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Troy Urquhart — Poetry

3/5/2011

58 Comments

 
Sometimes, a poem is about things we weren't.

Like my parents, who began and
    ended in desparation.

A one-hour ride to the junior college in Pensacola,
Neal in the back seat of the bus, crying out
the name of the dark-haired girl sitting
hand-crossed in the front.

    My lovers suffocate me!

Over
    and over
        and over,
    Diana.

Or the flowers
he wouldn't stop
sending to her
parents' house after
she left, two sons
later, & the way
he wouldn't stop
calling, & the way
she wouldn't come
to the phone.


But sometimes, the poem is collapsing.

Once, a poem began with poets
on an empty stage, sprawling across bare
wood floor, a semi-circled ring of raw
emotion, offering words that promised
a brief blink of betterment.
                                        And after
they ranted and panted and planted seeds
of verse in themselves, there were stretches
of unplanned silence as we waited
to see who would stand and cry out
across the dark and empty seats, to see
who would rage against the quiet.

          the poem then / became a thing / stretched beyond
          breaking / elasticity of emotion / bent past brittleness

And the seats weren't all empty:
there was one where I sat, my legs bent,
coughing up the voice in my throat
that used to flow so freely.

    loose the stop from your throat

This voice gone flat:
tonguing the edge of decomposed
sentences and a reticence that raws
verbs into inaction, their passivity
and insensitivity faced forward
and falling for this brief blinking
hope of betterment.

I was fallen.

I meant better things, but deconstructed syllables, riddled rhymes lined the page.

Clowns in cars. Hind-legging dogs. Poets crying lines. They ranted blind
    against time,
        against things gone wrong,
against things gone.

          I wondered what I would say if I were dragged / from the wings
          and stood up center stage / spot lit and composed / seats full
          of silence and anticipation as they waited for

But imagine: all
    the world's a stage, and I am wallowing in the wings,
wingless waiting for some brief blink of better days,
wishing for better ways to say
what I meant.

And imagine: I
    string my outstretched arms to the fly,
rise above this stage, float above the footlights,
gaze across the empty seats, cry rage rant
rend these words.

    Writing and talk do not prove me;
    I carry the plenum of proof, and everything else, in my face

Center stage, I wanted you
to hang me. Let my feet dangle.
Let me strangle myself in these lines.

And I would hang with my feet faced forward.
    I would struggle.

You would watch me
struggle, my tongue weighed
down against the edges of these phrases,
the syntax decomposing before the words reached


Troy Urquhart is the author of Springtime Sea Bathing (Greying Ghost, 2010), the editor of Willows Wept Review, and a contributor to Vouched Books. He teaches writing and American literature at Montverde Academy, where he serves as Director of Professional Development. He can be reached online here.
58 Comments

Nathaniel Tower — Prose

3/5/2011

89 Comments

 
A Visit from the Moon

Yesterday the man in the moon paid me a visit.
 
Naturally I didn't believe it was really him at first. He swore that it was him in the flesh with a big smile. I glanced up into the night sky to verify that his visage was no longer visible. I thought I could still see the face in the orb, but he reasoned that he had been there so long that it had permanently been imprinted in the rocks. Looking from his face to the sky, I reckoned that the two shared quite a few similarities. They both had hooked noses, for one. The evidence seemed compelling enough. Besides, I saw no reason why someone would lie about being the man in the moon.
 
"Would you care for some tea?" I asked him cordially. I wanted to give the impression that I was a good host. I wasn't sure why he had picked me of all people, but there was likely a good reason.
 
"Is it really made of cheese?" I asked obviously once he sat down for tea.
 
Of course not he told me with a laugh appearing on his giant circle of a face. Through the open slats of the blinds, I could see the moon laugh with him.
 
"Do you want some cheese?"
 
He said he wanted to give it a try. As he ate it, he mused what it would be like to have a home made of cheese. I laughed with him.
 
We had a good visit, the man in the moon eating my cheese and drinking my tea, me listening to his many stories, wondering so many things as he spoke but afraid to interrupt him. How did he get in the moon? Was it lonely? Could he see everything on Earth? How did he get down? How long had he been there? Why had he chosen me? But I couldn’t ask any of them.

At midnight, he rose to leave. He’d best be going he told me.
 
I opened the front door and followed him out on the porch. We looked up and admired his home.
 
"It sure is beautiful," I said to him. He nodded in agreement.
 
And as we watched, staring at what I imagined was the most beautiful home in the universe, a jealous man on the other side of town harpooned the man in the moon's home. We watched together in awe at the great sphere crashing down from the sky. It sounded like a giant light bulb cracking on a concrete basement floor.
 
"What will you do now?" I asked the man.
 
