 With the changing season, I wish everyone a bit of magic and, in these weird times, a poem or two, and perhaps a traveling opossum.
Satisfying all of the above criteria, please meet my new poetry collection. Lay Down Your Fleece, a chapbook exploring my experience growing up in the South (specifically VA), which is now available for pre-order via Shirt Pocket Press. At the price of less than a movie ticket, you will have one opossum all to your lonesome to the backdrop of a dog spoiled as cream, a freshly kicked hornet’s nest, and the tune of “La Cucaracha”. The author swears this chapbook meets or exceeds Shirt Pocket Press’s tagline, “Portable Poetry for a Weirder World”. To all those adding a copy to your cart/collection. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you!  As a doctor, I know the implications of too much screen time. In this era of the great Google, don't
we all? Yet, I confess I have a pretty serious crush on The Mindy Project. Having grown up when few people of color were featured on any major station and the only Indian character was an incredibly reductionist one, Apu on The Simpsons, I nearly jumped through the screen the first time a friend showed me an episode of Mindy Kaling's brilliant sitcom. An intelligent, irreverent, hilarious, lead WOC actress of Indian heritage, who plays a skilled physician and is also the creator/writer of the show? Get out! Having been the cardiologist's daughter, so much so that it became the title of my first book, it took me decades to pursue anything medical. I couldn't help but wonder if I had been introduced to this kind of a scenario from a young age, would it have taken me so long to arrive at medicine myself? I know. I know, I am the daughter of a doctor (one who immigrated to the U.S. with the equivalent of $8 in his pocket and a residency, the subsequent requirements of returning to medical training even though he was a practicing physician in Kerala, India), but there is something about seeing a powerful female, POC doctor in media. So although I rarely write persona poems, I felt compelled to lean into the character of Mindy Lahiri. And what do you know? It spoke to others, too, so much so that it was announced as a finalist today in the 2017 Jack Grapes Poetry Prize Contest at LA's Cultural Weekly. Please make my day and give my poem, "We have all been that woman at the bottom of the pool" a read, a like, a share or two, if it tickles you, too. With thanks to Mindy Kaling!  Polishing A Gem On The Surface Of The Sea The day I met Jack a single yellow balloon floated into the yard. Before I drove to the beach I tied the balloon to my VW’s antennae, imagined it spinning like a twister beyond my view. Jack is now my Jack, and he loves Jack Kerouac, but I love my Jack more than Jack loves Jack. When we read On The Road, there is momentum in the moments we share. Judy Garland is singing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Jack is driving and I’m watching it all go by. I’ve only been awake for a minute, but Jack has been on my mind for hours. On our first date, Jack got down on one knee and asked me to visualize a diamond ring. We are moments, elegant and simple, “Mm,” I say, “Pavarotti with a latte.” Jack and I find a collector’s box of butterflies in a second-hand store with “Jack” written on the back. Kismet and irony is what Jack and I eat for breakfast. The clouds are like goose down at a distance, blurred and gray, soft and unreal in the fading light. I wonder who drove the pins through the hearts of the butterflies in the box? Jack says, “Those two people look like owls.” I ask Jack what we look like, he says "Surfers." When the pale blue sky turns to night, I look deep into the universe, and I can feel it looking back. Lying on my surfboard with my arms out stretched I feel like a giant Blue Morpho butterfly. Jack says the Blue Morpho is the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen. Jack and I like to play Breakfast at Tiffany’s every chance we get. Today, we’re on our fourth cocktail by noon. We are constant change, falling asleep in an LA Wonderland on Friday, waking up in the Emerald City of Seattle on Sunday, wondering what happened to Saturday. It’s wine with La Wally and all is well. Our imperfections are thrilling. When my parents meet Jack, they say, “That is enough of that.” Rerun Dorothy says, “There’s no place like home.” Jack and I read Alice In Wonderland aloud. Our neighbors Richard and Sheila ask, “Do you know what happened to our rose bushes?” Later, as I watch Jack pull a snarl of crimson and brier out of our lawnmower I wonder if I’m dating the Mad Hatter. I usually write when Jack is asleep, but sometimes we write together on cocktail napkins. I obsess over Dorothy’s ruby slippers - Jack vows to buy me a pair. My handwriting is that of a drunken child. We both want to make our home in Wonderland. Our neighbors cross our overgrown lawn to tell us that they hate weeds. We are happy daisies. At times I sense myself on a meandering river headed toward a waterfall. We wear the shadows of leaves when the sun streams through the filter of our Oak