All posts by Lisa Hase-Jackson

Evening in Haidar’s Basement

Poetry, , , , ,

Marlin M. Jenkins

Spring/Summer 2015

When I give him that look, he asks why I think it’s weird for him to rap along with the radio. He looks back at his game on the TV as I shake my head, place my hand on his shoulder. We were the first in school to begin to grow beards. We will order pizza with halal pepperoni; he will ask about my mother, what it was like for her to re-marry. My mother has not made Arabic food since she converted and met her husband at church. His mother rolls grape leaves on the front porch, wet like his gelled hair. She whispers to the neighbors. When he asks his questions, he stares into the hybridity in my arteries. I stare at the hair on his arms, compare the tight curls on my head, the curve of his nose.

Poet Marlin JenkinsMarlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit, graduated from Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan, and will be attending University of Michigan’s MFA program this fall. His writings have found homes in River Styx, Yemassee, and Midwestern Gothic, among others. You can find him online at marlinmjenkins.tumblr.com and @Marlin_Poet.

What Shoes Do

Poetry, , , , , , ,

Mary Catherine Harper

Summer 2017

I hated my mother sometimes
as all good girls do,
because there were too many
pairs of unused shoes
in her closet, hoarded there,
a heart beating only for itself.

But how could love be measured
by the amount of dust falling
on thirteen pairs of red shoes,
I chided myself.

I loved my mother,
most of the time,
remembering we both breathe
the same early morning air
with such relish,
before worrying over
the weather the day might bring,
this as all farm women
in my family are apt to do.

And apt to stare into the mirror,
where my skin has taken on the
texture of dried leather,
like that single pair of shoes
left in the garden,
untended, splitting open.

And apt to exaggerate
the count of shoes
and the texture of memory,
gaps where the past should be,
that oblique place
I cannot quite describe,
except to say it was small,
cramped with the clutter
of at least a hundred high heels
and no clear faces.

 

Mary Catherine HarperMary Catherine Harper, a Southwest Kansas drylands native, lives at the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee in Ohio. She organizes the annual SwampFire Retreat for artists and writers in Angola, Indiana, and has poems in The Comstock Review, Cold Mountain Review, Old Northwest Review, Pudding Magazine, SLAB, MidAmerica, and New England Review. Her “Muddy World” won the 2013 Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize, and her chapbook, Some Gods Don’t Need Saints, was recently published.

When I Wore a Yellow Polka Dot Dress

Poetry,

by David Huddle

In the George Wythe High School auditorium,
at “The Boys’ Beauty Contest” in 1958,
I played to the rowdy crowd

as best I could but got only nervous laughs,
a couple of jeers, and mostly
tepid applause.

But here’s what I remember–how serious
Mary Sawyers was helping me
put on my make-up,

Nancy Umberger stuffing my bra with gym socks,
Sarah Parsons grieving over how wrong
my ballet flats

looked with that dress.  T.W. Alley,
our All-State tackle who’d got
his front teeth knocked

out that year–a 260 pound bawdy slut
who turned her back to the audience
and shook it–won,

and every single one of us teenage queens
knew T. deserved it, but still–
and I don’t know why nobody

ever talked about it–backstage, us boys
changing back to the sex
we were used to

and even the girls who’d helped change us–
we were all kind of quiet
and sad.

David Huddle‘s most recent books are Nothing Can Make Me Do This, a novel, and Black Snake at the Family Reunion, a collection of poems.  He’s a native of Ivanhoe, Virginia, and he makes his home in Burlington, Vermont.

What I Remember

Poetry,

by Carl Boon

August 6, 1945

It was the brightest morning in many days.
I saw the factory smoke
from the kitchen window
drifting east toward Fukuyama.

My daughter had cleaned the windows
on Saturday. We’d grown displeased
with the soot, what the firebombs
brought from Myoshi and Shobara.

I was putting the breakfast dishes away.
Sakura was listening to the radio.
I told her I’d cut her bangs,
for I believed the heat of summer

had made them long, and her wrists
brushed them often from her eyes,
her father’s eyes. He was dead at 8:17
under a lathe in the lumber factory,

lucky, I suppose, because he never felt
that rush of wind, the cup
that crushed Sakura’s jaw, the monsoon
that killed us again in September.

Carl BoonCarl Boon lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Recent or forthcoming poems appear in Posit, The Tulane Review, Badlands, JuxtaProse, The Blue Bonnet Review, and many other magazines.

Looking at a Refugee

Poetry,

by Abhijit Sarmah

Fall 2018

I.
In a camp of over a million refugees,
the only unfamiliar face is
his mother’s.

II.
The raven scratches the ground,
but the refugee has no land
to bury himself in.

III.
Every time the old refugee
tells a joke
it is his laugh that is
funnier than the joke.

IV.
It was not too hungry
for summer, yet
not too cold for prayers.
The refugee kneeled
and was gone.

Abhijit SarmahAbhijit Sarmah is a Masters in English student at the University of Dibrugarh, Assam, in India.  He wrote a chapbook, The Voice Under Silence, in 2016.

Our Lady Reaper

Poetry, , , ,

by Brit Graham

Fall 2016

Why is death
rarely a woman?

Eyes rend and tear.
Mouths gape, jaws have forgotten
their function. Idolized
is she, amongst the strobing lights
and fluorescent bulbs.

