NarrativeNortheast

VARIATONS ON NOON – Libby Goss

on June 1 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments
In the trees, the noon
rose like an unmarked shadow,
bare and sullen.

A cat closed his eyes
for sleep. A cat slumbered in
the darkness of sun.

In the window, a
poet was imagining
a yellow kitchen.

Winter preferred the
night, the roaming winds, the sound
of ice cracking.

What day was it I
dreamt of the braeburns? All those
apples cold as frost.

A rose was growing
the color of ice, counting
its small, tender thoughts.

Your letters came like
September russets. Outside,
the branches rattled.

A lover waited
beneath a tree. The noon
still growing young.
```
 
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Libby Goss has an MFA in poetry from Boston University and a BA in creative writing, marketing, and publishing from NYU. Her work has previously been published on Confluence (NYU Gallatin) and in the anthology If You’re Not Happy Now (Broadstone Books).
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TWO POEMS – Glenn Moss

on May 11 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

STORY TELLING

God raised an eyebrow, twitching nothing into possibility
Questions blessed with spit and mistakes
Universes quoting Beckett long before college students would

The day I was born was the hottest of August
One undeclared war had reached an exhausted truce
Mine was just beginning, an invader searching for a DMZ
Ammunition of guilt to shame

My eyebrow split open when I was five
As I fell into a spike in a stone wall bordering Prospect Park
The butterfly I chased turned and laughed
Or it may have been a parent
Stitches and judgment closed a wound
Beneath the scar a memory of risk sends ripples

In the dust of childhood
My father seemed a dowser in a drought believing the stick and the con
My mother heard Django Reinhardt in the squeal of the BMT
My brother saw cracks in thin ice as invitations to skate

Seven decades of leaps and stumbles on a road imagined into existence
Time to fill in the blanks with stories I am finally ready to tell

BOY UNDER THE TABLE

He bends to fit into a space small and dark
His hands shake, the cup on the desk spills juice on the paper with his number
Two tears, one for each parent, slip out of his left eye
The right holds one for himself
His mother was crying, his father screaming
He doesn’t want to remember that
So he thinks of the night in the desert, his mother stroking his head, humming their favorite song
There is no music here, under the table
The tear he can no longer hold
Follows the curve of his cheek, falling on the floor
To disappear
He has heard that before
Tonight he begins to understand it
He closes his eyes
The knock on the door is thunder

Glenn Moss is a media lawyer and has been writing poetry and stories since high school. While at Binghamton University, he wrote a play for a course in Jacobean Literature, and while at Case Western Reserve Law School, a play for a course in Jurisprudence. Upon his return to NYC, he wrote poetry and stories amidst contracts and business plans. Each area of writing enriches the other, with contracts benefiting from a bit of poetic dance. He has poems and stories published in Ithaca Lit, West Trade Review, Oddville Press, Oberon, Foliate Oak Magazine, Illuminations, Qu, 34th Parallel and Harbinger Asylum.
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LANDFALL, from Found Poem – Liza Katz-Duncan

on January 11 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

In the cemetery for thwarted artists

A breach caused by the storm surge

A resurrection: crosses
Rise from the snow like wild grasses.

We are dealing with categories we don’t normally see

Their ghosts paddle skeleton boats through the town.
The floodwater breathes new currents, spins a life of its own.

A 10- to 12-foot storm tide

Where once were steeples, peaks of snow.
Where once were hills, an archipelago.

Liza Katz-Duncan is an MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College and a 2017 recipient of an Amy Award from Poets and Writers. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Northwest, Poet Lore, the Cortland Review, and elsewhere.
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AT RISK OF RAIN – Vivian Montgomery

on January 11 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

My mother had been saying “I need to get out of here” for several hours.

The night before, she had called out into the darkness from her recliner, that she was lost in the woods and needed help finding her way home. The only time we had been out of the house during my stay was two days earlier to go to the doctor to get more bad news that she couldn’t understand.

It was time, no matter the approaching storm or the fact that she wasn’t able to walk. I called out to my father in his study, my sister in the guest room, that we were going on an outing. I must have sounded so matter-of-fact, as though it presented no challenges, wasn’t subject to question, that they just responded with simple agreement. I got her into the wheel chair, a process that sometimes felt almost like dancing and that could lead on better days to my mother getting a shine in her eye and impishly spitting out “Cha cha cha.” We headed out to the car over the roughly paved path, and then I lugged her out of the wheelchair, pivoted her into the Toyota seat, lifted her legs, and closed the door. We drove downtown to get her watchband fixed at Mallove’s Jewelers. She had been so worried about the watch, getting it fixed was one of the only concrete items on her mental list.

She sat in the car as I ran in, chose a new band, and waited for the attendant to replace it, all the while glancing out at the car and the slumped figure in the passenger seat. I toured the jewelry cases, remembering the Saturday walks downtown with my pre-pubescent friends, stopping at Mallove’s to look at posts we could buy for our freshly pierced ears. When the watch was ready and I ran back out to the car, the rain was almost impenetrable. Mommy was so glad to be able to put her watch on, although she couldn’t remember which wrist. We journeyed on; it had just been so much work to get out, and it seemed to be doing her some good.

