tipton poetry journal #29

Tipton Poetry Journal


Editor’s Note

Tipton Poetry Journal, located in the heartland of the Midwest, publishes quality poetry from Indiana and around the world.

Welcome to our 29th issue, in which we once again publish a book review – this time a poetry chapbook (Dark Leaves, Strange Light) by Tom Raithel, a poet from Evansville, Indiana. Going forward we will consider book reviews if the author has previously been published in TPJ and if the book is recent.

Barry Harris, EditorTipton Poetry Journal

Cover photo, “Monet’s Bridge” by Jessica D. Thompson, New Harmony, Indiana.

Copyright 2016 by the Tipton Poetry Journal.

All rights remain the exclusive property of the individual contributors and may not be used without their permission.

Tipton Poetry Journal is published by Brick Street Poetry Inc., a tax-exempt non-profit organization under IRS Code 501(c)(3). Brick Street Poetry Inc. publishes the Tipton Poetry Journal, hosts the monthly poetry series Poetry on Brick Street and sponsors other poetry-related events.


Contents

Christopher Todd Anderson ................................................1

Vibha Malhotra ..................................................................2

Heath Brougher ..................................................................3

Emily Strauss .....................................................................4

Simon Perchik.....................................................................6

Melisha Garrett...................................................................7

Melissa Parietti ..................................................................8

Allison Gliesman.................................................................9

Steve Hood ........................................................................10

Cathryn Shea ....................................................................10

Indunil Madhusankha.......................................................12

Carol Hamilton .................................................................13

Erin McIntosh ...................................................................14

Timothy Robbins...............................................................14

Nancy Pulley .....................................................................17

Martin Willitts Jr. .............................................................18

Brian Robert Flynn...........................................................20

Sonnet by Saloni Kaul.......................................................22

Patrick Erickson ...............................................................23

John P. Kristofco ..............................................................24

Gayle Compton .................................................................24

Kenneth Salzmann............................................................26

Heather Truett ..................................................................27

Luke Samra ......................................................................28

Mimi Ford .........................................................................30


Luke Powers .....................................................................30

Review: Dark Leaves, Strange Light by Tom Raithel........36

Clinton Inman ..................................................................40

Jim Wardell ......................................................................40

Woodrow Hightower ........................................................42

Clinton Inman...................................................................43

Keith Moul ........................................................................44

Katherine Givens ..............................................................45

Susan Niz ..........................................................................46

Lucas Smith ......................................................................47

Erren Kelly .......................................................................48

Martin Willitts Jr..............................................................49

Keith Dunlap ....................................................................50

Keith Dunlap .....................................................................51

Ryan Frisinger..................................................................52

Ryan Frisinger..................................................................52

Clinton Inman...................................................................54

Timothy Robbins ..............................................................54

Thomas O’Dore .................................................................56

Richard Boada ...................................................................57

Susan Niz ..........................................................................58

Kudzai Mahwite................................................................59

Christopher Todd Anderson .............................................60

Biographies .......................................................................61


1

About the TongueChristopher Todd Anderson

My tongue is a prodigy. If it had armsand legs, it would be on talk shows. It is a genius, it is buff and agile. Eyeless, it tells sweet from sour, bitter from salt. It could be the world’s best carnie or con man. It can wrestle its loverall night in the dirtiest hotel in Joplin,then spend the next morning singingVerdi and feasting on satsuma oranges.

Sometimes words line up at its tiplike third graders on a diving board,then plunge into the clean blue air. Though it can pronounce diphtheriaand Quetzalcoatl, it can spit and slather,dangle and curse like any workworn lubber.Lock it in its toothy cage and, like Houdini,it twists itself free. You will never net it nor pull it ashore. Watch as, slick as an eel,it swims upstream through a river of gin.

An Indiana native who grew up in Fort Wayne, Christopher Todd Anderson is now an Associate Professor of English at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. His poems have most recently appeared in journals such as River Styx, Tar River Poetry, Ellipsis, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Midwest Quarterly, where he also served as guest poetry editor for their 2013-14 print run.


2

PossessedVibha Malhotra

I lie flat on my backspread-eagledlife seeps through my poresmingles with the eartharound me, saplings raise their headsand wither

I count seconds with my heartbeatstime slows downblood coagulatesbreath freezesit hangs in the air above my faceposing existential questions

The mind emptiesone memory at a timeone thought at a timeuntil nothing remainsbut your wordsin what had once beenmy brain

Vibha Malhotra is a writer, a poet, an editor, and a translator, and the founder of Literature Studio. She is the editor-in-chief of Literature Studio Review. Vibha holds a Master in Creative Writing from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. At present, apart from running Literature Studio and teaching creative writing to all age groups, she works as a Consulting Editor with Dorling Kindersley (Penguin Random House). Her work has been published in literary e-journals such as Muse India and The Luxembourg Review, and in dailies such as The Times of India and Ceylon Today. Vibha lives in Delhi, India.


3

PerishableHeath Brougher

Sitting under cement treeswrapped in the blissful numb

I chose the songsleft in the space between troughand entrails, walking the skywith my fingers,

toddlers of the air, I roseto feel the grass-stains under my back. They were purpleas a tilting cup of grape juice.

This trunk must be hollow, I said, watching a squirrel emergewith cheeks bloated to acorn-width.I looked into the black hole

and saw children keeping namesand jumping through ropes.The smell of melted plums came and I ate their essence off the concreteslowly turned brown through years of wood.

[This poem was first published in Fauna Quarterly]

Heath Brougher lives in York, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University. He recently finished his second chapbook and has two others on the way as well as a full-length book of poetry. Heath has been previously published or has work forthcoming in Yellow Chair Review, Of/with, Mobius, Third Wednesday, Foliate Oak, Main Street Rag, *Star 82 Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Calliope, Van Gogh's Ear, MiPOesias, Gloom Cupboard, Rust + Moth, Eunoia Review, BlazeVOX, Indigo Rising, Icebox Journal, Inscape Literary Journal, and elsewhere.


4

Maize GodEmily Strauss

we no longer talk to cornor the azure sky or storms,sunsets are for self-exposureby tiny light-capturing lensesdeep pinks only a backdrop

not to light a smoky kitchenin a sod hut built in hastebefore a prairie winterthe moon dissipated, smallbloody animal hanging

now the sky has no more starsglaring arc lamps fillevery corner, the corn faraway in industrially plowed fields, ears wrapped, shipped

displayed— we need notspeak to it, give thanksbend to the kernelsin gratitude, hands raisedto the rain, faces shining wet

hair streaming. No— let uswater-proof our lives, skirtpuddles, cash our checks, prayto distant robed men,pass the corn as if a wall

of fodder beside the road,the air simply menacing dusty, forbidding in its heat, rays touch the stalks, leaves take sun light, make sugar


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and we are unimpressedwith the results, ears of cornanimals ingest, we have no gestures left, no words of praise,the sky blank, wind broken

just a commodity: corn, don't offer your hands in prayertoday's price- 77 cents a busheltoo low to harvest, leave itrot where it grew, for crows.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Nearly 300 of her poems appear in over a hundred online venues and in anthologies, in the US, UK, Canada, and further abroad. The natural world is often her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her and personal histories. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.


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*Simon Perchik

You button this shirtthe way doves break freeand the magician bows

–begin by reaching inthough the applause even nowis darkening on a calendar

that has no morningsno secret place was savedfor the sleeve half fleece

half dripping oil –your sweatlouder and loudercovered with rain from the 40s.

Simon Perchik’s poetry has also appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere. Simon lives in East Hampton, New York.


7

Morning BusMelisha Garrett

“Life is like a falling leaf.”That’s how he began the conversation.

You never know who you’ll end up sitting next to on the morning bus.

Damn it.

He proceeded to outline his story.The importance of it.The significance.

I sighed a miraculously inward sigh.

Leaving the bus,ears fullhead throbbingwords circlingcoffee cold

I watched as five golden leaves swirledabove menext to me

then hit the groundgentlybut with permanence.

A very sad very musty very immutable infinity.

I guess that bastard was right.

Melisha Garrett graduated from Montana State University with her MA in English. She has since relocated to Tennessee. She writes that she finds herself missing the Rockies, and oddly, the bus conversations of the past.


