Lars Palm: (bus notes 11:ix:13)

 

(bus notes 11:ix:13)

departure berlin zentrale omnibus

bahnhof in kaiserdamm

            portrait of angela merkel

empress for germany

licence plate ”bar go”

            winding our way out of the greater

berlin area onto the autobahn

heading toward rostock

passing a truck from somewhere in former

yugoslavia ”natural beheadings of hens

& other beasts” on the trailer

almost at a standstill due to another

            roadwork (the second

in a few short miles)

southbound truck ”we know the way” to

the next ausfahrt (or beyond?)

oh dear deer you should have

            kept to the field

most petrol stations we pass

            are called total

spotted 20^th animal transport heading south

passing a creek called dosse

10 minute break for a smoke or other

            needs at eldetal

a handful of very fully grown men

almost have time to

            get into a proper fight

back on the road

lion king going south

& the bridge across

peterdorfer see is not

currently in

            mint condition

pretty graffiti on a short wall

in the outskirts of a hamlet

some 70 kilometres

            south of rostock

hours later in falster political/existential

graffiti ”shit does not only

             come out of

             your arse”

some kind of traffic jam

arrival copenhagen central station

& after some confusion

departure copenhagen to malmö

via the locally famous bridge which

            he whispers

cost at least a dozen construction

workers their lives

arrival malmö södervärn

Lars Palm lives with his lovely wife, currently near the end of that bus ride. his 4^th book, means, will be out from The Knives Forks & Spoons Press any day now

Matt Hohner: Confirmation

Confirmation

for Klaude

Penance

What is the sound

of regret through the wind

at sixteen feet per second?

Absolution

Your feet, empty

as beams of light.

Your smile a dead

giveaway.

Resurrection

The stone moved aside.

An empty tomb.

She found your burial clothes

laid out neatly on your bed.

Age of Discretion

You must have wanted

as I stood with you

before Christ.

You must have known.

Lead us not.

Lead us not into.

Lead us.

Sanctum

In a car. On a lot. In the daylight. You paid the boy.

You hated yourself. Your prayers were flagellants.

Persecution

You were drunk in the car when they pulled you over.

They brought you before the judge. You were guilty. You fled.

They crucified you in the news. I denied your name to myself.

You were drunk in the car when they pulled you over again.

Facing hard time, you knew it was time to go.

If only Judas were there to kiss you goodbye.

Contrition

Heart burst like water.

Ribs caved in like jars of clay.

Teeth exploded in shards.

Brains become jelly.

Bones become dust.

Accipe signaculum doni Spiritus Sancti[1]

A note left behind on the seat of a car on a bridge over the river.

Ascension

Now, the quiet trees. Now, the darkness.

Now the odor of iron and wet stone

rising in the cool June air.

---

[1] Be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.


Matt Hohner holds an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.  His work has appeared in The Mom Egg Review, The Baltimore Review, Dancing Shadow Review, September Eleven: Maryland Voices, Poets Against the War (online), The Potomac (online), Lily (online), and other publications. Hohner lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Three Poems by Barrett Warner

The Trouble with Poets

In the way that movies arrive

at the playhouse two years after releasing

Billy Collins came to our infinite town.

We were eight miles across the Mason-Dixon,

a lunch hour’s ride and back

to Gettysburg and other cemeteries.

First the fat sweaty mayor spoke—

he was pretty sure Billy was Republican,

a blue poet in the only county that had carried Bush!

After four hot days of hay-making someone said,

Why doesn’t he read his fucking poems?

At which point my wife kicked me.

She reminded me we were in church in spite

of the hand-made posters decorated with bears,

picnic tables, bullets, and zagged yellow lines.

Then Billy stood and delivered verses about death

and being isolated and feeling lost. We clapped

after each, his silky words impossible for us

not to feel even if we didn’t understand them.

Good one, my wife said to our neighbors,

the Harrisons, about Billy’s dead parents.

