Featured Poet: February 2012 Vol. 4 # 4

admin — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:02:17 +0000

Kate Falvey

Kate Falvey's work has appeared in a number of print and online magazines, including Memoir(and), Danse Macabre, Subliminal Interiors, Hoboeye, Umbrella, CRIT, Inscribed, Hearing Voices, OVS, Literary Mama, Women Writers, The Mom Egg, the Aroostook Review, Shot Glass Journal and is forthcoming in Italian Americana. She is on the editorial board of the N.Y.U. Langone Medical Center's Bellevue Literary Review and is editor in chief of the 2 Bridges Review. She teaches at New York City College of Technology/CUNY and lives with her daughter in Long Beach, New York.

Spitting Image

Fractured, this image of a swan:

early morning, early June,

a slow sun ruffling the clouds

where they tend to their nest of storms.

Egrets watch, aloof familiars, from

the blighted coven of skeletal cedar

and red maple, dead, still reaching,

intricate with power.

And the cygnets rake coils in the green

stillness of the marsh, their mothers prodding

pondweed and stonewort, harrying the tadpoles.

There is a scrim of birch and alder, and more

herons skimming for snakes and fishing-spiders

as light curls and dabs haphazardly.

Lured by the hazy peace, I blunder

from my clumsy blind and venture

to a translucent verge, too flimsy to bar

my love-sick gazing.

An inch too far and I am beset by

an eruption of wing and hissing.

The egrets don’t lift a feather to save me.

Slipping Down the Mud Bank

The spot where the child’s high chair

was up-ended

was bright with ferns and creepers,

wisteria and jewelweed wanton in

a mossy undertow

of run-off from the vague peril of

the listing, storm-addled road.

A slow mist clung like stifled thought

and shaped elfish hints of fear

which I subdued while reaching for

a cloudy-seeming rung as if the chair

were root or reed and would provide

a hand-hold or a stair as the creek bank

dissolved into a sodden, undulating lair.

There was a strange animation in the

chipped red of the high chair’s tray,

a ruddy evanescent glow of memory,

perhaps, or wooden dread,

a flash of muted color fixed

inside the diffuse, muddled grey

of drizzle, clay, and sand. I took

a stand and melded into mud,

knee and ankle splayed, distended,

the sudden swell more shocking than

predicament or pain. How long

I lay and shivered before shifting, rocking

a hair’s-breadth turn from break to bruise,

I still can’t say, but then, I spied

emerging from the startled ooze,

a silver baby rattle, blackened,

swaddled in bedraggled curls

of goldenrod and bracken.

When lifted free and scraped,

this age-clenched random find exposed

my own initials etched

in murky swirls on the twisted handle.

Arms outstretched, I grabbled, rose,

shaken, shaking, to somewhat higher ground.

My proof escaped as I ascended,

rattling down the slippery slope

to where some day, no doubt,

some other wanderer will unearth it

when she stumbles.

“But whose initials will be found?”

I vaguely wondered, hoped,

pushing through veils of fog

into the jolt of a clear and sudden

play of light.

Sister Moon

I could put you to rights if

you had half a mind.

What I’d tell you is this:

your illness has it right;

nothing is starlit, nothing is over,

nothing is sacred, everything

is scarred.

You insist on your right

to a past of snares and peril,

eyes without mercy, thickets

of giddy abandonments and

relentless disregard,

boggy distensions where only a small shoe

lies crumpled on the verge.

Your vision is complete.

The same images flicker chronically;

the pain mechanical and prescribed.

You’ve never realized it was you

who told all those ghastly lies.

Lucky Stiff

Cautious, she is, at thirteen,

visiting the Christmas city from the sticks.

She’s heard of tricks the monsters in the dark

are wont to play, scenting for young blood in the

thickets of the Park. She’s smart, but she’s

deliberately afraid.

She’s heard about the killings and the stalkings and

the gangs, the women turned to ashes in their glares.

They mark you unawares, then mutate into vicious

feral things. They catch your shyness in their eyes,

then spring.

