doesn't ask me a damn thing just keeps reading shakespeare or something and i look through her panties theres always a hole or two and i see her big chest heaving up and down as she reads and sometimes i want to feel it but mostly i want to stop it from heaving sarah says i couldnt hurt a fly and i said oh yeah one day i showed her a dead fly she screamed and i screamed back it wasnt a mouse or a rat at least i told her it was only a fly i said but i saw her get red in the face and she had trouble breathing so i took the fly out and buried it in the vegetable garden sometimes sarah invites the neighbor man over and he comes in with a red tie and nice black pants sarah looks at me a lot making sure im not up to something i guess but im not im only looking for dead roaches and usually¡i cant find any when i really want to but most of the time i dont really want to you know ha so she and the neighbor man pour gin from the huge bottle in the cupboard and they sit down close to each other one in the red chair the other in the brown chair by the tv and they look at each other and drink a lot and look at each other a lot i know its gin because when they arent looking i go to the kitchen and sneak a few quick ones myself then pour some in a dirty cup by the sink and take it out back near the garden pretending to see how the tomatoes are SVR ’07
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growing sometimes theres some sevenup in the frig on the porch and i mix it in by the time theyve had 3 stiff ones im counting tomatoes and starting over because i cant remember past 30 and the dogs barking next door sound like theyre lost in a tunnel way down and i want to save em i get angry and lonely and wanna do something real quick like tear up the tomatoes and zucchini especially the corn i hate it between my teeth so i wanna save my friends the dogs but instead i get sneaky and i go around to the front of the house where the drapes from the front room dont close all the way and i peek in at the neighbor man and sarah hes got his hands in her blouse and their faces are all smiles and he unbuttons the blouse not much like a gentleman he sort a rips at it then his hands are allover her and his lips too then he accidentally kicks the drinks all over the floor sarah laughs and he laughs she would a killed me if it were me and now standing here im getting all excited a little angry too that hes so mean to sarah but sarah likes it i know and now hes on top a her and i cant help laughing it looks so funny hes kinda skinny and tall and sarahs fat legs look like those blowup dolls i see downtown sometimes they all have short little socks and red shoes and sarah has red shoes too but she doesnt take em off and he doesnt care obviously so im still laughing but i gotta be as quiet as possible if sarah knew i was watching shed kill me but now i think of it they should a gone to her room oh well by now the floors a mess with spilled drink and all and i can see hes sweating i dont know how i can see this far away but i can see hes sweating and very serious as usual and hes kinda handsome too yeah i knew sarah had good taste anyhow im not stupid so i shut up and keep watching and cant help myself im so excited hes just sweating and sweating and sarahs probably whimpering she does it sometimes when she pees or has a movement too sometimes the door opens by accident but i shut it quick cause i cant stand her whimpering like that i slam it sometimes and she gets the message shes not dumb she likes me and worries a lot when im in a bad mood like when i slam doors and things i loved a woman once like the neighbor man loves sarah it was nice her name was mary and mary loved it a lot but she said i was too serious and i was surprised and looked at her funny and she said yeah youre always thinking when youre not supposed to be and youre not thinking when you should be and mainly youre not thinking of me its something else i looked at her and i felt sad and glad all at once sad because she knew the truth and i didnt want her to feel bad glad cause it was the truth as much of a pervert as i am or as serious as i am thinking about things even when im thinking a nothing though i dont admit it well as much as i am all those things i aint a liar no way i can tell you no ones ever accused me a being one either so i was sad cause she was my friend too but mainly i was glad cause she said it first so it was out in the open and all i nodded and i said mary honey i cant lie never have never will i am thinking a something else even if its nothing in particular its still something else you know and mary i said i like you and youre my friend too but i cant see you anymore and so i stood up pulled up my pants put on my shirt didnt even button it just leaned over and kissed her ear she had the prettiest ears and on the left one was a shiny 21
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red ruby i kissed it and looked in her eyes for a second then walked out the door i know mary was in shock to see me go so much so that she said nothing just watched me go i could feel her eyes back a my head and her breath sucked air in little tiny gasps so precious i almost turned back but i didnt just kept going i was sad but im not a liar no ill never be so i just kept walking i walked across corn fields then some cotton it was some place in the middle of california i think and i never been back i walked for miles then hitched a ride on a truck full a onions first time i ever slept on a truck full a onions its like that sayin you know water water everywhere not a drop to drink well its the same with onions i rode for about two days with the onions and nothing to eat the farmer not even looking in the back but once when he stopped for coffee i slipped out and bought a hamburger with the last dollar from the money mary gave me ill pay her back too i told her i would when i get a job up north you aint going nowhere she said you stay here with me ill fix you pancakes every day if you like with bananas and plenty maple syrup and all the milk you want i love milk you see and i said maybe and i gave her my best smile maybe i said then i took her back to the bedroom and we did it again she loved it again she always loved it again i dont miss her much even though i think a her a lot shes a sweet gal well old bruiser here has got his pants zipped up and sarahs lying pretty still got the wind knocked out a her i guess and i still got a boner gotta get me a girl i guess somebody sweet who doesnt miss me all the time like mary someone who loves me but doesnt make me do the dishes i hate doing the dishes id rather cook i