Issue #31.1 Mardi Gras Issue: Dan Alter, Susan Stiles, Dennis Formento, Samantha Terrell
A Poem by Dan Alter
[Donald Stone on the street]
Donald Stone on the street above also had no father, where were the fathers, mom sold bottles of something out of the trunk of a car which might, if hit, explode. Sat bathrobed & TV-lit eating potato chips that came in a can. Evel Kneivel of the broken bones in star-spangled
jumpsuit on a motorcycle over canyons would teach us how to be a man. Our ramps went up, we fell, we shredded plastic wheels of pretend choppers. Our bodies wheels, stones to skip: rack us up, knock us down like pins. A nice idea was boys should have men, so my mom signed up,
dropped me past the edge of town at Ed's house beside birch trees in dingy snow, wood fence giving in to weather. Rooms submerged in dog musk & smoke & aftertaste of one of the wars in Asia. Everyone seemed in a dim house to live alone, TV in the evening, more chips
from a can. Ed in his big brotherly love placing in my hands a gun. Happiness: toward empties on the fence my tiny shining bb flew.
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Dan Alter is the author of two collections of poetry: My Little Book of Exiles (Eyewear, 2002) winner of the Cowan Poetry Prize, and Hills Full of Holes (Fernwood, 2025). He is also the translator of Take a Breath, You’re Getting Excited (Ben Yehuda, 2024), from the Hebrew of Yakir Ben-Moshe. He works at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley. https://danalter.net/
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A Poem by Susan Stiles
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Susan Stiles is a freelance writer living in Croatia. Her poetry has appeared in The Lake, The Dalhousie Review, Panorama, Innisfree, Slant, The Westchester Review, and elsewhere. Recently, she joined the team at Panorama as a reader and, occasionally, she writes a blog, “Letters from Rab,” on her website at susan-stiles.com.
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A Poem by Dennis Formento
Donepezil dream of such intensity I must have taken two by mistake
i
Cycling old Mid-city years ago—
my old neighborhood, on my bike—
wandering little dead-end streets
with magical decrepit houses
single shotgun gems with falling windows and peeling paint
small streets, tiny narrow neutral grounds
blue-black night-time scenes,
bright blue day!
Avoid that blue alligator
that crawled out of the bayou
crossing the street right after Dumaine
or maybe it’s DeSoto
two blocks over
where night falls, and somewhere
between Banks and Bienville
there’s a little place I’ve been to before
a coffee house of all the ages:
little families, hippies with kids
in costume, everybody’s in costume,
clowns and meatballs and mountebanks
courir de Mardi Gras ensembles
carrying little torches to light their feet
light the night.
Parents, poets
children and single people packed
into this coffeehouse
dizzying scene
the street almost tipping over
with hubbub.
But around the corner and down the bend,
police in droves on foot and horse
are rounding up the revelers,
humorless cops in black
policing the unruly electorate
after dark.
Shops,
little corner stores
packed up with friendly forces,
the street tips sideways
I lose my balance and fall—
golden rings dot the sky
and a group of someone’s friends appear:
Oh she wants me again
and she falls against me,
but the time is wrong
the sky has been dialed backwards
and she offers a gold-leaf disk called a “favor,”
marked like a solar calendar
from the Mayan-Mexican team
a psychopompic ride from one
elementary state to another.
ii
Gold rings and spheres
on blue shields
blue-gold squares
born by city marchers, swaying
thousands on Carrollton Avenue,
middle of the day and I’m flying
floating awake, amber light of sunset,
broad day looking for a place to go to school
to learn the trombone.
And I’m floating above this Uptown cinema 3-dimensional p.m.
mother picking up her son and daughters
adds to the traffic jam
and the parade
in front of schools, churches,
all these pleasant old buildings,
a synagogue or two,
kids boarding the street cars,
parades of maskers and
musketeers.
And here I am floating over the neighborhood
in an invisible vehicle,
circling the old Masonic hall,
now a music school,
and on every floor
crowds are rendering shuffle-time,
and the mass stands still while the band rewinds
patiently—a billboard in the distance
near the interstate has changed, it’s a movie,
and hovering over the building like a crow,
over the school to get a sense
of its suitability,
how could I know
watching a lanky 16-year-old
emerge from the old brick pile—
if I would be happy there?
There’s so much glittering gold in the street
an airplane shuffles by,
so many worlds to be known.
Memory is capacious
but incapable of recalling
all the surfaces
in this scene
that glitter and glow.
Sunday, 2-23-25 3:08 a.m.
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Dennis Formento: Books include Phaeton’s Wheels (Lavender Ink Press, 2024); Spirit Vessels and Looking for an Out Place (FootHills Publishing 2014/2010); Cineplex (Paper Press, 2012). Edited bioregional magazine, Mesechabe: The Journal of Surregionalism, 1991-2001; founded Surregional Press, publishing Darlene Fife’s memoir, Portraits from Memory: New Orleans in the Sixties (2000), John Sinclair’s Fattening Frogs for Snakes: Delta Sound Suite (2002), and Ungulations: Ten Waves (Under the Hoof) by A. di Michele and Amy Trussell, 2011. Founded 100,000 Poets for Change, New Orleans and Northshore chapters, a world-wide movement of poets and other artists for social change and ecological sanity, 2011/2015.
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A Poem by Samantha Terrell
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Samantha Terrell is an American poet whose work has been widely anthologized, recently in Fulcrum Review, haus-a-rest, iamb poetry, and Locust Shells Journal. Her collections have been published by indie presses in the US & UK including Alien Buddha Press, JC STUDIO Press, Low Hanging Fruit Publishing, Vellum Publishing UK, and others. Terrell's poem “Nor Should We” was shortlisted for The Letter Review Prize (Summer 2025); she has been a Poets & Writers grant recipient; and she is the founding editor of SHINE international poetry series. Terrell resides with her family in New York State.
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