note from editor:

"I'll just tell you what I remember because memory is as close as I've gotten to building my own time machine." 

— Samantha Hunt (The Invention of Everything Else)

"con-trails" by jennifer l. tomaloff

Writing a poem is like transcending space and time, especially if it's based on something true. And they're all sort of true. I turn old lovers in to sea monsters and haunted European forests. It feels like rewriting history the way it happened in some parallel universe. I should have known from the beginning things were going to go wrong. There's an unexplored sense that is always active, like power lines hovering above you that you fail to notice. It hums to you all the possibilities that are existing at every moment, and just because you choose one outcome, it doesn't mean the others stop existing. They are running the course of your veins, and sometimes when you sit down to write, remembering the beginning of some love story, your hand picks up a pen and tells a slight variation of that story, but it never means it's not true. 

Claudia

February 2011

note: jennifer l. tomaloff's photograph is the inspiration for ed makowski's poem featured in this issue. 

Dave's Con-Trails

by Ed Makowski

Working in a basement

computer warehouse 

with one other man 

who was hired

before me, so

                   naturally

he had seniority 

and played

conspiracy theory radio 

We worked between

40 and 60 hours per week

listening to radio shows about

time travel, chupacabras, 

grays (slang for aliens),  

poisonous con-trails, 

the bloodline of Christ,

werewolves and vampires,

unidentified flying objects, 

abnormalities in weather 

and

everything was caused by

government experiments.

A dusty decades old 

basement with poor lighting

on land that had been  

Native American marsh.

Deforested, drained, filled. 

Then paved and built to become 

new retail opportunities 

in mid-century America. 

When Dave started seeing men

walking about in loin cloths,

and vanishing, I wondered

what had taken them

so long. 

stockton, california

by Anthony Jones

hearing train tracks rumble late at night

locomotives bellowing like wounded dogs

a fog gray feeling

seeming sometimes blue

Preserve the Lies

by Ben John Smith

Bach composes violoncello minute

and at thirty-eight seconds

she walks into my room

and cringes at the sight of me

pouring wine into a pint glass.

And her eyes break

like Christmas tree

decorations.

Or a plug that has

never been

unplugged.

She says,

“What in GOD'S name are

you doing?”

And with an ugly truth

I lower my head

like a child with dirty palms

and say,

“I'm pretending to be famous.”

She whispers to God.

The cat brushes past her

bare

feet.

I don’t know what

she said

or if he heard

but I bet

he doesn’t

need her

as much

as I do.

It's All in the Wrists, Said Ted Bundy

by Donal Mahoney

The others, of course, are more rabid than I

but less apt to show it. 

Whenever I strike, I never romp off. 

I stand with the wrist that I've snatched

from the lady locked in my teeth

as I wait with a smile for the wagon.

As one of the few wrist-snatchers 

still on the streets of Chicago,

I make all of my rounds in old tennies.

I dive for the purse hand, give it a whack, 

and sever the wrist without slobber,   

then stand like a Vatican Guard

with her wrist in my teeth until

I am certain I have no pursuers. 

In my dreams every night I can see 

all of those women whose wrists 

I have had in my teeth. 

They stand at their bus stops 

like Statues of Liberty,

shrieking and waving their stumps like flares 

as I wait for their screams 

to bring to a frieze 

the patrol cars glowing  

in the middle of the street. 

lost dialog

by Helen Vitoria

let’s say that there was no Ghost−

let’s say, all the small conversations

are with you

& somehow you carried them back to the

 

Ghost, outside, on the front walkway

near the magnolia, because that is where the

Ghost would be, waiting for me to open the door

& let him in.

Graveyard Nights

by John Grey

The only white he knows

is tombstones,

your neck,

another moonlit canvas

to mark with dates, with death,

for pointless flowers

to rhapsodize

as they wither

in the shadow

of your decay.

Even touch does not fool him,

the cemetery bed

pandering to

his dark expectations,

your life sucked out

through grave-digger lips,

as bitter cold marble

rises up into his fingers,

your flesh stiff and pale

as the bone

it clings to.

Hibiscus Tea

by John Swain

Field became another sky
when snow fell
over the first winter night.
In the drift on the hill
we warmed beneath my coat
and sipped hibiscus tea
from a silver bowl I carry.
Trees floated from the ice
as she polished a rabbit jaw
and dropped prayer beads
to mark our path.
Fear darkened my heart
so I kneeled on my teeth
gone away to rejoicing her.

The Pornographer's Daughter

by Laura Hardy 

Lets go to the moon and dig a giant hole.

So big in fact only our arms will penetrate the surface,

we will reach out just at the top,

our fingers will dance as blue flowers for our graves.

Then we will walk downstairs to Beirut

and laugh, as the men we have been inside stare,

trying to remember why our hands look familiar.

We will answer seductively, “Monsieur, do you not recall?

I performed your colonoscopy” and he will glare,

looking down to see his hands are sewn to dull gold cymbals.

We will drink as he serenades us,

Bang, Bang, Bang.

Then it will start to rain.

So we will pull down the roof and build a house of cards to stay warm.

One hand inside our coats and another up our skirts, because

lesbian porn is all that works

and we swore we’d never be wives but only sleep with their husbands.

Then we will hear a cry.

