Daughter Bird Bone Song, 8 and 9 | by Michele Harman

8.

A plastic nativity scene lights up in three concentric circles, electric cords stretched in every direction. On the card's front, a foot-high, laminated clown, meant to cheer me up. I go to the rec center to practice craps, then photocopy the good rolls. Who murdered the 24-year-old grandmother? And why in a closet? At this amusement park, I become caught in Adventure River, my legs wrapped entirely with rope before I fall into the rushing water; though it's all preplanned, one wrong move leads to disaster: notice the vacuum cleaners tilting toward us on a high glass ledge. When the Butter Eatery truck passes, everyone claps. They go flying in a round ball that hovers just over rooftops. Yes! The woman in the purple dress did it! Though it pours rain into my glass, I wait at the outdoor bar by the side of the road. He puts one of his sons into a dolls' house living room, and the other into a bird cage to keep him occupied with my same-sized finch which plays dead at first, feet up, then recovers.

 

      

9.

In a maze, expressionless people pair up in matching costumes, then leave. He becomes a plant. Everyone knows exactly what to do except me. I spend the next hour/minute searching for him. Their train, de-railing. An alien creature flies around looking to possess or kill me. The breathing space is insubstantial. We lower it into a vat of honey and tear it apart limb by limb. They skate on minuscule patches of ice. Over there! The miniaturized people. I hide. I put on the wedding dress in order to cross town. And, a piece of clothing with memory and feathers.

You can also read
 Daughter Bird Bone Song 1, 
 2 and 3
 4 and 5
6 and 7

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The Writer: With undergraduate and graduate degrees in English literature and creative writing, poetry, from UCLA and UF, Gainesville, Michele Pizarro Harman has published poems in such literary journals and online venues as Quarterly West, The Antioch Review, Mississippi Mud, Midwest Quarterly, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review, Berry Blue Haiku, Shepherd’s Check, a handful of stones, The Commonline Journal, and Miriam’s Well. She currently lives with her husband and two of their four children in the small town in Central California where she and her husband grew up; beyond the cows, crows and cranes, she teaches reading, writing, and math to K-6 special-needs students in a public elementary school. She also may be found at: www.michelepizarroharman.com.

The Photographer: Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC..

He knew his wife was sleeping with somebody else | by William Wright Harris

He knew his wife was sleeping with somebody else

but he didn't know it was Ares. 

He just knew Aphrodite

was fucking somebody that wasn’t him.

That’s important.

So Hephaestus must have devised the chains

he hung atop his wife’s bed sturdy

enough to trap Zeus,

the strongest of the gods.

He must have fashioned them to withstand

the earthquakes of Poseidon

and the sharp rust of Hades.

Clever enough that swift footed Hermes

- a trickster- could not escape.

Those chains had to bind

tight enough to ensnare the madness

of Dionysus writhing ecstatically,

and to outlast the burning songs of Apollo

or the terrible rage and fury of Ares.

The links had to be able

to endure all these possibilities. I ask

what was going through his mind

as Hephaestus

was in his workshop

making chains that could hold a god.

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The Poet: William Wright Harris's poetry has appeared in fifteen countries in such publications as Poetry Salzburg Review, The Cannon’s Mouth, Ascent Aspirations, andWrite On!!! He attained his BA in English Literature from the University of Tennessee and is currently a graduate student in DePaul University’s MA in Writing and Publishing program. He is currently employed at the Art Institute of Chicago, selling audio guides.

The Artist: Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.

The First Eight Lines of Eliot's "The Waste Land"—an editor's note by Ada Fetters

The first line of The Waste Land contains one of the greatest and possibly most misunderstood lines in poetic history: "April is the cruelest month." We've all heard this but what does it mean?

Many poets use April to recall bright associations of new life. Daffodils, lilacs, tulips, lambs and so on. It is the beginning of spring, of love, of entreaties to sons or brothers to come home. Other poets (Watson, for example) say that April's vice is a changeable temperament, one minute laughing "girlish laughter" and then weeping "girlish tears." Why should Eliot say it is cruel? 

The first four lines are a deliberate recall to Chaucer's opening to Canterbury Tales, when Chaucer describes April rain nourishing the roots of plants which come to flower. Much of Waste Land is a recall to other poets or writers from the past, so a big part of figuring out what Eliot is trying to say is picking up these clues.

However, it does not do to be so busy trying to put a jigsaw of references together that we lose sight of Eliot himself and what he is trying to say, and indeed the way in which he says it. There is a 70s martial arts movie called "Enter the Dragon"  in which a master informs his student that the form of martial arts "is like a finger pointing a way to the moon. Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all the heavenly glory!" This is another way of saying "Do not look at the form/law/letter/words, look at the meanings or forces beyond them." This is not one of my favorite sayings but it makes the point well.

Eliot's Waste Land is a bit like that except readers must keep an eye on the guiding hand, the trajectory, and the beautiful moon too. If that saying could be applied to a martial arts movie, it would be a favorite of mine. Things always have a symbolic and transcendent meaning, poetry especially. This poem has several layers of it. Still, it doesn't do to miss the things themselves.

So this is a reference to Chaucer. That is important and sets the tone. Eliot is telling readers that there will be many "voices" in this poem from many walks of life,  the way Chaucer used several different "voices" to tell his various Tales. He is telling readers that much of the meaning this poem has to offer will be oblique - after all, he does not simply write, "As Chaucer said before me..." but throws out a veiled reference to the man's work and relies on the reader to catch it.

