And like a sailor, he lifts the blinds. In the distance, no matter how far he is in that VA nursing home, he sees us out here somewhere as we glide. Your elderly father sees you and me, our hearts as one woven kite on the porch swing just as night seems to nudge the sun aside. He knows we are falling in love.
After all, all our footprints in sand and snow and cinder and everywhere we go, we go two by two by love but look at how the world blends so small. He knows. Widowers may have a way of seeing all the power in believing, as somewhere way out there is yet a heavenly mother near her child.
He may remember his younger sky, and her beautiful eyes, and likely can see them still when you laugh and when you cry.… ...continue reading
It’s one kind of delirium
the state of these bed sheets
state of the union
after the fever breaks amid the folds
honey bees through the window
summoned by the sweet musk
they find moisture
in the crevices
and buzz about the tiny bud beneath the curtain
The linens bare your teeth marks
Cresent indentations like moon shadows
The fever broke
amid the shadows
behind the blinds
and the ecstatic mess
the delicious delirium of bedsheets
became
a home
– Apollo Papafrangou… ...continue reading
One of the many awards that noted American poet Judith Skillman has received is from the Academy of American Poets (for Storm), while Red Town and Prisoner of the Swifts were Washington State Book Award finalists. Her poems have been included in such journals as Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner, and FIELD; also, her collaborative translations in various journals. She’s in Best Indie Verse of New England as well. Her latest full poetry collection is Kafka’s Shadow and you can visit her here.
How did you decide on Franz Kafka for your new poetry collection?
I read “Metamorphosis” again and was very taken with it. After a span of thirty years since the last reading, the story took on new dimensions. Then I read “The Stoker,” “The Judgment,” and “Letter to His Father,” as these have been reissued in a new edition titled The Sons (Schocken Books, Inc.,… ...continue reading
In the spring, planting
commences, the roots of
verbs and gerunds
are persuaded to cloak
themselves in new
soils and stretch
into blank territory
without the sun’s
compass; the weeds
that hold as fast as skin
distracting the soft and
hairless on their route;
to thicken and thickening,
rinds and lemons,
the oranges trees
souring at the twigs
without ever flowering:… ...continue reading
Donna asked me
to run off to the farm,
raise goats and sheep and turnips
with her. Seventh grade,
and I don’t know, don’t go,
though china doll Donna
with her hair
like a central Kansas night
is still a Helen
in high school,
every guy wants her,
and I’m no different,
though I love
what she writes me
in her letters
as much as her looks.
I kept that one
about the goat farm,
take it with me
when I travel,
and sometimes I write back,
cursive script
into the past,
letters to the girl
from that boy
back in junior high.
And she never
writes back.
– Kevin Rabas… ...continue reading
Ryan W. Bradley has pumped gas, painted houses, swept the floor of a mechanic’s shop, worked on a construction crew in the Arctic Circle, fronted a punk band, and more. He is the author of eight books of poetry and fiction, including the story collection Nothing But the Dead and Dying. He received his MFA from Pacific University and lives in Oregon with his wife and two sons.
In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Bradley about balancing life as a writer and graphic designer, reflections on a scary run-in with a white supremacist, and thoughts on Twin Peaks and the new Queens of the Stone Age LP (among many other things).
– Ryan W. Bradley… ...continue reading
The ‘sixties went by in a blur for Jerry and Mike,
remembered in fragments, bright and discontinuous.
Phil Spector shadowing them in the studio,
his head swiveling like a bird of prey.
The Dixie Cups, Jewish Valkyries, setting up
harmonies that made Mike’s scalp cringe.
Hearing in ’64 The Beatles’ version of “Kansas City,”
knowing then something of the curve and contour of time.
Jerry at dinner with Motherwell and DeKooning.
Jerry wrestling with Mailer by the bar at Elaine’s.
Mike at the Village Gate hearing Stan Getz
blow long and long into the coming dark.
The stone-faced Customs man at Heathrow
who liked to say: “If you’re Stoller, where’s Leiber?”
These were not, like the fifties, the time of their time:
the days in diminuendo, a falling away.… ...continue reading