As It Ought To Be

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: OLAM, SHANA, NEFESH

Posted on February 6, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

Etching on chapbook cover by Andi Arnovitz

From OLAM SHANA NEFESH
By Jane Medved:

SIRENS

They think it is the young girls singing
you see, we pull them to us as smoothly

as oiled rope uncurls into golden braids.
It only takes a few minutes before everything

they see is woman. The pale skin of the sails
spreading like thighs, the thick knots

that tie the anchor turning to strands
of dampened hair held by a lover

before she shakes it free. The salt tastes
as sweet as sweat and soon the ship’s thrust

into the sea becomes unbearable.
This would be enough for galley slaves,

soldiers who tattoo fortunes on their scars,
the simple, parched sailors. But they are not

the ones we want. When we see the heroes
whose fierce deeds fall like hammers, we lay

aside our nocturne of desire. We sing instead
as a mother holds a dying child until

the horizon is the circle of our arms, the wind
a cloth wrapping them in its whisper, the waves

a gentle hush upon each creaking of the deck.
“Do not be afraid. You will be remembered and reborn.”

WHITE FIRE

There is a cable and it reaches
from the side of loving kindness

to the cold window across the room
taking over the function of your heart

which is tired of trying to make blood
out of air. Some days it’s just too hard

to keep on lifting, to appear in a robe
which keeps on falling, exposing

all sorts of intimate matters and the
little whispers beneath. Do not worry.

You are the hand, the page, the white fire
and you cannot be erased. The black letters

will burn and sing and declare themselves
but they are nothing without your silence;

which is not the absence of words, empty
as the howl of a bowl, but the promise made

between all words before they are spoken,
that they will reach across the black lines

and know each other again, even
if they no longer recognize themselves.

LEAVING A NOTE AT THE WESTERN WALL

There is a splintered door leading
nowhere and a lot of women crying
today I can’t even get near the wall.
Luckily I have my own tricks.
I place my arm over a young girl’s shoulder,
sigh sympathetically as she bends
her head in prayer, then edge myself
into her space. Everyone wants to touch
God’s face, to press their forehead
against his slippery cheek and brush
the pitted marks beneath, thank you
for my eyes, my legs, my arms, my breath.
Herod did a good job, the ancient stones
hold solid. They outweigh the base
of the great pyramids and nothing moves
them, perhaps they are even held up
by pleading, since every crack is filled
with scraps of blue-lined paper, torn
index cards, a piece of yellow legal pad,
a folded napkin, sealed envelopes, airmail,
express, please, listen, thank you for my eyes,
my legs, my arms, my breath, excuse me,
a woman pushes past me, excuse me please,
when she reaches for the wall a handful
of notes loosen and fall at our feet.
The chair behind me is piled with prayers
as morning, evening and darkness
make their requests, songs from the sons
of Korach even though their father moans
in the earth thank you for my arms,
my legs, my eyes, my breath, women beg
the matriarchs and children press letters
into fists of stone while God sends back his answers
– No and no and no.

Olam, Shana, Nefesh: “‘Olam, Shana, Nefesh’ is a Kabbalistic phrase used to describe the three dimensions of Place, Time and Person. Olam is most commonly translated as ‘world.’ But in Hebrew olam comes from the root of the word ‘hidden.’ This implies that place always has an unrevealed element to it; that we are surrounded by a reality beyond what is immediately visible. Shana literally means ‘year.’ It invokes an image of repetition, re-visiting, return, a never -ending cycle of months. In the Jewish calendar time is not a passive backdrop to human endeavor, but an active force whose windows of opportunity open and close, blossom and die just like the seasons. Nefesh can be translated as ‘person’ but it refers to the spirit as well as the body; the infusion of the divine into the physical. This is an inherently volatile combination, since a human being always contains a push and pull between the material and the spiritual, the body with its appetites and fears and the spirit. This is ‘person’ as the container of the animal and the divine.” – From Olam, Shana, Nefesh (Finishing Line Press, 2014)

Jane Medved is the poetry editor of the Ilanot Review, the on-line literary magazine of Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv. Her chapbook, Olam, Shana, Nefesh, was released by Finishing Line Press in 2014. Her recent essays and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Lilith Magazine, Mudlark, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly and New American Writing. A native of Chicago, Illinois, she has lived for the last 25 years in Jerusalem, Israel.

