Burningword Literary Journal, issue 61

Issue 61

Jan 2012

Burning Word is a quarterly literary

publication focussing on emerging

writers of poetry and short fiction.

ISSN 2161-8992 (print)

ISSN 2157-7366 (online)

Issue 61

Jan 2012



In thIs Issue

Ivor Irwin

Zoe Etkin

FM Stringer

Ryan Mattern

Alexander N. Tan Jr., M.D.

Lowell Jaeger

Jon Stocks

Kevin McCoy

Kathy Carr

Ian Campbell

Gregory Wm. Gunn

D. Trunick

Patrick Battle

Remi’el Ki

Gabriel “G” Garcia

Craig McCarthy

Emily Faison

Sarah Lucille Marchant

Marija Stajic

Kyle C Lucas

Elisa Abatsis

Rich Ives

Zhanna Vaynberg

Sara Shah

George Fleck

Walter William Safar

Changming Yuan

Cliff Weber

Burning Word is published by Burrdowning Publishing.

Publishing Editor & Creative Director

Erik Austin Deerly

Editor In Chief

Anita M. Garza

submissions & guidelines: www.burningword.com/submissions

© 2012 Burning Word & the authors

www.burningword.com

4 V Issue 6 1

The DialogueI say, Some parts of me are like this—and open his handRain water funnels into the pink

Thin channels of waterbranching out and then contractingas if surface tension isn’t a thing at all

He says he doesn’t understand how I made him this wayso porous

I did it to show you, I saymade us parallel and reflective

He says, I cannot accept thisHe means to say my bodybut the word has too much shapedoesn’t fit well between his teeth

He searches for answers but he’s too distractedby the bright flush of starsdappling the mid-day sky

How odd today is, he saysdragging his fingertips against the cotton of my overcoat

I tell him, No—This isn’t what you are supposed to seeand make with the unbuttoning

Underneath is a stretch of landwhite, winter land with a center of melt

He turns to walk awayI am not this tooYes, I say, you are this too

— Zoe Etkin ([email protected])

The Dialogue IIShe says, Some parts of me are like this—She says this as she undressesexposing herself to him in the dead of winterin a dead field under a shocked sky

This is the scene of itthe time and place of her opening

She tries to show him through his handsthrough mirroring but even this miracle is too small

He fingers her overcoathis last attempt at softnessbut she is angry

No, she says, No—and removes every stitchun-sews herself at the middle

All that warm begins to spreadout from her center and all overher white skin

And the boy leaves her there—

A girl standing naked in a fieldholding her heart

— Zoe Etkin ([email protected])

Zoe Etkin is a Los Angeles based poet, student and educator. She is a recipient of the Beutner Award for Excellence in the Arts for her poetry. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Burning Word, Poetry South and Glyph.

Burn In g Word U 5

Fragments on Catherine ClodiusMy grandmother, after her stroke

I.

Here, you are in that nightgown, a girlagain, wandering the downstairs hallwayescaping some dream. Later I will find youin the dark kitchen trying to rememberhow to read the digits on the microwave.

II.

In our house the bell was unexpected,the cops even more so. A call about a gun,

my father’s rigid confusion, my mother’s balance

failing. I’m watching from the stairs thinking someonemust be dead. You’re there too, your hands aflame.

Gun! Your wild eyes. Gun!

III.

One day you will remember only the glass, child,not even the goldfinch tree.

IV.

Earlier, late Summer,your glass back door already showing Fall.

Tell me about your girlfriend. You loveto watch me glower, all of eight.

You run a loose hand over my head and whenyou call me so handsome what you meanis that even now I look like him.

V. Frederick Clodius

The only photo I recall of us:

I’m holding Big Bird, and he is holding meup against his chest, his hair longgone to cancer.

I wonder how he smelled and sounded,

if when he found his brothers with his fists, his facered with whiskey, there was any other way.

VI.

Tell the one about the city in winter, the blacksnowclosing-in, your father’s factory coat, your mother’sdisease, the dusty stairs in that house,the gathering war, the hooded woman who could hold firebare you would become and never understand.

VII.

It is kinder under evergreen, isn’t it,than in the white of hospital?

You knew this even when the tubes consumed you.

John oh John this place is guns.

It’s me, it’s Mike, it’s me

—FM Stringer ([email protected])

FM Stringer is a MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Maryland. He grew up in New Jersey and studied as an undergraduate with James Hoch at Ramapo College. He currently lives in Baltimore.

6 V Issue 6 1

Big DirtyA brown doe with tranquilizer darts stuck in her hide enters the red line to 95th, nestles vacant space between seats of Vietnam vets in Chicago-stained Cosby sweaters. A junkie teenager, ringworm scars like trilobite spirals fossilized into his scalp, steadies himself as the train quakes over demagnetized tracks and walks toward the deer. The two of them sleepy-eyed, unsure of movement, drunk and emaciated dancers on fetal calf legs.

The deer mistakes industry for a meadow; passengers’ backpacks and briefcases as moss-covered boulders; the ding-donging Doors Closing announcement for flittering birdsong; the hollow vibrations of the subway accelerating underneath the city as the cooing of a rushing brook.

The junkie muscles a dart from the doe’s thick skin. Licks a droplet of blood from the tip and eases it into his neck, collapses into the deer’s stomach. His head, frozen with poison, nuzzles into fur and rubbery tick nipples.

They sleep entangled, like fighters too tired to throw punches, both thankful for warmth and the thud of heartbeats against skin.

—Ryan Mattern ([email protected])

CubaI’ve been dreaming about Cuba.

Brown beanpole girls under coconut trees fan themselves with elephant ears. Skinny rib-caged boys pet cats and eat blankets, shatter bare feet against dirt clod soccer balls. Men named for warships clothespin cigars to lines that swing between adobe mud huts. Bats sleeping-bagged in sun-baked onionskin wings. At night they use fire to dry. When one catches, the city is a glowing festival of purple tobacco smoke and orange paper lanterns.

