A Poem by Michael H. Brownstein

A BODY’S LANGUAGE IS SOMETIMES WRITTEN IN LATIN

  

One morning you roll over and wake to a stranger,

your body splintering into hard time.

Suddenly fingers do not remember how to lift a fork,

feet need a rhythm to climb the stairs,

even hair refuses the demands of a comb.

At the hospital, they make a study in mistakes,

the hard gurney bending too much into the wrong shape,

doctors arriving to play doctor, tests made, blood drawn.

They check your ears, look long into your eyes,

move you from one room to another, tell you to go home.

Sometimes there is nothing more anyone can do.

They send you away with prescriptions for pain and swelling,

directions you can barely see, your eyes so full of fire,

the skin surrounding them sulfur yellow and rotting eggs.

So it goes. All of your life this is your body.

It did its work and brought comfort to you.

Tonight you try to walk a straight line down the hallway.

Even in bright light, shadows are instruments of pain.

 

 

 

Michael H. Brownstein has been widely published throughout the small and literary presses. His work has appeared in The Café Review, American Letters and Commentary, Skidrow Penthouse, Xavier Review, Hotel Amerika, Free Lunch, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Pacific Review, Poetrysuperhighway.com and others. In addition, he has nine poetry chapbooks including The Shooting Gallery (Samidat Press, 1987), Poems from the Body Bag (Ommation Press, 1988), A Period of Trees (Snark Press, 2004), What Stone Is (Fractal Edge Press, 2005), I Was a Teacher Once (Ten Page Press, 2011) and Firestorm: A Rendering of Torah--http://booksonblog35.blogspot.com/ (Camel Saloon Press, 2012). He is the editor of First Poems from Viet Nam (2011).  Brownstein taught elementary school in Chicago’s inner city (he is now retired), but he continues to study authentic African instruments, conducts grant-writing workshops for educators, designs websites and records performance and music pieces with grants from the City of Chicago?s Department of Cultural Affairs, the Oppenheimer Foundation, BP Leadership Grants, and others.

Two Poems by Chris Butler

Blew

When she blew me

the last kiss,

I tried to

pocket and save it

for an eternal later,

but I didn’t know

I was also carrying

around a hole,

so it’s long lost

with all of my

loose change.

Money Shot

I can no longer

take pleasure

in pornography,

for fear

that the girl,

whose love

I once

suffered over,

might be the star

of the money shot.

 

 

 

 

Chris Butler is a twentysomething nobody shouting from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut.

Two Poems by Michael Estabrook

 

 

the worst day ever in my life

Winter, first semester away at college,

I take the train on Saturday, like usual,

to my girlfriend’s school,

meet her in the dorm lobby.

She sits, quiet, not looking at me,

one pretty leg folded under,

a beautiful girl, so collegiate, so confident,

fresh as new winter snow.

“I’m so sorry, Mike” she says,

looking out through the window,

“But I can’t see you today.”

I didn’t see this coming, nope,

broadsided by this one.

We had been together

since high school, three years now,

and were serious, at least

I thought we were serious.

“I have a date today with another guy.”

My heart sinks like a stone

down to the bottom of the sea.

“I need to date other guys to be certain

you are the right one for me.”

I’m dumbfounded, shattered, I shrug.

What could I do? It is useless to protest.

But before leaving the campus

I go over to the cafeteria,

watch from an upper window

as she and her new boyfriend

come in for lunch, watch her giggling

and playful, throwing little snowballs

at her new beau, her lustrous

brown hair catching the sun.

 

 

 

 

Instead of trying to kiss and paw at her

 

I remember that dismal,

uncertain time in college

(lost in the mists of life’s dark,

tangled jungle)

when my wife

(my girlfriend then)

decided she needed to wander,

to date other guys. If instead

of trying to kiss and paw at her,

these short-sighted jackasses

(thank God for that)

would have been chivalrous

and caring, selfless and concerned

about what she thought and felt

and had to say, she might

have connected with something

in one of them, something

she admired and needed

and came to love, something

she has never found in me.

Things might have been

very different than they are today.

Certainly if she had dated another guy

even a handful of times

I wouldn’t be here right now.