Afterwards, we were allowed to ask him anything.

Mr. Collins, would more people read poetry

If it had a rating system, like PG or R?

Mr. Collins, does Sarah Palin have a shot?

Raining Fish

I wanted to drive to the bridge mounts

between the dam and the first crossing.

Ed wanted to walk, that crazy fool,

swirling his canteen scotch for company.

So I yelled the gear into the pick-me-up—

our rods, packs, rice, bamboo rolling sleeves.

Ed disappeared into the Indian summer,

the stream full of cold and splash and air.

We wanted to hook our lunch and eat

sushi on the bank, chatting about Li Po.

If a fish weren’t clean enough to serve

raw why would you want it oiled and fried?

We’d heard the trout would jump

into your bucket like clowns.

When I got to the river I saw Ed leaning

on a boulder, praising the last ice age.

He offered me a Cuban. Hand-rolled

against the thigh of a virgin, he said.

Must be an import, I replied.

There aren’t any virgins around here.

Our snorts must have scared away the fish.

Next time, we’d remember to bring our tears.

Isn’t it true, trout love a good cry?

Sob, and they tumble out of the clouds like acid.

Balance

Driving, I love the feeling at the wheel

when one of my tires needs marriage counseling.

Maybe there’s a shimmy, an intermittent squeal,

like I’m always moving over rumble strips.

And how the pain worsens the slower I go,

and how the radio doesn’t quite hide the noise,

and even the wind rushing my face

doesn’t carry any mysteries,

only facts—

Tuesday she dyes her crotch green

to make it easier to find others’ pubic hairs

astray in the sheets. Friday he answers every question

with doubt—maybe, not sure, OK I guess—

Sunday she squints at the tweezered evidence

and curses, who belongs to this black coil?

Twice in my life I’ve driven the axle off the frame,

and it’s such a long dying fall, the bullet

coursing through the air like a drugged moth.

It seems so easy to ignore.

So petty.

And next month someone is shaving

whiskers off a dead man,

wiping grease off the dead man’s face,

more than one witness wondering

if he ever bothered to look in a side mirror

and spit on a comb to relax the beast

rooted in his skull.

Barrett Warner's poems have appeared in Cultural Weekly, Nude Beach, Industrial Decay, Little Patuxent Review, Berkley Poetry Review, Comstock Review, Quarter after Eight, and other places. He is associate editor of Free State Review and gets kicked around for a living at An Otherwise Perfect Farm.

Two Poems by Le Hinton

  Hiroshima

            It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered.

                        — July 25, 1945 from the diary of Harry S. Truman

At 7 a.m. the siren

cried  ̶  lonely and insistent  ̶

unsettling a new born mother

and sparrows in flight.

At 8, there was no calm

for Toshiko in the silence

of the all-clear lie.

At 8:15 and from 30,000

feet above, a Little Boy fell

into the future toward pristine arms.

8:15:44 flashed so swiftly that

80,000 lives

did not pass in front of

80,000 pairs of eyes.

If annihilation knew respite,

Toshiko could have smelled the scent

of Hiroki’s seared black hair,

heard his murmur at her breast.

If even the smallest of gods had mercy,

Toshiko could have whispered

a prayer into his tiny ears

before the shredding of her lungs,

before the rupture of his drums,

before their bones crackled in the fire.

If her sockets still held eyes,

she could have witnessed the precise

moment when the sparrows fell

back to the earth.

First Day of School, 1958

On the playground, the great white sharks pull

knives from their pockets with gazes

            sharp enough to shape

                        (an old man's) nightmares. They press

the points against the belly of the new Black boy.

Their laughs rimmed with incisors.

                        He prays for the National Guard

                                    he's seen on television

as his 5-year-old eyes fill.

In the school bathroom

they spin him from the urinal;

            roll him on his back.

                        Confirm the brownness

over

                  all            his          skin.