She had a urinary tract infection and it added restlessness to her disorientation and to the violent tremor in her arm. But she was taking it all in, the trees waving in the wind, the people walking with umbrellas pressed up against them, and she wanted to keep going as we got to a point where we could have turned home. I headed toward a little mountain road on Middletown’s outskirts, and the Toyota’s tires started to grind over wet gravel. The rain was torrential and I’m certain, had we been listening to the radio, we would have heard warnings of flash floods. The road was washing out from underneath us, a chunk of it was falling away down the steep slope as we struggled upward. I swore and gasped, Mommy laughed, and we rounded the bend at the crest of the hill, clearing the danger, hearing the crunching and slushing behind us. We looked at one another with amusement but it seemed we also shared a heroic feeling of having done something. She said, “I’ve never felt so much agony and so much of a thrill at the same time.” I had forgotten about her bladder pain. “Do you want to go home?” I asked, and she replied, “Oh NO, NEVER.”

We climbed another small hill, still with rain pouring down, but the road was paved so there was no more rush of the surface washing away beneath us. Down, then up, and she said “It’s occurred to me that Daddy will want to marry someone else when I die, someone who moves quickly and who’s fun. I once got sad when I watched him and Jocelyn walking up ahead of me in New York – she was able to keep up with him, and I thought he’d be happier with her.”

I made some feeble efforts to reassure her, saying that being well-matched in walking style was a far cry from wanting to live with that person. She shrugged, “Oh, I know, I know.” We said no more because the sun started shining through the trees, and we were driving along a stretch of road that was lined with brilliant red maples. She said, “This’ll be the last of them, the leaves will all be washed away.” I pulled the car over and we stared at the color as though it would be gone in less than a minute.

The rain started again, and she was anxious. We were just a few minutes from home, but our arrival there felt like a return from somewhere very far away. I couldn’t get her out of the car, we were both getting soaked, and she said, “I should just stay out here.” I went in and got my sister, who couldn’t believe I had taken her out, and it wasn’t the time to tell her how much had happened and how I was sure it would make things better. I just let her take charge of moving Mommy’s legs, hauling her seemingly dead weight into the wheelchair, while I covered her as best I could with a raincoat. We were dripping when we got inside, but her face was bright as I toweled her off, and she said, “That was the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.” Daddy and Jennifer stared silently at us as we told them where we had been – maybe they thought we were making too much out of a small adventure, or maybe they could see we were washed clean, filled with a sense of having done what we set out to do.

The next day was my husband’s birthday, so I left early to drive the two hours home from Connecticut to Boston to take him to lunch before returning to my parents’ house. The leaves had, indeed, been washed and blown away, so the fall color seemed like a vague reference to something else. I was aware of how briskly we walked on our way to the neighborhood seafood joint, how I kept up with him under the cloudless sky, how nothing hurt but there wasn’t much to say.

Three weeks later she was gone. Like the leaves. Like the rain. Like the road beneath our wheels.

Vivian Montgomery is a Boston-based harpsichordist and accordionist who writes. Her work centers around music, historical excavation of long-buried women composers, her mother, and unlikely Judaism. Her personal essays have been published in the Boston Globe Magazine, Bluestem, Ligeia, Adanna, Jabberwock, Chautaqua Review, and in the anthology Mother Reader by Seven Stories Press. Her personal essay “Immersion” received a Writers Digest Prize for Spiritual Writing, and was a finalist for New Letters’ Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction. She is a brooding walker and mother, feeling her way with the help of words spilled onto the page. She is also on the faculty of the Longy School of Music, leads the Klezmer band Shir Chutzpa, and has been a Resident Scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center for 14 years.
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TWO POEMS – Schyler Butler

on January 10 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

LISTEN

First he’ll gift me nights tied
with cheap Merlot ribbons
frayed beneath crescent moons
then introduce me to the art
of whistling, instruct me
to pucker less before blowing,
my lips dry bolti unable
to remember water, the song
that erupts a lost cantata
only he can access.

When he plucks the sun
into bloom between latescent
fingers, my mouth remains
unable to match the euphoria
dancing on each temple.

So when he stayed outside
my front door for five hours
after the first time his fist
twirled against the backdrop
of my brown flesh, whistling
like a jagged chime scraping
vinyl hall, I was not surprised,
prayed in a locked bathroom
for silence, clasped hands so hard
the blood should’ve burst.

TWENTY SOMETHING

Rolling down Fry St. on your mountain bike
like a Prime Minister abandoning Parliament,
hands loose on the handlebars and a customary
cigarette lopped between a grin, you reigned.
All the girls saw; all the middle-aged professors
and store owners reminisced. Here you killed
time till your band played their gig at Gillian’s,
never mind it’s Wednesday and an Intro to World Lit
paper calls, never mind the text messages
Misty sends like hot potatoes missed: on this street,
your long hair blows, your absence breezy blasphemy.

Schyler Butler received her BA in English from the University of North Texas. A recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY 2020 and a lead poetry editor for Human/Kind Journal, her work appears in and is forthcoming from African American Review, Writers Resist, Duende, Superstition Review, Obsidian, Heavy Feather Review’s #NoMorePresidents, Kissing Dynamite, and elsewhere, sometimes under the pseudonym “Iyana Sky.” Currently, she lives in Columbus, OH.
