Stefanie Bennett: Two Poems "Attention" and "Word Forest"

Attention

Renegade neutrons

Fall apart

Laughing

On the front lawn

Yet – you, with

Your cold

Aerial-of-souls’

Clip-board

            Hand them

A clean

Bill

Of health. It’s

Strange how

A ‘for real’

Shooting star’s

Never around

            When

You want

            One.

Word Forest

And I saw you return in

     The dream I’d

       Not dreamt

 © 2019 Stefanie Bennett

Stefanie Bennett, ex-blues singer and musician, has published 14 volumes of poetry, a novel, a libretto, two chapbooks, and worked with (No Nukes) Arts Action For Peace [now ICAN] – the Institute of Modern Languages & Equality. Of mixed ancestry [Italian/Irish/Paugussett-Shawnee] she was born in Queensland, Australia.

Mariano Zaro's Decoding Sparrows

There’s an infinite number of reasons to write, as well as read, quality poetry. The most important, in my opinion, and based on my experience, are the following: love of language, development of one’s spirituality/empathy, and to document the deeper moments of human existence. To be able to harness all three in a poem is a challenge, though every poet I’ve ever read strives to do their best. Very few poets consistently succeed, and one of those is Mariano Zaro. His work, over the years, has been a steady journey toward this poetic trifecta, and his newest collection, Decoding Sparrows (© 2019 What Books Press), is proof of his mastery.

     Decoding Sparrows, divided into three parts, contains personal accounts of people who populate Zaro’s universe; family members from his youth in Spain (“Decoding Sparrows”, “Old Petra”), friends and lovers (“Convenience Store”, “The Crown of Youth” ), as well as strangers in passing who’ve left their mark on his poetic consciousness (“Nun Eating a Small Apple”, “Street Vendor”). 

    Zaro’s minimalist style and dialogue launch the reader right into the heart of each poem, where they become one with the person who’s interacting with Zaro. It’s a powerful and unique synthesis of reader, poet, and subject, most notably in the poem, “They Say Fire is the Tongue of God”, where Zaro takes a Benedictine Anglican monk, Brother George, to the remains of his monastery, which burned down to the ground during the Tea Fire (2008), in Santa Barbara, California:

Past fire extinguished inside cold volcanic rocks.

Future fire in lightning, war, and funeral pyres.

Present fire in this combustion that we are.

I drive Brother George to the monastery.

To the place the monastery used to be.

This is his first time back here

after the fire destroyed it all.

I bring my dog Cooper with us, because he loves

Brother George, because he may help

sort out the path of grief.

It’s hard to believe, Brother George says

when we arrive, standing at the edge of the road.

   The tower was there, he says, pointing

     at the air on a clear Saturday morning.

Workers have removed the rubble.

Brother George walks into the dark, flat ground.

The library was there, he says. The refractory,

the pantry, our rooms, the main chapel.

The bell is still standing, lifted on a tall, uneven tripod.

A bell big as a horse’s head, all bronze but humble.

Almost embarrassed by its survival.

Brother George rings the bell, three times,

and the sound, violent and soft, rolls down

the mountains that open like a throat.

Cooper gets agitated, starts barking at the sky,

eyes furious, leash tense. I kneel down and

cover his ears. It’s okay, it’s okay, I say.

Brother George leans his forehead against

the bell, suffocates the last breath of sound,

and all is quiet again, inescapable.

© 2019 Mariano Zaro

     Poetry is a gateway to empathy, an ever diminishing commodity in this present age. Zaro’s Decoding Sparrows will help keep readers in touch with their humanity, as well as their humility, the two best qualities that make us, as a species, worthy of survival.

Decoding Sparrows, Mariano Zaro, © 2019 What Books Press (www.whatbookspress.com), ISBN 987-1-5323-4145-8, 111 pages, $17.95

