Full of Crow | Poetry

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29 Jul 09

Rachel Helm

Rachel Helm is Full of Crow’s Featured Poet for August 2009. I came upon her work by chance when we swapped chaps for the 2009 OW Chap Swap. I was taken by her clear voice and how her small poems lead me to linger and want more. Rachel has the distinction of being Full of Crow’s first featured poet. I am proud to present to you the musings of Rachel Helm.

Aleathia Drehmer, Poetry Editor

Canvas.Paper.
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009

I think, above all, I was most excited about gay
neighbors. I try to straddle two worlds, but wind up
abandoning one for the other with little more than a
phone call. Yes, ma? Hello? No, no babies yet…

I think, above all, I was most excited about the
prospect of sex, and breaking things that should have
been broken long ago. We’d made plans, and although
I don’t believe I’d call the event traumatic, I will say I
expected more from you.

Mama, we could have raised the kids, grown into our
golden years…
Ain’t nothing doin, Daddy…

III

There was rumor of a scar. He said he got you to take
off your shirt; said he painted on your belly.
I said: I wrote a thousand and one sonnets over her
shoulder blades and tattooed her spine with wasps.
He said he didn’t know anything about that, but your
ribs were mountains and your bellybutton was an
ocean of breaths and freckles and gooseflesh.

lavender
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009

I drowned lavender before I knew any better.
And sometimes I can’t hum frequencies -
the likes of which a father
is supposed to teach a daughter
(but we never quite got to days
where we both cared).

fireworks
Rachel Helm, August Featured Poet, 2009

I want to break childhood against bent knee,
where dreams in ringlets
and pigtails are abandoned
in ways all but forgotten.

If I could measure so surely -
the way she did,
the way she does -
I would have no need
for these binoculars, which today
do nothing but examine
history books.

Rachel Helm respectfully declines to comment on her poems, publishing history, or education. In lieu of these details, she offers her favorite color (green), her current occupation (spinning the grooves for her local indie station), and her thoughts on the weather (she likes it best when the sun is just right – to make everything golden, especially if she gets to sit down in grass and listen to a whole bunch of trees, the way they speak to the breeze).

29 Jul 09

Barry Basden

Lovesick
Barry Basden, August 2009

I sat on the edge of the tub and
watched my new wife bathe.
I was her second husband,
needing to feel closer.

I touched her knee.
“I want to know everything about you.”

She lay back and
candlelight flickered,
reflecting off her breasts.
She looked into my eyes.
“You never will.”

And I never did.

Flights Not Taken
Barry Basden, August 2009

I come to poetry late,
face it, an old man now,
after a lifetime of counting
trivial things that have
bought only the unsatisfying
comforts of trivial things.

Like an old fighter pilot,
I dream again of the glory
of youthful flight, when life
was intense, a matter of
boldness and sharp wits up in
the cold clear skies, and I

wish, with certain longing and
regret, I had joined the
poetry Aces, those masters
of rarified air, wanting
words to lift and carry me
off into some wild blue yonder.

Barry Basden writes mostly short pieces these days. Some have been published in various online venues. Some have not. He is also coauthor of CRACK! AND THUMP: WITH A COMBAT INFANTRY OFFICER IN WORLD WAR II, and edits Camroc Press Review, online at www.camrocpressreview.com

29 Jul 09

Howie Good

13
Howie Good, August 2009

A dot of blood where the sun should be.
“I’ve nothing to say about it,” my heart said.

Trees in full leaf haunted
the highway for miles,

millions of dimly veined hands
reaching out as if begging forgiveness,

or offering it –

but, of course, I’ve made mistaken inferences
from vague gestures before.

At the border the guard told me to pop the trunk.
My heart rattled

like a plastic bottle of small, white pills.
It was then the evening returned with two guns

and started shooting.

Howie Good, a journalism professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, is the author of eight poetry chapbooks, including Police and Questions from Right Hand Pointing (2008), Tomorrowland (2008) from Achilles Chapbooks, The Torturer’s Horse (2009) from Recycled Karma Press, and Love Is a UFO (2009) from Pudding House.

