Tag: American Literature

Tony Pena: “Birds of a Feather”

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Birds of a Feather

The black birds caw
as I hobble to my Honda
CRV noir like Mister
no meniscus on the lam
from hard boiled critics
who put Clarice Starling
on my case for killing
so many of my darlings.
In my standard literary
issue of charcoal satin
shirt and dungarees,
I ask of the evening
in iambic slang,
if the crows consider
me an accomplice
to their murder
or just another
Edgar Allan wannabe.

 

 

About the Author: Tony Pena was formerly 2017-2018 Poet Laureate for the city of Beacon, New York.  His work has appeared in several publications over the years. Recently, poems have appeared in 1870, Museum of Poetry, and the Rye Whiskey Review. A volume of poetry and flash fiction, “Blood and Beats and Rock n Roll,” is available at Amazon.  A chapbook of poetry, “Opening night in Gehenna,” is available from author. Colorful compositions and caterwauling with a couple of chords can be seen at:

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Image Credit: illustration from A synopsis of the birds of Australia, and the adjacent Islands. London: John Gould, 1837. Courtesy of the Biodiversity Heritage Library

Leslie M. Rupracht: “Brothers”

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Brothers 

The phone call behind him,
shock still fresh in his ears,  

the surviving brother    
reaches for memories 
long archived in the depths 
of a cerebral vault, 

untapped for a half-century 
and more until this unending night

Images of two laughing brothers 
upon hand-built rafts forged of scrap 
barn wood, frayed ropes and faith, 
floating on creek waters 

into the rapids of his 
consciousness—

a pair of young captains, 
made of invincible braveness, are
summoned into this sobering moment 
to placate a suddenly lonesome man’s 

shattered hope to bond and build 
more durable craft with his brother

In irretrievable youth 
as in this irreversible hour 
and the tomorrows of his mourning, 
he realized 

he always wanted more 
of his big brother’s time

 

About the Author: Leslie M. Rupracht is an editor, poet, writer, and visual artist living in the Charlotte/Lake Norman region of North Carolina since 1997. Her words and artwork appear in various journals (most recently Gargoyle), anthologies, group exhibits, and a chapbook, Splintered Memories (Main Street Rag, 2012). Longtime senior associate editor of now-retired Iodine Poetry Journal, Rupracht also edited NC Poetry Society’s 2017 and 2018 Pinesong anthology. Swearing off a corporate work relapse, Rupracht co-founded and hosts Waterbean Poetry Night at the Mic in Huntersville, NC.

 

Image Credit: “Portrait of Two Seated Boys” (1850s) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Scott Silsbe: “Reading Rich Gegick’s Greasy Handshakes at Neighbors Tavern in Jeannette, Pennsylvania”

Posted on by Chase Dimock

 

 

Reading Rich Gegick’s Greasy Handshakes at Neighbors Tavern in Jeannette, Pennsylvania

Since it’s my first time at Neighbors, I don’t know what I want
to drink. Call me a snob, but none of the drafts look appealing 
to me. But I order one anyway. I can’t recall the last time that 
I had me a Coors Banquet beer. And it doesn’t taste bad. But it 
doesn’t taste great either—perhaps one of the worst things you 
can say about a beer. But I’ve got a copy of Greasy Handshakes 
and that is something. At the art gallery, Newman gave me a big 
box of them to take to Rich, his author copies. And I pulled one 
out of the box to have as a companion at the bar, promising I’d 
replace it after my brief stop off at Neighbors. Thinking maybe 
I’d only have to have one Coors Banquet if Bobby would be up 
for company once I am back in Allegheny County, and across
the Westinghouse Bridge, where I feel at home, close to my lady 
and my friends and my collection of books and records, cassettes
and compact discs and 8-tracks, DVDs and VHS tapes. I know 
I’m a sucker for crap. I fucking love crap. Maybe older crap 
especially, but any crap’ll do. My crap. All that crap that I own.
That crap almost makes you feel immortal, you know? I’m going
to own all this crap forever. These records. These old-ass books.
I didn’t spill any of my Banquet on the book I borrowed, Rich.
Next time I go to Neighbors, I think I’ll get a bottle of High Life.
Or else maybe I’ll just stick to going to Johnny’s Wife’s Place.

 

About the Author: Scott Silsbe was born in Detroit. He now lives in Pittsburgh. His poems have been collected in three books—Unattended Fire, The River Underneath the City, and Muskrat Friday Dinner. He is also an assistant editor at Low Ghost Press.

 

More By Scott Silsbe:

Double Downriver

 

Image Credit: John Vachon “Bartender in Catholic Sokol Club. Ambridge, Pennsylvania” (1941) The Library of Congress

 

Victor Clevenger: “Low-Flying Birds”

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As It Ought To Be Magazine, in a partnership with River Dog Press and Temple of Man, is proud to feature Victor Clevenger’s Low-Flying Birds, as a free downloadable chapbook of poetry.

