Basic Currency - Christine Vovakes Ghost - Sida Li Haircut - J.W. Hocter Highway Prisoners - Victoria Clayton Munn How it Looks - Joan Mazza Imagine - Blaise Allen, Ph.D. Injustice - Rebecca Leo Reading Everyone Else's Memoirs - Christine Vovakes Scars in Progress - Oleh Lysiak Seeing Red - John Thomas Clark Stephan Delbos
With two Moroccan men disguised as guides, I walked past stalls of boiled snails and spices To a café where Mick Jagger smoked hashish In headier days, the late sixties, when the city hosted Rock stars, writers and pedophiles. Peppery smoke Choked the air while men with callused foreheads Crowded every corner, puffing long Wooden pipes with tiny bowls. At the New Art Institute of Tangier, I'd touched the desk where Paul Bowles wrote, And climbed at dusk the narrow terrace staircase As prayer calls like slow sirens wailed From every mosque across the city, Harmonizing one by one By words prescribed in ancient texts To seed the minds of devotees With thoughts of righteousness and Mecca. Chalk houses pocking clay cliffs softened Pink as sunset streaked across Gibraltar. The men did not call me brother When they pushed me hard against a sandstone wall Outside the train station where I would catch The southern overnight to Fez. I couldn't believe their sudden fists and angry faces! Bare teeth cleaved hot breath, demanding money. They took seven hundred dirham, eighty dollars, Left me broke. But I cannot fail to mention my older 'guide' Brewing tea while we sat in his concrete hole Apartment waiting for his son to bring A cache of couscous and lamb. A flickering finger of propane flame From the dying burner tickled the teapot filled With fresh mint leaves, Lipton, brown sugar. He poured the first glass quickly back to brew, Lifted the silver pot above his sun-dark head, Said Insha'Allah, God willing, and poured again The fragrant steaming stream, a ribbon Brimming our glasses with frothy infusion, Luminous bubbles bursting at my lips. Stephan Delbos is a New England-born poet currently living in Prague, CZ. His poetry, essays and translations have been published internationally, most recently in Prague Tales, BorderCrossing Berlin and Alehouse Journal. "An Eighty Dollar Poem About Tangier" is one poem in a cycle entitled "Toward Mecca," which draws on his experiences travelling in Morocco. He is currently compiling his first manuscript and working as poetry editor for The Prague Revue.
Basic Currency Christine Vovakes
Kisses are the only currency that counts. They multiply like gold accumulating. Lips, reddened, open wide to catch spare change that slips from your tongue to mine. Christine Vovakes lives in northern California. Her articles and photos have appeared in several publications, including The Sacramento Bee, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Vovakes won a Patricia Painton Scholarship at the 2005 Paris Writers Workshop for a piece of short fiction. Her poetry has been published in small journals, most recently in the Spring 2007 issue of Apple Valley Review.
Ghost Sida Li
I am.
In the jade courtyard where the dust grows, and through the bitter, deserted room. I am. Breathing down his back with my cold fury, Biting his ears with my icy whispers. A leaf resting on the barred door Falls to the floor. Betrays my silence. I hear the man gasp. Scream. "Who's there?" I am. Sida will be attending college in the fall of 2007, where he's planning to minor in creative writing. But until then, he plans on working, hanging out, and doing a whole lot of nothing. Sida's work has also appeared in Antithesis Common.
Haircut J.W.Hocter
So short, shorter than it's been Since my little brother, Drenched in adolescent nonsense And high-school irreverence Challenged me to grow… My wife cut it in the living room, A bisected trash bag taped to carpet Catching the falling pieces Of my normalized comfort The way I used to look, Me… A swarm of compliments Follows me through the first day Old women and childlike men Say I look better/great/cute How hideous I must have been yesterday… Strangers smile when they pass As though they know me Now that I look like one of them Prim and neatly trimmed As a properly shorn sheep… I lay my head down at two Running my hand under my head To brush away the lush excess Which used to be there, now gone Lost memories of tiny detail… My wife rolls over as she always does Draping her arm over my shoulder Gently running her ticklers over my skin She nuzzles my neck, whispering sweetly, "It'll grow back." J.W. Hocter is a writer living in Ohio. Highway Prisoners Victoria Clayton Munn
Small hands rest on tempered glass sweaty, rimmed with fog silhouettes faces between the pairs look out on a world of moving steel monsters. They don't wave, or smile, or blink glazed by the hours of road travel, eyes see all and nothing at once their hearing dampened by miles of arguments and '80s rock. The silent screams from the front seat issue commands - as wisps of smoke fill the car with nicotine haze. Flyaway hair in a halo, as a tired hand clutches the wheel, steady. Heeding the voice of impatience the little captives turn around - front and center as the car wardens call them to attention once more. Victoria Clayton Munn is a freelance writer and poet whose closest friends are pen and paper. Her poetry has previously been published in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), here in the Boston Literary Magazine, Foliate Oak, and edifice WRECKED. Victoria lives in upstate New York with her husband and daughter. How it Looks Joan Mazza It must seem I've always had a privileged life, had property, didn't have to work. New friends didn't know me when I worked three jobs at minimum wage (a dollar and a quarter an hour) took the bus to a city college, saved every penny I could to buy my first house. They didn't know me the years I worked full time in the smelly lab, went to grad school three nights a week, paid cash for my therapy four days a week. They don't know the woman I was when I pretended to be what men wanted, sold my Self and my soul for money, security, a promise. Joan Mazza has worked as a psychotherapist, certified sex therapist, writing coach, and seminar leader. Author of six books, including Dreaming Your Real Self (Perigee/Penguin), her work has appeared in Potomac Review, Mobius, Permafrost, Writer's Digest Magazine, Playgirl, The Writer and Writer's Journal. She's now a poet in rural Virginia.