29 Jul 09

Anick Roschi

Capital Ground
Anick Roschi, August 2009

Now is the shared time
Of our last riches

To each birth
Freedom
A drop of water
Thirsty of river

To each birth
Equality
A drop of sweat
Exhausted of misery

To each birth
Fraternity
A drop of air
Dirty of deserts

Now is the exorcised time
Of our planetary reasons

The articulated time
Of a capital
Ground.

Anick Roschi has the dual nationality of Suisse and French. After secondary studies started in France, he registered at the school of Engineer de Geneva and obtained a Diploma of Applied Physics. Very quickly he put an end to his scientific course and gave up additional training in Paris for voyages to several European countries, the Middle East, and North Africa. Upon his return, he took the position of socio-cultural worker at the Genevese Institute of Social Studies and worked for many years with the children of the peripheral districts of the city. Parallel to his professional investment, he has submitted his poetry to several international contests, of which Fiele Filiochta in Ireland, allotted him first prize. His poems have been published in several anthologies in Belgium, Spain, and Italy.

29 Jul 09

Iris Appelquist

campaigner
Iris Appelquist, August 2009

“…Even Richard Nixon’s
got soul…”
- Neil Young

all the photographers
became poets; there was
nothing else to do with
their knack for composition.

all the poets became
photographers; there was
nothing else to do with
their terrible beauty.

all the photographs became
poems; the images are only
many phrases.

all the poems became
photographs; the words
are only many pictures.

Iris Appelquist, born September 3, 1983, is a resident and native of Kansas City. Through a decade of honing her craft, her work has found homes in several print and online magazines, including: Ditch, Debris, Present, and was recently featured in her local newspaper, The Kansas City Star. Ms. Appelquist maintains a weblog of rough drafts at www.myspace.com/appelquist.

29 Jul 09

Jack Ohms

Classroom One
Jack Ohms, August 2009

Be grateful to your enemies
people who have done you down;
poor teachers
bad parents
disloyal friends.

If you’ve listened well enough
you will know
they didn’t let you down;
but taught you
what they should have;

just

what you needed to know

fair seed time
Jack Ohms, August 2009

I’m trying not to claim it as my own,
but damn,
it’s a habit I’ve followed all my life;
bricking other personalities into the side of my head,
the double doors open
letting all the good grain flow in;
spewing out again as genuine home-grown product
from:

parent,
school friend,
new bicycle,
movie hero,

(downloading another icon)

the curve of a good wooden boat
a bar hero
a long-hair

an old wise one,
sitting in a room alone for years
among fading Nottingham lace,
fine bone china fancies,
yellowed clippings of the war dead;

a lake poet,
eccentric,
a sculpture

- for god’s sake -

not realising
my life’s turned away from my own source
to become a liturgy,

a pissing of priests;

not knowing

or even daring to know

my own roll…

…left unexposed on a dark-room shelf;

the broken glass not glinting in the sun,
the seed pod ungerminated
sperm dry
and the ears of deaf corn, swaying in the marbled grey storm

unexposed.

From central England, Jack Ohms now lives in Eastern Finland where he no longer works as a ceramics teacher, but bums along on the dole and occasional part-time employment schemes, giving him time to write. His work appears in Gloom Cupboard, Opium Poetry, the Laura Hird Showcase and Audio Scribblers.

29 Jul 09

Jeffrey S. Callico

early trouble
Jeffrey S. Callico, August 2009

I meant to tell you something
but you hung up
before I had the chance
to even say it.

I stare at the phone
as if it’s my doctor
informing me
of my impending death.

Days later you call back
asking what it was
I wanted to say and I
start to tell you but realize

you probably don’t care
so my voice trails off
into some other matter that has
nothing to do with either of us

and soon the phone is again
abandoned like before
leaving no one to blame
but the history of you and me.

TOO LATE
Jeffrey S. Callico, August 2009

you didn’t
call

until now
after so

many days
& weeks

did you
think

I wouldn’t
notice

your silence
or

how you
make me

believe
you’re

not
there

Jeffrey S. Callico has been published in a variety of online and print magazines, including Johnny America, Frigg, Origami Condom, and several others. He recently released a self-published chapbook entitled Early Trouble, which was part of the Outsider Writers chapbook swap. His collection of short fiction, Fighting Off the Sun: Stories, Tales, and Other Matters of Opinion, is available on Amazon.com.

