The Year of Not Dancing Hours passed languid as the flap of a hawk’s wing in a last July before the awkward initiations of fifteen and lifts to far-afield jiving. He’d work for an uncle, cutting hay, fixing shingles with bradawls and hot, smoking pitch — evenings, hung round with fairground hands till the sideshows lit at eight. Then he’d sidestroke from the main pier, alone, on a full tide as far as the bobbing Perpetua, its line of cork floats with dock and fairground small as a snow-bubble town, bull-horns carrying Frank Ifield’s When the angels ask me to recall out across a calm, irredentist blackness. C.L. Dallat …from The Year of Not Dancing (Blackstaff Press, 2009) _______________________________________ C.L. Dallat, poet, musician & critic, (b. Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, Ireland) lives in London where he reviews literature & the arts for the TLS & Guardian, has been a regular contributor [...]
The journey Travelling early, we set out while it’s still dark. At this unblessed hour, we should be wary of the threat of footpads and of cut-throats, but we are blithe with optimism, our surprising sovereigns stinging in our pockets. Our burdens are as insubstantial as the moon and already last night has dwindled to a twist of wrinkled bedclothes. How did we wake so promptly without alarm? What witchery set us bolt upright in our beds? Perhaps as the dawn begins to damage the dark, one of our number will venture: “Where was it that we were heading? Who has the map?” Day scarifies the sky, polluting our clarity of purpose. We will not answer the rank-breaker. We tear off hunks of bread with hungry teeth. The light comes up like sadness. We do not want to recognise ourselves ___________________________________________ London-based poet Susannah Hart has attended Coffee-House Poetry’s Troubadour [...]
__________________________________________________ Poet Dominic Bury grew up in Bideford in Devon and now lives in London where he works as a copywriter & brand writer. In his spare time he manages front-of-house at Coffee-House Poetry nights at the famous Troubadour cellar-club in London’s Earls Court (www.coffeehousepoetry.org). Dom studied Creative Writing at Kingston University & his poems have been widely published in UK poetry journals including Poetry Wales, Ambit and Iota, and in Best British Poetry 2014 (Salt).
Insomniac by Mona Arshi Never marry an insomniac. You will have ________to mind yourself. ________________Have hem weights ________sewn into the lining of your garments, cure your skin with almond oil until it’s bloated ________and the pores are brimming. ________________Purchase a large wooden-grained ________trunk and place it near your bed-it’s for safekeepings. (Obscurely, somewhere deep inside you ________know all this).Very soon ________________you won’t be able to tell ________the days apart, you’ll develop a tic and it will distill at the centre (within the hive of your other small ________anomalies).You’ll flail ________________in mild wind and when you speak ________minute silver-fish consort in the pit of your throat. Exquisite wife to the shade: the exact point you place ________your finger-tip on winter mornings, ________________a raindrop will later stop and fret. ________It’s a wonder if you survive at all. It will all end in the mouth; you’ll blink- ________he’ll stir. You’ll practice lying very [...]
This Rain brings with it the scent of rain-soaked lilac, lemon lily. Bruised skirts of thunderclouds drop their wet hems over this prairie. It rains and the ditches brim, rains and the water rises like ire amongst the willows. What we say and do not say. The heart incandescent, riverine with distance. *** lilt like this: sound of droplets from leaves aaaaaa gift gift gift (Shortlisted for the International Salt Prize for Best Individual Poem, 2012 Published in The Salt Book of New Writing 2013, UK.) _______________________________________________________ Jenna Butler is the author of three books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012), and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010), in addition to a book of ecocritical essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail. When she is not in the classroom as a professor of ecocriticism and creative writing at [...]
PARADOX The hand that draws the bowstring has faith that the deer will die. The longbow bends, the arrow points, the deer stands frozen in the curious pose of prey before its doom. But Zeno suggests that once the arrow flies, it covers half the distance to the deer’s heart first, then half the distance left and half again and again and half again so the deer will live and the arrow will never find its one true home. A woman’s faith is different than a man’s. She believes his strength is bowstring straight, his heart like longbow yew, flexible but taut. A man believes that he is not a beast– until the string snaps, the tortured bow splinters and his fist is arcing through the air toward the faithful face of the woman who believes. The hunter doesn’t love the prey. He’s filed the razor edge of the arrowhead [...]
Driving under drying skies, north, passing fields the summer has been too wet to turn brown, i wait for God to appear, for poems to rise like mists, for some sort of ever that doesn’t sting. croon to me like a wild road, sunlight spider-webbing across a cracked windshield across strange arms across a morning we can all afford to spend and live and live. ________________________________________________________ Joanna Suzanne Lee earned her MD from the Medical College of Virginia in 2007 and a further MS in Applied Science from the College of William and Mary in 2010. Her ppoetry has been published in a number of online and print journals, including Caduceus, Contemporary American Voices, and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. Her second full-length book of poetry, the river and the dead, is forthcoming in 2015 from unboundCONTENT. She is currently serving her third year on the James River [...]
Vital Desert Lesson Number One Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried. – Henry David Thoreau Living on beans and bread in an abandoned cabin no larger than a tool shed, I’d be happy, I once said. If I could just remain immobile, silent. No place to go, I’d read Dante’s Inferno and ponder the nature of mass movements, the building of Babel’s tower, the steam locomotive. Dawn and dusk I’d thank sun and moon that I’d escaped the grinding bustle, that nothing disturbed my dreams. Oh, I know it all seems too idyllic, but one vital lesson this desert’s teaching: let nothing rush me—not the heat I try to keep out of, not the man behind me in the traffic jam fidgeting with the folds of his gutra* while he beeps and speeds past me one nano second after the light [...]
