September & October 2019
Vol IV No V
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
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Published bi-monthly
Formal & Rhyming Poetry with Vera Ignatowitsch
Vision
I saw you clearly in a dream —
you had become
Immaculate in that vast stream,
and dropping from
That height, you poured out syllables
exultant. Why,
I asked, do we return, old woes
forgotten, sighs
Relinquished, yet on waking see
no brighter world?
Not gone, you said, for clarity
can still unfurl.
Jared Carter’s latest collection, The Land Itself, is from Monongahela Books in West Virginia. Carter lives in Indiana.
Anant Chaturdashi
Sticks started cracking, and the barn cats scattered:
a late-night stranger. On my property.
Hey, what you want? A feline tenor chattered
the moon was urgent, and a holiday,
urgent, and could he please please bathe his Shri
Shri God Ganesha in my reservoir?
Soon as I shrugged and muttered, Well, okay,
a whole family gathered. One, a daughter,
cradled no dolly, no mere avatar,
but him, they clamored, him! Could I not see
the tusks, the trunk, the pudgy little belly?
The god had flown here all the way from Delhi.
The whole family waist-deep in the water
took turns immersing him. The moon was full
and satisfied at last. What they possessed
was what possessed them—a reciprocal
devotion. They were home, and I, a guest,
observed, from my own land, their festival.
Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, POETRY, and The Times Literary Supplement.
A Demurral
Why keep your senses grounded here,
Or let them have you sharp and clear
Who wakened you to numbered days
To yoke you to their futile ways?
While tickings winch you nearer toward
Your execution and reward,
Why not imbibe—or pick your trip,
Let them ram home the standard script
As you, absorbing what you like
Risk transport on a one-way flight;
Let our grand architects complain,
Who pull their mighty weight in vain,
Only to end as they began,
Fragile freight of a circling hand
That flicks the feeble out and in
And each back to his origin.
Poems by Tom Merrill have recently appeared in two novels as epigraphs. His latest book, Time in Eternity, can be purchased from Ancient Cypress Press.
Ritual Journey to Native America
So summer closes. Now we travel north
To Oklahoma, where they found “black gold”
On Uncle’s land. I’m twelve years old, and seated
Behind him, at the back of his red Mustang,
With cousins, singing “99 Beer Bottles,”
To pass time and improve my backwards counting.
My cousins laugh, for they are going home
To Indian country, leaving my loved bayous,
Returning to their clan another year.
The hot night wind whips hair into my eyes,
So I’m stung blind by tears — or so I tell them.
Have I brought with me Uncle’s Native dolls?
I can’t recall. The Mustang roughly rocks.
These shocks, as I sit settled at its rear,
Seem de rigueur for such an expedition,
As do the teardrops shed at my “removal.”
For years, I shall not understand their joy,
Returning to that tribal territory,
Till Tulsa — like a hideout — is my home,
Where I will find my everlasting love,
And where my half-blood, prized, first son is born,
Where I will feel that bond and that relief
In glimpsing everywhere an agnate face.
Familiar names I know and recognize:
Coushatta and the fierce Atakapas—
Although notorious for eating men—
I do not fear. The first beloved eyes
I ever saw in life were Indian.
But Pawnee, Tonkawa, are strange to me
And frightening — whatever they consume.
I shift and ask my cousins to make room.
Jennifer Reeser is the author of INDIGENOUS, Able Muse Press. Her writings have appeared in POETRY, Rattle, and The Hudson Review. Her work has been anthologized in Everyman’s Library, Poets Translate Poets, and others.
Theosebeia to Zosimus
(spoken by the lifelong pupil of the alchemist Zosimus of Panopolis)
I came to learn. That’s all. How close I kept
Your words—How close I copied each report,
How close I gazed into the deep retort
To see smoke turn to sand. Dead ashes wept
Rivers of livid flame. I gave my youth
To you, our Art, trusting your ardent spirit
To light my twist-filled way to Truth. I’d near it
And watch it recede. I’d stepped, blind, toward your Truth
To find it hidden. Each turn revealed a turn.
There was no Way. So long I thought your Word
Could turn the breathless clay in me
To gold. How could I hold my love to be
This base and brazen fraud? The emerald sword
Transfixes us on truth—I came to learn.
Daniel Galef’s “Imaginary Sonnets” have appeared in Measure, The Lyric, The Copperfield Review, Ars Medica, Volare, and the J Journal, among others. Besides poetry he also writes short stories and plays. Find him on Twitter at @DanielGalef.
Black Holes
Remember how we watched as Captain Kirk,
white knuckled on the bridge, tried to get clear
of the black hole, how nothing seemed to work,
so this could be his last final frontier?
Recall the image on the screen? A ring
of throbbing orange licking a dark void?
And how Kirk pulled off one last desperate thing
like ricocheting off an asteroid?
Turns out a real black hole looks just the same,
as close as cellphones to communicators.
Now for those fictions fact has yet to claim:
the Tricorder, the Universal Translator,
Tribbles, Klingons, Vulcans, the warp bubble,
Scotty, to beam us up when we're in trouble.
Anna M. Evans gained her MFA from Bennington College and teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her latest book is Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic.
On this page we publish selections of metrical poetry from our contributors. Submit your blank verse, metrical rhyming poems, villanelles, sonnets, sestinas, pantoums, and other formal poetry to betterthanstarbucks2@gmail. We love both traditional and experimental forms and subjects, and please do submit limericks and lighthearted verse as well! Vera Ignatowitsch
“some of the best poetry on the web” Vera Ignatowitsch
At Dusk
At dusk out on Plum Island, in October,
my friend and I sit on a ridge of sand
that overlooks the sea.
