A.E. Watkins

TO CALLISTO, WHO WAS FIRST A GIRL, THEN A BEAR, THEN LATER THE BEAR CONSTELLATION


If I peel back the wallpaper of this world, Callisto, will I find
myself in your age? Will I be

closer to you? If the crows show as chips in a pale sky, does it mean
you still decorate the distance somewhere? I know here

holds my face like some motel’s portrait hung
in the lobby of each day, and the night’s room

has curtains I pull back to see if your slow gait in stars still
crosses my latest black window. Sometimes

I imagine us as the sole cast in Arcady – the gods unwritten,
without us. It is for spite that they spell our bodies

in animals, that they turn us to wonder
where we go beneath our coarse hides, our coats growing thicker

with each passing winter. And your groves grow odious,
my rooms in the city speak

as though they don’t know me, as we walk the freshly painted halls
of each year. But if I were a bear, Callisto –

you among poplars, myself nearby the populace –
how I would tear through this world to companion.


A.E. Watkins is a graduate of the MFA program at Saint Mary’s College of California and currently attends Purdue University’s Graduate English Program. His first collection of poetry, Dear, Companion, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press in 2012. Individual poems can be found in Barrow Street, Copper Nickel, Denver Quarterly, Handsome, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, Verse Daily and elsewhere.

Christopher Kondrich

from CONTRAPUNTAL


That beautiful melody? It is already within us
Tim was sorting through his compositions

                       we need to find a way to bring it closer
                       to brush our end against its end, but we must remain

and regardless if I am satisfied with it
I have to abide by the metronome

                       I want to study piano because in doing so I will destroy
                       my discreteness. One is always concerned with one’s discreteness

this tiresome harangue of mine, would you believe me
just as I was reaching the terminus or whatever point

                       in the mind that receives it. Listen to this, Tim said
                       playing nothing. Do you hear what I hear

I would have to do it myself
with my own hands, Tim continued,

                       sometimes I am struck, my chair a closer
                       companion than anyone I know.



Christopher Kondrich is the author of Contrapuntal, forthcoming in the Free Verse Editions poetry series. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver.

MRB Chelko [Part Two]

from  M O T H E R   M A Y  I


have

something like a mystery to solve, not that

a floppy straw hat

to organize the light, it falls all over me like this isn't New York

you wouldn't understand, how darkly my sunglasses sit

on the ground arms folded

this concrete is sand

no parking sign a love letter

right? scrawled

in lipstick in blood

let's romanticize everything

glare like you want me



MRB Chelko is Assistant Editor of the unbound journal, Tuesday; An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of Indiana Review, POOL, Washington Square, Forklift, Ohio and Verse Daily among many others. Her second chapbook, The World after Czeslaw Milosz, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press.

MRB Chelko

from THE MARCH


The airless blue
to wake alive

again
place no thought no finger on

that miracle
life

ha
to get one

and discover work
music

the snow melts
reveals it's been collecting

bones
death I tear from my dog's throat

the way we want to eat each other up
the way we lick our swollen lips

our chapped lips
I'm alive

I tell my shirt because I want to take it off
when I talk about love I mean

am I the only one
this will need to be revised

I will need to be forgiven
and locked inside for some time

to wake alive
to sit at the table

stare at an open kitchen drawer
and think

never close



MRB Chelko is Assistant Editor of the unbound journal, Tuesday; An Art Project. She has poems in current or forthcoming issues of Indiana Review, POOL, Washington Square, Forklift, Ohio and Verse Daily among many others. Her second chapbook, The World after Czeslaw Milosz, is forthcoming from Dream Horse Press.