8

This is when I think of youMelissa Parietti

This is when I think of you:

I think of you in philosophy clubWhile boys and girls throw Kant, Nietzsche, Locke

at each other's sweater-covered arms,extend to eager raised hands.

I think of you when I shouldn'tWhen I'm laughing with friends And singing in the darkWhen girls pass me in the hallwaysAnd casual Hellos abound

I think of you in anthropology, Don't ask me why.

I think of you, and your bedroom floorStains on the bed sheetsMy breathing, Yours. I think of you always at the wrong timeI think of you when it hurts the most

I think of you in movie theaterswhere bad movies play, and empty seats surroundI think of you when I close my eyes and try.

I think of you when I read the newspaperAnd brood over my daily bountyOf homework and social encounterAnd the days I spend here, the weeks to comeI think of you when I think of time


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This is when I think of youWhen I walk back home when its cold and everything shivers

And never when I see

Couples kissOr love songs blareor two people sit contented, silentNext to one another

Melissa Parietti is a native of Long Island originally from Melville, New York. Melissa attended business classes and writing workshops at SUNY Geneseo. At 24 years old, her poetry has received several acceptances to print and online journals

voodooAllison Gliesman

You put a stake in my heart and claimed it for your own. But once the arteries ran dryAnd all of my blood had stained the floor,You ripped out that hollow vessel And threw it in a drawer next toAll the other hearts with holes like mine.You didn’t mean to hurt them too, But now your room is a bloodied mess,And you can’t remember if the blood is hers or mine or yours.

Allison Gliesman lives and writes in Kansas.


10

Loyal CompanionSteve Hood

Adolf loved dear his dog, Blondi,but Eva hated her, kicked her, sometimes.

Unique bond between species,dogs of snowy death camps bark,well-clothed in lush fur.

Before killed by a cyanide pill,she looked into his eyes,lapped water from a bowl,

and her five puppies, takenfrom Goebbels’ children, were shot in a nearby garden.

[This poem was first published by The Waterhouse Review]

Steve Hood is an attorney and political activist. His work won an award from the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association and has been published in many places including Crack the Spine, Maudlin House, and the anthology Noisy Water. His chapbook From Here To Astronomy was published by Pudding House. Steve lives in Bellingham, Washington.

GlimmerCathryn SheaAfter James Schuyler

The apple tree that last year was weighed down this year bears little fruit. Was it the dry spell we had?


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All the apple tree branches go hooray, all at once. The October sun blasts through the haze. The Stock Market crashed. Well, nobody’s calling it a crash. But it tanked pretty good. My portfolio! I’m not to think of it. On my sill, bananas from Ecuadorstill green with some yellow and brown specks. The brown is normal I think. The shadow on my cup shaped like a frog reminds me of a frog I saw once with bulging eyes staring back at me. I liked that frog, a little bellows huffing and puffing with life in the cool pond. Today you could peel the sunlight off the cupboard and fling it into the compost, gold streaks and all. Bury the glow right in the mulch.

Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Allegro, Gravel, Gargoyle, Eunoia, Main Street Rag, Permafrost, Poet Lore, Quiddity, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Snap Bean, is by CC.Marimbo (2014). Cathryn is included in the 2012 anthology Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape and she served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Cathryn lives in California. Visit her website http://www.cathrynshea.com or follow her on Twitter: @cathy_shea.

http://www.cathrynshea.com/


12

OasisIndunil Madhusankha

All the living are a caravancaught in the sterile desert of sufferingEmbattled in the timelesssansāric journey Sans a purpose,quite unaware of a way of crossing the desert

The Buddha, the most fabulous of all teachersNow is in the oasis,having circumvented the barrenness

Renunciation,as the Blessed One preaches, clears the path to the salvation,to the Oasis, located beyond the arid desert of suffering

[This poem was first published by Lost Tower Publications in the international anthology of poetry, Journeys Along the Silk Road by Selected International Poets]

Indunil Madhusankha is currently an undergraduate in the Faculty of Science of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. While his major involvement is with the areas of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, he pursues a successful writing career as a poet and content writer. He has received several awards from some National Level English Essay Competitions. Indunil has written a volume of poetry entitled, Oasis, which explores diverse dimensions of society and he has been published in several international anthologies, journals and magazines. Moreover, he has undertaken research projects pertaining to the areas of ELT and Sri Lankan Literature in English.


13

St. Jerome’s LionsCarol Hamilton

Perhaps St. Jerome met a lionin the desert. History saysthe attribution of thorn-removingbeneficence was probably a caseof mistaken identity. There wasa less irascible saint nearbyof similar name. But Jerome'smany artists do not seem to haveever been closer to a lionthan a fuzzy description giventhird-hand. The golden beasts,tucked near the saint in so many works look moredogly, more like monkey-faced stones curled into a yellow carvingor just stiff-legged cutouts.This tale of saint, thorn, lion, donkeypaints a vivid scene,and art is not framed with a rigid reality.Were these fantasy beastscaged in my zoo, I might well pay to become a member and makeregular morning visits to such harmless sacred creatures.

Carol Hamilton is a former Poet Laureate of Oklahoma and has been nominated six times for a Pushcart Prize. She has published 17 books: children’s novels, legends and poetry, most recently Such Deaths. Her recent and upcoming publications are in Poet Lore, Limestone, Louisiana Literature, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Albatross, Two Cities Review, Main Street Rag, Abbey and others.


14

lost itErin McIntosh

I read somewhere that people are losingthe meaning of things, forgetting they want

a road, or a sign, or an angel.

People are afraid and feel they know everything about it.I read that too.

Last night I was curled on a sofa in a bedroomtouching arms with someone I love.

Tonight he said to me, When will I see you?Standing again in front of me.

Try as we might, (and we did) we could not figure it out.

Erin McIntosh is a writer and actress currently living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared and is forthcoming in various journals including Bone Bouquet, Lavender Review, Hawai’i Review, apt, Plenitude Magazine, and Pine Hills Review, among others.

Southern Decatur CountyTimothy Robbins

Squirrel naked and greasy flanked by corn’s yellow teeth. Squirrel on the sill ignoring a glass bird that bows without dropping its hat.


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Squirrel falling straight as a walnut. then swinging in my hand,perfectly relaxed.I never know where Bill will appear.By a campfire under Hoosierstars or under the single redstar of his Texaco Fire Chief Gas Pump. Posing for a photobeside the wreck of the bi-planehe flew above the Ohio.At his kitchen table,wine glasses on an oil cloth,his machinist’s fingers coaxing ghosts from rims. Maggie may appear beside wobbling Tower of Babel cakes.Or among beans and cabbages, beating a goat. Or in a dream where her breasts plop from her sun dress, clogging the garden rows. I never know where I will show.In the civil war cemetery pickingblackberries. Underwear-swimmingin Sand Creek’s muddy water catching a baby snake. In the auditorium where my cousin and two hundred others march in minister’s robes while I squirm in a suit without briefs.

Timothy Robbins teaches ESL and does freelance translation in Wisconsin. He has a BA in French and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Indiana University. He has been a regular contributor to Hanging Loose since 1978. His poems have also appeared appeared in Three New Poets, Long Shot, The James White Review, Evergreen, Off The Coast, Slant, Main Street Rag and various small zines.


16

A Parent’s RegretNancy Pulley

Like every parent since,God began to imagine what was going to happen—and leave him all alone

shuffling about heavenremembering clayand the first twitchof a quickening arm.

He must have tastedthe juice running downtheir chins tart and sweet—and them just created, new

to the sense of tasteand touch, passing the appleback and forth like a carafe of good red wine.

After that day, there wereangry words, apologies—hischildren hiding themselvesfrom him, running from

the garden. He has triedto forget the look on theirfaces, though some people sayhe put it there. He wanted

shame, but that other thing—the fear—was a surpriseeven to him. You give someonelife and you just don’t know


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where it will end. He sitsin the garden at evening, remembershow it was before he madethe point he was their Father.

Burning BushNancy Pulley

It appears like God to Moses, a fierywhoosh of the unknown, a peek at blaze.until all thought of winter is sucked into

its bonfire and bones are fired, eyes reflectthe red of desire and of ripe fruit, the crimsonof blood running fast towards winter.

Tiny tongues of leaves burn one deciduous spark at a time. Such brazen flair with loss in the air.How soon you will forfeit everything

to the north wind. Take heat when it comes, a flame of spirit at the edge of frost, passion in a land of spare and boney branches.