The pornographer’s daughter, she stands tall in the mirror

unable to gaze upon her naked self.

Touch and feel are so very far apart.

We will climb her tower walls with suction cups made

with the chicken cutlets we left in our brassieres.

And take her down, down, down,

to the bridge, where guards shelter her shy cunt.

Even they will trade kisses for liberty,

and the pornographer’s daughter will turn red in the cheeks,

I’ll press my finger to her rouge, spread it on his lips whispering,

“Freedom Rings!”

Because out here we know that:

Bare feet tell the best stories,

Sand can often be unkind,

Heat determines how much you smoke,

Rain cannot tear down a house of cards,

And you, like me,

Fall asleep with one, two, three,

But prefer to wake up alone.

We Are All Haunted

by Megan Kennedy

She wanted to die young.

Her theory was, 

All the enlightened and spiritually

Significant people

Didn’t need to live that long.

To her, it was a badge of honor

To leave this place early.

She had formulated this 

From hours of reading:

Philosophy, religion, biographies

Crime statistics, metaphysics

And fiction of the loftiest kind.

She said, I believe I have it figured out.

The Hindus had it right.

Your soul will keep coming here

Over and over

Until you’re ready to rejoin 

The universe at its highest understandings.

Those who die young

Well, they didn’t need to be here

Any longer.

All the kids beaten and murdered 

By loved ones and strangers.

All the angelic teenagers

Killed in traffic accidents.

All the world-changers 

Who barely had time to 

Give us their message,

To show us the light,

These people were, somehow,

Finally finished.

Martin Luther King.  Jesus Christ. 

JFK. RFK. Abraham Lincoln.

Dimebag Darrell.  Some prodigy

Drummer from a metal band

I’d never heard of.

Heath Ledger. Princess Di. Anne Frank.

Jimi Hendrix. Hank Williams. Mozart.

Bob Marley. Joan of Arc.

She had a list

Longer than my arm.

                       I would point out some flaws in her theory:

                       Gandhi.  Mother Teresa. Pope John Paul II.

                       Newton.  Einstein.  Galileo. 

Her arguments were:

The scientists were smart,

Not enlightened.

Gandhi just stood up for a cause, 

And so do a lot of stupid people.

And Mother Teresa, well,

According to her own letters, 

She couldn’t even feel God anymore.

But she kept helping the poor anyway.

Wonderful, yes, but disqualified

In this particular running.

                      She is the only person I know

                      Who could trivialize Mother Teresa 

                      And actually make you stop and think about it.

And so, this is why, she,

My best friend and my own personal

Piece of enlightenment

Wanted to die young.

Because it would mean she was

On the right track,

Not only for her own ascension,

But for the overall well-being

Of the universe

And mankind.

                     I said, why don’t you just kill yourself then?

                     Guarantee it?

But suicides don’t count, she said.

It has to be an accident, or a murder,

Or some natural cause.

You can’t cheat your way

Into that great gig in the sky.

And so she waits, every day,

Wondering if today is it.

Reading her Aurelius and Dali Lama,

Nietzsche and the Bible,

Aquinas and the Satanic Bible,

Alchemy, occult, fundamentalist Islam.

She keeps learning, and searching,

And by now, she can debate brilliantly

With anyone of any religion, 

Any belief.

Now she is a force to be reckoned with.

                   I tell her, why don’t you teach?

                   Write a book?

                   Keep a record of all these ideas. 

                   Who knows what may come of them?

But she just smiles from under

Her ratty old blanket

In her favorite armchair.

Sometimes she will reply:

Maybe I will.  

But with any luck,

I won’t have it finished

Before I go. 

Voodoo Dream

by Ron Koppelberger

Spun by ebony threads in a voodoo dream, By perfumed Hyacinth blooms and burlap cloaks of Scarecrow design, the pin and needle by Garlic seed and horseradish flavor, The breath of a witch and wicked measures of Bat blood.

The End, Twenty Ten

by Tannen Dell 

“I couldn’t help but want to die when I started living; the Irony of all good things.”

In the beginning, I did not know this girl. We dated in a dusty corner mansion with a scene broken movie as she talked not to me, but a parallel, through some shining veil of existence and as I walked the path of doomed concrete and mist grass, a dog of fog trotted up into a pencil outline and then sky fur apparition. 

After I saved the fourth twin little girl with bone skin and tombstone hair, the human form of Cerberus’ mother greeted me with open fangs.

-A shower at 4:00 AM later…-

In the beginning I did not know this girl until the computer screen told me she died in a nightclub. I doubted the coincidence and my girlfriend who had not been to that dream, or to that house.

I was in a camera as it snapped in half and should’ve woken up, but in the end the girl was wrapped in pinion feathers and a cross. 

I will live and

The haunting house 

Will remain forever unspoken.

“In the beginning Shadow created the Heavens and the Earth.”

At Water's Edge

by Taylor Graham

the embryonic stage of a creature

I’ve never seen before, sleek and limbless,

dark as if conceived in a blackout.

 

Beyond, oblivious square-dance

of water insects on the still surface.

August afternoon. Overhead,

 

a republic of jays in noisy caucus.

 

But this creature – as if cloaked,

about to shed a shadow-habit, burka

of disguise.

 

The sun is lowering

as if on some malignancy in water,

mutation of air.

 

Twilight of changes coming.