#3.1 Three Poems by Michael Robins

Against Long Island

Over a river sober & through our screens we go, stomaching trees & their cuts soon bracing a home. It means less than pickled fanfare, felt in pictures

fooling my love around with the grace to be born & (scrolling variously as possible) call it a life. Once, the advice of fathers standing like a mailbox as we drove away.

The satellites nod, route a faster course past the urge to idle long at the fence & seed a plot or two toward our younger, more vulnerable years. What jubilee

spying bluebells & the daffodils ballooning for me, only me, forever each for me when, if anything, the bed in my eye baffles & thins, blows as it must & quits.

***

One Hundred Days

Down the steps & where a path bends among tomatoes & flowerless lilies, the caterpillars feeding on the dill. A wedge of lime left to sink in its glass, with no slight suspicion at the garage or alley for early morning groceries, shortening a pile of limbs cut already once from the mulberries. Months back (a stitch that long ago held an eye) your father’s wife asks, But has anyone you know personally gotten sick? Now the cartwheels of laughter through the fence &, having come like birds to this periphery, someone mistakenly kisses the ground called Later. A housefly, a firefly, a dragonfly like prayer in the air around us & with little use for the arts, which surely isn’t true.

***

Someone Who Looked Just Like Me

When friends long dead confess a thing or two what choice but heed their ghostly conceit roving my lunchtime tray to the bored ceiling

tiny &, like yellow pencil, their directive hung to right the narrow of windows ripe in crow, lazy cows &, at the brim where a cemetery

ends & begins, you might imagine the urge to ditch my grounds for being, southeasterly, other days deny what spills dirt & a body

both, late tomatoes letting go & charged down like fire between your town & the heavens, your child’s fright & another while I’m caught

stuttered (oblivion ha!) halfway out the yard & difficult, startled by the headless rabbit wet on the paving stone, salient patchwork

nearly intact & with its fold, with the branches bare & those in bloom, I mark no phoenix off the sludge but (because scaffolds swerve

my eyes from the sidewalk gum to that swift, steady washing of marble) my coordinates shift, stumble the watermelon rind & alone

toward seed, fatal where the feline’s tongue gladdens the fur of her right leg, then her left routine as tending a grave, expecting some

company yet & furthermore with inside jokes, punch-lines for every synapse but the one counting back from ten, never quite getting

joy, its heart snaillike & down the middle until snapped when my only daughter shouts she’s so angry she could hit a thousand cats,

raindrops that look to her like turned off lights & I hear spit in the empire of crude trucks, common flies swept in the painting of a face

then a fence, I hear December with the dog blind in her garden, hear a buckling door & hear the softened fruit, hear furrow & hear

crosswind while my mind builds this father scaling the clouds for a child, that height sudden & from which worry fits the thimble,

love & love-me-not blown like dandelion heads between what’s possible & where I believe collecting rock delivers no safety from the sea,

such breadth & airlessness, lamps overturned then sunk beneath the crests, beyond deep & suggesting my friends own less than water

& so, to their curious visits, I reply with thanks, ask we pass together the gates into a meadow or the dappled thought of grass that anchors

these green now purple dogwoods, inviting our measure to the stranger who knelt, cradled not some lonely tree but went & planted two.

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Michael Robins is the author of four collections of poetry, including In Memory of Brilliance & Value (2015) and People You May Know (2020), both from Saturnalia Books. He lives in the Portage Park neighborhood of Chicago.

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#3.2 Two Poems by Benjamin Schmitt

Healing

I need healing your hands and eyes and mouth I need courageous snow upon my eyelids I need Rocky Mountain canyons to come live inside me listening to Adele and Amy Winehouse at full volume in the early morning I need the monarchical octopus on the throne to shake my shame away

I need healing your hair and breasts and thighs I need the vast sunset to touch her pink toes in the east before sighing the names of disorders I need you to know I’m not crazy even though I showed up just now with all my clothes in plastic bags and all my thoughts in a necklace of poison apples

I need healing your style and fight and mind I need to listen to you and your mess the clean loneliness that gets on everything I need curtains to keep out the darkness turning windows into punctuation marks separating all my loves I need to be able to look you in the eye as you’re looking away from me

***

Exegesis

I write for the insignificant shadows elongated on the warm asphalt of words

I write for the drapes that keep the sun from entering the rooms of expensive gifts

I write for the violent waves crashing on the gentle coastal rocks that absorb them

I write for the wind that passes through the eternal entrance that can be slammed shut

I write for the green-haired teenager with a feather crushing a semi on her tongue

I write for the ones who hate poetry for I’m just a gorilla loving in sign language

I write for those who have broken my heart that’s me passed out drunk between the letters

I write for the lone country light unaware of the darkness breathing down its neck

I write for all the saints of capitalism worshiping at the decrepit altars of long cons

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Benjamin Schmitt is the author of three books, most recently Soundtrack to a Fleeting Masculinity. His poems have appeared in the Antioch Review, Hobart, Worcester Review, Columbia Review, Roanoke Review, and elsewhere. A co-founder of Pacifica Writers’ Workshop, he has also written articles for The Seattle Times and At The Inkwell. He lives in Seattle with his wife and children.

