A Day! Help! Help! (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1859]

A Day! Help! Help!
Another Day!
Your prayers — Oh Passer by!
From such a common ball as this
Might date a Victory!
From marshallings as simple
The flags of nations swang.
Steady — my soul! What issues
Upon thine arrow hang!

*

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Who robbed the Woods (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1859]

Who robbed the Woods —
The trusting Woods?

The unsuspecting Trees

Brought out their Burs and Mosses —
His fantasy to please –

He scanned their trinkets — curious –

He grasped — he bore away –

What will the solemn Hemlock —
What will the Fir-tree — say?

*

B-List (by Mark Sebastian Jordan)

B-List 

Another young actor has died,
tired litany of our times.
I grew up watching his
crooked-sweet smile
in gawkward comedies
hammered out
onerightafteranother.

In time I grew to distrust
youth and eternal summer,
the cheap charm, sugar-buzz
blare of B-list flicks, but he stayed there.
Is still there, as if the cameras
stole his soul, discarding the body
to fall off the Hollywood sign
and roll down the Sunset Strip
to join the rivers of trash
rolling out to the sea.

I almost said Movie Star,
but those days flew in a flurry of snow,
for fame gorges on the gorgeous,
like Goya’s tabloid Saturn.
We drive by, craning
our rubber necks at
E News Daily, waiting
for the next commercial
to sate us with distraction.

Once, you were loved.
You were a generation’s erotic toy
sucked dry by the same beasts
who now beat their breasts
and talk about innocence lost
and protecting our children.

As far as I can tell,
little has changed since the Mayans.
We don’t need a pyramid temple
and a knife-wielding priest today.
We lay him out on the big screen
and take the boy’s living heart
into our hands and squeeze.

The crowd roars.
Life tastes so fine.

Roll
the
credits. 



* * * * *

Mark Sebastian Jordan has been an active presence on the Ohio arts scene for thirty years as an actor, director, playwright, and improv comedian. His Mansfield Trilogy of historical dramas was featured in sell-out performances for a decade at Malabar Farm State Park. As a living history performer, Jordan has portrayed Orson Welles, George Frideric Handel, Dan De Quille, and Clement Vallandigham. He has also been featured in television programs such as Ghost Hunters, My Ghost Story, and House of the Unknown, and appeared as an extra in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption.

Jordan is also a poet with numerous publication credits. He was awarded 2nd place in the 2013 Jesse Stuart Memorial Award by the National Association of State Poetry Societies, and has also received awards from the Ohio Poetry Association, the Ohio Arts Council, The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University, The Associated Press, The Rupp Foundation, The Ohio Theater Alliance, the Ohio Community Theatre Association, the Ohio Eta Chapter of the Theta Alpha Phi drama honor fraternity, and the Mansfield/Richland County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Jordan has worked as a freelance journalist for publications all over Ohio as well as ones based in New York City and London, England. He currently reviews concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra for Seen & Heard International.

He lives at Malabar Farm State Park in Lucas, where he runs the Hostelling International hostel, which provides affordable accomodations to travelers of all ages.

I’ve got an arrow here (by Emily Dickinson)

Emily Dickinson 

[1859]

I’ve got an arrow here.
Loving the hand that sent it
I the dart revere.

Fell, they will say, in “skirmish”!
Vanquished, my soul will know
By but a simple arrow
Sped by an archer’s bow.

*

bridge avenue perfumery (by Jeffrey Bowen)

Jeffrey Bowen – photo by Kim Yanoshik

bridge avenue perfumery 

he sniffs the air like his canine brothers,

detects artist’s paint and sweet roses

on the summer breeze,

cigarettes and herb

from the neighbor’s open window,

sulfur from the most recent barrage

of fourth of july firecrackers,

red wine and black coffee

walking hand in hand

toward the gathering sounds

of ohio city restaurants.

he’s missing the party,
again,

stayed home alone

to do the laundry,

read,

keep close company with old records,

and words wrapped tightly

like hand rolled

cuban cigars.

he savors the solitude

but longs for

feminine contact,

the top note of anticipation

wafting like jasmine

across the citrus

of intelligent conversation.

he savors the caress

of this cool summer day’s slowly

passing,

recalls the warm sands of proximity,

the euphoria of bright eyes across the table,

and fingers barely touching
electric.

