Let’s learn to look up.
Matthew Scampoli
Paddle Ball
Ponytails
Pink ball on a rubber string
The tip of her tongue a writhing, uprooted earthworm
An incessant gentle thud
I feel her concentration
“25 Dad!”
Later, we lie silently on a mattress of thick grass
And watch the sunset
12 now, I hear the sounds of her growing older with each breath
“Dad, why doesn’t it just bounce off the horizon
(See how the flat rocks ricochet from the water’s surface)?”
Indeed, (I think to myself), it only sinks deep below
Like wounded pride into a dark abyss
While the evil chill settles into and around us
“But it rises in a symphony of brilliance,” I say
“Again and again,
Like a paddle ball on a rubber string”
“Love you Dad”
Relieved, I ease back into my darkness
And nonchalantly coalesce with my worries
Beneath a decaying canopy of hope
At the Shore
The aroma of sea and aged wine vapors lulled me to a sandy retreat,
And as I squinted up through the sunspots and glare
I saw your scarlet lips
And your freckles, all randomly spilled upon an ivory canvas.
I watched the seaweed twirl on the kite string
Like a forlorn seedling helicoptering its way to fertile ground.
Erratic movements, like a discarded beach ball in the wind,
attended me.
When The Maestro tapped his baton on the lifeguard’s tall wooden chair,
The last wave crescendoed in perfect 4/4 time,
A darting breeze snapped the umbrella fabric,
The seagulls chanted an urgent chorus, and
Suddenly, I lost my senses.
But just as I accepted my newfound weightlessness . . .
“Come” you said, your generous bosom pointing the way.
Rising from the cool dark shade, I witnessed cotton candy clouds framing your silhouette.
The sun teased the ocean’s edge as I absorbed your warmth.
While you sashayed, I heard the gentle crunch of sand
Beneath your French pedicure.
Our fingers cut through the licking wind.
I bristled at the chill of my sweaty palms and sunburned skin
And breathed your jasmine perfume.
Your cherub tattoo weeping saltwater,
We walked to Nowhere and arrived to a waxing moon,
The stars winking at our togetherness.
“I can’t imagine it,” you said,
As you sat, criss-cross applesauce, on the teak boardwalk.
But what you really meant was
That you couldn’t comprehend it
Which is quite an important distinction
Because after all, as children we lived by imagination.
Burrow, hermit crab!
Spying through your translucent flowing linen, I glimpsed your belly
Distended from the fruit we planted there.
And when we returned, we studied each other,
Weathered and bleached
Like driftwood vomited upon the shore,
And smiled.
Halftime
We smelled the sweet decay of autumn
As the sun hung low and distant
Like an indifferent youth leaning on a street lamp with a cigarette hanging from his lips.
“Yes, you can,” said I,
And gently lifted her sharp chin with a curled index finger.
Her large eyes were two fried eggs on a skillet—steady and unblinking.
“Think of the seed,” said I.
“It’s infinitesimal,
Merely a speck
Buoyed by breeze.
Soon it’s punished by beams of sunshine,
Drenched by torrents of rain,
Relegated to lie hopeless in the muck.
In time, it’s a resplendent and majestic tree
Standing stoical against winter’s biting wind.”
In one swift errand, and
With a knowing glance
I watched her peel away
And felt a familiar swell in my core
As the ball left her foot
And distorted the symmetry of the rectangular soccer net.
Libretto of a Three Act Opera
Seated in my private box
I reach for my glasses
As the curtain parts
And I hear the familiar choral swell
(I know this libretto by heart)
Act I
Intermingled shadows of distinct forms
Melting in an awkward dance
Act II
A filthy, biting, angry, swirling cyclone of vomited words in a deafening crescendo
SPLCH! *tink, tink*
Shards of porcelain scattered like grain on the cold kitchen tile
Act III
Bereft of all senses
In my private hillside castle
With my moat and my stone walls
I poke sticks at the sentries
The Impropriety of Soul
As you spoke,
My soul abandoned all decorum,
Gliding gleefully through your hair,
Lying about lazily on each perfumed tuft.
It swam desperately in the deep pools of your eyes,
and danced across the perfect symmetry of your face.
Then, encircling your tender neck,
It ran to the valley of your chest
And hiked the gentle peaks of your breasts.
It inched its way across your pale abdomen,
Twisted its way to the small of your back
Where it caressed your Venus dimples,
Skied expertly down your buttocks,
And surfed the smooth islands of your thighs.
It paused to read the tattoo encircling your ankle
Before sliding along the arches of your feet.
It returned to me
More wanton than before it left
Eager to explore this foreign, beautiful terrain
Again and again.