A Cuban woman sleeps naked in my bed and my fingers island hop back freckles.

Pronounce your last name again.

“Montes de Oca.”

My bed fills with sand, Garcinias bloom from my chest.

What is your hometown called?

“Ciudad San Ramon.”

I can see you there. And I am there too, smashing toilets to build barriers from the men who argue over corn and potatoes.


Burn In g Word U 7

We Will All Make a Mixed TapeJust for today let’s pretend that love is real. And this word (when we close our eyesand whisper it into our hands) can cause us to will images of clouds in the sky.Some of us will see tufts of white in the shape of boys pushing girls on swings. Others will imagine a slender woman bending down to uproot a flower in the high whips of cirrus painted over the moon.

Keeping our eyes closed, let’s all hum our favorite song. Listen as the melodiesoverlap with one another, colliding in dissonance and sounding like thunder rattling windows.The sound causes the clouds in our minds to morph into puffy grey record players with hearts bubbling from their phonograph horns.

Now let’s open our eyes. Let’s make a decision right now. With all of us here,syncopated by the heartbeats in our wrists, let’s decide that love is not make-believe,is not as indefinite as a dreamor as faint as a ghost zips by in a whisper.When asked to prove this,we will all make a mixed tape. When we go home and climb the stairs to our bedrooms,pretending that our fathers are not asleep on couchesand hoping that our mothers will come back from aunt’s and grandmother’s, we will all make a mixed tape.


Pipe-Cleaner GirlWe all gathered around the tank because she was actually going to do it. This pipe-cleaner girl, a child really, with long stringy brown hair hanging over the indents of sad eyes, was standing on the rusty access-ledge over the shark exhibit. Aquarium patrons, overweight women with colorful visors and men in shorts with fanny packs turned away, cringed in prayer. The girl was wearing an ADOLESCENTS t-shirt and, already discounting her life, turning into newsprint, I knew someone would blame the music. A police officer with narrow eyes and a red mustache tried to talk her down. C’mon kid, he said. You don’t really want to do this, do you? She answered without words, taking two tiny steps closer to the water. The cop placed his hand over the megaphone and whispered to his short partner, I’ve got 50 bucks on the sharks. The menacing sharks whose fins had been breaching and slicing through the skinny girl’s shadow as it ebbed on the water’s surface. Then, without warning or explanation, she leaped forward like a broke-winged heron plummets. I closed my eyes, her afterimage branded into my eyelids. While waiting for the splash, time stopped at the aquarium. The choking sounds of the water filter sounded like planes passing. And for one brief second, instead of considering what drove her to jump, I think about what will become of me after my own death.


Ryan Mattern is a 23 year old creative writing student at California State University, San Bernardino. His work has appeared in Criminal Class Review, The Toucan, This Paper City, Halfnelson, and The Secret Handshake. Although he calls Chicago home, he currently lives in Southern California with his dog, Wrigley.

8 V Issue 6 1

Desert(for Kristoffer Ian Villalino — the morning after, March 9, 1997)

it is too much for us, the fantasies, the mirages founded on empty air, the groping and walking in circles, finding nothing solid in outstretched hands. the purple tongue protruding through cracked lips rasps the soft skin and rasps the soft skin off. then boneless, the skeleton of lips protests the passage through uncertain sands, and reaches ends too tired to feel relief. it is too much for us, the long dry coughs, bringing nothing up but the salt of phlegms hands tearing at the throat to reach within we choke on hands that try to give us drink.

— Alexander N. Tan Jr., M.D. ([email protected])

Alexander N. Tan Jr.,M.D. graduated from the University of the City of Manila (Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila) with a Doctor of Medicine Degree. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapy degree from Our Lady of Fatima University. He was a fellow at the 36th Dumaguete National Summer Writers’ Workshop (1997). His short stories and poems have been published in several literary journals throughout the Philippines and the United States. He is a member of MENSA Philippines. A practicing physician and physical therapist, he writes and lives in Mandaluyong City, Philippines.

Phantom LimbIt still twinges on cold nights, and itches from imagined insect bites.

Sometimes, I expect to look and see it still attached to me.

I still pull blankets over it at night, and see its outline beneath the cotton sheets.

I still feel the blood coursing through non- existent capillaries.

I scratch to find out where it really is. My nails find nothing

to scrabble at. I am still counting the hours of separation:

How long since amputa- tion? It left while I was asleep.

I am left with echoes of its departure. It has preceded me

to the grave. I am dying by install- ments.

— Alexander N. Tan Jr., M.D.

Burn In g Word U 9

What Are You Doing, Sheryl?Moms unload their kidsfor Kiddee Day on the midway.Cheap rides to kill an afternoonso hot us ride jockeys get away with strippingdown to muscle shirts. Nobodyshirtless on the job, that’s the rule.

We watch the moms watching us behind their sunglasses. Bringing Johnnyback and back in line, making longerconversation at us the longerwe let Johnny ride. Till it comes timeto run him back home, him screaminghe’d had way too much and wants more.

Near dusk just the moms and their bestgirlfriends come strolling out of nowhereall made up fresh. Nothing else that latebut stall till closing, set the ladies sidesaddle on the merry-go-round, bum their smokes,and let ‘em circle us all they need for free.

On the beach after we shut down,we sit around a stick-fire,passing 20s of malt liquor, inventingwho we are one lie at a time.Laughing too loud and louderthe more we get twisted.

What are you doing, Sheryl? saysa tall man who’d walked up behind.We all stand and puff our chestslike we’d defend her. Hubbybacks off weak-kneed on his own,and Sheryl does right, walking awayand letting him chase her.

Another rule: If outside trouble finds youdon’t bring it home. There’s Sherylsout there everywhere, some willingto drive and try us again next town.We don’t want no bad mess.Though it’s fun sometimes to get cozyand push up real close by.

