Kiely Sweatt
When Possible Married Couples Piece Together Furniture To Feel Complete.
And the room saturates with warmth.
We speak with low throaty inertia
To keep pain indispensible.
I read to myself: All odd changes take place in gestures.
I am slackening the pace of syllables.
To-Mo-rrow is but a warm liquid.
To-morrow memory is taste.
Melanie Whithaus
Daddy forgot to close the window
so the bluebirds got in.
Mommy tried to hang herself
from the third story window.
I remember it had been snowing
so when the noose broke,
she couldn’t throw herself
out on the concrete.
She misses spring because
December drives her mad.
My best friend Bear hates winter too.
It scares me because
I don’t want to be like him.
I hold my breath until my lips turn blue
And dream of a snow-covered slumber.
Daddy would throw birdseed on me;
the bluebirds would tickle.
I wish I could imagine
Mommy and Daddy in love again.
But the noose didn’t break this time.
December got Mommy and
Daddy made love to bluebirds.
I dream in thoughts of formaldehyde.
They float lifelessly in a jar
upon a shelf next to
a meth addict’s mind
and the broken heart of a child.
Does this make my thoughts
dead upon arrival or
are they slowly killing themselves
as they embalm their memories with poison?
That poison was once a friend
that tickled its way down my throat,
past my smoker’s lungs
and withered heart,
straight into my stomach where even
its acidic self
couldn’t take down the poison.
First you fear it,
then you absorb it like a drug
until it kills you slowly,
embalming you.
Buried alive;
you just lack dirt and a shovel.
Instead you have open veins
and a jar of formaldehyde
dripping down your throat.
You think of love;
it’s much like embalming.
First you fear it,
then you absorb it like a drug.
Even the acids in your stomach
can’t destroy it.
Melanie Whithaus is currently studying creative writing. Many of her pieces can be found at blog at melwhithaus.wordpress.com. She’s been published in Umbrella Factory Magazine, Crack the Spine Literary Magazine, and The Rusty Nail Literary Magazine. Her writing is known for its raw and straight-forward voice, and her “no-bars-held” style.
Lyn Lifshin
NIGHTS IT WAS TOO HOT TO STAY IN THE APARTMENT
We drove to the lake, then stopped
at my grandmother’s. The grown ups
sat in the screened porch on wicker
or the glider whispering above the
clink of ice in wet glass. Spirea and
yellow roses circled the earth under
stars. A silver apple moon. Bored
and still sweaty, my sister and I
wanted to sleep out on the lawn
and dragged out our uncle’s army
blankets and chairs for a tent. We
wanted the stars on our skin, the
small green apples to hang over
the blanket to protect us from bats.
From the straw mats, peonies glowed
like planets and if there was a breeze,
it was roses and sweat. I wanted
our white cats under the olive green
with us, their tongues snapping up
moths and whatever buzzed thru the
clover. For an hour the porch
seemed miles away until itchy with
bug bites and feeling our shirts fill
with night air, my hair grow curlier,
our mother came to fold up the blankets
and chairs and I wished I was old
enough to stay alone until dawn or
small enough to be scooped up, asleep
in arms that would carry me up the
still hot apartment stairs and into
sheets I wouldn’t know were still
warm until morning
SITTING IN THE BROWN CHAIR WITH LETS PRETEND ON THE RADIO
I don’t think how the
m and m’s that soothe
only made my fat legs
worse. I’m not thinking
how my mother will
die, of fires that could
gulp a mother up, leave
me like Bambi. I’m not
going over the baby sitter’s
stories of what they did to
young girls in tunnels, of
the ovens and gas or have
nightmares I’ll wake up
screaming for one whole
year wanting someone to
lie near me, hold me as if
from then on no one can get
close enough. I don’t hear
my mother and father yelling,
my mother howling that if
he loved us he’d want to buy
a house, not stay in the apart-
ment he doesn’t even pay
her father rent for but get
a place we wouldn’t be
ashamed to bring friends.
What I can drift and dream
in is more real. I don’t want
to leave the world of golden
apples and silver geese. To
make sure, I close my eyes,
make a wish on the first hay
load of summer then wait
until it disappears
Swiss summer pajamas,
my face a blotch of
measles in the small
dark room over blue
grapes and rhubarb,
hot stucco cracking.