Editor’s Note: Olam, Shana, Nefesh is an absolutely stunning collection. A rare assortment of meditations on myth and history, religion, spirituality, sensuality, gender and place. The questions posed are epic, the answers as small and as critical as breath. The poems themselves are absolutely gorgeous in their own right; lyric delights that any reader would feel indulgent slipping into, with moments like “The salt tastes / as sweet as sweat and soon the ship’s thrust // into the sea becomes unbearable,” “The black letters // will burn and sing and declare themselves / but they are nothing without your silence,” and “Everyone wants to touch / God’s face.” But this book is even more rewarding for those readers familiar with the rich landscapes the poems call and respond to. How rewarding is “Sirens” for those well-versed in Greek mythology, how brilliant “White Fire” for those who know and love midrash, and how masterful “Leaving a Note at the Western Wall” for students of religion and history, for Jewish women, for those who have been to Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall, who have “press[ed] their forehead[s]/ against [God’s] slippery cheek and brush[ed] / the pitted marks beneath, [saying] thank you / for my eyes, my legs, my arms, my breath.”

Want to see more from Jane Medved?
Tinderbox Poetry Journal
Lilith Magazine
Buy Olam, Shana, Nefesh from Amazon

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: KEETJE KUIPERS

Posted on January 30, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

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GETTING THE BABY TO SLEEP
By Keetje Kuipers

Sometimes the baby can’t reconcile
the self with the self: too hungry
to eat, too tired to sleep. I know

the feeling. O, America, on those nights
when you are too beautiful for me
to continue to forgive you any longer—

for allowing us to kill each other
with your graceless bullets, or exile
our neighbors across your fictitious

border, or argue over the ownership
of each young girl’s body as if its freedom
is a lie she must stop telling herself—

I go out into your radiant embrace.
The baby and I drive through your streets,
over the bridge and its light-chipped

waters, under a moon so big, so full
of itself that though I know it belongs
to the world, it can’t be anything but

American. I hang my arm out the window
and skim the air like touching skin.
I breathe you in, and the baby sleeps.

Today’s poem was originally published in Blackbird and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Keetje Kuipers has been the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, her poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best American Poetry. Her first book of poetry, Beautiful in the Mouth, won the 2009 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was published by BOA Editions. Her second collection, The Keys to the Jail, was published by BOA in 2014. Keetje is an Assistant Professor at Auburn University where she is Editor of Southern Humanities Review.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem absolutely blows me away. It is too powerful to contain, and yet it is perfectly wrought as if chiseled from marble. It is metaphor and life, politic and country, as near as a closely-held infant and as far as the moon. It is the American affliction: needless gun violence, our backs turned and hearts hardened against immigrants and refugees, our deep seated fear of women’s sexuality, freedom, independence. “O, America, on those nights… you are too beautiful for me / to continue to forgive you any longer.” Absolutely stunning. Heartbreaking. An outcry in the form of a quiet, contemplative drive, cruising America in an attempt to get the baby to sleep.

Want more from Keetje Kuipers?
www.keetjekuipers.com

Bernie Sanders’ Gay Pride Day Proclamation and the History of LGBT Advocacy

Posted on January 28, 2016 by Chase Dimock

Bernie Sanders’ Gay Pride Day Proclamation and the History of LGBT Advocacy

by Chase Dimock

The above image is of Bernie’s declaration of a “Gay Pride Day” in Burlington, VT in 1985. I was born in 1985, which means that this man has been advocating for my civil rights my entire life. As we near the democratic primaries, I believe it is important for the LGBT community to consider the value of such a long history of support. I don’t want to vote for a candidate that only chose to recognize my humanity when it became politically expedient. I want to vote for a candidate who has been standing up for me since day one.

To fully understand what these 30 years of advocacy mean to me, it’s important to contextualize what standing up for LGBT rights entailed in the 80s. In 1985, the LGBT community was struggling through one of its great tragedies, the AIDS epidemic. In the four years since its first documented case in 1981 (then called the “gay cancer” and later “Gay Related Immune Deficiency”) AIDS ravaged the community and claimed thousands of lives. The AIDS epidemic spurred a public panic. Little was known about the disease or its transmission other than its association with gay men as its principal victims. Just days after Bernie Sanders signed this proclamation of a “Gay Pride Day”, Ryan White, a teenager from Indiana who contracted the virus from a contaminated blood treatment, was expelled from his school due to fears he could be contagious.