Jamie Ross
Not Exactly
—Taller Servicio Automotivo Rafael Teniente
You have seen the mechanic. No,
you haven’t. You have seen his son, Rafi,
who knew nothing. Then you saw your pickup:
out by the fence, between a taxi and police car,
hood open, jacked high on its side. Just
to replace a loose timing chain? No,
not exactly. The engine’s in pieces—spark
plugs and wiring heaped on the cab, covers
on a fender, oil pan on the ground; bolts,
screws, nuts piled all over the place. Something
else has happened. Something other than
the timing chain has loosened, warped, torqued,
rattled away. Perhaps it was the valves. Where
are the valves? Or were they? What exactly
do they do, or did? Perhaps it was nothing.
Perhaps Teniente needed simply to look. To see
if anything else had occurred—to those valves,
and the guides, and the rods and camshaft,
and the tiny bearings that bob up and down
over and under the springs. When Aaron Chigbrow
disassembles an engine (he showed me once)
there are hundreds of these things, sometimes
chipped or corroded, yet often—when you wipe
off the oil, as smooth as the day they were born.
But a bad cylinder can drive you mad, trying
to even out scratches and gouges, with air-driven
dremels, sapphire bits, micrometers, stee
l wool
rubbed by hand; to get back the compression,
the purr of the rockers, like a fine-tuned Maserati
the first time it takes off. How my Toyota’s motor
used to sound, two weeks ago. When I knew,
at least, where it was.
Foreigners
—Café Organica, S. Miguel de Allende
I was gazing at the blackboard
with the specials today, it was only
ten a.m., too early for lunch, though
the large butch woman with
stark facial hair and Sacramento State
was knocking down a salad, a giant
enchilada, plus a bowl of beans
her girlfriend hadn’t touched, they
were talking intently about a she
from Portland, I wasn’t that focused,
besides their thing was private, and
Lara at the register
had let her long hair down
and was speaking with Santos, Santos
was wearing a bright pink polo
with a little alligator
that wiggled as she laughed
and someone had put sunflowers
in the umber vases, like Vincent Van Gogh,
with a bouquet on each table of tiny
bright carnations, each petal striped
with different colors, just like
the ones inside a cast glass sphere
on Nanna’s cocktail table, that sat
by her lighter and her silver cigarettes
when Dad took our family
back to New York, all night from Denver
on the vistadome Zephyr
to pick up the brand new Volkswagen bus.
No one in Kansas on Route Thirty-six
had ever seen a Microbus before
and ran to the fences, stared
from the tractors, dropped their hay bales
simply to gape,
and here was I, in the back
with the seats reversed, my kid sisters
Betsy, Deedee, two-year-old Ali
and we all were playing
the license plate game, waiting
for a drive-in like Lula’s Dairy Dream
or the next rhymed, eight-sign
Burma Shave riddle, chocolate
milkshakes always were the best
on this trip, burgers in wax paper
dripping mustard as we drove
and everyone, including Dad
and Mummy, had a dark brown
moustache, a thick German accent
and no one wiped theirs off
until the next Texaco.
Float
Do you remember how you felt
yesterday, when the giant hot-air balloon
swooshed down in front of your hotel window
behind the equally giant palm tree?
How it hissed, belched flame—suddenly
got bigger, encompassing the whole tree.
And then, without prediction, how it
rose, receded and shrank, little by little
until it was a satellite tracked by the sun,
finally a gum wrapper, blowing away.
Do you remember how you felt
this morning at Rafael Teniente’s lot,
finding your truck jacked-up by the fence,
its gas tank on the ground, a cylindrical part
dangling from a line. Was that
a fuel pump, the thing that pumps the gas?
Was that a float, that tells your gauge
how much? And when his daughter Eva,
ripe to marry, waiting her chance
showed you, yes, the float, in her hands
with its tiny mechanism, the contacts
that were bad, how lovely the apparatus
looked, the twelve brass ingots like notches
of a zipper, so beautifully calibrated
as she moved the sensor up and down.
Do you remember the elephant
on the cover of your child’s writing book?
How light in the photo, how round;
yet how massive, heavy, as it trumpets,
bellows, crushes trees and cars,
affirms the earth with no need to fly.
How the float was just a canister
that bobbed and fell on the tides of its fuel.
How day rose with the balloon, then
broke live. How the tank in the dirt
was a kind of death. How an elephant,
without trying, each year circles the sun.
How Eva’s hands, soaked black
with motor oil, opened, trembling,
shot up to grasp the rope
dropping from the sky.