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2 POEMS – Janiru Liyanage

on January 4 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

LET X BE THE CENTRE

My body builds another body inside itself. My mother gives birth and she is mythless and moonless again and this is what I fear most: her, yellowing in the soft and aching light until her eyes turn glassy; she empties, she empties into; I imagine her too: deer-like, knelt, lapping water from a ditch, full of perfect and jewelled guts and here I am miles away, gripping the subway pole to forget for a second how my body sheathed in smoke is calling it quits: right here, we stop with all this gasping and fogging mirrors with our breath; these days, every part of my body is an eye; I can only love you one way: with all these teeth and this blade buried in my blackening palms. I unseam my loneliness, feral and untouchable. I am making you as you unmake me. Fear is a structured response, the lover says as he practices his breath on me, searches my insides like a soft sacrifice for forgiveness, a name to redden in his mouth; breaks me open like a question, guts me to the marrow and there, in the centre, he holds up a quaver, a quivering semitone he fills his mouth with its warming light and says Love me, love me all the way inside

ODE TO MY PEOPLE

the man on the subway asks where I am from
and I cannot answer; I mean to say [ ] died and
somehow, I am here now; I mean to say [ ]’s
mother is weeping and I fill my mouth with money;

and it’s true that we have no country–
we have no country worth dying for
I say home and mean the stain, the warming clot
of blood in my mother’s left lung, mean
we open our mouths and the light inside is
our home, we hew incense to the holy agarbathi
wick we came from and it’s our home; our
anthem is to saffron and incense, the thin
smoke in our knotted hair, us warming in
the sun and our grandmother’s brown
hands, our grandmother’s good brown
hands gathering us, pooled and alive forever,
our stories spangled in romance and gauzy streaks of
Sinhala, perfect by never being told

our anthem is to our fathers chanting pirith
in the dusk and porchlight, wrapping
Jampala and Sai Sin around our wrists, Hosanna!
to Kasun and Tharindu and Buddhika and Ayusha,
To Tharaka singing Ahasai oba mata with all the
wrong notes, and to Ahamed crying because he
is in love with him but it is grace; it is good; he is still alive

and it’s true that my people are everywhere
our mothers steaming and sweat-bellied in
the kitchen, soft lilac eyes, rakta doḍam
and tambilli making a sweet red lip of their
thumbs, our uncles, all soft liquor and plumes
of smoke, all silk and languid in the street, our uncles
lull, their songs heavy with syrup and saffron
enough to make any aunty swoon

our aunties gone abroad to white men and
our aunties gone muslim, the only muslim
still allowed home; home and not yet wed,
painting-henna-up-our-arms-in-the-dark-
waiting-for-the-stain-to set-home;
home and not home for al-hijra and eid
and hajj; our aunties, a slick pool of blood

and red ribbon on the sidewalk,
hijab dissolving to wind; our uncles, broken
to open chords in the night;
but today, I help my mother cut tamarinds in
the gloaming and amber light; today, I shred cinnamon
with my hands, unfurl a mango
all Columbo sunlight on the inside,
and my people are not dead

they sit around the table, their mouths, small
gaping moons and we are all alive and
glimmering in sequin and gold and the
red saris we stole from our grandmothers, our

hair, a fountain of jasmine; we are alive
and brown, and we are alive and sunlit, we
are alive and the colour of glint and ash
and amen, we are alive and the colour
of our grandma’s ashy hallelujah,
we are alive and how good it is, how good it
is to see you again magē rattaran,
mashallah, adhiṣṭhāna, amen,
amen, amen, amen

Janiru Liyanage is a 15-year-old school student and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet. His re-cent work appears or is forthcoming in [PANK], Frontier Poetry, Wildness Journal, Cordite Poetry Review, The Cardiff Review, Homology Lit, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Boston Ac-cent Lit, The Journal Of Compressed Creative Arts, Ekphrastic Review, Driftwood Press and elsewhere. He serves as a reader for Palette Poetry. He is a two-time winner of the national Dorothea Mackellar Poetry Awards, a recipient of an Ekphrastic Award from the Ekphrastic Review and Sydney finalist of the Australian Poetry Slam. He has appeared on The Project and featured in Namoi Valley Independent, The Minister’s Media Centre, Audition Material Young People among other places. He is a recipient of a UNICAF scholarship for a degree at the University of California Riverside, Liverpool John Moores University, University of Suffolk, University of East London, and Unicaf University. Born as the son of Sinhalese immigrants, he currently lives in Sydney.
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In The Cold Grey Morning – Micah Zevin

on October 26 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

It’s not hard to think of yourself, the
empty beer bottle, your sleeping wife
(on the border of despair),
the news that brews disaster after disaster
more revelations of harassment shootings
after school genocide on top of genocide
on top of genocide with no hope of solution
in the face/flames of protest.
I sit here worrying about my competence
my ego, my pocket book
thinking how will I survive, how my debts
will be erased, how my mind will be purged
or cleansed year after year.
The trail cannot be cleaned by the mop bucket or pail.
It keeps leaking and poisoning the soil.
In the cold grey morning
the birds talk, the cars honk, the dogs bark,
your eyes itched get rubbed because irritated.
You think you have nothing intriguing to write about
even though you know it’s not true,
you with the royal wedding clips.
It’s a joyous distraction my wife and
you must admit even if deprived of sleep,
even if the minister speaks of love this love
as the most purest of things.
You see a dark play that is so funny
Our Lady of 121st street by Stephen Adly Guirgis,
it brings you close to sobbing
except it has no resolution or ending
really for anything, and this my wife the playwright
says is the point.
In the cold grey morning it is supposed
to go up to eighty-two degrees
even though the sun may not shine at all
and the humidity will/can soak us through.

