I want to hit on about three things, all of which intersect, in praising Richard Vargas’s collection, “leaving a tip at the Blue Moon Motel.” I want to talk a little bit about what it means to do a ‘political poem,’ in the loosest sense that this means. Meaning: I want to talk about writing from direct experience, as opposed to writing from theory. This brings up Vargas’s unique sense of empathy. And last, I want to talk about style just a little bit, to remind us all that clarity and clean writing is not an abandonment of it. All these things explain why I like Richard Vargas’s poetry.
In an anthology of essays titled “Poetry and Politics,” edited by Richard Jones, I want to say I recall the poet Denise Levertov making a succinct point about some of what we call “political poetry.” She alluded to Bertolt Brecht’s version of the political poem as something akin to “marching orders.” I remembered this and wrote it down and it has stuck with me, but I don’t have the patience to re-read her essay right now. So if she did not characterize some political poetry, like Brecht’s, as something like “marching orders,” then let me do so now, and continue to credit her with the idea, just in case.
Don’t get me wrong. A theoretician or an academic poet who cares about humanity, without having experienced the bad jobs or prison experience he or she writes about, is still on the human and not the dehumanizing side of things. Bertolt Brecht was on the side of humanity. But when poets write about such things from some place other than their own experience, they must invariably do so in the third person, or do so in an abstract or at least imagined way. We, as readers, tend not to relate as much to such work. But Vargas only writes about what he has experienced himself, without assuming to understand worse. He wonders about it, and more on that later, but he never presumes.
My mother and the birds: we watch them at the feeder. I call out their names.
Look mom! The blue jay’s back! That one! she says. That one!! And the red-headed woodpecker–
Such a big…nose thing… Yes, he has a long beak. And there are the chickadees, the little nuthatches
and the turtledoves, grey and homely their sound all the beauty they own. Then the red-winged blackbird – Mom, look!
They’re a sign of spring. That will never – she says…. Oh yes, my love. And the robin too. It will come. You will see it.
All the names she has forgotten I recite like a litany: a prayer to the birds, distinct and various as the language slipping away.
Good bye to wingéd words. I say the names of birds; she does not repeat them. Nor do I ever hear the name I own.
About the Author: Paula Reed Nancarrow’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Ballast, Hole in the Head Review, and Book of Matches, among other journals. She is a past winner of the Sixfold Poetry Prize and her poems have been nominated for Sunrise Publications’ Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. Find her at paulareednancarrow.com.
Image Credit: Public domain image originally from La galerie des oiseaux. Paris, Constant-Chantpie,1825-1826. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library.
Starting with charcoal catch the movement sixty seconds to finish
the drawing to capture the gesture in the fewest possible lines so much is about
touch move on to the camera and now it’s about framing it’s about depth of field
where so much depends on the interaction of speed and aperture talk to me
about art and how it defines our lives we are windblown through space and time
we are the green edges that surround this city the mailman on his rounds
the fish in the canal where a man floated slowly past a long pole
in his hands make a movie from these elements the story should tell itself.
About the Author: Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, The Night Heron Barks, deLuge, Stirring, and The Inflectionist Review. He has also published several chapbooks.
When the latest version of Dogs of War dropped, adolescents of all ages kept vigil.
Children played like adults. Adults played like children. True for all good fun, killing
felt almost real. In this virtual world (“virtual” comes from the Latin for “manly”),
the human body springs alive with detail, down to platelets and red and white blood cells.
In slow motion, you watch the discharged round spin and spin and spin until you see the impact,
then hear the sound. The slow motion kill effects are insane, down to shattering bone.
How could verisimilitude this true not make anyone fall in love with war?
About the Author: Richard Stimac has published a poetry book Bricolage (Spartan Press), two poetry chapbooks, and one flash fiction chapbook. He is a fiction reader for The Maine Review.
Image Credit: Rik Wouters “Nightmare – War” (1914) Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
It is there in my own script. “Hugs to Chance!” If there is anything we should entrust to the lottery, it is not hugs.
But fifteen givers call their creatures Chance, so I ballpoint my embraces. “Hugs to Chance!” This is what you do when you are the Development Director for a cat sanctuary. You buy blue pens in bulk so you can add personal notes to every tax receipt. You remember the names of donors’ pets. You send the animals hugs. You send hugs to Chances.
