Full Of Crow Poetry: October 2009

Owners Of The Grim

Featured Poet: David Keali’i

Oracle Offerings
Benedictine
Oracle Notations
Unsaid

Kat Dixon: Scales, Upper Peninsula, Ten

Felino Soriano: Painters’ Exhalations 575, Painters’ Exhalations 576, Painters’ Exhalations 577, Painters’ Exhalations 578, Painters’ Exhalations 579

Jeannette Angell: Answers, What I Didn’t Know

Fariel Shafee:  Love and Hate

Vincent Turner:  Weeds

Mark Masland:  Jobs and Lovers, Evoking Jeanne Moreau

Eric Burke: Grandma Remembers

Serena Tome: Graduation Day

Walter Conley:  Where We Are Not

Holly Day:  Love, Mother

David Smith:  Crazy In Love With A Savage Messiah

April Michelle Bratten:  Asleep On Magazine Street, Like A Diamond In The Light

Curt Hopkins: Our Ship Shivers And Splits On Black Rocks

Michael Solender:  A Relative Point Of View

Joseph Goosey:  About Mental Institutions

Joseph Hargrave: South Street

Joanna M. Weston:  Tide-Line, The Wraith

Featured Poet: David Keali’i

Featured Poet: David Keali’i

Oracle Offerings
Benedictine
Oracle Notations
Unsaid

Felino Soriano

Felino Soriano: Painters’ Exhalations 575, Painters’ Exhalations 576, Painters’ Exhalations 577, Painters’ Exhalations 578, Painters’ Exhalations 579

Kat Dixon

Kat Dixon: Scales, Upper Peninsula, Ten

Jeannette Angell

Jeannette Angell: Answers, What I Didn’t Know

Answers

It was my friend Rachel who said, I love Emily Post. She asked me to let her know
when the big white book filled with intricate orders of service for everyday
(and not-so-everyday) events and occurrences arrived at the bookshop. You read Emily

Post? I asked her, waiting for some ironic laughing response (for Rachel was the
coolest of the cool in those days and I was a little in awe of her). But she was serious: I love
the big white book, she said, her dark eyes filled with wonder.

Where else can you go and it says it has all the answers? I lost Rachel later in the
flotsam of those years that were unkind to so many of us: but later I was in a bookshop

myself, my hand lingering on that thick white spine, and I pulled the Emily Post
down off the shelf. It was heavy in my hands, weighty with wisdom that
proclaimed it had an answer to everything, and now I think I know

what Rachel was talking about. We all need limits, and you have to know what the
rules are before you break them: but the night of Cece’s suicide I understood that
nobody has all the solutions, not even Emily Post, not even little lost Rachel, and

what the book gives you at best is a consolation prize: something to cling to
when you still believe that somewhere

there might yet be answers.

What I Didn’t Know

You said, we’re safe from all that, laughing at the women’s shelter where we donated clothes and
helped out at holidays: at least we don’t

need to worry about abusive husbands or boyfriends, now that we’re out and proud. And I
believed you were right—women

are not the cause of violence in the world, but what I didn’t know was that violence wears
disguises. And the first time you made fun of me

in front of someone I never saw it as the beginning of something bigger. I looked out past the
rocks to where the humpbacks rise and fall and

began to feel something else was out there, just under the waves, something dark and lurking:
what I didn’t know

was that it had never been out there. It was always in here. When it—they tell me it always does—
got worse, I never labeled it (though

I stopped going to the women’s shelter: their eyes were too-bright mirrors and I couldn’t stand
the reflection) still believing you, that it was

my fault, my inadequacy, my lack of whatever it was you wanted in that moment: that I could
never make it up to you, for being me: you made me believe

and trust only your skewed version of reality. You never hit me, and that was why I stayed,
because I couldn’t believe what I couldn’t label:

what I didn’t know was that what you did was far worse, stripping me of feelings and thoughts
and my sense of self. And when I finally understood you cried

and asked me — you dared ask me — what you would do without me. The humpbacks have come
and gone eight times since then, and I sometimes still see you in town,

entwined with another woman, but I close my ears to the gossip we delight in here at the end of
the world and remember only that last question, and wish I’d had

the strength to answer with the words I want to say now: that, as a man would say

I simply don’t give a damn.