River Dog is a small press from Missouri creating chapbooks, broadsides and zines. They are not any sort of commercial enterprise, but simply two friends who wanted to get back to basics, to why they got into all of this to begin with, to offer something from the heart. For more information on River Dog’s publications, inquire at thezineriverdog@yahoo.com

 

About the Author: Victor Clevenger spends his days in a Madhouse and his nights writing poetry.  Selected pieces of his work have appeared in print magazines and journals around the world.  He is the author of several collections of poetry including Sandpaper Lovin’ (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2017), A Finger in the Hornets’ Nest (Red Flag Poetry, 2018), and Corned Beef Hash By Candlelight (Luchador Press, 2019).  Together with American poet John Dorsey, they run River Dog.

 

More By Victor Clevenger:

Milkman’s Mustache

$5.00 Wok

John Haugh: “Thanksgiving Hurt”

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Thanksgiving Hurt  

Twelve of us stand, hands encircling 
your granite-topped kitchen island. 
Eleven offer prayers of Thanksgiving, 
while you weep. 

Medicine’s cornucopia failed you. 
Now it’s pain and acupuncture, brutal, 
additive opioids or brain stem injections. 

Later, I take our four sons of two families 
romping through leaves from winter-bare oaks, 
to build driftwood forts by the Flatrock River. 
I can’t remember, in our decades as siblings, 
any prior moment when you openly wept. 

Our four boys imagine riverside wars, 
negotiate play-battle near a small pool 
of Rosyface Shiner minnows, 
separate from the Flatrock’s main body. 
You’re thinning toward gaunt, and tried 
to warn me by phone about your crying, 
but I had no concept. 

The Flatrock chuckles, November empty. 
Minnows flash over rotting leaves in just 
one pool, cut from Mother River by a fallen 
chestnut tree. Now, I admire courage, 
with an Irish respect for all things addictive, 
but please mind the cost of pain. 

One hard freeze or hungry bird 
could kill all those lovely minnows. 
Perhaps we could dig 
a channel from pool to river. 

I check my watch and shout, 
our boys settle final treaties. 
We can wish minnows 
had the life they deserve, 
but it is time to go.

 

 

About the Author: John Haugh lives in Greensboro, NC where he works in finance and is trying to assemble his first chapbook, Repurpose Those Ghosts.  Recent other publishing credits include poems appearing in Main Street Rag, Kackalack, the Roanoke Review, Peregrine, North Carolina Literary Review, and The Tipton Poetry Review.  Mr. Haugh was a finalist for the Applewhite poetry award recently, was a NCAA national champion in fencing years ago, and spent untold hours browsing Oxford Books in Atlanta and Powell’s City of Books in Oregon when young.

 

Image Credit: “Wagon hit with fallen tree” (1922) The Library of Congress

 

 

Brendon Booth-Jones: “Van Gogh, Roses, 1890”

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Van Gogh, Roses, 1890
—For Mathieu & Rachel

Calendar above my bed:
the harsh grid of days softened
by almost translucent
blue-white roses
so close to dissolving—

how the plague of failure
must have fingered the wound of your gift—

the sad angles of the leaves
remorseful in the fading light
from the transparent evening sky
above of the sanatorium in Saint-Remy in May.

Knowing you had it—
knowing you would be forgotten
before you were even remembered—

 

About the Author: Brendon Booth-Jones is the Editor-in-Chief of Writer’s Block Magazine in Amsterdam. Brendon’s work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, Amaryllis, Botsotso, The Blue Nib, Ghost City Review, Odd Magazine, Peeking Cat, Scarlet Leaf Review, Zigzag and elsewhere. Brendon won the 2019 White Label Competition for his debut poetry collection, Vertigo to Go, which will be published by Hedgehog Poetry Press in 2020. Find him on Facebook @brendonboothjoneswriter

 

Image Credit: Vincent Van Gogh “Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses” (1890) Public Domain

Paul Ilechko: “Lemonade”

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Lemonade 

A summer day     hot as lemonade stand
and there she was    a mere child     learning

capitalism from first principles     a folding chair
and a rickety desk     a stack of paper cups

or possibly plastic     who remembers such
details at this distance     and the honeyed jug 

ice cold in the quivering breath of heatwave 
continual now for days without respite

and there we appeared     to spend our quarters 
assisting in the catechism of commerce 

of location  location  location     as she pounced
on the closure of the general store

on this holiday     that suffered through 
the dazzling whiteness     we also suffered 

sweaty and parched   we dismounted from
our bicycles     first in dismay     and then relief

now     some years later   we observe 
                                                 in our rear mirrors

not weather    but a prophecy     
                                          speeding to fulfillment.

 

About the Author: Paul Ilechko is the author of the chapbooks “Bartok in Winter” (Flutter Press, 2018) and “Graph of Life” (Finishing Line Press, 2018). His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Manhattanville Review, West Trade Review, Cathexis Northwest Press, Otoliths and Pithead Chapel. He lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ.

