At the peak of my
pubescence,
I almost kill my father
who lost his soul
in the Siberian Gulag.
I plunge a fork into
his vodka-soaked thigh
and run away from home.
I get lost in the woods
and can’t find my way back,
roaming around in circles
on the edge of panic
in my clownish shoes.
I remember the rule of three
from my Eagle Scout training:
I’ll die in three hours in the cold,
three days without water,
and three weeks without food.
At night, I can see the Big Dipper
and follow the stars in the bowl
to the North Star, sure of direction
when I find moss on the north side
of a tree.
I slog through marshes,
searching for a rivulet,
running past clusters of chanterelles
I’d gathered in the past,
when I discover the brackish water
of an estuary that lead to the open sea.…
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Evan Mantyk is the president and co-founder of the Society of Classical Poets. He teaches courses in literature and history at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, in upstate New York. He previously worked as a news editor and reporter in New York City.
Please describe your website and your duties as editor/writer.
The Society of Classical Poets is dedicated to the proliferation of classical poetry. What does that mean? It means poetry usually with rhyme and/or meter. It also means poetry of good character that puts the reader first, not the poet. The government’s “Survey on National Participation in the Arts,” found, over the last twenty years or so, a sharp decline in the number of people who had read or listened to a poem within the last 12 months while other literary forms stayed static.…
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I will not be seen today &
how does it worry me?
out there a city swells
from river to weeds
like a silvery fish
taking first hesitant steps on land
unnoticed like most history
I hear it serenade with castanets
invisible like me
parts of the same dissolute fluid
we have passed the test
of loneliness
even our scars blank in the opaque
our voices mute
in the gasp of a morning
fat like sorrow
but more like guilt
in how it stays too long
– Ace Boggess…
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#34
Thirty-four minutes late & what I want this to be is another breakdown & my imagination burying you while you are singing & gentle to my shoulders. I want to be crazy & for you to be alive forever & if I can manage to change my beliefs before you come home that might just happen.
#35
Thirty-five minutes late & I have confirmed the existence of fire & I have taken small, heroic bites of my own flaming flesh. If I can be wolf enough to remove a limb without removing a limb, then I can sell you on the idea that you being late doesn’t ruin the whole pack of my mind. If I can sit here until the blue car enters the driveway, then nothing overly-human will happen.…
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Now that we have the Internet it is very easy to get at lists of the greatest things – movies, books, records, kings, criminals, snacks. Of course, we had such lists before, but now we have them in abundance and naturally enough they reflect the changing times. For example, while old lists of the greatest movies always included popular or Hollywood films alongside what we would call art house films – Gone with the Wind and The Godfather, E.T. and Star Wars, alongside Bergman and Fellini, Goddard and Truffaut – lists of the greatest novels did not, that is, did not include popular novels – no Gone with the Wind and The Godfather alongside Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Kafka and Mann. Now they often do, and even the Harry Potter books.…
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Every time Mom doesn’t call
I think you are dead.
…………I recall the old yard
…………playset legs jolting in long grass
…………as we swung toward ripe green branches
…………carving shapes of light on our skin
…………giggling mouths ringed popsicle red
…………when I saw, limp in the garden,
…………my beloved pet sunflower
…………green hairy stem bent L-ward
…………black seeds and sunshine petals
…………facing earth muddied
…………by tears and sprinkler feet
…………my red-eyed face next to hers
…………a single photo the only proof left.
No loss, no uprooting
could prepare me
for your pain later in life
lined wrists, midnight calls to 9-1-1
substances you thirsted for
like sun.
As my mind reckons my heart
…………recalling how you were the one
…………to break her stem, simple mistake
…………as we ran wild in the yard —
I fear you are just as fragile.…
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5. ‘Twenty Questions’ day
The sky is—?
“Blue.”
The grass is—?
“Green.”
How many days are there in a week?
“Six.”
The son laughs in attempt to lighten the mood, gangling arms scratching coarse hair that is faded and gray. “Sunday doesn’t count, apparently.” The daughter does not smile as she looks at the muted television, which has been on the same five minute loop for who knows how long.
There is no day of rest for the sick.
—…
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