Ivan Jenson

Star Spangled

I am
a half-mast flag
flapping in the wind
representing a fraction
of my country
having spent over
half a century
undocumented
by historians
living out the improv
of my destiny
and one day they will say
that I am survived
by the blinking and breathing
who will cough and cry
at the monotony
of my eulogy
and what remains
of my karmic debt
will be repaid
where my best
plans will finally
be laid down
in the anticlimax
of my nakedness
don't worry
only worms
and angels
will know what
to make of this

Ivan Jenson is a fine artist, novelist and popular contemporary poet who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan. His artwork was featured in Art in America, Art News, and Interview Magazine and has sold at auction at Christie’s. Ivan was commissioned by Absolut Vodka to make a painting titled Absolut Jenson for the brand’s national ad campaign. His Absolut paintings are in the collection of the Spiritmusuem, the museum of spirits in Stockholm, Sweden. Jenson's painting of the “Marlboro Man” was collected by the Philip Morris corporation. Ivan was commissioned to paint the final portrait of the late Malcolm Forbes.  Ivan has written two novels, Dead Artist and Seeing Soriah, both of which illustrate the creative and often dramatic lives of artists. Jenson's poetry is widely published (with over 600 poems published in the US, UK and Europe) in a variety of literary media. A book of Ivan Jenson's poetry  was recently published by Hen House Press titled Media Child and Other Poems, which can be acquired on Amazon. Two novels by Ivan Jenson entitled, Marketing Mia and Erotic Rights have been published hardcover. Ivan Jenson’s novel, Gypsies of New Rochellei is now available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble. Ivan Jenson’s new romantic thriller novel The Murderess will be published in the summer of 2021 by Dark Edge Press, UK. Ivan Jenson's website is: www.IvanJenson.com

M.J. Arcangelini

An Absence of Snow

It doesn’t snow here, although there
Are winter mornings when the frost
Is enough to make one wonder,
Joints grind against themselves,
Skin shudders, shedding warmth.

It does not snow here, though all the
Leaves have vacated their perches
And the naked branches hang empty
Anticipating the wet weight of snow,
Even though it won’t snow here.

The calendar can tell me when winter
Has arrived or my bones can tell me,
Or the aches in muscles which never
Ached before when doing those things
Which no longer seem worth doing.

Bones know better than digital clocks,
Better than daylight savings time,
Better than the holiday displays in
Every store and on every downtown
Street where merchants ply their trade.

Snow has no power on the California
Coast, it is merely a distant relative
Who lives up in the boonies, sufficiently
Inclined to deep suspicion of outsiders
As to greet all visitors with a shotgun.


My Mother Grows Old
(1931-2019)

She hardly ever left the recliner but only rarely reclined it.
Gathered an afghan around her most of the time, always cold.

Grand and great-grandchildren visited occasionally. She told
me, “I can’t believe I have a son who qualifies for MediCare.”

The television was on all day as she nodded in and out. News, talk
shows, game shows, more news, police procedurals and sitcoms.

Memories of Santo Domingo, Las Vegas, Nashville Fan Weeks,
and the Knoxville World’s Fair weighed on her static existence.

Several times every day she had to enter the kitchen to fix her
shrinking meals. Her husband died there four decades earlier.

The rugs were removed from her house to prevent another fall.
She stopped taking all her pills and then sat alone, waiting.

M.J. (Michael Joseph) Arcangelini was born 1952 in western Pennsylvania. He has resided in northern California since 1979. He has published in a lot of little magazines, online journals, & over a dozen anthologies.  He is the author of five collections, the most recent of which are “What the Night Keeps,” Stubborn Mule Press 2019, and “A Quiet Ghost,” Luchador Press 2020. Arcangelini has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He can be reached at poetbear@sonic.net

Super Blood Wolf Moon, by Gary V. Powell, reviewed by Rusty Barnes

Super Blood Wolf Moon

Gary V. Powell

Kallisto Gaia Press 2020

41 pages

$12.95

Powell's chapbook is an impressive undertaking, Beginning with the evocative title, Super Blood Wolf Moon, the collection takes us through rocky pitfalls of life with wit and poignance. "On Learning of the Death of an Old Girlfriend on Facebook Before Finishing Your First Cup of Coffee" uses repetition to make its point, in a a chant or wail of sadness in which the narrator bemoans the loss of an old love while performing the odd tasks of a life, walking the dogs and remembering that annual flowers are just that: they always come back, but that she won't. Age and accident rule us all, and it's never easy to take.

Another poem which uses repetition to its great advantage is a poem titled "Crowder Peas." The first and last stanzas are identical: "Remembered picking crowder peas/for the first time in years." Yet in the middle, contrary to the first poem, the narrator catalogues the natural elements that remind him of a girl and her father, the doilies his grandmother crocheted, and the bark of a dog on his father's farm. It's a lovely, if sentimental, perhaps because it deliberately and bravely risks sentimentality, poem.