tree. We throw seeds that look like helicopter blades into the air and watch them flutter to the ground. We find a heavy black cat and call him “Magic.” Jack and I contact the spirit realm on our Ouija board until an entity guides Jack’s hands to spell out the words “See you soon.” Rain shoots holes into puddles in our driveway. After a Saki induced sleep, Jack suddenly opens his eyes to say, “We should move to Japan!” When I think of Jack my mouth waters. Jack hasn’t come home. His crazy blonde hair recalls to my mind Slivics Manual: A Guide to Trees; I pray that he hasn’t fallen like a Yellow Birch, a tree that rots from the inside out and is too easily taken down by the wind or snow. Jack is so handsome that if he were to pass out on the floor most women would try and pick him up. Jack says, "Don’t worry, I was only drunk." Tonight Jack is laughing on the phone, he sings, “The girls all get prettier at closing time.” I am never going to say Jack’s name again. Jack. Jack. Jack. Jack says that I’m an unapologetic distortionist of events, but he misses me all the same. I ask myself, “What sort of assholery is this?” I watch a raindrop defy gravity as it clings to a leaf. I dream of flying monkeys. Jack tells me he loves me more than surfing, writing or whisky. He tells Magic that black cats are the luckiest in the world. When the butterfly box falls from the wall the Great Monarch is dislodged from its pin. Jack and I are two hearts painting the roses red, two lovers, rarely apart, spending the day in bed. “Over time,” I say to the students in my meditation class, “I have come to believe that it's my spiritual duty to never to get upset.” Fuck you Jack! Jack tells me that I make him laugh as he kisses me on the nose. I worry that the Monarch loose in the box will fall to pieces but I can’t get myself to put it back on its pin. On our Cali vacation we drink so much that Jack tells me he’s seen God in a wetsuit carrying a longboard. Jack puts his hand on my head, and I put my hand on his head, and we walk down the street holding heads because holding hands is so passé. The clouds have wound through the Evergreens like cotton through the teeth of a comb. Every morning we kiss each other goodbye. When Jack knocks the mirror off the wall, he cries uncontrollably for an hour. When I say, “Jack, don’t be so superstitious,” a chill shoots down my spine. We have cocktails before we go out for cocktails. Jack gets a speeding ticket going 110 in a 55. Our lives have taken on an apocalyptic vibe that we call “fun. Jack is a love “10” and responsibility “2” on a scale that doesn’t exist. My fortune cookie says, “You are loved more than you will ever know.” Jack and I play nude croquet on the lawn beneath a full moon. I can feel our neighbors disapproving glare from beyond their darkened window. When Richard and Sheila ask us to keep it down as we shout, “Off with their heads!” We do tequila shots until we're cut off. I laugh so hard in my dream that I wake myself up. Jack and I both say, “Drunken Boy” at the same time when we see it in a film’s credits. On 9/11 we are twin towers falling down over and over again in perpetuity. Jack says, “Everything is an illusion, except love.” When I watch the police officer walk away from our house absence gesticulates around me. I’m a single balloon floating away from a party. A hole has been torn in time and space, the illusion flaps wildly. Blackness pulls me past the tattered edges of my home. Nothing tastes like anything. The next day Magic goes missing. When Richard comes to the door with a garbage bag, I become so hysterical that he drops my dead cat and runs away shouting, “It was an accident!” Christmas tree lights blink and snow tumbles from invisible clouds. I’m afraid to look at the Monarch’s wing for fear that I’ll fall headfirst into one those little black holes. I listen to the story of when my parents met Jack; I love what they’ve done with it. The story begins, “Jack showed up drunk and late for dinner.” They are 80’s comedians doing a gag. The story ends with my mother saying, “And we both collapsed on the kitchen floor laughing.” I walk outside and into the dark wood. After a long time I manage to bury the box of butterflies in the hard winter ground. The world is uncanny, manufactured, like a movie poster, everyone is laughing with their heads tossed back. I watch a video of Jack surfing in California last summer. He rode a wave to shore, picked up his board and walked toward me saying, “If Gertrude Stein were born later she might have surfed here.” I see a woman holding hands with a man and think how repetitive it all is. “Do you miss me?” I ask myself in the mirror. I run as fast as I can through the forest at night, barely missing tree branches, up and over rocks, until I sense the edge of the cliff and my body knows to stop. On my flight to Japan I fantasize that Jack will meet me at the gate. Melancholy is such a pretty word. Jack Kerouac once said, “It will all end in tears.” I eat Chinese food from a carton and it is a new moment; it doesn’t taste like regret or remorse or longing, it just tastes like Moo Goo Gai Pan. Two