Letras Caseras

You have arrived at the river,
numb with the murmur of the city
and the sleeplessness of anger, boredom,
and too many people loving
too many people too much.
The heat in this night,
not the moon as in ancient poems,
is blazing; the moon is pink
like the washed-out dress
of an impoverished child. The thick dust
of the city lies around it, heavy
like a distance, and it would be easier if
you could sleep. But there is so much absence:
One girl’s long dark hair not touching you,
but flooding you more deeply than a dream.
You imagine her sleeping, cradled
in the faithfulness for which you came
to her too late. You imagine
everyone sleeping, you also
imagine her stepping behind you
now in a dance that will not be. You
do not turn around to the impossibility,
so that she ebbs away into the hours
of dark stones. Twice in this night
the watchmen asked what you were doing
in the city, meekly
you explained and hated
the suspicion in their eyes, the frowned
expectation that you did not belong
there, and soon you may begin to agree,
even if you have your keys along.
You had to leave before, for the third time
asking, they would have convinced you.
So you came to the river,
to the earliest call of the birds,
wishing you could touch their impatience
for day, for you have none
inside this ceaselessness of being.
And suddenly you pity the world
for all its beauty that you cannot hold,
its secrets that may always wash away
from you, like water from your hands,
downstream, where finally you lose
the waves to darkness, and to
the slow rift in the horizon
that grows like a patient cadence of music
into the weight of the sky,
or like invisible hands pushing up
the heaviness as though by prayer,
letting the disk of the sun glide
out from the water like a mercy, for there is
nothing the dust of the city
can do to alter the sun that mirrors
you in water as you follow
with your eyes until it is
complete, forbidding it its brightness.
And between the sun and you the trees
stand calmly, combing the light
with their still branches, and suddenly
you do not need a god, or love
to hold this rising of the world
for you, out of the dark.
You wonder what these trees are called.

Beate Sigriddaughter lives and writes in North Vancouver, Canada. Her fiction has received three Pushcart Prize nominations.  She has established the Glass Woman Prize to honor passionate women’s voices.  The poem “Vigil” is from her book “Letters to a Stranger” available for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Stranger-Beate-Goldman/dp/0931846188/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337118687&sr=8-1

The Beasties sound good. They sound really good. Lucy and I have dropped acid. We took the tabs and we placed them on our tongues and they dissolved and we waited. That was two hours ago. Now we are tripping. We are in her father and stepmother’s house and we are surrounded by the toys of her much younger siblings. The toys feel soft and strange. We are listening to Paul’s Boutique. The Beasties are talking to us from Lucy’s father’s special wooden speakers. They are asking us to shake our rump-a. They are screaming with joy and I can see their voices travel out of the speakers and hang in mid-air. Their voices are red and gold and purple. They swirl around my hands and I reach out to try and touch them but they jump higher and higher. Soon they are on the ceiling and I am laughing and Lucy is laughing and we are all dancing together. We are dancing around the speakers and I am waiting for MCA to come down off the ceiling and hold me but he whispers to me that I need to keep going, I need to keep dancing, for as long as I can, for as long as I have a body.

Dedicated to Adam Yauch, 1964-2012

Sarah Karlinsky is an urban planning nerd who loves writing fiction. She writes about exchange students, supermarkets, the suburbs, angsty teenagers, sibling rivalry, bad things that happen in convenience store parking lots, good things that happen on public transportation, alienation and love.  You can read more of her work at http://www.fictionaut.com/users/sarah-karlinsky

Lately I’ve been reading poems with eyes
peeled for what can be stolen -
the brave landscape of the dashes
and the slinky, surprising sounds.
Lately I’ve been seeing all poetry as an act
of aggression, a taking back of the voice,
a refusal to ask for permission.
From her I want the courage
and from him the music.
Lately I’m hungering
to present less certainty, to be closer
to a question than an answer -
not the female energy,
not the male counterpart,
but another body needed, simply,
to breathe for the soul.

Kait Mauro’s work has found homes at the 52/250 project and in Teen Ink.  One of her poems, “Cocoon,” will be published in Cur.ren.cy (currencylit.com) in the near future.

Kait Mauro blogs at dont-flinch.com

we are sitting on the outer tiled floor,
engrossed in a chessgame
as if it mattered,
with the young gazelle
wondering what it was, or is,
that we’re doing,
my friends, the sheikh standing
observing every move, so that he
feels he can outfox me
when next we play,
and my man servant using his youthful
imagination trying to figure out new ways
to set my pieces afire,
while the afternoon sun drifts lazily away,
the grapevines curling up the sides of the tiled pillars,
and in the garden, the birds are singing late afternoon lullabies,
while we play at this game,
whiling away our life
in this most serene and pleasant manner

The incomparable Sam Hamod is a poet and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.  He earned his Ph.D. from the famed Iowa Writers Workshop.  He has taught at Princeton, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, Howard and more, but I’d say, as has Ishmael Reed, “He’s a man for all seasons and all situations,” something very rare in this world.

This bio is excerpted from http://contemporaryworldpoetry.com/?page_id=1317

Please visit www.contemporaryworldpoetry.com to read more of Sam Hamod’s work and that of other poets.

Everything wills it.
I will step out of this box
like I’m going for a drink of water.
The heavy clothes will puddle at my feet.
The fresh air will burn my lungs
the blazing blue sky will deafen me
the waiting earth will welcome me
with a mother mouth, deep and ravaged mother heart
accepting the sorry gift of me
as if I were made
of shinier stuff.

Misti Rainwater-Lites is the author of Bullshit Rodeo, Nova’s Gone Potty and several poetry collections. Misti’s latest poetry collection, Expired Nickel Valentine, sold out in two weeks.
Misti maintains two blogs: Chupacabra Disco and Roxi Xmas.

Misti resides in rural Texas. To maintain a semblance of sanity she plays with her camera and vibrator on a frequent basis.

still slick from the womb,
hooves soft, legs lank,

her foal nurses, next to blood,
afterbirth on the ground

wind, scent of rain, scent
of flesh, something above

her in the trees, shadows
move, claws on skin,

blood, teeth, eyes,
hair, spit, bone,

quiet, her foal
down, dead

years later, she won’t
go near the trees

white-grey scars
peeling pink underneath.

Tawnysha Greene is currently a Ph.D. candidate in fiction writing at the University of Tennessee where she serves as the fiction editor for Grist: A Journal for Writers. Her work has appeared in various literary journals including Necessary Fiction and Bluestem and is forthcoming in Emprise Review. She can be found online at http://tawnyshagreene.blogspot.com/.  “Trees” was originally published in Poydras Review.