Holly Day Explains A Mummy's Confession, Belgian Monasteries, Rampant Bulbs, and The Frigid Coast of the Simulacrum

The Mummy, 20 Years Between Visits

this bundle of dried skin, matchstick bones
hands folded over one another in
frozen yet thoughtful contemplation
caused me such nightmares
impossible, this

tiny brown thing, half-seen through
the crumpled, painted lid, teeth not
bared in an angry grimace as I
imagined as a child but in
a peaceful, purposeful smile
as if to say

I am dead, I really am
I’m dead.



The Monks in My Head

my garden makes me think of God, of
the Alsatian monks toiling endless to create
climbing, bright-faced clematis that would spread
all over a wall, taking tiny yellow down-turned flowers on thin
upright stalks and unleashing something holy, wholly
new twining plants with palm-sized flowers in shades
of blue and white and pink and purple.

my beer makes me think of God, of how
hours of studying and painstaking labor
in the basements of Belgian monasteries helped improve
guttural meads flavored with clover and honey
how those monks must have thought they’d bottled something holy
when they tasted their own creations, kept them secret and hidden
from the hungry flat-ale-swilling masses outside.



Stunted, Thwarted

The tulips I grow in pots
never do as well as the ones
spreading rampant in my backyard
bulbs swollen big as fists
sprays of flowers bursting like fireworks
from a single hidden point. Every time I try

to recreate the flamboyant show of color from out there
in here, I end up with
shrunken, mold-speckled bulbs bearing
withered, yellow-green stalks
twisted striped buds that
open sickly as sea anemones
in polluted tidepools
on some frigid coast.


Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minnesota, since 2000. Her published books include Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar All-in-One for Dummies, Piano All-in-One for Dummies, Walking Twin Cities, Insider’s Guide to the Twin Cities, Nordeast Minneapolis: A History, and The Book Of, while her poetry has recently appeared in Oyez Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle. Her newest poetry book, Ugly Girl, just came out from Shoe Music Press.

M. A. Schaffner Navigates Peripherally Through Ambient Pornography of Snowbound Bookshelves and Spilling Honeysuckle

Miracle Machine

They could be with you or the someone else
on the object they hold as they walk along
next to you, so you go online to check
having learned to navigate peripherally
even in spring as blossoms compete with the sky
in color saturation and bees pop up
advertising scent and pollen, your eyes
flickering like a defective screen, teared
and itching from ambient pornography,
the sweet hectoring of horny warblers
and lusty cardinals and jays, just as
you walk down the street side by side checking
images from elsewhere and tweets from beyond
the slightly less intrusive world around you
and when you put the device back and look,
the two of you, at each other and around
the trees newly leafed seem improbable.


Zefiro Torna

The demanding season, promoting sprawl,
while burdens of culling the spoil from last fall's
forgotten herbage make an urgent call

on hours best suited for observing all
the feathered migrants who this time of year
conjure a spell when they simply appear.

Blistered from spade and fork, crusty with sweat,
rasped by clouds of pollen, wearied, and yet
amazed by blossoms and the rakish set

of a warbler's beak as it sifts the leaves
newly sprouted to weave infinities
of caverns and shifting balconies.

It had all seemed dead, or nearly so, just
a week ago, as I came to the fire
to read from bookshelves snowbound in dust.



Buy Now

Not little things but little short of all
we hope for when we think of it or feel
what life could be beyond the money spent

in hopes of comfort or validation
from the images in a catalog
or the music and voices from the screen

where everyone seems delighted with the car
or counter tops and carpets, where worlds
distill to number sequences on cards

and all the friends who "like" your purchases.
It's the other little things that disagree,
from the honeysuckle spilling over

the chain link fence that fastens every yard
to the next in a chain of property
that couldn't hold a hummingbird at rest.


M. A. Schaffner has had poems published in Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, Agni, and elsewhere -- most recently in Hermes, Modern Poetry Review, and Pennsylvania Review. Long-ago-published books include the poetry collection The Good Opinion of Squirrels and the novel War Boys. Schaffner spends most days in Arlington, Virginia juggling a Toshiba laptop and a Gillott 404.

Ricky Garni Is Blonde With His Liar of a Grandmother Building Caskets in the Laughing Cosmos

BLONDE

The first man on earth must have been a blonde.

