Italian Express
Will Schmitz
On this strike-stopped
Italian express
The tourists scramble
To close the windows.
The train has been halted
By a steel factory and a
Quadrillion flakes
Of steel dust glitter
Through the sunlit air.
None of the workers in the yard
Has a mask on. The conductor
Is trying to close a window for
A very complaining Viennese lady
Who is holding a handkerchief over
A pert little mouth. The perspiration
Collects on the conductor's moustache
While he sweats explanations of the delay
To those unfamiliar with the Italian system.
We watch two workers shift a heavy wheelbarrow
Across the yard in the sustaining fall
Confident that we will soon again be moving
through the many black tunnels that make up
This line.
_________________________________________________
Compartment
Erin Lindsay Dragan
legislation is
a cradle
a cradle
contains
cooing little secrets
soaring like songs
up high/the sky or cold ocean waves
open unlike
a box
which is a compartment, like
my body
and your labels, blooming like flowers
under
fingertips
finding foolishness
sweet
as
saccharine
songs in sweaters
unbeknownst to gender
gentrification grinding
down the town documented in movies streamed out of boxes for the minds of millions,
and the minds
are compartments, too.
_________________________________________________
from Paranoid Season
Cory Lawrence
Cory Lawrence
Tomorrow is not a mere reimbursement, it is far more than even its establishment of me, of us and this, there is a great sickness attached to the clinging hands of the familiar, chipped paint, chipped mind, toes and teeth, yet I still bite down surprisingly hard, to this resuming cycle, this constant pull, jerking, joking, jerking, choking and then that one hour comes and we can only dangle amidst that vacuum of our happy head too big for our thoughts, unable to stop the pull and so its imply snaps it all, snaps so suddenly that we are gone before we ever realize we are not here
A sweat, more sweat, the cold and sticky kind where nothing is quite dry until the following year after each season passed without divergence,
only to move on, on to something more twisted, it hunts at noon day amongst talk shows to find the new modern retardation and then splatters it over the seldom bothered foreheads of the existing house mom population in order to help slow the heavy virginity of their daughters whose turn has come to open wide and find that first real pleasure so to have something to splash around in when the rainy days become unfavorable
Each day he comes in with a sort of panic, he talks very little and stairs very convincingly at the lotto machine as he hopes to not have to return to work next Monday thanks to the sudden whisk of fortune, there is something gross and sad
About watching him
Perhaps he is the picture behind that starkness we find when in our upper-headed wonderings, the one which is needless to count on, but impart [IMPORTANT?] IN part due to the great improbability of happiness being located within them; there seems to come a strain for any who want to physically not [NOT PHYSICALLY?] (yes) enter into those deep slices [OK? NOT (YES, SLICES) SILENCES?]
Will corporations proceed to become places so needed that from them the very society that makes us will continue to exist not because of us, but of them? Everything is floating through the circles fast and slow and then over and over for the rest of it all as it already has a billion times before
Nature is where it is because it’s where it’s come; our social habits might look on some days dull, and I guess even maniacal, but, its great strength stems from an exclusive foundation that can never be fully understood let alone competed with by science of any kind; there is not even a single unplanned measure which, made to look sophisticated, could prevail over its weight; after the thought on its uniqueness, there is always an apprehension during the second acknowledging breath, as there has always been following one’s first deep look into this remarkably and oddly exposed earth.
_________________________________________________
The Old Women
Will Schmitz
you will not see many of them
walking the city streets anymore.
they seem to have been taken away.
but they have removed themselves
voluntarily. Packing possessions
and memories of dead husbands,
they tally up their bankbooks and
leave for a place in the country.
these cranky souls, rattling their teeth and pillboxes
still have eyes which can drill surrounding space
like pools of water shining in the night. In remembrance,
they are little girls who laugh at clumsy first dates
and getting treated for the first time on the inside.
could the grim city hold up its hand
and seem graceful without their presences?
it would only drop little shopgirls and shopboys
with their masters into the void. young and older
crimeless nothings.