make a mean baked potato mary she thought i would do things for her i didnt want to do just cause she asked one day i slapped her though im not like that normally its not in me to hurt a fly you know but one day i couldnt help it i guess i had a bit to drink which is no excuse all the women say theyre right you know a mans gotta be gentle with a woman cause they can hurt you with what they say but you cant die from that really unless youre already a dead man you know what i mean i watched a woman give birth once to a little boy and what a bloody mess the woman screaming the baby crying i just held her hand was my aunt i think she was past her prime i just held her hand and stood there shivering and shaking and biting my lips til they bled i wanted to bleed too you know and i had some rum it kept me warm but the poor woman only had my hand and she put it sometimes to her head sometimes to her breasts and they were heaving so bad i just held on tight to her and once in a while even shut my eyes what balls i have you know and it was bad real bad she had lots a pain but finally everything came out it just exploded i was afraid for her but she kept on breathing and then i knew itd be all right and sure enough there was a little¡boy screaming bloody murder and she crying and me gulping shots a rum til i was stoned outta my skull but it helped us all i bet least i think so somebody had to be calm you know anyways i hit mary once slapped her right across the face knocked her to the floor i didnt know i was so strong i was angry and i hit her but i never hit her again ever i felt like i was hurting my own sister and i dont even have a sister i felt so bad and i felt worse cause she didnt say nothing SVR ’07
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not a thing just whimpered and went into the other room i was real nervous so i washed the dishes despite the fact i hate it and i put on her favorite apron she always tried to make me wear it had raccoons and bears all over it she loves raccoons and bears just like me thats one thing we share so i soaped everything up real nice i started humming but i knew that wasnt right so i just stared at the suds¡and for the life of me i couldnt remember why i hit her i know i had a couple drinks so did she i know she was talking to me not at all nagging just talking you know real calm about the corn fields or something about how her daddy started working in the fields when he was five years old right along beside his daddy and how it was his whole life it was his dream he never took vacations just plowed the pastures harvested the corn she was saying how in the past few years the weather had turned bad the drought seemed like it was here to stay and all the farmers in the county were fighting with the big cities for water and it was getting real political and all her daddy wanted was a way to feed his crops and feed his family cause he and the others were feeding the world and her eyes her sweet blue eyes were sad and kinda misty her whole body was so still it was as if she were talking for several minutes without taking one single breath and i looked at her and looked at her and id never seen her so sweet so serious like and i felt funny i felt angry i guess something in me was disappointed in myself i knew i was no god like her daddy so i hauled off and smacked her before i knew what id done and she said nothing nothing at all i swear i never felt so bad in all my life well in a long time at least and i washed the dishes sparkling clean and dried em and put em all away in their individual cupboards and folded the apron as neat as a pin and before you know it i heard her humming mary was humming it was coming from the other room it sounded sweeter than a bluebird sounds almost as sweet as the flute my momma used to play and so i dried my hands and hung my head feeling as guilty as i must a looked and i went in to see her to see my mary i was sad i had tears for the first time i tried to keep em to myself but she saw em anyhow and i went over and sat down on the floor next to her feet and i said as clear as a bell im sorry and then i shut up well she looked down at me and she smiled and she said i know ya are and she went on humming she picked up her sewing needle and started to knit and she kept on humming well i crawled into bed totally ashamed but for some god damn reason i had a boner too and i watched mary with her long brown hair and pretty arms and i wanted to touch her but i didnt i just let er be and she hummed for quite a while in fact i remember i was almost asleep forgot all about my boner til i felt her touching me and i opened my eyes and she had the sweetest smile and i got excited all over again and we got into it all over again we didnt stop for hours and mary smiled a lot cause i was real gentle now here i am feet stuck in the mud 3 inches from the thorniest rose bush i ever saw and i realize im not looking in the window anymore just staring into space so i look in and i dont see sarah or the neighbor man theyre gone my stomach feels sick all a sudden and i jump away from the window making more noise than i should i head for the garden its the safest 23
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place and i hear the dogs barking again though they dont sound like i need to save em anymore so i dont im in a bad mood anyway then i hear the back door creak and sarah leans out looking for me johnny she says i look up and she says come in be nice to mister foster before he leaves and suddenly im laughing inside i say to myself how nice does this mr foster want me to be bet hed like a little a this and i pretend i have an itch and scratch myself and yawn cleverly at the same time to show i was thinking a nothing and i say yeah okay to sarah and follow her in the whole time picturing mr foster in red shorts and him and me comparing notes and talking real tough like we been a round you know and then id start touching him as quick as can be i said i was a pervert you know but id do it real gentle too cause then heel start to smile you know and then i bet heel start thinking wow this is good i can come over anytime i want and get all i want from both of em you know so the whole time im following sarah into the kitchen im thinking this and im also remembering the time i did it with a man once he and i were a little drunk but not too drunk he was older and real strong with lots a muscles i think he was a sailor anyway we met in frisco and i remember smelling fish and salty air so we werent far from the piers i guess and it was real dark and he was real big you know but he was real gentle too real sweet