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Four Poems by Bronka Nowicka from “To Feed the Stone” (translated from the Polish by Katarzyna Szuster) Drawings by Lula Bajek
Box
Mother doesn’t know that heaven exists. She’s getting a double chin from looking down. Her head, as heavy as an iron, presses that fold down.
Father keeps getting in mother’s way. He’s short. To reach grown-up things, he needs to stand on his tippy-toes or get a chair. He just moved it by pressing his belly against the seat. Now he points to the cushions. He needs them stacked to reach the table. He clambers up, props his elbows on the counter covered with an oilcloth, next to a spoon,
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“Come Next Spring” by Paul Bamberger
“the epochal consciousness has turned a somersault in the void”Karl Jaspersfrom: Man in Modern Timescome next spring this category will swing its gate closedyes yes we’re readybut who are they these poetswe have no ideacould they be the wicked little joke we never quite understood but laughed at anywaywe don’t believe somisdemeanors unallotted time and spacemore than thatmuch morea fight to the draw perhapsthat would be too sadcould they be a metaphor lost to an empty conclusiontoo far afieldwhy then don’t we just say they are mercy screaming down a hill after waking the bonesthe scavenging moon in chaseyou might be onto something hereand do they come back oftenyes come in spring so we are toldlooking for whatwho knowsi have heard they suffer bad mood swingswe’ll see*Paul Bamberger received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts Writing Program.
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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,
