Archive
Hospital at Night
the belly of a whale
throb of a great heart
heavy breathing
dark and light by turns
I drift in the sway
of a giant kelp bed
small nudges on my body
minnows nosing a hand hanging
over the side of a boat
all around me nattering sounds
high-pitched blips
that seem to have nothing to do with me
message from across the hall
You’ve never told the truth
in your whole life
Una Nichols Hynum writes, “Old fashioned, I like a book in my hands and have never submitted to on line journals before. It feels like I’m sending my poems off into the ether. But why not?”
Between
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By way of a bio, Thomas Ferrella writes:
it’s about exploration
and passion
and seeing
hopefully without limits
The Dog as Healer, the Snake as Cure
by Jeffery Beam
And there are records of many cures
effected by the healing tongues of both
dogs & serpents during the incubation
of those who came praying for healing.
Maria Leach, God Had a Dog
Fear nothing, no matter
what. In your sleep, that perilous
place, will come
dogs & serpents licking
with their tongues.
Ointments will be spread,
foul odors & sharp pain
diminished. Wounds healed
miraculously. Sorrows erased.
The narrow hairy face
of man’s best friend, your
four-legged mentor, will
embrace you. The serpent
in your belly will laugh.
Fear nothing, no matter
what. It has been
this way
forever.
And will be
again.
Jeffery Beam (website) is the author of numerous award-winning books of poetry including An Invocation, The Beautiful Tendons: Uncollected Queer Poems 1969 – 2007, Visions of Dame Kind, An Elizabethan Bestiary: Retold, The Fountain , and the spoken word CD with multimedia, What We Have Lost: New and Selected Poems 1977-2001. The song cycle, Life of the Bee, with composer Lee Hoiby, continues to be performed on the international stage, and can be heard on Albany Record’s New Growth. Beam is poetry editor of the print and online literary journal Oyster Boy Review and a botanical librarian in the Biology-Chemistry Library at UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Sarcoma
You are the anti-fetus,
a hungry skinless whelp
feeding on the stuff of life,
the rising sap, the savory—
ravenous, you crave
what can never be enough.
When you come
we arm ourselves
we slash and burn
to stop you from planting
your pernicious taproot
in such fragile sod.
But ours is a primitive
weaponry, no match
for you who are so hard
to do away with, you
who fasten on
and won’t let go.
Marilyn L. Taylor’s award-winning poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Poetry, The American Scholar, Measure, Iris, and The Formalist. Her sixth and latest collection, Going Wrong, was published by Parallel Press in July of 2009. She is a Contributing Editor for The Writer magazine, where her articles on poetic craft appear bimonthly. Marilyn is also serving as Poet Laureate of Wisconsin for 2009 and 2010, and is happy to report that she’s enjoying every minute of it. For more about Marilyn and her poetry, please visit her website.
Gloriosa
by Heidi Hart
after a song collected by Alfonso X de Castille (1221-1284)
Press your face to the earth. The Glorious One
will pass by in the night, she who brings
the dead to life again, she who straightens
out the broken limbs. Listen, pilgrim girl,
she’ll break your backwards feet while you
are fast asleep. Did you expect your healing
to be painless? No, you’ll cry out.
You’ll think you are dying. And your father
will not see the visitor who works your soles
like clay. Pilgrim girl, press your face
closer to the earth, the ground you’ll walk
for the first time, forever, circling the world
until the day you are too tired to walk
and lie down, crying out, waiting for the Holy
Mother to appear and break your body
backwards, snap you free into the blessed dark.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
Healing Buddha
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Katherine Durham Oldmixon (website) recently edited a special issue of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review dedicated to ekphrastic poetry. Her chapbook Water Signs, a finalist for the New Women’s Voices Award, was released in January 2009 by Finishing Line Press. Katherine lives healthily and happily in Austin, TX, with her husband, Arturo Lomas Garza.
La Virgen de la Candelaria
1542
I came of age
the day of my first miracle —
light body of vegetable paste
become human
and healing a child
dead through the throat
with her father’s knife.
He will tell anyone who listens
that I draw angels to me
and that I am the mother
of all compassion.
1755
Feria! Near my sanctuary pilgrims
dance, thrill to fireworks, sing,
cook, nurse infants, eat, drink and
drink some more, make love and promises,
sell amulets, candles, toys, mango and tortillas,
buy burros, ride the merry-go-round.
They have walked for days
and not slept for nights,
have visited my little well
and come to me caked in my mud
with pleas for my intervention.
Since they entertain me,
I grant it. Those who repent of coming
I turn to stone.
2001
My mud cakes are novelties for the young who are grateful that their parents at least now ride in vans, don’t freeze for the sake of a pasty virgin.
The road is paved to my door and the songs are thin. It was the music and the suffering that brought rain. I can’t do miracles without rain.
Too many are stone, lost to the colors of hope. I took it for granted — fields of fire, dancers in the atrium, the dusty taste of faith, aroma of annual penitence.
Lisken Van Pelt Dus is a poet, teacher, and martial artist living in western Massachusetts. Her poems can be found in numerous journals, including Conduit, The Comstock Review, and Main Street Rag, and her first poetry collection, Everywhere at Once, was published last year by Pudding House Press.
Materia Medica
by Heidi Hart
In the gutter, maple keys, dried elm pods,
human hair, a shredded document
I gather with my bare hands, stuff into
a plastic bag and carry home. I twist it all
into a tall clear bottle that held spring water
from Norway, empty for a year. Long hair
catches on my thumbnail. I turn over
one thread of the paper with its font too small
to read, even if I could sew back its words.
An elm pod cracks and spills its seed. I fill
my cryptic and useless prescription,
knowing that the world’s hungry
for healing, not knowing what crushed herb
or tincture it can take. All I have is this,
a cylinder of silenced words and seeds that
will not grow, sloughed human cells,
bacteria that bloom invisibly in summer heat.
I add a sprig of fresh thyme.
Steam is rising in the glass.
Heidi Hart holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her published work includes the memoir Grace Notes: The Waking of a Woman’s Voice (University of Utah Press, 2004) and the four-poet collection Edge by Edge (Toadlily Press, 2007). She is a singer and voice teacher who also teaches creative writing at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
In/organic Transmissions
Video link. (If you can’t see the video, you need to download Flash.)
Artist’s statement
“In/organic Transmissions” functions as a conversation that is not taking place. In it, elements of natural disintegration attempt to engage with the artificial. This piece entertains notions of health and communication on both micro and macro levels.
Patricia McInroy (website) graduated with an MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2007. Her video work has been screened at film festivals in New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and New York. It is also being shown at schools in Maine, Massachusetts, Florida and South Carolina. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she teaches photography to incarcerated youth through the Fresh Eyes program.
qarrtsiluni 