Poetry Feature: “New Friends” by Scott Laudati

We saw the end of the sun some time ago

and I thought about California

and the palm trees that were still eating

and the girls in the sand 

and their hair in the wind

and how it didn’t matter to me anymore 

where the lightning bugs went

once the days cooled off,

or why old men never died like outlaws

if it’s what we all want.

Born alone.

Legacy always in question.

Life has a way of herding the useless together,

drafting us into a showdown 

that began

long before the dead had to 

explain their worth.

Bellies up.

No closure.

No kind words left behind 

for the kids.

We forgot a long time ago that

the world will keep rolling over

like it always has.

So we laugh at the snoring dogs 

shaking their jaws 

and running in place,

but now I wonder:

why are they the only ones 

who sleep deeply enough 

to dream?

 

I’d been locked up at my 

girlfriend’s parents’ house for a week

and all anyone could talk about

was a skunk that lived in the woods.

And every night I’d go outside

and stare into the trees

but I never saw anything.

The sun dropped,

the geese flew south,

and just as I was about to give up 

for the last time

a little skunk crawled out from 

under the shed.

I jumped up and waved at him 

and he looked back as friendly 

as any fat and free thing

and neither of us did much more

than that.

But then my girlfriend came 

out and screamed.

The skunk looked back like I’d 

betrayed him,

and as I watched his tail go up

I felt like I’d broken our bond too. 

I knew my girlfriend would get mad if 

I said it was her fault

so I cursed at the skunk

cursed at the trees

cursed my name

(never going for the one who deserved it),

hating everyone and everything

in this whole stupid world. 

 

Her mother made lasagna that night.

I left a plate out by the backdoor. 

 

Scott Laudati is the author of Camp Winapooka (Bone Machine, Inc.). Visit him on instagram @scottlaudati

Late Night Movers by Duane Anderson

Late Night Movers
By: Duane Anderson

Two men walk down the street
at three in the morning carrying
a 24-inch console color television.
They are headed for a pick-up truck
parked in the back alley.
The shirts they wear do not
indicate that they work for a moving company.

They must be independent businessmen.
Quietly I say, “Hurray for the small 
businessman,” as I take down the
number of the license plate
to report it to the police.

 

His Mother Smells Like Hairspray by Megan Clark

Just because she 
chose
to go drinking
instead of tucking you in 
each night 
does not mean
you're unworthy of love,

and the fact
your most prominent
memory
is her AquaNet lingering
near the foyer bathroom
tells me that you'll know 
how to be better.

Megan Clark graduated from Towson University in 2018 with her degree in English (creative writing concentration). She lives in Harford County with her soon-to-be husband and their Jack Russell Terrier, Rudy.

Middle Earth by Robert Beveridge

Lower the boom, lower the cheese, lower
the flag and see who still salutes. Pieces
at half eight, a basket in the Presidential
rose garden, unsure which restroom is safe
or desirable. You find you can dip pretzels
in anything once you’ve had a couple
of joints and they still taste good. Breast
milk took some getting used to, but now
you favor it over ranch (the houses,
not the dressing). Keep pushing your shark
to level up, he slacks off on his training
regimen every time a Wapner rerun shows
up on the tube, but he responds well
to rewards of Jarlsberg, Limburger, Stilton.

 

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in The Virginia Normal, Credo Espoir, and Chiron Review, among others.
Thanks!

The Audiologist Said I Can Hear Grass Growing by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

At Seven Seas diner sits a mother, still
and pale as an ivory carving—white hair pulled
into a tiny topknot, eyes—soft gray, open wide,
barely blinking. Her face, breasts, belly, arms and legs 
are round like The Venus of Willendorf. 

Her daughter faces her with the same face, 
but her hair is dark, flowing, her body lithe, long, 
her eyes trained on her mother’s eyes, 
as if gathering in the last of her.  
 
The mother reaches for her purse. 
“It’s okay, Mama. You took care of me all these years.
Now I can take care of you a little bit.”

The daughter keeps her eyes locked on her mother
who can no longer speak and her mother
who can no longer speak matches the gaze.

