Willawaw Journal Spring 2018 Issue 3

Little Brown Beauty

–-after Valery Mann

Why rush the kitchen window every morning|
to bang your tender head upon the glass,
like a yoyo on an invisible string?

Experts declare: “protecting territory.”
That interloper in the glass has got to go,
and you’re just the soldier to do it,
a troop of one, your life’s quixotic business.

I’ve plastered the window with green post-it notes,
tried closing the shade, but you simply choose
another window.
‌                           I admire your persistence,
wonder at futility
‌                           see how you’re like me.

One day, I find your body beneath the window,
neck broken, twitching forever stilled,
subdued enough for a watercolorist.

Wrapped in plain, brown stripes,
from a family too abundant to be rare.
One of a long, undistinguished series

showing what can happen when you chase away
the one who looks like you, charging forward
instead of stepping back,
‌                                        the fallibility of instinct.

Along with your mussed, lumpy chest, your
cunning beak, and your already desiccating carcass,
your feet are what will stick with me:
curved, wiry, offered to the morning sky.

 

Katherine Edgren’s book The Grain Beneath the Gloss, (Finishing Line Press), is now available. She also has two chapbooks: Long Division and Transports. Her poems have appeared in Christian Science Monitor, Birmingham Poetry Review and Barbaric Yawp. She is a retired social worker, living in Dexter, Michigan.

“The Journey of Time”

Judith Sander‘s “The Journey of Time” was inspired by a poem “What Journey Now” by Terri Thomas.  Mixed media collage using papers, oil pastels, pencil and acrylic paint.  18”H x 24”W. The collection of objects from her travels manages to fill the room with emotions.

 

Follow Suit 

Go on, then.
Seek that which remains
rhetorical, without retort,
dismissive hand-wave
by narrow-eyed prophet,
self-fulfill, produce tomes
chockfull of minced word,
wield fountain tip as daggered
butterfly meant for jugular
and bleed out. With regards,
make your mark, feign high art
in gaudy formation of book,
embossed, leather-bound,
a loud sigil of floweriness.
Trick about, then vanish
into smoke screen- nothing
to see here. Schooled gentleman,
yes, manchild hanger-on,
coin flip today’s: To be.
Lock eye with dusked muse
to be forgotten when the birds
whisper in trees you will never
know the names of.

Your pseudo-Zen,
thatched hat sensibility-
ebbs abject horror,
eludes doomed femme
fatale imaginings,
saves embattled horse
who’d taken arrows
on some scorched field.
The mirror’s intervention,
that follows;
my, my,
you’ve seen better days.

 

Orpheus

What’s not so well known, and rarely told,
is how Orpheus hesitated when his beloved
Eurydice walked as a shadow behind
and, as you know, cast his eye back to see
his dearest depart back to Hades, though—
and this is where it gets interesting—
he knew she had yet to make it across
the threshold to reclaim her role as boss.

During their walk toward the upper-world
he wondered if she was worth all the fuss.
Having been busy so long on the lyre
writing weepies that got to the Gods
had made his fame an inevitability.
What would her return do to his infamy?
Might the film deal fall through were he to cease
being the sad widower, the poet-genius?

And then he thought of her, the way she woke,
her morning breath and unmade face,
the clothes scattered throughout their home,
the tube of toothpaste incorrectly squeezed,
the ghastly things she made in the kitchen—
So he thought maybe it might be best
to leave her to eternal rest.

Their good times were had. Now he had to think
of how he’d live out the remainder of his days
dodging Maenads, Zeus’s fury, beastly assassins
bent on keeping him quiet, but the Muses
took care of it—they kept him around
so that he might continue to sing his laments
and charm the next generation of poets.

 

Vincent Francone’s work has appeared in Spectrum, Rhino, New City, The Oklahoma Review, and other web and print journals.  He won 1st place in the 2009 Illinois Emerging Writers Competition and his memoir, Like a Dog, was published in 2015.  Visit his website www.vincentfrancone.com to learn more.

All about Eve

—for the Dutch poet Joop Bersee

‌   On this brilliant summer day let’s do

‌   away with instinct, Moses, Joan of Arc,
‌   Albert Schweitzer, Franz Kafka, and
‌   Emily Dickinson and return to words,
‌   the nature of life, the birth of morning
‌   inheriting the wolf. I do not want to
‌   live here forever like this. Finding the
‌   source of Everest, the Nile. I study her.
‌   Her hair, her belly, her smile, her laughter.
‌   Her beautiful, and sensitive hands and
‌   interesting face. The one I call mother.
‌   Triumph and hope, despair and triumph
‌   co-exist. The lover becomes philosopher, I
‌   become teacher. I think of her red shoes,
‌   the ex. My brother’s ex and of how
‌   she’s no longer here in this space. I
‌   think of the happy vibes between lovers,

‌   cold sunlight, the life of the sea, the
swimming pool. I’m wounded looking
‌   out at the veil of this coastal city. Waves
‌   flood every nerve. My anxiety withers
‌   in this storm. This, this is my story. The door
‌   appeared like dark paper. The craft of
‌   writing, for example, brings me to you.
‌   The Johannesburg of you. I think of the
‌   radio playing in my lungs. Mountains on
‌   the television. I listen to the social outcast
‌   eating dry bread and who wants to
‌   make a conversation with me. I think
‌   of the icy mouth of winter’s stamina.
‌   You’re begging for another survival-
‌   cycle, lover. My hands. Yes, these hands
‌   carry this human stain. This is not goodbye,
‌   and I will fear no evil. I’ll only live
‌   for the greater good. Be a man. Go on!
‌   Be a man. The reward will be freedom.

 

Pushcart Prize nominated Abigail George is a South African blogger,
essayist, poet and short story writer. She is the recipient of grants
from the NAC in Johannesburg, the Centre for the Book in Cape Town,
and ECPACC in East London. See other work on Bluepepper, an
Australian-based zine edited by Justin Lowe.

Land of the Lost

There’s nothing worse than driving
through West Virginia
in the dead of night
for that brief silent time
after your wife has
turned off the flashlight,
folded the map
into an approximation
of its original shape
and then profusely shrugged her shoulders.

It’s like being in a space ship
somewhere at the far edge of the galaxy,
darkness in all directions
but for a pair of pathetic headlamps
and wondering if you’ll ever see
your home and loved ones ever again.
The feeling is there
even when one of those loved ones
is seated beside you.

“Maybe we could ask for directions,” she volunteers.
But somehow or other,
I don’t think the trees, the bats,
the half-moon, the black clouds,
could tell us anything
we don’t already know.

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. Recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.