Plagiarism

I read in this biography of Jim Morrison that toward the end he was getting through two bottles of Jack Daniel’s a day. That’s amazing. I can just about get through one.

The last email I had from my publisher friend was about the reasons for his depression. They were all sound reasons, hard to argue with. In a p.s. he added that, toward the end, Jim Morrison was drinking two bottles of Southern Comfort a day. He said he was impressed, as it was all he could do to get to the bottom of one.

Today’s class will be about Jim Morrison, a notable song writer, hedonist, mystic, and lead singer of The Doors. Morrison died in Paris, just like Oscar Wilde, Richard Wright, Wallis Simpson, and, of course, numerous French people. Jim abused—or, as he would argue, used—drugs and alcohol. Jim was famous, even legendary, for his drinking. By the time he died at twenty-seven he was downing two bottles of Chivas a day, so they say. I think you’ll find that it’s hard just getting through one. That’s been my experience, anyway.

My old lady claims she’s as good a drinker as Jim Morrison because, like him, she can guzzle two bottles of Four Roses a day. I make that eight roses. She calls me a wimp because I can’t swallow more than two roses.

Nobody’s really sure what killed Jim Morrison, but alcohol probably had something to do with it. According to those in a position to know, in his last year he was polishing off two bottles of Jim Beam a day.

—–And that’s why I stop at one.

Robert Wexelblatt is a professor at Boston University. He has published five fiction collections; two of essays; a pair of short novels; essays, stories, poems in various journals, and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards prize for fiction. A collection of Chinese and one of non-Chinese stories are forthcoming.

Emily as Her Shiny Parts Are Not a Signal for Help
 
I know there is resentment
for the name that has begun
these three thousand poems

& I really don’t care at all.
I was terrible with terrible
outcomes. I am good now,

sober, so the beautiful woman
I married decided not to
leave me. She is an epic,

but most of these poems
are about how she never went
anywhere without me.

It’s difficult to explain that
when you’re staring at her
the way everyone does.

Emily as I Sit on a Stone outside Our Front Door
 
I don’t wait for the moon.
I wait for Emily.
If I had wanted the moon

I would have gone
to the moon. I do have
that sort of devotion.

I have been misguided
before. She will tell me
if I ever am again.

OCD  

1, 2, 3
21, 22
I touch the spine of each notebook as I count
It’s the fourth time tonight
And I should be asleep
My very soul exhausted
From the constant stress
My mind won’t let me rest
I’m tired
Because it’s 3 am and I should be asleep but instead I am rooting through my hamper, ———-desperate to find that one shirt, to make sure it’s still there
My mind plays games with me
I thought we would both outgrow them: we haven’t
Tickles in the back of my mind turn into obsessions, into compulsions
A descent into irrational behavior
And with it comes the darkness
The darkness
Makes it hard to remember
That light exists at all
1, 2, 3
I wish I could count myself into reassurance, into relief
But I don’t think I can count that high

Catherine Moscatt is a 22-year-old counseling and human services major. Besides poetry, she enjoys playing basketball, listening to loud music, and watching terrible horror movies. Her poetry has been published in several magazines, including Sick Lit Magazine, Phree Write Magazine, and Muse–An International Poetry Journal.

Crossing Over into the Land of Rattlesnakes

She looked out over the hot Texas scrub plain,
its cruel footing of knotted roots, jagged rocks.
gopher holes, dry creek beds, maybe a rattle-snake or two.
Even without taking a step, she could feel herself falling.

She’d crossed the border, struggled to feel triumphant.
But the border patrol could sniff her out at any moment.
They were part of the invisible, encroaching terrain.
She’d come for safety but safety wasn’t safe.

What were her last words when she left her home?
Something about a better life. Not sorer feet.
Not burning thirst and brow shining with sweat.
Not a tear in her dress just below the knee.

In her mind stretched the future’s landscape.
It was no different than the one she saw before her.
Except the rattle-snakes were out there in their numbers.
She could hear the rattle. The hiss of venom to come.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in the Homestead Review, Poetry East, and Columbia Review with work upcoming in the Roanoke Review, the Hawaii Review, and North Dakota Quarterly.  

Heartsick

The doctor with old food stains on his tie is turning out to be absurdly talkative. “Apparently it’s Mental Health Awareness Day today,” he says. “And ski season is coming. Quite the weather forecast for Budapest. I’ve never been to California and, yes, that’s sad.” He keeps up this giddy stream of consciousness while jamming a giant needle into my chest. When the pain becomes too great, I start to hallucinate a herd of horned beasts – the kind the Dadaists loved – grazing on darkness without the darkness being consumed. I beg the doctor, “Stop, stop, please stop.” He just pushes the needle in deeper. I’m screaming now. A nurse hurries in. “Almost there,” the doctor calmly tells her, referring, I imagine in my distress, to the outskirts of heaven, where angels, some the size of a grain of salt, some the size of a pebble, buzz like dung flies.

Planet Nine

Giant telescopes have searched the skies for Planet Nine, but found only bronze cauldrons filled with ash. I’ve looked for it myself where things accumulate, where people leave things. Every house has a corner like that. I’ve been to the market, too, and the cemetery of babies. I’ve walked down those cobblestone streets. And, in the end, the answer is no. It could have been stolen. It could have been accidentally thrown out. Whatever, it’s gone, and if I were you, I would be nervous now about putting faith in robot bees. It has nothing to do with religion. It’s simply physics, a rainy place with lots of crows and very low ceilings.