Jeannette Angell is a poet, playwright, and novelist who lives and works in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. More about her at www.JeannetteAngell.com.

Fariel Shafee

Fariel Shafee:  Love and Hate

That uniquely defined voice–
the exact mixture of frequencies
combined
into a  tone,
evoked the
image
of a
beaming face
and a pair of lips
–red,
and when that specific
voice
vibrated
the layers of
air
with words,
the molecules
perturbed the world:

Connected,
another pattern would emerge
soon
in a glowing yellow
and a familiar scent.

I loved those dancing atoms
and that chrome,
but did not care too much
for the panic attacks
that reorganized
unpredictably.

But they came together
in a package deal
which was “she,”
and when the voice was there
no more
layers of expressions
that were once part of the world
also dissipated.

The author has worked in various areas of physics, but likes exploring realms of gray human conditions in her spare time.
Her writing has appeared in BluePrintReview, DecomP, Ygdrasil, Tin Foil Dresses, Oak Bend Review etc.
Her art has been accepted by Mary, Flashquake, Foliate Oak etc.

http://fariels.tripod.com

Vincent Turner

Vincent Turner:  Weeds

Weeds

Choked by a rope of early March mist
the shed, undisturbed,
rots beyond enemy green lines.
Armed with burial song
We take our bitterness to them:
At first, little more than aimless swinging of stick
as though soldiers fatigued by the brutality of war.

Idly scything an opening,
we happen upon the circumstance of your passing.

In the summers of our youth
you shouldered the weight of your realm,
the echo of your spade clinking
against bone solid soil
Come dinner, your face was heat slapped and alive.
November nights were pithy-dark and cold.

Your outline hide and seeking in the falling dusk
we’d uncover you by the ember glow of your roll up.

The lopped weeds begin to sting

Recalling your technique we change
tack and unearth roots with frenzy
as if, by yanking away their presence
we could lessen the weight of your absence.

Vincent Turner resides in London, he has been writing for some time now, but has only recently began to submit work to publishers and Zines, recently his work has appeared in GloomCupboard, Three Lights, ReadThisMagazine, and ShootsandVines.

Vincent works has a drug and alchol worker by day, and plays the part of an insomniac by night. You can read more of his work at fortherainfromthegrave.blogpost.com

Mark Masland

Mark Masland:  Jobs and Lovers, Evoking Jeanne Moreau

Jobs and Lovers

I

I’m cleaning nights at a church
of the same religion I was taught
by Dad, a modest preacher.
I took the job to support
my now exwife, with whom I
once shared a life—at least

an apartment—but now only
a dog named Moses. Chaos
and the cleansing of toilets
gives way to silent hours,
weeks, which only more flushing
answer. I pull from the cart

the trash the last guy left:
the bag swollen with dirty
napkins and banana peels.
At the bottom I notice
an empty bottle of vodka
and try to recall if it’s mine.

II

You knocked on the glass door,
light on blonde hair too angelic—
a medieval portrait of Mary.
I checked locks; you stomped
your cigarette on the stoop.

Before you left, after dark cinemas
and churning bright carousels,
you taught me to put on my shirts
from the inside out, but I still stretch
them when I pull my arms through.

III

After cutting two hours
to worship at a Zendo,
I rush-clean bathrooms,
mop floors, scrub breathless
to catch up, but attempt
to leave my newfound
Buddhist calm intact.

I cut the lights, but then I
remember my jacket, run
trembling to get it from the
supply closet in just this
bleach-stained tee-shirt,
afraid of the god who

raised me, or that he’s
a pretty thought as absent
as she is. I drive to my apartment
in restless contemplation
of salvation that comes with
mopping sanctuary floors.

Evoking Jeanne Moreau

She carries her idols in her pocket
like they’re still here, her mom
and sister who died before she’d grown.

She feels closest to God when
she’s hiding from cops, climbing
building walls in Camdentown.

I asked her to be careful, didn’t
try to slow her down or boss her around,
only keep her from falling too fast.

But after all, loving is the only thing
we both know as well as breathing,
So we were barely friends before
we slept together. I must admit, I
needed a light and she was a bonfire.