* * * * *

Jeffrey Bowen’s poetry has been published by ArtCrimes, Cicada, Cool Cleveland, Crisis Chronicles, CSU Poetry Center, Dimensions, Doan Brook Watershed, Excursions, Green Panda Press, Hessler Street Fair, Procrastination Press, Poet’s League of Greater Cleveland, The City, The Cleveland Reader, and Whiskey Island Magazine.  He is one of six poets profiled in the 1995 documentary, “Off the Page”.  Four of his poems are featured on Cleveland Tumbadors, an album of Traditional Afro Cuban Music and Latin Jazz on Fame City Records.  Jeffrey is the resident poet & conga player with the band, Cats On Holiday, and his poetry appears on their CD, Holiday in a Box from COHTONE Records.  In addition to his poetic work, Jeffrey’s writing has appeared in Call & Post, City News, Cool Cleveland, EcoWatch, Elephant Journal, Girl Scout News, GreenCityBlueLake, Live Cleveland, Neighborhood News, Nonprofit Notes, Sun News and various Habitat for Humanity publications.

A Working Party (by Siegfried Sassoon)

 

A Working Party
by Siegfried Sassoon
[from The Old Huntsman and Other Poems, 1918]

Three hours ago he blundered up the trench,
Sliding and poising, groping with his boots;
Sometimes he tripped and lurched against the walls
With hands that pawed the sodden bags of chalk.
He couldn’t see the man who walked in front;
Only he heard the drum and rattle of feet
Stepping along barred trench boards, often splashing
Wretchedly where the sludge was ankle-deep.

Voices would grunt ‘Keep to your right — make way!’
When squeezing past some men from the front-line:
White faces peered, puffing a point of red;
Candles and braziers glinted through the chinks
And curtain-flaps of dug-outs; then the gloom
Swallowed his sense of sight; he stooped and swore
Because a sagging wire had caught his neck.

A flare went up; the shining whiteness spread
And flickered upward, showing nimble rats
And mounds of glimmering sand-bags, bleached with rain;
Then the slow silver moment died in dark.

The wind came posting by with chilly gusts
And buffeting at the corners, piping thin.
And dreary through the crannies; rifle-shots
Would split and crack and sing along the night,
And shells came calmly through the drizzling air
To burst with hollow bang below the hill.



Three hours ago, he stumbled up the trench;
Now he will never walk that road again:
He must be carried back, a jolting lump
Beyond all needs of tenderness and care.



He was a young man with a meagre wife
And two small children in a Midland town,
He showed their photographs to all his mates,
And they considered him a decent chap
Who did his work and hadn’t much to say,
And always laughed at other people’s jokes
Because he hadn’t any of his own.



That night when he was busy at his job
Of piling bags along the parapet,
He thought how slow time went, stamping his feet
And blowing on his fingers, pinched with cold.
He thought of getting back by half-past twelve,
And tot of rum to send him warm to sleep
In draughty dug-out frowsty with the fumes
Of coke, and full of snoring weary men.



He pushed another bag along the top,
Craning his body outward; then a flare
Gave one white glimpse of
No Man’s Land and wire;
And as he dropped his head the instant split
His startled life with lead, and all went out.

*

Lord, It Is Easter Time (by Séamas Carraher)

Lord, It Is Easter Time

Lord, it is Easter time
and Niamh’s hair is dressed in braids
the broken down trees are budding
and the broken walls
and the unswept streets
washed in sunlight.
Lord of light,
when the children are
dressed in suits
and marched to church
and the seasons turn
and the earth’s hard skin cracks.
Lord of broken promises,
when this life like a prison sentence
is absolved,
when this place like a disease
goes into remission
and hope is kick started at dawn
like a broken engine.
Lord in the desperate silence of
time passing
year after year like an excess of
lifetimes
as if one life was not
enough,
when this hurt woman
lifts her life from her hands
and asks what does it mean?
Lord of loss and lives
unlived
in the early hours
when time falls soft
on the ground
when the wind is stilled
and this grim procession of ghosts
descends the stairs
in Ballyogan or another town.
Lord of altars and priests
when words lie empty and wounded
in laneway and cul-de-sac
like old beer cans.
Lord of the ritual,
our own birth and death
and the unspoken hours
of sickness,
this prayer like smoke from a fire
like heads and hands lifted from kitchen tables
of cold tea and half smoked cigarettes
when the children dressed like angels
still sleep
and her hair is uncombed
when the barking dogs dream
when the busstops are empty
and all the doors closed,
this prayer at Easter time
rising like an unwashed plea
over alarm clocks and rooftops
over the landfill and the deserted roads
like life itself
in a howl of rage
lifted on its wings like a bird

the strength to go on
the unanswered questions asked
the questions answered
in the living.




“Lord, It Is Easter Time” comes from Séamas Carraher’s unpublished manuscript The Song of Poverty.

Séamas Carraher’s poetry has appeared in a number of print and online journals and anthologies, including Dead Beats: CANTOS, Pemmican, The SHOp (Ireland), Full of Crow, Word Riot & Poetry Ireland. He has recently been published in The Camel Saloon, Red Poets 19 (Wales) and The Poetry Bus 5 (Ireland). At the moment he lives in Ballyogan, South County Dublin, Ireland.

Find him at www.seamascarraher.blogspot.ie/.

