Tag: American Poetry

John Brantingham: “Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War: This Is the Worst”

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Francisco Goya's The Disasters of War: This Is the Worst

My dead stand with me before Goya’s piece,
where a wolf conspires with priests to write down
orders for the poor, suffering behind
them. The poor here starve. They beg. They freeze.
The poor are not forgotten, and that’s the trouble
with people who put on frocks and play
at sanctity. It’s the trouble with the way
wolves wait and watch their desperate struggle.
But my dead whisper to me that he’s wrong.
The trouble is also that we think beasts
walk among us, but they’re ordinary
men who have discovered that if you’re strong,
you can have your way with the weak.
We have to tamp down our own cruelty.

About the Author: John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press) and Kitkitdizzi (Bamboo Dart Press). He lives in Jamestown, New York.

Image Credit: Francisco Goya, “Esto es lo peor! (This is the worst!)” Public Domain

Susan Cossette: “Magdalen with the Smoking Flame”

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Magdalen with the Smoking Flame
-after Georges de la Tour


You see the polished skull
settled under my now-empty womb,
the books of scripture on the desk,
the unadorned wooden cross.

You see the leather scourge.
I am the perfect lover of Christ,
correcting myself daily,
now perfect penitent.

You will not see the red welts
on my back or upper thighs,
only remorse in lowered eyes.
Sweet burn, delectable wound.

The oily candle plays its tricks,
slim shafts of light on cave walls.
Peering into shadows,
I pay respect to the power of the dark.

My mind plays tricks on me.
Is it mother, laid out at solstice,
her face plump and purple,
the monsignor saying rosary?

Or something else drawn
out of the dark night of the soul,
longing for light.

About the Author: Susan Cossette lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Author of Peggy Sue Messed Up, she is a recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Wallace Stevens Poetry Prize. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Rust and Moth, The New York Quarterly, ONE ART, As it Ought to Be, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Amethyst Review, Crow & Cross Keys, Loch Raven Review, and in the anthologies Fast Fallen Women (Woodhall Press) and Tuesdays at Curley’s (Yuganta Press).

Image Credit: Georges de La Tour “Magdalene with the Smoking Flame” (1640) Image courtesy of Wikimedia

Jeanette Hutzell: “Wasting Disease”

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Wasting Disease

The CDC states that the symptoms of Wasting Disease are
drastic weight loss, stumbling, and listlessness.

I saw a dead deer in the middle of Route 31 driving home,
and his insides were sucked in till his bones stuck out.

My dad tells me in a curious tone during our weekly calls
that the wasting comes in and eats them from the inside out.

He then informs me, in an even more drastic way,
that it can definitely spread to humans from the meat,

but I think, driving back to small town United States,
it’s already here.

I passed by my favorite restaurant during deep dusk,
and the windows were boarded up and already vandalized.

The main road into town is starting to wash away,
and flood control can’t hold anymore of its rubble.

That bridge they claimed they would fix became a crater,
and the orange work sign has become a vague, plastic white.

I turn on my high beams and catch the eyes of a young buck,
breaking quickly so I don’t catch him on my car.

He blinks at me and his fog breath hitches out in the fall air,
and I see his sides sucked in like an empty duffle bag.

I watch him leave and then sit for awhile longer realizing
the sign for the street I live on has been stolen.

I’m driving through a hot carcass that isn’t even dead yet.

About the Author: Jeanette Hutzell works part time as a server while studying English Literature and English Writing at the University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg. She grew up on her family farm in Meyersdale, Pennsylvania.

Image Credit: Arthur Rothstein “Abandoned store. Cambria, Illinois” (1939) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress

R.T. Castleberry: “Items from the Wreckage”

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ITEMS FROM THE WRECKAGE

The chant sounded overhead 
is a rosary of wails 
pitched upon the sea.
Feasting days are over.
As bodies, like incantations,
return as denial, as disbelief,
there is a need between us
to act the abandoned child.
We must appear as 
orphans of mothers, of fathers
who could not see us
except at drink or night brutality.

I have spoken to your fears
as best I could;
taken and turned what I know
to some attempt at service.
It is never enough. 
I must seem a fool
to attempt a patch upon a 
part that slips daily, grinding 
ever finer, ever closer.

Feasting days are finished.
And we are left consoling
our fathers, our mothers weeping 
in raging lines along the shore.
We must take the unkind step to
leave them to their grieving.
You and I must learn a new answer,
another offering to the tides.
In movement, past regret,
past unspent days and seasons,
we will lay claim to our own lives.

