Issue 158
known rain
Milado Vigerova (Unsplash.com)
Please use the pointing right hand icons to move through the issue. It's just a thing we have.
The Note
Dear Friends,
I'm glad to see 2024 go. Although, that sentiment implies more hope for 2025 than I have. This has inspired me to say, as I will now, please stay alive. We're going to need you.
There's a lyric by Richelle Dassin of a song, "We Were All Uprooted," on Vangelis's first album, Earth.
We were all uprooted
The earth was stolen from beneath our feet
We became a Diaspora
An unnamed nation of bastards
We channeled our roots to the pulse of light
deep within the galaxies of our mind
Our breath was the sky
Our dreams were water
We claimed the wilderness
We recognized one another
Lines 5 through 8 may be a bit too cosmic for my tastes. (That's okay. It was 1972). But I love the first 4 lines and then that last line, "We recognized one another." Stay alive. We're going to need you.
I am not sure how I will cope with this new year. I'm more sure about what I'll be trying to do.
-
Do more for those who are most vulnerable.
-
Express love and receive it.
-
Read, view, and listen to art.
-
Write more.
Not sure I can elaborate on the first three and probably don't need to. But here's some fine advice from Nick Cave on writing and art. Consider reading his book, with Seán O'Hagan, Faith, Hope, and Carnage.*
Back to expressing and receiving love...I love me some editors of this whole Ambidextrous Bloodhound Press thing. F. John Sharp, F. J. Bergmann, Steve Klepetar, Bill McCloud, Annie Stenzel, and Ina Roy-Faderman (right hand pointing) Elizabeth McMunn-Tetangco, (One Sentence Poems & first frost) Ken Chau (Unbroken & Unlost), Howie Good (Unlost), Michael Dylan Welch and Eric Burke (first frost), Clare Rolens (One Sentence Poems), Katherine DiBella Seluja (Unbroken), Natalie Wolf (One Sentence Poems), Tom Fugalli (Unbroken & Unlost), and Tina Carlson (Unbroken).
Thanks to all who contributed to this issue!
Love,
Dale
*My favorite reads of 2024: Nick Cave, Faith, Hope, and Carnage; Claire Keegan, Foster; and Paul Lynch, Prophet Song.
Meg Freer
Markers
Rembrandt’s paintings
shimmer with translucence
even in dark sections with few colors.
My dog always pees under the canopies
of weeping mulberry trees
whose leaves reach the ground.
Subtle ways to sign our names
in concealed, sheltered places
where those who search will find them.
William Aarnes
foreign
when there is a voice at the door it is foreign
—W. S. Merwin, “Losing a Language”
This morning shelling demolished
the cluster of businesses downtown.
Now helicopters throb overhead
and tanks ease into the neighborhood.
The gunfire from next door sounds methodical.
Soldiers torch both cars in your driveway.
The corporal who pounds on your door
speaks an English that’s foreign.
Your home, he says, will hotel his squad.
The word he must mean, he apologies, is lodge.
Disciplined, jittery boys follow him in.
We are here to be, he tells you, here to put down.
He grants your wife and daughters his all right
to reside for a night in the garage.
Lynn Strongin
WE CANNOT live outside our lives, embellishing bolts of cloth.
The dray that stands outside our window, breath hanging like a wreath.
Aren’t we northern monks, suffering and grace. Bethlehem come down.
Stockpiled grievances are like the ash heaps in Wales.
Down the hospital halls.
A child wanting to amputate herself from her life.
A moth infestation means taking every piece of fabric
to the dry cleaners and that comes next. A hex.
The buzzing of gossip at the village well is rising...
One or two angel-shaped moths push in at the window:
beyond the ash groves.
What shall we do? We cannot live outside our lives:
honey is made in these treacherous hives like love.