Micah Zevin is a librarian poet living in Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. He has recently published articles and poems in such journals as: The Otter; The Newtown Literary Journal and Blog; Poetry and Politics; Reality Beach; Jokes Review; Post (Blank); American Journal of Poetry; Tower Journal; Five2OneMagazine, the What Rough Beast Series at Indolent Books, Maudlin House, and has work forthcoming in the Heavy Feather Review. He created/curates an open mic/poetry prompt workshop called The Risk of Discovery Reading Series now at Blue Cups in Woodside, Queens, N.Y.
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GATHERING STORMS – Saba Sebhatu

on October 25 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

From under the awning, I could hear a sound like small fragmenting pieces of stone crashing into the window. The rain was starting to pour down from above; listening to it for a moment, I inhaled slowly and exhaled the cooling air around me, my chest tightening as I felt the cold spreading slowly into my lungs. The insides of the window sills glistened with water, pockets of it trapped between them, bits of sun layered against them. The rain began to accumulate into a pool on the sills and began to drop from the sharp edges of the windows in a stream of small drops. The streets in Manhattan were battered with large raindrops that pounded everything around them as if conducting a frenzied soliloquy. The downpour sounded like a streaming river.

I waited, lazily transfixed, for the rain to subside. It didn’t. Finally searching beneath the books at the bottom of my purse, I found my travel-sized umbrella. I wrestled with it, struggling until finally it flared open. The wind was blowing furiously toward me from the direction of my destination. I decided to walk with the storm and wrapped my fingers, firmly gripping my umbrella, hoping it would not steer me into the opposite direction.

As I began walking towards the street corner, I noticed my tan shoes bleeding, dark wet spots splattered across them, the rain now seeping into the fiber. Still, I did not find myself rushing to get indoors or anywhere for that matter. I stare at a row of streetlights, which suddenly begin to flicker simultaneously.

Standing on the corner, a traffic light in my periphery, I am still wondering and wandering. Rotating myself west, south, east and then north again, I notice a stream of puddles that has accumulated near the sewer. This reminds me of a conversation I had last Sunday with an old friend I met through work. He lives in South Africa, where they have experienced the worst drought in over a century. The dams were nearly dried out. They rationed water, beginning a debate on how to desalinate water from the oceans, a technology which may also burden the ecosystem even more. I tell him that here it rains for days, that it has rained day and night for the entire weekend. I am not sure why I tell him this, but for some reason I think he ought to know. We try to resolve these inconsistencies over the phone but neither of us has the answers.

South Africa recently sent crisis and disaster personnel to Beira in Mozambique. A cyclone enveloped an entire port city, now an inland ocean visible from outer space. Two major rivers and their banks have burst. Entire villages and communities submerged as a result of earths rioting. There is no electricity or running water. My thoughts wrestle with the puddles in the gutter in front of me, which have mixed with debris and other garbage, and glide into the sewers below.

Saba Sebhatu was born in Italy and raised in Washington DC where she completed a BA in journalism. She then moved to Eritrea where she began working as a peacebuilding practitioner in conflict resolution initiatives in the Horn of Africa. A previous Callaloo Fellow, her current work focuses on the African Diaspora and their geographies. In Spring 2018 she was selected as a mentee by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She is currently pursuing her MFA in nonfiction writing at The New School in New York City.
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VAGINA – Kika Dorsey

on October 25 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

You should never ever use the word vagina in a poem.
Better to write about the great wall of China
or Nina from Carolina.
Better to describe the diner
in the desert of Nevada
with its blue walls and soggy pancakes,
where your lover confessed that he carried a gun
and then ate your cantaloupe.
Better to write about the juicy papaya
you ate in Mexico because it’s good
for the gut, and also, instead of your vagina
you could write about marijuana,
which makes the papaya taste better.
You could write about a messiah
whom you don’t believe in
but he sounds better than the hell you live.
You could write about Godiva
but then they’ll think of you naked
and it will imply your vagina
and she was probably a bit of a pariah
and you really just want to fit in.
You do like horses, though.
You believe it’s finer
to write music in the minor
key and even Messiahs
are nailed to crosses.
Your vagina is split in two
like North and South Carolina
and you’re always traveling south in your body,
so some people call you a slut
but you strut with your beautiful vagina
and when you sleep, you’re as naked
as a cracked chestnut, roasted soft meat
in the middle like the babies
who spilled out of you.

Kika Dorsey is a poet and fiction writer in Boulder, Colorado, and lives with her two children, husband, and pets. Her books include Beside Herself (Flutter Press, 2010) and three full-length collections, Rust, Coming Up for Air (Word Tech Editions, 2016, 2018), and Occupied: Vienna is a Broken Man and Daughter of Hunger (Pinyon Publishing, 2020). She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize four times. Currently, she is an instructor of English at Front Range Community College and tutors. When not writing or teaching, she swims miles in pools and runs and hikes in the open space of Colorado’s mountains and plains.

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Marine Pilots Investigated for Drawing Penis and Testicles with Plane – Jen Karetnick

on October 24 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

over the Salton Sea, with the aircraft

      shooting out of the tip of the phallus.

            We should be offended by this obscene

blueprint, protest it, mapped in the unbolted

      embrace of the sky, digitally drawn where

            the subsonic goes supersonic, where the air

molecules make their bunched, bucking

      complaints. We recognize that sound—what it could

          mean—muffler, fireworks, gunshot. Whip.