he let me stroke his hair too it was real¡soft and the funny thing was i didnt feel bad at all or dirty i enjoyed myself the whole time you see i aint a liar when something feels right just like i aint a liar when something feels wrong so we were out there a while on the pier i guess and sometime around early morning i heard a foghorn blow real deep and low and real mysterious and he said he had to go and he put his pants on i couldnt see too well but i heard the zipper and it made me excited allover again and i asked him to stay i said id never done this and it felt real good and i liked him and all¡i liked him a lot and he said he liked me too but he had to go so he kissed me on the cheek real gentle and he said hed be back in a few months and hed look me up at the bar we went to i guess i told him i hung out there or something which wasnt exactly a lie cause sometimes i did and then he left well i sat there all alone a bit and listened to the foghorn it was low and deep and really mysterious just now all this flashed on me as im following sarah i dont know why it just did it was a long time ago that i lived in that town i used to walk around real late at night looking for things to paint i had an easel and lots of good watercolors and some oils too and id wander around til early morning looking for trouble but didnt find as much as i wanted i slept most the days til noon when id grab some eggs at the cafe then paint all afternoon now im standing here looking at mr neighbor in his red tie and black slick pants and im mumbling hello or something and sarahs rattling on about something and hes standing there not saying much just looking at sarahs tits that er bouncing as she talks so after a minute i start looking at sarahs tits too just for the helluvit or to be polite or something and then i realize how really perverted that is so i look at him and he looks at me finally and he smiles real nice cause hes real drunk and he says something to sarah like i gotta go or whadya know or did you hurt your toe something SVR ’07
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like that so finally i look down real quick you know just out a curiosity and i cant help myself i say oh shit suddenly and sarah looks at me funny and mr neighbor looks at me funny and then i just give up and start running down the hall to the bathroom and slam the door real hard i know theyre looking at each other funny i know theyre saying whats that all about and then they sorta laugh like its a joke and then theyll hold each other real tight like mary and i did afterwards too and theyll look at each other real secretive like me and mary did too and maybe theyll fix another gin or maybe heel leave or maybe theyll go out to the vegetable garden and do it again in the dirt and heel act real mean and sarahll smile a lot and sheel whimper too like mary used to whimper and theyll lie there with the dogs barking and theyll keep at it like mary and me kept at it but only cause she wanted it so bad and i didnt mind i gotta find me a girl before i finish the dishes tonite ill leave right now head for town ill go to the toy store some of em hang out there and maybe onell have a kid and the kid and i we could laugh and blow bubbles just like sarah can if not id show em and the girl could take me home with er and make me wear an apron and make me cook and clean i could learn to do it well i know i could learn to do it real well
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[shea garrity] Politik (from the mouth of a Defective) I How many different ways can you make guns sing? Is it not the bullet(in) mindset“Just do it, just do as they show you.”? Are you not blogged out, over-posted on political pills, shot-gunned and swung out on your brain-busting Prog Rock? The insecticide is pouring on the grass-root Free thought and compromising the anti-war protest dances. In these confession booths, we play Father and Son, seeking reconciliation from ourselves. MIB conservatives hiding in the shadows disguised as abortion cops, trying to relieve us of our sin. The “Pro-choice/Pro-kill” serves as the front page exclusive for absentee ballots, but it's our responsibility to check the boxes; under the possession of weightless spiritsInking the script according to the Director's cut(s). Surgically proficient, yet when did power to the people mean disassembling existence? “Smoke the vote! Burn your quota! Check ‘No’ on Proposition Death.”
They propose loose freedom cages for the breathless inept— These are theocratic thieves practicing patriotic theft. SVR ’07
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So, Let the unsigned bills stack, unpaid Let the broken automatic quills resign themselves Let the reverse-Psych vamps maintain their sheep Let the Shepherds kill these sheep and cry “Wolf” Let the anti-politik be the next rebel hit, Only getting 10 minutes before burning itself out nostalgic. II This is a public project and we're constantly raising the bar— Cast-iron rat traps. Depreciation seems imminent Because— Despite all my rage, I am still just a stat on the . . . page. . . . and a small cog in the big stop-watch, running the rounds on double time; perfecting our double thoughts: We're slavin' away unscathed, unmaking ourselves on overtime. Unpaid for lost wages, the time clocks wage wars and shortchange us. The Thought Tanks ride in like Pale Horsemen, pulling along Dresden euphemisms;
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paving the Red and Blue brick road— Wicked White Witch of the West on a broom, driving the fine white line through the rainbowed pot— Now melting upon itself. We're morbidly obese over-eating the American Pie. Not choosing till we're shot by the whites of the Lie And cleaning the blood off the whites of our ties, Forcing the knot tight to overdub the screams with high-pitched Anthem-song sighs. Obsessively playing the urbanized white craving more and more hard knock times, all are killed softly by concrete sculptures illustrated with dreams of gold fields and oil streaked driveways while docking the soccer motherhood with the 2 (point) 3 children who promise (point) 4 childhoods The Theo-con thrives on the Christmas economy, burning bible verses and pages of instant messages;
And activist party monsters reload their ammo drums to find the beating hearts. SVR ’07
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And the blind suits walk the streets watching us on TV, blasting our screens out while we cast our votes. And America, the Free was too preoccupied with the television's bloody stars and stripes that we didn't even notice we were screaming.