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#3.3 from Meathead in America by Lacy Schutz

Introduction: The following work is excerpted from Meathead in America, a longer, blank verse poem.

In The Relation of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (1542), the eponymous narrator stumbles, slips, and staggers through the new world from the east to the west. A hapless rather than intrepid conquistador, Cabeza de Vaca sailed from Spain in 1527 with around six hundred men in five ships, stopping in present-day Dominican Republic, and devastated by a hurricane in Cuba where the party lost two ships and many of the crew. Current scholarship lands the remaining ships in Florida where a portion of the men headed inland on foot. Wandering without plan or purpose in a hazardous, disorienting environment, eventually only Cabeza de Vaca and three companions remained. Over nine years, having eaten their horses, they walked across Louisiana and Texas, possibly into New Mexico and Arizona, and then south to Mexico, eventually ending up in Mexico City, from whence Cabeza de Vaca finally returned to Spain in 1537.

Meathead in America is not a translation of The Relation, but it follows the tale closely, reconvening its details in a lyric narrative of aspiration and madness, hubris and loss. This poem is an attempt to capture what Emerson, echoed by Stanley Cavell, called “this new yet unapproachable America,” an America that remains new, continues to resist every approach, even while aging into its present density and darkness.

***

We sailed onward in sore depletion ‘til sighting some natives far upon a shore. Then Meathead called to them and they came forth with fish and venison. We anchored there, and slept, and woke to a deserted place, the natives whispered off into the dark. We found abandoned horses everywhere. Reconnaissance concluded with Meathead’s lumbering from a lodge, and from his hand a noise, a gleam, a baby’s rattle, gold.

***

We took possession of those natives’ realm and claimed it in Your Royal Name. I made another governor, to Meathead’s grief. I need you by my side, I said. Natives returned in twos and threes. They spoke to us, but we had no one to interpret. Some seemed angry, shook their fists as if to say that we, not they, should leave their little town. Yet then they left and made no more attempts to hinder us or block our conquering.

***

We traveled further inland. When we came upon four native men, we captured them. We showed them corn. We shouted, corn! and shook the ears at them. They took us to their home. They pointed at some corn. It wasn’t fit to pick. We looked around and found some cloth, some feathers, boxes full of bodies, dead. Each corpse was draped in deerskin daubed with paint. There was idolatry afoot so we set fire to the place, burned it to the ground.

***

The natives stood and watched their village burn. We showed them corn again and gold and asked where we might find these things. By signs they showed there was a place quite far away, a great long distance, very, very far, where men like us could find the gold and corn we sought. We went to tell the others on our ships about this far off land and plotted our direction with the pilots, comptroller, the commissary, and the notary.

***

Meathead, notary, pilots, comptroller, the commissary, governor, and I disagreed. I demanded that my stance be transcribed, notarized. The others did the same. I said I’d rather lose my life than risk my reputation, but I was o’er-ruled. The ships divided into two parties. The second sailed for better port while ours remained. We all were ravenous, becoming thin, weak. Meathead wept at night.

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Lacy Schutz is Executive Director of Shaker Museum in New York State. Her poetry has appeared in Verse, FENCE, Denver Quarterly, New Orleans Review, The Diagram, and other venues. She lives in the Bronx.

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#3.4 A Poem by Brad Crenshaw

ELEGY AT HOME

We all tremble. Tents across the street on Water and Pacific rise once more, pretty much overnight like dreams of unknown flowers, I was saying—I

can tell you all this here—more like assorted artificial poison mushrooms, offered the pedestrian in leggings turning cynical at the light.

I want to say the right thing, uncertain where to go. Watch for the syringes, she already added to my silence as we crossed together out of step,

and threaded through the camp. We could be in Patagonia, and better off on steppes to the remotest mountains looking down on wind-swept plains of yellow poppies

anywhere away from common view. Grey horses grazing unmolested. Everywhere is room. Our local sibyl, on the other hand, is looking wary

at hallucinations plaguing her with truth, as she sees it, just in view of coffee shops with students focusing on grades. Exhausted people looking bedroomish

in blankets sprawl exactly in the way of traffic, and disrupt the flow of cash downtown. Carefully, we step around, and owe ourselves the serenades on old

guitars as rasty bearded fellows here and there intone despairing lines of love. Each has warbled on, within my hearing, anyway, befriending hopes for partnership,

a shared bed, and shelter for the day.