Later his teacher notes on his temporary permanent record

that he never laughs,

            wonders why he takes everything

                                                                                                personally,

                        decides that he can't take a

                                                            joke.





Le Hinton is the author of five poetry collections including, most recently, The Language of Moisture and Light. His work has been selected to appear in The Best American Poetry 2014. 

Joseph Ross: What Can Be Said

What Can Be Said

for M. T.

What can be said

of the white cop

who spat on my Black

student in the 2am

silence beside Hwy 270?

Did the vigilant oaks

slip steel into your

blood? Did you think

the stars could not see

in the dark? Did you

imagine darkness has

no conscience, would

not speak up?

And what of my student,

this young man

lying on the ground

behind a car, trembling

amid the 2am choir of 

seizure and panic?

That his shivering

asthma scared you so

much you couldn’t breathe?

Bitch the only word

to dance off your tongue?

Spit the only language

you could speak?

Joseph Ross is the author of two books of poetry: Gospel of Dust (2013) and Meeting Bone Man (2012). He teaches English and Creative Writing at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C. and writes regularly at Joseph Ross.net

Four Photographs by Doug Anderson

Doug Anderson is a poet and visual artist living in Thorndike, Massachusetts.

Two Poems by Ginger Teppner

Eulogy for Virginia C.

In The Desert

My nose is the wrong shape

Of this I am very aware and barefoot

But my pant legs are wide and flowy

And the flower print makes me feel demure

Less salty

More crimson than flying

A Dog Barks

Chained to a metal stake

In the back yard, another back yard

With a traditional dog house and Lilac bushes

And a clothesline

All the less stained sheets

Hung to face the neighbor’s house

                        Snapping in a distant breeze

That carries

                        Away from ancient windows

Ancient mist or air

 I Want to Be a Bird

So I marry a pilot

And his nose in the wrong shape

And his words in the wrong color

But he laughs when I hold my cigarette

He appreciates my strong fingers

Like an aura to describe prophets face

How I bake the hard boiled eggs into the lasagna

How when he smashes the plate of spaghetti

Into the white washed kitchen wall

My first thought is that mashed potatoes

Make less of a racket

That Day

                       

                        You hummed and traced raindrops

Sucked backward in slow motion

Along the edge of the car window

Less Lonely

                        I was relieved when he left me.

It was a relief to be alone.

In early March I watched my disappointment

Walk out the side door. The door that opened to the garage

Do you remember this garage?

The smells of car

A red three wheeled trike

Metal rakes hanging in a row

You, a child with a kitten all smiles and pigtails

Criss-cross applesauce

                        Let’s go for a ride you say

                        In the big car you say

The neighbor boy pedals away

On his miniature green tractor

I Remember

                       

                        How she took my hand,

                        Not gently as if to say the world is harder

For a woman. Especially the handsome kind

The kind with stronger spine

Sometimes the efficiency of woman

Is to blame. Some women just don’t need

As much. And there is only so much

Pretending to be other than

                        Like when he runs down the dock

                        Pretending

                        To be attacked by a bee. Watch

As he runs clear off the end of the dock

There are so few real surprises

I suppose this was the hook

And they thought they were being cute

When they threw the blanket over our heads,

But I have the scars to prove

And the blanket smelled like outside rain,

And I never went back in the water after that

Already turning away. Weak with ankles

Prestolgia

My husband secures shade cloth to the top of the arbor.

I have been hounding him for weeks.

Tender shoots below need relief from the direct Florida sun.

He is using the utility rack on the back of his truck as a scaffold.

From my bedroom window I can only see his legs dressed in muck boots, the one’s I bought him for Christmas, and camo shorts.

This is his uniform.

His blue Guy Harvey t-shirt, the cap on his head, and his unshaven face are not in my field of vision.

I hear him singing to himself, talking out loud to his dog, rummaging in the tool box for something he can’t find.

I hear him climb off of the scaffold on to the ladder.

I hear him lose his balance, his quick recovery.

I hear his footsteps come around the East side of the house.