—Lowell Jaeger ([email protected])

The Pie LadyHer pie wagon steamed early mornings—far end of the midway—with smells of home-baked sweets. She chose me, of all the ride-jockeys who schemed for a slice of her, to drive her every few day for sacks of flourand apples she could have managedeasily on her own. And we’d ride laughing, two carnies shoved up in tight spaceswho never minded sitting close by.

I was just a kid, mostly, back then.Saved up wages and bought new jeans,light blue, almost white. Ruined themfirst day with a smear of axel greaseacross my thigh. Upon which the Pie Ladygladly set to scrubbing me with a wet ragand her own brand of miracle problem solver.She worked and worked unstaining me.Take ‘em off, she said and I did,while the ovens bubbled with pie.

—Lowell Jaeger ([email protected])

As founding editor of Many Voices Press, Lowell Jaeger compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states. His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award. His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.

1 0 V Issue 6 1

Cormorants and GuillemotsCome with me to the Western watersWhere the waves lap a coarse kiss on the shoreAnd we can learn to love the silenceTo give love and know the love of others.

For we are nothing, a scattering of dustA fleeting spark of electricity;And yet we feel the pull of the moonSome sense of mystery, communion of soulsThe subtle tugging of a distant star.

When sometimes our imagination leapsTo empathy, then we are uniqueEmbracing some other consciousness,An elemental wildness deep within.

To some other alien heart betrothed,Sensing the salt water on their beaks,Their disingenuous curves of flightThe nuances of their transitory lives.

Then we are Cormorants and GuillemotsWe are the brooding deep water whaleThe swift to whom, the west wind whistles homeWe are love, life indestructible,Their grief is our grief, our souls are cleavedAs to the dreams of our sons, our daughters.

—Jon Stocks ([email protected])

MasadaHere the soft flesh tone are tenderisedthe assertive sprays, the gurgling spurts dry quicklythe haunches cook slowly on sun bleached stone;see how the salty blood forms patterns, rivuletsfrom a warm, still wobbling heart?

At Masada the dying buried the deadbelow circling vultures, eager to be known.Resting on the high table of moralitythe Hebrew God paused and blessed his own,‘Blessed are the children slayersthe guardians of their sacred soulssecuring death before dishonour.’

After the carnage only the sun gazed downover the hillside, across the valley floor,torpid in a summer heat wave to where,the dead sea gazed back; unwavering.

—Jon Stocks ([email protected])

Jon Stocks is a UK based poet who has had work published in magazines worldwide. Recent credits include two nominations for the Pushcart prize and, in January 2011, the Mariner award for, ‘best of the best’ work in BwS magazine 2010. Recent poetry has appeared, or is scheduled to appear, in The Montreal Review, The Dublin Literary Review, Candelabrum, The Coffee House magazine, The Journal, Burner, the Dawntreader, Coffee House, Pennine Platform, Littoral, Other Poetry, Manifold. Poetry Monthly, Harlequin, Tadeeb International (translated into Urdu), Taj Mahal review, Avacado, Involution, Interlude, and others.

Burn In g Word U 1 1

Cannes AbsintheStreets like threads woven into the cityKnot at the harborAm I moving uphill or down?Echo of my footstepsCentimes in my pocket tap rhythmLost in the working class mazeHomes expand and collapseExpelling screaming ghostsWith every yawn and step upon uneven stones

Piss in the same alleys as NapoleonThe pavement slippery with allegoryHistory hunches my shouldersWith its random weight The light slithers in my eyesAs I lay back on the street In the swirling green absinthe smokeWill no one call the shore patrol?

The kiosk is toppled Words tumble and twist and escape on the push of winter windsThe men and police stand and stareLike puzzled insects with sharp clawsTo be behead enemies and loversQui nettoiera ce désordre ?

The summit of an amazing canvasDancing headlights shop windows and beer signsThese blend into a divine rayWhat time is it?Watch ticks loudly and wakes the workersGut burns like a star collapsingThe man with two heads pushes his bicycleHis words are mush mouthed distantMy lips moves to speakBut I am without language

We are the only two stars out tonightAnd yet we are silent to another

—Kevin McCoy ([email protected])

Lead PoisoningSeated in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, I am filling out a questionnaire. I come to a question I am not sure how to answer. Do they really need to know that? I put the pencil into my mouth and bite down. The feeling of the smooth paint crunching and then giving way to the wood underneath brings me back in time to another question I didn’t know how to answer. A blank sheet sat in front of me at the kitchen table. I couldn’t concentrate with my mom looking over my shoulder. “You’ve got to put something down, everyone wants to be something when they grow up.” Cursing the stupid yellow no. 2 pencil for leaving my paper blank, I put it in my mouth and clamped down. “Don’t chew on your pencil,” my mother said, “you’ll get lead poisoning.” I chomped on the pencil even harder. Maybe I would get lead poisoning. The doctors would know that’s what it was because my molars would have lead stuck in them, like fillings. And there would be yellow splinters between my teeth. “How could this happen?” my mother would demand. The doctor would answer, “Normally kids her age masticate pencils because they have overbearing mothers.” I tried to give my mother a look that resembled Dirty Harry when he asked the punk if he felt lucky. But she knew I was out of bullets because she stayed there, hovering like a vulture waiting for its dinner to keel over. I failed the assignment. In the waiting room, the pencil bows under the pressure of my teeth. I can feel my mom looking over my shoulder, waiting to see what words will fill the blank lines. The answers are supposed to be confidential – the nurse said so. But she doesn’t know my mother.

