Issue 8 - June 2008 - Poetry
Rainy Evening Jazz by Caitlin Barry
Sweet dirty smell of musky velvet rain
Pools of lukewarm dew that worms will drink
Rainbows making love in oil stains
Undulating droplets sway and sink
Caressing window’s cheek as they slide down
Lick furnace edge with sizzle and gray smoke.
Flag whipped around as violently as smoke.
Chalky bricks turned bloody by the rain.
Splintered boards pried off, ripped, torn, thrown down;
Replaced with lacquered posters of new drinks.
Darkened door, a shadowed place to sink
When muddy water dries into a stain.
Lipstick, stoned-eye red, mascara stain;
Blue irises lurk lusty in the smoke.
Entrapping you, her hand begins to sink
Like clouds towards land when it begins to rain.
She offers you an unknown brew to drink
And hastily, like rain, you throw it down.
The rhythm finally coaxes you two down.
Jazz whispers to your feet, a sultry stain
Replacing rain or beer as your new drink.
Her hair sticks to your face like wisps of smoke;
Something elemental, like the rain
Clogs your windpipe like a dirty sink.
Uneasy piano riffs make pelvis sink
And rise; outside brassy mist swirls down,
Creates a mirrored light show out of rain.
Thunder’s a reverberating stain
On leaves whose ashy palms resemble smoke.
Musicians hear it, close their eyes and take a drink.
Beat becomes erratic as the drink
Between your slippery fingers starts to sink
To floor made sticky damp by soles and smoke.
Sax mimics wet, dark chills and pulls you down
Out through the door, onto the road that has been stained
With all the lights above it from the rain.
Smoky notes escape and smear a dripping stain.
Band raises drinks, salutes the sinking moon.
The drenched black night slows down and whispers to the rain.
To Rome (the beaches of Italy) by Kristi Kirkland
These are quiet times;
our flower beds are unmade,
speech comes softly in slurred phrases—
the bawdy body hungers
to roam the beaches of Italy,
to coast the coastline from
rocky boot-tip to heal,
converse with wind
joke with waves
forget the lies we've muttered
(without confidence).
These are quiet times,
introspective,
yet completely unaware of self.
We've tricked ourselves,
petty deceptions,
what we need is to be alone.
But where are we now?
Stuck inside the rhythm
of the shape shifter's groove,
a Ferris wheel that overlooks the sea,
chases Mediterranean breezes.
We spin in cycles.
I'm on top,
now on bottom,
a tussle with self-fulfilled prophecy;
I just want this ride to end.
These are quiet times,
charred ruins of Pompeii,
like Pisa I lean, bend to you
uncertain which direction is North.
Kennebunk Port, Maine by Alaina McGinnis
The smell of
decaying fish and low tide
never bothered me
in late August
the way it did
mid July.
The attic bookstore
was worth it.
I never understood
how the eight foot tall
candle by the door,
refused to engulf the building.
I guess it had respect
for literature.
Sometimes I think of
the rotting wedding cake
Miss Havisham sat next to.
This must be what it looked like.
A mass of ivory melting
only to harden again
stale.
The barely insolated,
wooden, walls looked
as if they were torn
out of a Bible.
The scripture holding
everything together.
My grandma said, when
the sea air grays
the wooden planks, they
just flip them over.
No one could
tell me what happened
when both sides went
gray.
I’m going gray.
White actually,
same as the pages
in every journal
I buy when I come here.
Twelve and counting.
The Ash Tree by Ainslee Meredith
Look how hot his lungs must be,
white forms apart from his mouth.
Two friar-birds—
that him whose lungs are wet plastic bags
would elsewhere have breathed on—
heirless. Stark-boned,
wakes collect in fingertips
that drag a hot smell
in April, cleaning vents.
What he died from has left me,
a garden-variety goddess
alone in my hand.
Birds that die in winter
slush instamatic,
beasts in a starve of a season.
Thrushes under hopscotch lines
raise mangers in chalk,
fallen laundry iatrogenes
my hands to snow.
Bedding Icarus by Lauren Pope
Silk ripples form over our mattress.
Uncalculated white caps,
caused by the impact of your naked body.
Arching the bridge of your back,
grounded in metatarsal and blade, you curl quickly
little mollusk.
But then you unravel, open up
like a sheet parachuting in the wind,
or the form of a man flinging himself off a cliff's edge
and you catch my wrist,
pulling me down with you.
Nahla by Hamza Reed
I look for you in the expressions of silly little girls
or deep in the windings of their tangled hair-
black, of course.
And when Spring arrives,
yellow buses become fat with the howls of children.
Some of them bounce off at stops,
and I wait for one to be you
as if my wishes could be fashioned into stones
and skipped heedlessly across the grasp of God.
Every unbounded shoulder of Sun
will no doubt bring
ample interim.
Last night,
the moonlight swept across your mother's face as I watched her sleep.
I think I met you there by the curve of her lips.
Hello.
This poem is good-looking, as are you
by Amy Walter
Maybe it's okay
To tell you that
You're interesting,
And fun and sexy
As long as you don't
Look at me in class with
That falling-apart face.
Maybe it's okay to say
I want to hold your hand,
And to send songs
That might help you
Think of me more.
Maybe, when you tell me
You want to kiss me
It's okay that I've got
Nothing to say
Out loud: In my head
I'm kissing you already
You holding me,
And kissing back.