Nancy Pulley has poems published in Flying Island, Passages North, Plainsong, The Sycamore Review, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, and the Humpback Barn Festival collection. In 1992 she won the Indiana Writer’s Center Poetry Chapbook contest, resulting in the publication of her Tremolo of Light. Nancy lives in Columbus, Indiana.


18

ChronicleMartin Willitts Jr.

We wait for the narrativethunder with expectationof a golden retriever

the illuminationwith such passion —

however the shoulder of the skysags oily and uncomfortably —

yet we have anticipated thisas we huddled undergreen-gray shadelike passengerswaiting for a connection

even the ones in houseslow to the groundnotice the Homecoming —

tens of thousandsof longings—

someone tries to pinpointthe momentwhen the texture changed


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for it beganminiature like belief doesor when a branchsnaps against a windowand someone declaresit is a divine message

then suddenlyan orchid of reporters appearconjured from a rendin the magnetic fieldof reality

Martin Willitts Jr. is the winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice. He has 8 full-length collections and over 20 chapbooks of poetry. His forthcoming books include How to Be Silent (FutureCycle Press), God Is Not Amused With What You Are Doing In Her Name (Aldrich Press), and Dylan Thomas and the Writer’s Shed (FutureCycle Press). Martin lives in Syracuse, New York.


20

Cézanne Poaching EggsBrian Robert Flynn

The water comes to a simmer.A glimmer

of white vinegar scents the scene. The egg slips

nearer to its uncertain end, diverted

from its biological cocka doodle

doings. Cézanne eyes the swirling vortex.

He will strain to make things perfect. It’s gone on

like this for years, the hunger to be exact.

The vinegar’s swirl keeps its pact,a balled up

little yellow yolk. Back in his studio,

cup of tea in hand, he sprinklespepper on


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his egg. Slathers soft butter on his baguette.

Sets his eyes on his newspaper, sans his père’s

attentive smirk (hatted Monet’s puff of smoke,

notwithstanding). He forks into what’s poached,

the yellow glow brightening his blue willow

plate. For a precise moment,all the world

becomes still. The cat smiles, eyes a-spiral.

She fancies hers over-easy.

Originally from Denver, Brian Robert Flynn is currently breathing the fiction and poetry of Washington, DC. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in LETTERS Journal, The Learned Pig, Glasgow Review of Books, Banango Street, and The Moth.


22

Lake Maxinkuckee, IndianaSonnet by Saloni Kaul

Flocks elegant of woodducks smoothly skimLake Maxinkuckee like hard buoyantly afloatToys wooden; glides so gracious, in unmoving rhythm,That heartless inanimate Nature must gloatAt the seeming power, effortless, controlled,It exerts over its country creatures all around , That with their striking breathing beauty boldCan look cold as art and senses confound.But poet author breathes quacking life inTo fantastical sketches, skeletons of thoughtCrafted of immaterial fabrics, whimsy thin ,Till whole world peopled is wide loved and sought. Tell me one day if you like reality on edge of knife,For even art’s woodducks stiff as toys take on life.

Saloni Kaul, author and poet, first published at the age of ten, has been in print since. As critic and columnist, Saloni has enjoyed 37 years of being published in leading dailies and magazines. From time to time Saloni has held many an editorial position. Saloni has also won considerable critical acclaim as broadcaster and producer-presenter of radio documentaries and features. Saloni Kaul's first volume, Saloni Kaul’s Book of Children’s Poetry, was published in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All Her work has been published or will appear in Poetry Quarterly, The Horrorzine, Eye On Life Magazine, Poetry and Paint Anthology, Misty Mountain Review, Inwood Indiana and Sentinel Quarterly. Saloni lives in Rome and Toronto.


23

Bird’s Eye MaplePatrick Erickson

they call itnot for nothing

The bird’s eye detectsthe tiniest nitwhen there are nitpickers

The tiniest flawand the bird’s eye mapleis hidden

beneath the finest velvetsand the finest satinsand the finest silks

when the thinnest veneerseparates the bird’s eye maplefrom the finest mahogany

and the bird’s eye mapleis hidden

while the nitpickersare in full view.

Patrick Erickson is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself, a former shepherd of sheep, a small flock with no sheep dog and no hang-dog expression. Or he is the sheep dog, a small dog, with the hang-dog expression. Secretariat is his mentor, though he has never been an achiever and has never gained on the competition. He resonates to a friend's definition of change; though a bit dated with the advent of wi fi, it has the ring of truth to it: change coming at us a lot faster because you can punch a whole lot more, a whole lot faster down digital

broadband "glass" fiber than an old copper co-axial landline cable. Of late, Patrick’s work has appeared in Poetry Pacific, Red Fez, SubtleTea, The Oddville Press and Literary Juice. He lives in Garland, Texas.


24

Bird CageJohn P. Kristofco

they tilt their robot heads,mimic my clack back at them,these rivet-eyed imposters,snapping at the same seeds every day,their sun and moon,staring like the whole world stares at meand I, left to cipher what I can,have only empty nouns and verbs,useless in the language of these souls,puzzled as they look at me,befuddled by the boundaries of my cage

John P. Kristofco, from Highland Heights, Ohio, is professor of English and the former dean of Wayne College in Orrville, Ohio. His poetry, short stories, and essay have appeared in over a hundred different publications, including: Folio, Cimarron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Rattle, Poem, and Sierra Nevada Review. He has published three collections of poetry: A Box of Stones, Apparitions, and The Fire in Our Eyes and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.

WondersGayle Compton

I have never seen the Taj Mahalnor viewed with quickened pulsethe four faces of the Matterhorn

But I have seen grown menin one sad and frozen cityunable to sleep,worrying over the health of the992G front end loader.


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I have seen them in gray-tiledboard rooms,Men—and women, God forbid!pale and cadaverous with laptops and flow charts

Converts of Six-Sigmaimportuning the deities over the untrueangle of articulation,the feeble lower float-down on empty,Jehovah God, the erratic hydraulic cycle time,great Allah, St. Michael, and Mary, Mother of Jesus,the drifting bore stroke on low idle!

And when at last the great 992G front end loader,brawny friend of elk and duck, robust ally of the EPA,is about his business, 880 horsepower,devouring and regurgitating Lost Mountain, Wildcat and Big Shoal,I have seen them dance far into the nightof wine and romance at full throttle.

I have seen wonders.

_______________________________________________

Gayle Compton, a hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky, lives up the river from where Randall McCoy is buried and attended college on the hill where “Cotton Top” Mounts was hanged. With deep affection, he tells the story of Appalachia’s common people, allowing them to speak, without apology, in their own colorful language. His prize-winning stories, poems and essays have appeared most recently in Sow’s Ear, Now and Then, New Southerner, Blue Collar Review, Kentucky Review and Main Street Rag anthologies. Coal Dust and Crabgrass, a collection of poetry, is due March 2017 from FutureCycle Press.


26

For the Names of ThingsKenneth Salzmann

Thank you for the many kindnessesyou've shown me, if only from a distance.

Thank you for the blessingsI don't recall and the ones I never noticed.

Thank you for your gentle way and steeled will;for forgotten dreams, for imperfection.

Thank you for the blackbird and the wheelbarrowand for teaching me the names of things anew.

Thank you for your failure to reply.

Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, as well as such anthologies as Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), a Finalist (Anthology) in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press). He lives in Woodstock, New York, and Ajijic, Mexico, with his wife, editor Sandi Gelles-Cole.


27

PilgrimageHeather Truett

Mexico - the drug cartel is on the TV screen in the waiting room. Once a month, sitting in one of these wooden chairs, well-worn fabric and mottled carpet in gray green blue cream, and my son asking the time again and again. It’s always the news, no matter how many small children occupy the space, legs kicking at those wooden chairs. All of us, waiting, are stressed and struggle with our own demons or the myriad of issues that affect our kids. That stress, the many-lettered disorders, are why we’re here. ADHD, AS, TS, NOS, OCD, MDD, PDD... What’s your label? Your drug? Your reason to see the good doctor?

Heather Truett has been published in The Mom Egg, The Paintsville Herald, Jackson Free Press, The Invitation Tupelo, Busy Parents Online, Everyday Musings, Divine Revolution, Teen Love: On Friendship, Tweetspeak Poetry, Crazy Good Parent, and Vine Leaves Literary. A coalminer’s granddaughter who grew up lip-syncing to Loretta Lynn, she is a mom to boys, the wife of a minister in Mississippi and a novelist represented by Peter Knapp of New Leaf Literary.