— by Kathy Carr ([email protected])

1 2 V Issue 6 1

It Was Just a House It was the year in which the plumbing went badThat the beloved house, feeling perhaps neglected, began to reveal itself in waysIt had previously chosen to keep to itself, the dead, and the demented.Redwood, granite, level-set oak floors and an emptied bedroom emanating puffs of white smokeWhere the man who plowed the best break, Seamand furrowOnce lay,Yellow teeth bared in the ineffable discomfortOf Active Dying.Where the gentlest woman had clawedHim in the chest before being gentled off to a place notable for its nurses, her hair growing longer and whiter as outThrough the locks leaked the lady inside.Observe (my brother and I) merely attempting to plug a leak above the kitchen sink.In our Grandparents’ home.It seemed to have sprung as a watery reminiscence from underneath Green tile, the slab of cement, the redwood four by sixes.Perhaps the flooding was -- in truth -- the final rusted fountain of memories we soughtTo contain between our wet fingersWe couldn’t get at the pipes; each fat inch of wall so cemented -- the factsObscured by the forgotten rose garden,The desiccated orange tree, bark falling off in surrendering stripsDistributing a few final white petals About the bronzed lawn.It was just a house--blessed with a solidity we each still sought And rusted pipes elusive as cats. (What plumberCould we have called?) Stopping ourselves short of prying up the floorboards, Surreptitiously a large luminousness crept in: the leak sprung to provide proofs of what was essential if not entirely enduring.Tall, ladylike poinsettias bursting crimson by the white double-hung dining room windows,Big beamed redwood. Granite, horse-carted down from high mountains to pillarThe place.Cigar smoke off the back porch, fresh squeezed lemonade, cherry pie cooling on the sill, White bathrobes, Pendleton caps, bamboo fly rods, five irons, Saturday morning Pancakes from scratch and just the four of us in a tidy yellow kitchen. No sound but the sound of batter bubbling quietly to itself.

—Ian Campbell ([email protected])


Such a FishDo you remember the big troutYou caught that summer afternoonOut on the little lake, hardly more than a Pond of green and sweetly susurrous watersIn the mountain valley, we hadA small wind, a hot sun, an aluminum row boat your DadCould barely manage butOur lines were tightYour fine blonde hair lifted by that small windSuddenly your slender arms stroveAs the rod doubled over and the fine feathery lineRan like an excitement off the reel and all three hearts beat and onceHe even leaped into our world, Clear of the waterRed and silver and shining like someone’s futureWhen you were seven and I forty two and we had tight linesWhenSmall girls could be happy for hoursAfter catchingSuch a fish.


I Watch You RiseNow, fifty summers behind me, I come, at last, to worship you.From my narrowed kitchen windowI watch you rising in ever higher, Ever-reaching ranks, Tai Chi to the wind.I see only now what has long been written:That you leap backEver green, ever gracefulNo matter how flattenedNo matter how fierce or feralThe hammering of the wind;That your roots snicker at stump grinder, axe,Poison, pesticide, salt, even the casting of spells;That excavation will be as foolish a pursuitAs imprisoning wind. You, (One of three friends in winter,Sanctuary from evil)And the woman inside youAwait, a still field of fallen snow,Your sole exuberance of flowering.If but one fine fingerlingOf root remainsUp you jump:Rising ineradicable and readied, Supple and slender-leafed, Reaching to hook the sky, As I brew the morning coffee, bamboo.


1 4 V Issue 6 1

IVOR IRWIN

Ivor Irwin writes a weekly column on English Premier League soccer for globalfootballtoday.com and edits its Manchester United F.C. blog. He lives in Chicago and is working on a Noir novel ‘Miami, Damn!’

My Internist PrescribesGuess it depends on which of your three eyes that you look at it with.All I see, floating around me, is detritus.The detritus of denied intimacy.The detritus of the glib.Like beautiful Venezia, you float in your gondolaand ignore the surfing turds.Peripherally, if you take the time to stuff cotton wool up your nose,there is the renaissance,gargoyles in repose.Pretty girls chinning crumbling window sills.Perry Como crooning.A strand of DNA showing off, curtsying,vaguely remembering my ancestors days of slavery in Mitzrayim.A novella performed in my arteries.My internist prescribes,I obey.The pills are orange and yellow and a gruesome sort of flecked turquoise.I wash them down with lukewarm waterand the eye at the back of my head winks..

—Ivor Irwin ([email protected])


ReligiousI pray in the morning.I drink at night.Somewhere in between there is the dog barkingthe genuflecting of authority figures.The urge for fried food.A notion of racial purity. Beethoven with his ear smushed into the piano lid.The first names of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.The ten plagues always carry I.D.“Hi! My name is Locusts!”The facsimile of God that all those meaty boys pray to in football seasonKnows that repetition causes cancer..And in the Garden of Eden it rains and rains.You think you’re in Manchester.I’m not a bit religious, except when it comes to taking my pills.

—Ivor Irwin ([email protected])

Dear YahwehDear Yahweh, can’t wait to be a burden on my kids.Long long time, they’ve cumbered meSo, soon they’ll deliver and carryBleach and clean and scrub-a-dub-dub.And do it happily.

No Sun City for me. No old folks warehouse, please.No special strangers tossing melike some smelly old sack of shit.Each must take turns putting me upin a sunny parlor, so’s I don’t have to climbto the top of the stairs. A niceglimmering walk-in bath with handles installedA minor cost..... Yours, of course.

The purpose of children is insuranceA girded codpiece against the testicle-kicks of mean daddy timeA guarantee. Insurance.Yeah, that’s what kid s are all about!Bring them up in your own image, knowing that they Owe you and oughtn’t just farm you out

I’ve spent all the money on schooling and clothing.Attended the ceremonies and soccer practices,Cheered for you religiously at your games.Knowing that, once you’re earning, you’ll be gone.Only recreatable in photographic shrines,Discount baby-sitting, birthday parties, Christmas present competition and good Thanksgiving wine!