Maybe he'd give Mars a try he told me.

Nathaniel Tower writes fiction, teaches English, and manages the online lit magazine Bartleby Snopes. His short fiction has appeared in over 50 online and print magazines. A story of his, "The Oaten Hands," was named one of 190 notable stories by storySouth's Million Writers Award in 2009. His first novel, A Reason To Kill, is due out in July 2011. Visit him here.


89 Comments

Jennifer Mills Kerr — Prose

3/5/2011

38 Comments

 
Countdown to Zero

"May?  Are you in?"  Frau Hessen knocked at the back door again.

May smiled through the window from her bedroom, peering down on Frau Hessen's finely etched part, a tiny slice of skin amidst her dark, lustrous hair.  The back door creaked open.  Frau Hessen's figure slid out of sight; she had come inside the house.  May shivered with pleasure as the woman's footsteps clicked along the kitchen linoleum that May's mother had mopped that morning.  It was 1920; the war had ended.  But her mother repeatedly scrubbed the house as if to set Germany right again. 

May faced herself in the mirror.  She had just turned eighteen.  Her chestnut-colored hair was pulled back from her face, revealing her cheeks' peachy glimmer and blue eyes that glinted with resolution.  Now was the time.  She could feel it.  God, she had been waiting.  She ran her hands over her breasts slowly.  I'm beautiful, she whispered, a flush of heat filling her body.  Beautiful.     

"May?"  Frau Hessen's voice resounded in the kitchen, more loudly now, more urgent.

May began to count down from ten.  Her mother had always encouraged this in an attempt to instill patience in her restless, impulsive child, often called a tomboy, and occasionally, to her mother's mortification, "boyish."  She encouraged May to grow her hair, pluck her eyebrows, always wear stockings.  She instructed her on the benefits of long walks, regular hair brushing, the properly fitting bra.  All in the purpose of May finding a man so those of their acquaintance could never, would never, allude to her being like one.   

Frau Hessen darted about the kitchen in small, ruffled movements, reminding May of a bird rustling its wings in a cage.  She had lost her husband in the war.  Not quite thirty, she wore snug skirts with heels and plum-colored lipstick which May imagined tasting like plum.  Now, her heels ticked along the floor like a bomb waiting to go off.  A drawer squeaked open—Frau Hessen was searching—and she began to hum softly, just as May's pediatrician did while inspecting the private corners of her body. 

May leaned on one foot so the floor creaked.  The sound was subtle, but distinct.   

"May?  Is that you?"  Fright in Frau Hessen's voice—but excitement too.  For the first time, they were alone in the house.  Three months before, Frau Hessen had befriended May's mother at church, but she latched onto May, hunger in her dark eyes.  The war had taken so many men.  Like other widows, Frau Hessen went to church to quell the flame of anger and bereavement, and there, she had discovered May, the sweetness of her, the youth of her, the decency of her, a young woman who attended church, volunteered at the hospital, tutored the neighborhood children.  She began to knit May sweaters, one the color of sand, one sky blue to match May's eyes.  She brought her pies—blackberry, peach, green apple.  It seemed so innocent, May thought, all so innocent. 

Then Frau Hessen's visits became more frequent, and longer.  She began to ask May if she had boyfriends, what body cream she used.  She even touched May's hair sometimes, commenting on its silkiness; last week, she ran her fingernails through it. Beautiful, she whispered in May's ear.  Beautiful.  The word charged through May's blood, filling spaces in her body that she hadn't realized were empty, and she drank it in, so thirsty, so very thirsty.

May leaned on her foot again; another creak from the floorboards.  Would Frau Hessen dare climb the stairs?  Would she come into May's bedroom? Ten, nine, eight...she counted.  Frau Hessen's legs whispered as she approached the stairs, and May felt a heat glowing inside of her.  Still, she waited, pressing up against the discomfort until she completed the countdown.

...three, two, one.  Ready.  She left the shelter of her bedroom and found Frau Hessen at the bottom of the stairs, pale face upturned.  Her hand lay on the banister, her high heel was poised on the first stair.

"That is you," she said, fingering the buttons on her dress. 

May didn't move.

Frau Hessen said,  "I brought you a pie."

"Thank you, Frau Hessen."

"You're not wearing any shoes," she said.  "Sweetheart, it's cold."

Her eyes lingered along May's bare feet and calves.     

"My mother won't be returning for a few hours," May said.  She lay a moist palm against her thigh.  Slowly, she drew her hand upward, lifting her skirt slightly.  "We're all alone."

Frau Hessen's gaze drifted to May's face.  Her lips parted.  "Young lady, I—"  She stopped, swallowed.

