Issue 9

Caper Literary Journal's 9th issue contains several pieces of work, including adopted pieces from the now-closed Writers Bloc Journal.

We are ecstatic to present the 1st and 2nd place winners of our Maravillosa Literary Contest in addition to a great deal of new poetry and prose, with art by Alexandra Burguieres.

Please note Caper Literary Journal will be publishing less work each issue as 2011 comes along, in addition to a new publishing element: we will feature work from a writer of a different country in each issue.

Upcoming Events: Caper Literary Journal's Oct. 29 Masquerade Literary Party at Happy Ending Lounge was wild! Thanks for coming. We have 2 readings coming up: The Burlesque & Lit night at Happy Ending Lounge, co-hosted with The Fiction Circus. And a night of intimate literature at KGB Bar.

Our Borges Poetry & Prose Contest continues to remain open to submissions. The guest poetry editor for this contest is Pushcart Prize-nominated writer Kelly Davio. She is the Managing Editor of The Los Angeles Review and the Associate Poetry Editor for Fifth Wednesday Journal, Davio is a poet and teacher who holds a MFA in Poetry from Northwest Institute of Literary Arts (Whidbey Writers’ Workshop). She is an instructor of English as a Second Language. Davio is also the book reviewer for the Women’s Review of Books.  Her debut collection, Burn This House, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Submit now.


Read
Maravillosa Literary Contest Winners
Timothy Black
Mara Buck
Abigail Rine
Miles Klee

Selected Work from Writers Bloc
Holly Schwartz-Coignat
DJ Romo
J.P. Greene

Poetry & Prose
Ines Rivera Prosdocimi
Darryl Willis
Jasmine Silver
David McLean
Lavinia Kumar
Britt Gambino
Mike Florian
Jake David
Tallulah Grey
Roland Goity
Anne Barngrover
Martin Willitts Jr.
Marc Carver
Scott Alexander Jones
Peter Marra
Bobbie Troy
Christina Marie Speed
T.M. De Vos
David Fraser
Gina Marie LoBianco
Roland Goity
Kristen Michelle Håvet

Art
Alexandra Burguieres Gallery

Requiem For An Orchard

The silence would never change.

    I had walked down this dirt path one year ago - that felt like ten. Never an official road; tree roots jutted out of the dirt, a few late summer flowers struggled through the dry wind, drinking the last moisture in the rivulets of a thunderstorm two days passed. The trail was worn by generations of feet that walked the centuries from the stone farmhouse to the orchard at the edge of the drive.

5 Things I Would do if I Were James Earl Jones
(possibly in order)

1.  Talk dirty to myself. The Jedi of all sex talk. Deathstar fetishes and Lightsaber innuendos. Oh, how Lando Calrissian would slide off the tongue on a wine-filled balmy summer night.

2.  Stop doing commercials. Hello… JAMES EARL JONES. Three bold names like “burnt fuckin’sienna”. Unlike Ponch informercials—selling land in Oregon. Or Magic peddling plasma TVs. I think it’s safe to say the cell phone industry can survive without me. 

3.  Stick to the stage. The occasional voiceover is nice, an unexpected dose of legitimacy. But really, do I want be associated with a medium that produces Jersey Shore?    

4.  Become best friends with Morgan Freeman. Moonlight Graham and Shawshank lore: soulful brothas from other mothas’ velvet wombs.

5.  Narrate my life story… Aloud... Everywhere, I went.

Daniel Romo is currently an MFA candidate at Antioch University, but is transferring to Queens University of Charlotte in the winter.  His recent poems can be found in Divine Dirt Quarterly, Scythe, and Kill Author.  He was recently nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, and the Pushcart Prize.  His first book of poetry, Romancing Gravity, is forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press.  More of his writing can be found here.

For An Age: Poetry Contempo

Foreword

    We do not dwell on our mortality, yet we conduct our lives as we do because of it.  Ordinarily we behave the same toward other less dire realities that we might wish were not so.  Indeed, we think delusional those who ignore them.  This essay makes the case for similarly recognizing in our discourse and behavior the factuality of a proposition that today exists in neither.  The argument is difficult to judge calmly and fairly, because it seems to undermine long-standing assumptions about who we are, what we are doing, and what we may hope to accomplish.  My purpose, however, is just the opposite, not to undermine self-confidence but to found it on current reality.

