James Crews

 

James holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Columbia, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Best New Poets 2006 and other journals. He was the recipient of the 2008 Gertrude Press Chapbook Award for Bending the Knot and another chapbook, One Hundred Small Yellow Envelopes, based on the life and work of artist, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, is due out this year from Parallel Press. He currently teaches English and Writing at Eastern Oregon University and enjoys tracking the deer that nightly invade his backyard.

 

 

Foreshadowing

 

I don’t mind winter because I know

what follows. There are laws.

                             —Belle Waring

 

Snow clouds fill the sky

like a power you never knew

you had. The man next to you

on this rush hour bus

has stuffed plastic bags

into the holes of his coat

& huddles close to look out

your window as if the sunset

might burst for once with the red

of alpenglow, as if these piles

of snow were only beginnings

of mountains trying to rise up.

But you know the cold and ice

will give up these plains again

as a robe gives up the body

underneath. Color always

returns, if slowly, to the earth

like the self you thought

you already were all winter.

 

(Originally appeared in Best New Poets 2006)

 

 

 

Revision

 

What hubris to believe you could save

this moment or that & tuck it away

for the day the warbler’s morning call

outside the honeymoon cabin that summer

grows finally too garbled to recall, or when

the familiar sound of her bathwater running

now flows backward into the faucet

as if neither she nor it ever even existed.

 

Go ahead, try to preserve this setting.

Let memory choreograph that dance of past

selves & place you on the collapsing porch

where, after making love, you breathed in

evergreen, where the exhale of your smoke

mixed with the white of retreating mist,

then drifted heavy & gray as a nimbus cloud

into the bright patch of sunlight.

 

Keep your arm wrapped tight around

the small of nostalgia’s back. Lean in,

whisper, Don’t ever leave me, fearful into its ear

& some morning a neighbor with a hose

watering her garden & a single sparrow

calling at your window will both take you back

to the cabin—water filling the tub again,

her body slipping in. & this time when you

 

come inside & look at her as she

closes her eyes in the bath & does not

notice you, leave her alone. Let her hum

the private song whose words you’ll never know.

Say nothing to disturb this scene—never yours

to begin with—& leave the past in your mind.

Leave her heart for this moment intact

if only to prove, looking back now, you can.

 

(Originally appeared in Fourteen Hills)

 

Jason Lee Brown

 

 

Jason Lee Brown teaches writing at Eastern Illinois University.  His work has appeared in The Journal, Natural Bridge, Spoon River Poetry Review, Post Road, Tar River Poetry, Ecotone and others.  He has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes in fiction and poetry and received honors from the Academy of American Poets and the Playboy College Fiction Contest.  He was a 2008 RopeWalk Writers Retreat scholarship recipient in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

 

 

 

 

The Embittered Muse

 

 

Because.  My name was never sung by anyone

and was forgotten, that’s why no one knows me.

 

So, no, I’m not Mneme or Aoede or Melete.

And, okay, I didn’t worship at Mt. Helicon or Delphi

 

and I’m definitely not one of the Greeks’ nine.

Yes, I do know Plato identified Sappho of Lesbos

 

as the Tenth Muse.  Fine, I’ll be the Eleventh.

My gift allows artists to obsess over their crafts

 

without reference to passing time.  But for what?

Where’s my libations, my academic ink no one reads?

 

Nowhere, unless I manipulate the fabric both ways,

like when I bend time to slow the ten minutes

 

before work ends, or when your alarm clock’s

ten-minute snooze elapses faster than a thought

 

about how summers since childhood have quickened

each year, each season the next, then disappearing.

 

          ~originally appeared in Pearl (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)

 

Why Mr. President Loves Soap Bubbles

 

“They [the iridescent colors of soap bubbles]

are not the same as rainbow colors

but are the same as the colors in an oil slick.”

- Wikipedia

 

 

It’s not for the science. The Decider

has no time

               for complex thoughts

of mathematical properties, his hazel eyes

twitching side to side (as if failing

a sobriety test) at the thin, filmed sphere

of soap water

          floating aimlessly

as the first thirty-five years of his life.

 

It’s not for the scepter,

         a plastic yellow wand

he unsheathes from the clear solution,

his thin lips pursed, blowing, O,

as if in the middle of saying the word hope,

 

but it’s for this:

  he loves the anticipation

of the pop! that ends it all

       when he cups

the miniature iridescent earth in his palm

and bites down,

  giggling as the solution

bursts on his tongue, leaving nothing

but the bitter aftertaste of dispensation.

