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Yes, Poetry Vol. 3, Issue 7: July 2012
yespoetry.com twitter.com/yespoetry facebook.com/yespoetry editor@yespoetry.com Editor-in-Chief Joanna C. Valente Assistant Editor Stephanie Valente Managing Editor G. Taylor Davis, Jr. Cover Image: Joanna C. Valente
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Contents 4 5 7 8 9 11 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 21 22
Eric Kim Timothy J. Van Ausdal Danny Earl Simmons Zev Shanken Sara Borjas Hilary Sideris Maureen Donatelli Len Krisak Denny E. Marshall Patricia Kinney Elizabeth Brassler Simon Perchik Contributor's Notes Editor Biographies Submission Guidelines
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ERIC KIM I AM VERY SMART Tonight I spent forty minutes in front of the mirror Combing my hair black and polluting it with product So it would shine. If my name were spelt Erik, then Perhaps I would be more confident. In my tightest jeans And bluest shirt, I slogged to the train station downtown, Sat at the bar, and ordered a beer. I took out my reading For the night, some clever Borussian text by a German Teleologist. Someone was bound to notice how smart I was. I waited for hours as customer after customer passed me by Until the barista smiled at me, walked up to me, and told me I had to leave because they were closing in five minutes. Oh, I said and crawled out the door, right then bumping into A girl who dropped her purse: a pair of green bifocals and A Modern Library edition of Billy Budd wriggled out. I wanted To thank her for not reading Jane Austen, but I was fixated On the glasses, picking them up, Why don’t you wear These? Oh, she said, They’re my reading glasses, But I suppose I’d bump into fewer men if I wore them! Clever girl, she smiled and I helped her gather herself And we parted ways—but I could still see her for a mile, Her whiteblonde hair stealing down the street like a whale.
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TIMOTHY J. VAN AUSDAL Rice Boy I. The first bowl of rice is always The most important. White that time. Seimai – Ghost rice. You taught me one word The way ghosts always bestow Just one secret to the haunted – Gochujang. A simple ingredient, Nothing special – Fermented red pepper paste. I never knew why it was That one lonely word Until now – It’s always loss and love that Ferment With age. II. It wasn’t soft or fine Like freshly woven silk. Slightly rough, dry, and with a little bite – Our version of make-up sex. Genmai – Mysterious rice. It seems you loved to shove The face of God into every grain, To shove the most unanswerable Questions into every unpolished gem – The grains make Your brain healthier, Everything seems answerable In that state. But brown rice can only do So much. Yes, Poetry
6 III. This time we didn’t bother cooking it, Didn’t bother acknowledging the expiration date, Two days from now. Namagome – Life rice. You said it’s at these times Where you see the real beauty Of rice, See that its muffled whiteness Reminds you of quick, breathless words Mumbled into a pillow at night. It’s at these moments that I want to take hundreds of White, ivory grains, To take all of them and write I love you Because A thousand years of hard work Goes into each grain.
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DANNY EARL SIMMONS I Have a Hard Time with Happiness I was propped in bed smoking a cigarette under the ceiling fan after recent exertion. My wife, fluffing her hair in the bathroom mirror, had already moved on to talking about how her cell phone no longer holds a charge. All I could hear and see and taste was the nasty yellow residue my ex-wife left hovering around my nakedness like smoke rings that never float away.
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ZEV SHANKEN Special Education New lovers make the mistake of new teachers. To allay anxiety they smile, tell their student who can't do long division, "It's easy. Nothing to it. Watch me. Here's the trick." If it were easy for me, teacher, I wouldn't be here. If you tell me there's nothing to it, we don't belong together.
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SARA BORJAS In My Boyfriend's Kitchen We stand in your kitchen smelling of spiced lemons while your mother makes roti patting a soft, cold petal of dough like tucking sheets into the corners of a bed. You and your mother speak Punjabi and the words splatter all around me like hot oil jumping from a pan. I watch her add spices from clean unmarked shakers, take note of this recipe, and since I cannot know for sure what these spices are, I note their color, scent, red and dark, earthy and old, how easily they
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from the slotted bottle. One has a label, kalpasi, underneath it says Yes, Poetry
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HILARY SIDERIS Dartford I remember lying in the grass of our backyard, my mother pointing at the sky, saying Spitfire. The war was over, but our street ended in blue horizon, wildflowers, rubble. A siren sounding still makes my neck hair curl. Dartford was full of thieves, located as it is on Watling, the old Roman road, atop a steep hill where the horses flagged, the perfect spot for a stick-up or toll. When I grew up something was always falling off a lorry. Someone’s wife or mum showed up in diamonds, no one asked where from.