17 North Seminary.
That July Friday
noon my mother was
rushed in the grey
blimp of a Chevy
north to where my
sister Joy would be
born two months
early. I wasn’t
ready either and
missed my mother’s
cool hands, her
bringing me frosty
glasses of pineapple
juice and cherries
with a glass straw
as Nanny lost her
false teeth, flushed
them down the toilet
then held me so tight
I could smell lavender
and garlic in her
braided her, held
me as so few ever
have since, as if
not to lose more
Lyn Lifshin’s Another Woman Who Looks Like Me was published by Black Sparrow at David Godine October, 2006.. (Also out in 2006 is her prize winning book about the famous, short lived beautiful race horse, Ruffian: The Licorice Daughter: My Year With Ruffian from Texas Review Press. Lifshin’s other recent books include Before it’s Light published winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997 and 92 Rapple from Coatism.: Lost in the Fog and Barbaro: Beyond Brokenesss and Light at the End, the Jesus Poems, Katrina, Ballet Madonnas. For other books, bio, photographs see her web site::www.lynlifshin.com Persephone was published by Red Hen and Texas Review published Barbaro: Beyond Brokenness. Most recent books: Ballroom, All the Poets (Mostly) Who Have Touched me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially the Lies. And just out, Knife Edge &Absinthe: The Tango Poems. In Spring 2012, NYQ books will publish A Girl Goes into The Woods. Also just published: For the Rosespoems after Joni Mitchell
Coriel O'Shea Gaffney
You pocket a cloud of powdered milk.
I swat at a rubbery whiff.
Did I just speak?
A mute son pushes his chatty daddy's wheelchair up a steep bridge.
It's my shin bone. A door is goaded shut.
Nausea is a place. I demand to be frisked.
My nipples dock, your face liquidates.
Each thought forms a picket line.
A woman sleeks into place, eyes our fistful of checks and truckload of debt.
We've tried to be responsible but our credit rating keeps eating our dog.
Somewhere in the world, a girl carries a turtle through traffic
toward the rush of a river. His patchwork belly, a sharp inhale
against the steady current. She lowers him to a soggy bank,
turns back to road, can't bear to witness the water.
We are arbiters of joy, kettling revolutions of hearts.
I will never know how to be a person
but I promise to work damn hard at human
like the Postman who answers letters addressed to God.
Uprooted tree on the sidewalk, its shortest
branch engulfed in a paper bag. All night bender.
Little girls with slimy coolers selling Cheetos
for Cancer. A dollar for a 25 cent pack.
I want to say America so you might forgive
the Brooklyn of my imagery. But no country's
got me tottering in three inch heels in the
Home Depot parking lot hunting for flowers.
I'm dreaming of dreaming of carrots as I flip
the Cheetos bag inside-out and fuck shine
with shine. This is the sort of morning that breathes
if you're watching, delivers brilliant lectures
of light and air if you're listening
followed by terminal quiet, the world a sudden
classroom after the last chair scrapes to still.
We are vacuum-sealed into our brains again,
peopling the land. Garnishing silence.
Um is Om's first-cousin: sound that contains
all sounds kin to a speech impediment.
I pivot toward home (remember the parking lot)
flowerless; stutter down the Avenue like a kneeless beast,
clopping a two-word story: I'm Sorry I'm Sorry.
Several men bid for a piece of my paralysis.
I unlock the door to the inside, which we've turned
into a picture of the outside. It's going to rain
but it won't, Wittgenstein said in order to explain
something. The apartment building is an echo
of a thought in sight he said except for the apartment
part. You can hate me because I said Wittgenstein
but you'll only be hating the echo of a thought.
In the dusk-haze with thrumming heels,
I believe I see a man praying in a pool of light
at the base of the stairs. This is the time of day
when my eyes rediscover the god the parasite
left behind, renaming life at random. I seem
to believe I see a man crouching at the foot.
The man seems to believe he is garbage.
So what if the man is a heap of smelly black bags.
So what if revelry enters my heart sideways.
I know a drunk tree singing the blues, a charity of chips.
Coriel O'Shea Gaffney received her MFA from The City College of New York where she is also an Adjunct Lecturer and Yoga Instructor. She has been a featured poet for the Earshot! and Franklin Park Literary Series, the louderARTS Project, Spoken Word Café, and the Literary Salon. As a member of the feminist collaborative 500Genders, she has featured at the Bowery Poetry Club, Stain Bar, and Perch Café. Publications include: Lyre, Lyre, Union Station, Shakefist, and Promethean. Coriel is the recipient of the Jerome Lowell Dejur Award in Poetry.
James Fowler
Sugar Bush
I focus on the tree’s trunk, study the bark’s
crevices and cracks, the patterns of the scars,
seek the mark that shows the special spot
which conceals the greatest sweetness.
I focus on the maple, set the tap, hook the black
tubing, which insists it’s time to go. More maples
wait my touch along the half-a-mile I’ve left
on this line, then I’ll head back down another.
I focus on the tubing, look for breaks or leaks,
remove a branch that lies across it, reach a maple,
drill holes and pound three spouts. A spit of flakes
pushes me to rush my check-the-lines ritual.
I lose my focus when windblown snow mutters
in my ear, winter’s still here. I pull up my hood.
But the thought of sap brings my focus to a memory
of a spring morning with pancakes and I’m warm.