Harry Edgar Palacio
Tree of Good and Evil
Al arbol que das mas frutos es al que le tiran mas pierdas. The tree that gives the most fruit is thrown the most rocks. In a firing range I sat still as an obelisk. Readying myself. Paloma blanca redacted. In a city that knew a hundred years’ war. Shame was fury. The indolent still reaped. An ampersand faded on the pale skin of grief. I saw not much haverstroo, Dutch for oat straw. In the dark divorce. Sleepless cupidity. Swain at the bottomless youth lagoon. A spire of blue smoke like a shadow following its mother down the foyer of mirrors. Dutiful as though death transpired. Waiting in the anteroom. Yet no one queried after the blue sapphire snake twirled up the body of una flaca blanquita. Gentling the carnal girl. It is a watchman observing himself alone in a bed. Giving names to thoughts. Agua ardiente in a house bucking. Feral darkness. I saw the shrew winnow. Chasing its tail into a jade forest. An Elysian field. Pallid wet fingers. There is nothing. An abandoned church. A boy sees the shadow and names it. El agujero hondo, deep hole. He refuses to pluck the water from its casing. Alone and denigrated. Days become nights. Poverty wets the young man. And the nuns take off their habit. To drink the blood of Christ after Mass.
Michelle Ortega
After the Storm
heaven can’t hold
its own weight today—
sky so low,
gray brushes my skin
the air, heavy wet
loses its grip
stipples the sidewalk
was it gunshot or thunder
last night in my dream?
Quinn Marley Garcia
Sweet as Potatoes
Ate music while doing makeup
Listened to sweet potatoes in the car
Drove down the 405, conducted Nat King Cole with my fork
His voice, sweet and tender as the cubes of root vegetables in my ears.
Went to bed with greasy spoon hair
Friend on the phone, we talked about everything in between.
Happy girls, happy curls.
My frontal lobe is still waking up.
I wonder if I’ll ever feel this sweet again.
Brad Rose
Just Desserts
Thousands of satisfied customers. On election day, they’ll be voting against their better interests. Police say that God wills both the wins and the losses. Of course, nobody likes to pay full price, but you’ve got to be in the right place at the right time. In fact, news reports say that most parts of that falling satellite will burn up in the atmosphere, while only a few will crash into earth. Don’t worry, you’ll get yours.
Howie Good
The Art of War
So far his wealth and worldwide fame had protected the artist from arrest (or worst) in the German-occupied city. Then on a gray October day special police thumped on the door of his studio. There were three of them, dressed like ordinary civilians but radiating menace. They sniffed around the studio with the intense concentration of dogs sniffing assholes. The one in charge, a cretinous thug with dead eyes, picked up a photograph lying among used brushes, dirty rags, tubes of paint, a palette knife. It was of a feverish mural commemorating the annihilation of a town and one-third of its inhabitants by fascist dive-bombers." Did you do this?" the officer asked. "No," the artist replied. "You did."
Shayla Valentine
oyster
Seeking safety I cloistered for winter, surprised
instead to be pried at the hinge and lemoned—
strange tongues slice the soft of my belly,
spilled brine, outer shell sullied.
Juan Pablo Mobili
Daring the Tanks
for Sergio Mobili
I kiss the top of his head and he brushes it off as you might
an orphan feather landing on your hair.
He does the same if I kiss him on his cheek, with the back of
his left hand like you swipe a mosquito.
This is the way we navigate affection, we resist tenderness
but can’t help acknowledging its presence.
When you love the way I love him, you accept such danger
like a crowd demanding justice surrounded by tanks.
Juan Pablo Mobili
More than an Elegy
The friend more blues than skin
—Tongo Eisen Martin
More orphan bone
than memory.
More rust
than laughter,
in the playground.
More the lone man
sweeping ashes
off the launching pad
than astronauts
who sit on a convertible
waving tiny flags.
More anger, still,
than peace.
Juan Pablo Mobili
An Ant's Eulogy
After “I Genitori Perduti” by Lawrence Felinghetti
I lost my parents to one fierce rain
a summer whose sun I still remember.
I wish they remained home but they chose
to haul leaves before the sparrows raided the garden.
Ironic how a generous sky can turn so dark,
so suddenly, so deadly. They left as the wind
began to howl, without saying goodbye.