29 Jul 09

Matt Finney

the listener
Matt Finney, August 2009

the people that you love and the ones that you have forgotten and i can’t help but think of gorky spinning slowly in an empty room. i can’t help but think of all that wasted time. at some point the only thing left to do is fall.

adamson
Matt Finney, August 2009

cold, colder, and then the face of every god i’ve ever denied. the days are like withdrawal and this is who i am. i don’t want to be someone else. i want to be someone better. i will use both of these cracked hands to dig towards the light.

coquille
Matt Finney, August 2009

the future is a prison and the future is loss. you can give up your possessions, you can give up your children, but not this anger that has become your religion. you were always such a coward.

open your eyes and then your arms
Matt Finney, August 2009

stopped eating and stopped believing in words. i love my wife and i love my children. i give them what i can. i understand that it’s not enough. i understand that nothing ever will be.

Matt Finney is a writer from Millbrook, Alabama. You can find him on Myspace at www.myspace.com/finneyerkes

29 Jul 09

Dan Provost

Found
Dan Provost, August 2009

There are thoughts that
are beautiful

silent…

Displayed with only
a passing glance that
declares so much love
in an instant.

Then
a hand to hold.

Peace.

Tender–an uncontrollable
urge to weep.

The tears of laughter; man & woman.

We have searched
and found.

Dan Provost’s poetry has been published in the small press for many years. He has two new chapbooks coming out this summer: The Southside of Agony by Polish Beat Press and A Quiet Learning Curve a flipbook he will share with the talented Aleathia Drehmer’s Empty Spaces, published by Tainted Coffee Press. He lives in Worcester, Massachusetts.

29 Jul 09

Puma Perl

Memory of Sound
Puma Perl, August 2009

Her breasts talked only to each other
Ignoring him completely
The tattoo above his heart
Screamed another woman’s name
A long thin scar across her cheek
Whispered words of unrepentant love
His body begged her body to come home
She did not remember how to hear
He handed her his best black shirt
It whimpered as she slipped it on
He listened to the murmur of the trees
They laughed at him and spoke in French
The door could not decide if it would slam
Heels clicked and clacked against the stairs

Shoot at the sun
Puma Perl, August 2009

Poems emerged from the night
If angels were kind
they would turn off the stars
and our big hearts
might sleep in darkness

Light penetrates the calm
of my midnight room
Vega radiates his heat
Capella’s kids jump
and chatter

I am the sentry,
allowing rebel poems
safe passage, sanctuary
for words who have lost
their way under luminous
skies

Morning wears boots
and leather, shakes
loose yesterday’s dreams,
reeks of old tobacco

Poems escape
at first light of day
Armed and dangerous,
they shoot at the sun,
laughing as it withers
and burns

Puma Perl is a poet and fiction writer who believes strongly in the transformative power of the creative arts. Her work has been published in cause & effect, MadSwirl, Trespass ,Red Fez, Gloom Cupboard, Toronto Quarterly, The Oak Bend Review, and many other print and on-line publications. Her work has been published in several anthologies, including The Mom Egg and In Love. Her first chapbook, Belinda and Her Friends, was recently published by Erbacce Press. She performs her work in many venues, in and out of New York City. Upcoming features include Stain Bar, Cornelia Café , and the Riverwood Poetry Festival, Middleton CT – Outlaw Night. She lives and writes on the Lower East Side.

29 Jul 09

Catherine Benitez

make weigh
Catherine Benitez, August 2009

try as he might
he couldn’t understand it.
the gappy outlines
the smudged detail
made her suitable
only at a distance.
“amateur” he semi whispered
in an exhale of navajo
white. her personality
was a gallery of imprecise
manifestos. all anger
warped into a palpably
deluded semblance of
non fiction. her palette
her pattern pairings
her vague ethnic allusions
betrayed a lack
of education.
of self discipline.
of true understanding.
the kind that comes from
numbers and measurements.
her inner pendulum
swished a rhythm more
alike than she had any idea
but rough shod and oblivious
to its monotonous pathos.
her anecdote
gelatinous. constructed without
statistical backbone. beginning
middle
and end she was
blissfully unaware
of the rules
and so unsure of how
to break them
in a ways that proved
she knew them
but hate them
but love them
as he did. and this was
future. this was
what is good.
what is real
what is improvement
over the standard
he’d restrained his
pen to incremental
iambics to protect
to validate the principals
of a perfect system
he was now the error
being erased to make
room for something larger
without dimension
that creates more questions
than it answers
that villainizes each fiber
of the fabric now
sagging off the bones
of a child
still grunting and wildly
motioning
its frustrations
just below.