We see how these men have amused themselves,

      the way our sons did before we taught them

            better. This is not breaking news. This is only

breaking women, again, who have seen dicks

      pop up everywhere since birth, on whiteboards

            in school, smudged by cleats in the early

morning dew on soccer fields, sprung

      from zippers at parties by future judges. Face it,

            with such common intrusion that suspends

in our space like aerosol, we can only do

as the firmament does, moment by moment:

            Retain the right to gust and grow electric and strike.

The title is taken from the article https://www.thedailybeast.com/marine-pilots-investigated-for-drawing-penis-and-testicles-with-plane

Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020). She is also the author of the forthcoming collection, Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, spring 2023), and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. In addition, she is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Crossing Over (March 2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition. Her poems have been awarded the Hart Crane Memorial Prize, the Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, and two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes, among others. Her work appears recently or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, Jen is currently a Deering Estate Artist-in-Residence. Find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik and Instagram @JenKaretnick, or see jkaretnick.com.
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what happens when the addict finds himself drawn to deeper shades of blue? – Anthony Thomas Lombardi

on October 24 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

he spits saliva into bottles containing ships / ponders how far his DNA can take him / the ink on his divorce still glinting / aspires to be stately / in ways he fell short as man of the house / a term he waves away like stale smoke / he breaks his teeth on pearls / folds into carpets tongues lash at his ankles / he’s on the fast track he tells himself / look at him go / stretches his legs his smile scalding the earth / sunlight leaks in through the blinds like a fugitive / then vanishes behind trucks groaning past / shadows lick corners crevices / this tenderfoot divorcee sequestered / draws his silhouette without a body / the skill of the unseen he quarantines thirst / siphons hunger / hasn’t invented a polite word for crave yet / cups his hands catches fireflies who turn to ash / when they lose their glow / his mouth claps abruptly apologies that crack like gunshots / he chases ghosts imbrued with entrails membranes fish eyes / spits the remains in a bucket / his shirt is sodden from what he calls busy work / rowing the soil / he has no shame / he has no shame / walks through walls his limbs cut the shape of a keyhole / his lopsided grin would flip a canoe / laughs as he kicks the surf / he knows the way home the north star twirling twirling / hums with wild abandon corn straw clamped between his gums / he smacks his lips relishes the last sweet swan dive of summer / when the heat’s about to break / catches his breath without repose / releases the weight of planets / punctures a needle’s eye to thread them in the sky / a reaction to change / is still evolution / moths drink the tears of sleeping birds / that fact is implanted here to tell him something useful / the aviary door creaks he noses it open & open & open as he flies he sings

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Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow, a Tin House Writers Workshop alumnus, and was long listed for the 2020 Palette Poetry Emerging Poet Prize. He served as Assistant Director for Polyphony Lit’s Summer Scholars Program and is currently a poetry reader and contributor for the Adroit Journal. His work has appeared or will soon in wildness, North American Review, Colorado Review, THRUSH, Passages North, RHINO, Iron Horse Literary Review, Cherry Tree, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his cat, Dilla.
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PLAY IS A SERIOUS BUSINESS – Dan Kriesberg

on October 24 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments
When it came to playing, I lived with two experts. Zack had an imagination that turned the same stick into a dolphin, fishing pole, race car, pencil, or gun all in one day. Scott would climb over, under, through and around to get to new places, and rarely took no for an answer, all the while telling us stories about knights, superheroes or Lego. Both lived to splash, hold, dance, chase, catch, throw, climb, jump, grab and laugh. Before children I took hikes in the woods; with them, I played in the woods.

Our favorite place to play was Shu Swamp, a small preserve, only a 10-minute drive from our house. Shu Swamp is bisected by several streams that lead to a pond before flowing into Mill Neck Creek, to Oyster Bay and eventually Long Island Sound. There is an upland section with 200-year-old Oak and Tulip trees that are scented with Spicebush. Along the streams skunk cabbage, trout lilies, trilliums and jack in the pulpit grow. The varied habitats invited a lot of opportunity for playing. Each visit was a magical combination of old and new play.

I wanted to get better at playing in the woods, and at first, I thought the boys could just explain it by breaking play into simple steps, the same way I taught them to button a shirt or tie their shoes. They couldn’t. When I asked Zack, he laughed and ran off on his toy horse that was actually a stick. Scott simply explained, “play is fun.” Learning to play meant spending time with them and learning by doing. They grew up fast, and my research needed to get done before it was too late.

A typical outing began at the “big bridge.” a wood platform that overlooked a small pond. The shallow water covered the muddy bottom where huge carp swam with surprising grace. The boys loved to pick up rocks, throw them in, only to watch as they disappeared into a cloud of mucky mud. Scott happily toddled back and forth picking up one rock at a time. Throwing the rocks was fun and so was finding them. Scott did not grab just any rock, there were ones he picked up and ones he left on the ground. I never could figure out his thought process. He didn’t think to carry a bunch of rocks all at once to avoid going back and forth. Anything and everything was play. There was no means to an end getting to the fun part. It was all fun.

They had their rituals, but part of play is to be open to something new, otherwise they would miss new opportunities to play. For example, at one small stream, Zack discovered how to flip wet leaves out of the water. They waited patiently for a leaf to float by and then flicked it with a stick until the leaf flew out of the water. Scott called them “brownies.” Very quickly, they became skilled fishermen. Zack loved fishing at our beach, and this was a way to recreate the excitement of the catch.