It’s been a blessing.Really!Now Lordy Lord Yahweh, dude.I’m gonna be a burden on my childrenYes. And on my children’s children too. —Ivor Irwin ([email protected])

1 6 V Issue 6 1

The Blight To Bear ArmsWhat shall comfort us creaturesand offer salve to our sorrow now?Never those pubescent-speakingmilitary men who merely glancein lieu of glaring. Never those revolting, crippling contrivances that never set eyes on spirits onsolid ground, nor infantries, trust-worthy, uninformed in uniforms;infectiously inexperienced.Corruption begets corruptions,atrocity reciprocates atrocity.

What prevailing evil winds &complicitous joining of forcesmight accomplish, alleviatingthe longings of the pauperisedfor despots to transfer loathinginto power, we will never cometo fully comprehend.

Hell! Even Mephistopheles lurksin some shadow of doubt. Ourperipheral vision is veiled if wefail to wince, hesitate to take a breather, ruminate, and look atthe larger panoramic view.Everything is labyrinthine.All seems crooked, convoluted. Nothing at all is ever deliberately straight forward.

—Gregory Wm. Gunn ([email protected])

To date, Mr. Gunn has had poems published in Inscribed Magazine, Green’s Magazine, The Toronto Quarterly, Yes, Poetry, Wordletting Magazine, Songs for Every Race, Ditch Magazine, Ascent Aspirations, Steel Toe Review, Carcinogenic, The Light Ekphrasic, Cyclamens and Swords, et al. Also published are five collections of his selected poetry.

Spotlight

Eyes wide, legs quivering, sweat glistening, she feels ready

to heave. The thick dusty red curtain brushes against her

hands but provides no relief. “Why can’t I do this?” rolls from

her dry parched lips. Panic and desperation enter her heart

like a flash flood. She longingly watches from the side. Her

conflicted soul jolts alive with the increasing brilliance of the

lights above. Never stepping into view, her shadow begins to

spin and sway to the music. Behind the curtain she stands

dreaming of the day she too will be the one in the spotlight.

—D. Trunick ([email protected])

Halflings We used to be small, with many a great caretaking cover from comrades, waiting to give chaseSeeking the monsters of our youthattics, closets, beds, basements- better we find them, than they usRain’s worms and snow’s angels,the business of those quarters Feared only were the fatherly scold the playground rebuke and the motherly palmin a time when the doubts of giants trickled down to our crownslike raindrops upon ants

Now we roam as giantsmuch too tall to gaze upon the insects whom we frolicked with once upon a time and our tears have maturedThey will plunge toward our heirs, threaten to drown themunless they learn quickly to amendand mirror the tread of their keepers

From ours we fledTwo wheel commute carrying us far from our jobsof holding no agenda, but instead faceless grudges -then unnamedfated to revisit in adult slumber anddespite all,keep us from remembering what we then could not see...were still less complicated times

—Patrick Battle ([email protected])


Shakespeare’s Bile There are some days when more strength is needed than others

and today is one of those days.

I do not knowwhy it happens but sometimes I awakenand feel that Hellis at the cusp of my bed,

And if I step too hastily I shall fallfor millions of milesinto the mouth of the nether-gods.

So I tiptoe around it.I stand and I stretchas though I have the limbs of a giant.

Yes, of a giant—but I shall need those limbstoday, because today is one of those days.

I forgo the oatmealand drink dragon’s blood instead,

“Yes, there it is,” I say, taking it from the cupboard,in the canister behind the herbslabeled The Blood of Dragons.

I tread lightly to the basinand brush my teeth with Caligula’s ash.

I shower in the spittleof an ancient deity (though choosingone is always the difficult part).

I go to my closet and open the heavy doors hewnfrom blackened wood and choose my armor.

For I must wear something that withstandsthe fire of negativity;the sharpness of stupid tongues;the putrid mind; the living World.

I flank myself in an armor stitchedwith Medusa’s hair,

and my helmet, usually made of wool or felt, isnow made from the boneof Pegasus’s skull.

I go to my looking glass

and behold the wonder I have madeof myself.

I forgive the spectacleof it all,

“Because I shall need it much,” I say.

I decide to forgo my vitaminsand down a handful of fingernailspulled from the hand of Richard III.

This dissolves well, I find,with a shot of Shakespeare’s bile.

Yes, I think, now I am readyto face the day!

But before I pass over the threshold,I stop and do the sign of the crossthinking it can’t hurt. After all,I shall need it much today.

—Gabriel “G” Garcia

O Capricious HeartO capricious heartMake me the miracleThat in choir of love’s opus knells deeplySharp as piercing aweLike eyes perched in windows of a faceGleaming with the hymn of sharing candlesKindled in a liturgical flicker of the other

—Remi’el Ki ([email protected])

1 8 V Issue 6 1

Every Nightthe moon slurs, smilesleering compliance, consentingout of the corner of her face.at midnight,I am less, after just one more test.

regretted by the bashfulsun, at midday, his light lets learning infrom a drunk, swallowing sex — drinking down below all morals, creating cause, causing effect, from all unwritten words, learned, taught, spoken, now unlearned,

in the lush lavished unloved love of leaving after love.

sinking in sleeping, in thoughtlessness, in godlessness, in this.

—Craig McCarthy ([email protected])

Thoughts Of A Romantic

On A Bar StoolChasing confusing conversations through a perplexing patron performing a grand symphony, dancing around the idea that we all precipitate ideals, intertwined in the vastness of human decency, which struggles below the weight of each word, willingly wasteful, during listless listing, slip and sip to life’s many intricacies as my illustrations interpret illusions on behalf of our subconscious, detailing the horizon, as chasing the light in the day that you can never capture, before birthing the benevolent breaking of beliefs, with thoughts of thirst to lust, to love, to long for all that can not be between you and me.


