Journal

Vixen

Sue Parman is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and an award-winning poet, artist, and writer. For more information, see  www.sueparman.com

Artist’s Statement:   The painting/poem “This is not a Poet” is a portrait of Kenneth Goldsmith, originator of the “uncreative writing” poetry movement. Goldsmith once said that he didn’t have a “readership” so much as a “thinkership.” This portrait is my poetic/artistic response to his “thinkership” challenge. The painting is 32” (H) x 37” (W). It is a watercolor that has been printed with hand-made stamps, including an “S” for the eyes (representing myself trying to see through his eyes). The un-poem in the painting is mine.

Rooms for Tourists, 1945

—after Edward Hopper

Would you want to rent in this strangely lit
house looming out of Cape Cod’s dark. Black

window awnings gaze like half-closed eyes,
seeing perhaps, what’s hidden inside

and all who may be entering this place of yellow light.
Pale greens around windows and door shift to ink

in a hedge that seems to box us out. A sign glares
in front, dares any to accept its invitation. Where

are the one-nighters, the summer boarders? No rockers
on the vacant porch, so little furniture in the Victorian parlor

and front hall. Is there a long tabled dining
room with places set for the couple with nothing

to say to each other, for an unmarried teacher here
for the few days she can afford, the salesman here

to find a buyer for his trunk load of beach gear? Interior light
plays with ghosts, guards against the dark. Hopper’s night

drapes street and yard. Let’s leave it to him. Move
on, traveler. Unless you seek a brush with mystery.

Hotel by a Railroad, 1952

—after Edward Hopper

Almost bald with sharping features, a man stands
gazing from a window at empty tracks, parallel lines

leading from the city, out of the room where he has turned
from the woman who sits, book open on her lap, head bent

to the pages that could be leading her out of this hotel
in a city of trains, passengers stepping off and on. Mirrored

grays and a wedge of darkness outline this shadow-haunted room.
Of course I see sunlight—against the building, flooding their window,

brightening the red bureau, illuminating half of a wall
above the seated woman and the silky slip covering full breasts.

The man’s vest, pants and shirt, a pattern of black and white.
He holds a cigarette in his right hand, she with gray streaked hair

falling over pink straps, has stodgy calves rooted to the unseen floor,
her body so welded to the leather chair, I’m nodding—All right, be settled.

No. Before his vision narrows further, before she turns to stone,
I want to tell them—Get on the next train.

Diana Pinckney, Charlotte, NC, has five collections of poetry, including Alchemy, Green Daughters, and The Beast and the Innocent, 2015.  Pinckney is the 2010 Winner of the Ekphrasis Prize and Atlanta Review’s 2012 International Prize.

Walking Along the Beach

What’s wrong about self-pity, anyway?
                               — Elizabeth Bishop

My thin jacket is no match
for San Francisco. The cold
barks its way up my back.
It’s sunset without a sun —

just a low-hanging gray going
lower. The orange shoulders
of Golden Gate Bridge shrug
in the fog. The breathing Pacific

wears me out, lifting and falling
like a belly… you call late,
always too late, with that drop
in your voice when you say hey.

A single syllable stuffed
with sorries. Splayed on the sand
a rubbery seaweed, recently
abandoned, covers its face

with a shell. That I understand.
Doesn’t everyone? People
come and go though it seems
they’re mostly going.

Who hasn’t become an expert
at the art of farewell? My glasses,
an old prescription, are cloudy
with salt. A strong wind holds seagulls

as they surf the air. I’m envious.
How has my day been? The waves break
their dishes and throw the shards
in my direction. That kind of day.

Summer Evening, Age 12

The front porch turns orange at sunset, its color broken
by the curved shadows cast by the cane-backed chairs.

The boy leans forward in his father’s rocker to halt the sweat
running down his back. Inside the house his family lives

side by side in ordered rows like the scooped out places
in ice cube trays. It’s nearly 9 p.m. and still the temperature

is in the nineties. Humidity crawls its heavy body across
the darkened yard. Like velvet drapes, night finally falls.

Cicadas sew their whirring in the lining of the trees.
The fireflies are thousands of children wandering the air —

they hold aloft their flashing questions:  why? why?
The warmed grass calls — the boy goes and lies on its steaming

greenness, resting his head on his interlaced fingers.
He watches the sky stretch and lift its shirt to cool itself.

And there, the puncture of the crescent moon. He hears it
whisper:  climb up to me. Leave it all behind. Climb all night.

 
Bart Rawlinson received the 2013 William Matthews Poetry Prize. He has also received the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and the Robert Browning Prize in Dramatic Monologue. His work appears in Asheville Poetry Review, One, The Rumpus, Santa Clara Review, Assaracus and other magazines. He lives in rural California.

The Beggarmaid Speaks

You’d already given her Knaves and Queens,
talking hares and smoking caterpillars.
Certainly you could have saved a King for me, Lutwidge?

I am the dirt under her milk-white feet,
the moss she daren’t stain her rags
with where she rests her smooth-tressed head.
I am the grubs that eat the columbine.
I am the mason’s callouses that still rest between the married stone.

I am the pins that hold the ripped dress modestly in place.
But I am rusted and bent –
I’ve never seen the inside of a hat,
been kissed by a dressmaker’s lips,
or held a broken corset stay,
resting my head sweetly against perfumed skin.

She who dares the camera to look,
who holds the world in her palm,
an empty space waiting to be filled,
while I watch through a chink in the wall.

Leslie Rzeznik is a poet living in Michigan. She’s a Reiki Master, medicinal herbalist, intuitive, empath, and tarot reader of 30 years. She’s an elder in the Romuva (Lithuanian Indigenous) religion and she’s been published in Alyss, Bone Bouquet, Sling Magazine, Thank you for Swallowing, and Bear River Review.

Hijra Clap

clap clap
just two claps
the unsexed figure
preying the Indian Railways passengers
demanding money
with a hoarse vile voice
that belongs to no man or woman

people pass ten-rupee notes
into the outstretched palms
in no time
the pattern moves on
clap clap
just two claps
to the next passengers

a beggar with a broom
sweeping the floor
bringing waste out of nowhere
getting a coin or two
from a passenger or two
notices the colourful notes
held out to the hijra

he looks at the hijra
with his longing eyes
longing for the notes
longing to be a hijra
but dares not unsex himself
for he loves his sex
or has no courage to do it

clap clap
just two claps
the unsexed figure moves on
hitching the saree that covered no sex
the blouse that covered no breast
chewing betel leaves
with a bloody mouth

Yumnam Oken Singh is serving as an Assistant Professor (English) in the College of Horticulture & Forestry, Central Agricultural University, India. An avid reader, he is interested in literature of all sorts and has translated a short story into English and published a few research works. For more details, visit his site: http://yumoken.wordpress.com/