The next stop was an enormous tulip tree that crashed from wind and rot to bridge a mud spot. The boys called it “sleeping giant log,” Scott loved walking across and would not let me hold his hand. I hovered next to him tiptoeing in the mud ready to catch any slips. He raced back and forth yelling, “did it, did it!” Zack challenged himself by stick collecting. Usually, they were kindling size, but one day he was determined to carry a log-sized stick all the way back to the car. As far as I can tell, there was absolutely no reason. However, Zack obviously had one. That stick/log laid in our front yard for a month as a trophy to his success.

When Scott did occasionally fall off, it was also part of the fun. Muddy spots were always the best. Even puddles near the parking lot were worth a stop. Zack had a pitter patter dance for mud, and of course, Scott always joined in. Mud splattered everywhere on pants, jackets, bodies. I held my tongue by reminding myself that clothes, cars, and bodies could always get cleaned. Mud was just another medium to play in, and they loved the sound and the feel of squishy.

The “Little Bridge” was the place to race leaves down the stream. The game started when Zack and Scott began to rescue leaves that were floating with the current. Using sticks as rescue poles, they teamed up to pull leaves to the stream bank. Over time this teamwork evolved into competitive leaf racing. They dropped their leaves in the stream and watched which was the first to float out of sight. After a lot of trial and error, they figured out that long thin leaves were the fastest. There was a lot of debate about where to start the races and all the other rules.

Their friends were not all humans. Their animal finding senses were well honed. Frogs, salamanders, snakes, and once in a while a turtle were all friends. They knew the best spots to meet up with them. One such place was the tiny, mud-filled pond, where the tadpoles lived. With a skilled grab and a small net, they almost always captured at least one. They learned quickly to cup the creatures in their hands right over the water. After a few moments of captivity and conversation, the boys always let the tadpoles go.

They knew which rotten logs were most likely to give shelter to red-backed salamanders and which did not. In one practiced move, they learned to flip over a log and grab any salamanders with supreme gentleness. They tenderly held them in wet hands, careful not to touch their tails since red-backed salamanders can break off their tails as a means to escape from predators. One time while catching salamanders a woman chastised me for letting Zack and Scott hold them. I politely ignored her but wanted to give my “extinction of experience” speech concluding with a sermon on the importance of outdoor play for children and finally remind her that it is okay to hold salamander with wet, gentle, respectful hands. No matter how many times they found a salamander, it was as if the first time.

On days with extra time we could make it to the triple trunk tulip tree. Three trees grew out of one stump; each one was too big to wrap our arms around. Zack called it the “train tree.” There was room to climb in between each trunk. Some days we climbed between the trunks and headed for Boston (that is where their cousins live). Other times they used the tree to be anything from a laboratory, base camp for studying bobcats, a truck or a fort.

Shu Swamp is a small patch of trees on Long Island surrounded by suburban excess, but to Zack and Scott, it was their playground. It was their setting for whatever their minds could imagine. Seeing this place through their eyes helped me to play and better understand where we lived. They opened a world to me that had been closed since my own childhood. There was no before or later, no shoulds, just that moment. It was as they ate ice cream, just the taste with not a thought of calories, price, carbon footprint or any other food guilt. Ice cream must taste, a lot better that way. Playing must be more fun that way. That was the lesson they were teaching. Play happens without thinking by being present and open to the place.

Their playing was also their praying. Outdoors is where we walked with God, life spirit, goodness, whatever anyone wants to call it. Outdoors was time apart from the media world. It was time for the more than human world, time to walk in the presence of others and not in the presence of products. These were wordless prayers that were said by merely being out there, but one had to be out there. They were not prayers of requests, but prayers of celebration. They were not prayers born of fear, but of love and fun.

This kind of play and prayer not only benefits our soul, but it also benefits the soul of the land. It will make Zack and Scott more responsible citizens. They were becoming native to the Long Island and developing a sense of place by engaging in play unique to their home ground. This bond to the land will lead them to love and protect their home ground, now and in the future. Faithful stewardship is built on love. Like a blankie or a favorite stuffed animal, we care for what we love. Through their play, the land was becoming their security blanket.

Playing on a computer does not connect one to a place, neither does playing sports. A sports field is a sports field in Arizona or New York. Indoor play is the same in Florida or Alaska. This kind of play does not foster a love of place. This kind of play could be done anywhere and anyplace. Good play in the wild outdoors is an interaction with the uniqueness of the place.

Whether they realize it or not the playing that developed their sense of place gave Zack and Scott an ability to be attentive to the world beyond humans. Being attentive is a forgotten skill that is still needed today. In the past, being an observer of the natural world was critical to survival. We need to give children (and adults) the time to play and pay attention to the natural world, to be aware when new plants are growing, and other plants are dying. To realize some birds are arriving earlier in the spring and other birds no longer sing. Without attention, much is missed. The subtle changes that indicate what is happening. We need to notice when the water is different, or the soil is changing. It is a particular sadness when a place changes and no one notices.

The word attention comes from the word attendere which means “to stretch toward,” Attention is an action, something one must do, it is not a passive activity. As with dominoes, being attentive starts a cascade of actions that lead to both a more fascinating and sustainable world. Attention leads to wonder and that leads to understanding. Only with a genuine understanding, can there be effective stewardship. Once in motion, the energy that is created, this ability to do work, works. It makes a difference by creating a web of knowledge, wonder, and stewardship. But nothing would get started if not for paying attention and paying attention would not happen without playing.