"Super Blood Wolf Moon" is the most representative poem here in its descriptions and mood, so I'll discuss it at length. from the first third of the poem

. . .You've seen this first, full winter moon before,

hanging like a lantern over Indiana corn fields,

floating like a Mardi Gras mask over Lake

            Pontchartrain, rising like a New Year's'

            ball over Lake Michigan, and riding

            like a horseman over Iowa prairie.

I admire the way the poet gives us four different views of the moon, not any of which you would normally take to look like the other, so it's a fine piece of writing that brings together disparate looks at the same thing. And later on, "You've seen a lot because you're retired, now,/ like the winter copperheads burrowed beneath/these stones, and you have plenty of time,/. . . . The narrator has plenty of time of course, but these snakes probably don't, and this the fragility of life retired or otherwise offers itself up for our consideration. The remainder of the poem describes the meaning behind super blood wolf moon, and I find myself interested in it only as a way for the retired narrator to give us his thoughts on what it means. The technical definition, eh, not so much.

Poetry collections like Powell's serve to show how much there is to discover about American poetry. In all its hives and cells and uni programs and community centers, there are beating hearts of poetry each so different from the other it beggars belief. Kallisto Gaia Press may be one such locus. I do know one thing, of all of them Gary V. Powell deserves much more recognition than he currently has,  and the poetry world at large, in all of its multifariousness, could use his wisdom.

David Cranmer

Sandpiper

I run along life's shore

dodging the cold spray

of those surfing

the same waves

of past slights,

real and reimagined,

until the storms

transform into tsunamis

These champion surfers

are charged by the

surge of drama,

never growing weary, and

I've become an accomplished

long-distance runner,

avoiding their heavy, wet sand

in my shoes.

David Cranmer is the editor of the BEAT to a PULP webzine and whose own body of work has appeared in such diverse publications as The Five-Two: Crime Poetry Weekly, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, LitReactor, Macmillan’s Criminal Element, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. Under the pen name Edward A. Grainger he created the Cash Laramie western series. He's a dedicated Whovian who enjoys jazz and backgammon. He can be found in scenic upstate New York where he lives with his wife and daughter.

A Quiet Ghost, by M.J. Arcangelini, reviewed by Rusty Barnes

M.J. Arcangelini

A Quiet Ghost

Luchador Press

62 Pages

$13.00

reviewed by Rusty Barnes

M.J. Arcangelini's  A Quiet Ghost is a quiet revelation. Through a series of short narrative poems, Arcangelini takes us through and beyond all the stresses that come with open-heart surgery. Even the epigraph from Moby Dick from which the book's title emerges, we see already the signs of a careful poetic mind setting a deliberate tone.

In "Expiration Date" a poem which treats Arcangelini's heart as a product with a date beyond which lies death, the stanza is broken up by three indented instances of the words 'expiration date'  and more later on which serve to warn us that what is coming might uh, be grim. "Spread across three arteries,/repeated, a motif, a design, a sign,/my expiration date." We can see as the speaker does later on in the poem, this doom arising to greet him as the speaker observes the doctor,

. . .he had/

seen my expiration date and/

he was about to throw me/

in the freezer to see how/

much longer I might last.

The one catch in this lovely stanza is the ending 'and' in line 2 but I'll forgive that for the apt freezer metaphor. Something else a reader might not immediately notice about this poem is that in its twenty-one lines we have an entire scene, recognition, shock and loss and grief. It's a fine poem for the near-front of the collection.

For a poet so rooted in fine observation, the incredibly precise self-reflection the poet provides in the latter half of the book shouldn't be surprising, yet it is. In the prose poem "Under" the speaker talks of comparing himself to a 'handcuffed steroid case' as he is presented with the evidence of his medication-addled struggle with nurses, the bruises left on his wrists from the restraints used. The last paragraph of the poem slams its point home.

    To have the drugs release all constraints on action

    leaving me free, as free as that guy in the elevator'

    in the move, to do what feels right at that moment.

    To live and act without restraint if only for the

    briefest time as I am about to die and then to

    live just long enough to savor how that feels.

The final poem in this short but powerful book is my favorite. Cleverly titled "How the Heart Speaks," it plays off the Hallmark card sentimentality of its outward message only to dig deep as the rest of the book does, to a splendid and satisfying conclusion. "This odd sensation in my chest/like a cat stretching and yawning/emerging from a nap." This comfortable image belies its seriousness for a heart patient. Movement in the chest? Ye gods.