"I'm eighteen," May said.  "Not that much younger than you."

"That's true." Frau Hessen phrased it like a question.

 Would she climb the stairs?  May's body pulsed in a warm, delicious heat as Frau Hessen's eyes traveled along her skirt, tucked about her thighs in a firm embrace.  She began counting.  Ten, nine, eight… What was Frau Hessen waiting for?  May had seen the hunger in her eyes dozens of times, her need to believe there was good in the world, her need for one sweet, convincing taste.  Four, three, two... now was the opportunity for Frau Hessen to have it.  If she would dare. 

Then May saw the squint about Frau Hessen's eyes, the flash of hate. 

"You're disgusting," she whispered, twisting away, rushing from the stairs.  May heard the indelicate clap of high heels against the clean linoleum, tended by her mother's hands.

"I'm beautiful!" May shouted. "Beautiful!"

The door slammed.  Eventually, May unclenched her fists.  Her breath returned to its natural rhythm.  But the heat in her body did not give way.  Frau Hessen was pathetic, a spineless excuse for a woman; May felt sorry for her.  Retreat was failure.  Every German knew that.  



Jennifer Mills Kerr lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her stories and memoir have been most recently published in Mused Literary Journal, First Leaves, and Women’s Voices. You can read more of her work here.
38 Comments

Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly — Poetry

3/5/2011

91 Comments

 
Child from My Ovary, Half-Remembered

  1.

     (Pregnancy)

You'd like to see the foliage of my skin so you start
with removing my mittens, removing my shoes.
I know what comes next: I stare at the meat
of your mouth pass through stages. From devour
to sour, shot without a chaser, bristling hot, to chaste.
You are at me as though my stomach has turned to flour,
wakened by my pregnant flesh, my protruding belly.
I like to place things in my body that alter it.
You were fathomless, as I casually replied, it's not yours.
It's an immaculate conception. A flowerless joke.
Your eyes are two sockets; your mouth, a maze.
My body has another one inside it – you are talking to two.

  2.

     (Dream Sequence)

I cry vodka and oh god! It burns! I run to the neighborhood well
and find my baby brother speaking a dead baby language. It's not funny; my arms swell
as I pick him up; a rash gathers near the base of my spine. I have forgotten the smell
of the earth's underbelly, cocooning ourselves inside cotton seeds. All was well.
Woe are we for forgetting how to speak the universal language of infants, the caterwaul
only underdeveloped fetuses can perfectly pitch. My brother stops short: again he is unwell.
I feel his fever with my lips. Where is our mother? Every adult has laughed her way to hell.
Where is the base of his spine? I hear a crack; I am growing child-bearing hips, small
eggs crack into our scalps. I am washing his hair. There is nobody. I am no longer tall.
I break yolks with the palms of my hands. Babies are having babies.
My eyes well.

  3.

     (Baby Inside Me)

The baby inside me is half hutu/half tutsi,
and roasting in the fire pit of my womb,
wears a transistor radio attached to a tomb.
The baby inside me commits hubris this morning.
He wants to wear designer clothes, be half machine.
I fucked a machine nine months ago.
The baby inside me saves for braces, college tuition.
He wants to study the way windmills dance.
The baby inside me hands me a note.
I will get cancer when I turn eighteen, the note says.
Will you still send me to parochial school? I drink one glass of wine
and the baby inside me turns somersaults, hiccups.
He will cry when he leaves. They always do.



Christine Jessica Margaret Reilly is currently pursuing her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence University. She received a bachelor's degree in Psychology and English: Creative Writing at Bucknell University. Two of her poems will be featured in The Clearing: Forty Years with Toni Morrison, 1970-2010, a book by James Braxton Peterson and Carmen Gillespie. She has been published in the Anemone Sidecar, Asinine Poetry, Breadcrumb Scabs, Blood Lotus, Canopic Jar, the Bijou Poetry Review, CaKe, Blinking Cursor., Louffa Press, and Eudaimonia. She has also been published in Bucknell's publications, Fire and Ice and Mirth Grinder. One of her poems was featured in an African Blues Art Installation piece in Bucknell University's Bertrand Library. She lives in New York.
91 Comments

Sarah Gerard — Poetry

3/5/2011

62 Comments

 
Grandfather

You
are a leopard

whose spots
can’t disguise
anymore

where you’re running.


Changes in Grass

Texas
in cow pasture
ditches, evenings.

If I left in Mexico
among wilted cactus,
would you have thumbs?

Where would be home
if I left
among flowers?


Sarah Gerard is an MFA candidate at The New School. Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, elimae, and the St. Petersburg Times, among others. She lives in Brooklyn with her boyfriend, the artist Timm Mettler. 
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