Poetry
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“The Bell” by Martin Jago
It’s coming back, the black brick of despairthey made you dive for, early September,a monument today, stacked plastic chairsin blazing orange glory. Dust remembersthe chorus of the great assembly hall,and matron’s kindness hanging by a hingebeneath the gralloch of its flattened walls.Remember the smell of chlorine on your skin,the way you used lick it, smell your hand?The piano opens in a toothless yawnand with the slow sweep of a mop the sandsnakes past, -
“Improvised Compost” by Anastasia Stelse
All summer we tended tomatoes: stakedstalks as verdant leaves unfurled, veinsspreading into the fingertips of new growth.We watered, fertilized, filled plots with lovetokens and improvised compost—crushedeggshells, snippets of hair, orange peels.When the first leaf wallpapered itselfyellow, we plucked it. Washed our hands.But leaves kept turning, curling. We snippedbranches. I didn’t think I’d lose the plant.*Anastasia Stelse is a native of southeastern Wisconsin, -
Three Poems by John Findura
“Nineteen Minutes Ago”
This morning I am here
Nineteen minutes ago we might have met
But we missed each other, somehow
It is raining very hard but there is no thunder
Where there is no thunder there are few thoughts of you
Instead in their place is a stop-motion film
Of wooden hands playing the piano
Think of that – those wooden fingers on those ivory keys
Pictures of a famous actor with a bad haircut
An actress playing three roles in the same film
None of them are stop-motion like the wooden hands
I read a book about volcanoes
And the insistence of lava over everything else last night
And as you know if it didn’t happen there it doesn’t happen here
Or maybe the reverse, -
“Beavis & Butthead Do English Class: Guest Starring the Memory of John Ashbery in a Thought Bubble Floating over Instructor Bodaggit’s Fedora” by Tom Kelly
Beavis, like, bangs his head against the deskbecause the four-eyed fart-knocker by the podiumforgot to button the bottom of his shirt,so when he blabs, his exposed belly does that thingwhere it jiggles like grandma’s gelatin mold& I say his navel looks like the Sarlacc Pitbut Beavis says it looks like the hole in a Krispy Kreme donutbut I say it looks like a nook where Beavis can stick his snoutbut we agree that if we squint real hard, -
“The Spider Spins” by Sean Karns
In its foliage, the spider rides the vibratingweb. It is patient and waits Buddha-like,as if it knows something greater—that survival requires less consumption,that survival is basic— therefore its needsare minimal. When its hunger is met,it is blessed, so much so, it wraps its dead in silk.It seems simple, the spinning of the web.The spider’s world is instinctual—it ignores the chaos-order beyond its web. -
“The Art of Music” by David Shapiro
You were practicing the early art of memory.
You would bestow twenty per cent of your attention on me
Then shut your eyes. From time to time since the invention of print
The phrase “elephant debt” would force itself to your lips.Only one thing exists: the universe.
The others by definition cannot; how rigid out theory is.
Without the flavor of paint however force seems useless.
Needless to say the stage was set, but what followed?Together we will sing in octaves. And the hairy bushes
And bleeding hearts develop like twining vines.