Tricked out in its mesmerizing glow, the greens

and silvers smearing filmy ribbons in the snow,

the city sings

of winter work and want, wealth, and wry imaginings,

its complications muted in the gold

and dingy red tinged drifts,

the heft of gifts sparkling, crisply earnest, in

the high-strung shopping bags. She

has on her proud glad-rags, her thin-soled sling-back shoes,

like a coy suburban match-girl in the chips. Of course, she slips

into a frosty puddle of a cashmered gent, who drops his

briefcase, guard, and all pretence. Boozily roused

and absurdly unamused, he spits

something unholy then flips

this innocent the bird. Or maybe I misheard?

Or rashly misconstrued?

Before I, huffy Auntie Mame, can swing

to ineffectual defense, he murmurs season’s greetings

and slips into the huddling unreason of the street.

The charming flurry in the lamplight, heckled

by crass, impatient winds,

winds which, wilding, push

us indoors where spills of safe, spectacular

year-round lights dance, dazzling, over dancers –

whose nightly peril is latent in mistiming or missteps.

She

is frozen and forlorn, worrying her premonition:

we’ll have to pass the Park again,

there may well be thugs galore in store.

I tell her during intermission

that though this is a hungry, brutish world,

the brutes are far between and mostly dormant,

mostly tame.

A million passersby will pass the Park a million times,

will keep their purses, plans, and lives.

The bad that happens mostly doesn’t.

Self-satisfied, I think I’ve squared away her fear.

But when we tour the night again, she lags, sits

stiffly by the frozen fountain, demands

a taxi for a present.

Featured Artist: January 2011 Vol. 4 # 3

admin — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:52:51 +0000

Heidi Zito
New York, New York
Email: heidi.zito@gmail.com
Website: www.heidizito.com

Born March 23, 1987 to a Japanese mother and an Italian father. Heidi Zito is a painter and video artist living in New York City. Zito has been a part of projects and exhibitions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim's Stillspotting NYC project and an exhibition at the Big Screen Plaza in New York City. Her next solo exhibition will be on May 23 – June 30, 2012 at HEREart Gallery in SoHo. She is currently attending The School of Visual Arts for her Master of Fine Arts.

(Click HERE to enter gallery)

Featured Poet: January 2012 Vol. 4 # 3

admin — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:12:41 +0000

Shanan Ballam

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Shanan Ballam’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals, including Crab Orchard Review, Main Street Rag, Indiana Review, and Cream City Review. Her chapbook, The Red Riding Hood Papers, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2010. Her poetry manuscript, Pretty Marrow, was a semi-finalist for the 2010 Brittingham and Polk Poetry Prizes, the 2010 May Swenson Award, and the 2010 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. She teaches poetry writing and academic writing at Utah State University.

While Mowing the Lawn, I Realize I May Be Pregnant

Paradise of panic! The self-propelled

mower screams, drags

me in messy loops around the yard.

One round, two: the blade lops off

gold dandelion heads, lurches

toward the broom bush,

yellow lush of fragrant blooms.

Frantically bumblebees suck

sweet nectar. The world’s shrunk

to a bright box of noise:

my skin’s the bronze bash

of a cymbal, my footprints sizzle.

My fingers are a crimson tingle.

Kids across the street shout,

but the sound’s drowned out

by the mower’s roar.

It yanks me under the pine tree

and a branch whips my cheek, salty sting.

I’m inside the sound of shattering:

my father’s huge fist smashing

glass, the dining room table,

phone splintered on the kitchen floor.

I’m inside the wet hiss,

my mother’s drunk lips on my ear:

Please, wrap your hands

around my throat and squeeze.

I slip on slick grass,

fall to my knees, but don’t stop,

pop up like a jack-in-the-box,

knees grated, smeared wet-green.

Just last week, on my father’s birthday,

his new wife woke to blood streaming

down her thighs, a tear in her uterus.

She cradled the stillborn fetus

for hours. As always,

Dad was drunk the whole time.