Indulging memory,
a child again, she takes her father’s hand.
When she grows tired, he lifts her to his shoulder.
Slowly, now, a darkness fills the hollows.
Splotches of sunset founder in the rills.
Closing her eyes, she sees—
beyond the guava trees
along that inland, homeward path she follows—
La Vega in the shadow of its hills.
As for me, I grip the captain’s wheel,
each salt air inhalation like a dram;
my dreams are all about
adventure, setting out—
until I feel myself adrift, off-keel,
and start the long way back to where I am.
We brace ourselves as we descend the dune,
caught up in time, itself a kind of tide,
whose whorls and eddies trace
the stories of a place.
Our footprints will get covered over, soon.
For now, they skirt the beachgrass, side by side.
Alfred Nicol’s most recent collection of poetry, Animal Psalms, was published in 2016 by Able Muse Press. He has published two other collections, Elegy for Everyone (2009), and Winter Light, which received the 2004 Richard Wilbur Award.
White Horse Beach, 6 a.m.
Plymouth, MA
This morning it’s all mine—the sea, the sand,
and lots of things that I don’t understand
but that I feel embracing me: this air
that rushes to uncomb and salt my hair;
that far horizon, wider than ambition
or ego and insisting on submission
to larger forces; the emerging sun,
already brilliant though it’s just begun
its labors; and these wave-washed little stones
thrown here by mighty tides. Each pebble owns
its spot, and spares no mercy for bare feet;
with no concern about the forced retreat
ahead, each will assert its sovereignty
for just a little while, not unlike me.
Jean L. Kreiling is the prize-winning author of two poetry collections: Arts & Letters & Love (2018,) and The Truth in Dissonance (2014).
White Night
Minutes. Hours. Darkness pressing
through the window. Not a breeze.
Freight trains at the level crossing
wail and goad my turning, tossing.
Lurid ciphers lengthen, glossing
over time’s hypotheses.
Night attends my second-guessing
days we were not meant to seize.
First published in Mezzo Cammin, Volume 8, Issue 1, 2013.
Catherine Chandler is the author of five books of poetry, including The Frangible Hour, winner of the Richard Wilbur Award. Her poetry blog, The Wonderful Boat, is at cathychandler.blogspot.com
Lighthearted Verse
Poetry Reading
Her voice a buzzing monotone,
She first intoned her title,
Her mouth too near the microphone
She said, I think, our souls would moan
With howls like Allen Ginsberg’s own,
And slurred and blurred her dreary drone
In tedious recital.
She gripped the podium on stage,
Her poem never ending —
And only her decrepit age
Assuaged the next three readers’ rage
As, turning yet another page,
She spent our time as if her wage
Depended on its spending.
As moderator, I did not
Perceive a lot of choice
As murmurs grew: somebody ought,
No, had, to halt her verbal squat
So toad-like in our garden spot,
And find a way to staunch this rot
By stoppering her voice.
So arms out toward, as I’d been taught,
The middle of the mass,
I aimed, breathed out, and squeezed, and shot
The leather-lunged and doddering blot
Who’d droned along as if she thought
That once she'd seized the mike she’d got
Some sort of life-time pass.
The general approach of Law,
And many of its minions,
To shooting someone through the craw
For her inane blah blah blah blah,
However last that last last straw,
Is that it is a fatal flaw
In not a few opinions.
The prosecutor even shed
A manly tear to show it
Had moved him greatly she was dead:
“Her pure poetic spirit fled
Prosaic Death’s pedestrian tread . . . ”
“Wait, wait — ” the jury foreman said
“You say she was a poet?”
The prosecutor said “Indeed!
And she was published widely —
I’ll use your question to proceed
To show you.” He began to read.
At length, the foreman knelt to plead:
“Stop reading! We have all agreed!
We can’t abide this idly!
“You’ve put us through this punishment
And made your case absurder;
We find the shooter innocent
Of any criminal intent —
Indeed, we actively lament
Your silly try to represent
This noble act as murder.
“We hold free speech must know its place
If it is to continue:
You must not underbid your ace,
Nor doubt the Holy Spirit’s grace,
Nor sing the tune if you’re a bass,
For decency demands you face
The moral law within you!
“But poets who have read too long
Must all be superceded —
We urge you when you’re in a throng
While poets thus are in the wrong,
To make your protest very strong
And aim to end such ceaseless song
With shot and shell as he did!”
The prosecutor gave a sigh
And packed away his pleadings,
Then gave me such a look goodbye
It made me think he meant to try
To mutely say, or just imply,
That maybe I’d be wise if I
No longer read at readings.
Not much is known about Marcus Bales, except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, and his work has not appeared in The New Yorker or Poetry Magazine. His newest book, 51 Poems, from Lawrence Block Productions, is available at http://tinyurl.com/jo8ek3r.
The Fig Tree
The fig leaf symbol’s one of History’s greats
As, inter alia,
It hides, discloses and exaggerates
Male genitalia.
The fruit itself suggests the female form —
Dripping with honey
The little hole breaks open, pink and warm . . .
The Bible’s funny.
First Published in The Asses of Parnassus.
Robin Helweg-Larsen is British-born but Bahamian-raised. As Series Editor of Sampson Low’s Potcake Chapbooks he strongly advocates formal verse . . . but surreptitiously writes other poetry as well. Please don’t tell.
Archive of Formal & Rhyming Poetry pages by issue:
July 2019 May 2019 March 2019 January 2019 November 2018 September 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018
December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017
June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017