Spring 2013

Important Historical Events by Niall O'Connor

A newspaper headline

in the largest font available

was my first lesson

on how to recognise an historical event.

Then the black and white flicker,

of a man on the moon,

a fallen president,

a speech of a dream.

Embedded we crawled

the word-shingled beach,

watched fireworks displayed

for bloodied civilians dismayed.

Tyrants everywhere were shown

the soles of our shoes

the wrath of our righteousness,

the judgment of our News.

A wall is chipped, a princess killed,

a president signs with twenty gifting pens,

and two towers are folded down

into the ground,

a child is born and a woman says no

. . . and expects it so.

As for important historical events . . .

a farmer in Colombia receives a text

on the price of coffee

and has time to tell stories,

that allow his children to dream

and a bee dips into a flower,

so the last seed

can be born.

Integration by Niall O'Connor

I am the outsider,

the stranger,

the invader.

I come because it is what I want.

I come because I have nowhere else.

I come because my desire has made me

a stranger in my parents' home.

I will never be as you,

but my children's children

will look back and yearn

for what was once their promise.

I will be disinherited,

so they can be my gift,

and I will become an object

of curiosity, pity, and scorn.

I will work, or not work,

lie and falsify all my life

to fit the twisted forms

you place before me,

and when you have finished,

I will not know who I am

or where I have come from:

for this is your demand.

One Night Stand by Mepa Taufa-Vuni

We met through Johnnie Walker and Jack Daniel,

Over loud music and over crowded room of party people,

Paris perfumes enveloped our senses for the night,

Smokes swirled over the ceiling as the forgotten lizard lazing on top,

You stood tall towering over, watching, scanning, skimming I assumed,

I heard from others you are womaniser, a lady-killer, I mused.

A voice so seductive like the softness of the waves caressing the sands,

I melted like a candle hearing those similes flowing easily from your lips,

You are so beautiful like the red rose outside my house, you said smiling,

My knees were like jelly wobbly, trembling over the recited metaphors,

You are the stars stolen by your mother from the sky, you said laughing,

I cried for I am a lady, an innocent girl not knowing your tales, your trap,

I became your star for one night, your red rose, my one night stand.

Over the years, you grow with me, a one beautiful night stand,

Smokes swirled over the ceiling as the forgotten lizard lazing on top,

Have you wondered what happened to us on that night, my one night stand?

You stood tall towering over, watching, scanning, skimming I assumed,

Can you see your eyes smiling back, a reflection of my own brown eyes?

I heard from others you are womaniser, a lady-killer, I mused,

Through John Walker and Jack Daniel we met, dazed by the Paris perfumes,

You painted my night with your similes and metaphors, my one night stand,

You gave me a STAR adorned with endless heliaki, my one night stand.

IN SARASOTA by Ben Howard

Though prose exceed itself it cannot make

these turnings of the singing English line

nor tell its tale in rhythms that embark

on marvelous adventures of their own.

This morning, here in brilliant Sarasota,

the breakers are reminding me of phrases

played hastily, as if to meet a quota,

while, clad in caps and shorts, the early risers

traverse the beach for exercise or pleasure.

Prose is like their solitary walking,

their search for shells and unexpected treasure,

which sometimes satisfies their earnest seeking

and sometimes not. But verse is like those gulls

arising suddenly to soar or glide

in graceful arcs or slow, contracting circles,

as though their flights were emblems of their need.

CLOON by Ben Howard

Cluin: meadow

How well it imitates, this Irish word,

a meadow where the phlox have gone to seed

and all that was in bloom is now in states

of gray decline and imminent decay.

Forgive me if I savor for a while

that one untainted melancholy vowel

and relish as they pass those consonants

that call to mind the brittle milkweed pods,

the sturdy grass, the stalks as yet unbroken.

My Madness, Me... by Afzal Moolla

Confined by this straight-jacket,

strapped in, numb and dumbed,

a washed-out, has-been, also-ran,

body, eyes, the equilibrium of mind,

rattling like stones in an old tin-can.

Still, I am,

I am,

and I am unchained,

my dreams taking flight, soaring,

above these claustrophobic walls,

of synapses, and dungeons of stone,

swooping through green valleys,

taking a detour to savour the joys,

soaked in torrential, evergreen memories,

of a younger man, with passion in his bone.