Later in the poem: "Is this it? Is my time up?/Has my heart finally decided/ it has had enough and quit?" That string of rhetorical questions after the sharp observations seems to obviate the need for another stanza, but  wait: there's more. "This is how it speaks to me,/clutching at things unsaid to/tell me something uncertain." When the heart speaks, it always moves from the unsaid or the unsayable to something like uncertainty.

Arcangelini's poems are short, sharp, and quick in their deadly accuracies, and with a fine career behind him, now that the surgery is past, we dare to hope for more from him in this vein, the short narrative poems that are our lives. Bravo.

John Dorsey

The Prettiest Girl in Toledo, Ohio

used to wear a purple sweater

& buy drinks at the bar

with her father's texas oil money

she had hair on her neck

that she had to get removed by laser

every other thursday

or else she would look

like a delicate werewolf

to her the whole city

felt like a slab of glass

a pitcher of clammy beer

& she would drink just enough

to feel beautiful

& ugly again

in the same night

The Prettiest Girl in Greensburg, Pennsylvania

for gennifer payne

reads poetry & carries a skateboard

while walking past the train station

she has fiery red hair

& thinks the world ended in 1994

& who are you

to say that it didn't.

Kathy McDougal's Boyfriend

says he won't wear a face mask

because he just can't live in fear

someone once said live free or die

that's where we're lucky

now we can do both.

John Dorsey lived for several years in Toledo, Ohio. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006), Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010), Tombstone Factory, (Epic Rites Press, 2013), Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015) Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) and Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017) and Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and the Stanley Hanks Memorial Poetry Prize. He was the winner of the 2019 Terri Award given out at the Poetry Rendezvous. He may be reached at archerevans@yahoo.com.

Sentinel Species by Chase Dimock, reviewed by Mike James

Sentinel Species
Chase Dimock
Stubborn Mule Press 2020
$15.00
Reviewed by Mike James

Early in the book of Genesis, Adam names all of Earth’s animals. Even in myth’s endless dream time, that is a formidable task. The image of Adam, artist-imagined on one of Eden’s rocks, came to mind while reading Sentinel Species, Chase Dimock’s new bestiary of poems. Dimock doesn’t name the animals. That work is already done. Instead, he either re-imagines them in unique and sometimes comical situations or he utilizes them as catalysts for introspection and discovery.

The best-titled poem in the collection, “Burying my Dog Behind the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library”, illustrates how animals help to mark timelines of grand history and ordinary lives. The poem begins, “In the hills of my hometown / I have witnessed the burials / of two house cats / a golden retriever / and the 40th President / of the United States of America.” Dimock then begins to weave through a combination of public events and private memories. In the process, he shows how the public becomes private in memory.

In “Coming Out to a Spider” Dimock imagines a teenage boy grappling with same sex attraction and “the desiring vocabulary of sleep.” He relates the spider’s web to the entanglements of societal and parental expectations. He has the speaker “practice stuttering beneath / the stare of eight eyes at once.” For the speaker, truth comes in the saying. As sex is performative, so is the out loud verbal acknowledgment which leads to it.

Far away from desire is “The Vulture and the Little Girl.” The poem is based on Kevin Carter’s famous photograph taken during an African famine. It is a devastating accompaniment to the photograph. Dimock outlines the image in a few deft lines, then follows the photographer as if he were the vulture’s shadow. What is especially unique about the poem is that its very cohesion does not lend itself to quotation. No one line stands out, but all the lines work together. The poem is like a piece of Amish furniture: deceptively simple, yet tremendously hard to duplicate.

In “American Gothic”, one of the few non-animal related poems within the collection, Dimock shapes a story within the characters of Grant Wood’s most famous painting. In the poem, the artist’s sister has “all the realism / of the rutted earth / plowed across her face.” Like the painting, the poem is grounded in clean lines. It does not draw attention to itself.

Dimock’s style throughout this collection is clear and subtle. His focus is always on clarity and his poems all operate with simple diction. It is that simplicity, that willfulness away from the poetic, which provides this collection’s greatest enjoyment. Dimock is never trendy or posing. His well-built poems stand tall and alone.

Mike James makes his home outside Nashville, Tennessee and has published widely. His many poetry collections include: Journeyman’s Suitcase (Luchador), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), and Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog.) He currently serves as an associate editor of Unbroken. 

Howie Good

The Bereaved

Ugly, lined faces. A grimy rain coming

down. The world is behaving in ways

that just a short while ago I wouldn’t

have thought possible. A rectangular

hole has been dug to regulation depth.

This is where he’ll stay. You should

squeeze your younger siblings to you,

tell everyone within shouting distance

that you love them. There’s no word

in English for a parent who’s lost a child.

Howie Good's latest poetry collections are The Death Row Shuffle (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and The Trouble with Being Born (Ethel Micro-Press, 2020).