Hugs to Roxy are one thing. Hugs to Vercingetorix require careful cursive. The personal touch will be lost if I misspell the cat’s name. I practice on sticky notes before committing caresses to letterhead. Hugs to Vercingetorix, the warrior of nineteen ginger pounds. Hugs to Vercingetorix, whose name was Pumpkin until he was diagnosed with cancer.
When I tuck hugs between the signature line and the benediction that no goods or services were exchanged, givers write back.
Joan accuses me. “You know I can’t resist.” If I send Joan a photograph, even if I assure her that the kitten is fine, she will send fifty dollars. The kitten called Dumpling may sit fat in love’s stew. Joan still sees the wet and ragged. She boils over. She signs for the delivery of my hugs and sends a thank-you note with another fifty dollars. I wonder if Joan switches to no-name detergent when she can’t resist kittens. I wonder if she stops long enough to hug Roxy for me.
Gert’s ink bleeds. Vercingetorix is no more. “I don’t know when I am going to be okay again.” Gert does not say “if,” but “when.” She has been here before. Her Boots once became Genghis, and Tigger became Valkyrie. Their urns bear both names. Gert, in paisley pull-on pants, rode beside them into war. Gert gave insulin at twelve-hour increments and purchased Cornish hens for cats on hunger strikes. She rides with a ghost army to teach Sunday School and stack cans at the food bank. She does not know when she will adopt again. “If” would be the wrong word. She bought a stuffed animal the size of a nineteen-pound cat. She holds it in her arms so she can fall asleep.
Anthony knows it’s risky to name a cat “Chance.” His daughter once brought home a stray she called “Lucky,” and Anthony made her change it. Why tempt the stars, you know? Anthony’s letters have so many rhetorical questions, he has to type them out. His maintenance man found a cat in the boiler room and fed him Chef Boyardee. Anthony is not making this up. The maintenance man worried he would get in trouble. The cat’s eyes were all pupils, blind as Ray Charles. He’d been in the dark too long. That’s what happens. Anthony caught the maintenance man. The cat was eating toddler pasta from a spoon. The maintenance man cried, saying, “we give him a chance, we give him a chance.” So, “Chance” is a finger in fate’s eye. Do I understand? He can’t give Chance hugs, because Chance will bite his face. He’ll translate “hugs” into Chance.
When you are the Development Director, stories tattoo you. I try to tell donors that they ride in my front pocket, and some days I can’t stand up straight for the weight. I am not sending hugs so they will give us more money. I am sending hugs because they are inked into my skin. I want to invite all fifteen Chance people to a holy convocation. I want them to compare notes on how the Chances came. I want to collect all the naming ceremonies in a single volume. I want the story with the big arms.
I don’t tell them my story. When you are the Development Director, it is not about you. I start sentences with the word “you,” because the donor needs to know that they are the hero. They may not know when they will be okay again, but they know that they are the reason Dumpling will live. Love answers to “when,” not “if.”
About the Author: Angela Townsend is the Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary. She graduated from Princeton Seminary and Vassar College. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Chautauqua, CutBank, Lake Effect, New World Writing Quarterly, Paris Lit Up, The Penn Review, Pleiades, The Razor, and Terrain.org, among others. Angie has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 33 years, laughs with her poet mother every morning, and loves life affectionately.
Image Credit:Henriëtte Ronner-Knip “The Globetrotters” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
sometimes in the bleak tangle of the evening I will mute the television and watch the news in silence, listen to the cars passing by in the night, the house too close to the road but not too close to all the bombing and cheating and oil spills and threadbare calamity seeping into the airwaves like radiation poison—no, not here so far from the lights of town, where the hum of the night creatures ebb from the trees and the cedar swamp, the liminal infinity of night and flora edging closer, trying to reclaim the ground it has lost against the tide of humanity and when I turn the television off, the darkness gains a bit more ground, the natural world a little bit stronger in the twilight, and I’m satisfied, a traitor against my kind, a double agent living in one world while hoping another’s counter- attack will be swift, sweeping through the trees to bring all of our flagellations to a quiet end
About the Author: James H Duncan is the editor of Hobo Camp Review and author of Cistern Latitudes, Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line, and Vacancy, among other books of poetry and fiction. He also writes reviews of indie bookstores at his blog, The Bookshop Hunter. For more visit, www.jameshduncan.com.
Image Credit: Harris & Ewing, photographer “Looking up at the antenna mast in the rear of the precinct station.” (1938) Public domain photograph courtesy of the Library of Congress
“Adieu, but let me cherish, The hope with which I cannot part contempt may wound, and coldness chill But still, it lingers in my heart.”