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[a. j. newman] Parthenogenesis I do not want to be Matt's Dover Bitch. Footfalls fall lightly on the bathroom floor. I read a sign: “do not flush feminine Products!” I think a man is watching me, I feel his breath scraping through the air vents. I am Demeter searching for myself: Persephone amidst the bile of Hades. This slit, my thighs; all now a wounded relic. FUCKABILITY Fuck Ability. Demeter sits reading Hades’ lists of dead. And I cannot read anymore to those Who are afraid of me. I will be silent. Bathrooms are silent. Signs are pulling me To the Earth: Mother Goddess, Mother's Womb. Parthenogenesis: from whence we came Of one entity life was born from Her Procreation deferred and God denied. I smile and flush my histories with blood. I walk upon the white sands of my youth. I lock the door behind me as I leave. I kiss goodbye the poets of my past. Contractions birth my little enemy.
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Last Writes
[shea garrity]
Write for the widowed men that walk sideways across endless curbs searching for the fellow loveless. Write for the dopple-headed mind fucks singing songs that remain inaudible. Write for the convoluted cave drawings that were intended to spell out Ragnarok and Revelation in neon letters brightly lit. Write for the mistresses that have honeyed themselves to death and floated away on yellowed beds to realms of thought never to be seen again. Write for the infinite wandering eyes all staring at you incessantly and internally for a passing moment outside of time. Write for the priest's children and the paper airplanes that will never set flight to your own progeny. Write for mommy and dad who now sit knees-bent before the Devil Trump trying to receive forgiveness for their unforgettable sins. Write for suffocated futures that will, and cannot manifest here and now but rather drift like feathers on the winds of idleness across the polluted pond of the imagination. Write these sea scrolls so that the author may one day be considered godly in the midst of mind crisis and identity confusion. Write so that poetics might escape the slave box of online bloggery bullshit and at least return to an uninterested world that might confuse it for something more meaningful. Write so that the “buy” button at the bottom right of the screen might transform into the “die” button and those clicking will be able to experience the rebirth that they've fantasized for life times innumerable. Write so that the Rushes and Foleys and Bushes and Cheneys and Kerrys and Pattersons and Falwells might dissolve from a state of symbolism and revert back to empty shells of human consciousness.
Write so that the dead cannot rise from their graves and hold dominion over the fragile minds of today. Write so that the stolen fifteen will be swapped for the echoing voice of your pen, which will resonate here forever. 31
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[henry krusiewicz] 1967, Detroit, Michigan the day the race riot began well sir, that day began like any other day in the projects that we called home we woke, washed, dressed and broke the fast over the viaduct we walked one mile to read and write at school with the last bell's roar we raced home running full out like Superman gunshots rang out just before dark my mother brought me next door “Here, keep him,” she told our neighbor I ran into the apartment
and, together, me and Johnny wrestled and boxed as shots sounded outside in the dark we soaked in a bath a beard of suds on our faces I played a jolly Kris Kringle Johnny played an old blues singer we leapt into bed, pulled blankets over head and fell away dead the next morning was a new day smoke seeped from cars with melted wheels what a playground the night had birthed— hissing hulks and spars of lumber with arms pumping and feet flying into the midst of such fun I plunged
the first car was a Rambler its shifter still moved from P to D
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Johnny! Johnny! I screamed only to see him frozen in his door an army jeep drove by sweeping its gun silently past his stoop in the projects that we called home we woke, washed, and broke the fast the day after the race riot well sir, that day began like any other day
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[alena hairston] For Women Who Cannot Sleep for T. Today we talk of killing, your voice woman’s absence, hollow and thick enough for cell phones. I hate being close enough to be far away from this death you made on your own. No water for my love but I do not fear your future. Will you sleep? For now, know there is tomorrow, the world will forgive us our complacency despite the world we kill and replace with sedentary zeal. Consider the absence of lilting letters, careful speech, restful sleep. We live our lives in machines, keep our studied hate for each other, for we cannot control us, instead love the neoprene and aluminum of things we buy: Such death in your voice, certain, like any girl’s dreaming death, because we tell her to never be woman, the world always wanting the impossible way. Love, there are no pretty words for this absence. What can I give the girl burrowed in hate of her own body and the body once within, asleep? Maybe the day: tricks in the windows of sleep, assemblies of time like cancer, bone, death. Maybe the night: quiet scream, quiet hate. Maybe laughter: a woman welcoming the world without cell phone and other glossy absence. You must believe me when I say this: Love finds its way beneath any shadow; your love can return, certain, from its restless sleep. So many girls we lose in the present absence of needing need, hunger stronger than death. Womanhood can be too much for the world, and so we teach our boys and girls to hate soft things, like the promise against hate in the next new curve of your belly, love, a sweet dare, a cushion for the world, and small gift for women who cannot sleep. But, tomorrow, the low-strung sky wills death its own blue caves, rocky rooms for pain: good absence
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I say, despite all the hate. Get some sleep, my worried love, and let alone this talk of death. There is a vibrant world where she is never absent.