However it is not only Chaucer speaking, it is also Eliot, and his use of April is quite different from Chaucer's. In the greater context of the poem, he tells us about the fall and follies of Western civilization. He is not trying to tear down its accomplishments but rather is trying to use the lenses of these mighty accomplishments (i.e. the works of Shakespeare, Chaucer, etc.)  to show his readers what vast potential we have... and the ways we have squandered so much of it.

Thus we come back to "April is the cruelest month," and in the next few lines, he tells us that winter was easier.

If all we ever had to do was merely exist from hand to mouth in a perpetual present, the way animals do, it'd be easier for us. But no. We have so much potential. So much hope. So much ability to pull back and look to the future and plan. And this does not go away. After each and every bad winter or dark age, we stumble back out into the April sunshine, blinking.

So it has been for hundreds of years and on a level of civilizations, and so it is true today on an individual level.

According to Eliot, though, April is the cruelest month because all this greatness, existing as yet only in potential form (water slicking the roots under the earth at the beginning, just coming up to flower), is mostly squandered or frustrated (i.e., far more seeds are eaten or rot away than actually grow) or leads inevitably to a sort of Barbarian - Kingdom - Empire scenario in which the bloated, paranoid result collapses on itself. "Rust never sleeps." What we see today are its ruins.

For Eliot this is cyclical, thus his deliberate choice to represent it with a season. Winter is easy in that it is a time of dormancy. When hope and potential sets in, as they inevitably do, things get interesting.

With his choice to speak with voices from the past, Eliot is also informing his readers that although this is cyclical, we absolutely should not discount these works of greatness and these catastrophic failures. We as individuals and as civilizations stand on the shoulders of these giants. Without their past, we could not have a future. Hence he describes the April rains "mixing memory with desire." During April-times, we look back and see great civilizations such as the Romans-- or heroes such as Emmanuel Levinas or Bertrand Russell or Ammianus Marcellinus-- and we cast a desire toward the future, to be like them or better.

Not bad for the first eight lines.

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The Editor has been published in Copperwood Review, Humanist Magazine, Niche, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, and has poems scheduled for publication in Poetry Pacific Magazine.  

The Artist: Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Dante's Water Park— a poem by J. Alan Nelson

On a record hot day,

before we know the term global warming,

before Julia speaks English

I take her to the water park.

She floats the Lazy River

round and again.

Words of Russian glee gush

as we drift in dilated time,

scrummed tight with old grandparents

with young grandchildren.

The water holds shape

as a fixed wave of warm phlegm

compressed among the herd of worn bodies

that wander about the circle.

I abandon hope,

choose the conduit

with the most eye-popping graphics

bathe in the dark energy of life

enter Hell’s slick gate

into tautology

a fallen one

on a fallen world

rewarded like a saint

covered in holy spittle.

____

The Poet:  J. Alan Nelson is a writer and a lawyer.  He has essays, stories, epistles and poetry published or forthcoming in the following: Convergence, International Poetry Review, California Quarterly, Wisconsin Review, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, Adirondack Review, Red Cedar Review, Identity Theory, Hawai’i Review, Kennesaw Review, Driftwood Review, Ken*Again, Haggard and Halloo, Review Americana, South Carolina Review, Pegasus Review, Red Cedar Review, Fulcrum, Connecticut River Review, Blue Fifth Review, Chiron Review, SNReview, American Scholar and Ship of Fools.

The Artist: Brett Stout is an artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Mind Candy— a poem by Kelley White

Esoteric pseudo intellectuals
Seeking alchemic emotional potions to hack
Into a million chewy treats for a buck
Bent over a briefcase
Tied to a web post
Spun sugar baited breaths of psychobabble
Fawning flavors of fecal out bursts
Shootin like starbursts
Scurryin like Skittles
Dealin stale Milk Duds and Twizzling riddles
Everlasting Gab-flappers fakin-a- diddle
Fiddlin’ fairies passin off Pixie Stick pokes
Posin plastic parasitic jokes
Nutshells in fruit cakes
Re-hydrogenated spud flakes
Short-lived and half baked
Willies
All wanna be WONKA’s
Merlin’s playin mythical Mars Bars
Chewing cosmic carrions castigating
Masticating
Self-flagellating
Ego inflating
Hearts ravenous for love
Fearing the worst from those craving
Nuggets of truth
Bitter pills to swallow
Where wise words carry
Hollow hearts ring false
In the light that shines true~


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The Poet: Kelley White is Ordained Minister of the Church of the Latter Day Dude, a poet, certified Reiki Master, and owner of Gigi's Magic Garden.

The Artist: Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Introspective Clock Face— a poem by Marc Carver

There is a shadow

where time once dripped on

with a certainty

that made it eternal

now that time has gone

only a memory

a faded dark roundness.

It unsettles me

so I leave the room

and never go back

in a way I am the same as that room

the room with the time missing



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The Poet: Marc Carver has published six books of poetry and works as an editor for a site in New York. He has had about three hundred poems published around the world but most of all he hopes people enjoy his work and it inspires them to pick up the pen and turn the tv off.

The Photographer: Brett Stout is a 33-year-old artist and writer. He is a high school dropout and former construction worker turned college graduate and Paramedic. He creates art while mainly hung-over from a small cramped apartment in Myrtle Beach, SC.