© 2019 marie c lecrivain

Wyatt Underwood's poem "To Computers and Oz"

computers
I discovered you in 1965
you were eighteen and I was twenty-three
I felt like I had stumbled into a Norse doom
doom was what the Norse called fate
so it didn't have the grisly connotations doom has in English
but computer languages were like riddles, like puzzles
and I was asked to learn them, make them mine
then tease computers into solving problems we'd invented
how fast would a rocket climb?
how fast would fuel boil away?
how much fuel would a rocket need to...
oh!  I felt like a wizard solving those
and thrilled to take on the next ones
how does the spacecraft aim its camera?
and keep it from pointing at the sun?
and later how to use what we knew of gravity
to turn nothing more than doppler sounds
into probable locations of the spacecraft
it wasn't magic but it felt that way
and, better than magic, it worked
ah, computers, that was the trick of you
whatever we programmed you to do, you did
and that let us map the surface of the moon
and plan the trip to Mars and later Jupiter
the world was good then
I could and did forget Vietnam
Central and South America
it was just that one day when I looked up
the magic failed
I was a little tool in a big box of tools
and we were busy fooling people that we were doing good
we were the curtain the man used to disguise his tricks
and once the curtain began to tatter for some of us
soon it tattered for too many
and people no longer wanted to pay for the curtain
or for the man behind it
but by then he'd made himself indispensable
he and his minions swept away the shreds and bought a new curtain
velvet instead of linen
and it still works today
when Vietnam has become Afghanistan, Iraq, and whoever else we add
the man behind the curtain is busier than ever before
and I have lost the ability to see how he spreads good works
as well as so much misery
come on, Oz-makers!
weave us your spells again!

© 2019 Wyatt Underwood

Wyatt Underwood has been participating in the Los Angeles poetic communities since late January 2010.  He has published six books of poems and has had a collection of his poems published by World Stage Press.  He co-hosts or hosts at three sequences of open mics - at the Encino - Tarzana Branch Library, at the Westwood Branch Library, and at Beyond Baroque in Venice.  He participates at maybe a dozen other sequences of open mics scattered around Los Angeles.

Jack Henry's poem "and all for naught"

the ringing in my ears

never fades

day or night,

a constant screaming,

high pitched death wail,

it brings the madness,

it is the key that unlocks

my mind –

i sit in traffic,

daily,

ears ringing,

madness cresting through my skin,

an itch incurable,

a woman on a phone

talks loudly,

i hear her,

every word,

she is not hands free,

just talking & talking & talking -

& next to me

a man in a flash car

shiny bright

expensive

texts his mother,

or his brother,

or his mistress

as he

continues

to

slow

the

fuck

down…

& my hands grip

tight

the ringing & ringing

people slowing

& passing &

stopping

&

i

can’t

take it

anymore –

I pull off

the freeway,

return to

my hiding,

bury myself

deep beneath

the covers of

my bed,

& breath

real

slow

as the

ringing rises

higher

& i being

to

twitch again -

© 2019 Jack Henry

Jack Henry is a poet living south and east from Los Angeles. After a self imposed hibernation Jack reemerged and started writing again. Recent publications include Red Fez, Winamop, and dope fiend daily. In August 2019, Heroin Love Songs, a poetry journal Jack publishes, will see the light of day once more.

photo © 2019 marie c lecrivain

Joshua Corwin's "12:01 AM"

I can hear the shine in your eyes

on the other end of the telephone.

When I speak like this,

I feel authentic

and not heavy.

I don’t have to tattoo meaning in the air

to know what you mean.

I remember when you first told me…

apropos of nothing…

about the different levels of charitable donation.

I was sitting right across from you — over there.

(You in that armchair, me in this one: our eyes.)

You said there’s the donor who gives large sums

and puts a placard on the wall, signifying

who it’s from;

and then there’s the other one who gives…

but remains anonymous.

Your words hanging like a phantom,

I didn’t have to be who I thought I was;

you were once me,

once where I was…

In that moment, I knew. 

(c) 2019 Joshua Corwin 

                                                

LA native, Joshua Corwin is an emerging poet and a recent graduate from Pitzer College in Claremont, CA with a degree in Mathematics and a minor in Philosophy. His poem 'SALT' is forthcoming (August 31) in Spectrum Publishing, vol. 20, ‘Who's Your Honey?’ Currently, he is working on his first, full-length book, Becoming Vulnerable. Joshua writes to honor his grandpa, Mert, whose last words to him were “Don’t ever stop writing.” 

Rick Lupert’s "Hunka Hunka Howdee! Poetry from Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville"

     Rick Lupert, the poet, makes the world a better place for the rest of us. I’m convinced of that fact, especially with his new book, Hunka Hunka Howdee!: Poetry From Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville  (© 2019 Ain't Got No Press), a travelogue of poems and photographs that takes the reader through Memphis (TN), Nashville (TN), and Louisville (KY).

