Author: Chase Dimock

Chase Dimock teaches Literature and Writing at College of the Canyons. He is the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine.

Dan Overgaard : “Donations”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

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Donations

           for Huan

I’m thinking, as I bag these for Goodwill:

Four sport coats, hardly worn. I never quite
achieved the habitude of wearing them.
As coats they never kept me warm or cool.
They always made me want to shuck them off
as soon as they were on. I couldn’t sit
without some bunching, or some extra flap
that needed constant tending while I talked.
As costumes—I could never do the strut
with quite the right mix of insouciance
and casual, confident authority.
Perhaps my years in other uniforms
had cooked me too far in to act in these.
So, here you go—good luck with them—I hope
the sleeves will let you reach the things you need.

Twenty-some ties. I’m saving my favorites
for—who knows?—statistically, some funerals are
more likely now than weddings, but we’ll see.
The latest science says I could have used
the oxygen their knots had throttled up,
which makes me wonder—but it’s too late now.
Like any other homeless thoroughbreds,
they have the memories of their days of fame—
the compliments they gathered, dancing home.
They all believe they might have one more race,
and want to prove it if you’ll bet on them.

Eleven stalwart shirts. They’re lightly worn
but ready to stand up with dignity,
and should convey the buttoned competence
to nail a clause with some authority
or wrap a deal and walk it through today.
The sleeves are ready to be rolled again.

I list these on the form, but hesitate
to estimate their worth. I wish I could
include the lessons that I learned in them.

Baggy from sitting, squirming marathons,
my trousers feel too worn to be of use.

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About the Author: Dan Overgaard was born and raised in Thailand. He attended Westmont College, dropped out, moved to Seattle, became a transit operator, then managed transit technology projects and programs. He’s now retired and catching up on reading. His poems have appeared in Shark Reef, Willawaw Journal, As It Ought To Be Magazine, Glass Poetry: Poets Resist, The High Window, Canary Lit Mag, Shot Glass Journal, Allegro Poetry, Triggerfish Critical Review and other journals. Read more at: danovergaard.com.

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More by Dan Overgaard:

Drifting Off

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Image Credit: “Men’s fashions, 1896” from The Library of Congress

Steve Brisendine: “Working Out a Splinter at Three O’clock on Good Friday Afternoon”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

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Working Out a Splinter at Three O’clock on Good Friday Afternoon

You can’t go easy, get the big bits out
and call it good –

not if you want it all gone,
not if it’s buried, broken off
deep as the things that prick
at your dreams
when you sleep all the way through Saturday.

You have to keep at it until it all runs clear,
like there’s water in the blood.

Then it’s clean.

Then it’s finished.

There will be a scar.

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About the Author: Steve Brisendine is a writer, poet, occasional artist and recovering journalist living in Mission, Kansas. His poetry appears in the third and most recent volume of the 365 Days Poets anthology and in The Rye Whiskey Review. His first collection of poems, The Words We Do Not Have, is due out in spring 2021 from Spartan Press.

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Image Credit: Fritz Henle “Wood pile at the Orton farm, Marshfield, Vermont” (1942) The Library of Congress

Poetry Soundbite: A Reading and Interview with Bunkong Tuon

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

Welcome to AIOTB Magazine’s second Poetry Soundbite, an on-going series of poetry readings and interviews. For this edition, we welcome Bunkong Tuon, a Cambodian-American writer and critic. He is the author of Gruel, And So I Was Blessed (both published by NYQ Books), The Doctor Will Fix It (Shabda Press), and Dead Tongue (a chapbook with Joanna C. Valente, Yes Poetry). He teaches at Union College, in Schenectady, NY. He tweets @BunkongTuon

Below the video, you can find links to the poems from Tuon’s reading.

 

 

From Bunkong Tuon’s reading:

“Our Neighborhood in Revere, MA”

“Snow Day”

“Tightrope Dancer”

“Women’s March in Albany”

“My Mother on Her Deathbed”

Frank Gallimore: “The Shape of My Name”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the Author: Frank Gallimore is the creative director of marketing for ZVRS and Purple Communications, a telecommunications company for the deaf and hard of hearing. He also holds an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins University and paints in his spare time. A sampling of his art and poetry can be found at frankgallimore.com.  His poetry has appeared in Slate, Harvard Review Online, Unsplendid, Cold Mountain Review, and was featured on Verse Daily.