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Brad Crenshaw lives in Santa Cruz, CA, and has authored 5 poetry collections, including My Gargantuan Desire (2010); and Genealogies (2016). His fifth book, Memphis Shoals, is due to be published in Fall, 2020. He has published many poems in journals, as well as articles in literary criticism and theory, and 3 articles in neuroscience. He can be found at Blue Islands, Blue as Ink.

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#3.5 A Poem by Kelly Gartman

Mr. Gimme

Now, decades later, only a vague pity lingers. I run into him a few times a year on holidays, during Mardi Gras.

We cross paths, this time, at a house party. He lights up sighting a mark makes a zigzag beeline toward me.

Gimme a cigarette, he demands, hand extended, fingers pinching downward in a grip-mimic, blind muscle memory, a flinty challenge in his bloodshot eyes Tell me no, I dare you like the last-gasp fight left in a kicked dog, hoping I refuse so he can have something to rage against for a little while other than himself.

Everyone has bad luck sometimes but his bad luck has lasted 20 years and counting. Black undereye circles, pale, underweight. Bald spots – chronic aloe-peesha he says pointing toward his head as he backs me into a corner of the dining room.

Beer in hand with a dead-toothed grin he says he was fired from his last kitchen job. This time it was “only four beers.” According to him, drinking on the clock was allowed. And anyway no one fired him; he quit.

He bums another smoke from me and complains about his current job, how it doesn’t pay anything, how he is broke all the time, can barely cover rent. He takes a big swig says he’s finally reading again I’ve got my hands on books. I say That’s great – what but then he interrupts me

to tell me a story about how he bullied the last cook he managed. Brags triumphantly about making him cry mid-shift. These are the acts he loves best, inflicting pain, breaking someone for fun and he expects me to be impressed with this show of what he imagines is strength.

I see a young cook’s red face caving in during dinner rush as he stands shock-still in a clanging, indifferent kitchen, weeping, throwing his apron down, walking out on his job, humiliated, furious, and Mister Gimme gloating at his receding back, satisfaction-fat, mirth sliding across his face like a glob of old fryer grease.

Not getting the reaction he wants he then again laments his poverty, building up to the ask. He repeats that he’s got so much free time to read now in his tiny apartment. He’s already forgotten he said the same thing ten minutes prior.

I consider suggesting a second job or trying to ask what he’s reading again. I don’t.

He is edging toward hitting me up for money outright when I make a move to leave. One for the road? he begs, hand extended, palm up imitating a supplicant.

I give Mr. Gimme one last cigarette then he sneers at me, smug in his victory; he’s won, forced me to do something against my will broken me a little like his cook.

He once told me in all seriousness that he could play trombone just as well as Trombone Shorty if he felt like it.

I remember how his fingers left purple French fry shapes on my upper arms one Mardi Gras season years past, how tired I felt, and l remember my hopelessness toward the end stuck with him in that shitty Uptown apartment.

I remember crippling despair that evaporated as soon as I booked the U-Haul.

It always goes like this. Soon he will pass out blacked out in another guest room thrashing on damp, souring sheets, maybe piss the bed again, eyes closed, impotently raging to himself:

it’s all so unfair.

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Kelly Gartman is the author of several published poems, short fiction and non-fiction pieces, and was part of the New Orleans-based NOLAFugees writing group that arose post-Katrina. She is currently working on a new collection of poems entitled ANIMAL ME as well as Apocalypse Angels, a novel of magical surrealism that is a continuation of the same-titled short story originally published in Life in the Wake: Fiction from Post-Katrina New Orleans. In addition to writing, she is a multimedia artist and burgeoning photographer.

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#3.6 A Poem by Robert A. Morris

Saint Bukowski

“But, he really lived here,” they swore, showing me the signature in the concrete. “Hank was here.” I traced it with my foot. Everyone on Frenchmen Street had a story of how they knew the great recluse. I laughed them off.

Others showed me their relics: signed broadsides, napkins covered with haikus, crude cartoons on racing forms, chewed Macanudo cigars, and bent poker chips.

The next day, I dug deeper. Loyola University Library, special collections and archives.

The staff photocopied my ID and left me in a sterile room. I held the chapbook, it catches my heart in its hands, the signature matching the one in concrete. Holding it for a second, I left.