I yawned, rubbed my eyes, then saw two deer
in my headlights. Too late for brakes, I swerved
and missed them. But I didn’t see her.
My front end threw the doe in the ditch.
She flailed her front legs, couldn’t stand,
I’d snapped her spine. She let me rub her neck.
The cop came, put his gun to her ear.
“Do you want the meat. It’s yours.”
No! No thank you, no. I think not.
Now I see her. When I pull the sheets up,
lay my head down and close my eyes, I see her.
She tapped my forearm, pointed at my change
and then the juke box. At my nod, she grabbed
a hundred yen and handed me a card.
While she pushed buttons of her favorite songs,
I read: I’m Kumi, I can’t hear or speak.
That night, I dropped more money in the box
than spent on drinks. We danced till closing time.
Slow songs, she melded to my every sway,
and fast, she seemed to float above the notes.
When I grew tired, I watched her dance alone.
She took me home and taught me how to sing
the song of lovers who’ve no need to speak.
I have over two-hundred fifty poems published in various journals and anthologies, including The Other Side of Sorrow. I edited the poetry anthology Heartbeat of New England (Tiger Moon Publication, 2000). Finishing Line Press published a chapbook of my Japanese forms, Connections to This World, in March, 2012. I have a contract with Cyberwizard Productions for book one, The Healer, in the five book fantasy series, The Silenian Wars.
Sean Edgely
Frank O’Hara is alive.
He lives in Red Hook.
When the B61 bus
pulls onto Van Brunt Street,
you can see him down
at the Chinese bus depot.
He buys single cigarettes from the drivers
and says we should all be learning Mandarin.
When they roll out for Atlantic City,
he walks down to watch the stevedores.
If the Queen Mary is docked at the terminal,
he can’t help but recite the names
of all the Croatian ports he never got to see.
He takes his lunch in a Hitachi crane
in an abandoned, grassy lot.
He has rechristened all the Fairway coffee beans
in Esperanto and gives unsolicited advice
to the single women in the produce section.
He has undertaken precautions
to ensure his shoes don’t end up on the telephone wires.
The Swedish meatballs dinner at Ikea is $2.49
on Tuesday nights. He assumes his regular perch
at the windows which overlook the remains of the piers.
His wrists are a sticky ash from so many refills of Coke.
We observe a Muslim man praying under one of the giant cranes
at sunset. That makes up for a lot, he whispers.
Afterward, we walk down to the Beard Street pier.
The boats do their sidereal dance in the bay
and suddenly it’s clear that people would’ve gotten Van Gogh
if he said he’d done all his painting aboard ships.
He never looks at Manhattan, and when he sees the Verrazano,
all he can do is talk about the Golden Gate.
A lantern is a lantern, even if your eyes are closed, he says.
If you call his name in the street, he’ll look back at you
with the wistfulness of a girl with a pearl earring.
If he walks too close to Carroll Gardens, he’ll start to dissolve
like it’s a scene out of Field of Dreams.
If you run into him, don’t bring up the MOMA.
The last time I see him is in line
to go swimming at the rec center.
He doesn’t write anymore, he says,
beach towel tucked under his arm.
His shoes still have no laces.
I ask Fanni why.
Fanni is seventeen
but she is also very smart.
She calls me phlegmatic
when I am slow
to answer her questions
in class,
and during break,
I beat myself
with a dictionary.
Girls with short hair
are especially vexing.
Girls wear black leggings
as if to destroy men.
Girls are very feminine
by nature.
Fanni is the only student
at Thursday detention.
I am supposed
to help her
with math.
Instead we watch
The Hangover
twice in a row.
I tell her
about Vegas,
about the time
I studied
for spring finals
in a window
of the Luxor pyramid,
show her
the shard of
Grey Goose glass
lodged in my index finger.
When we talk,
every time she chooses
the wrong preposition
it hangs me
like a lovely dress
on a broken hanger.
Fanni’s boyfriend
is older than me.
She pronounces
my name Shone.
Fanni and I
never liked math.
Sean Edgely is a native of Northern California finishing his MFA at City College this winter. He has lived and worked abroad in Asia and Europe and these experiences abroad inform much of his worldview, including his poetry. He has been published most recently in HTMLGIANT, Literary Bohemian, and Lyre Lyre and has poetry forthcoming in the anthology Some Stories Are True that Never Happened. He spent last spring translating contemporary Korean poetry and currently teaches in Midtown.