While the American people’s fears stirred into a frenzy, the government’s response to help those affected by AIDS was notoriously slow. Despite thousands dead, President Reagan did not even mention AIDS until months after Bernie’s proclamation. The modern Gay Rights Movement born in the late 60s had achieved some small victories for LGBT rights through the 70s, but the AIDS epidemic threatened to erase their advances and reinforce the bigoted view of the gay man as both mentally and physically ill. Advocating for the humanity and dignity of LGBT people in the middle of the AIDS crisis meant standing against an overwhelming surge of hate, ignorance, and fear. While I applaud all allies who today advocate for LGBT liberties as courageous individuals, I must say that to do so in a time when gay men were stigmatized as plague rats and evangelists referred to AIDS as a gay punishment, required not just courage, but a bold, almost radical commitment to the belief in the principle of equality.

Yet Sanders’ statement went beyond simply stressing the humanity of these men and women. Sanders asserts “lesbians and gay men are making important contributions to the improvement of the quality of life in our city, state, and nation.” To Sanders, they were not just victims to pity, but integral members of a society that was being diminished by the great loss of LGBT talent and leadership due to AIDS. We preach tolerance in America, but mere tolerance is insufficient to deliver equality. Tolerance is just the act of allowing someone to exist. The AIDS epidemic could never be conquered through tolerance; it required compassion and an appreciation of the lives of those touched by it.

Though one could contend that the stakes of supporting LGBT rights for a mayor in Vermont were considerably lower than for a higher profile politician, it’s important to note that Sanders faced considerable opposition to his proclamation. When Sanders signed a letter of support for Burlington’s first Gay Pride celebration in 1983, the measure was met with protest. According to Paul Heinz:

Opponents, such as Alderman Diane Gallagher, a Ward 6 Republican, questioned why the march required official recognition.

“Can’t you just go out and have your party and enjoy yourselves and make your point without asking the city to have a proclamation?” she asked. (Seven Days)

Letters to the editor were less cordial in their disapproval:

Some of them went after Sanders — particularly in letters to the editor published in the Free Press.

The mayor’s “support for ‘gay rights’ and the city’s support is giving this town a bad name,” Burlington’s Patrick McCown wrote. Essex Center’s Stephen Gons questioned why the city wouldn’t designate a day for Nazis if it was willing to do so for gays. (Seven Days)

Along with his 1985 proclamation of a Gay Pride Day, Sanders and the Board of Aldermen passed a housing non-discrimination ordinance. In a letter to the community, Sanders explained his support:

“It is my very strong view that a society which proclaims human freedom as its goal, as the United States does, must work unceasingly to end discrimination against all people.

I am happy to say that this past year, in Burlington, we have made some important progress by adopting an ordinance which prohibits discrimination in housing. This law will give legal protection not only to welfare recipients, and families with children, the elderly and the handicapped — but to the gay community as well.” (Scribd)

It is this kind of thinking about LGBT rights- the ability to see how issues like housing that are not directly related to sexuality or gender still uniquely affect LGBT individuals- that makes Sanders such a promising candidate. The LGBT community is intersectional, meaning that its members are affected by all of the other forms of discrimination present in our society. LGBT people come from all walks of life, thus issues about race, social class, immigration, and religion among many others are LGBT issues. It is crucial to understand how issues not specific to gender or sexual identity affect the cause of LGBT equality. LGBT people need access to education, health care, and a living wage. The right to marry a partner of the same sex is important, but LGBT people struggling with poverty need leadership committed to vision of social justice that sees us as whole individuals affected by all aspects of American politics and not just as an interest group defined by a single cause.

Recently, The Human Rights Campaign, the most influential LGBT organization in Washington, formally announced the endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in the race for the democratic nomination. For those who have long followed the HRC, this was of little surprise because they have a history of supporting the establishment and focusing on a narrow view of LGBT issues. In 2011, The HRC awarded Goldman Sachs their “Workplace Equality Innovation Award.” (Huffington Post) In doing so, the HRC sent a clear message that their advocacy was aimed only at the interests of the most privileged of LGBT people. In praising the protections given to the handful of LGBT people who participated in Goldman Sachs’ predations on the American economy, they ignored the thousands of LGBT people who lost their jobs and homes due to the irresponsible greed of poorly regulated investment banks.