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[alena hairston] Elegy for Colombina Rigbe Gebreab (1948-2004) In shadows we do our drinking slow, grieve the slow whispers of memory. Who will take us in? Where will we go? To a thick book of nightmare, a winding hole, flesh of desert, scaled in arid misery, and deep shadows where we do our drinking slow. You tell me of your country, a pretty bowl of scratched and bloody maps no one will read. How it did not take you in. How it told you where to go. Women with guns in Asmara, raped in Durko, falsely married in Khartoum, jailed in Segeneiti. Lands of shadows roll and roll, as we do our drinking slow, as your face opens and folds in cliffs of sorrow: Homelessness, hunger, tomorrow; but tonight, this warm brandy will take us in and show us where to go. You hold my hands, tell me: Pain has a way to know what we don’t. Let me go. I will keep good company with soothing shadows, we do our drinking slow. You take me in. You show me where to go.
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[richard barnhart] Karta in Exposition Karta flips out, Karta flips right the fuck on out and she's gone for like hella days, Karta kicks it hopelessly hapless, all poser kid-set space cadet sparkle sparkle and subtle euphoria, Karta is pretty
bite and cleaver smile, gentle mind-fuck social lubricant with killer vocals to match, Karta stands naked as hell outside the cage feeding the bears her own special blend of deep personal relevance and profound revelation, Karta says fuck the sign, Karta runs pure A #1 rocket fuel, ain't no sleep, don't need no sleep, Karta is a rebel without a pause, Karta massages uptight temples with blown out speakers and half cocked pistols, Karta's all like expository my ass, read the fine fucking print you're dead motherfucker you're dead
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[beth franks] After “Happily Ever After” Undoubtedly you are familiar with the poem “The Owl and the Pussy Cat” by Edward Lear.1 In this piece, an owl goes to sea with a cat in a “beautiful pea green boat.”2 What most people don't know is what happened after the mismatched couple's honeymoon. The unholy pair returned to the Bay Area, and Pussy had a litter of three chick-kittens: two pussils (girls) and one owcat (a boy). Since the gestation period for a cat is approximately two months, it is clear that Owl and Pussy indulged in carnal relations before marriage.3 While Pussy was preoccupied with her devilish spawn, Owl became quite popular as a musician around town, though it's a mystery what his attraction was. He had a weak voice and could only play on a small guitar. Despite these disabilities, gigs were lined up months in advance. Like many musicians, however, he had to supplement his income by giving private lessons during the day.4 _______ 1Edward Lear is well known for writing limericks, a low form of rhyming humor. In my opinion, Lear's poems—if you can call such tripe poetry—should be banned from the schools. 2This kind of smut is typical of Lear—sly innuendos which point toward bodily functions. A pea green boat! It's offensive. And they consider this poem suitable for children! 3Not only did they have sex before marriage, they must have indulged in the deed before they even went to sea. Far be it from me to point the finger, but this kind of behavior is abominable. I'm pleased to say, however, that they got their just desserts in the end, the sinners. 4Now I'm not one to tell tales, but I've had it on good authority that Owl carried on disgracefully with his students. Would you believe that some irresponsible parents thought they could leave their daughters alone with him because he was an Owl. Horney old coot. That kind is the worst of all. Beaks and feathers my foot. Little did they imagine what could be done with beaks and feathers!
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Meanwhile, the chick-kittens began to grow up. Their eyes opened, and they lost their fluff. Their tufty ears twitched this way and that. Soon their wing and tail feathers grew in, and they launched themselves from the backs of chairs, the top of the stairs, and the second story windows of the house. Eventually each of them flew, much to Pussy's distress. She was earth-bound, the slut, and it served her right.5 To console herself, Pussy took to snacking on mince and quince. This disgusting combination brought back many happy memories. Quince and mince, however, both have a high sugar content, and they aggravated her hypoglycemia, making her irritable. “Take your paws off that sofa you little beast.” “Whoever left claw marks on the bannister is going to get it good.” “How many times do I have to tell you to keep your tails to yourselves?” “If you don't stop hooting this minute, I'll give you something to hoot about.” Et cetera. Why she quite lost control ofherself.6
_______ 5What
did she think would come of this mixed-marriage? Happiness? Happiness never comes from miscegenation, from mixing that which should be kept asunder. Look in Leviticus. We are told not to mix meat and milk. We are told not to plant different kinds of seeds in the same bed. We are told not to eat lobsters. Lobsters, after all are insects which swim like fish—clearly spawn of the devil. And just take a look at Chapter 11, Verses 13-18 for what it says about owls. “And these ye shall have in abomination among the birds . . . the little owl . . . and the great owl, and the horned owl.” How much clearer can you get? 6She
could have turned to religion, but despite my efforts, she didn't. If she found religion, she would have found consolation. I would have encouraged her to leave Owl, but she refused to consider that option as well. The wanton fool pined for her honeymoon when she drifted over the sea in that pea green boat and danced by the light of the moon. They're all alike, these sensualists. No discipline. Slaves of the body. They wallow in stimulation and then wonder why they're unhappy. I'd like to tear her limb from limb, the hussy.