     Lupert documents his (and his wife, Addie’s), 2018 trip to the American South, where he pays homage to music legends like Elvis (“Graceland” and “The Heavy King”), and Johnny Cash (“At the Johnny Cash Museum”), civil rights activist Martin Luther King (“Walking Through the Museum”), bourbon distilleries (“At Maker’s Mark”, and “At the Evan Williams Bourbon Experience”), and lots of observations about ducks (Section 2: “We Arrive in Memphis”). Lupert’s humor, and precise eye for detail, are skillfully employed throughout his poetry, which makes the whole experience of reading Hunka Hunka Howdee! thoroughly entertaining, as in the poem “Goodnight Nashville”:

Nashville, I was suspicious from the start

coming from Memphis where

the local currency is a smile.

But I’ve grown to like you.

I don’t think I’ve wept this much

since New Orleans.

A good city makes the water come.

We’ve left things unsaid and undone.

A roster for the future.

More biscuit for my blood.

More honky for my tonk.

I’m driving away in the morning

the appeal of the brown water

across the border, what you call

whiskey, is what started this

whole thing. You did your part.

The circle is unbroken and 

I’m standing in it.

    Along with the pure enjoyment of reading Hunka Hunka Howdee!, another factor makes me strongly recommend reading Lupert’s work; his recognition of humanity and goodwill in other parts of the country divided by politics/social issues/economics. The people that populate the poems in Hunka Hunka Howdee! are as real and warm and kind as your family and friends, which is a much needed balm to the fractious wounds social media and the current administration have inflicted on the collective consciousness. 

Hunka Hunka Howdee! Poetry from Memphis, Nashville, and Louisville, Rick Lupert, © 2019 Ain’t Got No Press, 276 pages, ISBN 9781733027909, www.poetrysuperhighway.com, $19.99

© 2019 marie c lecrivain

Matt McGee's "Remember Captain Save-A-Ho"

This Memorial Day, remember me. I fought twenty-two years in a different war. Local bars and the scene of social tragedies were my front and an AT&T cell phone was how I was radioed into battle, night after night after night.

Everyone had my number stored and they all knew my rank. They’d memorized my name, or some version of it (Matt Cab, Cab Matt, Taxi Matt, Matt Taxi – however they stored it in their cells), and honored my loyal service, year after year.

Night after night as drama struck - and it struck often, I’d be pulled away from another hot meal, another hour’s sleep, another family event. I believed they’d called me specifically, not any other random driver, perhaps out of loyalty but definitely out of need. Everyone needs a friend when they’re hitting rock bottom.

This Memorial Day, remember the friend who always showed up for the pivotal moments in your life, and pulled you out of a few that almost turned tragic. The next time a ride share driver refuses hands-on help in any given situation, remember who used to pull you out of the bushes, held your rings as you dove into a fight, handed his ID to the cops and said ‘I’ll take him straight home.’

This Memorial Day, think of me as you tap on an app. By doing it, you’re voting with a collective voice to announce that my years of sacrifice and loyalty were just fine.. but ultimately aren’t enough. When you tap, and see a price that’s below mine, know that it is the death knell to a way of life that once served us both very well.

After 26 years in the car sales business, my friend Jill retired last weekend. “Nine out of ten people who come into my showroom say ‘thank you very much’ then go buy a car somewhere else.” Ninety percent of her daily labor has been spent educating the car-buying public so they can then tap on an app, and buy a similar car cheaper someplace else.

For years, people have been calling to price shop. One woman I’ve known twelve years called last Wednesday; my price was $4 higher than her app. After twelve years of friendship, she went with.. the app. She still had the gall to call me from the backseat of her ride to ask what places in town were hopping.

This Memorial Day, remember Captain Save-a-Ho. Because starting this week, you’re going to see one less taxi on the road. You probably won’t notice as you’ll likely be burning a stare into your palm, and the car he’s bought looks like almost any other on the road. And in accordance with your preferences, he will no longer leave his driver’s seat to help you.

His new car is comfortable, air conditioned, and doesn’t smell of 400,000 miles of sweat and bodies. He’s enjoyed his vacation, but now it’s time to join the ranks. And he won’t feel like he’s leaving anyone behind.

That was already done years ago.

© 2019 Matt McGee

                                                   
                                             (c) 2019 marie c lecrivain




Bio: Matt McGee writes short fiction in the Los Angeles area. In 2019, his work has appeared in Biograph, Gnashing Teeth, Otherwise Engaged, poeticdiversity: the litzine of Los Angeles, and his story ‘The Rebirthing Shed’ will appear in Zimbell House’s 1929 anthology. When not typing he drives around in a vintage Mazda and plays goalie in local hockey leagues.