Cat is co-owner, editor and art director of the killpoet press. She sleeps with a bat and a bible at her bedside. www.killpoet.com

29 Jul 09

Craig Sernotti

WAITING ROOM
Craig Sernotti, August 2009

I am waiting for the cure for cancer.
It is due any moment now.

The man sitting next to me doesn’t look familiar.
He exhales mosquitoes.

I slap my face when they bite.
I see outlines of fancy guppies swimming in the air.

There is a man standing next to the man sitting next to me.
He is about as unattractive and uninteresting as a dead governor.

We drown in each others’ cologne

THE RACE
Craig Sernotti, August 2009

We run on empty stomachs.
We eat the lion’s share out of the hands of veterans of imaginary wars.
We pace ourselves to outlast our children’s children.
Our estimated time of arrival is yesterday.

Craig Sernotti is a sometimes writer, and has appeared in Instant Pussy, Skidrow Penthouse, Clockwise Cat, Mudfish, New York Quarterly, and Sisters of the Page, among others. He edits The (http://welcometoyethe.blogspot.com).

29 Jul 09

John Sweet

sea of tears
John Sweet, August 2009

reach yr dead hands up to
the surface

teach them to burn flags

to assassinate kings

all solutions create new problems,
and so the trick
is selective blindness

sat there in the back yard and
pointed out jupiter and
venus to my sons

spent most of my time
worrying that i was failing them

days got colder until we
ended up at zero

sick at christmas

sky of dirty glass

say to her i am not you and
then say you are not wakoski

say you are not atwood

it helps to be alone

it helps to believe in
redemption

we will all end up dead no
matter how many gods
clutter our rooms

perspective
John Sweet, August 2009

these days like black & white
pictures and all of these
pictures blurred and inarticulate

creaking staircases
and cracked windows

dirty light

find the field where the body was
buried, the one where the indians were
massacred, and lay down
your flowers

all of history is detailed
in the slow collapse of barns

all dreams in the wilderness
are dreams of decay

this girl on the carpet, carpet
soaked with blood, mother on the
far side of the room

candles on the sidewalk,
meaningless but pretty

a small atrocity, yes
but still too much

still so goddamned huge

John Sweet, 1968 – 20??, believer in writing as catharsis. Father and mild-mannered civil servant. Opposed to all forms of organized religion. Recent collections include “SUNPOISON” and “ASH WILDERNESS.”

29 Jul 09

Doug Draime

Fountain Avenue Apartments
Doug Draime, August 2009

The woman next door
was screaming at her kid again,
yelling horrible things at her.
The little girl probably
not more than 4
or 5,
being called a bitch and
a evil little asshole.
I listened to her crying
through the stucco walls.
It was the worse
it had ever been,
since I moved in
a couple months before.
Previous outbursts had never
been that loud.
And it usually stopped after
10 minutes or so.
But this time it went
on and on
“You wasted cum of a drunk,”
the woman screamed.
Something heavy
and substantial crashed
against the wall,
like innocence being destroyed!
It was the first time I had heard
things shattering
and breaking.
I couldn’t fucking take it a moment
longer. I became enraged and all
I wanted to do was stick
my boot up the
woman’s drunk and ignorant ass.

I pounded hard on her door
3 times, yelling, “I’m calling the cops.”
Silence from the other side, so
I pounded again.
“If I hear so much as you raise your
voice to that kid again, I will have
you arrested. Do you fucking hear me?”
Silence. I stood there for
a moment bending my
ear closer to the door,
listening.
Not a sound.
I walked back to my apartment
The next day when
I came home from work,
I learned that the
woman and her kid
had moved out,
owing 2 months back rent.