28

HyacinthLuke Samra

Planted deep within thisHeart of Georgia orange clayThe layers of soil down to my soulThough it's been below the snowIt finds a way to growThe sun shines in fractals Off of the snowflakes Turning them to rain

Luke Samra is a graduate of Marian University in Indianapolis. He enjoys playing and teaching tennis. Luke is a musician.

The Ghost MoonMichael Keshigian

Through the congested clouds it creeps,its vague, cratered tonnage,amid the dust, glides hauntingly through the mystery about,its path worn thin,reflecting the ambitionsabove which it hoversthat are slowly invadingthose dark recesses once hidden,barely illuminated by starlight.Its ghostly image


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meanders in and out of sight,passing through nightlike a dreamof continuous divergencethough its warning and pleas can never be discernedfor under the black skyit has been decreedto navigate in exile, growing more blanchwith every revolutionas we stare, sometimes in melancholysometimes in wonder,knowing no personwill cast themselves asunderas savior.

Michael Keshigian’s tenth poetry collection, Beyond was released in May, 2015 by Black Poppy. Other published books and chapbooks: Dark Edges, Eagle’s Perch, Wildflowers, Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. Published in numerous national and international journals, he is a 6-time Pushcart Prize and 2-time Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. Winter Moon, a poem set for Soprano and Piano, premiered in the Fall of 2013 in Boston. Michael lives in New Hampshire. http://michaelkeshigian.com.

http://michaelkeshigian.com/


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BereftMimi Ford

Yesterday, he called me He called about the meatloaf he madeThe meatloaf he made in his kitchen In his kitchen 1000 miles away

It tasted just like mine, he said He said how easy it was How easy it was to make my meatloaf My meatloaf in his kitchen His kitchen 1000 miles away

Mimi Ford lives and writes in Kokomo, Indiana.

Jack’s GirlLuke Powers

Hand me one ofMy pills, she bade meWith a turkeyclawHook of a handWith curling FuManchu nailsEmblazonedRed white and blue

I was youngI was there to interviewI had a NagraReeltoreel tape recorderOwned by the StateOf North Carolina


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I shook the pillsHorse tranquilizer sizeOut of the bottleAnd dropped themOne by one Into the abyssOf her palmThat had onceBeen so closeTo history

I knew Jack, yes,She began,AnticipatingMy callow questioning,I was called Jack's girl,But I wasn't really,He was "that way"--You know?

I knew butA good interviewerWould have pushedFor clarityInstead I was drawnTo the nest ofShadows thatCongregatedBeneath her fierceCleopatra eyebrowsDrawn on so many timesThey become permanentLike a tattoo

She meanderedThrough the Carousel Club,The Dallas PD, the suitsAnd what they drank


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And the art of burlesque,An art, the art of delayingBuilding anticipationAnd then cutting it off—

She turned her turkeyclawViolently, the way A farm girl during the DepressionIn OklahomaWould doA starving chickenNo longer ableTo give eggsAs the topsoilOf America Blew away

Jack had beenBoss to the Other girls,But just JackTo herShe got teasedFor itCalled Mrs Ruby

She was gettingBored by the past,She wanted to smokeBut was on oxygen

Don't outlive your body,That's my advice To young people

I ventured To broach the termConspiracy


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No she saidToward the ceilingAs if to a hidden Microphone,She had neverSeen OswaldUntilShe saw himOn TV And Jack was Killing himIn black-and-whiteLike The Days of Our Lives

Conspiracy,Her nose twistedAt the word,Jack could barelyRun a nightclubHe couldn't killThe president

A silence andAn afterthought: Maybe he had A thing for JackieBut he didn't Think much ofHer husband,Not enough To kill him‘The reeltape spunRecording herDisgust,Now aimed at me


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Young man, You know whatThe real conspiracyIs?

I shook my headObediently,Awaiting the revelation.

Life. I was a beautifulGirl once,I could haveBeen in movies . . .I'm not justTalking.

But look whatLife's doneTo me.

So you,Young man,Get over it—You move on,And that's allI've got to sayOn the whole goddamned subject.

Luke Powers teaches English at Tennessee State University in Nashville. He currently serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy. He received his PhD in English from Vanderbilt University where he thought he would be the Last of the Fugitives. He is a songwriter and performer who has recorded with Richard Lloyd (Television), Garth Hudson (The Band) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (The Flying Burrito Brothers). Luke once sang with Johnny Cashm, but says that’s too long a story for a short bio.


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Still Life w/YellowBrian Robert Flynn

I wish I were a painter, so I could paint that Bartlett pear.Upright, on that blue willow plate right there. A shining spectrum exactly splattered, my focus on the yellow.

Our Jell-O perceives us, too, as gelatinous cubes aquiverTrembling with each pull of our bowl, peaceful and harmless until we aren’t.We wiggle and jiggle. Oh, how we wiggle and we jiggle.If she likes it lemon fresh, Jell-O’s focus aims for yellow.

Tart raindrops glisten on still petals in ripe fields.When the sun’s rays finally pop, its quintessential turningYields a coalescing air. And for those of us who are color-blind, swirling traffic lights bedevil.

I wish I were a painter, I’d just focus on the yellow.



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Review: Dark Leaves, Strange Light by Tom Raithel

Reviewed by Barry Harris

Title: Dark Leaves, Strange Light

Author: Tom Raithel

Year: 2015

Publisher: Finishing Line Press

The poems in Tom Raithel’s chapbook, Dark Leaves, Strange Light, contain graceful, evocative images of the dark and light of the seasons, of our lives, even our deaths.

I first met Tom Raithel’s poetry when I published his poem, “The Fields,” in the Fall 2010 issue of TPJ. The imagery of that poem, which is included in Tom’s recent chapbook, is what first grabbed my attention. The poem quickly paints a vivid picture:

…the tractor in weeds. The wind-scoured barn.The farmhouse dark in its grove.

https://finishinglinepress.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=raithel

https://finishinglinepress.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=raithel


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But these images only set the scene for the lives of real people:

Our grandparents came from such fields.The aunt who eloped with the preacher.The uncle who raised six kids alone.One cousin hung himself in a barn;his widow would sit whole nights at the window…

Other readers may find their own hooks, but these were what first hooked me on the stark beauty I found in Raithel’s lyrical poems. For example, he paints us a vivid picture of winter with images like “snow-heaped cars are mastadons fallen in glacial graves.”

If you ever lived on a country farm, or felt like you had in some movie, this book is decorated tastefully with the sounds of crickets, toads and frogs, fireflies and, of course, the cicadas of summer. For the contrast of color, try on the poem “Cardinal in a Blizzard”:

a poetic flame in the philistine wind,a dash of red heart in a colorless world

Personally, I have always been a fool for a poem full of crows. From Tom’s poem “Crows:”

When, out of mist, those specters descendto a bare-branched oak in your yard,one of them casting a cold eye over you….… and when at the hour of their choosing they rise,they’ll ride off on unhurried wings.


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There are, for me, two particular poems that I find haunting, for different reasons. First, there is a poem I wished I had written, “Solstice:”

This is as deep into night as you’ll getThis is as out on the edge as you’ll be

Now the small fires of stars burn coldest,and the owl intones its hollowest notes.

… out of the midnight into the glow,tonight you find no comfort in knowing

that this is as near to the void as you’ll get,this is as far from the light as you’ll be.

Finally, there is the title poem, “Dark Leaves, Strange Lights.” While it contains elements of nature, it is not just a nature poem and is not really about falling leaves, although leaves do fall. Someone once accused me of thinking that poems were usually about God and, if not about God, then about death and life. This, of course, is one of those poems.


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Here the poet asks us to consider what the passing from this life might be like. Or perhaps he is just talking about falling leaves:

Maybe it will be something like this —like lying flat on your back in bed,the night air thick with the whisper of crickets…

Or maybe it will be like riding the train,face at the window, head nodding… the glowof the town you once knew growing distant.

Or will it be more like the passing warmththat stirs the wind chime and rustles dark leaves —

… Then again, maybe it’s more like a quickeningof creek water, mud, a parting of reeds…the old skin falling, a new voice breaking,a crawling, a lifting of eyes to strange light.