Safety is not her game, she’d rather
stop time and look into my eyes with
a longing only lovers know, and dress
in my tee-shirts and make me chase her
down crowded streets. But she always
waits in dark alleys for long kisses.

Drunk at midnight, she fancies herself
an actress, and she’d rather saunter
down foggy, lamplit streets, smoking
a cigarette, boyish as Jeanne Moreau,
swinging her hips in her white cotton
dress—hair dyed red and cropped,
eyes as vacant like Marilyn Monroe.

Mark Masland was born in New Jersey. He has a BA in Fiction/ Creative Writing from Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA. His work was included in the 2008 edition of the college’s literary magazine, The Tributary. He currently lives in Binghamton, NY.

Eric Burke

Serena Tome

Serena Tome: Graduation Day

Graduation Day

My grandfather died with a smile on his face

The church was a family heirloom,

built by an ancestor after the Civil War

The fragrance in the room was antique,

rich with tradition, heritage, and song

Rhythmic sounds of Africa rumbled across

the floor like thunder as people made music

with their feet, invoking our spirits to celebrate

his graduation—

home

Serena Tome is a poet, writer, and humanitarian who enjoys writing about social justice, and personal heritage. In 2009, she launched an international reading series for African children to connect, learn, and participate in literary activities with students from around the world via video conferencing. She is married to a Maasai man from Kenya and they have one child. She has literary work published and/or forthcoming in The Litchfield Review, Foundling Review, The Legendary, Breadcrumb Scabs, Counterexamplepoetics, and Boston Literary Magazine. You can find out more about Serena at http://www.serenatome.blogspot.com

Walter Conley

Walter Conley:  Bitchcraft, Where We Are Not

Holly Day

Holly Day:  Love, Mother

Holly Day

Cry!

My daughter cries in the other room

and I think, Cry! Cry!

You have no idea what’s out there, waiting for you.

Get used to the tears.

By the time she’s an adult

the world will be concrete and toxins

and if she’s lucky enough to be

one of the few who can conceive

her babies will face an even worse life

of asthma and environmentally-induced cancers

radioactive clouds and nuclear war.

She cries for her bear and I

bring it to her, kiss her forehead

wish her a better life

deny the inevitabilities.

Holly Day

Love, Mother

there is nothing left for us. I see

things getting worse and there is

nothing else I can offer us

but a way out.

I can only offer my family

the most painless of escapes—two drops

in the children’s cereal

three in my husband’s

morning cup of coffee. soon

there will be peace.

I have struggled with how we are going to

face the future, the mounting bills

the sleepless nights, the fights

and I am taking this into my own hands.

All of this, I do for us.

All of this, I do out of love.

Holly Day

Thoughts From the Top of a Chair

I’ve heard of prisoners in solitary confinement

growing so lonely they tame spiders

lure them to their knees by plucking hairs from their head

stretching them out and playing them like guitar strings

mimicking the sound of a mother spider

sending signals across the web

to her children.

if the buried memory of some warm, comforting

mother spider saying, “Come on home now! Dinner’s ready!”

can make a spider run towards the sound

of a hair being stroked by a rough convict hand

should I feel bad about stepping on them

flushing their twitching hairy bodies down the toilet

squirting them with window cleaner

burning them with alcohol?

Holly Day

In Passing

I wish she’d come back as a vampire,

or a zombie, or even a dog. I just wish

she’d come back. my grandfather

is so alone it’s just not right.

it’d be something to see my grandmother

floating through the air, white as a sheet

cloaked in black, fishnet hose, Elvira breasts

lips half-parted over razor-sharp teeth

or stumbling across the yard, arms held out

awkward in front of her, fingers weakly grasping

with carnivorous intent, eyes open, unseeing

death perpetually rattling in every moaning step

or running up the back stoop, young again, a pup

leaping against my grandfather’s legs

snout upturned in a sloppy kiss, every bit a dog

but with my grandmother’s soul inside, peeking through

every once in a while

to let the world know

she’s still here.

Holly Day

Tentacles

I close my eyes and imagine

he’s an octopus, slithering tentacles

all over my body

one large, supple, firm snake

slipping in

I open my eyes and see

he’s still a man

and I like this man

but I like the octopus more

Holly Day is a travel writing instructor living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her husband and two children. Her most recent nonfiction books are Music Theory for Dummies, Music Composition for Dummies, and Walking Twin Cities.