I am.

My wings unclipped, unshackled, free,

I am, and though I am unable to see,

I am.

At long last,

me.

I Sleep In The Rain by Allison Grayhurst

Lead by guilt - the fire seed

that begins with planting a new house.

Figures flay over the cold windows,

charming the fury of adjustment and opening wide

the shape of good wishes and engulfing beginnings.

The birth that contains death like the death

that brings rebirth – these are thing rarely told

and when told, always told as though

taken for granted. The sermon, the singing

of all that comes hard to wake us

hard and beautiful.

Human in the void, in the faith that trees know

and a snail that moves across a busy road.

Love sometimes lacks its light, but is a stronger

love when shadowed because it excavates

below smiles and kind affection. Love that is like

ice, sharp - turning the outsides in

is in the air, sleeping but visible.

Haggling for Holy Water by Tiesha Twomey

I’d bartered with my cousin at Easter,
a few three-ounce bottles in exchange
for both ears off my chocolate bunny
and a handful of jellybeans.
I thought it was a bargain in exchange
for the promise of eternal salvation.

My mother was not pleased
to return home near dawn, to find me,
spinning around and around that way.

Did she recognize I was emulating
her movements? I’d recently fallen in love
with the way she applied her favorite fragrance
before going out, captivated by that ritualistic
application. I mimicked how she sprayed
a mist of perfume into the air, then twirled

through it, like some ethereal ballerina,
emerging from a cloud made of blossoming
lilacs. I revolved as if I was a devout

electron passing endlessly around
a divine nucleus, on some sacred orbit,
all the while sending a steady stream
of holy water through every room.
I pretended I was a sacred sprinkler
system, sent directly from God

as I spun until I was too dizzy to stand.
I had already doused the curtains,
the walls, and her well-worn chaise lounge.

Emptying the contents of the first three
cross-enameled bottles long before
she came through the door, her jaw
clenched under bloodshot eyes
trying to focus on me as I tried to lose speed,
maintain balance and meet her glare.

I grew unsteady, inadvertently mimicking
the way she looked now, coming home
swaying and wobbling after a long night

of dancing and quenching her infinite
thirst. Gravity was just pulling at the crystals
of calcium carbonate in my ears. So the nerves,
they weren’t firing right. I didn’t know that then,
the science behind my own shaky legs. I figured
this could be what happened at the bar,

imagining a room full of divorced women,
pirouetting in the darkness. I tried to tell her
I was only driving away the evil spirits,

but she just roared, as if already possessed.
Later, I pressed my ear against the bedroom wall
bordering the kitchen. I overheard her slurring
cuss words from the rotary phone, telling someone
from my father’s side, that they were all a bunch
of goddamned lunatics. She hollered that I’d been

brainwashed. I stood in front of my full-length mirror
sideways, awkwardly angling my keychain-
flashlight, with my head twisted

to the side, trying to steal a glimpse of my mind
through my ear. I’d never seen it washed clean
before and was trying to catch the way
something glints after you’ve scrubbed it
enough, figuring that even gray matter
could shine if it was truly spotless.

All I could see was my outer ear blushing
and a droopy earlobe which casted a shadow
on my collar while my ear canal, spiraled

into obscurity. I didn’t know how I was going
to save my mother from the demons on their way.
She’d never been baptized. In a last ditch attempt,
I decided that I would try to wash her in the blood
of the lamb myself. I was all out of holy water.
All she had was one more of box of white zinfandel.

After hoisting it over her head,
I let the cardboard container hang there
for a moment, like a comic book thought balloon,

picturing it full of Z’s as she snored. I thought
of how many things, didn’t make sense to me.
Who decided that the succession of that letter
would be the onomatopoeia denoting sleep?
I listened to my mother’s breathing become heavier,
sounding more like a series of R’s crumbling deep inside

her throat, or the shuddering of an old bicycle chain
left out in the rain one too many times.
I wondered if lungs could get rusty,

just wanting it to stop when I finally twisted
the spigot counter-clockwise. Suddenly,
she was gasping sharply under the blush–hued
jet of the wine, as I summoned Jesus Christ
and made a cross between her eyes
growing wide in disbelief.