The Moment The Indian Elephant Called

                       To Kampuchea

And thus when my takara
hums his last oriental tune
and the parasol decides to forgo
gentle pitter pats on my window,
the wind’s resilience to a Cambodian breeze,
and when rice fields stop blooming,
tillers refusing to rove, I won’t
hear my call to rise
and thus will be the end.
So when your people
lull their last, early-morning song
and the tallows, the palm trees, decide
to hell with saccharine stenches,
the sweet morning sirens, mother earth’s
refusal for a daybreak draft, the drones of Dângrêk…
Or, possibly when you rise before the monsoon quakes,
our lips never putting, our arms refusing to rove too,
I won’t feel the call to rise here,
and so will be the end of us.
Because time flies as days resist pause.
Lying in peace, our limbs intertwined
like threads of wildlife, the Tonle Sap, the lakes
flowing, the provinces, the steep slopes of Phom Aoral.
Once though, she tiptoed away with my breath,
a kiss faded, moisture-laden like
ripples in the gulf.
Hardly revitalized, I pray for more time,
Tomorrow can’t be my last day here
pleading for a life in this moment.
A life with you, Khmer,
right here in Cambodia.

Jasmine Silver has been published in a variety of online and print venues. Look for her in the near future: Anon, Flutter and Barely South Review. For any further information, feel free to email: [email protected].

knife and absence 
 
she is my knife and my absence,
everything missing, broken bucket
rolling down a slow hill
 
our dive through time. here we poured
blood and nothing, assembling
suffering love and other values
 
to call them new. we knew knives
and dull love, blood and sufficient
dust, western values dressed sexy
 
in death and latex and leather,
a bucket rolling broken down god's
vapid hill. we assemble absences
 
and time to kill, our will as good
as nothing to love, broken
hopeless buckets and knives enough,
 
time to touch

David McLean is Welsh but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there on an island in a large lake called Mälaren, very near to Stockholm, with woman, five cats, and a couple of dogs. He has a BA in History from Balliol, Oxford, and an MA in philosophy, taken much later and much more seriously studied for, from Stockholm. Up to date details of over 1000 poems in various zines over the last three years or so and several available books and chapbooks, including three print full lengths, a few print chapbooks, and a free electronic chapbook, are at his blog.

Evening Walk
 
He walks on the path
left-side, same as Delhi traffic,
behind him two teens with yoyos
finally his silent wife 
more than twenty feet behind
in north Indian salwar-kameez
pants pale pink, white top with pink flowers,
 
the geese on the grass
follow at a careful distance
mother at the head
the five gosling heads peck grass
finally the father
to shepherd family laggards
with steady careful steps - 
they are not talking either.

Lavinia Kumar participates in the Delaware Valley and US1 poetry workshops. Her poetry has appeared in Waterways, Caper Literary Journal, Thatchwork (Delaware Valley Poets), Orbis, US1 Worksheets, and the US1 newspaper.

Revisionist History 
 
The only way to talk about it is 
not to talk about it.
 
It’s hard to cut straight
when there are so many 
 
frayed edges –
I never got a ruler,
 
a light, a leather
rope – save me – in prayers 

of Latin, in the Italian of my skin, 
in the French of my youth, 
 
in the English of my birth –
the words I can read underwater, 
 
without hesitation
between syllables or sentences
 
fluid with punctuation 
when there can be no silence
 
to slip in my teeth, out
to their tongues – sing this, 
 
that which I have always 
questioned, chin sunk in
 
the ground, eyes filling from
waiting – hands reaching for 
 
a needle to sew trust back
inside where she held me
 
once, before or after, maybe 
sucking from muscle, from rhythm,
 
extracting will – 
Is this the version you know?

Britt Gambino  lives in New York, NY, at the end of the universe (aka Washington Heights) where she is a current MFA candidate at the New School. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in anderbo.com, DecomP, Xenith, The Battered Suitcase, Moon Milk Review, The Arava Review, and vox poetica. Her poem, "Isosceles" was recently nominated by DecomP for Sundress's Best of the Net 2010 anthology. To read some of Britt’s ramblings, visit her blog here: gritsforyou.wordpress.com

Storm Warning

Roald Olson did not want to anchor behind ‘The Spit’ for two reasons.  When the wind blew from the southeast, the shelter was on the west side of the spit of land.  When it blew westerly, he had to pull up the anchor and move to the southeast side.  The procedure would take about two hours, and in the dead of night, when the gales switched from one side to the other it could be catastrophic as history well shows.  He also didn’t want to anchor at this dreadful place for another, more personal reason.  It was the place where his wife was killed.