Howie Good co-edits the journals Unlost and Unbroken with Dale Wisely.

Calcium Deposit

simply here, in violent indifference
and crippled focus will these
days fold unto us. even the
masquerade seems staged—where
we collapse beneath, when our
denouement loses its audience.
only with shards of glass under
fingernails can the wherewithal ooze
until watered down for a proof-copied
conversation a lifetime later. so shave
down those taut heartstrings and pop
that blister—don’t worry, its scar forever
renders behind this one-eyed jack’s
sheath. we’re already somewhere else,
waiting for just one to let us bleed out.

Joe Albanese is a writer from New Jersey. His work can be found in publications across the U.S. and in ten other countries. Joe’s novel, Caina (Mockingbird Lane Press), and his novella, Smash and Grab (Books to Go Now), were both published in 2018.

Men don’t sit near orchards anymore

With their knees up and head in between their legs. Men don’t write poems to women anymore, circling the plaza with an entourage of little children laughing and falling in love with love. Men don’t fight bulls anymore, they eat horse meat on fancy china with blood wine. Men don’t serenade lovers anymore, they grow beards and hide their kisses deep in their chins. Men don’t raise children anymore, they’re too busy rolling stones or laying flat on rooftops counting stars long dead. Men don’t sit near orchards anymore, they have become roots with muddy feet and senseless songs.

Edward Vidaurre is the 2018-2019 McAllen, Texas, Poet Laureate and author of five collections of poetry. Ramona & Rumi: Love in the Time of Oligarchy & Unedited Necessary Poems (Hercules Publishing, 2018) is his latest. He Lives in McAllen, TX, with his wife Liliana and daughter Luisa Isabella.

january

there is no kind of sadness that the ocean can’t fix

i tell myself this
after years of living among tall grasses, years of letting
that sadness build up
and i know if i just leave the house
things will be better.
if i put on my shoes
walk down to where the seagulls nest
_____on old pilings slick with algae
i will remember
–how to breathe.

and even if it doesn’t work
i’ll be at the beach
where even the crabs know how
to stay
in motion and how
to stand still
isn’t that what i am trying to understand?

i used to imagine
in the bluster of pacific storms i would bloom
believed my roots belong in clay and sand
not in soil

but sometimes the truth is
i do not feel worthy of forests or floodwaters
sometimes i am just the hull of an abandoned ship
—–tucked away beneath the waves
———-sprouting anemones

Ari Koontz is a queer nonbinary artist based in Bellingham, Washington, with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from Western Washington University. In poetry and prose, Ari grapples with identity, truth, and the sheer beauty of the universe, and is particularly fascinated by birds, stars, and other forms of light. Their work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Oyster River Pages, Rowan Glassworks, Wizards In Space Magazine, and Jeopardy Magazine.

*
You feed these birds at night
the way every feather they use
comes from a quarry where the air

darkens with each landing –it’s Tuesday
and you still have not forgotten
their return for seeds, endlessly

weeping for a missing child
a brother, mother though their eyes
are unsure how to close

when listening for a name, a flower
a river –you fill your hand from a bag
as if at the bottom they could hear

an emptiness that is not a night
falling behind step by step on the ground
–how open it was, already grass.

*
And stubborn yet these wicks
warm the light they need
to blossom as stone

then cling, smell from hair
burning inside, clawing for roots
heated by butterflies

and the afternoons coming together
to the light the fire, be a noon
where there was none before.

*
You stir this soup as if each finger
is warmed by the breeze
though your eyes close when salt is added

–small stones could bring it to life
overflow with branches, berries, wings
shimmering and far away dissolve

into a sea that has no word
for sitting at a table, naked
waiting for you to turn on the light

wrap your arms around a bowl
that’s empty, a night no longer sure
it’s the rim you’re holding on to

that’s circling a man eating alone
who can’t see, hears only the waves
becoming lips, colder and colder.

*
This thin sheet has no strength left
spread out as a bed
no longer interested in love

though the edge still folds in
taking hold a frayed promise
pulling it to safety word by word

–look around, what was saved is paper
shrinking into curls and hollows
has a face, a mouth –all in writing

has the silence, the forever
death listens for –what it hears
is the unfolding face up

the way moonlight
has never forgotten your fingers
are constantly unpacking paper

as the frail sound oars make
when bringing back a sea
that was not cared for :this note

all this time forgotten, in a box
half wood, half smoke
as if it once lit up the world.

*
And though this bottle is empty
it drifts on by as if the grass
puts its trust in the thirst

for sunlight and butterflies
–drop by drop you water this grave
till it smells from salt

then sent off, comes back
night after night as a wave
telling you where, what happened.

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 Osiris Poems, published by boxofchalk, 2017. For more information, including free e-books and his essay “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” please visit his website at http://www.simonperchik.com. To view one of his interviews, please follow this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSK774rtfx8

La Llorona (The Crying Woman)

Who is that woman
dragging herself
throughout the city
well after midnight?

The closer she gets
the woman is
not what she appears.
She is a shadow.

Her head is a cloud.
Her feet are roots
of a diseased tree;
her hands, gnarled branches.

As she touches you,
she feels like sand,
like sawdust, and her
horse laugh terrifies.

She is not human.
She is all fog
and dew. She weeps and
hollers by the creek.

Born in Mexico, Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in California and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles. His first poetry book, Raw Materials, was published by Pygmy Forest Press. Kendra Steiner Editions out of Austin, Texas, has published 7 of his chapbooks, including his latest offering, Make the Light Mine.