David Smith

David Smith:  Crazy In Love With A Savage Messiah

Ghastly and perverse,
with lightly applied brushstrokes
of plausible insanity,
to know her,
to really
know her,
is to redefine
the meaning
of pale and interesting.

A smiling serpent
oddly coiled,
her strike point
delicious anticipation,
rather than
outright delivery;
a phlebotomist’s worst nightmare,
as pure as something
you might see
in a silent film.

So chaste, so suffering,
so much love
so brutally misplaced;
like Saint Bernadette
or General Franco,
when she gives you
extreme unction,
you will not be surprised
when quickly and quietly
she slices-off her cheeks,
because she no longer
wants her tears
to stick to her face.

April Michelle Bratten

April Michelle Bratten:  Asleep On Magazine Street, Like A Diamond In The Light, Oh, North Dakota

Asleep on Magazine Street

I slept hotly,
burning on the hind legs of Magazine Street.
The heat rioted my insides,
moving me like a frazzled worm on the concrete.

I made that road my bed,
sprawled out like a white fan,
shameless,
waiting for the slow cook of summer.

I cut the flowers away from their humid homes,
and drizzled them over my chest like oils,
and while I slept,
I turned red and hard.

I awoke to find a caught dust in my palm,
it made an X on my skin,
tinted orange, the ends pink,
I thought I had been killed.

There was no wind, no sound,
only the moan of the rusted stairwells,
and I grieved with them,
as all the footsteps fell away,
and spring died in New Orleans.

Curt Hopkins

Curt Hopkins: Our Ship Shivers And Splits On Black Rocks

Our ship shivers and splits on black rocks

Our ship shivers and splits on black rocks
And prayers avail us nothing in the end.
The silvered timbers splinter in the foam,
We fail and falter in the spinning wrack.
And so it is a million times a day,
Each human death a shipwreck in a storm,
Each wreck a world ending, hope foresworn
In favor of a silent, slow decay.
This is why we lie awake at night
Listening in the darkness to the sea,
Because we recognize our destiny
Is written in the ocean’s breaking line.
Do not plead with heaven for more light,
Death is just as beautiful as life.

Curt Hopkins’ poems, plays and essays have been published in 3:AM, BlazeVox, University of Michigan’s Cavafy Forum, Cavafy Archive, Good Foot, Exquisite Corpse, Bluelawn, SPSM&H, Dada, Catalyst, Big Talk and others.  I have had plays produced at New City New Playwrights Festival in Seattle, Washington and Northwest Playwrights Festival in Eugene, Oregon and Venue9, The Marsh and Doc’s Clock in San Francisco, California.  I am a founding member of The Big Time Poetry Theatre, Emergency Horse Magazine and the Committee to Protect Bloggers.

Michael Solender

Michael Solender:  A Relative Point Of View

A Relative Point Of View
Supported by those he thought that he knew
Two brothers he had, were nary too few
Tight bonds unbroken from the final loss passing
Bonds meant for spanning lifetimes, gripping and lasting

Two brothers he had, were nary too few
Aligned firm once, now aligned but anew
Bonds meant for lifetimes, thought somehow to last
Now lay defeated, broken by episodes past

Aligned firm once, now aligned but anew
Tenuous alliances only close by one view
Laying defeated by episodes past
Brothers blood still, brothers no dispersions cast

Tense alliances amongst with one astride two
Two brothers apart, yet aware nothing new
Brothers still blood bound, brothers no dispersions cast
Triangles fragile, question – will they last

Two brothers apart, neither knowing or knew
Blood brothers matter when reliance is true
3 points lasting with each point of view
His brother supported by those he thought that he knew

Joseph Goosey

Joseph Goosey:  About Mental Institutions

About Mental Institutions

Some of the wood panels fall through.
The food is poor.
There is so much time going in
to so much plaster.
I work valet and somehow I
want to marry a semi gothic post punk drummer who
writes short stories about mental institutions and
various disorders.
You’d best leave because I am a tiger with teeth
and pieces of heart in between and I am writing down
every syllable that spills from your
tight little
mouth.