Friday, December 27, 2019

Agnes Vojta

I Need a Wrist Strap for my Ice Axe

Wearing a short dress and sandals,
I step into the outfitter,
ice axe in hand,
and ask for a wrist strap.

The questions begin immediately:
What do I want with an ice axe?
Don’t I know that is a dangerous mountain?
A real climb? Wouldn’t I rather
be interested in a nice walk?

My bearded friends
on the other side of the store
watch for a while, amused,
before they amble over to me.

Suddenly, the wrist strap
is no problem at all.


Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and now lives in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at Missouri S&T. She is the author of Porous Land (Spartan Press, 2019). Her poems recently appeared in Red River Review, Minute Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, The Blue Nib, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Former People, Thimble Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. 

Friday, December 20, 2019

Gabriella Garofalo

Listening to comets, aren’t you?
Yet you are deaf, deaf to the voice of riotous angels,
Deaf to the green solitude that heaves at you
While my sad place gathers
A blue ambivalence, or missing lives
Who dreamt of choosing between raw and hard light:
These are sidereal places,
Where fire can’t decrypt your hunger,
Where you can’t give light a nice welcome,
That’s why you need only
A womb insensitive to breathing light,
Here, among your furniture,
And crumpled souls at night who hiss
You won’t come back to the fields,
Nor will you reach the water,
Only exiled limbs hassling with the slant of demise,
The blue light you silence as undeserving
Of your hunger: is it a matter of voices, limbs,
And pewter skies?
Great, so please shape your light in mixed shades,
That will do, and bring me not flowers, nor toys,
As I saw too many at the children’s bedside-
Please bring me seedy cafes where men
Stare at an empty half-light,
Where women all clad in blue go unnoticed
‘Cause blue was the left hand of God
When he made me and no,
I didn’t want all the hours you hurled at me,
Time and demise, as I was dying for a wind, a fire,
A wind to dishevel my hair, to grab from me my souls,
A fire to run wild, and disperse my words
So scary of an ambush, as I was dying for being
A shore waves endlessly strike-
Waves? Of course I mean loving limbs,
Well, cry me a river, waves, limbs, who cares?
By me everything fine:
The dirty blonde who’s got scabs on her legs,
But plays the drums great,
Kharon thriving on hunger and hunted skies,
Who smiles, thanks the fight against words,
Maybe the envy the moon feels for exiled limbs,
When lovers and fathers go radio silence
And you bet she’ll end up without light.


***


Mother? No way,
You knew the names from the womb
And its dark blaze wore you out, danger -
Meanwhile she hobbles along life
Just to look the part,
Among deceits, frayed comets, halls,
Meanwhile strange rumours are going around
‘A wonderful haven for desire’ -
Forget it, not in the right mood for gropes
When she’ll show up: naked and blue,
Just like soul, yes, just like soul,
And see if they care, kids and teens
Locked up in the attic,
The grass cuts and runs,
She knows best, only books walls and trees
Can stalk light, hold her still,
Yet you stay alive, soul, you rise again
Among cars shooting out from Cerberus’ maw -
Got it, ok, the town that cheats and craves
Goes on with a life where scribes bend truth, papers,
Light colours give way to blue, neurotic sounds
Creep over your thirst deep down -
Say no to that ghastly muse
Who always wears mauve -
Well, to be honest, soul, you also wear mauve -
Maybe to get what writers try to say:
That you lost sight of heaven.

Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella Garofalo fell in love with the English language at six, started writing poems (in Italian) at six and is the author of “Lo sguardo di Orfeo”; “L’inverno di vetro”; “Di altre stelle polari”; “Blue branches”, “ A Blue Soul”.

Friday, December 13, 2019

Max Heinegg

Lake House Guns

Is it ever only a toy?
Robert Bly in my ears
talking campfire men
who cry handling a sword.

I get pissed at my nephews,
firing Nerf guns, water guns, any
gun—cocking pathologically
until my daughters join the effort,

pinning a hapless cousin
in a bedroom corner. The squad
rains doom, & I think it’s good
for them—girls are better off

not taking shit from anyone.
Let them get hit & hit back,
learn to handle them.
So, I quit bitching about

guns, firing equitably—
no one’s watching them
decide what’s fair play, protest
the other child a coward.

Max Heinegg's poems have appeared locally in Nixes Mate, Pangyrus, and Ibbetson Street Review. He lives in Medford, MA, where he teaches high school English and is the co-founder of Medford Brewing Company.

Friday, December 6, 2019

Simon Perchik

You stir this can before it opens
as the promise a frog makes
when asking for a kiss :the paint

warmer and warmer will become
an afternoon with room for mountains
and breezes close to your shoulder

though that’s not how magic works
–there’s the wave, the hand to hand
spreading out between the silence

and your fingers dressed with gloves
as if it was a burden and the brush
raising your arm the way this wall

needs a color that will dry by itself
leave a trace :a shadow not yet lovesick
no longer its blanket and cure.

Simon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, Forge, Poetry, Osiris, The New Yorker and elsewhere. His most recent collection is The Gibson Poems published by Cholla Needles Arts & Literary Library, 2019. For more information including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities” please visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. 

Paul Ilechko

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