Some Men Men who’ve kissed with passion the full lips of women they didn’t love, men who’ve grown too reticent for the confessional, who’ve cleaned public restrooms, wiped menstrual blood from their walls, who’ve written— then scrubbed off—vile graffiti from the rusting doors of shithouse stalls. Men who’ve grown enormous with disregard, rolls of it bellying over their wide belts. Men who’ve been barbers of the dead and were happy for the work, men who’ve become what they’ve microwaved, who overvalue the quality of their erections and fawn over them like the town’s new Wal-Mart. Men who look awful in suits, who’ve been there and back yet grew impatient, men who go to wakes to keep up appearances, who’ve made a deal with God but can’t remember the terms, men who are old pros when it comes to hospitals and cracking jokes at the nurses’ expense, men who’ll be at [...]
The Bride I met her on her wedding day Walked up to her, and smiled, No one ever talks to the bride I thought it might be interesting to try something new, Break tradition Henna patterns wrapped around her wrists climbed up her arms Spreading blossoms on tender flesh Her lips were a wilted crimson Tilted ever so slightly to the side, A perfect almost smile The first thing her mother taught her was to wipe the tears before the blood dries, Shredded knees heal, but shame never fades away, Don’t climb trees or ride bikes, That’s how little girls lose their virginity She sat on a porcelain throne beads and bows holding plastic flowers to the arm rests “are you alright?” I asked “I shouldn’t cry” she said, fingers catching tired tears “it’s fine to cry, you’ll be happy later” “I shouldn’t cry” “how long have you known him” [...]
Father took a hand saw to the rain gutter, but doubted my garbage bin would fill. How do I explain that there is no water? The bin filled in five minutes and we bought three more no fancy DIY spout nozzles, just hacked gutters, trash bins and screen for the worms/leaves/debris I’ve watched the fog, but it’s more than fog – I’ve watched the ocean’s selfie, haha, an imprint of itself: imagine the Pacific CRASHING against rock, the spray, the sonic boom of it all, now imagine that spray collecting – grabbing on to each other and pulling the marine layer from just above our heads and running, like bodies screaming for justice on the highway, for the mountains. I’ve watched the fog crash over the Gabilan range, flooding the crevices of the chaparral, giving the wiry blue oak a breather from the bleaching sun It looks like a tsunami [...]
Rest Stop We are all the year’s worries tossed into the dark dustbin of the sea. Swirling plastic returned, reared on its haunches. Let’s live slow and die when we do. Below the mess, kids are walking home from school. Gash the screen door to let the bugs in–– let them pinch my skin. I’ll coo investment tips in your ears. Anchor me to the all of our lives nestled in the hollow of this lake. Unbuckle my seatbelt. Unfasten my tongue. ___________________________________________ Devi K. Lockwood is a poet / touring cyclist / storyteller currently traveling the world by bicycle and by boat to collect 1001 stories from people she meets about water and/or climate change. You can keep up to date with her travels at .
For Emmett And if you are a boy, you might imagine the hairline that crawls backward without resistance. The barber was a good barber. Give him a blade and his grandfather emerges from the palm, like a slave that was a good slave, raking the weeds back until all you see is a shaven field of grass, ready for eyes to bear witness to this marvelous thing. The barber might’ve talked to Emmett about his grandfather, the hands that grooms the America black folk always attempt to believe in. I’m sure Emmett would’ve cracked a joke, light- ened the mood for the body to settle in and humor toughens the skin, I am told. I know he could not have bled even if the razor wished to carve more than the patches of wool, resting on the head like a dark field of grass after dusk. And if you are [...]
NOCTURNE IN WHICH WE FAIL YET AGAIN TO HAVE SEX IN YOUR PARENTS’ HOT TUB Your breasts at the surface of the roiling water. The smell of chlorine and desire. We divide and assign the space between us. Your specialty is keeping score, mine is pretending not to. We are not supposed to stay in water this hot more than 15 minutes. Plenty of time to pretend we could not drown here or anywhere in the middle of our own lives. Three walls away our children dream of life without us, your parents sleep with their television on. One of us slides closer. One of us places a finger in the other’s mouth, one of us stands, dripping, to reach for a towel. The tub’s motor falls quiet. The air suddenly cold against overheated skin. Absence swells to fill absence, water closes in over the holes our bodies once filled. [...]
The Size of Things, Decreasing Scale 1) An invitation 2) The gap between the door open and latched 3) Your open hand resting on my hip 4) Kittens past weaning 5) This human heart quickening 6) A young fist full of garden dirt 7) The curve of your lips 8) The tip of my finger brushing your ear 9) Flat headed worms aerating the soil 10) An avian heart beating 11) Your pupils grown wide soaking light 12) A bean seed to be planted 13) My pupils when fixated 14) The distance between your thumb and my neck 15) Bristles on my paint brush, dried slate clinging 16) Strawberry seeds set to germinate 17) How close my lips hover above yours 18) Capillaries dilating 19) Rushing red blood cells 20) A droplet of sweat drawn from the pores 21) The width of a strand of spider silk 22) The wavelength [...]
Letter from the Back Porch Quiet things are passageways to other quiet things. One cracks, another grows. Grass gives up to dust. Somewhere, clocks advance while other clocks reverse, the hissing continuous, a slow release. I would never ask you to come back as I don’t contain ideas like come back or I, or you. In the space below, snouting visitors, they come, they go. Something scrapes and once– the hollow beat of dancing. _________________________________________ Sara Biggs Chaney received her Ph.D. in English in 2008 and currently teaches first-year and upper-level writing in Dartmouth’s Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. Her most recent chapbook, Ann Coulter’s Letter to the Young Poets, was released from dancing girl press in November, 2014. Sara’s poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in RHINO, Sugar House Review, Columbia Poetry Review, [PANK], Juked, Thrush Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. You can catch up with Sara at sarabiggschaney.com.