The HRC-Goldman Sachs-Clinton relationship represents a disturbing turn in LGBT politics toward the interests of the privileged over those of the community’s most vulnerable members. Goldman Sachs and other corporations used LGBT protections like domestic partner benefits to maintain the veneer of benevolence and progressiveness in the hopes that we ignore how their corporate greed has undermined many of our other civil liberties.

When I hear Sanders explaining his arguments about issues like overhauling the regulation of our financial institutions, I hear someone who is opening a space for my liberties as an LGBT person. When Sanders criticizes Citizens United and argues against the influence of big donors on the political process, I see someone who is committed to making our representatives more accountable to us. LGBT issues will be better heard and addressed when our voices aren’t drowned out by the Koch Brothers and the Sheldon Adelsons of the world. When Sanders argues for better access to education and free admission to college, I envision a better educated population less prey to the bigotry that often accompanies ignorance.

Sanders’ support for a Gay Pride Day in the 80s is just one small part of an overall philosophy of government attentive to the complicated ways in which different populations are affected by political decisions. It is one thing to voice one’s support of LGBT people, but it is quite another to demonstrate an understanding of how LGBT inequalities are generated by our political system and how they uniquely affect our community, especially when it means criticizing entrenched economic behemoths. It’s the difference between condemning an evil versus studying the roots of what causes that evil to develop. Marriage Inequality did not create homophobia, but rather marriage inequality was a symptom of homophobia caused by a nation living in an unequal system. It is Sanders’ commitment to addressing the economic, political, and social roots of inequality that will most benefit the future of LGBT rights.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: STATE OF GRACE: THE JOSHUA ELEGIES

Posted on January 23, 2016January 23, 2020 by asitoughttobemagazine

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From STATE OF GRACE: THE JOSHUA ELEGIES
By Alexis Rhone Fancher:

DYING YOUNG

Midnight, and again I’m chasing
sleep: its fresh-linen smell and
deep sinking, but when I close my eyes I see
my son, closing his eyes. I’m afraid of that dream,
the tape-looped demise as cancer claims him.

My artist friend cancels her L.A. trip. Unplugs the
internet. Reverts to source. If cancer
will not let go its grip, then she will
return its embrace. Squeeze the life out of
her life. Ride it for all it’s worth.

By the time his friends arrive at the cabin
my son is exhausted, stays behind while
the others set out on a hike. He picks up the phone.
“Mom, it’s so quiet here. The air has never
been breathed before. It’s snowing.”

I put on Mozart. A warm robe. Make a pot
of camomile tea. The view from my 8th floor
window, spectacular, the sliver moon, the stark,
neon-smeared buildings, their windows dark.
Sometimes I think I am the only one not sleeping.

My artist friend wants to draw the rain. She
wants to paint her memories, wrap the canvas
around her like a burial shroud.

Tonight, a girl in a yellow dress stands below
my window, top lit by a street lamp, her long shadow
spilling into the street. She’s waiting for someone.

I want to tell my friend I’ll miss her.
I want to tell my son I understand.
I want to tell the girl he won’t be coming.
That it’s nothing personal. He died young.

SNOW GLOBE

Despair arrived, disguised as
nine pounds of ashes in a
velvet bag, worried so
often between my fingers
that wear-marks now stain
the fabric.

Is it wrong to sift
the remains of my dead son,
bring my ashen finger to my
forehead, make the mark of
the penitent above my eyes?

His eyes, the brown of mine,
the smooth of his skin, like mine.
Unless I look in the mirror
I can’t see him.

Better he’d arrived
as a snow globe, a small figure,
standing alone at the bottom of his
cut-short beauty.

Give him a shake, and watch
his life float by.

