A selection of poems from our Inaugural Issue, including work by:
Kim Addonizio Toi Derricotte
Susan Luzzaro Marge Piercy
Charles Simic Susan Wheeler
Gary Young & Natan Zach
A selection of poems from our Inaugural Issue, including work by:
Kim Addonizio Toi Derricotte
Susan Luzzaro Marge Piercy
Charles Simic Susan Wheeler
Gary Young & Natan Zach
Charles SimicPrison Guards Silhouetted Against The Sky
I never gave them a thought. Years had gone by, Many years. I had plenty of other things To mull over. This morning I was in the dentist's chair When his new assistant walked in Pretending not to recognize me in the slightest As I opened my mouth obediently. We were smooching in the grass by the river bank, And I wanted her to peel off her bra. The sky was darkening, there was even thunder When she finally did, so that the first large Rain drop fell and wet one of her nipples. That was nicer then what she did to my mouth now, While I peeked, while I waited for a sign, Perhaps a sudden dreamy look coming over her At the memory of the two of us running soaked wet Past the prison with its towers and armed guards Silhouetted against the stormy sky.
Marge Piercy
One reason I like operaIn movies, you can tell the heroine because she is blonder and thinner than her sidekick. The villainess is darkest. If a woman is fat, she is a joke and will probably die. In movies, the blondest are the best and in bleaching lies not only purity but victory. If two people are both extra pretty, they will end up in the final clinch. Only the flawless in face and body win. That is why I treat movies as less interesting than comic books. The camera is stupid. It sucks surfaces. Let's go to the opera instead. The heroine is fifty and weighs as much as a '65 Chevvie with fins. She could crack your jaw in her fist. She can hit high C lying down. The tenor the women scream for wolfs an eight course meal daily. He resembles a bull on hind legs. His thighs are the size of beer kegs. His chest is a redwood with hair. Their voices twine, golden serpents. Their voices rise like the best fireworks and hang and hang then drift slowly down descending in brilliant and still fiery sparks. The hippopotamus baritone (the villain) has a voice that could give you an orgasm right in your seat. His voice smokes with passion. He is hot as lava. He erupts nightly. The contralto is, however, svelte. She is supposed to be the soprano's other, but is ten years younger, beautiful and black. Nobody cares. She sings you into her womb where you rock. What you see is work like digging a ditch, hard physical labor. What you hear is magic as tricky as knife throwing. What you see is strength like any great athlete's; what you hear is skill rendered precisely as the best Swiss watchmaker. The body is resonance. The body is the cello case. The body just is. The voice loud as hunger remagnetizes your bones.
Toi DerricotteOn Katchimac Bay: Homer, Alaska
I will never forget Diane at the wheel of that wicked skiff eating the bay, her intense blue eyes like the inside of some ripped open mountain, how she tended us by throwing down the plastic windows, for the fractures of ice were flying back in our faces. We were down in the middle of all that, as if our faces had been pushed down in it, humiliated, as if we were barely staying afloat on the light of our souls. Something glistened between us & the water, & then we were down, down, as much as we were part of our mother. Icy breath shook us, like being born in terror, & the waves shuddered open like some woman eager to be pleased.
Gary YoungPoem
In New Jersey, a couple pulled a man from his car, shot him, and locked him in a box to die. They'd had a plan, but their plan fell through. They were captured, and the woman claimed she'd been forced; she had never wanted to do it. When she testified against her husband, someone shouted, what do you think of your wife now? And he turned, and said, I love her. The stories I must tell myself about myself seem even more pitiful repeated in the history of others.