 

Image Credit: Digital Art made from “Iced lemonade: cool & refreshing” by Currier & Ives (1879) The Library of Congress

Ace Boggess “Rock Garden”

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Rock Garden

Stacked in awkward symmetry, 
fenced to keep the lot in place
like cattle. Grays, browns, 
opalescent pearls—monolith to pebble, 
they ride backs of one another
like children at play in the schoolyard mud.
Not even faded orange of a cigarette butt
has landed on this isle to blight it.
Old earth reclaimed by eminent domain:
what the city loses, we regain.

 

About the Author: Ace Boggess is author of five books of poetry—Misadventure, I Have Lost the Art of Dreaming It So, Ultra Deep Field, The Prisoners, and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled—and the novels States of Mercy and A Song Without a Melody. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Notre Dame Review, Mid-American Review, Rattle, River Styx, and many other journals. He received a fellowship from the West Virginia Commission on the Arts and spent five years in a West Virginia prison. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia. His sixth collection, Escape Envy, is forthcoming from Brick Road Poetry Press in 2021.

 

More By Ace Boggess:

“And Why Am I a Free Man?”

“Why Did You Try to Sober Up?”

“Are Your Emotions More Or Less Intense?”

 

Image Credit: William Henry Jackson “Balanced Rock, Garden of the Gods” (1880) Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.

Jason Baldinger: “another monochrome day”

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another monochrome day

at the dog leg light
with the ghost
house, memories
of prohibition era
bathtub gin leaking
fumes into an ever
darkening sky

pillsbury sign
skirmish of endless rain
noise spills out of
the horoscope lounge
another soulful strut
drunk takes wings
glides past george aiken’s
while corner horns
street lights blow
along to a four beat

the coffee shop
clings to a revolving
door of hangovers
it seems every soul
is wider this morning

saucers of the moon
lost in the iris
of this old neighborhood
song, I swear
I’m breathing again
fingers tap on steering
wheel, light blinks green
hand spun turns
chooglin’
another split atom
another monochrome day

 

About the Author: Jason Baldinger is a poet from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He was recently a Writer in Residence at Osage Arts Community, and is founder and co-director of The Bridge Series. He has multiple books available including the soon to be released The Better Angels of our Nature (Kung Fu Treachery) and the split books The Ugly Side of the Lake with John Dorsey (Night Ballet Press) as well as Little Fires Hiding with James Benger (Kung Fu Treachery Press). His work has been published widely in print journals and online. You can listen to him read his work on Bandcamp on lps by the bands Theremonster and The Gotobeds.

 

More by Jason Baldinger:

“I forgot the earth and heaven”

“When Cancer Come to Evansville, Indiana”

“blind into leaving”

 

Photo Credit: Russell Lee “Drinking at the bar in Pilottown, Louisiana” (1938) The Library of Congress

Jenny Bates: “Patience not Panic”

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Patience not Panic

Grandfather on the farm in Michigan
was a dowser, he’d raise his willow rods
their pendulum swing and shudder
always found water.
Back and forth, twisting down toward
underground flow.
Patience not panic, he’d say as his
body shivered with water witching.

I’d watch him suspend power 
in quivering air like the

           soothing trill of grey tree frogs
           at morning pond
           the rustle of wild turkey
           leaves a call to prayer

I’d watch the rods bend with grace like the

          prowl of feline
          shares a ritual hour
          vibrates stones and sometimes,
          the moon
          vain and vacillating as opal or rose
          a reservoir of temples and ditches
          lit by tapers,
          extinguished altar candles

I’d drink the cold stream cupped in hands like
they were a chalice of divination.

 

 

About the Author: Jenny Bates is a poet from the foothills of North Carolina. A member of Winston-Salem Writers, NC Poetry Society, NC Writers Network. She has two published books, Opening Doors: an equilog of poetry about Donkeys (Lulu Publishing, Raleigh, NC); and Coyote with Coffee, a single poem fine craft volume (Catbird on the Yadkin Press, Tobaccoville, NC). Her work has been published in Flying South, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and Old Mountain Press, and Hermit Feathers Review. She is a consecutive contributing poet in Poetry in Plain Sight and in 2017 she was a top 10 Finalist in the Press 53 Single Poem Contest. Jenny’s poetry has appeared in laJoie 2017- 2019, a quarterly publication of Animals’ Peace Garden, dedicated to promoting appreciation for all beings. In 2019 her poem “Fame Looks Both Ways” was included in the Walt Whitman Bicentennial Celebration for publication in Poets to Come.  Her new book, Visitations has been published 2019 by (Hermit Feathers Press). Jenny currently volunteers as animal whisperer and helping hand at Plum Granny Farm. An organic local farm in Stokes County, North Carolina.

 

Image Credit:  Historic American Buildings Survey, Stanley P. Mixon, Photographer September 11, 1940 EXTERIOR VIEW OF FARMHOUSE & BARN STONE GROUP, SEEN ACROSS MILL POND. – Farm Group & Mill Pond, Cocalico, Lancaster County, PA. The Library of Congress