OVER IT

Now the splinter-sized dagger that jabs at my heart has
lodged itself in my aorta, I can’t worry it
anymore. I liked the pain, the
dig of remembering, the way, if I
moved the dagger just so, I could
see his face, jiggle the hilt and hear his voice
clearly, a kind of music played on my bones
and memory, complete with the hip-hop beat
of his defunct heart. Now what am I
supposed to do? I am dis-
inclined toward rehab. Prefer the steady
jab jab jab that reminds me I’m still
living. Two weeks after he died,
a friend asked if I was “over it.”
As if my son’s death was something to get
through, like the flu. Now it’s past
the five-year slot. Maybe I’m okay that he isn’t anymore,
maybe not. These days,
I am an open wound. Cry easily.
Need an arm to lean on. You know what I want?
I want to ask my friend how her only daughter
is doing. And for one moment, I want her to tell me she’s
dead so I can ask my friend if she’s over it yet.
I really want to know.

State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies: “Alexis Rhone Fancher’s book, State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, maps in searing detail a landscape no parent ever wants to visit—a mother’s world after it’s flattened by her child’s death. Though her son’s early passing was ‘nothing personal,’ her poems howl with personal devastation. They insist that the reader take the seat next to hers in grief’s sitting room and ‘imagine him in his wooden forever.’ Fancher grapples with how to reconcile oneself to the slow loss of memory’s fade-out, and with how to go on living without betraying the dead, how to ‘[s]queeze the life out of / her life.’ You’ll need tissues when you read this book, but it’s well worth rubbing your heart raw against the beauty of these poems and their brave, fierce honesty.” — Francesca Bell, eight-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in poetry, and winner of the 2014 Neil Postman Award for Metaphor from Rattle

Alexis Rhone Fancher is the author of How I Lost My Virginity To Michael Cohen and Other Heart Stab Poems, (Sybaritic Press, 2014). Find her work in Rattle, Menacing Hedge, Slipstream, Fjords Review, H_NGM_N, great weather for media, River Styx,The Chiron Review, and elsewhere. Her poems have been published in over twenty American and international anthologies. Her photos have been published worldwide. Since 2013 Alexis has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes and two Best of The Net awards. She is photography editor of Fine Linen, and poetry editor of Cultural Weekly, where she also publishes The Poet’s Eye, a monthly photo essay about her ongoing love affair with Los Angeles. www.alexisrhonefancher.com

Editor’s Note: The poems in today’s collection slew me. Long after I finished reading them, they stayed with me, a specter. As I nursed my young son, worried over his maladies, rejoiced in his small accomplishments, there in the shadows was the poetry of Alexis Rhone Fancher reminding me that life is precious, fleeting, that nothing should be taken for granted, that anything–no matter how dear–can be taken away.

It is impossible not to be moved by these poems. By “a girl in a yellow dress [who] stands below / my window, top lit by a street lamp, her long shadow / spilling into the street… waiting for someone.” By the poet, the mother, who wants “to tell the girl he won’t be coming. / That it’s nothing personal. He died young.” By the admission, “Unless I look in the mirror / I can’t see him.” By the callousness of a friend who would ask if a mother is “over” her son’s death. By a mother’s very human reaction to such a question: “I want to ask my friend how her only daughter / is doing. And for one moment, I want her to tell me she’s / dead so I can ask my friend if she’s over it yet. / I really want to know.”

State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies is raw, brave, honest. It rips you apart as you read it–and leaves you grieving long after–because of the very vulnerable and wounded place from whence the poems arose. This is an incredibly compelling collection that does what lyric, confessional, narrative poetry does best: invites the reader into a human experience that is at once personal and shared, pairing vivid imagery and beautiful language with a story so moving that the reader is forever changed by the very act of having read it.

Want to see more from Alexis Rhone Fancher?
Buy State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies from Amazon
Four poems in Ragazine, including “When I turned fourteen, my mother’s sister took me to lunch and said:,” chosen by Edward Hirsch for inclusion in The Best American Poetry, 2016
Broad (“Dying Young” was first published in Broad)
Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Official Website / link to published works

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: A WINTER POEM BY ALFRED AUSTIN

Posted on January 9, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

"Mit Reif vom Nebel belegte Rose." Photographer: Armin Kübelbeck, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons — “Mit Reif vom Nebel belegte Rose.” Photographer: Armin Kübelbeck, CC-BY-SA, Wikimedia Commons

MY WINTER ROSE
By Alfred Austin

Why did you come when the trees were bare?
Why did you come with the wintry air?
When the faint note dies in the robin’s throat,
And the gables drip and the white flakes float?

What a strange, strange season to choose to come,
When the heavens are blind and the earth is dumb:
When nought is left living to dirge the dead,
And even the snowdrop keeps its bed!