But, we’re rarely pretty when
stripped of our hearts, when
the camera shifts below
our hips, when flesh and jaw
dangle, longingly attached
to their former structure.

She’s shucking her glossed
leather gloves, flicking light
from shadow. She’s tugging
each gloved finger, peeling back
it’s black casing, a second
skin. Her sash blinds
in the stuttering lights, freed
from its bindings. Her hips
dip and roll in their easy crash
and saunter of angst-laced bass.
The precise pitch a perfect fever
to settle deep in the bones.

Glacial heels slam and crack
against the stage, her glove
drifts to the floor.

Why is death never a woman?

Why is she only aching
when she creates a life
for you? This body half loved
by you, this body spinning
a new life for you and
loving it more because that
budding body is half of you
too. Why is does she ache while
she’s creates a body
to sustain you?

Her robe parts, a scar
cleaves her soft belly
in two. The hood
of her robe, peaked over
her brow sheathes
pitted sockets and mangled
maw. Scuffed heels pierce
the sleek pedestal in which
she was raised. Her ease
fractures with rigor
mortis, her gentle serial
suicides laid as stepping
stones for the ferrying.

Her hood falls, long locks
moth eaten, much like
the webs she’s weaved.
The lies piled upon curled
silk, spun from ashes
and grief.

Why is she
not our harbinger
of death? The androgynous
shape the same
as any cut
from the stripped
fineries of living.

—

Photo of poet Brit GrahamFor now Brit Graham traverses the tundra that is South Dakota, while tripping over things while stargazing in the all too brief summer months. She is the crux of an ongoing love affair between the Pacific and Atlantic. She managed to pry an MFA in Poetry from the grasp of Converse College. You can read her poetry things in publications like Devilfish Review, The Night Owl, RealSouth Magazine, and The OWL.

Sistah Connection

Poetry, , ,

MéShelle Fae

Spring/Summer 2018

strangers lined in rows
sundresses on layaway
where’d you buy dem shoes?

Photo of poet and writer MéShelle Fae

MéShelle Fae has a passion for teaching and developing others, which led to the creation of meshellefae.com, her online blog for writers who want to hone their craft or learn how to tell their stories on a digital platform. She’s an avid reader of anything she finds interesting and thinks of herself as “the ultimate geeky, weird nerd-girl.” She’s a resident of Charleston, SC, where she operates The Writers’ Block, a literacy and mentorship program.

Twenty-Four Hours in Vladivostok

Blog, Poetry, , , , , ,

by Michelle Matthees

Fall 2013

It is tempting not to speak.
Rather, to breathe in cold catacombs
with eyes wide open.
I think I understand the way you hope.
In your mind, above, crisped spring:
white plum blossoms
icing up saplings. Belief is like this, getting
carried away by progress.
I cannot believe in history.
Still, the fisted buds flare
into wicks burning atop stone-
cold facades tipping deeper into silence.

Michelle Matthees lives and writes in Duluth, Minnesota. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program in Creative Writing. Recent work of Michelle’s can be found in PANK, The Prose Poem Project, Cider Press Review, 22 Magazine, Proof, Memorious, Anderbo, Defenestrationism, 5 Quarterly, Humber Pie, Specs, Third Wednesday, Paradise Review, The Mom Egg, Sou’wester, Thrice Fiction, and elsewhere.

After Burial

Poetry, , , ,

by George Such

Fall/Winter 2017

Remembering the sound
of my father’s axe
as it split wood,
the pile of kindling
on the ground,
how my fingers
would test the edge
of the blade for sharpness
and the day it left us
when we ice-fished
on Banks Lake,
Mark chopping a hole
through the thick ice,
the axe slipping
from his grasp as it broke through
the opening
and fell to the lake’s floor
where it still lies—
Have you felt
the surprise
when you swing
at something
expecting to feel
resistance,
but hit emptiness?
 

George Such

This December, George Such will graduate from University of Louisiana Lafayette with a Ph.D. in English, a significant change from his previous incarnation as a chiropractor for twenty-seven years in Washington State. His creative writing has appeared in Arroyo Literary Review, Barely South Review, The Cape Rock, Dislocate, The Evansville Review, and many other literary journals.

Building Blocks for Home

Poetry, , , , , ,

by Starr Herr

Summer 2017

Chipped plaster, termite-infested walls, cockroaches—
that which is worn, desecrated, lived in; ghosts,
overtaken gardens, tilted fences, scattered tool pieces—
that which is overwrought, still growing; tree houses,
sibling truces, midnight pillow forts, mailboxes—
that which we build together, try maintaining; grief,
malicious gods, tsunami aftershocks, gravestones—
that which we dread, yet still want to cling to; cradles,
mothers’ eyes, fathers’ hands, port dock posts—
that which nurtures us, kept us tethered; toy ships,
beached debris, tropical hurricanes, scorched sand—
that which topples, adapts to destruction; moving trucks,
interstate traffic, 80s rock & roll, cardboard boxes—
that which is in motion, sequences go, going, gone.

Starr Herr

Starr Herr recently graduated with a BFA Creative & Professional Writing and BA Philosophy at Converse College. She worked on her high school literary magazine staff as editor-in-chief and her college literary magazine staff as a poetry editor.