How can I tell you of the happiness
on the daughter’s face? On the mother’s? 
Like candle glow from an inner flame.  
The two of them in silence.

After a moment, long as an eon, they begin to hum low. 
My ears that can hear grass grow make out
a lullaby about roses and lilies.

The waiter spills ice water into my lap. 
Nothing breaks the spell. 

Rochelle Jewel Shapiro’s novel, Miriam the Medium (Simon & Schuster) was nominated for the Ribelow Award and her novel, Kaylee’s Ghost was an Indie finalist. Her essays have been published in The New York Times (Lives), Newsweek, Empty Mirror, and many other publications. Her short stories and poetry have been published in Moment, The MacGuffin, Permafrost, Moment, and more. Her poetry has been nominated by Best of the Net and for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, she teaches at UCLA Extension. http://rochellejshapiro.com  @rjshapiro

The Field Party by Darren Demaree

#50 
i know the boneshaker i know the bones i know my father believed that only he was entitled to take deep breaths in our home ohio is full of fathers like that some of them gather at the field party to talk shit about us where we can hear them too many of my brothers & sisters show up here & listen to them the mothers know my mother knew it will take more than a mother to save ohio it will take all of the mothers the fathers can burn in the fire for all i care i am a father i have no issue waiting for my jeans to get caught up in the revolution if you tell me my children will be safe if you tell me all of the mothers are coming to save them then bring on the fire 

Congregational Mourning Shoes by Susanna Baird

We bring them down from high shelves in guest room closets. We carry them up from basement boxes where they rest next to strings of Christmas lights, enamelware pots, rakes, trunks full of mothballs and wool.

Unbox, unbin pumps in leather if winter, patent if Easter has passed, heels thicker than strumpet but not too thick because we are not dead yet. We will strap one safe hole past comfort. It would not do to trip.

Black Kiwi polish we keep for such occasions. We do not buy the modern bottles with their sponges. We buy the round tins, circles of black wax that remind us of our weekend fathers with chamois cloths on wingtips.

Underneath we wear our stockings nude. Above we are smartly dressed. We look our best for the dead who cannot see us. We look our best for the people who are left who are alive. We are alive and so we have taken care.

Wine-red carpets pocked with thin spots thready from years of salted boots stretch down the aisles we walk. We pass our people. They too have taken care and we do not stop to catch at their hands. 

We sit in pews with backs that keep us wakeful. We sit, we do not kneel. We look our god straight in his eye. Someday we will shake his hand with our firm grip that will tell him exactly who we are.

How Great Thou Art, we sing. Our voices swell, our souls. Again we sit. We hear the gospel John. We hear Corinthians. We hear the beneficent reverend remind us of the good that is within us, of the good that was in our dead.

Tissues balled in fists, we do not wail. We are not hiding sorrow. We are not ashamed of our distress. We are heartache restrained, our loss full and contained, correctly expressed by the straight of our spines and the shine of our shoes.

This is our grieving. This is our grief.

Carmelita by Alison Hazle

I am writing to ask if you’d like

to dance again in the kitchen.

I have never been much for a phone

call, as you know. I was thinking

I could bring boas and peacock

flumes for our shoulders and the waists

of our pants. All the times you’ve tried

to teach me the Charleston 

with my eyes closed—this time,

I’d like to open them. We can put ice

in the beer because you prefer it

that way. We can smoke

your Slims as we make our way

through six rounds of gin

rummy. At midnight, we could eat

half-truths as you tell me how you fell

in love. I’d like to fall

asleep in that bed while you play

solitaire at your desk—just once more.

Carmelita, this could be read

as atonement but I must live

with the choice I made, having never sent

this letter. They called me an hour ago

to tell me that you had died.

Yesterday I sat beside you,

you still able to hold my hand.

I heard you mumble along

to the song we once circled

our hips to and I could only sit dumb

and cry. Carmelita, they’ve told me

that you’ve died and I can only sit here

pouring over a letter I never intended on sending you. 

Alison Hazle is a poet/writer and art school survivor. She plans to pursue an MFA somewhere far away from Baltimore.