Could you not come when woods are green?
Could you not come when lambs are seen?
When the primrose laughs from its childlike sleep,
And the violets hide and the bluebells peep?

When the air as your breath is sweet, and skies
Have all but the soul of your limpid eyes,
And the year, growing confident day by day,
Weans lusty June from the breast of May?

Yet had you come then, the lark had lent
In vain his music, the thorn its scent,
In vain the woodbine budded, in vain
The rippling smile of the April rain.

Your voice would have silenced merle and thrush,
And the rose outbloomed would have blushed to blush,
And Summer, seeing you, paused, and known
That the glow of your beauty outshone its own.

So, timely you came, and well you chose,
You came when most needed, my winter rose.
From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press
Your leaves ‘twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.

Today poem is in the public domain, belongs to the masses, and appears here accordingly.

Alfred Austin (1835 – 1913) was an English poet and journalist who succeeded Alfred, Lord Tennyson, as poet laureate. His acerbic criticism and jingoistic verse in the 1870s led Robert Browning to dismiss him as a “Banjo-Byron,” and his appointment to the laureateship in 1896 was much mocked. He also published a series of stiff verse dramas, some novels, and a good deal of lyrical but very minor nature poetry. A patriotic poet of the most confident phase of the British Empire, his work lacked the resonance of Rudyard Kipling’s. (Annotated biography courtesy of Encyclopedia Britannica, with edits.)

Editor’s Note: I love the use of metaphor in today’s poem, and the playful way language is paired with it. Moments like “And the year, growing confident day by day, / Weans lusty June from the breast of May.” I am taken, as well, by the allusion to the beloved, depicted as a winter rose arriving at what appears to be an inopportune time. But the poet eventually realizes that love–as it inevitably does–arrived exactly when it was most needed, occupying a space that had been waiting for just such an arrival: “You came when most needed, my winter rose. / From the snow I pluck you, and fondly press / Your leaves ‘twixt the leaves of my leaflessness.”

Want to read more winter poetry?
The Academy of American Poets
The Poetry Foundation

Kevin Pilkington Poetry Feature

Posted on January 6, 2016 by asitoughttobemagazine

What interests me most about Kevin Pilkington’s work is its range of content and tone. He can be serious and humorous with equal skill, and often in the same poem. His subject matters are human sexuality, human frailty, and post-modern life with all its joys and vicissitudes. I hope this small sampling of Pilkington’s work encourages readers to seek out his recently released Where You Want to Be: New and Selected Poems (Black Lawrence Press, 2015).

***

An Act of Seduction in the Twenty-First Century

You know as well as I
there is nothing more
than a piano between us.

So please rest your head
gently against my hip before
the moon burns a hole in my pocket.

If you close your eyes
perhaps you will see what I
did this morning at breakfast.

When I poured maple syrup
over a piece of French toast
it settled into a portrait of Christ.

Before I go any further you should
know this about me: I am
the kind of man who does not

believe in much of anything.
Now you will not be surprised
when I tell you what happened

next. I cut into it with my fork
and ate, just to feel what it is like
to chew on redemption.

***

Buying a Paper

You pass an alley
where a drunk holds
on to a rope of piss
he made with cheap wine
and these streets are the stink
August heats until
your one good lung turns
into a trash can rattling
each time you cough.

Like most tenants you keep
windows open hoping
the sax player on the corner
has a good enough lip tonight
to cool off the next breeze.

Things haven’t been right
but you know the voices you hear now
are no longer Irish arguing
in these tenements. After
moving uptown, the problems
they forgot to pack turned Spanish.

Before ever reaching
the newsstand you decided
the past year is worth the 50
cents a paper costs if it has an article
on why the women in your life
never meant more than rent.

Finding none, you light up
a cigarette, sucking down
all the smoke it takes to cloud
reasons why love has meant
just so many trout lying on their side
in the fish market window
with prices on their heads.

***

A Manual for Urban Living

Most things begin here in this city.
When the A train runs uptown
it rattles an orchard in Texas
causing fruit to fall from trees.
And when a glass of beer is knocked
over in a bar on Tenth Avenue the sunset
spills across the sky on the West Coast.
I quickly found out that any street
stretching across town is a kind
of rope that anyone can trip over.
And when I heard a neighbor on
the first floor was found in his
living room hanging from a piece
of Third Avenue wrapped around his neck,
I decided to find out what was hanging
over my head.