Why You Should Drink Slowanyone who makes a coaster Lonelyis a friend of you and Iyet in between your draining Drinkyour stirring speech is Slowand then you perch In a performing presencepresenting your questions of hellyou try to confirm your reservations With a sad proclamation.

We all go out like we all come in we all go out alone.


PoetryWhen armed with an arsenalOf ideas bigger than bombsAnd words that are piercing as arrowsQuiveringWith swelling anticipationLike the tide, it crests When faced with a blank white pageYou wait for the explosionThe crash of the ocean waveIt destroys the castles you have builtBut you call itCreation. —Emily Faison ([email protected])


Pieces Of Minute-Handstime runs fluid stop-motion over carpet – around in music syncopation, notes hanging from the ceiling like mobiles and your hands keep reaching for the moon, but clouds swarm and silver is only a flimsy figment in the dark

—Sarah Lucille Marchant ([email protected])

Untitled #1He walks On the road made of nothingnessPaved with bodies of dead wishesHe walks tacitlyInvisibly

I’m pretending to be a Star On his skyTo be the Sun and the Moon

He walksNot looking up…

—Marija Stajic ([email protected])

Marija Stajic is a writer and journalist who has been published by The New Yorker and many other online and print publications, and who has published three books of poetry. She has a B.A. in Linguistics from Faculty of Philosophy, University of Nis (Serbia) and an M.A. in International Journalism from American University.

Life SpringsSitting in a dark roombreeds thoughts of the soulnot to be indulged

the bliss of life liesin the simple

the penetrating sunlightpierces through the abyss

illuminating all the shadowsdank dark crevices

new life springs from deathto be reborn anew likea butterfly its cocoon

—Kyle C Lucas ([email protected])

Raspberry BushThe raspberry bushexpanding full of lifeseemed to offerendless tart bounty

they were best pickedright from the vineno need to rinseor put in a fancy bowl

the red juices stainedyour finger tipsa mark of remembrancefor their gifts

the gentle wind rustledthe leaves whispering tothe berries almostbegging for you to remember

—Kyle C Lucas ([email protected])

2 0 V Issue 6 1

Confessions of a Delinquent NarrativeOf course, the surprise ending knows I will arrive,but the beginning doesn’t know where I’ve gone,thinks I might start again. And I might, but notto set up house and drink endless tea.

Sometimes I do feel as if I know where I’m goingthough I cannot take you there throughthe door I’m still building, and I can’t stayhere any longer without erasing myself.

Sometimes I open what’s not even there.It could be a deeply questionable freedom I live in,beneath the could of it. I’m suffering froma surprisingly difficult stroll, and the color

of little bird panic in the wings of my heartwon’t bleed a seductive smile made of merelysmoke and daisies. Let not the unbound be fenceless,shedding their dark beneath the breath of progress.

Tonight I want yogurt blossoms and imbeciles inthe dark trees as happy as tongue depressors. I’ve alreadylost a couple of porches and reasoned with absentee clouds.I’ve an unreasonable love of falling leaves and wet hair.

I’ve decided the Italians must once have thought“modern dress” meant “attached to sullen hillsides,”and I’ve decided I’m a territory unexplored by innocence,unexpected beauty, toast, or a fresh glass of water.

Still, I might be less literal than I thought. I might beraining beachballs containing ideas for new machines.I might be plucking eyelids from the blind parents ofdirt-bikes and chastising the unplanned fun that bled us.

I might be joined to the confused by the undecided and,if it’s not a part of the plot, each pound for an ounceof thought, I might contain a warm milking stool withambitions to speech, and I might walk away from myself

out onto the road of participation and complicityin a rage of taking back, of feet, of direction,as if I might have been the goal and notmerely the forgotten territory of progress.

—Rich Ives ([email protected])

The Mortuary SchoolFrankie bites a peach, axks what’s gonna be on the test.Here sit our vessels, dressed up in sound,shrouded in the rattle of bone & the tap of Celeste’s pencilas she copies questions onto the surface of the desk:How can we cutthe carotid artery,and how will the heart,that is no longer beating,respond?In which chamberwill the attackbe the end of us,and which will just make usvery lucky,an avoider of the salt shaker,fierce embracer of children?“We went over this last week”, Ms. Moon says.All these things have passed,are passing.“We’ve got to move on”, she says.Last week’s answers, they were thatThe wall of the heart has three layers and thatthe Indians, they drum.They form circles and they drum.They drum past the time that it gets dark and their hands are tired,they keen and cut to bleed, hoping that their time is never.Frankie sucks a peach pit,lips wet as a feral cat’s.Turns and says if he don’t pass this one,he’ll bust open the head of the angry Moon,carves an elegy to blood and bone in the stale air behind him.

—Elisa Abatsis ([email protected])


DampThose little dream brothers were made of chicken feathers,and I had to blow their dream parts forcefully from my nose.I was lobbing bottles of vitamin water at their cute little feet.

You’ll need help to rise now andsome dreams won’t take you back,as if there were something determined in their breath.

We were after love that night, but wet and mysterious was close enough.You carried several husbands in your peekaboo pants, andThis just pisses me off, I admitted loudly,

but you were also the ocean with everyonecoming down to you to watch you breathe,and you will not have to pretend you know this.

Deep in the night when the night’s closer, someone thinksyou might understand I always wanted to help you,and I always wanted to be you helping me,

and suddenly it’s dusk with candelabras of birdsonglighting my ears, and it’s best to tell them everything becauseyou’ll feel better, and the wandering brothers won’t listen anyway.

—Rich Ives ([email protected])

Rich Ives has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, Seattle Arts Commission and the Coordinating Council of Literary Magazines for his work in poetry, fiction, editing, publishing, translation and photography. His writing has appeared in Verse, North American Review, Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Quarterly West, Iowa Review, Poetry Northwest, Virginia Quarterly Review, Fiction Daily and many more. He is the 2009 winner of the Francis Locke Memorial Poetry Award from Bitter Oleander. An interview and18 hybrid works appear in the Spring 2011 issue of Bitter Oleander. In 2011 he has been nominated twice for Best of the Net.

