A GIRL ON HER BOARD
She rolled on the sidewalk at dusk,
the wheels of her skateboard whirring.
She bent without effort,
feet tucked under knees
in a pose I’d never seen.
Gray leggings popped out of pink high-tops. Maroon lips,
aubergine nail polish, metal hoops dangled from her ears.
Her chin rested on her long arm. One bare shoulder
slipped out of her oversized black cardigan. She flew
past cherry blossoms, absorbing cracks in equal measure.
Gliding in her own momentum,
never intending to forget her flow,
she followed her beat wherever it led her.
Was this the starting gate of her velocity
or the peak of it?
Read more "Margaret Wagner – A GIRL ON HER BOARD"As We Wait for His Transport to Cremation
George’s body lies in bed
mouth ajar. His skin
each minute turns
in a shade of white
paler than before.
In front of his grandpa’s corpse
grandson flips through tropical shirts.
The few items George’s daughter
did not pack for me
to take to Goodwill.
Grandson picks one. He pulls
his t-shirt over his head.
Slips his arms through sleeves.
When buttons fasten holes
birds, flowers align.
A friend of George
who has the same name
who influenced George’s poetry
wears a tropical shirt he selected
from the stack.
George would smile
if he could see them
wear him.
But he said no afterlife exists.
Read more "Sal Marici – As We Wait for His Transport to Cremation"“It’s Probably More Than Colitis”
I like a woman with a clean colon,
the way she starts telling stories
at the end
and works back toward the beginning,
expecting me to connect all the dots.
She takes her temperature every hour,
tells me the results, wants for me
to tie a knot with my swollen tongue
in her cherry
stem. The french kiss should have been
the second best clue
that we wouldn’t click, at least not like that.
I can cuddle like a fish with the best of them,
but sometimes we have to be satisfied
with a flag at half mast. You can always
use tulips to brighten the
room. We fidget in the clinic for an hour
before they call her name.
She refuses my hand, gives me an orange-lipped
piranha smile, and disappears into the
blue-white light.
Read more "John Dorroh – “It’s Probably More Than Colitis”"The Bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
The bells of
The Mission Santa Ysabel
Ring no more
To most parishioners still living
They never have rang in their lifetimes
Being stolen in 1925
The whereabouts of the bells are unknown
Yet it’s expected
That this was an inside job
And that the bells are holed up
Not very far away
Forgotten about in some old shed or barn
The parishioners pray
That this is true
That God will work a mid-level miracle
And see to the safe return of the bells
In 1700 Peter the Great
Of Russia
Melted down all of his homelands’
Church bells
To make cannons for warfare
They fired church bell cannon balls
Which killed people
Did they suffer a holy death
That granted them immediate entrance
Into the kingdom of Heaven
Was this the fate of the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Have remained silent
As to their whereabouts
And to what they may be mixed-up in
The hostage syndrome
They identify with their captors
And don’t try to escape
Who would steal church bells
What kind of a low-life would do such a thing
You would think that they would feel guilty
Every time they heard a church bell ring
Wracked with inconsolable guilt
And with every ding-dong
That ever reached their ears
For the rest of their lives
Cringing on Sundays
At the noon day
At quitting time
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Ring no more
For us
But for their captors
They ring all the time
Clanging out “Thief, thief, thief!”
It must be tough to hold up
Under that kind of condemnation
God must have a hand in this
He keeps the thieves names on His black list
Nothing good could ever come of this
Those bells are surely missed
There’s only one way to escape eternal damnation
Bring back the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Buy your way out of hell
God’s not buying what you have to sell
And one can never tell
When things will no longer go so well
Someday the bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will chime in joyous rapture
Across the Santa Ysabel Valley
Summoning parishioners to appear
And perhaps shed some tears
Over the long-awaited return of the bells
God being in his Heaven
And all being right with the world
The bells
Of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Don’t ring currently
But even a blind man can see
That God will put an end to this travesty
He will solve the mystery
The bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will once again clang loudly
Ding, dong
No longer gone
The bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel
Will clang loudly
Over the Santa Ysabel Valley
God being in His Heaven
And all being right with the world
Ding
Dong
Ding
Dong
Read more "John C. Krieg – The Bells of the Mission Santa Ysabel"IMPRESSIONS OF THE SICK HOUSE
I watch in the world,
amused by massacre and gin,
homeland walls, holiday wars.
Viewed from the barred gate
darkened surveillance cars prowl,
aimless under winter afternoon skies.
Cold weather tramps straggle past
construction generators, pavement gaps,
work order water leaks.
I take into consideration
the symbolic and the sin.
I deny memories useless to me—
week-long binges, wives I’ve cheated with.