DRUMMED Charlie’s the bed I lie on musically. Deep down he’s a jazzman, a condition I once took it on myself to rectify. Charlie swings nicely but can’t rock, I noted in my Yes, Poetry
12 teen-aged diary. Fabulous guy. No white man grooves like Charlie, that illusion of looseness, sticks through his fingers, showman-like but no show-off. When he came on, I’d catch him humming Charlie Parker, Lester Young, “Cut that shit out! Listen to fuckin’ Muddy! Learn the blues!” I wouldn’t even let him put on Armstrong, and I love Armstrong.
ACID Pre-Raphaelites in ruffles searched for the Holy Grail, the Lost Chord, UFOs. I saw a flock of yellow birds, really a willow blowing in the wind, & I remember how each bird, as it took flight, gave me the eye, as if to say, “Try this, it’s so easy!” To trip you needed the right friend. With Brian you never knew. You’d belly laugh for hours or march down a dark sentence, end in his black dot. You had to fight to get back to the crossroads, find the willow, watch that flock take off again.
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MAUREEN DONATELLI Decorative Caged candlelight. Curved black bars like lines of latitude drawn around a small white flame. Shadows and efforts to devour the bars of a birdcage in which no bird has lived just a steady flame waiting for a flutter of air.
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LEN KRISAK ANNA AKHMATOVA: “ISOLATION” —from White Flock
They’ve thrown so many stones to make me cower, That stones no longer frighten me at all. What was a pit is now a stately tower, Taller than the tallest of the tall. I thank its builders, everyone, and pray That every care and sorrow pass them by. From here, I see the utmost break of day; Up here, the sun’s last rays are glad to die. And oftentimes, fierce winds from northern seas Will pierce my windows, blowing where they please. A dove feeds from my hand on grains of wheat . . . As for my half-filled page’s half-blank sheet, The Muse’s hand, light-brown and delicate— A hand divinely calm—will finish it.
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DENNY E. MARSHALL Haiku Telescope viewing Riding with the universe In a time machine Astronaut spacesuit In advertisement for sale Hardly ever worn Space exploration Unmarked tombstone in graveyard Dying a slow death Disliked camera Government made me install Inside of my car Ghost in my new house Sent me a letter by mail Three-day eviction
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PATRICIA KINNEY Curfew We used to say No Fear Cavalier, as though a Chevy made us invincible when we took hairpin turns on two wheels, squealed to stops at intersections, and blared R.E.M. while we played my parent’s game of beat the clock. One minute late sent an avalanche of blame. He was no damn good for me, student of the month in band, with his cigarettes, tattoos, spray-painted car. We didn’t know R.E.M. wouldn’t last, that Chevy would stop making the Cavalier, and we’d move the clocks back an hour or two before we stopped playing the game.
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ELIZABETH BRASSLER A Grass Stain I. The bus eases to a faded crosswalk, lamb hooves click quickly against the asphalt towards greener grass. The image of blue and red splattered wool imprints my memory like the waves of lush terrain circled by the Ring of Kerry. Ireland’s landscape looks like raw salad toppings and olive juice, pressed oats mixed with hay, straw, the splash of a ripened banana dropped in a pot of Moroccan Mint green tea, which isn’t available at the Dreadnought Hotel tonight. II. Syrupy scents of honey suckles and tobacco flower linger on the back patio. Running through midnight sprinklers, naked eyelids, red stained cheeks stripped down to nude garments, drenched in dew, fresh grass blades cling to ankles, skin exposed to square cut boxwoods, Bollywood azaleas.
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SIMON PERCHIK Untitled # 4 To urge the dead you lift a small gift, placed so the height waits motionless alongside though you can't sleep anymore afraid once your eyes close there's no turning back, you'll drift as darkness into darkness —you bring these dead a sharp stone the kind insomniacs find under the kitchen table —they loosen each tile the way flowers are pulled out still drinking from your hands on the way to the cemetery --you pick up everything! roads, shadows, dust and carefully face to face as if there was something daylight left out as shovels and weightlessness.