I hear him enter through the kitchen door.

From one room he says he is looking for scissors.

From another I tell him they are on the counter.

I imagine all of these movements and sounds and objects in my mind’s eye.

I name them all—translate them onto this page so that I can recognize them later.

But my truth is slanted.

Opinion inhabits every word—husband and arbor and tool and blue and kitchen and east.

Windows and trucks and shade lack neutrality.

Even as I write, this experience slips into the past.

I am filled with prestolgia—the knowledge that in the future I will long for an April moon.

But this is only an idea I can’t wake up from.



  
Ginger Teppner received her BA in Cultural Studies from Empire State College and her MFA in Creative Writing from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics of Naropa University. Recent publications include Upstairs at Duroc , Shambhala Times, Not enough Night, and Semicolon. 

Call for Works

I'm about halfway through wrecking Halvard Johnson's Truck. I bottomed it out a few times already, drove over a few signposts, added a few dents to the fenders and doors. I think the points are missing and it may need a master tune-up and an all-wheel alignment after I done with it, but it's still running. If you've got something you'd like me throw in the back of the Truck I'd be happy to look at it. I'll take anything that feels like I'm entering a new town, anything that feels like the wind of the road, the open landscapes, anything that's shiny and chromed or totally rusted with character, anything that feels like summer or tastes like wild berries, anything that has the chatter of a family cookout or the music of a tiki party. Or, anything reaking of roadkill. Send it to, egsilex@gmail.com, and I'll see if there's room for it with the other hitchhikers riding in the Truck bed.
 
I'm only driving the Truck for two more weeks so the sooner the better.  

Thanks.
 Edgar

Truck's editor-drivers, past, present and future, as of July 1, 2014

Present

Edgar Gabriel Silex

Future


Aug. 2014 -- Jerry McGuire
Sept. 2014 -- Karri Kokko
Oct. 2014 -- Márton Koppány
Nov. 2014 -- Burt Kimmelman
Dec. 2014 -- Chris Lott

Past

Apr. 2011 -- Kate Schapira
May 2011 -- Wendy Battin
June 2011 -- Frank Parker
July 2011 --  Skip Fox
Aug. 2011 -- Ken Wolman
Sept. 2011 -- Michael Tod Edgerton
Oct. 2011 -- Kelly Cherry
Nov. 2011 -- Andrew Burke
Dec. 2011 -- Lewis LaCook

Jan. 2012 --  Larissa Shmailo
Feb. 2012 -- Gerald Schwartz
Mar. 2012 -- Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
Apr. 2012 -- Lynda Schor
May 2012 -- David Graham
June 2012 -- Lars Palm
July 2012 --  Elizabeth Switaj
Aug. 2012 --  rob mclennan
Sept. 2012 -- Georgios Tsangaris
Oct. 2012 -- Douglas Barbour
Nov. 2012 -- Dirk Vekemans 
Dec. 2012 -- Erik Rzepka

Jan. 2013 -- Alan Britt
Feb. 2013 -- Mark Weiss
Mar. 2013-- Mary Kasimor
Apr. 2013-- John M. Bennett

May 2013--Orchid Tierney
June 2013--Victoria Marinelli
July 2013 -- Volodymyr Bilyk
Aug. 2013 -- David Howard
Sept. 2013 -- Philip Meersman
Oct. 2013 -- Chris Lott
Nov. 2013 -- Alexander Cigale
Dec. 2013 -- Catherine Daly

Jan. 2014 -- Maria Damon
Feb. 2014 -- John Oughton
Mar. 2014 -- Colin Morton and MaryLee Bragg
Apr. 2014 -- Alan Sondheim
May 2014 -- Glenn Bach
June 2014 -- Bill Pearlman

Truck's new editor-driver for July 2014

Please welcome Edgar Gabriel Silex, our new editor-driver for the month of July.

And many, many thanks to "Wandering Bill" Pearlman for his service during June.