 

          ~originally appeared in Natural Bridge

 

 

My Older Brother, June Bug

 

roots with the hogs in the field’s shallow burrows

and picks through the thick lawns and meadows

with the shrews and crows for those fat white grubs

with the brown heads that feed on the roots of weeds,

and he collects the bait until he finds a fishing pole

to borrow, though he rarely catches anything but a buzz.

 

Illinois June bugs usually land in July, but my brother

shows up whenever he needs a night or three of sleep,

basement hibernation, he always says, his head hunting

for the musty yellow cushions of the couch to burrow

his face from the rest of the world. He curls up, arms

around knees, underneath his leather coat, a brown shell

 

that never hardened, even when the slick black belt

blurred like a corner-of-the-eye shadow, the silver buckle

flickering the fluorescent light above our father’s head,

my brother purposely acting up, attracting the brunt

of the licks for our blue jeans with mud-stained knees,

live grubs in plastic cups, one dead crappie on a string.

 

          ~originally appeared in Post Road

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amie Whittemore

 

Amie Whittemore was the recipient of a 2007-08 Master’s Fellowship and is currently a poet in her second year of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale.  She’s had poems appear in journals such as Rattle, Poetry Midwest, Quiddity, Fifth Wendsday, Packingtown Review and has poetry forthcoming in the Atlanta Review and Bayou. 

 

 

 

The Calendar

 

When my grandmother died she stopped making sense.

She refuses to remember she’s dead.

She crashes family gatherings, pesters the tenants in her old house.

It’s hardest in April when her birthday snags her like a loose seam –

                                    the special day cake, the tally of cards in the mail.

 

 

I told her to stop.

One blue eye watered, one eye fell out.

When I woke I was holding her,

snared in the morning after her husband died,

knotted in each other’s throats,

my arms girdled around her waist.

It took months for her to slip through the sieve of months –

 

                        The first calendar arrived the next year, a note slid

                        from her side of eternity to mine.

She tells me she hates its datelessness, misses memory –

 

first kisses, lost marbles, broken legs, farms sold, resold, divorces set.

Dough rising. The warm crowd of days.

 

Now her face slides off her face. Now she upsets me when I find her

organizing my recipes, rearranging the spices.

 

I yell at her. I draw a shade

between her insistence and the sleet grey of winter months,

the sun-slate of summer.

 

 

I can only stand her in the spring –

 

The tulip world of new birds and leaf bud,

the swans she once fed webbing her name across the river.

 

Her face no longer a jar holding a face.

Her face the globe of a peony.

 

I sink into its scent as she once did,

read the petals until May ends

then I let the wind bow her head into its hands,

her face a patina over mine, cracked in two –

 

one half, steam rising from the river.

One half the frozen glare of a severed hoof in the snow. 

 

 

~(first published in RATTLE Winter 2008/09; finalist in the poetry competition)

 

 

 

The Other Runner

 

There is an other runner; we start in the same paces.

Before long our strides divide: I fall behind

and she veers in another direction.

I see her shadow sometimes as I go through my course –

distant, sweaty. Sometimes it is her footprints

that mark the space between puddles. The prints

look like mine and my head splits: have I run this stretch already?

Her stamina is made of horses — thousands whose throats

carry sea winds in them. I do not know why.

Maybe her lungs have never been filled with the butts

of cigarettes and dirty dreams. Maybe she is still in the race

from the school bus to the backdoor, overcoming her brother

at the last turn. Maybe she has no sense of time.

I do not try to chase her. Her scent is damp as fog

and her breath knows only endurance. She will always defeat me.

But I do not forget this: we started in parallel, unison.

Each time, without fail. When my legs are sore, I slow

to a walk and whisper: in the beginning, you were with me.

We were one stone thrown into the lake until you skimmed it.

 

                   ~(first published in Quiddity, Spring/Summer 2008)

 

 

First

 

If I hadn’t lost my mouth I’d tell you how you kiss. You give it to me first and I keep it. Like learning how to whistle. The dog unwraps candies at our feet. We look at each other and wait for the other to laugh. You hum your favorite song; I hear it when I’m sleeping. We take off our shoes and our feet match.  The pond out back has made me naked. Sometimes when you put your hands on my skin they are cold. They feel like rodent feet.  The sounds I make distract me from this. You have a car and I have no keys. We are on the bed as innocent as daylight when my mom comes home. She takes the lid off my heart and looks inside. It’s a jar with a moth in it but I tell you it’s a sloshing bucket. I tell you in the rain the same words you tell me. What I don’t say is gravel pressed under the wheels of a truck. You ask me to drive but you are not my dad. You teach me safety is not a belt. You stick to me like a tattoo that comes off with soap. I form roses out of tissue paper, chapped hands, and green pipe cleaners. Always: the sound of a zipper. The wooden box you hand me keeps filling up with words. The words hover between our faces like flies. I stick to you like paper. You are covered in wings. 