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Contributor's Notes Sara Borjas is currently earning an MFA in creative writing at UC Riverside. She has been previously published in San Joaquin Review and Verdad. Elizabeth Brassler is currently a student at the University of Tennessee about to graduate with a Business Management Degree, and Collateral in Entrepreneurship. After studying a business curriculum for 4 years, she has found peace through writing. Maureen Donatelli lives in Abbotsford, BC where she received her BA in English from The University of the Fraser Valley. Besides all things poetic, Maureen enjoys photography and spending time with her children. Her work has appeared in several online publications including Yes, Poetry, vox poetica, OVS, Willows Wept Review, Adroit Journal, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. Born and raised in Atlanta, Eric Kim earned a B.A. in English at New York University, where he wrote under Anne Carson and Marie Howe. In the fall, he will enter Columbia University to start his doctorate in English and Comparative Literature as a Marjorie Hope Nicolson Fellow. His poems have appeared in West 10th and A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. Patricia Kinney received her degree in Communication Arts and Humanities from Keystone College, and will be pursuing her MA in English at SUNY Binghamton in the fall of 2012. Her work has appeared in Indigo Rising, WritingRaw.com, and Word Fountain. Len Krisak is an American poet. He graduated from University of Michigan and Brandeis University. He taught at Brandeis University, Northeastern University, and Stonehill College. His work has appeared in Agenda, Commonweal, The Hudson Review, PN Review, The Formalist, The Cumberland Poetry Review, Tennessee Quarterly, Classical Outlook, Pivot, Rattapallax, The Weekly Standard. He read at Newburyport Literary Festival. He is a part of the Powow River Poets. Zev Shanken lives in New Jersey and works as an English teacher in New York’s Washington Heights. His poems have appeared in New Verse News, the forthcoming Brownstone Annual, and the forthcoming Möbius, The Poetry Magazine 2012. He is a happy member of Brevitas, an on-line poetry workshop. Hilary Sideris has an MFA from The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Arts & Letters, Cimarron Review, Confrontation, Connecticut Review, The Evansville Review, Green Mountains Review, Grey Sparrow, Gulf Coast, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, PMS, Tar River Poetry, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, among others. Her first and third chapbooks, The Orange Juice is Over and Gold & Other Fish, have been published by Finishing Line Press, and her second chapbook, Baby, was published by Pudding House Press. She lives in
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Editor Biographies Joanna C. Valente was born in Manhattan, New York. She attends Sarah Lawrence College as a MFA candidate in poetry writing. In 2011, Joanna was the recipient of the Friends of Humanities/American Society of Poet’s Prize. She is also the founder and editor of the magazine, Yes, Poetry. Joanna is a graduate of SUNY Purchase College, where she received a BA in creative writing and a BA in literature. Her work has appeared in La Fovea, The Medulla Review, The Houston Literary Review, Owen Wister Review, Tipton Poetry Journal, Uphook Press, among others. In her spare time, she is a mermaid. More can be found at her website: http://joannavalente.com Stephanie Valente lives in New York. One day, she would like to be a silent film star. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from dotdotdash, Nano Fiction, LIES/ISLE, and Uphook Press. She can be found at: http://kitschy.tumblr.com G. Taylor Davis, Jr is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College's MFA program in writing. He received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is currently the managing editor at Yes, Poetry. In the past, his work has appeared in The Boiler Journal and The Atlantis. He hails from the Milky Way, but currently lives in New York.
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Submission Guidelines -Please send all submissions to editor@yespoetry.com. -We consider previously unpublished work, although simultaneous submissions are acceptable. Copyrights revert back to writer upon publication. -Submissions are on a rolling basis, so we ask you not to submit more than once per month. -Don't forget to include a third-person author biography with your work. We also encourage you to link us to your website or blog. Poetry: Submit up to seven poems. In the subject line of the email, please write “Your Name_Poetry Submission.” Either copy and paste your work into the body of the email, or attach as a .doc file. We welcome all types of poetry. Photography: Only submit original work; it can be a stand-alone piece or part of an entire collection. Submit up to five photos with an artist's statement. Email us with the subject line “Your Name_Photography Submission.” Music: Please send mp3 or mp4 files only. In the subject line of the email, write “Your Name_Music Submission.” Other: If you are submitting a review or interview, please send in a .doc file. It must not exceed 2,000 words. Email us with the subject line “Your Name_Other Submission.” If you would like to be involved or have any other questions, please direct all emails to editor@yespoetry.com.
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