It seems so simple: play-attention-action equals a more sustainable planet, plus each step along the way is meshed with fun. With so many benefits, why don’t more children play outdoors? Too many children are stuck indoors, cut off from wild places and living a domesticated life.

Fear is stealing play from children. There is a fear that time playing is time wasted. Parents fear that children are not using their time “productively” which leads to over scheduling a child’s time with sports, art, music lessons, after-school activities and more, all in hopes of creating the successful child who will get into the perfect college. Schools jump on the bandwagon to show how educationally sound they are by giving more and more homework and standardized tests. There is a fear of the outdoors based on an overreaction to the slim possibilities of Lyme disease, kidnappers and other hazards. While awareness is needed and common sense precautions are valid, these fears should not keep children indoors and need to be held in perspective. Another problem is that there are fewer open spaces where children can build, throw, climb, break, catch, dig, run, get dirty, get lost, find wonder, and have fun.

Another factor is that children’s attention is being hijacked by screens. Children used to walk upright with eyes facing the world. Now they walk heads down, bent at the neck, hands in the texting position, missing the wonder of being in the moment. Children spend unbelievable amounts of time in front of the screen. The numbers seem impossible. I fear for what screens are doing to the attention children have to the right now, the right around them world. They are not learning the knowledge of place that comes directly from their place. The gain in information from smartphones is not worth the loss of information from smartphones. The solution is heart-achingly simple: Take the phones and let children out, it is an act of environmental stewardship.

When the boys got older, things changed. Instead of a bag of Cheerios and carrots, we would get a bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches. There was more walking and talking but even as teenagers they would there be sword fights with Joe Pye Weed stalks or dam building with rocks. In the winter breaking ice became another favorite pastime. When the boys return home as young adults they humor me and return for an occasional walk. We recall stories and share new ones. The racing stream no longer flows, cut off by erosion, more trees have fallen making more bridges to cross and there are deer in the woods now.

All those hours playing in the outdoors did not guarantee that the boys would grow up to be environmental activists, bird watchers, backpackers or biologists and that’s okay. I am confident that no matter what, they will be more aware and make better decisions to live ethically on the planet. They will have childhood memories of fun, and I am grateful for what they taught me about being in the outdoors by playing in the outdoors. Free play in the outdoors will not solve all our environmental problems. However, effective stewardship can’t be learned without playing around, being around and holding life.
Dan Kriesberg is the author of A Sense of Place, Teaching Children about the Environment with Picture Books and Think Green, Books and Activities for Kids, as well as over 100 articles on environmental education and essays about his personal experiences in the outdoors. He lives on Long Island with his wife, Karen and two sons, Zack and Scott. Dan is a sixth-grade science teacher at Friends Academy. Whenever possible he spends his time in wild places backpacking, hiking and hanging out. You can view his work at Witness to the Wild: https://www.dankriesberg.com/.
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DARK ARTS – Paul LaTorre

March 18 | Poetry, Spoken Word | admininfin8 | 0
TWO POEMS – Mia Willis

on January 10 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

THE DUKE OF YORK @ 5 PM.

for mickalene thomas

men talk about the weather like they were born for it.
             or it was born for them.
                        whichever.

a bar feels like an unsavory place to write until
             i hear two men talking about the weather like a femme noire they unlearned how to love.                          “i hope she stays this beautiful.”
                         “i hope we get lucky.”

and suddenly, i must write nature an apology.
             make it sound like “ain’t no mountain high enough,”
                        like “give me the night.”

i apologize the way only a fellow femme noire can.
             first.
             often.
             for the men and their climate change conversations.
             aware that forgiveness is buried somewhere in the atlantic
                            and archaeologists are coming for that too.
             familiar with all we will have to surrender before they let us rest.

PARABLE OF THE HIDDEN TREASURE

an aubade for those who are always rising

on the days my sister’s memory is an atrophied muscle
a sax player resurrects the “darkest light” sample / husks “show me what you got”
becomes the pot howling hymns at the kettle on the Q to church avenue.

                                              family honey-roasts niggas over woolen plats in a black girl’s kitchen
                                            stove hot / tongues sorrel sour / kanekalon viands to emaciated hearts
                                metta passes through dap meditation and none of us are tender-headed here.

on the days my sister’s empathy hangs thick / crab boil steam clouds ashlee’s windows
asia laughs under trees in a prospect park sunshower / superb and inevitable
fire envelops the tip of a blunt rolled with lavender the grandest
branching only complemented by heat.

                                                                           we two-step across the floor in maya’s living room
                                                transformed and overripe melody / a trap motet with massed strings
                                                                                                                   movement 1: i forgive her
                                                                                             for singing to me in voices not her own.

                                      thank her for the music anyway.

on the days my sister’s rings are trophies from a living made by hunting
commerce at an end / the green line sinking into the ocean
movement 2: i forgive myself
for marking the change in her tale’s narrator.

                                  thank her for lingering to listen anyway.

Mia S. Willis is a Black performance poet from Charlotte, North Carolina. Their work has been featured by or is forthcoming in The New Southern Fugitives, FreezeRay, Narrative Northeast, Peculiar, Slamfind, and others. Mia’s poem “hecatomb.” won the 2018 Foothill Editors’ Prize, earning nominations for a Pushcart Prize and for inclusion in Best New Poets. In 2019, Mia was named the first two-time Capturing Fire Slam Champion, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, the Young Artist Fellow at Chashama’s ChaNorth residency, a collaborator in Forward Together’s Transgender Day of Resilience Art Project, and a performing artist on RADAR Productions’ Sister Spit 2020 Tour. Their debut poetry collection, monster house., was the 2018 winner of the Cave Canem Foundation’s Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and is available with Jai-Alai Books. Connect with Mia on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram (@poetinthehat).

