Monday, October 1, 2012

Love in Ruins



The Whole Town Cleanse
by Ned Dougherty

because the gardens are beds of straw blanketing
rows of garlic and onion in hibernation
there is a run on
kale and rainbow chard in the produce aisle

the corn stalks are brittle beige, and the ears
all husked and buttered

but there is no more dairy
only ancient grains and steamed broccoli

the hunter’s moon’s come and gone
the crimson stained stone of the slaughter

steaks trimmed and frozen in the meat locker
but the body isn’t primed for stew

just cabbage and pale carrot
parsnip puree with cubed jicama

the beautifully bone-dull hued meals
and the transparent bottles of vodka for the liver screaming just in case

all shedding excess as the days wane into winter
see them skin and skeleton
before the holiday party plump
when they sip spiked ciders along the farolito redbow wreathed streets


Painted Face
by Gary Feuerman

There might be some beauty out there. It’s hard to tell where it is when everyone’s in face paint. The haunting of this darkening and deadening time of year is upon me. Despite the sun shining relentlessly as October turns into November, the fields are mute and matted, the stiff stalks ready for the sudden changeover to snow and ice. Darkness now descends before 6pm and my limbs are heavy, resenting the responsibility to do anything. The ancestors are around. I have had the hollow of my belly filled with their tugging presence, importuning me to stop and acknowledge the unseen, or even the seen which I’ve not been seeing. Dancing with the dead, in my head, on the dance floor, on the road that leads to the gorge, I am avoiding their message, yet wishing for their blessing. Painted faces are all around, heads swaying, music luring me into the dark. I don’t know who they are, but I’m curious. I’ll walk with them into the broken yard, but first I have to finish some stuff.


Modern Love
by Eric Mack
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I'm Feeling Romantic
by Robin Powlesland

I’m feeling romantic
reading romantic things
about edna st. Vincent millay
reading renaissance out loud
having read this book before
on my twenty first birthday
and I feel so new
yet that I haven’t begun
is it that I’m taking so long
or that certain things begin awkwardly
and join hands along frail lines
there is very little about where I am at now
that could have been set down
when I first read this book
and possibly I hungered then
for things I am just now slowly beginning
and yet I don’t know what is most important
where the starving flower lives
that needs my certain attention
I can’t seem to discover what question
is voiced loudest or
with that tinge of desperate impatience
I would I think go to him – if I could
even if he would not have me
I would try to lay quiet pride and misgivings
feel only his nearness – his solidity and heat
but in all the not knowing
in the letting the years go by
I angle also towards far away places
and remote islands
where I can keep busy
and still this constant need for change


Untitled
by Charles Clayton

It was a shotgun wedding. Sort of. Neither of them knew it at the time, but she was pregnant. Morning sickness gave it away—nausea during the honeymoon, and not, as he thought at first, from the free-range beef tacos at the reception. There was definitely a baby on the way.

The life plan had been to keep doing what they’d been doing: writing poems, painting canvasses, traveling, with a bit of carpentry and waitressing now and then to pay the bills…the slacker dream, extended well beyond reason, with the added bonus of wedding rings. The love plan had been straight out of Kahlil Gibran—filling each other’s cup but not drinking from the same cup, spaces in their togetherness, that sort of thing. But the hand of Life intervened by fashioning a noose out of cloth diapers and hanging the couple’s nearsighted visions and high falluting philosophies from the nearest playground slide.

They stood at the altar together, unaware that the moment was one of the last that would be solely about them. The wedding was the beginning of the end. The end of avoiding a real job. The end of restful nights. The end of long days of coffee and books and long nights of wine and sex. The end of their lives as they knew them…and the beginning of something better than either of them ever could have imagined.



Caldera is a Cauldron-like Volcanic Feature Usually Formed by the Collapse of Land Following an Eruption.
by Johanna DeBiase

She first noticed it in the car, on the way home from a party where she spent the last hour sitting on the couch and pouting because he was ignoring her pleas to go home. A small chasm existed between them that wasn't there before. She knew then that their relationship would not last. Just as any rational person suspects that love can not last forever, that the myth of growing old together belongs to the religious or a long gone era.

Ecuadorian folklore suggests that even the volcano gods, rising up from the earth together, laughing ecstatically as their lava ceremoniously burns the pastures below, even their love will decease. On cold nights, Volcano Imbaburra leaves his mistress Cayambe snowcapped as his betrothed Cuicocha watches on.

The road rose up the mountainside. Shifting gears, he seemed oblivious to the distance that now settled between them. How much longer? she wondered. Shivering, she rolled up the window.