2 2 V Issue 6 1

Bad TimingA line outside the liberty bell, bars you can still smoke in, cyclists covered in tattoos; my five-foot-one sister playingdress-up in her brand-new, oversized Albert Einstein Hospital coat.Everyone gone, to the shore.(Fourth of July weekend.)Gray, cobblestone streets nearly empty, melting before dusk. It’s my last day here. A crowd gathering for the presidential motorcadeJolts me out of sleep. Kids laughing on the sidewalk below, the day disappearing.Love’s at the door, with lightly freckled cheeks and a guitar case on the floor.Muscular arms bursting out of a gray v-neck, a smile like the best meal of your life.No place I’d rather be than in a room where he is singing.Orange lights pouring in from the street, a breeze, a voice--what a voice.Promises I’ve made –No More Musicians! – want to fall into the sky.Quitting would mean I learn from my mistakes.Reason never wins; look at the divorce rates. But,Spring has come and gone andTiming is everything. Maybe I should have owned a clock all these years.Usually, I can read them like paperbacks, but those eyes—museums should keep them Vaulted in a glass case.Where they can be studied,X-rayed.Years will go by and I’ll still remember them, under the awning, rain falling around us.Zippers staying zipped, a long embrace that felt like home—a home I can’t afford yet.

—Zhanna Vaynberg ([email protected])

ZHANNA VAYNBERG was born in Chernovtsy, Ukraine and moved to the Midwest in 1991. She graduated from UW-Milwaukee with a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing in 2008, and will be receiving a master’s degree in Writing and Publishing from DePaul University in March 2012. She recently won an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s August 2011 Short Story Award for New Writers for a piece of flash fiction entitled “Things You Should Never Tell Your Mother,” and her first published story, “Do Not Leave Chicago,” will be coming out in Euphony Journal’s winter issue in January 2012.


Memory Of Hurricane Hazel,

1954 for J. R. McKWeek or so after Hurricane Hazel,Me, just out of the Navy, no job.Mac, one year out of Walter Reed.

My dad (looking out for us) BunchOf trees down at Curtis Arboretum,Township needs help cleaning up.

Couple of axes. hatchet, sharpeningstone, file and coffee thermos.A two-man bucking saw, Mac and me

We waded into tangled branch messHatchet, axes swing, bite, chips flyBranches slap -- sweat stings eyes

Sun, leaves, sawdust everywhere.Axe blades sticky, saw teeth clogged,Sap-stiff gloves, blistered hands

Buck-sawing oak, maple, walnutSycamore -- some we didn’t know.Logs piled by road for dump truck

We cashed checks, drank beer.Papers said the storm killedThousands, Haiti to Toronto.

Mac died, Halloween Day 2008.Hit by northbound car on Rte. 611Happened fast like Hurricane Hazel.

Mac had his troubles; he was luckyGot out of this life quick-likeNow, nobody’s on saw’s other end.

Fifty-four years done and gone.

—George Fleck ([email protected])

George Fleck has been writing poetry for fourteen years. His work has appeared in Commomweath: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Penn State Press 2005, Mad Poets Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, and online in “Poets Against The War.”

She…

And so She was created from the dust, She who was

Beauty, Compassion, and Love. The Creator placed

her under the foliage of the dark forest, with an

abundance of berries and seeds. She lived, alone.

The Creator viewed her solitary state with sadness

and sent beasts of the forest to accompany her.

The beasts, although friendly, were not the proper

companions to such a creature as She. However, the

Creator quickly formed a new thought. The Creator

impelled She’s eyes to close, and She’s being to fall into

the state of Dream. While She surrendered to this new

and peaceful state, the Creator took from her being

and created a companion for She. For the Creator,

with knowledge of everything in the sphere of all that

is and has been, created.

From She, came He.

Slowly She opened her eyes and viewed the

new creature beside her. He was so much like her; He

did not look like any of the beasts from the depths of

the dark forest. He who was Strength, Security, and

Companionship, He was hers. She caressed his head

and felt only love. He opened his eyes carefully, for the

light of the forest was powerful, and his young eyes

were not accustomed to such brightness. He looked

into She’s eyes deeply and across his lips formed a sign

of happiness. She could not help but notice his beauty,

so like hers. She took He by the hand and showed him

the ways of the dark forest, She fed him berries, She

introduced him to the beasts, and She warned him of

the forbidden fruit…

— Sara Shah ([email protected])

2 4 V Issue 6 1

Your VoiceWhere did your voice disappear, man?In the demonic fires of passion?In golden castles of terrible greed?In the dark gorge of vanity?

You voices wander the golden mirages,Your tired spirit wanders the golden dusts,Like a warning for the new age;

When the golden bell rings on Wall Street,Your voice will be even quieter,Caught in the silky spider web you look upTo see the reflection of your lost spirit in the heavenly dome;When the golden bell rings on Wall Street,You find your limbo in the blue ink!You are seeking your resurrection in verses!

In which verse do I find your voice?In Walt Whitman’s verse of freedom?In Ezra Pound’s tragic verse?In Robert Frost’s accusing verse?

