2009 - Issue II
2009 - Issue II
* * *
* * *
* * *
Clyde L. Borg
APRIL FIRST
A day for foolishness,
Tomfoolery,
For acting the fool.
Alas!
So many need no
Special day.
Clyde L. Borg
* * *
Jerome Brooke
High Priestess
Goddess of Jade, Lee Su, cruel messenger of death,
Behold your servant.
Your maiden sings the pleas, promises of your city,
Offerings, she brings.
Bali, Isle of the Lost, fair land of the Lady,
Remembers the Goddess.
Bali, of the sea of storms, dark with gales,
Sends your priestess.
Angel of Death, the High Priestess dances,
Turning in her silk;
Servant of the Temple, covered in black robes,
Black cloth of Bali.
Jerome Brooke
* * *
Prince of Mindanao
Prince of Mindanao, splendid in bronze,
Marching, so young, so pure.
Vassals bow before your horse, the warband,
Does salute you, bright in azure.
Gold and silver, robes of silk, gleaming bronze,
Vassals before you bow.
Girls beg for mere copper coins, peasants mutter,
Reap as you sow.
Bring the fire, young and immortal, dear one,
Prince of the lie.
Your arms will surely weaken, false friends,
You too will die.
Prince of Shades, see your lady, at your feet,
Captive of seeming.
Beauty she sees, a god among us, love gazes,
Love pure, fleeting.
Love below you, eyes of a peasant,
Girl in rags, low of the land.
Hate, envy, pity, all weave the web,
Pass on with your band.
Jerome Brooke
* * *
War Leader
Through the waste marched the warriors,
Silent was the band.
In the swift, hot wind, were seen the men,
Quiet in the sand.
Gold, red gold, at their feet, gems,
Cast far, far away.
Swords no longer shone, as on parade,
Dull this fearful day.
My prince looked, saw this lost line,
Lost, dead on this dark day.
Men of the Queen, lost by fate,
Found where they fell, and lay.
Jerome Brooke
* * *
* * *
Carolyn Srygley-Moore
My Incan Name is not Palla I am not Noble
I wake when the moon has not yet descended
into another region of hours
still suspended like an unpeeled heart in a tree of clouds
searing the windless night
& I hear the air raid siren
& I lean from my window to catch war's bells
& let down my long brown braids
that the soldiers might climb to safety
yes I am flawed my love
my Incan name is not Palla I am not noble
but i am the central voice you will hear after my passing
the center around which the fractured trail whorls
& I draw you near like an anchor
to the keynote of spirit & flesh
real as fire
real as water
the eddies move rough yet the axis is still
where the sleeping grenade fell
Carolyn Srygley-Moore
The Leaf
I don't know your name
I see you walking through the sun-puddled woodlands
muttering to yourself & the feral cats
that murmur back to your hunger
you carry a book of alligator-bound elegies
written on a Norwegian cliff
or so I imagine
as I imagine your eyes are the tattoo
of a leaf catching light as it falls
spiraling as the red admiral butterfly
with so many variant wingstrokes
hawks in folds of unlight
Come let us fly!
Carolyn Srygley-Moore
Note from August #3: Here I Am
"There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." "Anthem," Leonard Cohen
If I express sorrow does that mean I whine? If I express awe,
does that mean I am stoned? Me, I only weep
before trees, never before people, never before the mirror. & if I hear
Swing lo sweet chariot boomeranging back at me from the mountains
afar or near, who is that singing, is it I, is my sorrow & awe cheaper
than history's slaves? perhaps. But do not cheapen my wonder, if less
than the cadence of seas.
Here I am, waiting for a telephone call
as a penguin awaits the hatchling; it denies itself the flight in water
that so defines it, waiting, waiting. Yet soon
after the chick is born, soon - it is abandoned to the dirty
sand nettled with snow. To huddle enmassed, protecting
eachother, as my brothers & I fortified oneanother from a parent's violence -
huddled under the table / huddled against the corners of night.