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: Chase Dimock “Flywheel, Oatman” (2023)

Sterling Warner: “Kick the Bucket”

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Kick the Bucket

Like a hollowed-out pumpkin
an empty orange bucket
sat on my back-porch stoop,
job completed, five-gallon
contents exhausted, container
just a lonely remnant inviting
children to flick it over, palm
the pleated bottom like a tabla
or pound corners with garden stakes
as if playing a floor tom-tom;
the pail’s white plastic handle
arced like an anemic tambourine
erect, bending indifferently
once flipped horizonal.

Oh, days came & went, tasks evolved,
trash stuffed space where machines
filled paint cans, shook pigment,
stamped a slogan that pealed
off the vessel’s exterior; creative
uses expanded, cobwebs cluttered
the uncovered lid before kicked
sideways so Scott could practice
golf putts till winter snowdrifts 
buried its Halloween semblance
welcomed springtime renewal
as rodents huddled, built nests
& guarded offspring oblivious
of their Home Depot connection.

About the Author: A Washington-based author, educator, and Pushcart nominee for poetry, Sterling Warner’s works have appeared in many international literary magazines, journals, and anthologies such as Street Lit., The Ekphrastic Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Fib Review, and Sparks of Calliope. Warner also has written seven volumes of poetry, including Without Wheels, ShadowCat, Memento Mori: A Chapbook Redux, Edges, Rags & Feathers, Serpent’s Tooth, Flytraps,  and  Cracks of Light: Pandemic Poetry & Fiction (2022)—as well as. Masques:Flash Fiction & Short Stories. Currently, he writes, turns wood, and hosts virtual poetry readings. 

Image Credit: Russell Lee “Old gold ore bucket at abandoned mine. Pinos Altos, New Mexico” (1940) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress

John Barnes: “Noah’s Bones”

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Noah’s Bones

The jasper skeleton of fallen Noah
Fossilized in mineral rich mud
Not so far from the chalcedony beams
That buoyed a sprig cut from the 
Tree of life over the vast empire 
Of whale and shark and seaweed groves.

His skeleton may remember what the flesh 
Forgets.  Crustaceans devouring the drowned 
Bodies of soft skinned leopards and 
Once ferocious bears.   The sharks smell
Leaking blood and rend flesh with razor teeth. 
Sunken cities shelter fish schools in tedious numbers.

And yet one tender sprig of olive, severed by
Dove teeth returning to a vista of gray on gray
Prophesies a retreat by the watery empire,
A beachhead outpost for the kingdom of the firmament,
And wings and legs and hands and sharpened swords.

Was it a sword left Noah on his back in the mud?
Was it contempt or jealousy or bitterness 
Behind the hand that struck? What evil did that
Great flood wash from the sticky nature of man?

About the Author: John Barnes has been writing poetry for 42 years and has been published in The Chained Muse, The Minison Project Sonnet Collection Series and received the Winter 2022 quarterly award for his submission to The Lyric. He recently performed a featured reading at ArtNewCo in Columbus, Ohio.  He is a student of verse and believes in the value of self-education.

Image Credit: Ester Almqvist “Noah’s Thank-offering” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee

Alexander Lazarus Wolff: “Self-Portrait as Ariel from The Tempest”

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Self-Portrait as Ariel from The Tempest

I have returned from the wreck, from that ship
	     you tossed with your tempest. The crew lay
                        unharmed, as you would know, 
	                            and they rest on the shore

where kaleidoscopic shells are scattered about
	    and where the sea slides up only to recede.
		        I serenaded them with my song, which,
                                    like my essence, belongs entirely to you: 

Full fathom five thy father lies;
            Of his bones are coral made;
                       Those are pearls that were his eyes:
	                             Nothing of him that doth fade…

By nature, my body belongs to the four winds,
	     and to them, one day, it will return. 
		       But, for now, I am an extension of your mind,
			            and I attend to your bidding 

as the sun comes out of hiding. The crew
	      has awoken and daylight spreads across
		        our island. I will return to my tree
			            until I’m to sing again.

About the Author: Alexander Lazarus Wolff is a writer of poetry and creative nonfiction. His work has been published or is forthcoming in The Best American Poetry online, The Citron Review, NDQ, Black Fox Literary Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Serotonin, and elsewhere. He was awarded first place in the Poetry Society of Virginia’s Undergraduate Award. He is a poetry editor for The Plentitudes and is an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary. You can find him and more of his work on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wolffalex108/ on Instagram: @wolffalex108 and at www.alexanderlazaruswolff.com

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Image Credit: Mary Hoare “Ferdinand and Ariel” (1781) Public Domain image courtesy of Artvee

Ace Boggess: “Why I can’t Play Poker”

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Why I Can’t Play Poker


Cards feel like collectibles,
each ace the Honus Wagner.

I prefer not to lay them down,
give them up. Weakness 

of character: I love chaos after losing,
one of those rare times 

anger & emptiness overlap 
enough to scorch a desert twice. 