Tom Raithel grew up in Milwaukee, and obtained a bachelor’s degree in English and a Master’s in Communication from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to working as an assembly line worker, truck-loader, janitor, landscaper, public relations account executive and busboy, he has been a journalist at several newspapers including the Evansville Courier & Press. Tom lives in Evansville, Indiana with his wife, Theresa Brett, and their dogs, Mattie and Sammy.

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company.


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LightlessClinton Inman

Each year the light is lessWe can barely see it nowThe faint necklace ofThe Milky Way.

The old ones were wrongYou know with their waxed fingersPointing up like abandoned adobe.

Yet you know better in your cubical gardensAnd half moth-eaten moonsYou have arrived inHandcuffs.

Clinton Inman, born in England in 1945, graduated from San Diego State University in 1977, is a retired high school English teacher in Tampa Bay where he lives with his wife, Elba.

SolsticeJim Wardell

Not quite overhead ,the sun pauses a moment.Our day was short, toolightly forgottenin mists of the longest night.Who could remember?


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Just before the dawnI would wake to the chorusof your gentle breath,blackbird, robin, thrush -now silenced by this seasonof icy darkness.

I can see the signsit may not always be so.When you talk of spring.a sense of hope fillsthe music of your laughter-Have I told you this?

I begin winterstanding beneath a clear skythinking of you whilenot quite overhead,the midday sun pauses, sighs,contemplates a rest,then turns north as shehas four billion times before.This is what stars do.

[This poem was first published in Jimson Weed Literary Magazine]

Jim Wardell is a musician and educator at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, where he provides continuing education to K-12 teachers. As a teaching consultant to the Appalachian Writing Project, he presents on the relationship between visual imagery, music, and the written word. Previous publications include Goliath Magazine and Jimson Weed Literary Magazine.


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2:22 a.m.Woodrow Hightower

Sitting on this rowing machineWatching a poker-faced monkeyRide a dog on late-night TVIs better than trapped in a lawn chairListening to the neighborTalk deadheading his rosesOr having my brotherTell me his sources are telling himThe illuminati is splintering And a black rain will soon fall on ParisOr watching a kleptoSteal cheese and crackersFrom a convenience storeOther than that Nothing else immediately comes to mind

It wounds to be banished from the marriage bedFor allegedly tossing and turningWishing I knew whyI can’t sleep more than four hours at a timeAnd how I seem to be aging by dog yearsAnd I think I should be redeeming this restlessnessBy spilling the unwritten proseRolling around in my head Stories about sharpshootersAnd sapphire necklacesDinner parties and self determinationKnowing the second I fire up the computerDrowsiness will begin setting inAnd by the time I’m readyTo commit sentences to a blank screenMy eyes will be starting to close


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Somewhere A technocrat is calculating charts and numbersAn artist with a gap between his teethCaresses his sketch bookAnd a girl holding a blue balloon Counts the taillights in DenverBut for me more stunted slumberSleep’s second shiftAbout to commence

Woodrow Hightower is a native of West Point, California. He is a poet currently producing a first book of verse to be titled So Low. A self-described “word muralist,” his work has recently been accepted by a multitude of print and online literary zines. Hightower resides in Sacramento’s Midtown District with photographer/co-conspirator Twyla Wyoming and their two Tibetan spaniels.

PlatoClinton Inman

Notice we no longer use chains andOf course the rooms are filled with shadowsWhile laser lights and virtual programs prove More cost effective than fire yet the cardboard Cut-outs and the curtains have remained the same As well as those old lies that trees are realThat the way out really goes somewhereThat math leads more than just in circles And that the Wizard himself behind the curtainsKeeps the whole domino world from collapsingAnd each year more and more come to believe itAs only a few poets and down-and-outers dare climb The arduous way out as most prefer To sit and talk about food and sports.



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Sylvia at Work in the SoilKeith Moul

One arm lacks gardener might (her rotator cuff has worn away).Pushing it toward a plant, she winces at the torn edge of memory.Pulling it fares no better: I move, out of earshot, not to witnesshow she kneels painfully, seized by her humiliation. She gruntsto beckon me, another new evidence that determination will suffice;or, flowing from her hurt, she bubbles a field hand’s song, personallyrics adapted by her for another season; or, she shifts her burdento a cobalt-chromium knee, hugs the ground, leverages a gristled tug.

She regards enduring soil her joyat work, the object of respect due.

If nutrients, from bags, and sweat, from her brow, have loosenedthe bonds of clay; have cut a channel for the latest rains to slakea thirst deeper than her reach, then laws that she abides, that naturehas designed, will be obeyed. Her virtue guarantees tomorrow.

She cherishes a place for growth.She composes anthems with utter grace.

A planted tree merges neatly into our forest on the western verge.Incoming wind sways its branches, waves too her silvering hair.Sylvia looks up to betoken an acre of a sturdy gardener’s pride;she licks her lips for salt to document evidence of her seasoning.

Joy everywhere builds: on her trowel’s point;on the shovel’s handle; as her arms and joints repose;as daylight softens and shadows mature to darkness.Abundantly stars send light to anchor her in rotating space.

[This poem also appears in Keith Moul’s latest chapbook: The Future as a Picnic Lunch]

Keith Moul received his MA from Western Washington and his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He retired in 2000 from 35 years in marketing, customer service and insurance underwriting and lives in Port Angeles, Washington. Five previous books include The Grammar of Mind, Beautiful Agitation, Reconsidered Light, To Take and Have Not, and The Future as a Picnic Lunch.Photo Credit: Ianthe Moul


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A Victor’s BalladKatherine Givens

ENEMY—She wilts into drama, Dwells in a fool’s den. Her voice harmonizesIn a choir of the insane. She feasts on pillsTo force a joyFrom the numbnessCalled her emotion. She raves, she wales, She stamps,Someone please see This beast’s tail. OH, and the horns juttingFrom her dark mane.

VICTOR—In grace I glide Through her barren criesInto the coveWhere I seek solitudeHidden from view. Quiet, save the rhythm of water.Dim, save the peeking sun. Within my earthy cocoon,I thrive on the separation,But if the she-devil decides on war,I’ll emerge from my coveAnd dash to her fool’s denFor a duel in which I Am her nightmare.

Katherine Givens writes whenever she has a chance. After breakfast, between breaks, before she sleeps. Her crazed writing habits have led to publication in numerous print and online magazines, including WestWard Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Copperfield Review, Nazar Look, and From the Depths. She also published Passages of Love: A Collection of Poems with Nazar Look in November 2015. Katherine lives in New Jersey.


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Two-Tone GreetingsSusan Niz

There are stretches in life when you will have to walk windy concrete blocks with dusty air drying your throat, or traipse the expanse of desolate parks with brown grass your only silent companion. Walking stiffly, you imagine yourself as the old person you will once be and all that will loom behind your dark shades, swim in your medicated pupils. The clarity of your regrets, the salve you coat it with, will change your gait and define your stride.

In those times, you forget the magic of orange light through curtains, which illuminate a brightly dyed blanket or the warmth of wool socks that melt the iciness from your toes.

Sometime, songbirds will speak to you boldly in two-tone calls. It’s nearly Spring, they will say. You’ll breathe a damp air and smell all that is growing underfoot and yet unseen. Your steps will be light and your lungs full and a lady will be walking down the other side of the street, still wearing a knee-length coat and walking her dog and you’ll call to her a two-tone hello and she might wave or crack a smile or even let the wind carry her constrained voice across the street, across decades, across warm, lost moments, to you.

Susan Niz has work which appeared in Blue Bonnet Review, Two Words For, Belleville Park Pages, Ginosko, Cezanne's Carrot, Flashquake, Opium Magazine, and Summerset Review. Her first novel Kara, Lost (North Star Press, 2011) was a finalist for a Midwest Book Award (MIPA) for Literary Fiction. Susan lives in Minnesota.


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TakeoffLucas Smith

Across the aisle a bulbous Salvadorean(I snooped her passport at check-in)crosses herself for takeoff. Just thenher shoes fall off and she smiles at meacknowledging her infirmityhers a different strategy for dealing with the chance of flight.

Mine is to scan the terminaland find someone who seems likethey don't deserve to die todayWhy, I could not say.Maybe they look aloof or mildsometimes they are shushing a childbut always that partial divinitythat will save me and the surplus cargo

The Salvadorean's shoes lie fallowThe way housefires and bushfireslook sublime from planes,ants driving along the freewayplanes are no more real than cloudsbut this is not a good theme for mere manwho survives by granting divinity.