Working outside all day long will do that to your hair.

And there was no inside then. My grandmother, who

worked on a farm, was also blonde until the day she died.

And until that day, she worked hard with the cattle and

the horses and had sinewy muscles of steel. At night she

would drink barley wine and dye her hair grey. She wasn’t

my real grandmother. Yet her hair was as beautiful as her

muscles and my lies.

CASKETS

I build little caskets for everything. Birds I see in the sky, donuts I find in the trash bins, people I barely remember. I even build little caskets for caskets. And caskets for their little caskets.

THE VERY OLD TV SHOWS

Sometimes only a few people would applaud. Sometimes only

one person will laugh. You don’t know who they are because

you never see them. There is always a chance that you know

their grandchildren. Or that you once saw one of them on

a bus and thought, “My, how old she is!” Her laugh sounds

the same on a bus as it did on TV. It seems like she can

laugh anywhere. She is laughing on the bus. She was perhaps

laughing this morning as she walked towards the bus.

Perhaps one day she will laugh in outer space, watching

an old TV show that no one else laughs at. Smoking a cigar

like crazy old laughing people often do in the cosmos.

Ricky Garni was born and raised in Miami and Maine. He works as a graphic designer by day, and writes music by night. His work is widely available in print, on the Web and in a number of anthologies, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on six occasions.

Dan Raphael Somersaults Until the Pigeons Become Gift Cards and a Transgalactic Pickup Trying to Dot an Asteroid

Now I Lay Me

I sleep when I’m tired, wherever I am

I croon to the fridge when I’m hungry, no matter whose kitchen

an open door to growling darkness & uncertain floors 

neath a chalky mist of disconstruction

Why am I peeing gasoline

how far can my clothes escape when I’m out of my body

if you’ve never made love to a sidewalk

if the rains never left so many holes in your hand every gesture’s orchestrated

i could unravel into a pavilion transporting you to an unnamed mythology

leaving you dazed & lubricated, slightly taxed & spiritually attuned

When I do an upright somersault crossing 4 lanes the pigeons turn into gift cards;

a halo of applause I’ll redeem for the days first window

like a police car turned into a fruit cake we keep regifting

as the buildings add more floors the street must trim its budget;

as cars get wider & more must park tween fewer lines

got my armor from the u-pull-it & prepare to slay the petro-dragon

One song for the exhaustion over taking us

one song to convince the sun to forgive again

Arriving

the hand would knock, would find a knob to turn. a dour door diorama—

just finding a tree wide enough these days, of goldilocks density,

straddling the bow and the rib, tension when everything is still

things you have to bend to get in, be it room  crowd   or university,

to get into my old uniform, out of the many-form, the mostly blue and loose

the synergistic contact field of costume and identity,

the same song on another frequency requires different moves, a bump in volume

is that snow, glitter or some unexpected coagulate of the air and what we put inside it

shower before bed and wake in new clothes

as the less dogs go outdoors the more they run in their sleep

scratch to open, squeeze and turn bringing knee to nose

focusing on an upside-down pine inhaling the studio through polypore windows,

cellular alveoli, dervishes of constant transport

       the wind owes nothing,

the wind collects but has no pockets, no skin to bruise

that cloud with a hanging dog penis whose end unfurls to a starfish

swallowed by the ocean that spawned it, what clouds can do for teeth,

what wind can do to efficiency--wait until the door stops to enter;

hesitation may indicate contraband.

did i get the address wrong or is this the right house in the wrong city,

the area code in my pocket, the impatient streets this map ignores,

why do i have to be the moving part and provide my own lubrication,

signing a maintenance contract is waiving your rights,

replacing filters i never had, adding belts that clash with my atmosphere

turn the key, press the pedal, close your eyes and scream some song--

a big cup of electric guitars the only caffeine i need

Hunger Town

4 medium cost the same as 3 large

depending on who you’re feeding, where they’ve been, what we started with

not counting the drinkage and druggage, gasoline fumes, winter or summer,

what we can shoot along the way, whether they cut the pie into 8 or 10,

the radius of the sun bringing down several trees with its double axles

randomly studded smoke-tread hanging from the vine like clouds from a sprinkler system