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Owl's Pussy had turned into a great sullen lump, and the chickkittens were out of control. Owl's doctor recommended tripling his dose of Prozac. His home had become a heathenish hell. 7 Well, the guano really hit the fan when the chick-kittens went to school. One of them even had the temerity to bring the runcible spoon into class for show and tell. Evil through and through. What greater evidence could you ask? Satan's spork. That's what a runcible spoon is. Satan's spork! Some misguided people say that Edward Lear made the word up, but any right-minded person knows better. It's no accident that the unholy mixture of fork and spoon results in an implement that looks just like the devil's fork. You can trust me on this, and if you don't, look it up the Internet. There are chat rooms devoted to discussions of this tool and its evil uses. In fact, you'll find evidence of sexual transgressions all over the place, all leading back to . . .8 _______ 7Which
was exactly what he deserved. What ye sow ye shall reap. He could have married a wonderful woman, a woman who would have loved and cared for him all his life. But did he jump at the opportunity? Of course not. He chose that fluffy, cuddly cat. Over me! Over me, the bastard. I could see from the first that hussy had wrapped him around her little finger. I offered him everything. Money. Fame. Love and affection. A decent home and a comfortable life. But he rejected it all to run off with that . . . that . . . thing. And look where it got him. Hah! I could have told him. And then those offspring. I'm against abortion, but those mixedmarriage abominations should have been ripped from the womb. Some people thought they were cute. Cute my foot. 8We're afraid that Ms. Franks' writing became totally incoherent at this point. We understand that she had stopped taking her medication several weeks prior to writing this piece for our journal. She is now residing in Langley Porter Hospital in San Francisco. Thus far her doctors have not allowed anyone to see her; however, they are confident that once her medication has been properly adjusted, she will be able to receive visitors. The Editors: Suisun Valley Review
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[ryan craig] children riding tricycles Boys call them trikes. To them, it's a weapon. Nothing can stand against them. Girls can only get out of the way.
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[j. l. torres] Rooftop During summer, when it's tar beach, we spread towels, turn on Radio Seduction. The beer drops like monsoon rain, and car honking dissolves like waves into sand. Buildings become tree shade, and you swear the air's salty sweet, like taffy.
Other days, the door creaks open onto a bordered cloud, the sky's your ceiling, one rung closer to heaven, Concrete Nirvana; where yerba floats like incense at a sĂŠance, and prayers lunge for the kicks that landed a perfect sidewalk somersault. At night, the skyline tinkles like cheap disco lights. From some cloistered corner, a capella voices echo; timbales and trumpet duel; a fiery sax spits out notes, and someone always looks up to say: if we could only see the stars.
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[taylor graham] In Four Movements 1) Molto vivace We weave it into myth and legend, how the dinosaurs died as the world they knew was shattered under an ice-hammer only to be reborn without them 2) Andante a slow lesson that teaches us about climate change (is it myth or speculation?) quite imperceptible, until 3) Presto harridan glaciers screaming down, all the natural elements in revolt. But that was prehistoric. Nowadays science takes control. 4) Adagio non cantabile And yet, beachfront property subsides in aqueous submersion, each month's high tide a little higher, another something drowned. Last night on the boardwalk Dasmanni premiered his newest grandest (as everything now must be newer, grander than the last) symphony, Elegy for Earth.
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[brad buchanan] The Clay Fraternity Behind the pool shed, we found clay before we knew that we had to die in spite of the lifeguard who lay and sunned herself, unaware that all this would end. We scooped cool finger-shapes and packed wet handfuls, not believing our luck, already imagining fired urns and rugged statues, our fossil bones precocious, beyond the reckless reach of sex, already calm to the touch . . . We knew that this was no common clay, but a model of immortality to soothe the jagged, crumbling world before it had no choice but to grow wild. We were so patient, yet no longer children; our swollen handfuls began to harden.
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[taylor graham] Gold Rush You can hear the forty-niner tunes sometimes in the ghost-pines waving gray arms in all directions to the hills gouged-out for color. What we've always done to landscape. Gold gave out to dredger piles that bloom wildflowers now. Poppies, buttercups all the way past cattle-guard and rundown shacks edging pavement. The money-grubbers left. What stayed were folks with nothing but a rough-stone oven, sweat-built walls of rock, a cool niche dug down six feet deep. One feral cat still hunts here, out of sight of the asphalt twolane headed as fast as metal on wheels for the nearest town. A cat knows wild things about this place that we in our speedy histories haven't learned.