 

 

 

Michael Estabrook is a baby boomer who began getting his poetry published in the late 1980s. Over the years he has published 15 poetry chapbooks, his most recent entitled “When the Muse Speaks.” His interests include history, art, music, theatre, opera, and his wife who just happens to be the most beautiful woman he has ever known.

A Poem by Denny E. Marshall

Later Tonight
She is not the first woman
That has told me good-bye
She is the first one
I still dream of
And pretend she is mine


Denny E. Marshall has had poetry recently published and rejected.

A Poem by James Owens

Lost

But how could I have

returned to you?

How? When

the memory

of fingertips

still burned my face

like bars of sunlight

falling heavily

through autumn shadows,

and behind ordinary

things the colors

of the world

were memories

of the angels’ touch?

I am trying to speak.

I couldn't return ---

not with this desire

shivering in me like a drenched

child. This longing

for a breath

to tear me open.

This lust that will

slice me into color.

I didn't speak. I turned

from you. I drifted

into the trees. I saw

the lovers kiss, and they

fell into each other

and blew away, sand

on the ancient wind,

turning deeper

into the blue wind

and the sky

and the sky

and the sky

 

 

 

James Owens divides his time between Wabash, Ind., and Northern Ontario. Two books of his poems have been published: An Hour is the Doorway (Black Lawrence Press) and Frost Lights a Thin Flame (Mayapple Press). His poems, reviews, translations, and photographs have appeared widely in literary journals, including recent or upcoming publications in The Cortland Review, The Cresset, Poetry Ireland, and The Chaffey Review. He blogs at http://circumstanceandmagic.blogspot.com

A Poem by Nicole Yurcaba

Objectified

the dynamics shifted in your favor

so that you could spill your thick ink onto my unlined pages,

exposing half-truthed confidences between my spread-open covers.

you creased me, broke me at my well-stitched, leather-bound spine.

eventually you tore, ripped, shredded my corners.

how could i--the diary whose pages you gently fingered--ever have fallen into abused disarray?

Reach into the Darkness and Feel

stretch your blood-licked hand to grasp the glass

shards littering the rain-kissed asphalt--

remnants of a wreck formerly known as "Love".

and as I lie motionless, glassy-eyed, concussed,

I'll forgive myself for inadvertently jerking the steady wheel

from your guiding, all-knowing hand;

headlong-sending us into a guardrail disguised as "Reality".

Nicole Yurcaba is a backwoods feminist hailing from West Virginia. Her childhood icons were Daniel Boone, Bettie Page and Rosie the Riveter. An adjunct instructor, farm hand, and substitute teacher, her work has been published in a multitude of places including Referential Magazine, VoxPoetica, Rolling Thunder Quarterly, The Literary Burlesque, Floyd County  Moonshine, and many others.

Two Poems by Sarah Flint

Your Eyes

You believe your eyes shine light

And that no one can be blind to you

You believe your head touches the stars

And millions are left behind you in the clouds

Where they ought to be

No one can touch your heights of aloofness.

You believe your words are the choicest

And rarest of jewels

Only you can have the last one

And it will always be the best and most precise.

You are ablaze with your self-belief

It sits in you like a fat toad

Or a yapping dog

It is undeniably persistent.

I look for my reflection in your eye

Finding none my soul shrinks

Away from your bright bluster

And moves towards a gentler and softer light.

Look into my eye and tell me

what you see in your blindness.

Speak your truth

Your words were like a singing

Stream in the cwm.

Bubbling ,swirling, ceaseless.

They tickled me. They were fresh.

Your words were like a

Sell-by date passed.

Stale, sour, wasteful.

They bored me. They annoyed.

Your words are a sickness

Ready to infect.

Foul. Obnoxious. Toxic.

They poison me. They make me speechless.

My words were like a freshly

Formed butterfly.

Carefree. Colourful. Simple.

They empowered me. They danced with yours.

My words were like a cornered rat

Down a hole.

Aggressive. Uneasy. Ready to run.

They screamed. Then they hid.

My words are like gold dust

Cupped in the palm of my hand.

Precious. Pure. Honest.

I show you a fist.

Sarah Flint has been trying to put words into good order for a while. Originally writing about all things green and horticultural she now has had success in the world of poetry and flash fiction. She has been runner up in the Scottish Mountaineering Council poetry competition for 2 years running and is a regular contributor to The Pygmy Giant.