Time is a Worn Thread
by Edward Mycue
“poetry” is an odd and restricting term.
marianne moore (“i too detest it … but find in it … a place for the
genuine.”)
william carlos williams (“men die every day for want of what is found
there ….”)
avoid and don’t censor with the corset of “poetry.” just write.
grow into technique, your own vocabulary.
fight.
bang out your stuff.
operate simply.
(pulse).
get a move on.
time is a worn thread.
Nothing else moves
by Iclal Akcay
oy anam, oy babam,
oy gençliğim, geçmişim geleceğim
adım Bergen,
öyle diyorlar bana,
acıların kadınıyım
17‘imden beri şarkı söylerim
annem bile unuttu gerçek adımı
eşim, sevdiğim adam
kezzapla dağladı yüzümü
oy, bu aşk, oy, şöhret, para
27‘imde vurdu, koydu beni mezara.
Oh mother, oh father,
oh my youth, my past and my future,
my name is Bergen,
that’s what they call me
the woman of pain.
I’ve been singing since I was 17.
My gypsy mother forgot my real name.
Oh, this love, oh fortune and fame
my husband,
the man I loved
threw acid in my face
my husband,
the man I loved,
gunned me down at 27.
It’s pitch dark now.
a woman’s voice is the only link
to yesterday evening
streaming melancholy
among twittering street lights
she breaks into pieces
in another part of the city.
She was singing
scratching the ground
with her nails
an irresistible force
a gunshot
everybody else is numb
the song’s melody
still reaches my ears.
Now, it’s so quiet.
a gentle breeze moves a lock of my hair
from its original place.
the motion releases tension
into this steady night.
I can see
nothing else moves
except perhaps
a bird’s feather
making slow rounds
in mid air
totally undetermined
about its final destination
in the labyrinths
of the sudden breeze.
Am I mistaken?
it’s difficult to know
if anything else really moves.
not even the weightless curves
of my lavish dress
though it gently sweeps
the surface of my legs.
A memory suddenly slits my heart
a butcher’s knife finding its way
through a dying animal.
the familiarity of the pain
isn’t soothing.
it’s massive,
it’s here.
Ulla
by Madalina Florea
She came—in between conversations of various kinds—
an appearance
from behind the unknown mountain
which you, in your famous stubbornness, wanted to climb
on your own strength
You’re taking a breather
You notice the way up it’s steeper
than you thought
We’re taking a breather
We’re speaking about you and others
Stubborn like you, brave like you
The word is powerful these days
like in the beginning
we are whispering and yet the word
can be felt on the skin like the air we breathe
we say her name
and the impossible is present—
in less flesh and blood
than usual
Ulla has come
to encourage you for the last time
She proudly shows her short hair
“I’ve already prepared myself
for the challenge;
we’ll see each other up there soon,”
she says to you
and points with fresh blood around the fingernails
to a mountain top
still invisible to us.
Ulla
A venit—printer subiecte de tot felul—
o aparitie
de dincolo de muntele necunoscut
pe care tu, in celebra ta incapatanare, ai vrut sa-l uric
pe propria-ti putere
Ai luat o pauza ca sa respiri
vezi ca urcusul e mai abrupt
decat ti-ai imaginat
Am luat si noi o pauza sa respiram
vorbim despre tine si altii
incapatnati ca tine, curajosi ca tine
cuvantul e puternic zilele acestea
ca la inceputuri
vorbim in soapta si totusi cuvantul
se simte pe piele precum aerul pe care-l respiram
ii spunem numele
si imposibilul e present—
in mai putina carne si oase
decat de obicei
Ulla a venit
sa te incurajeze pentru ultima data
iti arata mandra parul ei scurt
“m-am pregatit déjà
pentru marea incercare
ne vedem acolo sus in curand”
iti spune
si arata cu sange proaspat in jurul unghiilor
catre un varf de munte
pentru noi inca invisibil.
Postcards
by Kate Foley
Slumbering on my mantelpiece
the Fat Lady from a Maltese tomb.
She doesn’t have to prove anything
or ever wake up.
Heaped as a croissant
whatever caused her to lie down forever
has left only a trace of red
ochre. Her neighbour,
the Hooded Lady, carved from the horn
of an unimaginable beast,
no longer smokes with cold
or listens to the bone flute
play a tune we’ll never know
if we’ve remembered
or reinvented.