Crooked freaks, they still know
they were women. They know the metamorphosis,
the drinking in bars, building of estates and
dissolution of properties. They have felt
their flesh rotting and have made plans
to survive the disappearance of their beauty,
the power of their smile.
where has it all gone?
they ask in millions of ways.
where is so and so now?
the devil deposits calcium in their bones
and pushes their bodies down flights of stairs.
if you could find one of these phantoms,
track it through its swarming babel of brick,
concrete and steps, back to where it emanates from--
see it reach for mercy and be a thousand times denied.
--after Baudelaire
_________________________________________________
Scar, Rising
Sarah Shotland
I know what the woman in red means when she says,
“I love my scars.”
The scars that bear witness to her love, the things she’s made.
I have made things, too.
The proof of my making rides up my right leg.
The others faded long ago, along with the yellow-green bruises and eggplant abscesses.
Pink and shadowed, almost receding back into thigh,
Each time that slick, pink track tries to fade away,
I bring it back, one pinprick at a time, one red register at a time—
Say again,
Don’t forget where you come from.
Don’t forget what you really love.
I lie in bed thinking of her,
Happy I will never buy $75 cream to hide my scarred stretch marks.
Hers are proof of happiness, so should mine be.
When I sleep, my scar rises
Extends from thigh, hits hip, up through my hollow middle,
where, as a child, I imagined my soul lived.
Scar makes nest in the hollow middle of me.
I see it in aerial-view. It pops from the rest of my map.
Vein and muscle, blood and bone in black and white, grainy photographic finish.
Scar hyper-colored hot pink, Super hi-resolution,
And then, frame, by frame, coming in closer,
Click.
Click-click.
Zoom-lens
zero-down
come-in-close
super-tight-shot
of each and every pinprick that paved its
shadowy surface.
It is broken down and deconstructed,
I see in slow motion
its making played backwards.
I am back in every pay-by-the-hour motel bathtub,
I am back in every walk-in freezer,
Every dried up riverbed, falling doorframe, railroad track tents.
I am back in the Felicity St. house,
Lying on the ripped mattress, spring pushing through into my spine,
Jennifer is holding me, long, streaked hair falling in my eyes.
She takes my leg into her hand, pulls my skin taut,
rubs a creamy, smooth vein with her long, graceful fingers,
I hold my breath and close my eyes.
I am ready, ready.
I am there again.
And then it is gone.
Wake.
Another day.
I finger my thigh, rub sleep from my eyes, and think again of the things I have loved.
_________________________________________________
Honolulu
Will Schmitz
Honolulu hot nights the boys
Around the kitchen sink
try out an informal discussion
Of how often they masturbate when
They aren't getting laid. The banjo strummer
Is the most enthusiastic in following
The subject. He'd like everyone to admit
That jacking-off is as good as putting it in.
Heads shake, but voices fail to contradict
The friend...
_________________________________________________
National Junkie Day in Hartford
Will Schmitz
Carmello has been fantasizing at his saw all week.
He thinks he can live off the street, buy a hunk of smack,
Cut it up, take his need and still get his front money back.
This afternoon, our friendly fence is bringing by the piece
Carmello is going to use for his protection. If he wins
The lottery today (the Puerto Rican, not the state's)
He can set it up. The numbers roll around and he loses.
Willy, our other sawyer, come back from lunch
Loaded on a half pint of rum &
Cuts the top of his thumb off.
A crisis has been inaugurated
(Willy dashed like a chicken across the floor of the shop
Spurting blood until he got to the loading dock and fainted.)
And Carmello is squeezed back
Into worrying about how to keep on feeding himself
And his family.
_________________________________________________
A Poet Paints a Picture of Himself; or, Stanzas on Man
Dominick Montalto
Man is a fallen creature, wandering
through the barren, twisted
woods of the earth, tracing
paths across the uncharted landscape
with a heavy gait; the stars above
him matching
his movements, sewing
patterns of constellations
in the convex infinite
space of the primal sky.