Ode to James Harden’s Beard by Joshua Nguyen

Let’s speak of the grizzly bear

in the middle of the room.

Thick black rambutan branches

dripping citrus under the sun.

What extra powers are suppressed

beneath? Lulling opponents to sleep

with each bend against the wind. Hope

is lost if you stare directly into the void

because by then, arms will outstretch

to consume its prey & what other

response is justified when under

direct attack & the focal

point is to stifle the air around you.

Any creature backed into a corner

remembers they have to survive &

remembers that they have skin

beneath their fur that can be penetrated

unless they quickly realize that

it isn’t the hair that wards off defenders

but the hidden keen teeth that refuse

to help another man’s hunger.

Joshua Nguyen is a Kundiman Fellow, collegiate national poetry champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He has been published in The Offing, The Acentos Review, Rambutan Literary, Button Poetry, The Texas Review, Gulf Coast, and Hot Metal Bridge. He is currently an MFA candidate at The University of Mississippi. He is a bubble tea connoisseur and works in a kitchen.

Froth by Trevor Plate

                                          *
 
Not the first time I loved you, just the first time I met you.
Your breath like dead fish pickled in your alcoholism.
Your knuckles raw from beating someone up the night before.
Your long hair greased from stress and hours.
A single word etched into each of your twelve teeth:
 
I  was  born  to  die  alone  these  thoughts  are  not  my  own
 
I made you smile three times to read the whole poem.
It wasn’t hard to do: smile first
and laugh at a thing you said. I don’t remember what it was.
That makes me a bad person. Worse than you maybe.
I don’t usually fall in the dark
but in the freak of the night I had a pang—
a longing to believe that we are more than they claim
or at least that one of us might be.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you but when I was deep in love with you.
My hand, caught in a bad dream, running across the metal plate
that the doctors placed above your burning brain;
the times you tried to drain the ghosts yourself
through the holes someone made in your skull.
 
But  they  could  not  see  you  so  the  help  was  only  hurt
 
And if I’m being honest, there might have been a sliver of me
that wanted to believe certain people are unlovable
so I might could maybe call myself a miracle worker.
Your swollen foot pressed deep into the gas pedal.
The speedometer breaking; the ignited city pulsing through us.
You screaming at the windshield that you wanted to murder the whole world.
And it would be easy enough to be horrified but instead
I only whispered in your ear that crows don’t fly south for the winter.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you, just the first time I doubted you.
When you tried to drown me in the bathtub, calling it the ocean.
Calling it a baptism or a long time coming.
Your skin turned lizard beneath the bathroom lighting
and as I lay there, supine and scared, I began to notice:
 
All  this  violence  was  too  vague  all  these  fears  were  too  specific
 
And what scared me wasn’t you and it wasn’t dying
but something threatening in the underbelly of the water.
My reflection choking on the air above me.
I wanted to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
I wanted to rise to the top of the atmosphere.
Then you let go of my chest
and I rose to meet myself in the space inside the surface tension.
I took a breath and saw you wrapped up in yourself crying on the floor
and I pulled the plug and watched the water flow down the drain.
 
                                                *
 
Not the first time I loved you but the time that I left you.
We drove all night and lay in the dying dark;
I, drunk and hungry, you coughing up blood onto the side of the freeway.
As daylight suffocated the stars
I ran my aching tongue along your teeth:
 
I  was  born  to  die  alone  these  thoughts  are  not  my  own
 
The birds began to sing the morning and I felt your breath turn heavy
and my left hand pulled the keys from your pocket
as my right hand circled the broken circle of your face.
The engine humming, the road passing beneath me, you alone in that ditch.
This makes me a bad person, worse than you maybe.
I didn’t think about the first time I loved you.
I didn’t think about anything at all, only stared ahead.
The planet curved with cruelty, carrying me with it.
 
                                                *

Trevor Plate spent his childhood on the island of Guam before moving to the mainland at eighteen. Now he lives all over the country while he continues to write poetry. His poems have previously appeared in Maudlin House, Boston Accent, and The Ilanot Review.