Unsettled by panic attack, I leave
a dark bedroom for couch and cable tv.
Lessons located in news video,
detention gangs scour migrant dives,
mercados, work warehouse.
I look away, watch the ceiling fan
swirl shadow circles on the blinds.
In jeans, a Steely Dan tour tee shirt,
almost ready for silence,
I allow days clear of music.
~
Cemetario General
Cemetario General is one of the largest cemeteries in Santiago, Chile. Patio 29 is a plot used to bury the disappeared, the homeless, the unidentified, and victims of the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship.
What’s left of them is arranged in boxes,
fifty or so line a wall.
He turns off the leaf blower,
passes a woman kneeling, her head lowered.
Even in death there are mansions.
Glass criptas encasing tías.
He coaxes leaves away
from the marble structures.
In a narrower section
ice cream and chip vendors push their carts.
Crowded together are plots of dirt, maybe some hierba,
a Nescafé bottle filled with wilted hydrangea.
He asks families to give more.
Sometimes there’s no response. So he digs up the land
and transfers what endured to a mass plot, Patio 29.
He’s so close to the body then, touching its bones.
At home he holds his esposa’s hips
as she cooks dinner, the smell of her sweat and the humitas
mixing in the kitchen air,
holds her as she undresses and they lie down together.
Find her at marlenachertock.com or @mchertock.
Read more "POETRY: MARLENA CHERTOCK – CEMETARIO GENERAL"Hasta La Vista
Here I find myself again,
in the company of
trees and sunshine,
a quiet workday morning.
It’s like emerging from a tunnel
where my mind was cloyed
with mundane matters such as
providing food, doing dishes,
and having to
respond to others—
who are my family,
who have gone back now
to being themselves
in the far distance where I can
make out the details better,
hear their words more clearly
in the sparse air between
here and there, as if minds can’t
co-exist in close proximity
and must always be
sent on their way.
–
Order Joseph Somoza’s new volume of poems As Far as I know (Cinco Puntos Press, 2015).
Read more "poetry: Joseph Somoza – Hasta La Vista"
This story originally appeared in Backpack Trekker: A 60’s Flashback (Beatlick Press, 2011).
TREK 55
In 1969 four-hundred students at Harvard University seize buildings as part of a campus-wide strike.
I enjoy long flights while looking out the window at rivers and empty ball parks. When the clouds blocked the view at 30,000 feet I read “Uncle Tom’s Children” by Richard Wright. It is right to say he left a rich mark on literature. He introduced a new element into American fiction. He created a tension from the possibility of random violence. H.L. Mencken taught him how to use words as weapons.
In the story “Big Boy Leaves Home” three Negro men go skinny dipping in a lake. There are no signs of trouble until a white man appears with a rifle. He kills two of the men but Big Boy manages to kill the white man. Later, while trying to secure a hiding place, he beats a snake to death with a stick. From a hide-out he watches a friend get burned with hot tar and gas. He strangles a barking dog that sniffs him out and threatens to dis-close his presence. Big Boy is pursued by the vigilante commit-tee but he escapes to the north.
Richard Wright escaped to Paris in 1946. In 1953 with the publication of his novel “The Outsider”, he culminated the work of the Harlem Renaissance and joined forces with French existentialism. Wright died in Paris in 1960 and his ashes are interred at Père Lachaise. He shares the cemetery with other exiles such as Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison.
The stewardess asked if I wanted a drink. Her skin was the color of a cooked pinto bean so I assumed she was a Latina. I replied in Spanish that I wanted a beer. She popped the cap on a Corona and we bantered back and forth in Spanish. She complimented me on my accent and asked where I learned to speak Español. I explained that I read Antonio Machado. My father served in Spain during their civil war. He accompanied Machado into southern France and was at his bedside when the poet died in exile in 1939.
She asked if I was familiar with Federico García Lorca. I told her my mother was a student at Columbia University in 1929. My mom provided the lonely poet with a conversation partner. He gave her a hand-written poem called “La Aurora” which he signed “Federico.” She kept it until 1936 when she showed it to a neighbor who inadvertently spilled a blotch of ketchup on it. Lorca’s name was smeared blood red.
We landed and like Dean Moriarity, I crossed the street into Mexico “on soft feet.”
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Read more "NONFICTION: BEATLICK JOE SPEER – TREK 55"
Jealous Guy
slow night
i think of all the owls
who are busy enjoying their lives without me
Bright Blue Day
lost in my head for a very long time
and then, suddenly: the mountains
In Nature
drunk as fuck
these silent mornings
are always so pretty
~
Buy Flak’s killer book here.
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Read more "POETRY: KYLE FLAK – 3 HAIKU"
Cacti Fur 