 

I stick to you like paper. The words hover between our faces like flies. The wooden box you hand me keeps filling up with words. Always: the sound of a zipper. I form roses out of tissue paper, chapped hands, and green pipe cleaners. You stick to me like a tattoo that comes off with soap. You teach me safety is not a belt. You ask me to drive but you are not my dad. What I don’t say is gravel pressed under the wheels of a truck. I tell you in the rain the same words you tell me. It’s a jar with a moth in it but I tell you it’s a sloshing bucket. She takes the lid off my heart and looks inside. We are on the bed as innocent as daylight when my mom comes home. You have a car and I have no keys.  The sounds I make distract me from this. They are like rodent feet. Sometimes when you put your hands on my skin they are cold. The pond out back has made me naked. We take off our shoes and our feet match. You hum your favorite song; I hear it when I’m sleeping. We look at each other and wait for the other to laugh. The dog unwraps candies at our feet. Like learning how to whistle. You give it to me first and I keep it. If I hadn’t lost my mouth I’d tell you how you kiss.

 

~(first published in Poetry Midwest Spring 2008)

 

 

Kerry James Evans

 

Kerry James has been a finalist in both the Saturnalia and Kent State book contests as well as a finalist for Boston Review’s Discovery Award. He makes his home in southern Illinois, where he’s finishing up his last year in the MFA program of SIUC.

         

 

Monopoly

 

She is always the wheelbarrow—a piece

I can’t grasp. I am the cannon of war.

 

We never deal out property—the Deluxe

Edition, we’d rather fight, with each roll,

over New York and Boardwalk, Railroads

and Utilities. I’ve yet to own Boardwalk,

 

but I manage to swindle the Railroads.

Occasionally, I am lucky to land in jail,

 

where I don’t have to mortgage property

to pay rent. She buys hotels early, casts

 

me to the ghetto of Baltic. Once, I boasted

three monopolies, won Free Parking—

 

we place $500 in Free Parking. I bagged

my earnings from the middle, revealing

 

the moustached man with his shoulders

shrugged, hat tipped. He winked at a stack

 

of pastels tucked on the edge of town.

The game was fixed. She kept drawing

 

the good cards from the Community Chest

and Chance. I lived in the suburbs and she

 

was my landlord. Like my father, I slipped

off and got drunk on Boardwalk, gallivanted

 

for a while. It cost me everything—she owned

that, too. Fed up, I took out a loan at 10%

 

interest, paid her and passed Go, collected

two hundred dollars and made a run for it.

 

Got as far as Pennsylvania before she caught

me stealing shampoo from her hotel. Clogged

 

barrel, she broke me. Gave me the worst smile:

Cook me supper and I’ll let you stay.

 

                                      ~appeared originally in Eclipse Vol. 19, Fall 2008

 

 

          Blue Ribbon Tomato Soup

 

This is dinner: tomato soup

with black pepper and garlic salt,

a grilled cheese buttered

                                on both sides,

 

charred in the skillet on the stove.

 

I serve my brother and sister this meal

with napkins and plastic ware.

                                                We say grace.

 

Our parents are working.

Parents work.

                        The meal is superb.

 

I get a wink and a high-five, turn off

the stove eye—

                           sometimes I forget.

 

I am a chef at any restaurant imaginable:

Cracker Barrel, Country Kitchen,

the coffee shop on U.S. 78,

just before the peanut shack

in Carbon Hill.

                             My brother and sister agree.

 

They say I ought to enter the county fair.

Drape a cloth over my arm

                                            when I serve.

 

They remind me not to speak about how

food stamps paid for this meal.

 

We talk about the neighbors up the hill,

the expiration date on the milk jug.

 

                                                ~appeared originally in Court Green 2008

 

 

          Design

 

                   after Billy Collins

 

And this, canvas of paintless

numbers, this square, it

is the square

of my imagination, four

corners and seam

running from this

middle, my mother’s awful

trailer, the children

she keeps in daycare—

a square daycare, where I look

back into memory and recall

the driest of squares,

an empty pan

of meatloaf, ketchup

crusting in our stomachs

—my brothers and sisters

and all the children mothers keep.

And I think of the square world

and how it stumbles

down the stairs of space,

while we square off the yard

to plant seed, to remind

our children of what they

cannot have, while we

sample wine from a boxed

bowl, its drip,

dripping on the tile floor

of this, our grouted design.

 

                ~appeared originally in Iron Horse Literary Review Volume 10 #2, 2008