On the clearest night I could find,
I took an elevator to the roof
of a high rise then kept going to look
for a piece of moon, a bit of star
anything that resembled the sky
before I moved here. Later I learned
how to say no beginning with a woman
at a party who asked me to get her
a glass of wine. I told her she shouldn’t
since she was pregnant. She claimed
she wasn’t – the truth was she swallowed
the world. After she walked away,
I just hoped whenever her water broke
it turned out to be the Atlantic.

***

Kevin Pilkington is a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of six collections: Spare Change was the La Jolla Poets Press National Book Award winner; Ready to Eat the Sky was a finalist for an Independent Publishers Books Award; In the Eyes of a Dog won the 2011 New York Book Festival Award; The Unemployed Man Who Became a Tree was a Milt Kessler Poetry Book Award finalist. His poems have appeared in numerous magazines including: The Harvard Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Boston Review, Yankee, Hayden’s Ferry, Columbia, North American Review, etc. He has taught and lectured at numerous colleges and universities including The New School, Manhattanville College, MIT, University of Michigan, Susquehanna University, Georgia Tech. His debut novel Summer Shares was published in 2012 and a paperback edition was reissued in summer 2014. His collection Where You Want To Be: New and Selected Poems was just published by Black Lawrence Press.

***

[The above poems are reprinted from Where You Want to Be with permission of the author.]

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: CHANEL BRENNER

Posted on December 26, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

A POEM FOR WOMEN WHO DON’T WANT CHILDREN
By Chanel Brenner

I won’t preach about the rewards of motherhood.
I won’t say it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.
I won’t say it’s the best job I’ve ever had.
I won’t say you’ll regret not having a child.
I won’t say you’ll forget what life was like before.
I won’t say it makes life worth living.
What I will say
is my son died.
What I will say
is I would still do it again.

Today’s poem was originally published in Rattle and appears here today with permission from the poet. Hear the poet read today’s poem aloud via Rattle.

Chanel Brenner is the author of Vanilla Milk: a memoir told in poems, (Silver Birch Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Rattle, Cultural Weekly, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Anderbo, West Trestle Review, and others. Her poem, “July 28th, 2012” won first prize in The Write Place At the Write Time’s contest, judged by Ellen Bass. In 2014, she was nominated for a Best of the Net award and a Pushcart Prize.

Editor’s Note: I won’t say it’s because I first read today’s poem while pregnant. I won’t say it’s because three weeks ago I became a mother for the first time. I won’t say it’s because I did not want children myself. I will say that my son is an amazing human being and that I am honored to be in his service. I will say that today’s incredibly moving, incredibly brave poem breaks my heart each and every time I read it.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: VALERIE BACHARACH

Posted on December 19, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

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GENESIS
By Valerie Bacharach

I flew across the international
date line to yesterday.
Stayed on the plane,
circumnavigated the world,
arrived at time’s beginning.

A garden of wildness.

No need of that man
whose rib I stole,
no need of knowledge,
or apples,
or snakes,
or God…

Only this—
solitude
grace
pure air

before pain found me.

Today’s poem was originally published in Poetica‘s “Poem of the Week” series and appears here today with permission from the poet.

Valerie Bacharach is a poet and teacher in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is a member of Carlow University’s Madwomen in the Attic poetry workshops and has attended Chatham University’s Summer Community of Writers. In 2015, she participated in Chautauqua Institution’s Writers Festival, and worked with the poet, Tony Hoagland. She conducts weekly poetry workshops with the women of Power House, a halfway house for women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Voices from the Attic, Pittsburgh City Paper Chapter and Verse, Uppagus, U. S. 1 Worksheets, and Poetica.

Editor’s Note: Today’s poem is epic in its sparse simplicity. Rife with the unsaid, with what does not need to be written. At the same time, the poem is laden with intertextuality, the Bible doing the heavy lifting of connectivity and association, allowing what appears on the page to be ripe with the weight of ancient tales. Amid these rich layers, a lyric beauty emerges: “[I] circumnavigated the world, / arrived at time’s beginning,” “A garden of wildness,” “before pain found me.”