Your voice is hiding in the column of abandoned shadows,Escaping the lunatic gazes of golden masks,In which many inebriated eyes found their home.Whose eyes are they?The eyes of maddened street lights?The eyes of hungry death?The eyes of a lost man? The shadows march the streets of funeral processions,The terrible voice of the golden bell chases the poor into the graves,Golden masks steal human faces,The eyes of conscience become blind,Your voice is ever quieter. —Walter William Safar ([email protected])

Lonely NightsAgainst the old oak I cling my cheekto hear a lost voice inside;The voice of a lost friend,the voice of my lost father and mother,the voice of lost love.And in this lonely night the voicesinside the old oak are quiet and inaudible,as if dying along with my spirit.The night has turned its beautiful lonely face to the sky,and I,I call out my own name in this lonely night.which became perfectly strange to me –with some desperate hopethat I shall hear the echo of my own spirit.Wise people say that each spirit is made of memories,and my memories are dead;dead like those lost voices inside the old oak,which, like vampire claws,raises its old, barren branches towards a black crow,to steel its voice and to call out into this silent, lonely night,like the voice of many friends of men,that someone’s tear sometime dies before it’s born.Inside me, there is still hopethat someone shall hear my name,and that it won’t sound as strangeas it does to me.Slowly and ghastly I tread the shadowslike a sinner treads the skulls in hell,and I call out with a solitary cryinto this lonely night,to chase away death, if I can’t chase away solitude.But what is life worth without voices,not the ones you can buy,but voices of conscience,which are born and eternally live along with human souls.

Against the old oak I cling my cheek,and I listen in to a thousand souls,Now I know,yes, Lord, now I know that someone will call my name as well,because when you hear the voices of soulsof dear people you’ve lost,you have the powerto bear memories of yourself in someone else.

—Walter William Safar ([email protected])


The Old Man And The ButterflyHow many wishes and hopes pass through a man’s mind?This is what I am thinking about while lookinginto the sad face of an old manwho is motionlessly starring into the distance,as if down there,in the blue eye of the dreamy seahe shall find all the answers.And while the turquoise hands of the moon drive the shadowsinto the old man’s embrace,a turquoise butterfly merrily flaps its wingsand radiates rays of lightalong the dark ridges of this warm summer nightabove his trembling tired head.Perhaps this is the reason whythe old man’s sad face looks upinstead of down,why the sparkle of life still glowsin his tired eyes.This butterfly is very young,but his noble parentage is very old,and that noble parentage used to spread its turquoise lightin the times of the old man’s parentsand grandparents,back in the time when hope was born(and people say that hopes are younger than solitude).It seems that the old man feels it,and he raises his tired eyes whenever he hearsthe harmonious sound of the butterfly’s turquoise wings,and death,like a dark lady,respectfully waits for its turn,as if it took pity on the old man’s boyish gaze;

How many wishes and hopes pass through a man’s mindwhile he helplessly sitsand waits for death?I wonder where his thoughts are traveling nowand which soul in heaven do they touch?His mother’s soul?His father’s soul?His brother’s and sister’s souls? Because souls are like butterflies,crawling the earth with people,only to eventually fly up to the sky,perfectly free and magically bright.All of this must be passing through the old man’s thoughtswhile he looks at the turquoise butterflyin such a childish and lively manner.Everything on him is dead,apart from that childish gaze,which makes his old man’s thoughts so youngand so full of hopethat his soul might soon enough fly uplike his dear butterfly;

How many wishes and hopes pass through a man’s mind;yes, Lord, how many wishes and hopes are passingmy old father’s mind now. —Walter William Safar ([email protected])

WALTER WILLIAM SAFAR He is the author of a number of a significant number of prose works and novels, including “Leaden Fog”, “Chastity On Sale”, “In The Flames Of Passion”, “The Price Of Life”, “Above The Clouds”, “The Infernal Circle”, “The Scream”, “The Devil’s Architect”, “Queen Elizabeth II”, as well as a book of poems.

2 6 V Issue 6 1

Winterscape: Crow vs Snow Like billions of dark butterflies Beating their wings Against nightmares, ratherLike myriads of Spirited coal-flakes Spread from the sky Of another worldA heavy black snow Falls, falling, fallen Down towards the horizon Of my mind, where a little crowWhite as a lost patchOf autumn fogIs trying hard to flap, flying From bough to bough

—changming yuan ([email protected])

Changming Yuan, author of Chansons of a Chinaman and 4-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China and published several monographs before moving to North America. Currently Yuan teaches in Vancouver and has had poetry appearing in over 400 literary publications worldwide, including Barrow Street, Best Canadian Poetry, Best New Poems Online, Cortland Review, Exquisite Corpse and RHINO.

Zeugmatic America:

A Parallel PoemEvery time you stage a play or an election in your own yard You cannot wait to shake hands with your audiences and their wealth No matter whether it is the passage of a new bill or an old dilemma You excel particularly at manipulating public will and private property With your weeping eyes and hands You keep waging war and peace far beyond your boundaries While you kill non-Americans and their hope together To turn all others and othernesses into biblical dust More often than not, you selfish intentions prove Much more destructive than your smart bombs You invisible fighter jets strike far farther Than your visible arms of peace effort You are simply too great for a small criticism Too super-powerful for a weak opposition Too democratic for a totalitarian competition And too single-minded for a double standard

—changming yuan ([email protected])


Studying Bare WallsHis shrinking humiliation blistered in the sun.You raise your nose at him but I’ve seen you,I’ve seen you digging trough the dumpsters,hissing at spectators as they laugh at your misfortune.Lean in close and listen to the clickingof the kitchen clock. Maddening, isn’t it?All of your mental calculations are letting you down, aren’t they? These are nights of love and laughterfollowed by days of unapologetic loneliness.You stare at the dirty wine glasses filling your sink as if you’re the only onewho feels empty on a daily basis.

—Cliff Weber ([email protected])

Cliff Weber is 25 years-old and lives in Los Angeles. He has self-published three books, “Matzo Ball Soup” in 2009, “Jack Defeats Ron 100-64” in 2010 and “Remain Frantic” in 2011. His work has appeared in Adbusters, Out of Our, Burning Word, Bartleby Snopes and Young American Poets, among others. Weber is currently in need of a book publisher.



Burning Word is published by Burrdowning Publishing.

Copyright © 2012 Burning Word and the authors.

www.burningword.com

Documents

Burningword Literary Journal, issue 61