Nathan Hauke

COLOR IS WORSE THAN ETERNITY

Ribbon of water

in the morning

Shines like razor

walking the dog

With a mouthful of blackberries

rain leaves mirror everywhere

Trying not to step in it

Our life is a forgetting (friend’s voice)

Where one place begins to fall into another

Where the bank of this shore erodes into current

Nathan Hauke's chapbook In the Living Room was recently released by Lame House Press (2010).  His poetry has been published in American Letters & Commentary, BlazeVox, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Electronic Poetry Review, Eleven Eleven, Greatcoat, Horse Less Review, Interim, New American Writing, Parthenon West, Peaches & Bats, Twenty Six, and We Are So Happy To Know Something among others.  He is currently co-editor at Ark Press and an editor for Slash Pine Press.  

Leora Fridman

FORETHOUGHT AGONY BELL

forethought agony

bell that ringing

is not an illness

but reduces anyway

tell on, teller   forthwith

a grandfatherly preacher

faded into the normal

blackguard of the town

no one saw him slide

to the stairway or begin

to disallow      any visual

representation of his

speeches, crowds of this

size play basketball

out of boredom when

they want to in

church             a receptive

leader would have

spoke to them again

the preacher just lived

up higher in a bedroom

& door           flapping hands

at the windows when

menfolk went too low,

he set a tonal

standard  by which trust

crowded        the disease

they knew was coming

trapped stature

                    so ho-hum

Leora Fridman is a writer, translator and educator living in Massachusetts.  Her recent and forthcoming publications are included in The Awl, Shampoo, Denver Quarterly and others.  She is an MFA candidate at UMass-Amherst.

Joseph P. Wood

from The Vyvanse Triolets

XI.

Now I the rower gentle on the water. Now I the water gentle

in refraction. If this the moon, I befuddled by its light

touch on owls, on feathers, on one bare branch settling

the rower toward stasis. If I drown, it will be in my genitals,

that dreary drooping flesh I detested—it put you in hospital

and daughter arrived to this sick, sad world. I was blighted

in my skull’s noxious water. I rowed in circles gently

so as not to incur reflection. The moon insisted on light.

XXXXVII.

Reflection owes the moon no debt. Its light not insistent,

noxious, nor gentle—sometimes a circle, traces of water

located where I—unharnessed, floating, breathless—

would see not—nor owe—reflection.  Its light insists

to those outside its body—there’s not lying one place

that’s an earthling skull or a genital—strange creatures

believe the moon owes their species’ reflection, insist

they are gentle—they trace a circle, make an X—water.

Joseph P. Wood is the author of two full collections of poetry--Fold of the Map (Salmon 2012) and I & We (CW Books 2010)--and five chapbooks. New poems can or will be found in Boston Review, Bateau, DIAGRAM, Hotel Amerika, horseless review, and Handsome, among others. He teaches at The University of Alabama and is one of six members running The Slash Pine Projects, an undergraduate internship focusing on community arts and micropublishing. His website is www.josephpatrickwood.com.

Shane McCrae [Part Two]

from THE AWAKENING OF SOLOMON NORTHUP: 2. IN DARKNESS

Woke for the first     time in my life

chained     aching woke in darkness

Woke in a dark my eyes

Couldn’t adjust to woke

chained to a ring in the floor

Head aching     chained in a dark room

And hearing footsteps voices

overhead     I realized

The room was underground

Woke     and at first I couldn’t

Remember how I came     to be in the room     and after I

After remembering the men     who ran the circus the

Two white men who     with whom

I had been traveling

Remembered but I couldn’t understand

remembered only

Eagerness     kindness in their faces

As they handed me the money I had earned

And kindness in their faces as they left me for the night

And woke in darkness was

In darkness for     hours and no one came

I felt my way

around the room I found

The ring in the floor remembered

but I couldn’t understand I     felt my way around

Crawling     and in the darkness

I after a while     couldn’t be sure

My eyes were open

Shane McCrae is the author of Mule (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 2011), and two chapbooks, One Neither One (Octopus Books, 2009) and In Canaan (Rescue Press, 2010). His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Best American Poetry 2010, Fence, Agni, Denver Quarterly, Typo, and others.