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TWO POEMS – Marisol Baca

on December 26 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

IN EIGHTS // Octaves

I: Emergence

Let the moss take you
halfway to origin
a doorway of sticking

Imagine the stone path
a step forward
the terra change before
you press a foot down

2: Interval

who is worthy enough
to create?
the opalescent portrait
the sign of ancient organic
wisdom

a carafe of silver
a wooden spoon
a clay bowl

3: Feed the moon

What vessel is immense
enough
to fill the void?
and what to use?
mitochondrial window plants
crystalline structures
small platelets like moon pies

4: Never-the-less

Never-the-less, the milky way
splashes its way
ever a reminder
our humanness is a malleable textured consciousness
the heart beat and the break
when mother is cut
loose from a star

The Gutiérrez Sisters in Grand Junction Boarding School, Colorado

I would write the lyrics to a song their mama sang to them, but I have no song to write—it is lost

A hundred ribbons
smooth and edged in lace
Ribbons like the sound of songs she sings to them

My great grandmother played the mandolin,
tuning pegs in a dust storm with crooked fingers
outside Grand Junction, Colorado
The other girls do not bother her during her practice
This is stolen time
between writing inky letters home
classes on Anglo customs
and work for white farmers

Her dress was cotton linen, striped, black blouse
and white scalloped collar
no embellishments
because vanity was an extravagance
their hair had been cut away

When they weren’t canning or sewing
their teachers’ smiles
were reflections against icy windows
in winter, she would brace against the cold
A navy woolen sweater sags over her shoulders

And the girls, three sisters,
would sit on bare cots holding their hands
against the warmth of a radiator

It was the oldest who had the duty of writing home
Dear mother, how are you? When will we come home?

Manuelita plays her mandolin
Rosita sews
Teresita hides candy in her shoe

*

You see, in this place we have no stories of our own, Mama
We don’t hold our people’s songs
They are untied from us, unspooled and unraveled
not like ribbons at all – like thread.

*

Teresita will never know her mother;
she was so young
when they went away.
The other two remind her
to be courteous.
But Teresita was a decade old
when she saw her mother again.
She said,
You are not my mama.
I never had one.

*

They wrote to Mama
to send something special.
The season has blotted them out
cold reminded them that they have bones

They know she can’t travel the distance from Albuquerque
to Grand Junction.
They won’t see her for years.
They are good—do what they’re told.
Except for letters
there is no connection.

Mama yearns for the softness
of the three.
Manuelita, Rosita, Teresita
In her dreams
it is what it was like
when they hung on her apron,
they hung from her arms,
wrapped themselves around her ankles.
These three, first, cherished, sent away.

*

Ribbons

In between the time she is working
for her husband
feeding the men who come in and out of the fields and orchards—.
She collects yarn and ribbon
green felted velvet ribbon, black satin,
pink satin, red taffeta silk, brown velvet, lace
and egg shell white,
guipure roses hand-stitched on chocolate frosted ribbon
round pearl, oat pearl,
ribbons with sequins, and amethyst silk

A ribbon from every place she could find
Now, she sees them
everywhere
an unraveled mustard yellow
tied to a fence post
two silvery loops are straps holding a dress
Thick and silken in a basket at a thrift store
in rolls at the fabric shop
like dreams waiting to unravel
lace with a thousand eyes
look across the desert to her girls
blue, and peach, and some with stiffened wire
some she would touch
run her thumb nail over
satin weave

A ribbon for their hair,
to pin on a dress,
to wrap around a wrist,
to tie up.
Seam binding ribbon to connect
one to another
across the dusted road, ribbon
the ice and snow,
organdy ribbon
collected from around the legs of chairs,
grosgrain writhing at the feet of mountains,
waving like fingers from pinon tree groves,
wide, dusty lace
entwined in thick creosote
in the outstretched llano— picot edged.
Ribbons under the eaves of houses
satin ribbons tied to horses’ ankles
feathery ribbons in bouquets
twill ribbons taking shape on frosted cakes

*

A box arrives at the school.
A plain brown box from far away.
Amidst the wind and chill.
for Manueltia, Teresita, Rosita
addressed from Mama Gutiérrez
They lay their hands in the nest of it all
ribbons smooth and edged
Ribbons like the sound of songs
collected for them.

Marisol Baca is the author of Tremor from Three Mile Harbor Press. In 2019, she was named Fresno Poet Laureate. She is the first woman and Chicana/Latinx poet to hold this appointment, and her poem, “The Origin of Certain Place Names: for Fresno” was designated Fresno city’s official poem. She has been published in SPF Lit, Casa Libre, Narrative Northeast, Riverlit, Shadowed: An Anthology of Women Writers, Acentos Review, among other publications. Marisol won the Andres Montoya poetry scholarship prize and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University where she won the Robert Chasen poetry award for her poem, “Revelato”. Currently, Marisol is an English professor at Fresno City College and she has established a community for women writers of color that seeks to support and uplift their writing endeavors.
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