I think about the little girl now and then,
after all these years, and wonder
how she turned out.
If she has been resilient, broken the cycle,
and now, maybe, she is
a loving mother
to her own little girl?
The alternative possibilities of what
could have happened
to the her in her life, considering the travesty of her abuse,
are thoughts I avoid.
Anyhow, that is not what this poem is about

Doug Draime emerged as part of the ‘underground’ literary movement in Los Angeles in the late 1960’s. Most recent books are: “Knox County” (Kendra Steiner Editions) and “Los Angeles Terminal: Poems 1971-1980″ (Covert Press). Forthcoming are 2 large collected volumes: “Transmissions From The Underground” (d/e/a/d/b/e/a/t press) and “Farrago Soup” (Coatlism Press). Also, being released in 2009, a chapbook from Tainted Coffee Press, “Boulevards of Oblivion”. His diverse range of writing including: poems, short stories and plays, continue to appear in publications worldwide. Awarded PEN grants in 1987 and 1991. Nominated for 2 Pushcart awards in 2008. Draime moved
to the foothills of Oregon in the early 1980’s, where he still resides.

Spune-ti parerea

29 Jul 09

Pris Campbell

Proper Wife
Pris Campbell, August 2009

She serves dinner precisely at six,
corned beef every Wednesday,
wears sensible shoes, never
runs in the rain or collapses
helplessly over a silly joke.
She submits once a month
to his groping,
gown on,
arms to her side,
legs barely spread.
She doesn’t move
(that would be unseemly),
won’t kiss him,
won’t turn on the lights,
look into his eyes.
She’s glad when his jerk
says it’s over, marks
the date on her mental calendar.
She’s never known what it’s like
to fly, holding him close, their
bodies moving beneath them
or hear angels sing
when she wakes in the morning.

Hourglass
Pris Campbell, August 2009

When we were young,
we never did put a name to it,
this thing between us.

I let it fall away,
slide through my fingertips
like fine-grained sand.

You scooped it into a pouch,
kept it safe in your pocket.

Youth no longer gilds
me with favor.
Vultures circle my shoulder blades.

I tell you why you should reject me,
make detailed lists.

You take out the pouch,
pour sand till it fills my hands.

Look, you say, flicking away the greedy birds,
it glitters as gold in the sunlight,
made even more precious
by the passage of time.

Among other poetry journals and anthologies, Pris Campbell’s poetry has appeared in Chiron Review, Cliffs: Soundings, MiPo (digital and print, most recently the OCHO Twitter issue), Wild Goose Review, Blue Fifth Review, and The Dead Mule. She was featured poet in In The Fray and Empowerment4Women in 2008 and in From East to West in 2009. She also was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2008. Her third chapbook, Hesitant Commitments, was released in late 2008 by Lummox Press (www.lummoxpress.com) as part of its Little Red Book series. She is in the Best of Little Red Book series, as well as The Best of Boxcar Poetry Review anthologies. Formerly a Clinical Psychologist and avid sailor, she was sidelined by CFIDS in 1990 and now lives in the greater West Palm Beach, FL with her husband.

29 Jul 09

Lester J. Allen

the wax people
Lester J. Allen, August 2009

to find pause
just long enough
in this whittled down
existence
so that the fridge may be heard
belting out some lost rock opera that
the spiders can
tap in their webs and upon
my brain

this has been the way,
the secret
not so heavily guarded
like the Queen’s men and
their insatiable thirst for young
flesh or
this country eroding
from center

I wait for something to dust the dust
from the damp corners of my mind
a sweet voice that
I’d do best
to forget
for be it the gentlemanly thing
to do
while passing time waiting upon
an old sickness
like worms for rain
while the sun hides it’s jealousy with
a proper poker face and
the wax people grow old but
do not age while wishing for hearts
and brains and hernias
a sweet salty flesh to caress or
curtain the thought
of bone,
a lasting credibility and yet,
still some time to play
while planes go up & down
& buildings
& moods & lives
and those of us still here to write
about it, complain about it
and generally suffer from it

are left wishing
inevitably
for the same

Lester J. Allen is a poet and publisher living in upstate New York. He has a few self-published collections floating around called “The Days Carnivore” and “A Cockroach in the Penthouse.” He appears in the anthology “The Beards” published by Tainted Coffee Press and has an upcoming collection called “The Sidewalk Girls” to be published by Covert Press. He publishes manuscripts of up and coming writers at Bird War Press (www.birdwarpress.blogspot.com) and you can keep up with his adventures at his Myspace page (www.myspace.com/mad_cap).