Lucas Smith, a writer from Orange County, California and the Gippsland region of Australia, currently resides in Melbourne. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Angle, Cadaverine, Cordite Poetry Review, Curator, Dappled Things, El Portal, otoliths and The American Aesthetic.


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all my peepsErren Kelly

all my peeps go to church on sundaypraise the lordand do the shoutlike the brotherswho get their drink onall my peepseat and are loudgrandmother's kitchenis filled with the soundsof busy womenlittle mouthsand men's bodies/belliesat restall my peepslook at me and laughcos after all these yearsI'm still the quiet one"why you talkin so proper?you around us now"and i laugh with themas the house fills up withlove like a black balloon

Erren Kelly’s work has appeared in numerous publications in print and online in various literary journals and magazines throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Mr. Kelly is the author of the book Disturbing The Peace, on Night Ballet Press. Erren received his BA in English – Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Kelly lives in Los Angeles.


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Knowing the AnswersMartin Willitts Jr.

Cows lowing in narrow stallsmoving shouldersremembering repetition and anticipationthe bead of last night’s rainsuddering on the eveholding the reflectionof moon or memory;it’s hard to tell which.

The world is no longer creeping aroundgiving and takingsleep. We untie problemslike shoelaces, oneknot at a time.

The cows knowwe are comingbefore we arriveproviding resolutions.

It is we,who do not knowwe always had the solutionsall along.

Martin Willitts Jr. is the winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015, Editor’s Choice. He has 8 full-length collections and over 20 chapbooks of poetry. His forthcoming books include How to Be Silent (FutureCycle Press), God Is Not Amused With What You Are Doing In Her Name (Aldrich Press), and Dylan Thomas and the Writer’s Shed (FutureCycle Press). Martin lives in Syracuse, New York.


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The TurkKeith Dunlap

Each of us learns a difficult thingThat once learned becomes our baneOur only consolation that those who do it bestAre also hollowed by their craft and knowThere are no magic strings.

A chess playing automatonfrom the late eighteenth centurytilts his turbaned brow slightly forward,extends his stiff arms from his fur-trimmed cloak,and his immobile eyes painted jetstare from a face as dark as bronze,which sports a thick sable “Asiatic” moustache.He is not unexplainable:a clockwork mechanism fillsthe cabinet beneath the tablewhere the chess board sits,over which his wooden hands hover,as if petrified mid-incantation.He seems to ponder his opponent’s move,but does not betray any intent,until suddenly, awkwardly, and without remorse,his robotic armpushes a pawn forward.It takes less masterythan one might thinkto crouch inside the cabinetand play a secret game of chess,to cause the Turk’s right hand to actas if inspired by intelligence—as if a soul could be replacedby a whirring clock and springs,and beat a local man from Gridley’s pubwho for a few shillingswould put his skill to the test.


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Speed of LightKeith Dunlap

the speed of light is much too slowit is starting to snow a deliberate snow

nothing happens quite as fastsnow follows snow falling fast

how time curves back to showthe speed of light is much too slow

but I wouldn’t want it any fasteron this the best of days my last

Keith Dunlap is a former co-editor of The Columbia Review and former co-editor of Cutbank, having received his MFA from the University of Montana. Keith’s poems have been accepted for publication in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Georgetown Review, Poet Lore, and Sou’wester, among other places. His manuscript, The Foot in the Elevator was a finalist at Brickhouse Books New Poet Series and The New Issues Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist for Brooklyn Arts Press. Keith has a BA in English from Columbia College in New York and an MA in Classics from Columbia University. He lives in Portland, Maine with his wife, the novelist Jenny Siler, and his daughter, Vivica.


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When Last I Saw YouRyan Frisinger

The time before thisin a backseat messof body parts and prepositions:around, over, against, down.English our teachers never taught,spoken as if the soap had run dry.

Still, I scalded and scrubbedso well after,it held me over a handful of years…to this momentwhen I see another man’s sinsin the backseat mess,

wide-eyed and singing their ABCs:a countenance I’ve long forgotten,a language I seem to have just.

How It’s to DieRyan Frisinger

Like finding the first girl you lovedin the garden where you left her,blossoming, picking and basketing ripe for summer supper on the kind of nightwhen the rush of well-being that fancies young lovers’ chest cavities


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makes its grand entrance at thesplit-secondwhen heat turns to balm, thick in the air thins and lightens,bubbles and soars into the sorts of words that you’ll tell your grandchildren about…

except the line that was forgotten,thanks to the moon shining rightness, bugs chirping blindness,sweet-tasting salt and the vellum touch of drip-lines down her upper lip, where you mistook taste for smell as boiling pots gushed from a firefly window—but this time, you’re them and they’re you,those words swallowed, traded for action and reaction,to the tip of the tongue and back down, cut short, forgotten, ingested—nearly, but never making it to the twisting folds, diamond-lobed ears of the last girl you loved,and she, blissfully unaware you existed at all.

Ryan Frisinger is a professor of English, holding an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. He is also an accomplished songwriter, whose work has been featured in numerous television shows, such as America's Next Top Model and The Real World. His non-musical writing has appeared in publications like Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin, and Punchnel's. He resides in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his more-talented wife and couldn’t-care-less cat.


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FrankensteinClinton Inman

Color coded complete with picture I.D.We will teach you to be like us.Give you a turtle neck or bow tieYou will be our kind of MenschWe’ll give you a new brain, doesn’tMatter whose for they are all the same,Complete with certificate of authenticityCredit rating and charge account,Security, savings, and even disability. We’ll teach you how to walk and talkIn circles as if you had some sense. We will give you some brand named shoes We will give you a new name like Frankie, But why are you still reaching for flowers?


BetterTimothy Robbins

I lived there well, but I could have lived better.I was with you but I could have been within you.The heatwave when we slept on the floor could have been hotter. We could have sweatedout sins we weren’t even aware of. Had the floorbeen harder, we might have felt more support.The fans, standing blandly by like eunuchscould have breathed on us fresher sweetness.


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Yes, the sweat we cursed we could have blessed and used to anoint our waists. The Chinese food we had delivered when I was too sick andyou too tired to cook, could have delivered us from evil. We ate facing but we could have fed each other as bride and groom give maritalblood and body, heedless of crumbs or stains thatmight befall tux and gown. We could have nourished each other like the blessed deadin the parable of Heaven and Hell’s similarity. Remember the tornado warning? The sirens sangtheir sadness, taking all the town for witness. Thatcould have been our lament, the disseminationof our fertile fears. We gathered our valuables, descended to the laundry room and sat on the exercise equipment for two hours without television. We could have done this routinely without threatof tornado, each time reevaluating what should be saved. Remember Mr. Liang, how viewless his basement office was? We could have welcomed him to our third-floor balcony with its panorama of Amtrak windows blazing at night like speeding TV screens, the trains and the Huron running side by side in a perpetual dead heat, while fowl of all sorts stirred the air with their bets. We left well but we could have left better, could have tossed a handful of dirt into the dumpster where we buried what we could not keep.



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Not Far AwayThomas O’Dore

approaching on footthru corn forest or soybean carpetsometimes a thin riparian bermof sycamores or cotton woods…you smell it first…a big inland river

emerging where viscous waterlaps the heavy redolent muck \decades of chemical siltfertilizers / herbicides / pesticidessieved thru deforested floodplains \sliding on a centuries old bedof untreated human sewageand god-knows-what trashfrom municipal dumping sitesand toxic industrial wastes

this one is no differentfrom so many othersexcept for the ironyof its Miami name…Waapaashsiikicorrupted by French traders…Quabacheslurred by English settlers…Wabash – it shines white

by discharge the twelfth largest riverin the forty-eight contiguous states \four hundred and seventy-five miles longfour hundred and eleven free-flowing \longest unimpeded stretcheast of the Mississippi \ alternatelyby season a brown or greenturbid sluice of excrementpuking…into the Ohio

Guys like Tom O’Dore do not have biographies.


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Mississippi WinterRichard Boada

She wants to be a character in a Jack Kerouac novel,a Japhy Ryder with hands deep in plush vest pockets,

Lucky Strikes squarely tucked away, black sunglasses,hair uncombed. She mimics Kerouac’s longingfor a destination when she exhales a long gray rope of smoke.