i pulled up for chicken but the suit was too small, 

a transgalactic pickup trying to dot an asteroid,

share the protein as you want--that’s not my hand inside the glove

sprouting feathers like an instant forest convincing us growth is easier,

the weather is our puppet, water just happens

eat what you can catch, what you can afford, when no ones looking

don’t let those pizza crusts go to waste, whats the interest rate at the food bank,

free the seeds, a fence means youre paranoid, a road means youre running away

banished from the local coz the cows no longer speak your language,

like changing channels but you cant change back, someone replaced the satellite with art,

electrified oil in unsettled water as the pool liner evaporates in rapture

koi ghosts reclaim their skin from the lungs of the neighborhood,

herons we all have to pay for, this close to the river i dont want gravity to  know

grass explodes sidewalk

           the tallest not always first to go but soon

       or anyone out in the middle

         who would think of going against the stream and the wind

         random invisible furniture

         when the feng shui is perfect the building transcends

rivers reverse, clouds pulling up,

we ascend mountains and get elemental, broader-spectrumed

how is a thunderstorm like a drive through restaurant,

carwash re-automated to deliver, hot and seeping, we are not what we eat: 

food is fuel, work is paycheck, nothing this tasty is given away

For a couple decades, Dan Raphael has been active in the Northwest as a poet, performer, publisher and reading host. His next book, Everyone in this Movie Gets Paid, will be out summer of ’16 from Last Word Press.  His current poems appear in Big Bridge, Peculiar Mormyrids, Caliban, Tip of the Knife and Streetcake.

Matthew Borczon and the Perils of Compassion Fatigue

timeline


In my
journal
I always
wrote the
date and
weather
I worked
day or
night shift

I wrote
a list
of injuries
I saw
and the
number of
people
who died
then  I
wrote what
I ate
for dinner
and if
I talked
to Dana
or my
kids

in one
entry
somewhere
before the
middle of
my tour
of duty
I wrote
one extra
line simply
asking myself
if I
thought I
should be
worried that
this all
feels so
normal.


Timeline2


in Kuwait
2 weeks
from home
I hear
the word
compassion
fatigue for
the first
time in
my life

after all
you have
seen you
may just
be too
tired
to care
about people
for awhile

we were
advised to
sleep a
lot and
watch movies
decompress
before we
head home
and remember
you may
not be
able to
be a
kind person
for awhile

5 years
later and
I am still
not a
kind person

not any
kind of
person.


Timeline 3


the first
night a
helicopter
flew over
my house
I was
running out
my door
before I
realized
I was
home and
the Hospital
was a
war and
a world
away.

Matthew Borczon is a nurse and Navy sailor from Erie Pa. He was deployed to the busiest combat hospital in Afghanistan in 2010-11 where he lost a part of his soul. His work has appeared in Dead Snakes, Dissident voice, busted Dharma, Big hammer, 1947 as well as many other small press publications. His chapbook a clock of human bones won the Yellow chair review 2015 chap book contest and is available at their web site.

Vernon Frazer Musters the Human Volcano for Nodal Conflict Amidst the Doggerel With No Stegosaurus Left

Beautiful Music Outplayed

a desperation mattress 

caught in ballad’s hot pursuit 

a madness                 

at the mural heads roll

       the pass                    over

                          the

           deaf-eared 

                     overture

advancing matter, energy the former

  heroic in transforming the thought

          word    as       deeded

  decodes receded residue

springs

    the nodal lunge

     synthetic

     entreaty                 dabs  

     spotters      trained

in the code of the crabgrass murder

no window scene flayed

when the brutal shadow 

displayed a frontal edge

the pitch tuned 

 to ears 

      out of hearing

Afterbirth Control

spontaneous comprehension 

stripteases yachts in the monastery

      unexpected

banjo factory a live augment

plagues 

     at the margin

       everything moves to guillotine   

       the multidimensional continuity breakthrough

mandarin lore: 

                

     instrumental muster for the human volcano

  