hours later I cry uncontrollably. Monocentris Japonicas, “Ghost Fish,” glow beneath my surfboard. Seven months after Jack died Richard and Sheila learn the truth and write to ask, “Why didn’t you tell us Jack died?” At the end of their letter they ask, “Have you met anyone new?” One of my favorite memories of Jack is of the two of us lying in the sun, our feet barely touching, and the only sound is the sound of the sea. I’m looking for a word that means, pining that causes an emotional indent or depression. An affliction caused by tragic loss. Pain that lingers that is accompanied by obsessive thoughts and despair, but there is no single word for that in the English language. I invent one, everpine. Verb use, I was everpining until I surrendered in meditation. My Sensai of pain must be fired so that my Sensai of joy can be hired. I meditate until I float out of my body into space connected by a strand of light. Jack isn’t there, but Buddha's serenity soothes me. I meditate upon Buddha’s lap; sit on his stone knees rubbing his belly, as he tells me of his drinking days. I fly paper airplanes with poems written on them to the people passing below, and when someone picks up a poem, and puts it in their pocket, it pleases the poet. It pleases the poet. I find treasures, a gold ring, an out-of-circulation coin, many things, even myself, but I never find what I’ve lost. I take Jack’s ashes out of my suitcase and pour them into the sea. I want to go home because there is no place like home. My Jack once told me, “I will love you forever.” Jack Kerouac once said, “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.” Previously published in My Myths (Yellow Chair Press, 2016). Yellow Chair Press published Kelle Grace Gaddis’s poetry and fiction collection, My Myths, in December of 2016. Other recently published works appear in Dispatches Editions Resist Much / Obey Little, Vending Machine Presses Very Fine Writing, The Till, Five Willows Poetry Review, The Hessler Street Fair Anthology, LOLX, Moonlight Dreamers of the Yellow Haze, BlazeVOX in BlazeVOX15, The New Independents Magazine, Thirteen Myna Birds Journal, Knot Literary Magazine, Entropy, Writing For Peace, Dove Tales: The Nature Edition, Blackmail Presses Edition 37, Knot Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. Ms. Gaddis has written three chapbooks It Is What It Is, It Was What It Was, Visions Of, and American Discard. She is honored to be one of 4Culture’s “Poetry on the Buses” contest winners in 2015 and 2017 Ms. Gaddis is a 2016 Till Writer’s Residency alum. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington in 2014.  Photo by Gabriel Cuello The Foot of Montségur A rumor said we crept in and dug like animals a hollow for the grail. The friars weren’t listening at Albi or Verfeuil. We buried nothing. I think of the spaces where we existed. Landscape is a corner of my eye: papery like dry ashen leaves. The crusaders brought a map with blue cut into the outline of our Languedoc. I touched the lightweight edge, the places where our caves would be; we worshipped in the walls. I loved to steady the child’s head with a light touch on the ear, her patient stare while I combed the long hair back, breathed the cold cutting air, and buried the afterbirths. I knew there was no mistake about the body and routine. God did not send us out, but back. The most physical of all, I rocked as in a body, what I felt a boat must be. I see rocks, transparent, how grainy water is, and finally I watch the iron density of flame. All night, sun sets on the town. Easily they fit us in the circle. We are the last of us. Previously published in Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016). Jessica Cuello is the author of Hunt, a feminist response to Moby Dick and winner of The 2016 Washington Prize from The Word Works. Her other collections include Pricking (Tiger Bark Press, 2016) and the chapbooks My Father’s Bargain (2015), By Fire (2013), and Curie (2011). She was the winner of The 2013 New Letters Poetry Prize, a winner of LUMINA’s poetry contest (selected by Carolyn Forché), the recipient of a 2015 Saltonstall Writing Fellowship and the recipient of the 2014 Decker Award from Hollins University for outstanding teaching. https://jessicacuello.wordpress.com/  I Could Be A Whale Shark Bolinao, Philippines I am worried about tentacles. How you can still get stung even if the jelly arm disconnects from the bell. My husband swims without me—further out to sea than I would like, buoyed by salt and rind of kelp. I am worried if I step too far into the China Sea, my baby will slow the beautiful kicks he has just begun since we landed. The quickening, they call it, but all I am is slow, a moon jelly floating like a bag in the sea. Or a whale shark. Yes—I could be a whale shark, newly spotted with moles from the pregnancy-- my wide mouth always open to eat and eat with a look that says Surprise! Did I eat that much? When I sleep, I am a flutefish, just lying there, swaying back and forth among the kelp-y mess of sheets. You can see the wet of my dark eye awake, awake. My husband is a pale blur near the horizon, full of adobo and did not wait thirty minutes before swimming. He is free and waves at me as he backstrokes past. This is how he prepares for fatherhood. Such tenderness still lingers in the air: the Roman poet Virgil once gave his pet fly the most lavish funeral, complete with meat feast and barrels of oaky wine. You can never know where or why you hear a humming on this soft earth. Previously published in Asian American Literary Review. Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s fourth book of poetry, Oceanic, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon and her nature essay collection is forthcoming from Milkweed, both in 2018. She is poetry editor of Orion and is the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi's MFA program.  Worried Man Blues Halfway through the song, the dog bumped his big black pit bull head against my leg and I stopped-- small rest between the banjo and the guitar player who never sits down. My ragged chords caught their breath, the bow dropped and turned and pressed against the fiddle, freeing one hand to hold that warm, soft ear with its own dark valley of music. Previously published in Gold Man Review. Amy Miller’s poetry has appeared in Nimrod, Rattle, Willow Springs, and ZYZZYVA. Her chapbooks include I Am on a River and Cannot Answer (BOAAT Press) and Rough House (White Knuckle Press), and she won the Cultural Center of Cape Cod National Poetry Competition, judged by Tony Hoagland, the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize from Cultural Weekly, and the Earl Weaver Baseball Writing Award. She works as the publications project manager for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and blogs at writers-island.blogspot.com.  Photo by Laura Duldner The Garden Came First Eve was framed. (bumper-sticker) Perhaps she was already weeding. You know how it is: step into the yard for a moment because you hear birdsong then glance down at the ground and see weeds everywhere. You have to do something, which means you have to decide: oxalis or chamomile? vinca or Bermuda grass? dandelion or morning glory? So, which one was put here on purpose? Previously published in Quiddity. Annie Stenzel was born in Illinois, but has lived in several places on both sides of this continent, and in a number of other countries. She received both a B.A. in English Literature and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland. Her poems appear in a wide range of print and online journals, from Ambit to Rat's Ass Review, with stops at Blue Lyra Review, Catamaran Literary Reader, Eclectica, Kestrel, and Quiddity, among many others. By day, she works at a mid-size San Francisco law firm. Her full-length collection, The First Home Air After Absence, will be published later this year by Big Table Publishing Co.  Karma We become poets In an attempt to tether words To righteousness, Our notebooks To social consciousness. Sitting cross-legged and anxious in Wing-backed chairs we Sip lattes to news of regimes Firing American-made artillery into Crowds of folk, Their bodies pickled by the sun They line streets in countries We never think about and We suck our teeth and Ask a thesaurus to become a machete And as romantic as passivism is These days I dream of dictators falling headfirst Into karma and forget to be afraid If I could write this shit in fire, I would write this shit in fire. This ain’t poetry. It’s rage, unmuted. A verb, a means, an end, This is my body. This is a sacrifice. This is an offering. This is Southside Chicago, Compton, California, Red Hook Projects in Jersey, Roosevelt Projects in Brooklyn. This is severed hands. Clubs against flesh, Black boots to pregnant bellies, This is sterilizations, Inoculations, Leg irons and chains, The bit and the noose, This is a war cry. Tell Massa I’m coming back. Carrying fire in my knapsack, Tell him I am Patrice Lumumba Steven Biko, Fred Hampton, Fannie Lou Hamer Harriet Tubman Tell him they have been born again in me. Tell him I found my mother tongue Buried under the rubble of The World Trade Center Tell him this shit ain’t no poem. This is me, running naked From sugarcane and cotton fields Having dropped my croaker sack. Tell him he can call me karma. I am re-fleshing the bones. A witch, a root-worker, A sorceress, a priestess, a gangster… Tell him this is the result of segregation. Tell him this is the result of integration. Tell him I have never been invisible. Tell him he has never been invincible. Tell him I will melt the barbed wire and Steel bars of prison yards They will flow over him like lava. I am returned I am blood-thirsty I am fangs and hooks and Swollen feet in welfare lines, The gauntlet thrown down, Lines drawn in the sand I am apocryphal. Historical deletions gathering themselves Up and into textbooks, I am the niece of exploitation On a rice and pancake box, Come to collect the royalties For Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben… I am a line of smoke, A rain dance, The tomahawk used to kill the first invader, A passbook in South Africa, A Whites Only sign on a courthouse door In Mississippi, The streets of Benghazi