Want to read more from Valerie Bacharach?
Uppagus
Pittsburgh City Paper

High School Poetry Series: Gender, Identity, & Race — Naudia Loftis

Posted on December 17, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

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A note from Series Editor Sarah Marcus: Born from a powerful in-class discussion we had about gender, race, and the role of masculinity in rape culture, these poems are an analysis of gendered personal experience and a study of our intersectionality. This poetry series was inspired by a HuffPost essay I wrote called, “Why I Teach Feminism at an Urban High School.” The poets featured here are students from my 12th Grade Creative Writing class whose work I found to be brave, fearless, and progressive. Please help me support their crucial and influential voices.

Naudia Loftis is a senior poet in my Creative Writing class and the Vice President of our high school’s Poetry Club. Her passions include writing, high stepping, and helping others. She recently organized a local anti-violence Cleveland youth rally.

Loftis’s poem addresses the inescapable topic of gun violence. Cleveland has had a deadly year. In recent months, we have seen indiscriminate shootings take the lives of at least three children. Loftis explains: “It is important for me to be an anti-violence activist in my community because I am a part of the next generation that will soon run the world, and I feel it is my responsibility to help move my community on a better path. I believe in change, which is not common in my neighborhood. So if it takes me saying something, I will.”

I chose this poem for its beautiful awareness of breaking. Loftis’s careful consideration of line breaks, her masterful rhyme, and her ability to capture Cleveland’s grief is surely worthy of much more than our attention and reflection. In this midst of this holiday season, I am reminded of how grateful I am to have the opportunity to work with such talented young poets.

A Dead City

On September 23, 2009, my cousin, Reginald Fain, was shot a week before his 26th birthday by a boy he grew up with (and on the street they grew up on). It’s hard to imagine such tragedies happening so close to you, but this is our reality in Cleveland.

I’ve seen baby boys in gangs, sagging, cussing in slang
Following role models who show them which way to bang
Mommas crying in shame, media ripping their names
And after they get locked up, the hood is taking the blame
Nobody wants to speak up, but everybody wants change
I’ve watched my city die
‘Cause of street signs that we claim
The knife is in our heart
While the blood is leaving stains
And we’re witnessing bodies drop like we’re stuck in a Hellraid
My summer filled with gang shootings
Police sirens in the breeze
Holding hands like precious pearls
Not knowing who’s next to leave
‘Cause shooters just want the praise
And I’m stuck out in the rain
Contemplating the beast the city needs me to tame
Shards ripping our fabric smiles
And looping us on a chain
Holding us tied together and leaving our bodies slain
It’s hard for me to be sane
In a land that’s acting strange
Moving beyond murders and savages playing games
I’m pushing in hope to gain people who are brave
To help reclaim our city
‘Cause we’re the ones who remain.

SATURDAY POETRY SERIES PRESENTS: ALAN TOLTZIS

Posted on November 28, 2015 by asitoughttobemagazine

FORTY-TWO PLACES
By Alan Toltzis

As time passed,
they didn’t need to study love,
pray for it,
or even speak its name.

Instead,
they lived their love
silently.
Secrets remained secret

as love sank into unbending bones,
fused with supple corpuscles,
and seeped through soft skin
beneath their fingernails.

Only by looking back
and naming each
of the 42 places (in order)
they had journeyed

did they realize they had grown
into an old couple
who survived a long-forgotten stopover
of bickering and concession

and the should-
and should-not-have-saids
they should never
have crossed

leaving only unspoken love
perpetuated by the comfort and intimacy
of taking each other
for granted.

Alan Toltzis is the author of the book of poems, The Last Commandment (Poetica Publishing, 2015). His work appears in print and online publications including The Provo Canyon Review, Poetica Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Soul-Lit, and Red Wolf Journal. Alan is working on his second book of poems and is developing The Psalm Project, to teach poetry to middle- and high-school students.

Editor’s Note: There is something of a prayer in today’s poem. A thanksgiving. Something quiet, humble, and honest. Something lived, understood, known. What it is to journey throughout a lifetime of relationship. What it is to look back and reflect upon “the should- / and should-not-have-saids … leaving only unspoken love / perpetuated by the comfort and intimacy / of taking each other / for granted.”

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Bernie Sanders’ Gay Pride Day Proclamation and the History of LGBT Advocacy

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