*

mileage candor

  resuscitates past hammering

and chaotic scorpions thatch

random convection projectiles

          chameleon linearity currents

     exquisite magnet quarrels

     magenta doggerel drooled 

ecstatic 

      on the painter

lark polarity the hobble

          legitimate  

                     in the first placenta

Secret’s Exhibition

clandestine 

portfolios its intimate 

   charade

a slow burlesque 

brings ancient breath

to runic emblems

no stegosaurus left to run its doublethink

before the rubicon 

challenge bolding its nightline thrust 

a 

   timid  murmur faced

reduction its own hearing breath

  plate     shattered                     clatter

annoy

the aging who shift to the right

their windbreakers catching the current

of past

   emissions galore

at the reduction platter

    where serpent invaders

inured to the past

reclamation haunt

its vague suspenders float adrift

direction a suspension of leisure

pulling the emblem camp legend

underscoring the mileage debacle

patron saints

lifted after scorning their meat

when undue particles climb

the slated dimension cluster

to demean the hated tissue

a fibrous entourage

sneaks the slow wipe

encore a tentacle spread

ensures a plated glossary

         its undue weight of water

before the plastic surges hit

the freehand holding templar

mysteries along the great ruin

charges the line’s horizon

to the face of its darkest ledge

Vernon Frazer’s most recent books of poetry include Selected IMPROVISATIONS, ANCHOR WHAT and Definitions of Obscurity, a collaborative work with Michelle Greenblatt. Frazer’s web site is http://www.vernonfrazer.net. Bellicose Warbling, the blog that updates his web page, can be read at http://bellicosewarbling.blogspot.com/, His work, including the entire longpoem IMPROVISATIONS,may also be viewed at Scribd.com. In addition to writing poetry and fiction, Frazer also performs his poetry, incorporating text and recitation with animation and musical accompaniment on YouTube. Frazer is married. 

Leonard Gontarek Reveals That Perfume Is The Gateway Drug

Apart                                                              

1

Tell me about yourself in a 100 words or less.

2

I have always believed, if it is not broken, don’t fix it.

I who believe it is not broken. I have never trusted the TV version

of autumn over autumn. I am only interested in people

who have fallen in with anything. It looks like I brought a haiku

to an epic fight. I was there the day the music cried.

My cat hung up on you. I am not good at lying.

I have a sacred heart.

I have difficulty telling the Mysterious Universe

and the Outside World apart.

Morphine

 1

                                                           

He sits on a bench refolding the map, with difficulty,

now that he knows where he is going,

The bouquet next to him

may be a gift, may have been given to him.  

He is on morphine.

He is wearing alligator gloves.

                                             

2

Poetry must change the world.

                       

 3

Santana is playing at a party in the past,                               

so loud you think the party is outdoors.

Window                                                         

 one

                                   

A single syllable of lily, before night.

 two

Mostly green, but gold too,

trees are ejected into the day.

The book says the voices of children

arise clear in spring like toys,

balls or kites, miraculous and

loud, and it is so.

The silence is a public garden.

You go there for the scent of water,

the statues of angels and monsters

and lovers, the magnolia.

You cannot see the future.

It is out of view of the window,

to the west. Darkness is covering the houses.

The branches are going out one by one.

The perfume is of a teenage flame.

The cat rolls in the last dazzle of light.

Each season is contained in the next,

understood simply. You cannot understand

spring, or summer. It is mysterious, as it should be.

The children have gone in, against their wishes, for dinner.             

Fair                 

It’s just like the chair

in my movie, I mean, dream.

There are thirteen things that matter for me here.                 

 1

Five Hundred New

Fairy Tales Discovered

In Germany.

 2

Newly Divorced Man

Gets Creative With

His Ex-Wife’s

Wedding Dress.

 3

I want to be paid for the time

I go to my job in my dreams.

The minotaur in the cubicle next to me agrees.

 4

The woman I’m with is wearing a perfume called High School.

The light is intentional.

 5

Perfume is a gateway drug.

 

 6

I feel totally safe-ish with you.

 7

Dusk is ex cathedra. The mica-flecked dark is also.

 8

Now that paradise is locked, where will we go?

Now that there is nowhere to go, what will we do with these brochures?

I have set fire to these messages in an ashtray many times in the last hour

and dumped the ashes in the river of wind.

 9

Little wind.

Don’t let it in.

 10

Everything is done. The truce is not apparent.

 11

The world isn’t fair, ladling out light.