They disappeared among the tall grasses.
Jim LaMontagne
Quaking Aspen (Populus tremuloides)
a dozer tread chops the roots
of the largest underground
family on the clearcut
she suffers at home
for her children to be born
from the cuts and catkins
Agatha Wuh
Aviary
They used to call him seagull
because work bound him
ashore while we lived in
an apartment, his satellite office.
This was many years ago
but I remember this:
strange things happened
when dad wasn’t around.
Years later, while traveling
overseas, I came across a bird garden
within a heady metropolis.
Brittle old men slouched
on benches, smoking long pipes
admiring birds in cages.
Judith Yarrow
Correspondence
High in the elm trees wind
writes itself in the leaves.
They reply with a sound
of waves sliding through
coarse sand to the sea.
Bradley K Meyer
The song is difficult, but the melody is easy, almost sounds like a proverb
A puppet, idly on my hand, makes me speak. There must be a word for general weariness with the world. There is. It’s weltschmerz. Its German sounds like the name for the smoking room on the Hindenburg. I don’t care what the names of plants and animals are. As if a name is ownership. A cat was on my porch last night and then it wasn’t.
Tarn Wilson
Carries the One
She adds the double
digit number and carries
the one. Jots the little line.
A small person standing
on top of a mountain. The
classroom disappears, her
stern teacher, her own stern
concentration. She is alone
on top of a mountain. She is
small and victorious. She is
waving from a great distance.
Hallie Fogarty
August
Everything alive was once dead.
The golden finch, the big-winged
butterfly, the way concrete sparkles
and glitters in the humid sun, how the dirt
showcases the holes left by creatures long
gone: the gerbil, the anthill, the mole.
The dried-out worms I’m afraid
to touch. The trouble
I go through to push their bodies
back into the wet grass.
Dana Henry Martin
Semantic Attack
You say father and I see him
arched over my mother like a hook
his long metallic body
into her wet gills.
It does not matter
that you really said farther
or further or fathom.
Whatever the word
it has become a piercing.
There she is
bleeding out again
onto her own feet.
Shannon Guglielmo
Chrysalis
He stood outside every night it rained. Somehow the rain in the dark wasn’t scary. He lost his job a year ago but kept getting dressed like he was going to the office. He drove all over Los Angeles wishing he were a dozen different people. Cop on the corner. Guy unloading a fruit truck. Woman getting a manicure. What if right now he were actually encased in the chrysalis of his life? When he broke out, he’d get another job. He’d end his affair. He’d become famous. Thank God for this soothing tonic. This cold honest good rain.
Matthew Caretti
After the Curtains
I gather up her hair
and twine together
tops to bottoms.
An island
braid lacing together light
and what might be love.
No simple knot,
fishbone
becoming the connected
ribs of this life.
Matthew Caretti
I have known rain
and a sable stroke of skin. A deep
beauty born of the sun. Then sheets
of wet rinsing us clean. A first love
in Africa. Next in the Solomons, thighs
cool to the touch. Jagged scars at
the edges. Like an occasional cloud
carving what’s left of summer skies
beyond the antipodes of our lives.
Born again.
Contributors
William Aarnes, born in Missouri and raised in North Dakota, taught in D.C, and South Carolina before retiring to Manhattan. His fourth and latest collection is The Hum in Human (Main Street Rag, 2024).
Matthew Caretti lives and teaches English in Pago Pago, American Samoa. His collections include Harvesting Stones (2017, Snapshot Press eChapbook Award), Africa, Buddha (2022, Red Moon Press) and Ukulele Drift: Poems from a Small Island (2023, Red Moon Press). He is the recipient of a 2024 Touchstone Award.
Hallie Fogarty is a poet and artist from Kentucky. She received her MFA in poetry from Miami University, where she was awarded the 2024 Jordan-Goodman Graduate Award for Poetry. Her work has been published in Pegasus, Poetry South, Barzakh Magazine, and elsewhere.