Americans Are Not on the Whole Well Informed on World Matters (by Ally Malinenko)

Ally Malinenko

Americans Are Not on the Whole Well Informed on World Matters

She has many questions about our culture, but she is shy and nervous.
It takes a few beers before she turns to my husband in Plaza Santa Ana
and says,
Why do the poor people support Republicans?
I mean, she says, in Spain, we protest when our government fails us.
But in America, poor people like to have less.

My husband smiles,
they don’t like it, he says, but
they don’t want to admit that they have less
and they want to believe that they too
can become millionaires one day.

Why? she asks.

Because they’re ashamed that they’re poor, I say.

But that is not something to be ashamed of, she says.
That is something to be angry about. Something to cause change.

Not in America, he says. There, there is nothing worse than failure.

She frowns. Europe is not like this, she says.
We do not want to be unhappy but we are not afraid to say that we are.

Well, my husband says, Americans aren’t as smart as Europeans.

She eyes him one more time,
takes a sip of her beer
and says,

You two, you are not Americans. You are really Europeans.




Ally Malinenko is the author of poetry book The Wanting Bone (Six Gallery Press) and the children’s book Lizzy Speare and the Cursed Tomb (Antenna Books). She lives in the part of Brooklyn voted to have the best halal truck.

Author’s note: “[This poem is] from the How to Be An American series that I have been working on. The titles are variations on sentences from Culture Shock: USA a book by Esther Wanning written to acclimate new Americans to our culture. It is a collection of sweeping generalizations about this country that ring so true it’s both hilarious and frightening.”

Rolling the Dice One More Time at the Last Chance Ego Death (by Paul Corman-Roberts)

Paul Corman-Roberts

Rolling the Dice One More Time at the Last Chance Ego Death

You aren’t really

taking the time

to enjoy being

away from home.

& even if you danced

it would still

be less frenetic

than your quietude

& if we groped

ardent & fumbling

it would be

more serene still

than your imperious meditations

& if we reach

that vista where

our convergence ends,

will you take

but one moment

 

to look in my eyes

to look in my scars

to look in my thorns

and how far

will you run

when you see

the mesh nest

I made for you

there?

Paul Corman-Roberts is co-founder of the Beast Crawl Literary Festival in Oakland, California.  He is a compulsive organizer and writer of frequently subversive words.  His out of print collections of poems and flash are 19th Street Station from Full of Crow Chapbooks, 2011; Neocom(muter) from Tainted Coffee, 2009; and Coming WorldGone World (The Abomunauts Are Coming to Piss on Your Lawn) from Howling Dog Press, 2006.

Night Comes to the Versailles of the Mind (by Mark Sebastian Jordan)

Night Comes to the Versailles of the Mind

Dreamrise beckons
come away away
surrender the shine
of a sun-sharped mind,
slip into eyeless sleep
where a brooding
garden breathes.

A thousand falling fountains
are wells of infinite curve.
Sleep seeps to bleed
the listless flags
of a far-off world.
Chiselled lines are abandoned—
no dreaming brow is straight—
each furrow is a mob of liberty
overthrowing absolutes.

But what says the voice of the dead?
Will not dreamtide’s rosy gore
pearl across the dawn lawn
when all princes and palaces are gone?

The sun king sweats
in the hall of mirrors,
watching his selves
slip away away
across the wide misery
between seem and dream.

They call you to come,
come away—
frost flowers kiss
the deep leaves of the mind,
silent eyes start,
as if to speak—
but no prince
shall mark
this time. 



* * * * *

Mark Sebastian Jordan has been an active presence on the Ohio arts scene for thirty years as an actor, director, playwright, and improv comedian. His Mansfield Trilogy of historical dramas was featured in sell-out performances for a decade at Malabar Farm State Park. As a living history performer, Jordan has portrayed Orson Welles, George Frideric Handel, Dan De Quille, and Clement Vallandigham. He has also been featured in television programs such as Ghost Hunters, My Ghost Story, and House of the Unknown, and appeared as an extra in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption.

Jordan is also a poet with numerous publication credits. He was awarded 2nd place in the 2013 Jesse Stuart Memorial Award by the National Association of State Poetry Societies, and has also received awards from the Ohio Poetry Association, the Ohio Arts Council, The Ohio State University, Case Western Reserve University, The Associated Press, The Rupp Foundation, The Ohio Theater Alliance, the Ohio Community Theatre Association, the Ohio Eta Chapter of the Theta Alpha Phi drama honor fraternity, and the Mansfield/Richland County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Jordan has worked as a freelance journalist for publications all over Ohio as well as ones based in New York City and London, England. He currently reviews concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra for Seen & Heard International.

He lives at Malabar Farm State Park in Lucas, where he runs the Hostelling International hostel, which provides affordable accomodations to travelers of all ages.