 12

It’s spring. Kids run

through streets, with

cherry-stained hands, yelling,

trailing strings.

 13

I want more than this.

I know you do.

Rake                                                               

 1

It is the cutouts or silhouettes

of the leaves that concern

us. What is not here

is on our mind. The door

that opened out on the vista of light

cannot be seen or remembered

at all. It is suggested                                      

that the rake left out                                       

was not elegant, but may be so

now. Think along these lines.

 2

There is only one question: How can I help?

This is a direct quote.

 3

The man sits down at the paper

and begins to write a letter.

It is understood that there are those

among you to whom the idea of letter

will have to be explained.                              

Say you are viewing paintings in a museum

for the first time and you are transported to

a clearing and it is mildly hot.

The dragonflies are flashing and the base

of the mountain hums.

Two liters of root beer or ginger ale

are poured over you. You equate                  

this to the imagery in the paintings

you have seen and the emotion that is

stirred. It’s crazy, of course, but that is

why you’ve put pen to paper.

You add something

witty and charming because

you are writing to someone close to

you. And you sign your name.

That’s all.

Or you want to say the world is a garden.

Your small garden, which is wild, beautiful

and disordered, connects you to the larger world.

The birds make a terrific racket,                                                       

praise it and call it singing.

The soil smells like green darkness,

praise the slight air of oregano and dark chocolate.

You say you live for the civil twilight

when the bats try out the night

and the embers even out.

Say you coast in one of the boats                                          

to the center of the lake.

Tell me the silk the milkweed emits                                      

means the world to you

and you talk all day with cats and rats           

as if they understood.

Tell me you have fallen for the darkness                              

and petals, but save the last dance for me.

Level              

 1

Item: She parked under the dogwood                        

and hoped the blossoms

would undo and cover

her dark car.

She would photograph it.

There is a mysterious

rain in the fields, I am told.

Finite amount of crows

in oak at dusk.

 2

I would not want to seem

as if I knew something about

faith or the way to it,

if I did not.

To know a thing is simple.

When you do not know it,

it is complex, with many layers.

There are many places

I would want to return

to without a dark heart.

Now as I purchase blueberries

on the sidewalk, I see my

heart as lightened.

The wind rustles Mirror

Lake once more. The pines or reflections?

It is hard to tell.

 3

Through the night of trees

and tree frog hum,

a clearing in the leaves.

A falls starts up. Sheet

by aluminum sheet.

Mostly gray, thunder distant in the day.

All happens so fast,

as though a letter had grown wings.

Perhaps there is a place

to set up the compass

and level,

to better see from one point to another,

the present to the past.

Maybe it is this park.                                                             

Customer Service                                          

 1

Somehow it is my father at the customer service window.

I feel sadness. I don’t know what to do with it.                                             

He hands me a brochure to take home, to think about it later.

I realize the cicadas I heard were in a dream.

The weather breaks.

The rides at the carnival are closed.

I cannot love the past again.

The city asks, Do you desire a glass coffin?

A skyline in haze and mist.

 2

I see a red dog and I want it painted black.

No more will my green seagull turn a deeper blue.

I want to see bats fly out from the sky.                                  

I want to see it plainly, plainly, plainly.

 3

There is a music.

It is like when you are reading and listening to music.

The story is longer and more drawn out.                               

There are people here and there.

You interact and four-hundred pages later you interact again.

Music, on the other hand, happens inside.

You are not really thinking about it.

It is a river.

            (after Richard Aldrich)

 4

The weather breaks. I realize

the cicadas I heard were in a dream.

I feel a sadness I do not know what to do with.

One that overcomes and confounds.

The rides at the carnival are closed.

I cannot have the past again.

A city skyline in a mist of heat and exhaust.

The wind asks, Do you desire a glass coffin?

Somehow it is my father at the customer service window.

He hands me a brochure to take home, to think about it later.

Leonard Gontarek’s recent book is He Looked Beyond My Faults and Saw My Needs

A new book of poems is forthcoming from Hanging Loose Press in 2016.

In 2015, his poem, 37 Photos From The Bridge, was a Poetry winner for the Big Bridges

MotionPoems project and the basis for the winning film from the Big Bridges poetry/

film contest sponsored by MotionPoems and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis.