issue 35 > poetry

• Springtime bursts its seams

  by Rosa Alice Branco. Translated by Alexis Levitin.

  Spring time bursts its seams.
  Girls water flowers
  the buttons of their blouses slipping free  

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• She came from the hills...

  by Rosa Alice Branco. Translated by Alexis Levitin.

  She came from the hills with a basket on her head
  and a round of goat cheese. She had full skirts
  and right away playful hands began to tease their way.

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• Two Decades in the South: A Memoir

  by Elizabeth J. Coleman

  Through the open
  window I heard
  a neighbor’s friend

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• What Began as an Ode to a Cabin in the Catskills

  by Elizabeth J. Coleman

  The stream sounds like my mother
          filling our bathtub,  porcelain
                fat-fingered hot and cold 

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• Divining

  by Elizabeth J. Coleman

  Across from me at Laguardia, a man and his son
  chat quietly.  The young man’s cane has a red tip 

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• The Dining Room War, 1967

  by Claudia Gary

  At dinnertime the first volleys are fired
  above your fork, knife, spoon, chocolate-smeared plate.

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• Desserted

  by Claudia Gary

  The kind whose steady crush whispers between
  your teeth as you move closer to its flame
  of chocolate, knowing all along you mean
  to bask a moment, then repeat the game:

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• Vinegar

  by Stephen Gibson

  The ones I slept with—I was always sleeping with someone.
  The time you did—and said it was just a kiss in the hallway.

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• YouTube Animals

  by Stephen Gibson

  Spongiform brain disease: the cow, tormented with a prod,
  won’t stand, but still makes it to the dinner table in the film.

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• Breath

  by Lena Gluck

  I almost died at birth
  with my own umbilical cord
  as my noose. 

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• beloved iv

  by Donald Kuspit

  absence
         makes the heart
  wither,

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• beloved v

  by Donald Kuspit

  doubt is as necessary
                               as night,
  foraging in shadows,

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• beloved vi

  by Donald Kuspit

  yet again words
                     to embolden our tie,
  to mark the plenitude,

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• beloved vii

  by Donald Kuspit

  you again,
                bright there
  in the blackness,

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• Hunger

  by Harriet Levin

  Before he walked into the middle
  of the room and spoiled everything,
  she found in it
  a pasture for horses.

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• From: The Odes of Mørch

  by Torkilk Mørch. Translated by David R. Slavitt.

  ...Was there someone named Dan?  And the ogonek,

  that tail on the O that indicates nasalization.
  What can we make of that?...

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• Two Hymns from the Rig Veda

  by David R. Slavitt

  HYMN CLX. Heaven and Earth

  1 Heaven and Earth, bestow prosperity on all, sustainers of the region, wise holy ones,
              two noble bowls: between these goddesses the god, the radiant Sun, travels by fixed decree.

   

  HYMN CXCI. Water. Grass. Sun.

  1 Venomous, slightly or deadly, aquatic worms,
              stinging unobserved, have infected me with poison.

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• Up on the Mountainside

  by Lee Slonimsky

  I have to pause to feel my atoms spin,
  to flow with physics governing within,
  or else reality would merely be
  dry words in textbooks.  

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• Chance

  by Lee Slonimsky

  They looked alike: a certain trilobite
  and saw-toothed leaves, at one quick glance.

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• Fish

  by Alice Teeter

  In the bucket are fish
  your mother caught in the pond
  by her house above you on this mountain.

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• Your Mother's Porch

  by Alice Teeter

  Your mother’s porch wraps around the house
  on three sides, the veranda hangs over
  the mountainside way up there
  high above your little house below.

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• How Not to Raise a Son: A Trilogy

  by Lewis Turco

  My son told me last evening
  Something I did not know:
  How bad a father I had been
  While he had time to grow,

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• Thinking Out Loud

  by Lewis Turco

  "I think; therefore, I am," I think.
  I think I think I am, I think,
  But I can wink out in a blink --

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• Gerontology

  by Lewis Turco

  Consuming agues dwell in every vein;
  Rheum and catarrh do not exist in vain –
  When one grows old, life’s nothing but a pain. 

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