Here I am, unmoored again, cleaning house to the cadence of ballads,
new wave, punk...tossing the clutter into the great slagheap
of familial memory, worn edges of crow feather & wood - against the sill of
knowing nothing, really, constantly countering that verity...& I
arrive upon a space of reds & blacks & whites, dogs on the loveseat,
sleeping, Mondrian style - but look at the roof & the clutter has broken
through metal & tile, sky high, acquiring flight...I see
a sudden furrow in my skin, where the light arrives.
Left Unmentioned by Name
Sleepless night the first of November
I tidy the table centerpiece
placing quotation marks here & there
(the description of a smudge of lavender on a hat's brim) -
where we lay on the lullabye rowboat in light of the snowbank
speaking hushed as the worn loon in winter
hushed as the war across the vast sea, the gulf
between ourselves & the warrior
who has seen things & already been changed
(things we do not mention by name) hushed
as the loon in winter's machine
Hush
(& going home midsummer
we veer off the main highway weary of headlights
blazing roses into the slits of our eyes
meant for shadows at the axis of midnight
we follow the trail along the Susquehanna
the smell of rotting foliage & flowers barrages the opened windows
eclipsing the breath of stars
light dead or dying or
still very much alive
we are lost & don't mind at all
being late for the destination
which destruction we have forgotten
Rivers instead
Elegy for Ann: From this Box of September
From this box I peel walls of layered varnish
& find the brush strokes of impressionist painters
to construct the fracture of a new worldview
From this box I glimpse sunlight glancing off the trees / preening their leaves like a cat's tongue
timbres to fall & crash & break in pebbled waves
against the nightmare's macadam
in cadence of the red horse's canter
From this box I consider a ladder with rungs of darkness
& an old lover named x returned
just an amusing variable in an equation
I offer up like half-eaten pears
to the full lips of sunlight
glancing in barbs off the leaves
& suddenly I hear you call & ask: what is the meaning of life
& I sit in the hospital phonebooth & struggling
say Curiousity, it is curiousity that drives & sustains me
From this box i hear you say "I have none of that left"
next day you were dead
I tell you, Ann (what was your last name)
some nights in a vertigo / sweating like the moon
I glimpse you on the opposing sandbar reddening gold / where everyone is loveless as the empty shell of a tortoise / where
the leaves never prepare to crash in waves against the rock / where there is no window
cut into the cliffside
you are slapping your plump thighs laughing
calling me in gibberish, cursing cursing my name
(still what is
the heat an atom reaches before the bomb
rains over the next radar target? what is the trace of the moon's sweat on my sheet
the bodily mattress coiling & springs? my soul is not shrinking / what is
truly, this insatiable wonder)
the earth is a raven's feather / the earth is not so hard
Carolyn Srygley-Moore
Carolyn Srygley-Moore is an award-winning graduate of the Johns Hopkins University's Writing Seminars & a Pushcart nominee: her digital chapbook Enough Light on the Dogwood is available at mimesispoetry.com. She has been published in reviews to include Antioch, Eclectica, and the antiwar anthology Cost of Freedom. She lives in Upstate New York with her husband and daughter.
* * *
* * *
G David Schwartz
Paprika Is A Funny Word
G David Schwartz
Paprika is funny word
Humorous at east
Interesting to take around
At the families feast
Paprika is funny word
In thought and day dreams
And you need a dictionary
to know what it means
David Schwartz - the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee. Schwartz is the author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati , Schwartz continues to write. His new book, Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is now in stores or can be ordered.
* * *
* * *
Brian K Walters
Thank You
Sometimes, when walking in the rain
or stopping to look at a sunset
I'll think of you
and just smile
I'll remember how life
used to dance in your eyes
and wonder
if it still does
You taught me so many things in life
just by being yourself
like how to laugh
and how to live
Do you remember when
we looked to the trees
and watched the wind
tickle the leaves
You told me
the simplest things in life
carry the most magic.
You were right
Now as I wonder where you are
I'll pray you're safe
and thank you
from the bottom of my hear
Brian K. Walters
* * *
* * *