 

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Grover Beach Dunes” (2020)

Howie Good: “The View from Here”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

 

The View from Here

I’m dusting the indoor plants when the doorbell rings. It’s you, and you’re bleeding from an ear. “What happened to your ear?” I ask. You touch it. Your fingers come away with blood. “Steely Dan on the headphones,” you say. I don’t move, don’t even nod. Now that an estimated 150 species go extinct every day, I try not to rush through my days. And if, as sometimes happens, it feels like everything is speeding up, I’ll lie down on the floor and stare at the ceiling or out the window, my view a small thing but my own.

 

 

 

About the Author: Howie Good’s latest poetry collection, Gunmetal Sky, is due in February from Thirty West Publishing

 

More By Howie Good:

The Third Reich of Dreams

Reason to Believe

People Get Ready

 

Image Credit: Chase Dimock “Parking Lot Prism” (2021)

Poetry Soundbite: An Interview and Reading with Mike James

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

Welcome to AIOTB Magazine’s first Poetry Soundbite, an on-going series of poetry readings and interviews. For our inaugural Poetry Soundbite, we welcome Mike James, author of over a dozen books of poetry, including the soon to be released Leftover Distances, from Luchador Press. Below the video, you can find the text of the poems from James’ reading.

 

 

 

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“Falling as We Go” and “Drunk Butterflies near the Missouri River” previously appeared in The Rye Whiskey Review.

 

About the Author: Mike James has published widely in places such as Plainsongs, Laurel Poetry Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, Gargoyle, and Tar River Poetry. His poetry collections include: Parades (Alien Buddha), Jumping Drawbridges in Technicolor (Blue Horse), Crows in the Jukebox (Bottom Dog), and My Favorite Houseguest (FutureCycle.) He has served as an associate editor of The Kentucky Review, of Autumn House Press, and of The Good Works Review, as well as the publisher of the now defunct Yellow Pepper Press. He currently serves as an associate editor of the prose poem journal Unbroken. His 18th collection, Leftover Distances, is forthcoming from Luchador Press. A multiple Pushcart nominee, Mike has read and lectured at festivals and universities throughout the country He is strong supporter of cats, literacy, coffee, white wine, top hats, crows, and free range poetics. He is an opponent of plaid, rigidity, salads, and quiet parakeets. He currently makes his home right outside Nashville.

Jonel Abellanosa: “Anilius”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

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Anilius

And if some people and nonpeople
call us false coral snake? Nothing
untrue with the bright red and black
bands segmenting our bodies in your
fossorial wonder, ways you follow
imagination’s slither into quiet joy.

Evolution has left us the vestigial
pelvic girdle, which makes me picture
human swaying hips – to and fro
geometry to hunger’s kiss, zig and zag
into beetle delicacies, fish and frogs
of lunar gourmandizing.

We bear the oldest ancestral traces,
skulled, like lizards, with God’s
original blueprint for our biology,
most resembling our kin that bit heels
of dinosaurs – finding the broken
fangs way it isn’t edible.

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About the Author: Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His poetry and fiction are forthcoming in Poetry Salzburg Review, Chiron Review and Eunoia Review; and appeared in hundreds of magazines, including As It Ought to Be, The Lyric, Thin Air, Rigorous, Loch Raven Review and The Anglican Theological Review. His poetry collections include, “Songs from My Mind’s Tree” and “Multiverse” (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), “50 Acrostic Poems,” (Cyberwit, India), “In the Donald’s Time” (Poetic Justice Books and Art, Florida), and his speculative poetry collection, “Pan’s Saxophone” (Weasel Press, Texas). His works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Dwarf Stars and Best of the Net Awards.

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More by Jonel Abellanosa:

Jaguar

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Image Credit: Digitally enhanced image from: The naturalists’ miscellany: London: Printed for Nodder co,1789. Image courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Creative Commons License 2.0.

R.T. Castleberry: “Stopping to Leave”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

 

Stopping to Leave

Dire drift, the afternoon lurks—
flood forecast, prayers rising
from upraised hands, open text.
Rain passes over,
seedlings, oak and elm stirred
by South Coast wind.
Cell phone walkers stretch a crosswalk light.
Food trucks pack for dinner destination.
Pocket park slowly closes—
cigarettes smoked, office lunches done.
Coming off the bridge,
an Audi slips left lane to right,
driver dreaming at the wheel.
Yellow vest workmen scuff
to Ram and Silverado,
helmets and coolers thumping at hips.
Parking lots empty to open arid space,
to painted white lines and chain link.
Captured bags flutter like half-mast flags.
Metal doors and lights lowered,
we are locking down to leave.