In the still quite morning by the small pond nearher parents’ home, beyond the metallic forest, alluvialearth and sputtering Mississippi sleet, trees riot

in the breeze and slim steel clouds suture the sky. She orbitsthe pond like a rickety satellite that’s too close to the atmosphere,iced grass crunching as she walks, and loses a layer of clothes

each circumference. She burns as she closes inon what’s left of her own debris.

[Previously published in The Error of Nostalgia (Texas Review Press, 2013)]

Richard Boada earned his doctorate from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His book of poems, The Error of Nostalgia was published by Texas Review Press in 2013. His chapbook, Archipelago Sinking, was nominated for the 2012 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Book Award. His poems have appeared in RHINO, Crab Orchard Review,. Yalobusha Review, Jabberwock Review, and The Louisville Review among others. He teaches Creative Writing at the University of Memphis.


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Homecoming GirlSusan Niz

I only wanted to be homecoming girl —Not queenThe liquid gold core of royalty Doesn’t sparkle in me

Cross the blackened parkYellow jacket percussion callCold-water-in-the-face spotlightsBats lash the skyLove-lost players drive the thick nightFleece-lined cheers rattle and numbBehind the bleachers, a lead apron lays her down

My genie Marlboro breathsDenim slides andBoots press toward the lit sceneThe iron I’m made of slows me

The marsh to my rightBlind as tomorrow’s mistakesHide-and-seek cattails and aFlat-note cricket sideshowDreams drown in algae glitter

I cross the park, toward the football game,For all my life



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Fame and VanityKudzai Mahwite

That foul taste engulfs my tongueThat steady churning meshes my brainSmug frown where once a smile hungHow much longer can I remain sane?

Lament, lament which wrong foot I setBe this harsh chastening nature sent?Truly; to appear before this fool with knee bentTo join in undeserving adorationTo herald his arrival with trumpets’ flourishTo step into cold shadow ever hidden from glory’s light.

Alas!I see!I be the fool.

This glory that eludeth me be just a mirageThroughout I spy many a feigned visage.Presence of absence of substance harboured withinStill, straight faces: the shrewdest of liarsTheir expectant eyes bear green fires.

Hush pervades sensing an impending fallCheery shouts quickly dwindleQuickly stripped of purple robes.

This be a mighty tedious throne.

Kudzai Mahwite is a young Zimbabwean poet inspired greatly by the works and life of William Shakespeare. He is an Economics student and as part of his studies runs a small-time blog on the African Economy. Kudzai is also a Sportswriter with football.co.uk. You can follow him on Twitter @[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]


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Last CallChristopher Todd Anderson

We’re slumming in the North Star Bar,me with Jack Daniels and Coke, my friendLiz with a Stella Artois she drinks, crazily,through a straw. We were always wild and shy: she the one, I the other. In college, she wore tweed, smoked a pipe, studiedKant and shrooms. She was the onewho wore a mini skirt and turquoise fishnetsto her sister’s wedding, then hooked upwith the ring bearer’s not-quite-divorced-yetfather. I only kissed her once, years ago, just drunk and funning. Now we’re ata teacher’s convention, escaping the afternoon monotones. Her husband’s a good guy, back at the hotel with their kids. Liz and I are on our third drink when she blurts out that she has cancer and starts chemo in twelve days, adding that it must be karma for never going punk enough to shave her head when she was twenty. I sip and stare while she describes how she wants her coffin rigged up like thosebirthday cards that play pop songs, so the priest can lift the lid and the grieving beloved—as she puts it—will hear The Waitresses sing “I Know What Boys Like,” and as people shift in their black suits and dresses, those mofos—as she puts it—won’t know if the song—nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah sucker!—is for them or God.



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Editor

Barry Harris is editor of the Tipton Poetry Journal and Brick Street Poetry’s Mapping the Muse: A Bicentennial Look at Indiana Poetry. He has published one poetry collection, Something At The Center. Barry lives in Brownsburg, Indiana and is retired from Eli Lilly and Company. His poetry has appeared in Kentucky Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grey Sparrow, Silk Road Review, Saint Ann‘s Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Night Train, Silver Birch Press, Flying Island, Awaken

Consciousness and Writers‘ Bloc. One of his poems is on display at the National Museum of Sport and another is painted on a barn in Boone County, Indiana as part of Brick Street Poetry‘s Word Hunger public art project. His poems are also included in these anthologies: From the Edge of the Prairie; Motif 3: All the Livelong Day; and Twin Muses: Art and Poetry.

Biographies


Heath Brougher lives in York, Pennsylvania and attended Temple University. He recently finished his second chapbook and has two others on the way as well as a full-length book of poetry. Heath has been previously published or has work forthcoming in Yellow Chair Review, Of/with, Mobius, Third Wednesday, Foliate Oak, Main Street Rag, *Star 82 Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Calliope, Van Gogh's Ear, MiPOesias, Gloom Cupboard, Rust + Moth, Eunoia Review, BlazeVOX, Indigo Rising, Icebox Journal, Inscape Literary Journal, and elsewhere.


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Gayle Compton, a hillbilly from Eastern Kentucky, lives up the river from where Randall McCoy is buried and attended college on the hill where “Cotton Top” Mounts was hanged. With deep affection, he tells the story of Appalachia’s common people, allowing them to speak, without apology, in their own colorful language. His prize-winning stories, poems and essays have appeared most recently in Sow’s Ear, Now and Then, New Southerner, Blue Collar Review, Kentucky Review and Main Street Rag anthologies. Coal Dust and Crabgrass, a collection of poetry, is due March 2017 from FutureCycle Press.

Keith Dunlap is a former co-editor of friend's definition Review and former co-editor of Cutbank, having received his MFA from the University of Montana. Keith’s poems have been accepted for publication in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Georgetown Review, Poet Lore, and Sou’wester, among other places. His manuscript, The Foot in the Elevator was a finalist at Brickhouse Books New Poet Series and The New Issues Poetry Prize, and a semi-finalist for Brooklyn Arts Press. Keith has a BA in English from Columbia College in New York and an MA in Classics from Columbia University. He lives in Portland, Maine with his wife, the novelist Jenny Siler, and his daughter, Vivica.

Patrick Erickson is a retired parish pastor put out to pasture himself, a former shepherd of sheep, a small flock with no sheep dog and no hang-dog expression. Or he is the sheep dog, a small dog, with the hang-dog expression. Secretariat is his mentor, though he has never been an achiever and has never gained on the competition. He resonates to a friend's definition of change; though a bit dated with the advent of wi fi, it has the ring of truth to it: change coming at us a lot faster because you can punch a whole lot more, a whole lot faster down digital broadband "glass" fiber than an old copper co-axial landline cable. Of late, Patrick’s work has appeared in Poetry Pacific, Red Fez, SubtleTea, The Oddville Press and Literary Juice. He lives in Garland, Texas.


Mimi Ford lives and writes in Kokomo, Indiana.


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Ryan Frisinger is a professor of English, holding an MFA in Writing from Lindenwood University. He is also an accomplished songwriter, whose work has been featured in numerous television shows, such as America's Next Top Model and The Real World. His non-musical writing has appeared in publications like Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The MacGuffin, and Punchnel's. He resides in Fort Wayne, Indiana, with his more-talented wife and couldn’t-care-less cat. Melisha Garrett graduated from Montana State University with her MA in English. She has since relocated to Tennessee. She writes that she finds herself missing the Rockies, and oddly, the bus conversations of the past.

Katherine Givens writes whenever she has a chance. After breakfast, between breaks, before she sleeps. Her crazed writing habits have led to publication in numerous print and online magazines, including WestWard Quarterly, Tipton Poetry Journal, The Copperfield Review, Nazar Look, and From the Depths. She also published Passages of Love: A Collection of Poems with Nazar Look in November 2015.

Allison Gliesman lives and writes in Kansas.


Woodrow Hightower is a native of West Point, California. He is a poet currently producing a first book of verse to be titled So Low. A self-described “word muralist,” his work has recently been accepted by a multitude of print and online literary zines. Hightower resides in Sacramento’s Midtown District with photographer/co-conspirator Twyla Wyoming and their two Tibetan spaniels.


