Category: Summer 2016

Matthew Rotando, Summer 2016

The Beast That Lunges
Matthew Rotando

The best thing about remembering is that it’s in your hands. You revolt against sleep and become a phantom in time, moving through rooms and visions as a wiry, feral child. You don’t need words to eat, to find shelter. You taste water in air and move to it with your thirst. You kneel over a lake at night. The outline of your face is a surprise. You breathe hard and lunge into recollection. You run backwards and laugh at your heelprints in the earth. Snakes slide back to their skins. Fires grow into trees. Pearls soften to sand. You unwrite the future for the happy beast you are becoming. Rain whispers quietly upward. The past begins to show. Clarity is dimness. Your hands as clouds, as fins, as roaming notes. Continue reading “Matthew Rotando, Summer 2016” →

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Brian Fanelli, Summer 2016

Two Poems

Wandering South Street with You
Brian Fanelli

The day will be fleeting,
so I want to photograph you
near neon lights, storefront mannequins
in pink corsets and red fishnets,
your hair tucked under a knit hat,
some brown strands visible behind your ears.
I want to photograph all of you—
your chipped gold nail polish,
black stockings hugging your thighs,
white smudges of salt on your boots,
the plastic mustache you bought
as a gag and wore as we drifted
shop to shop, café to café.
By sunset, our hands will unlink,
and we will drive home,
that two-hour Turnpike haul.
After you drop me off,
I’ll glance back and remember
this day, here on South Street with you,
when your hand curled into mine,
and we pretended Continue reading “Brian Fanelli, Summer 2016” →

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Raymond Cummings, Summer 2016

Two Poems

Your Ad Will End After This Video
Raymond Cummings

A family of robins cuddles in a nest,
hatchlings nestled, timid, beneath a
mother’s wings. Reflexively, the
smallest bird rolls a white eye as if
watching you dream around him.

 

Rose
Raymond Cummings

Poised and trembling before a starry Alaskan
Plane, I hunt every word. They melt like wax
seals, felled at your bare feet, provocatively arrayed:
a shrine of faith. At a touch the barrette snaps
and long, black hair spills free. Around your
middle you wrap my arms like a sash; dreaming,
we sway in the half-light of a honeymoon suite.

Continue reading “Raymond Cummings, Summer 2016” →

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John Devers Jr., Summer 2016

Two Poems

Kingston
John Devers Jr.

Let your car replace your mind
And drive
To retrace your steps
Down old, familiar streets.
You pass the pizza place
Turned floral shop,
Whose pizza was terrible
With over-risen bread
And diluted tomato sauce,
But you ate it because
You were young
And your parents
Only gave you so much.

You pass the ice cream shop,
Where either the workers
Got younger
Or you got taller,
And your chances of low-key
Freebies
Dropped exponentially
The further you went away
From your High School graduation.

You pass your ex’s house Continue reading “John Devers Jr., Summer 2016” →

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Sharlene Gilman, Summer 2016

Two Poems

Dear Fractal Me, 14, 28, 42, 56, maybe 70 (Growing Up True and False)
Sharlene Gilman

I’m here from the future only temporarily present. I tell you
Only half believe when they say “be yourself” — no
one really cares if you are yourself or anyone else or not, the best
reason, therefore to care about yourself since no one else
does. Only half believe when they say “something
to fall back on.” True, Falling is a law of the universe, though falling
forward & sideways can be true as much as back. Words will
not hurt, you’ve been told. False: though words hurt not
as much as they will if you believe them or when
you want someone not to. Return then to Rule
One: Be yourself but in half-belief, so respect Continue reading “Sharlene Gilman, Summer 2016” →

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