Farewell by Anne Brontë
mourners filed into your home
gathered around a table's harsh surface in the dining room— intended for birthdays Thanksgiving Christmas— gutting fish shrouded in a makeshift cloth
instead of a boning knife razor sharp stockpiled photographs lay
two-inch thick faded heaps—
you— Miss University of Florida smile from a float
hold your bouquet — dark roses
over your satin sash over your heart-sounds
at the beach tipped chin brown eyes
deny rain
your smile perched atop the grand canyon refuses to wilt
free-falls all the way down
the color of your sore throat
fringed in distressed mahogany wishing today was your birthday—
you’d blow out candles in front of me
gusts blast through windows
winter storms july
your jigsaw-puzzle life trembles unlike never before
I hear your silence— weightless as a fly’s wing
the sound of your gun
About the Author: Andi (Andrea) Horowitz is an older emerging poet who lives in Fort Myers, FL., with her husband and their two cairn terriers, BeCa and Bleecker. She taught high school English and speech and was also the drama coach. Her students remain one of her life’s greatest gifts. Andrea can be read in VARIANT LIT, STONE PACIFIC, NEW NOTE, GRIFFEL MAG. and others. She has a manuscript titled: tasted lies, misnomers, and balderdash in chicken soup at a fine hotel serving cheap champagne coming out later this year. Andrea dreams of a world devoid of stains.
Ode to the Serenity Prayer …the courage to change the things I can & the wisdom to know the difference
Grief turns to obsession, you deify and mythologize loss; daughters sons spouses lovers become heroes,
you swath yourself in their legend; bask in the soft glow of make believe pasts, never allowing them to breathe
denying them the death and memory they deserve. You become addicted to torment, turned to stone by grief
start to hibernate, hide from the bloom of a sunrise, deaf to the music of spheres you become dead yourself, a ghost
haunting your own life; pieces thought missing, never lost at all. The day I’m gone I will watch over you,
be the whisper in your ear, the spark of light in the darkest corners; we will create and love, wake up alive, saved from death.
About the Author: Alex Stolis lives in Minneapolis; he has had poems published in numerous journals. The full-length collection, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower was runner up for the Moon City Poetry Prize in 2017. Two full length collections Pop. 1280, and John Berryman Died Here were released by Cyberwit and available on Amazon. His work has previously appeared or is forthcoming in Piker’s Press, Jasper’s Folly Poetry Journal, One Art Poetry, Black Moon Magazine, and Star 82 Review. His chapbook, Postcards from the Knife-Thrower’s Wife is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press in 2024. He has been nominated multiple times for the Pushcart Prize.
Image Credit: Edvard Munch Melancholy (1892)Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
I’m in the wrong cycle. Mondays marred by hospice runs, mid-week to weekend languishing in dramas of heat wave, drunks on benders. I am my own beast— closer to insect than animal, best friend to bastards who pay debts with conflict diamonds and Juneau furs, who fill their silences with message blanks, rolled scraps of maps. I’m aging out of despair. Borne out by warnings of drying rivers, drought sky, I’ve wronged the weather.
About the Author: R.T. Castleberry, a Pushcart Prize nominee, has work in Steam Ticket, Vita Brevis, As It Ought To Be, Trajectory, Silk Road, StepAway, and The River. Internationally, he’s had poetry published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France, New Zealand, Portugal, India, the Philippines and Antarctica. His poetry has appeared in the anthologies: Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, TimeSlice, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen, and Level Land: Poetry For and About the I35 Corridor. He lives and writes in Houston, Texas.
Image Credit: Russell Lee “Wagon tracks down the dry bed of the Colorado River at Colorado, Texas. Rivers and streams of the Southwest are often dry during periods of drought” (1939) Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
If there’s butter something sugary sweet a difference in how he looks at you how he touches you and do you welcome his touch or not he’s almost a stranger if there’s anything left at all a difference in where he looks at you when he looks at you and do you want to be seen or not by strangers if there’s butter or not something a little bittersweet.
About the Author: LB Sedlacek has had poems and stories appear in “Impspired,” “River Dog,” “Hill Rag,” “Inverse Journal,” and “Iconoclast.” Her short stories “Sight Unseen” and “Backwards Wink” were awarded 1st Place Prose prizes in “Branches Literary Magazine.” For 20 years, she published the free resource for poets, “The Poetry Market Ezine.” LB also likes to swim and read.