The old bird feeder hangs

in the pine like a broken arm,

like a forgotten piñata,

and I want to beat it

‘til the stale seeds spill.

In the grass, violets shine like eyes.

The mower slices them, spits

out retinas, eyelashes.

Blown into sky,

an eyelash is a wish.

My sister tore all hers out,

held them in her palm and blew.

Dew blazes in the lawn.

The mower tears toward

one blade burning gold,

lonely as a birthday candle.

Once More to the Lake

–for my sister

Didn’t you just tell me you loved me?

Didn’t you just say you were sad about god?

And just now, was that the sound

of early morning, lake softly breathing?

Now, at this hour, I can’t

bear to let go.

Didn’t we just dance on the beach with bare feet?

Weren’t we lovely?

And wasn’t my hair curled,

weren’t my lips painted pink,

lily of the valley pinned,

sweet perfume soaking

my hair? Wasn’t that yesterday?

And weren’t we happy, and weren’t we strong,

muscles flexing under tanned skin

as we dove in, trout spinning

their shimmering funnels around us?

Weren’t we a family?

Weren’t we?

And wasn’t our father charming

that day on the lake,

his blue hat flying off in the wind?

And wasn’t he marvelous,

his enormous authority as he leaned

from the truck window, Marlboro dangling

from his mouth, his silent concentration

as he snugged, inch by inch,

our trailer into its narrow slot?

And wasn’t he wonderful

in the mornings before he’d been

drinking, how he hauled

the jetskis into the lake,

rainbows of gasoline glistening?

We watched strapped

in bright pink life-jackets

as he choked the engines,

then throttled them

until they screamed.

I loved him, you know, this is our story.

We wore green bikinis,

cut-offs and thongs, white-rimmed

sunglasses even,

we all drank rum in a cabin,

and even then you knew

you shouldn’t marry

that man, but you married him,

even then he slammed you down

on the concrete and our parents never said a thing,

even then he forgot your birthday,

and you were only sixteen, and that was before

you were pregnant, before I whispered abortion,

before we dove into

the lake and witnessed our own

distortion under water,

before we knew our father would not

survive his life, the life we helped

construct and destroy, and everyone keeps

saying it was not,

it is not your fault,

and it’s not,

but go back, go deeper: had we not

been so clever, had we

not been so evil,

had we not fought over

the one blue cup, had we not

bawled in the Mexican restaurant—

if we went back maybe we’d try

to be better, learned to build

engines because having only

daughters, he had to do this

alone.

Didn’t we all love one another

once on the lake before

we could look back and grieve,

before cancer in the femur,

before alcohol poisoning,

before liver failure,

before all these sad children,

before everything collapsed,

weren’t we blessed,

weren’t we lovely?

Once I wore perfumed flowers

and a white cotton dress,

once we smiled

for the camera

near the lake, its cold

turquoise drowsy and deep

while we stood, clinging.

I’m asking you to take me,

take me back, once more,

to the lake.

My Paper Boat

You were an albino trout waving

its tail in the river’s cold current,

but when I crept closer I saw

you were a white swath of plastic,

perhaps fabric torn from a dress,

or paper. You were a suicide

note, or a love poem snagged

on a ragged branch. I wanted

to peel off my socks, wade into

the shock of winter run off, wanted

to take you with me, your words,

your little body. I imagine

someone folded you into a warm

pocket, dropped you by accident,

or pinned you to a tree till spring wind

ripped you down. Why did I not save

you, lay you in the sun. Why did I

not lift you, moss-limp and lovely, press

your river-blurred words to my face.

You are my love note to the world,

my paper boat. I wish you

could let go and swirl away

to a place unblemished, where light

could pour its honey onto your face.

I wish you could let go and forget

I stood here on the bank, body filled

with river stones, hand clutching

a heavy set of keys. I should have

opened my mouth to taste you,

chewed and swallowed you, rescued

you from unsnagging into new

violence, tumble-lick of rocks,

river gnashing you, ragdoll.

Why did I not kneel, crawl

into the river to you,

my bright pinwheel.