Man has cast his gaze of instinctual
irrationality upon the waters
and on the sands and somehow he knows,
looking far off into the sunset
and then down at his feet, that the
rolling tomb
of sailors lost at sea is also the eternal
womb of his own vibrant seed.
Is it any wonder why Achilles,
the quintessential Greek warrior searching for glory,
and Odysseus, the flint-sharp journeyer searching for home,
are the archetypal
symbols of man
mythologized into all eternity?
Man was not made to stand still,
to be land locked and imprisoned
in the four dull walls of his own making;
man has no lasting recourse to safety
in the physical world because
he has no fixed way to security within.
As countless planets turn
and revolve along the invisible orbits
of their solar systems
with nothing but the frayed wire of gravity
holding them, driving them across the unmanageable
dark continent
of the universe, so man
evolves through his preset number
of years like
a tight-rope walker balancing high above
the ground just below the canopy
of the circus of Life,
in a precarious dance to
the music of Time from
the infant screams of his birth pangs
to his last moments of
whimpering cries and delusional outbursts
as death, the bloodhound, hunts
him down and breaks
his spirit from the flesh.
Man has been given authenticity
in his immeasurable freedom;
he has no one place, for all is his if he so desires,
all things but rest.
Man was not made for peace.
_________________________________________________
Scott T. Starbuck
When our middle-aged sun
grows old
and Congress is boxing
names, documents, photos
like children
trying to protect sandcastles
from the inevitable tide,
when cold poor people
and unwanted pets
huddle beneath
crackling florescent tubes
and even the most devout
begin to accept
that words on a page
won't save them,
and all nations realize
money spent through human history
on wars and bombs
and public relations campaigns
could have been used
in unison
to get us off this rock,
who will be grateful
for the grand adventure
that began in the Fertile Crescent,
and sun-lit tide pools
before then,
and the sky itself
before then?
as the entire planet
like an ancient hiker lost
in winter woods
grows delirious with hypothermia,
wet eyes behold
warmth of stars
from across the vast distances.
_________________________________________________
Will Schmitz
When Eisenstein was in Mexico
He shot
Over 400 hours of clouds.
Breaking across the border &
tired
From the thirteen hour drive
we
Dump ourselves into a Tijuana hotel.
In the morning our addiction
to Superior Beer &
Commenetertivo Tequila begins
Since the water is no better than snake venom.
Touristly
We search for the mythical donkey show
But encounter instead
only mangy street dogs
debilitated beggars with
missing noses and chins
as well as the expected ones
with missing fingers and limbs.
By noon we've retreated into a side-street bar
Where cadaverous whores lisp their toothless litanies to us
promising excitement and delight--
"Fuckee-suckee
Up my ass
Dog-style
Suck your balls, cowboy..."
Over my beer
And out of the corner of my eye
I can see an adroit puta
Who's snared a pair of marines
giving head 2 one &
hand-jobbing the other.
Her lips are making the slurping noises
That attracted my attention. It's decided that
Tijuana may not be for us
Donkeys or no.
Getting out of town
isn't easy.
Every street is a calamity
Limed with sand &
Littered with inanimate and human
Debris. The Federales have taken
To imitating the Giardia of Seville
Submachine guns strapped across their chests.
They seem to enjoy blowing their whistles
at cripples who've become confused
and trapped in the unpatterned traffic.
Ensenada
Became our destination & after passing the line of peasants
Bringing their cottage industry wares into Tijuana
The road bared itself
to look down on an ink-blue sea
and sweep an arm up to the inland mountain ranges
while the dust rose insolently behind the car.
Ensenada
Was quiet by day and clean.
An American couple from Georgia
On a mission to free an in-law from a Mexican jail
Told us about seeing an Ohio family shot by rebels
A day ago in Oaxaca.
Ensenada
Has the best seafood this side of Paris and New Orleans.
the shrimps in garlic
octopus ranchero
abalone, bass &
sea turtle stew
Are redeemingly blissful. We ate
Five meals a day &
nibbled constantly
Off the carts that roam the streets.