Nin Andrews
Some nights the orgasm is a woman instead of a man. Why not? she asks as she glides into black stockings and nothing else. Unless she has guests. Then she puts on a brassiere to match. She says she doesn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable—she says this as she adjusts her straps, but this is what she wears whenever she composes herself in the afterlife. If you insist on staying, or even if you don’t, she plays the organ all night long, her stockinged legs pumping the pedals, the music filling her rooms. Music, she says, is a genii trapped in the bones. It is the last thoughts of orgasms who have passed and all those who will be gone soon. She has to let the songs go. Every last moan and wobbly note. When she tires, she slips out of the stockings, massages her toes, and walks on bare feet to her tiny bed. She sleeps with no covers, no clothes at all, no clock. There’s a tiny ladder to a loft upstairs where lost souls sleep. Or cats. Her bed is too small for two. The truth: each night she floats like a musical note in the air, looking for lips that can sing and fingers that can strum or stroke her back to life. She is looking for you, Love. Or your long-lost soul. Nothing less.
If Orgasms Were Poodles
after Brecht
If orgasms were poodles, we could keep them on leashes or dress them up like the dogs one purchases at Pet World. One would have to take good care of them of course—perhaps line their cages with soft bedding, and bathe them regularly. (No one appreciates those unhygienic orgasms who carry diseases and the scent of low tide.) An occasional squirt of Febreze could fix them right up, though orgasms are sensitive to sprays and frequently suffer allergic reactions. No one wants to end up in an emergency room. Or worse, the morgue. Nor does anyone want to explain what happened, who is to be blamed, or worse, be deprived of the orgasms. After all, the orgasms offer such pleasure to humans, humans owe it to their orgasms to care for it as they would their most beloved and pampered poodles.
If Orgasms Were Paris
If orgasms were Paris, a person could visit them on vacation. He would only need to purchase a ticket. Reserve a room. Maybe hire a tour guide.
But sometimes the tickets might be sold out. Or too costly. After all, not just anyone can purchase a ticket on a whim. And of course, airlines are unreliable. Often a traveler gets stuck in Newark, New Jersey. In Washington D.C.. Or Philadelphia. Purgatory, have you noticed, has so many names? And what if there were headwinds, mechanical difficulties, sick pilots? Volcanic eruptions and tropical storms have caused planes to detour to other cities, or even countries. Who wants to board a plane that won’t get him where he wishes he were going?
And then there’s the question of leg-room. A man can’t always fit comfortably in a regular seat, nor can he afford first class. And even if price is not a problem, what about those endless chattering, snoring, sneezing, or gum-chewing seat mates?
Even if he arrives, no problem, and he has a room reserved at a fancy hotel, surely he has read that many rooms, even in the finest Paris hotels are said to have bed bugs these days. “Punaises de lit” Parisians call them, meaning bed drawing pins. Who can enjoy himself with the thought of a drawing pin in his mattress?
Of course some live to tell of their luxurious Paris views, fine French wines, and strolls along the Champs Elysees. It happens. Of course it does. We have all heard those who talk about their splendid vacations. Some even become tour guides. How did I get so lucky? they ask.
Listening to such braggarts is enough to destroy the simplest pleasures of life, of perhaps a hot cup of tea, a biscuit, or an after dinner mint. I’ve always been a fan of my after dinner mint.
One morning on a whim the orgasms met to discuss the humans. “Friends,” they said to one another, “let’s play the game of royalty again.” They chose one man to be king and one woman to be queen. The woman laughed and trembled when the man held her hand. The man kept telling her of all the trials his life had run him through, how many battles he had lost and won, how many enemies he had poisoned, how at last he had her. Only she mattered. They kissed. They swooned. They made love again and again.
They were royalty for the entire evening, walking through the palace gardens of their dreams. They could have been Adam and Eve. King Arthur and Queen Guinevere. Queen Guinevere and Sir Lancelot. How gullible they were. How easy it was for the orgasms to fool them.
Nin Andrews is the author of 5 chapbooks and 5 books of poetry. Her most recent collection is Southern Comfort published by CavanKerry Press.
Introduction
We’re back again—this time with the Fall/Winter issue of Scapegoat. We have a great
group of poets, some familiar to you and some new.
Thanksgiving has just passed and it seems like a good time to note what we are all
thankful for in our lives--how fortunate most of us are as our thoughts and prayers go out
to many people who have lost so much recently from the Hurricane.
I was looking around for a poem with the theme of gratitude and found the following
excerpt from Sam Hamill:
Best, June
Lives of a Poet:
A Letter to Gary Snyder
Nearly forty years
have passed since Kenneth Rexroth
introduced me to
the mountains and rivers of
your poems, the campfire light
flickering softly
across
a page of Milton,
animal shadows
and wide, wise innocent eyes
observing from the darkness…
What I want to say,
what I have struggled to say
in this poem, is
that you have been a master
and model, a friend and sage
for those who follow
And if I may paraphrase:
That’s what a poet
is—one who recognizes
sacramental relationships.
That is the real work—
reading books or bucking wood
or washing babies—
attentive lives all our days:
the real joy is gratitude.
— First two stanzas & last three stanzas
Scapegoat Review Winter 2012
 Introduction by June Coleman Magrab |
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Lyn Lifshin |
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