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[sophie nogue] Napa Valley the sun whispers upon emerald vines sugar crusted grapes dangle like swollen udders pleading to be plucked crushed and aged into bottles of intoxicating goodness it's autumn in the wine country his calloused 18 year old fingers caress the crop back bending/aching tired worn jeans ride his hips baggy like the purple lines under his eyes he lugs heaps of fruit not dropping one fingertips stained in Cabernet maroon blood swimming in sweat thirst gnaws at his tongue even though it is only 8 AM my eyes stare on and I can't help but wonder was it always like this? as he strains on for hours because overtime means ground meat instead of canned beans tonight or does the warm dark soil remind him of moonlight dancing cool wine with his amor does the silver dew remind him of barrios of childhood bliss before exhaustion before filth before minimum wage before SVR ’07
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the beauty of Napa Valley I wonder, cuz his eyes tell me how much he hates every fucking grape on that sun kissed vineyard
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[alan bunch] Viva La Vida (words added at the bottom of Kahlo's Still Life, which is a portrait of watermelons) for Frida Kahlo You estranged hawk-browed seared angel: how many agonies could you bear in forty-seven winters? All the ripe watermelons in the world, blood red with symbolism, seedy, loves that ran through hips of yin, monkeys of yang, could not brush off brushes with death or the arrows of St. Anthony, you deer wounded by hubby Diego's betrayals, as lover and son, pigments of the subconscious that animated your portraits, your ash-smeared passions, for once in a frame, you gave birth to your self. You finally came home to old Mexico, to the dream textures your realities stroked everywhere, to the self-divided colors of your heart and hearts taken up in red, orange, and yellow flowers in your hair, in the revolutions of your obsessive demons.
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[red shuttleworth] I Drop Ten Dollars in Quarters on Slots in the Exchange Club in Beatty, Nevada, Where Wyatt Earp Once Won Three Grand in an All Night Poker Game It's late afternoon like a scratched Bob Wills 78 RPM record. Wet yellow flowers are blooming in near-to-hand Death Valley. Half the town escaped when the mines closed, but Jim Pitts says the new nuke dump site will use-up hundreds of Wackenhut guards. This optimism keeps everything-is-pink Angel's Ladies open. For now it's Japanese tourists blowing through. The bartender hands me a Wild Turkey with ditch water. When Earp rode down from Tonopah for a weekend, he wore a coat of Russian wolf fur against December wind. In Beatty it's good manners to leave water out for wild burros. Upstairs, where the last Exchange Club whores worked on horsehair mattresses, the rooms are empty. With a lopsided grin, I drop my last quarter. In Earp's day, when this place sported soiled doves, some guys left their children behind, markers to be redeemed later.
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[alexa mergen] Historian Typewriters mark work of words on paper, clattering keys soothe as a train whistle or bird song at midnight. I drifted to sleep to the sound of Olivetti b-u-t a-n-d t-h-e words recognizable as code. The typewriter's hammer indented the page like the weight of my father who tipped the bed's edge to check for fever with his hand to my forehead. Keys arranged one-by-one ideas, records methodical as the historian's steps across the city. Routes walked into paragraphs like sentences tapped out by footfall among others' sentences who once passed the same curbs. Casement layered over pachyderm snow side-by-side with steeple at the corner where everyone waits for signal lights to change. Letters make words like stones make cairns on the landscape of people time, days mapped, discovered at intersections of meaning.
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[noah benjamin]
indexed neatly by the inscrutable Dewey, privy to the how and even why he sees and I do not the words, a record of a silent symphony I do not know what the dots mean
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[noah benjamin]
Deoxyribonucleic acid hallucinates life A double helix because two can be made to lean You are a ladder placed on a burning window sill
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[red shuttleworth] Trying to Get a Saddle on a February Sunday in Nebraska Let’s go get us another bite of Jesus, Ciara screamed, as Kate gathered the kids for the dozen mile haul to Wayne for Mass. Maura and Ciara ballet-jigged across linoleum. Luke cussed, Goddamn, oh goddamn sonofabitch, I can 't find my bronc hookin’ spurs. Spurs to Sunday Mass on a three year old? Ciara yelled, Let's go spur ol’ Jesus! At the time, we had the landscape of Frank and Jesse James on their purgatorial ride home from the botched Northfield raid. Our country was wide, with a sky as blue as Kate’s laughing blue eyes.
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[evan brengle] love at a distance, like an assembly of fragments. (for Jessica. because i do.) 1. love at a distance, like a parakeet over the ocean, with the rotation of the globe:
the same blue floor, and the same blue ceiling. the same blue speck into the wind. 2. love at a distance, like static like the breath of a dead radio. —it must be the dust we collect escaping— and of the particles, all these mountains of crumbling flesh, which is the right. . . . the fingertips scattered, and the lips. 3. love at a distance, like a shuffle of papers like snow, black, the space between falls to cover the rooftops. a cloud in front of the sun burns a permanent shadow. perhaps they will drag the sky away. it begins and ends with birds. 4. love at a distance, like a green fuzz of innumerable, indistinguishable, miniscule units. . . . where to begin. if the aphids are what i said, then the ladybug is what I meant. . . . where to end.
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a simple, single, steady bead of red. 5. love at a distance, like a whisper in sleep, you speak foreign languages no one speaks. you blink in code. the voice on the inside of humans and other minor appliances mumbles so loud the circuits rattle, like a toaster, hummmmmmmm— until the bread is burnt. you speak foreign languages you don't speak. a whisper in dreams. 6. love at a distance, like a lullaby from the music box that sleeps there until the lid is opened and out like doves from a bell tower ringing. white.