Besides, I think, what if I won?
How could I bear reality?

To surrender failings I embrace 
like a childhood toy? To gain 

but sacrifice my desperation,
doubt? I’d have to be a different me,

neither my goal nor a solution,
more like deodorant sprayed on later.

I’d rather not play a hand again,
except these sailboats in the hole:

how they glide across the table,
how they carry me farther out to sea

About the Author:Ace Boggess is author of six books of poetry, most recently Escape Envy (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2021). His poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, River Styx, and other journals. An ex-con, he lives in Charleston, West Virginia, where he writes and tries to stay out of trouble.

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Image Credit: Arthur S. Siegel “Detroit, Michigan. Poker hand and hands of girl players” (1941) Public domain image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Paul Lamar “August 5, 2020 (for Mark)”

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 August 5, 2020 (for Mark)

Enclosed with you. But rather with? No one,
Of course. We’ve fashioned decades side by side,
And some days it’s as if we’ve just begun
To see each other’s core. Pandemic’s slide
Into confusion makes life sharper than
The blurry days of running here and there,
Compelled and scattered. No need to plan
Each moment now-- my grasp is light as air
Though never tighter on what matters most:
Our children. Neighbors. Music. Books. The yard.
And thoughts about the wider world: the lost
Of every sort! The earth. I know what’s hard
Is yet to come, but soon we’ll crack the door,
And live in ways we should have lived before.

About the Author: Paul Lamar lives with his husband, Mark, in Albany, NY, where he teaches poetry, fiction, and memoir workshops; reviews theater for a local paper; and conducts a chorus. Over many years (he just attended his 55th college reunion, mirabile dictu!) his poems and stories have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Steam Ticket, Bloodroot, Southern Review, Off the Coast, etc.

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Image Credit: Edvard Munch “Men Turning Toward the Sun” Public domain image courtesy of Artvee

Evan Myquest Reviews Pawning My Sins By M.J. Arcangelini

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A Review of

Pawning My Sins

By M.J. Arcangelini

..


The depth and breadth of Joe Arcangelini’s life must make his confessional appearance in this volume of poetry one bad-ass day in the publishing world. The eponymous first poem has his first confession of the book—that he wouldn’t get much of a return at his mystical sin pawnshop. And this is his first sin of a lie to confess to the reader. Going by the sins in this book, I’m thinking Joe’s got a damn good pawn stub in his mitts.


Joe takes us through his experiences: weed patch sentry duty, the booze, and the seedy North Beach hotel stays, and even more life on the “interesting” side of town. We definitely have some librarians clutching pearls and clucking tongues going on here. Fret not, librarians, we have no full-monty tell-all here. What we have is an honest accounting of a wild life told in poetry—because that is what Joe Arcangelini is good at these days.


Especially at lines like these about the clearing out of his Dad’s place, “The bed that witnessed such tender gymnastics” not kept, but keeping the “1920s straight razor, a 1903 Colt .38 revolver, a decayed molar.” All those embedded memories offloaded to the page.


You don’t have to read very far to see that once past the deprecation of the first poem, the reader is off and running on what would singe the local padre’s “heard it all” ears in a confessional. Sure that the ears listening nearby are perked toward that booth.


Yes, Joe is raising the shades in Pawning My Sins. He is confessing to the angels (and us), but he wants the pawnbroker’s cash, not some nebulous absolution. I love the stark, honest, eloquent writing going on here. We get treated to both the significance and the insignificance of a life in these pages. The midnight quill scritching Joe is sharing has the oldest of intentions “not to do what I have done.” The thing I dig with this book of poems is that there is not a lot of resignation and sadness here. It is even hard to see apologetic regret. You know Joe will write another great book and move on from the fizzled fireworks, the hitchhiking, the rehabs, and lost friends and lovers—because in the clarity of his writing there is a survivor here, and we sure count on this loveable gentleman to go on “pawning” more of these wonderful poems off on us.


Collect those tickets, Joe, and get every last dime you are entitled to, because surviving and becoming the gentle artist we finally meet here is well deserved.

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Pawning My Sins
M.J. Arcangelini
Luchador Press 2022
Big Tuna, TX (cool) –98 pages

About the Author: Evan Myquest lives in the Sierra foothills near Sacramento, CA. He has been married to his wife, Eva, for 47 years. His poetry has appeared alongside Jack Hirschman, Patti Smith, Leonard Cohen, Jim Carroll, and many others across the US and in Italy as well as translated and performed on video by Rome’s maestro Beppe Costa. His latest poetry collection, Cold Blue Roses, is available at Amazon in print and Kindle editions. This is his second book review, his first appeared in Ingrid Swanberg’s “Abraxas” about “Dorsey/Wagner.”