Meg Freer grew up in Missoula, Montana, and now lives with her family in Ontario, where she teaches piano and writes. She enjoys collaborative projects, being active outdoors year-round, taking photos, and is co-author of a chapbook, Serve the Sorrowing World with Joy (Woodpecker Lane Press, 2020) and author of two other chapbooks.
Howie Good is a professor emeritus at SUNY New Paltz whose newest poetry book, The Dark, is available from Sacred Parasite, a Berlin-based publisher.
Shannon Guglielmo is a poet and math teacher in New York City. Her poems have appeared in Last Stanza Poetry Journal, Neologism Poetry Journal, and Green Ink Poetry. She is a Math for America Master Teacher and a recipient of the Fund for Teachers Fellowship.
Quinn Marley Garcia is a writer and actor. She aims to darn the moth-holes with her stories, and was the first youth playwright to have a piece virtually performed at the Little Fish Theater in LA, as well as being published to literary websites such as The Drama Notebook.
Jim LaMontagne studied forestry (BS) and creative writing at the University of Massachusetts and has lived and worked in Montana as a logger. He currently lives in South Hadley, MA, where he plays bass in a jazz band. His poems have been published in a number of small press magazines, such as Ekphrasis Review, Silkworm, One Sentence. His most recent book is Merrick (Unsolicited Press, 2018).
Dana Henry Martin’s work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Barrow Street, Chiron Review, Cider Press Review, FRiGG, Muzzle, New Letters, Rogue Agent, Stirring, Willow Springs, and other literary journals. Martin’s poetry collections include the chapbooks Toward What Is Awful (YesYes Books), In the Space Where I Was (Hyacinth Girl Press), and The Spare Room (Blood Pudding Press). Their chapbook No Sea Here (Moon in the Rye Press) is forthcoming.
Bradley K Meyer writes from Tbilisi, Georgia. His work has appeared in decomP, Right Hand Pointing, Superstition Review and others. He teaches English.
Juan Pablo Mobili was born in Buenos Aires and adopted by New York. His poems has been published in many journals in the United States as well as internationally. His work received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and is currently finishing the manuscript for his next book of poems. Most recently, he has been appointed the Poet Laureate of Rockland County, New York.
Michelle Ortega has been published at Tweetspeak Poetry, Snapdragon: A Journal of Healing, The Platform Review, Rust + Moth, Humana Obscura and elsewhere. Her chapbook, When You Ask Me, Why Paris? is forthcoming (Finishing Line Press, July 2025).
Harry Edgar Palacio (Hari) is a U.S born celebrity: numerous award-winning musician, author and fine artist. He is signed to Interscope Records & performed with Grammy winners and Grammy nominated artists including Ari Up, lead singer of The Slits 'Godmothers of Punk' former members of The Raincoats.
Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. He is the author of six collections of poetry and flash fiction: WordInEdgeWise, Lucky Animals, No. Wait. I Can Explain, Pink X-Ray, de/tonations, and Momentary Turbulence. His poetry collection I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly, is forthcoming. His website is www.bradrosepoetry.com
Lynn Strongin is an American poet currently residing in Canada who has published more than two dozen books. Lynn's new book of poems, Kiosk, is just published in England.
Shayla Valentine holds a Bachelor of Arts in Japanese Language from the University of Alaska at Anchorage. She is a poet who writes about nature, selfhood, and interpersonal connection. She is excited and honored to share her poetry.
Tarn Wilson is the author of three books: The Slow Farm, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts (winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award), and 5-Minute Daily Writing Prompts. Her essays and poetry have appeared in numerous journals, including Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, River Teeth, Sweet Lit, and The Sun.
Agatha Wuh is a writer and formally trained cook. Her work has appeared in The Bold Italic, 4x4 Magazine, and Outer Sunset Bugler. She currently lives in the Richmond neighborhood of San Francisco.
Judith Yarrow has been published in Aji and Raven’s Perch among many others. She was the featured poet in Edge: An International Journal, and her poems have been included in the Washington State Poet Laureates’ collections. She lives in Seattle, Washington. Find more of her work at jyarrow.com.