 

 

About the Author: R.T. Castleberry is a widely published poet and critic. His work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Trajectory, Blue Collar Review, White Wall Review, The Alembic and Visitant. Internationally, Castleberry’s work has been published in Canada, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, New Zealand and Antarctica. Mr. Castleberry’s work has been featured in the anthologies, Travois-An Anthology of Texas Poetry, The Weight of Addition, Anthem: A Tribute to Leonard Cohen and You Can Hear the Ocean: An Anthology of Classic and Current Poetry.

 

More By R.T. Castleberry:

Down Cold Lanes

July, Roadhouse Dinner

 

Image Credit: “Detail of east side of overpass, showing spandrel beam, piers, roadway and guardrails. View to southwest. – 86th Street Overpass, Spanning Interstate 35 & 80 at Northwest Eighty-sixth Street, Urbandale, Polk County, IA ” The Library of Congress

Tim Heerdink: ’70 Chevelle

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

’70 Chevelle

A dream I once held in the past passed away today
with the final sell of my father’s ’70 Chevelle.

See, the dusty shell was not just an old car
but a hope to rebuild and journey through memory.

My parents went on their honeymoon to French Lick
with bold black stripes across the stark red hood.

I recently came across a photograph of these moments
snapped thirty-six years ago as of last month
in my search for my mother’s youth
as she slowly slips with the cancer in her head.

February of ’84 saw several feet of snow
mixed with influenza that failed to ruin romance.

Perhaps I’ve never seen the kind of money in cash
it takes to purchase a dream like the hotrod I never got
the chance to take a ride in on a warm sunny day,
but there still is family and a little time for us to spend.

 

 

About the Author: Tim Heerdink is the author of The Human Remains, Red Flag and Other Poems, Razed Monuments, and short stories, The Tithing of Man and HEA-VEN2. His poems appear in Poetry Quarterly, Fish Hook, Flying Island, Auroras and Blossoms, Kissing Dynamite, Tanka Journal, and various anthologies. He is President of Midwest Writers Guild of Evansville, Indiana.

 

Image Credit: John Margolies “Uniroyal Tire, I-94, Dearborn, Michigan” (1986) The Library of Congress

Tim Peeler: “Drive-in 21”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

Drive-in 21

Through the pounding thunderstorm,
They endured blue lightning flashes,
Great drops of steaming rain,
And on the screen, the first of
A double feature, Invasion
Of the Blood Farmers,
A film shot so poorly
That day and night shots
Were jumbled together;
So cheap, the actors were paid
With six packs of beer
To play blood-seeking druids
On a mission to save their queen.
They gritted their teeth
As their wipers slashed,
The speaker crackled, and
The parking lot emptied
Of all but the stoners
And the crazies awaiting
The second feature,
Shriek of the Mutilated,
Wherein grad students
Undertake a field trip
To Boot Island in search of Yeti,
And the hardcores were rewarded
When the summer skies cleared
And fell silent as the hairy
Beast began his carnage.

 

 

 

About the Author: A past winner of the Jim Harrison Award for contributions to baseball literature, Tim Peeler has also twice been a Casey Award Finalist (baseball book of the year) and a finalist for the SIBA Award. He lives with his wife, Penny in Hickory, North Carolina, where he directs the academic assistance programs at Catawba Valley Community College. He has published close to a thousand poems, stories, essays, and reviews in magazines, journals, and anthologies and has written sixteen books and three chapbooks. He has five books in the permanent collection at the Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, NY. His recent books include Rough Beast, an Appalachian verse novel about a southern gangster named Larry Ledbetter, Henry River: An American Ruin, poems about an abandoned mill town and film site for The Hunger Games, and Wild in the Strike Zone: Baseball Poems, his third volume of baseball-related poems.

 

More By Tim Peeler:

Modernist Hay Making

Paramnesia 2

Ballers 2, the Star’s Monologue 3

 

Image Credit: John Margolies “Augusta Drive-in Theater, Route 11, Augusta, Maine” (1984) The Library of Congress