On my way home, I bought a reprint, not old, but worn slap out, pages curling at the corners, stained with smoke and coffee, aged beyond its years just like me.

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Robert A. Morris lives near Baton Rouge and works as a teacher. Besides poetry, he also writes fiction and bashes out the occasional song on his blue Stratocaster. A recent poem of his has been selected to appear in a future issue of Lummox Poetry Anthology. His work has appeared in The Main Street Rag, Readshift 4, and The Chaffin Review among others. https://robertamorrisblog.wordpress.com

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#3.7 Two Poems by Colin Pope

Colin Pope’s collection Why I Didn’t Go to Your Funeral (Tolsun Books) was a finalist for the Press 53 Award for Poetry and was released in 2019, and his manuscript Prayer Book for an American God was a finalist for the Louise Bogan Award, the Unicorn Press First Book Competition, and the St. Lawrence Award. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Slate, Rattle, Third Coast, West Branch, Pleiades, Ninth Letter, Best New Poets, and others. He teaches at Oklahoma State University and works on the editorial staffs of Cimarron Review and Nimrod International.

#3.8 Three Poems by Natalie Lyalin

What Can I Tell You

I entered the room not as myself. Smug, I circled as someone from a different planet, having gone to college in upstate whatever, or maybe out west. A person with blurred lineage, who knows where her parents are but doesn’t call them. She makes her own stovetop shampoo, boiling lavender and then forgetting about it. One thing I’ll say, she’s great with kids. Like a grandmother who makes potions but does not eat the children. The children are afraid of her because they know she really gets them. She listens at their height but instead of kneeling, she stands them on a chair. And that’s how she leaves them

***

You Can be Both

Dad said, I can be a poor husband and a good dad. I can look out the window and do my job. But I can’t go back in time and sit in your lap, perfect summer morning, small waves of heat, the basil going crazy in the garden. I can say ‘wish’ and ‘was’ and ‘together’ but there is no point. The point is living. The point is the moon, but that is a moot point

***

Only Child

The space was big enough for a baby to slip through – in metaphor only. We would never slip a baby or create such a large space for her to wander out into. I recreated California with eucalyptus branches, round leaves. This doesn’t end like you think. This is exactly how the witches behaved. Isn’t it wild, a baby was found sleeping in the woods. She said something kept her warm. It kept her for a little bit. In truth, there are dozens of these stories. In California we drove around, speculating on Robert Alter’s house. The air was tuberose, wisteria. The baby was safe in the shell of her seat. We kept the windows down to better sense the depths of the cliffs

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Natalie Lyalin is the author of Blood Makes Me Faint, but I Go for It (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014), Pink & Hot Pink Habitat (Coconut Books 2009), and the chapbooks, Try A Little Time Travel (Ugly Duckling Presse 2010) and Short Cloud (above / ground press 2019). She lives in Rhode Island.

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#3.9 Two Poems by Dan Chelotti

On Handel’s Sarabande

I’ve a mind to set a timer for the spider on the mantle. I bet they’ll mend their web faster than the one under the cuckoo. Here we go, I chop one strand; I chop four strands. Andawaytheygo.

The yearbook of everything that happened after Wisconsin inches toward me: the Mall of America photo booth, Madge holding the parrot I don’t want to take home, the parrot I would grow to love.

It all comes round to fake glittery pinecones too big for their elected environments. But what do scale and glitter have in common really?

The thing about orca is that they prove themselves effortlessly. The tide is coming in. The moon is new. The salt is coarse. The queen is dead.

It’s no wonder we tessellate. They will down the old bridge once the new is fashioned.

I’ve taken up with a little blue monkey. I don’t get out with her much because joy is occluding. She climbs the wall. Looks over her shoulder. I grab her and spin just spin, laughing. Even if I at times tire of my melancholy fate, I glance over at her eyes as they follow the evening wall, and within them I entertain an irreconcilable peace.

***

For Signe

I’d ask you to forgive me But you’ll do that in the smallest Of seconds. Until that time, I suppose I’ll have to forgive myself. Hey Self, can you please forgive This morning’s mourning and while I’m at it also forgive the holy fuck ups That relegate the mast sea-floorwards? All of them, the Self asks. Even? Even That, I say. No prob, the Self says, I’ve been waiting for you to ask – So, was it worth it? Yes, I say After a while. The children sleep. The yellow candle hurries Its light to the wall.

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Dan Chelotti wrote x (Mcsweeney’s). His chapbook, The Eights, was published by the Poetry Society of America in 2006. He lives in western Massachusetts with his family, and teaches at Elms College.

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