We Are Rain and the Rain
does not discount us. It doesn’t put its garbage
in a black plastic bag dogs will rip apart.
It doesn’t buy toothpaste at Espino’s, just
to see María, six months pregnant. The rain
has been pregnant for many months, many times
and all of them are beautiful. My sister Deeds’
first child was such, everywhere this baby
broadcast over highways, cities fraught with fire,
in the Chico kennel every stray and starveling
gifted Haley as a Chevron gifts hoses to its pumps;
Deedee fueling passing engines, Haley’s
smile, her wisps of hair and dancing gurgle tiny
hands at every moment of a party Haley at my
sister’s open breast, the rain, how soft, expansive
for us all the rain adores the cucumber the sand
fleas at Los Cocos the waitress’ panty hose the
baby rain named Haley tapping at my window
roses sudden asters blooming all across the balcony,
the rain does not remove us from our slippers
or the metal eyelets of a silver vinyl tarp
lashed across a taco cart dripping into midnight
just outside San Marcos Market two men wet
in canvas trousers pitched sombreros woven
for this flavor while my sister glows
in every taxi Haley’s promised garden, every
petal spritzing the handmade wrought-iron rail, rain
does not contain itself or still sunlight after passing
women with the juicer in the hotel kitchen
laughing, sizzling bacon and their boiling beans
forever this aroma, we are rain the coffee
perks, burbles, my rain will not forget you
once your rain moves on.
Contributor Notes
Harry Bauld graduated from Medford High School in Massachusetts and studied art history and played shortstop at Columbia University. Selected by Matthew Dickman for inclusion in Best New Poets 2012 (University of Virginia Press), he has taught and coached at high schools in Vermont and New York.
Tania Brown is a poet who enjoys focusing on the depth and shallowness of the human landscape. She’s worked as a social worker, retail manager, and freelance editor, all while soaking in the rich, urban experiences of Philadelphia. Tania aspires to be a renaissance woman and hopes that ingesting enough books will get her there. In her free time, she enjoys snapping slices of life and nature in pictures, knitting, and watching Doctor Who.
Martin Conte is a student of English literature at the University of Southern Maine. He has published in the Words and Images Journal, and has won numerous poetry and playwriting awards. His current project involves the struggles that ensue when his narrator appears in his home, and refuses to leave. He currently lives on the coast of Maine, the most beautiful place to live, where he intends to stay.
Miguel Coronado is an aspiring poet currently studying at New York University. He was born in the Dominican Republic, but has spent most of his life raised in New York City. He plans on pursuing a lifelong career in Journalism and Creative Writin
g after he graduates from college.
A poet since age 11, Margie Curcio was born and raised in Staten Island, New York. She lived in Santa Cruz, California, for five years before settling in New Jersey, where she makes her home. Margie’s previously publications include “Press of Tangled Bodies” (Porter Gulch Review 2003), “Tattoo Poem” (Porter Gulch Review 2013), “Javits” and “Flame-Licked” (Porter Gulch Review 2014). Margie is working on her second poetry collection, which she hopes to publish next year.
Ann V. DeVilbiss holds a BA from Indiana University, where she studied English and completed the honors program in poetry. She does editing and production work for a small press in Louisville, Kentucky, where she lives with her husband and their cat.
Bryce Emley is a freelance writer and MFA student at NC State. His poetry can be found in Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, The Cortland Review, Your Impossible Voice, etc. He’s on staff for Raleigh Review and BULL: Men’s Fiction and blogs about advertising at advertventures.wordpress.com.
Michael Fleming was born in San Francisco, raised in Wyoming, and has lived and learned and worked all around the world, from Thailand and England and Swaziland to Berkeley, New York City, and now Brattleboro, Vermont. He’s been a teacher, a grad student, a carpenter, and always a writer; for the past decade he has edited literary anthologies for W. W. Norton. (You can see some of Fleming’s own writing at: www.dutchgirl.com/foxpaws.)
Ryan Flores is a writer, musician, producer, and designer from the California Bay Area. He lives in Colorado and has a degree in Spanish literature from the University of Colorado. Flores is the founder of the independent record label Heart Shaped Records and is in several bands, including Moonhoney, Ondas, Leopard and the Vine, and Love Water. He is currently working on a novel and his favorite fruit is the mango.
Tom Freeman, the oldest of six children, comes from a little, twenty acre, not-for-profit farm in the Cuyahoga Valley of northeast Ohio. He has lived there for most of his twenty-three years but has also spent a considerable amount of time traveling, working, and mountaineering across the western United States where he feels most welcome. He enjoys hiking with his fourteen-month-old husky-wolf dog, Denali. He recently graduated from Kent State University.