pocked in Prayer beads and shell casings, The juxtaposition of faith and savagery. Tell him I am African wide hips and American bulimia, Peace symbols on assault rifles, It is the deepest kind of contradiction. If I could write this shit in fire, I would write this shit in fire. Tell Massa I’m coming back. Howl in the wind, I’m coming back. Bur in his heel, I’m coming back. I’m coming back Massa. I’m coming back Massa. I’m coming back. Previously published in They Are All Me (Swimming With Elephants Publications) Dominique Christina is a mother, published author of three books, licensed educator, 2x Women of the World Slam Champion, 2011 National Poetry Slam Champion, 2013 National Underground Poetry Individual Slam Champion, social agitator, and intersectional feminist. She is the only person to win the Women of the World Championship twice. Her work is influenced by her family's legacy during the Civil Rights Movement. Her grandfather, who is in the baseball hall of fame, was a shortstop for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues. When he left, Jackie Robinson, who later integrated baseball, took his place. Dominique's aunt is a Congressional Medal of Honor recipient for being one of 9 students who desegregated Central High School in Little Rock Arkansas. Dominique is sought after to teach and perform at colleges and universities nationally and internationally every year. Her work appears in numerous literary journals and anthologies, the Huffington Post, IBTimes, Upworthy, Poetry Magazine, etc. http://www.dominiquechristina.com/  Photo by Jim Fagiolo Lunar Longing: Do Moons Have Lips? First word? Moon. We’re not sure if it is the m of mama or divine bovine hum, this naming of satellites to spin a planet, outer spacey, cosmo naughty, having mastered the o-ring and its fallacies, its aborted missions witching fluids can tap moon rocks in her pockets. Women thirst a milky blue. Dowsing the moon is a matter of debate, iceglint below a dry surface in the crater’s shadow, a pocket of H2O lodged by a meteor hunk hurled across the black vacuum, which sucks all manner of moisture into the void, her last words—Mulled Moon, Must Moon, Mute Moon. Previously published by Fourth River. Seven-time Pushcart nominee and finalist for the Discovery/The Nation Award, Janet Norman Knox's poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Los Angeles Review, 5 AM, Crab Creek Review, Rhino, Bellingham Review, Fourth River, Diner, Seattle Review, Adirondack Review, and Diagram. Her play, 9 Gs and the Red Telephone, was featured in Feminist Studies. She received the Ruskin Poetry Prize (Red Hen Press) and the Los Angeles Review nominated her for Best New Poets. Her chapbook, Eastlake Cleaners when Quality & Price Count [a romance], received the Concrete Wolf Editor's Award. http://www.rattle.com/ereviews/knoxeastlake.htm Janet collaborates with artists Anne Beffel (Jack Straw Foundation and Duwamish Revealed Grants) and Vaughn Bell (4Culture and Duwamish Revealed Grants). She currently has an exhibit at the Jack Straw Foundation Galleries. Her play, Artifact Pattern—Observations on the Behavior of Homo Sapiens in Change, was hosted by the Bainbridge Island Art Museum in 2016. Janet is an entrepreneur and Environmental Geochemist, her company turning 30.  Martha Stewart’s Guide to the End Times Of course you know I love those little drones, so I’ve stockpiled them. Those and lemons. I’ve learned the hard way that life without lemons is barely worth living. Animal husbandry 101: Fill your own organic pantry. Which breed of chicken will give you the best eggs under stress? Pg. 13. Leave the fondant til later. You can always do a ganache topping for your cupcakes in a pinch. So simple! Evacuation map for New York City, Boston, the Hamptons, with scratch-and-sniff icons: page 24. Survival skills are just like hostess skills: a little preparation, a little spying (with the drones,) a little determined defense-driven hedging of the grounds. Razor wire goes beautifully with your holly thicket. Guide to storing munitions in attractive wicker boxes: page 52. If your water isn’t as clear as it should be, use up those charcoal filters first, but after, try a solid iodine tablet in your home-dug well. In these times, it’s a good thing. Culinary tips for after the mega-store raid: mixed nuts have a long shelf life. Throw in a little rosemary and toast them over an open flame for anytime elegance. More ideas for those family-sized tubs of popcorn: page 68. Now’s the time to get out your hurricane lamps! They create a lovely glow in these last days. Previously published in Field Guide To The End Of The World (Moon City Press, 2016). Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington. She is the author of five books of poetry:Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and Field Guide to the End of the World, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily, and in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Iowa Review and Prairie Schooner. Her web site is www.webbish6.com. Twitter handle: @webbish6. |
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