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Steve Hood is an attorney and political activist. His work won an award from the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association and has been published in many places including Crack the Spine, Maudlin House, and the anthology Noisy Water. His chapbook From Here To Astronomy was published by Pudding House. Steve lives in Bellingham, Washington.


Clinton Inman, born in England in 1945, graduated from San Diego State University in 1977, is a retired high school English teacher in Tampa Bay where he lives with his wife, Elba. Saloni Kaul, author and poet, first published at the age of ten, has been in print since. As critic and columnist, Saloni has enjoyed 37 years of being published in leading dailies and magazines. From time to time Saloni has held many an editorial position. Saloni has also won considerable critical acclaim as broadcaster and producer-presenter of radio documentaries and features. Saloni Kaul's first volume, Saloni Kaul’s Book of Children’s Poetry, was published in 2009. Subsequent volumes include Universal One and Essentials All Her work has been published or will appear in Poetry Quarterly, The Horrorzine, Eye On Life Magazine, Poetry and Paint Anthology, Misty Mountain Review, Inwood Indiana and Sentinel Quarterly.

Erren Kelly’s work has appeared in numerous publications in print and online in various literary journals and magazines throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Mr. Kelly is the author of the book Disturbing The Peace, on Night Ballet Press. Erren received his BA in English – Creative Writing from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Kelly lives in Los Angeles


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Michael Keshigian’s tenth poetry collection, Beyond was released in May, 2015 by Black Poppy. Other published books and chapbooks: Dark Edges, Eagle’s Perch, Wildflowers, Jazz Face, Warm Summer Memories, Silent Poems, Seeking Solace, Dwindling Knight, Translucent View. Published in numerous national and international journals, he is a 6-time Pushcart Prize and 2-time Best Of The Net nominee. His poetry cycle, Lunar Images, set for Clarinet, Piano, Narrator, was premiered at Del Mar College in Texas. Subsequent performances occurred in Boston (Berklee College) and Moleto, Italy. Winter Moon, a poem set for Soprano and Piano, premiered in the Fall of 2013 in Boston. http://michaelkeshigian.com

John P. Kristofco, from Highland Heights, Ohio, is professor of English and the former dean of Wayne College in Orrville, Ohio. His poetry, short stories, and essay have appeared in over a hundred different publications, including: Folio, Cimarron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Rattle, Poem, and Sierra Nevada Review. He has published three collections of poetry: A Box of Stones, Apparitions, and The Fire in Our Eyes and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times.

Indunil Madhusankha is currently an undergraduate in the Faculty of Science of the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. While his major involvement is with the areas of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, he pursues a successful writing career as a poet and content writer. He has received several awards from some National Level English Essay Competitions. Indunil has written a volume of poetry entitled, Oasis, which explores diverse dimensions of society and he has been published in several international anthologies, journals and magazines. Moreover, he has undertaken research projects pertaining to the areas of ELT and Sri Lankan Literature in English.

Kudzai Mahwite is a young Zimbabwean poet inspired greatly by the works and life of William Shakespeare. He is an Economics student and as part of his studies runs a small-time blog on the African Economy. Kudzai is also a Sportswriter with football.co.uk. You can follow him on Twitter @[email protected]

http://michaelkeshigian.com/

mailto:[email protected]


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Vibha Malhotra is a writer, a poet, an editor, and a translator, and the founder of Literature Studio. She is the editor-in-chief of Literature Studio Review. Vibha holds a Master in Creative Writing from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom. At present, apart from running Literature Studio and teaching creative writing to all age groups, she works as a Consulting Editor with Dorling Kindersley (Penguin Random House). Her work has been published in literary e-journals such as Muse India and The Luxembourg Review, and in dailies such as The Times of India and Ceylon Today.

Erin McIntosh is a writer and actress currently living in Los Angeles. Her poetry has appeared and is forthcoming in various journals including Bone Bouquet, Lavender Review, Hawai’i Review, apt, Plenitude Magazine, and Pine Hills Review, among others. Keith Moul received his MA from Western Washington and his PhD from the University of South Carolina. He retired in 2000 from 35 years in marketing, customer service and insurance underwriting and lives in Port Angeles, Washington. Five previous books include The Grammar of Mind, Beautiful Agitation, Reconsidered Light, To Take and Have Not, and The Future as a Picnic Lunch.


Guys like Tom O’Dore do not have biographies.

Melissa Parietti is a native of Long Island originally from Melville, New York. Melissa attended business classes and writing workshops at SUNY Geneseo. At 24 years old, her poetry has received several acceptances to print and online journals

Simon Perchik’s poetry has also appeared in Partisan Review, The Nation, The New Yorker and elsewhere.


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Luke Powers teaches English at Tennessee State University in Nashville. He currently serves as Chair of the Department of Languages, Literature and Philosophy. He received his PhD in English from Vanderbilt University where he thought he would be the Last of the Fugitives. He is a songwriter and performer who has recorded with Richard Lloyd (Television), Garth Hudson (The Band) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (The Flying Burrito Brothers). Luke once sang with Johnny Cashm, but says that’s too long a story for a short bio.

Nancy Pulley has poems published in Flying Island, Passages North, Plainsong, The Sycamore Review, Arts Indiana Literary Supplement, and the Humpback Barn Festival collection. In 1992 she won the Indiana Writer’s Center Poetry Chapbook contest, resulting in the publication of her Tremolo of Light. Nancy lives in Columbus, Indiana.


Kenneth Salzmann is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in numerous newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, as well as such anthologies as Child of My Child: Poems and Stories for Grandparents (Gelles-Cole Literary Enterprises), a Finalist (Anthology) in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards, Beloved on the Earth: 150 Poems of Grief and Gratitude (Holy Cow! Press), Riverine: An Anthology of Hudson Valley Writers (Codhill Press), The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (Holy Cow! Press). He lives in Woodstock, New York, and Ajijic, Mexico, with his wife, editor Sandi Gelles-Cole.

Luke Samra is a graduate of Marian University in Indianapolis. He enjoys playing and teaching tennis. Luke is a musician.


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Cathryn Shea’s poetry is forthcoming or has appeared in Allegro, Gravel, Gargoyle, Eunoia, Main Street Rag, Permafrost, Poet Lore, Quiddity, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Snap Bean, is by CC.Marimbo (2014). Cathryn is included in the 2012 anthology Open to Interpretation: Intimate Landscape and she served as editor for Marin Poetry Center Anthology. Cathryn lives in California. Visit her website http://www.cathrynshea.com or follow her on Twitter: @cathy_shea.

Lucas Smith, a writer from Orange County, California and the Gippsland region of Australia, currently resides in Melbourne. His poetry has appear or is forthcoming in Angle, Cadaverine, Cordite Poetry Review, Curator, Dappled Things, El Portal, otoliths and The American Aesthetic.

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Nearly 300 of her poems appear in over a hundred online venues and in anthologies, in the US, UK, Canada, and further abroad. The natural world is often her framework; she also considers the stories of people and places around her and personal histories. She is a semi-retired teacher living in California.

Jessica D. Thompson is a poet (and sometimes photographer) who lives on the banks of the Wabash River. Her work recently appeared in Circe’s Lament: Anthology of Wild Women Poetry (Accents Publishing).

Heather Truett has been published in The Mom Egg, The Paintsville Herald, Jackson Free Press, The Invitation Tupelo, Busy Parents Online, Everyday Musings, Divine Revolution, Teen Love: On Friendship, Tweetspeak Poetry, Crazy Good Parent, and Vine Leaves Literary. Heather is a coalminer’s granddaughter and grew up lip-syncing to Loretta Lynn. Currently a mom to boys and the wife of a minister in Mississippi, Heather is also a novelist represented by Peter Knapp of New Leaf Literary.

http://www.cathrynshea.com/


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Jim Wardell is a musician and educator at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, where he provides continuing education to K-12 teachers. As a teaching consultant to the Appalachian Writing Project, he presents on the relationship between visual imagery, music, and the written word. Previous publications include Goliath Magazine and Jimson Weed Literary Magazine.

Martin Willitts Jr. is the winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest; Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge, June 2015,Editor’s Choice. He has 8 full-length collections and over 20 chapbooks of poetry. His forthcoming books include How to Be Silent (FutureCycle Press), God Is Not Amused With What You Are Doing In Her Name (Aldrich Press), and Dylan Thomas and the Writer’s Shed (FutureCycle Press).

tipton poetry journal #29

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