On the Saturday night
Before the drive back
We went to the usual kind of stripper bar
For a drop of farewell refreshment.
The dancers were their usual, shitty
Unattractive selves, the bouncers
eagle tattoos
on the forearms
jaguars on the chest
peering through unbuttoned shirtfronts.
Five flubbed numbers paraded by
Before the band's butchered notes stopped
And the main attraction came on
to throw off the furnished costume
And reveal the most beautiful body ever seen.
we jabbered like
airport controllers
fearing a crash.
My compadre stared at her until she knew
It was time to do her chores
And drink watered rum cokes with the guests.
For being privileged to run her fingers
Through the, as yet uncommon, golden
Ringlets of his hair, my friend received
One timorous kiss.
She was 18, full Indian
Maybe of the Seri,
A tribe that wanders the Baja
Blowing on conch shells. We stared
For about an hour while
she threw back drinks and chattered like a
monkey in an unintelligible Spanish/Indian dialect. We agreed
to make an offer &
called over her padron.
We offered
All that we had left--
An ample and generous sum, but her padron
had the pleasure of slapping the table
and informing us that
she had already
been bought
"For more pesos than you two gringos will ever see in
your entire lives."
We left to imagine her being smuggled over the border
In the trunk of a Ferrari and then
Being bolted behind the door of
A Brentwood cage.
Back to our jobs
And the dull snacks in our brains.
Well then--so long, Amigos! &
May we not meet again,
Even outside the dangers of time.
_________________________________________________
Erin Lindsay Dragan is a Brooklyn-based singer, songwriter, guitarist, and sometimes poet. She is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and received her BA in Religious Studies, English, and Women's Studies from the University of Pittsburgh. When not supporting herself by busking around New York City, she enjoys yoga, road and urban cycling, microbrews and scotch, hiking in Arizona, and traveling to Pittsburgh to see her parents and Italian Greyhounds.
Cory Lawrence is from the village of Alfred in the upstate lakes region of New York. She’s 26 years old and currently lives in the west village. She enjoys reading William James. She was home schooled and also took classes at the state college of Alfred, New York.
Dominick Montalto is a freelance copy editor/proofreader pursuing full-time work in the editorial division of the publishing industry. His educational background is in Literature, Art History, Philosophy, and Religion. He is a poet and critical prose essayist, with several publishing credits in both genres in print and on the web. His literary field specialization is the long 19th century from the French Revolution through the early Modern novel, with particular focus on the evolutionary changes of the Gothic, Romanticism, Decadence and Aestheticism, and Orientalism. His religious and philosophical interests focus on the various sects of mysticism, as well as Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism. Overall, he continues to hold a strong interest in and love for the different aspects of the arts and humanities.
Will Schmitz attended the University of Hawaii from 1968-1972 and the University of Iowa Writers Workshop from 1976-1978. He teaches high school English at a Catholic school in Montebello, CA. and just finished part two of a detective novel trilogy. Other novels and short stories are available on Amazon.
Sarah Shotland teaches creative writing through the Words Without Walls program at Allegheny County Jail. Her plays have been performed in Dallas, Chicago, Madrid, and Chongqing (PRC). Her newest work, Other People's Children, will be performed at RhinoFest in Chicago, February 2011. She lives in Pittsburgh.
Scott T. Starbuck’s chapbook, The Warrior Poems, was one of six finalists of over 500 entries at the 2009 Pudding House Chapbook Contest, featuring protest poems about human rights, animal rights, media distortions, Iraq War, sour economy, and the G.W. Bush presidency. It is available at jen@puddinghouse.com You can hear him read two poems at Fogged Clarity (http://foggedclarity.com/2010/01/january-2010/) or read his "Moon and Money Poem" at http://www.pemmicanpress.com/thePoems.html. He is a Creative Writing Coordinator at San Diego Mesa College.
