Sixfold Poetry Winter 2014

  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.