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[toni chisamore] Offering for Sarah Phelan “Sign my book,” she said. “Someday you'll be famous.” If I am, it is you I’ll blame for teaching me that concrete is not cement but something much softer or harder, maybe . . . Until you said it so easy— The words. Here you stand in a room that will not be forever, so small and yet so large. Your passion the gift you have given to so many who have taken. “This is serious,” you say. “This is Keats, by God, this is serious!”
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[tim kahl] Bright Pillow There are those who stare into the bright pillow at night who have just awakened from a dream still bubbling up from oblivion. The pillow is the blank, white screen where all the characters are meticulously prepared by the frenetic cult of the synapse. The market patriot is tossing superballs into the opening of a hollowed-out globe, his publicist arranging interviews on a scrambled cable channel for arms dealers. Spirited young mothers assemble to recount tales of breastfeeding on trains. A failed musician rehearses for a tired, but determined moon. The list goes on, but somehow the images settle into a distinct rhythm, rocking like a pendulum between night and day, between wakefulness and sleep. Sleep—where maybe there is no planet underneath us. Perhaps water is a kind of plastic that hasn't been invented yet. And the first flag is the uterus of a cow hung on the top of a stick and carried through an ancient city. There, the inconstant wind tunnels through and scrapes against the forsaken walls as another dreamer is shaken from the deep and released. His fluttering heart disturbed his sleep; on his pillow, a tick needs a blood meal.
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[kimi julian] Talking Carp Hunts for a Good Meal, Sex, and Long Rest This poem is dedicated to the courtesan, Kamala, from Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. I swam upstream to mate undercover of Buddha's bo tree branches extended over swift currents from a river bank not far from an intersection of His cold blue feet to select my hot spots as He did press my self impression reflected in others color preferences from flashing menus and chased bobbing white lotus blossoms that grew there as surface shadow signs block watery highway traffic like dark sunspots rip their soft slimy stems free from down under nibble at luscious pearly petals relished in open season and eject my cloudy load between fins of young virgin strangers trolling anxiously hungry for me below like deadly water snakes—dumped on whomever I could get laugh as I finish when poisoned by sediments while making memories imagined hope again for known and unknown affectionate paramours roll over hard in murky water bottom and died stiff look straight up. Carp's body floats to the top goes headlong in tributaries to river Ganges bay of Bengal rots in middle travels Buddha's winding liquid trail to nirvana in putrid pieces as Kamala's burnt dust remains fell from heaven scattered down scent of a woman breeze wafts. Buddha breathes her black perfumed powder senses Parinirvana' s tempting immediacy a gaping hungry void looking to suck Him in jumps to It for a brief moment choke as a drowning fish out of water and pop back into solid flesh leaning against His tree destined to stay on earth alone with Siddhartha until both realize Kamala's seductive sacrificial way.
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Black pug dog Emperor Oliver Diamondheart Canis Major of the Knights of Holy Sirius Single minded son of Cerberus Nephew of Othros His Highness The Royal Buddha Pest Official Irritant of the Crusaders of Templar followed the twisted road to nirvana by continuously pacing its banks up one end turning around and going the other way thinking: No fire hydrants here no bitches down there and found rotten carp's wide open mouth at the southern end of the river Ganges the fish's only remaining part maggots spit out of it many small wagging Cassandra tongues. Ollie gulped it in one bite like sanctified road kill. The G-DD-G Grinned pissed a hard long yellow arch skillfully kicked up a dust devil with His hind legs snickered as a hyena at everyone in the dirt haze. Said speedflash “You-can-stop-now-I'm-done.”
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[toni chisamore] Erosion Alone at Baja Fresh thinking about a Midori Margarita and your addiction to you It was so simple Yesterday I had all the answers today you rebuke me with random motions random motions lead to collisions The breakup of a small body into a cloud of particles into withered reality High contrast components with a mythical quality as old as genesis Together
we
are like erosion slow on the moon
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[elfie nelson] Martyr Tastes like copper the way the entrails spout like that tastes like worlds and faces of lies like the way you think I know how the story goes. I have understood it in passing, in nothing parts of grey matter. You're in the middle, and you're choked that way, this image that sticks in your mind, so I can know the way you screamed Screaming, the exact pitch of it the perfect rattle Bleeding the way that tells of no wound, I can still feel the cuts that were never there. I can press my ear against that crook where your halves meet and come away with blood, but no pulse. Thorns stick in your hair, matted, with indistinguishable colors shining between branches Branches, symbolizing higher ground with white, crooked brows I know how the story goes. Strung up on display, life ebbing in drips and drags, and you like to say, or would have to say, that the time elapsed and death came strolling, but metal dug in to cave the holy shell, and destiny became too strong even for your eternal grace. The note says you died to let me live, but where do your true colors lie? Because I don't think you're Jesus and there isn't any room for your portrait.
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[joshua neely] Haiku on a Plane From my window seat the moon hides underwater, slips under the earth.
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The 2007 Editors would like to give thanks to Sally Bailey, Janice Larsen, Kathy Rosengren, Marjorie Trolinder (and her wonderful staff), the Solano Community College English Department and all of the writers who submitted to the Spring 2007 issue of the journal whether we were able to include your work in this issue or not. Without the hard work and commitment of all of you, this magazine would not have been a success. Thank you!