Stone tools or pixels.
Tracks of long dead silences.
A bell ringing underwater.
To the Field Of Reeds
by Kate Foley
The heart is measured in a scale against the feather of truth
in the Egyptian Book of the Dead
42 gods waiting,
a placard held up,
one for each sin.
My heart, fat, elderly, shabby,
surely deserves some credit for keeping on
keeping on?
Over there the Field of Reeds.
My heart gives a little shall-I-make-it? skip.
Your feather trembles. Ever since I said I’m a liar
and a coward and you said ‘yes, but I love you’
I’ve borrowed your compass.
Now that 42 pairs of eyes
are sizing up my canopic heart,
measuring the equilibrium of the scales,
I need it.
OK, OK, myth and procrastination.
You know and I know the Field of Reeds
is nothing more or less
than a Sunday morning in our bed
while we can. But lend me your feather
and I’ll look very hard for my own.
One feather on each side
trimmed and steady
as she goes.
A Past Life Archaeology in Measurable Terms
by Charles Jensen
OMM SETY, born Dorothy Eady (1904-1981), is considered the most compelling argument for
reincarnation. Following a freak accident in her house at age 4, claimed to almost fully recover
a past life memory of being an Egyptian priestess. Scientists were unable to explain her high
rate of success in predicting the location of buried antiquities.
I know how much a year weighs,
how many days rest in a spade’s single dip
as it cuts into sand.
I pull day after day from the ground—
I say, Here there was a garden.
The diggers dig and find what I remember.
Nothing is ever lost—my other life in Egypt you may not believe true,
but my memories sift upward through the brain and I discover things,
impossible things. I know where the bodies are buried,
where the dogs curled in sleep head to tail,
exactly where clay pots shattered when they fell.
Lives have simple beginnings and ends. Artifacts sleep.
We turn the earth upside down
as if years would pass again.
The earth,
an hourglass.
Omm Sety Rides the Night Train to Giza
by Charles Jensen
Omm Sety, born Dorothy Eady (1904-1981), is considered the most compelling argument
for reincarnation, having recovered the memory of a past life in ancient Egypt.
Two trains pass each other in darkness,
the lights of one zip past the windows of the other:
a swarming glow of fireflies.
And then darkness fills the window with its inkblots
until I see my own face
murky, hesitant in the spill of night.
I wonder if the souls of these two trains
recognize each other as they cut through the air
never touching, but aware
another train exists. Such heavy questions.
The car’s hypnotic rock makes a cradle of my seat;
my mind is tired.
All my years I lived feeling shorn in two. Pieces missing.
When this train finds its station, men will chop it up,
an earthworm spliced into segments.
The cars will pull apart so easily those men won’t think
to listen for their cries. Much of life’s pain is released this silently.
And the train doesn’t die. It lives, ridiculously, in ruin.
What You Left Behind
by Bryan R. Monte
The Yellow Pages A through L
A half dozen empty Pepsi cans
The fluorescent lamp over the kitchen sink
An empty refrigerator, its door ajar, humming in the corner
Postcards of Joseph and Emma Smith
Taken out of their frames, taped to the wall
A blue striped vine torn out of its pot
Soil streaked across the white living room rug
Four holes in the wall behind the rocking chair
Six red sequins from your skating suit on the closet floor
An empty Imodium D bottle in the medicine chest
Five purple cough syrup stains in the bathroom sink
Auburn hairs in my electric razor and the shower drain
Echoes in the empty back bedroom.
Wat je achter liet
De Gouden Gids A tot L
Zes lege Pepsi blikken
De TL buis boven de keuken aanrecht
Een lege koelkast, zijn deur open, zoemend in de hoek
Ansichtkaarten van Joseph en Emma Smith
Uit hun lijsten gehaald, geplakt aan de muur
Een blauw-gestreepte klimplant, uit zijn pot gerukt
Aarde gestrooid over het witte woonkamer tapijt
Vier gaten in de muur achter de schommelstoel
Zes rode lovertjes van jouw schaatspak op de halkastvloer
Een lege Imodium doosje in de medicijnkast
Vijf paarse hoestsiroopvlekken in de wastafel
Rode haren in mijn scheerapparaat en de douche afvoer
Weergalmen in de lege achter slaapkamer.
New and Used
by Andrea Rubin
There is No Drug Whose Name is Not Pretend
by Andrea Rubin