Leech at the Base of a Beech Tree by Teisha Twomey

It was not always this way. Scavenging for dead bullhead
a fisher may have left behind and feeding off sickened
bullfrogs that are dying on the banks.

We had colonies that washed along these shores, currents
that carried us along, or else we curled up like pill bugs
and rolled down the hill to hunt in the leaf litter.

We held out, and waited for something worthy
to drink from the stream, for the warm folds
we would find behind the velvet ears of lambs

or young deer, all with blood as sweet maraschino cherries.
Now during the dry seasons we burrow
and live off these memories of nourishment.

When we do hunt, the most we can hope for
is a muddy puddle, to find a tadpole or salamander
in some vernal pool of muck, to try to suck their cool blood.

But today, writhing here at the base of this beech tree.
I can hear the five new wrens hatching and begin to
salivate at the prospect of the sibling rivalry

birds are famous for. I can almost picture the weakest one
as it’s pushed and its pink, hollow-boned body hits
the forest floor, still balmy from the warmth of its siblings.

How I would find the crevice between its wing and body
or it’s warm underside to fasten myself at its thickest vein,
all three hundred and sixty of my teeth sunk deep, and scissoring.

I might feel the hatchling’s heart skip a beat, seize as the blood
is re-routed, and begins to flow backwards, so drunk
on plasma and hemoglobin, I’d swell like a thumb hit

with a hammer, turning purple as a grape ready to burst.
I’d sap every last drop of life out of the wren, while it was still fresh.
Only then as I detached, rolling into my most protective position,

you might see the deep emerald eggs I am carrying at my belly,
the ones you hadn’t noticed before but perhaps you might understand
now, as I retreat carefully back underground, much gentler.

folly by Fraser Mackay

any man can lose his hat in a fairy wind. Irish Proverb

the alchemist cleaves into

the morning’s minutiae

ruminates on the day

snatches his hat

from the tempest

light plays the straw bed

glares off shade-sail

lines curve away

he squints

into the troubled sky

disembodied images

drift up from the well

with rocks and damp earth

he again packs the opening

one mouth less…

(in her eyes she had already left)

a cracking sheet of wind

hurls across the treetops

third time this week

the lashing rain

chased him indoors.

new rock by Fraser Mackay

I want a new rock

endowed with

generous facets

and a mind

not easily

moved

by knowledge

and the weight

of its own

importance

I want

your glass ideals

to shatter

in disbelief

across this

broken

avenue

of our

dead

future.

The Last Time in the Woods by Timothy Gager

she found the view of the treetops spectacular,

said, You’re not the only one who knows

about suicide, showed me her wrists,

The scars can hardly be seen. Mine are

from a day twenty years ago,

I found a friend hung from a pipe,

so I never looked back or up again.

In the woods today, she saw the sky

reaching to heaven strong branches.

Wiping the twigs from her skirt,

the needles from her arms, asked

What do you think God does?

I told her He took on everything that

she doesn’t want. “Turn it over”, please,

as the saying goes, make love to me

one more time. I’m scared

there is nothing, afraid where we’re heading,

as we drove a few hours the car clung

to the curves in the road, You can drop me

off at my house; the last thing I heard. He

found her in the tub filled with water

and blood.

She is with Me,

He said. She is safe.

Rose Hills by Kevin Ridgeway

much of my family is buried at Rose Hills,

but not all of them together

we have to hike up a canyon of skeletons

to visit each one in their respective

corners of a country club for the dead,

its rolling green lawns host grass that hides

their names and dates

mud prints from tractors cross grandpa’s headstone

and Uncle Bill’s American flags are mashed

into the earth, broken sticks and confetti of

red, white

and blue

my grandfather’s ashes lurk

in the soil among the fertilizer thousands

beneath a trail of grim bushes that form up

toward the graves of lost children,

where my cousin rests after

his heart exploded when a

baseball went through his chest

during little league;

you can see the Los Angeles skyline

from each of these spots

a living breathing postcard for mourners

that in grief you want to write a thousand

eulogies on the invisible back of

and send to every single person

still living in this world,

but the post office does not have

stamps larger than skyscrapers

reflection 42 by Scott C. Kaestner

don’t get me wrong

older & wiser is righteous

but so too was the fallacy

of invincibility,

now skin shed long ago