Imagine Blaise Allen, Ph.D.
Late afternoon we sit on the boardwalk lean into one another people pass on the beach distant laughter seagulls take the bait feel the undercurrent waves ahead of us hotel at our backs we gaze into each others lives Disregard omens and stars you take my hand we sit silently weigh pros and cons decide we could if we weren't caught up in language afraid to cut our lines dig our heels in cooling sand watch the water darken do you know that pelicans dive with their eyes open? after a few years of fishing they go blind Blaise Allen, Ph.D. is the Director of Community Outreach for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. Her poetry publications include: University of Kansas School of Medicine, Touch, Mothering Magazine, The Walt Whitman Review, The Long Island Quarterly, Flashquake 2006, EWG Presents, This Hard Wind, Ruby Quill, Writers Quill, The Blue Fifth Review, Rock Press Anthology:Irrepressible Appetites. Her work is featured in six juried anthologies published by Poetworks Press.
Injustice Rebecca Leo
He doesn't call. I call him twice. Twice he is sick with migraine. Third time he says an old girlfriend Has come back into his life. They're going to the Newport folk festival. "Well," I say, "have a nice weekend. Hope you have a safe trip. And... I wish you all the best." "You, too," he says. I hang up quickly. Feel queasy, That sinking sensation of failing again. Why hadn't I said, "I'm disappointed. You seem like a nice person, And I hoped we'd get to know each other better"? Why hadn't I asked, "Why don't you want to know me?" Again the injustice Of not respecting myself, Not speaking my truth. Rebecca Leo taught English and writing for many years at high school, college and university levels while writing and publishing poetry and non-fiction. For ten years she led writing groups in the Boston area and provided editing services for writers of various genres. Rebecca edited and contributed two chapters to The Revision Process. Now living in California, she is working on two autobiographical novels. Recently Boston University awarded her a grant to support a screenplay project.
Reading Everyone Else's Memoirs Christine Vovakes
You only think you had a good childhood while, in fact, all the seesaws were broken and the swings clanged with loose chains and splintered wooden seats dangled down. Just because you laid in the grass and counted lady bugs, and blew milkweed into a hundred tiny seeds splayed on a breeze, and sat in the sun next to your mother while she read Thumbelina, doesn't mean you were happy. Pick the past apart long enough and you'll remember how sad you were. Then write your memoir and tell it all to Oprah. Christine Vovakes lives in northern California. Her articles and photos have appeared in several publications, including The Sacramento Bee, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Vovakes won a Patricia Painton Scholarship at the 2005 Paris Writers Workshop for a piece of short fiction. Her poetry has been published in small journals, most recently in the Spring 2007 issue of Apple Valley Review.
Scars in Progress Oleh Lysiak
Vicodin and coffee take the edge off
scars in progress. Post crash recall tumbles to the border of no return again. Cute chubby ambulance technician slips a back road IV in my arm, siren on. Emergency room doctor rode his Norton until a $500 speeding ticket upped the ante. He crams a stint into my lung to keep it from collapsing any more, stitches my elbow, congratulates me for wearing good protective gear. Where do I find gear that protects me from myself? The Demerol kicks in. No more philosophy. I'm in the zone. Oleh Lysiak arrived in the United States in 1952, a six -year-old Ukrainian DP. He survived childhood in North Philadelphia, graduated from Temple University with a degree in Journalism. After 30 years as a self-styled vagabond, Lysiak managed to set anchor on the Oregon Coast. He and his wife live in a barn with two dogs and two cats. Lysiak has written and self-published three books: Filet & Release, The Chromium Kid in the American Zooand Barely Inside the Lines.
Seeing Red John Thomas Clark For Brian Brady, M.D.
Doctor Brady, Bronx born fan of the dread Sox, looked askance at what was on my head — Not my Yankee cap — on my annual Check-up. This was straight out of Faneuil Hall where Samuel Adams and Otis Hatched plots against the Redcoats. No notice Would I take of anything sinister As he said colleagues should administer A closer look. I was none the wiser, As this other Red Sox sympathizer Neared. Along with her wide grin, she wielded The largest needle on Earth. I yielded To its contents. When I awoke, "Rule, Red Sox" Was tattooed across the top of my brain box. John Thomas Clark lives in Scarsdale, NY with his wife Ginny, daughter Chris and his black lab, Lex — the best service dog in the world. A retired NYC teacher, his poetry has appeared in or will be published in The Recorder — Journal of the American-Irish Society, Mediphors, Celtic Fringe, Exit 13, The Innisfree Poetry Journal, Lachryma and Hidden Oak. He has written The Joy of Lex — an upbeat romp, in sonnet form, which tells the story of life with Lex. Othering is his mss of 150 sonnets which recounts the journey of a person who others, who becomes "an other" as he faces a burgeoning physical disability. He has also penned The Captivity of St Patrick — a 700 pg novel which provides a window on fifth-century Ireland.
| |