Kim Addonizio
HA
A man walks into a bar. You think that's some kind of joke? Actually he runs in, to get out of the freezing weather. Who cares, you say. Nobody you know. You've got your own troubles, could use a drink yourself. You get your coat, a long scarf. You trudge to the corner over the scraped sidewalk, slip and fall down hard on the ice. Actually a banana peel, but who's looking? Only a priest, a rabbi, and a lawyer you vaguely recognize-- didn't she help with the divorce? Never mind, the marriage is over, good riddance. You're thinking now you'd better have a double. You get up, holding your hip, and limp towards the neon martini glass. Anyway a man goes into a bar, just like you do. He's tired of life, tired of being alone. No one takes him seriously; at work he's the butt of jokes, the foreman calls him Moron all day long. It's true he's not too bright. He wants to kill himself, but doesn't know how to. He orders drink after drink, cursing the angel who passed out brains. You take the stool next to him. In half an hour you're pals--two losers getting shitfaced. You start to tell each other riddles. What's big and red and eats rocks; what do you get when you cross a penis with a potato? Why is there something rather than nothing? If God is good, how is it that the weed of evil takes root everywhere, and what is there to keep us from murdering each other in despair? Why is pleasure always a prelude to pain? The bartender takes your glasses, tells you it's time to get out. You stumble through the door, and there you are in the cold and the wind and a little snow that's started to fall. Two losers stand on a corner. One turns to the other and says, Why did our love end? The other can't answer. Why do they torment me? he says. The snowstorm begins in earnest but still they stand there, determined to stay put until they finally get it.
Natan Zach
Three Poems That Were Never Written
1 I wrote a few lines on the occasion of my friends' marriage. My girlfriend looked over my shoulder: "Thank heaven," she said, "you're back to lyric poems again, at last!" I met my friend after the wedding. "She can't cook," he said, "not even my favorite dishes." This, too, I put in the poem. My girlfriend read it and said, "You persist in writing such dull prosaic things. You do it to spite me." We went to visit Yisrael, who was wounded. We had to make an effort so he wouldn't notice how hard it was to look at his face. The smell of burnt flesh lingered in the rrom and his one remaning eye seemed moved from its usual place, if that's possible; I'm not a doctor. When we came home my girlfriend said to me, "I suppose now you'll write a political poem." "No," I said, "it's still the same one." "What's it about?" she said. "The usual," I said: "how time is out of joint but we learn to live with it, and that's bad; also that life's as hard as ever; and whatever is , has been- though one mustn't say so, so as not to discourage." "You call that a poem?" she said. "No," I said, "you're right. It isn't any good; I'll throw it out. I'll only publish this, so people will know, at least, what was in it." 2 The second poem came to me in a dream, and I said to it: "Welcome, my fiend, how beautiful you are! It's been a long time since so beautiful a poem was here." When morning came, however, I could remember nothing. All the more bitter then was my cup, though this is the price one pays, perhaps, for waking up. 3 The third poem is being sung aboard a luxury liner. A luxury liner, lights ablaze, is sailing out of Haifa. The poem can't be heard from where I stand. Sail away! sail away! ship of my youth, to remind me nothing begins or ends here.translated by Peter Everwine
Susan Luzzaro
InjunctionCall in sick. Live the day, like first, like last. See the other side-the dead side. Thin membrane between the two. Swim the cold sea till the blue bruise deepens. Open Remembrance of Things Past for the luxurious pace of details. Eat the berries, the bananas, the Co2 sweet star food of your only life. Then lie down for the blink of a nap so to have the pleasure of rising twice in the same day. Make love if you're lucky to the soles of the feet, to the arch of the eyebrow, to every feathered spot of someone worth your last minute. Touch yourself if you're solo. Let your fingers sink deep, rub sweet, tempo adagio. Pour the wine, drink the grape till the orange ball falls, flames the ocean, burns the bougainvillea, X-rays you onto the whitewashed wall.Pack rubble of the day in valise bound for heaven of tomorrow- or for the gates at which no gatekeeper will love the cut of a diamond, the Irish of an emerald enough to let you back out. Not ever. Not for a single day.
Susan WheelerKnot Me
after H.C. WestermannThe reddish glow is jacked. Ole Cliff he found the yard out back, and it sure got the roses bright. Criminy anchor, tippled hull, haunt of pieces&parts in a footlocker full. O Canada don't hold a candle to thee, spring's air like cigar from the gunnery, she was the slightest gal on the circuit see and I loved her. Yellow barn planks thrum in the hum of the plane. Handstandin'est, sweet bargain pal, I could have found nothing in the hickory but what below burned frightest. Knot me.
