in Buy Print Editions, Issue 100 (6 November 2011), Poems, Prose, Word Art, Writers from China, Writers from Colorado, Writers from Illinois, Writers from Italy, Writers from Maryland, Writers from Massachusetts, Writers from New Jersey, Writers from New Mexico, Writers from New York, Writers from Pennsylvania, Writers from Spain, Writers from Wales | Permalink
Word Problem
If 1,800 of our soldiers
went into battle,
and only 400 survived,
how many clawed the grass
before they died?
(Please show all your work.)
by Howie Good of Hyannis
Cloudburst
I finish walking the dogs at Jeff's, racing the cold front. Angina ebbs, sky blackens, a few dozen raindrops smack the windshield. A whiff of petrichor and Bach's Orchestral Suite #3 graces the radio: I'm content. Then all hell envelops me. Gravity temporarily trebles rending water out of air. A half-hour of biblically-proportioned rain and lightning, street gutters overflow, I can't see. Now it stops. Just stops.
by Ray Scanlon of Rehoboth
Birdsong II
Six in the morning
and the world makes
a certain sound,
like the color red
mixed with longing
and a little rain.
by Howie Good of Hyannis
To A Grown Daughter
Pour a glass of whiskey
on your heartache
and consider starting over
and then go to the zoo
though it wasn’t
the polar bear’s fault
by Howie Good of Hyannis
Bone
Because
you’re my catapult
my antibiotic
a barbwire camp
why not
hold me while I’m naked
just squeeze
by Howie Good of Hyannis
Tangled
After only
three rings,
the machine
picks up.
I leave
a message
someone
will erase
without ever
playing.
The heart is
a knotted
ball of yarn.
by Howie Good of Hyannis
Smoke
Cigarette: caustic, ashy death. Pipe: cloys. Cigar: intoxicating, evocative. Heady as wood fires and burning leaves, sensuous as a woman's Chanel. Port. Gunpowder. Mark Twain, H. L. Mencken, Wm. F. Buckley. The Sherlock Holmes monograph. Connecticut River valley tobacco fields. Writing of Hester Prynne in my 1920s dorm room. Rusty and Uncle Edward cruising Boston's North End. Jeff and my grandkids playing wiffle ball.
by Ray Scanlon of Rehoboth
Phases
The moon is only 57 percent of full.
Who should I blame?
Which of my forefathers wore
a long, black cape
as if hoping to hide a deformity?
by Howie Good of Hyannis
Silicone Salubrious Sentiment
Silicone salubrious sentiment of destruction. Spinning fabrication of streaming, sucking, sexual elation. As the dice tumble 6, 7, 9, will luck come my way? Almost smoking my dreams of lustful lips to the end of corruption-disruption-seduction. I believe in love...today.
by NARDO of Framingham
Power to the People
Casual observers can see a dandelion's intense yellow bionic energy aura; I compute that a typical ball field will power a small city, including its vehicles. Any fool can build a collector of garnets, fluorite crystals, and duct tape—tricky part is the tinfoil shielding to make the thing practical. The suits and sunglasses in the dark green Prius are no problem. They back off when they get a load of my light saber.
by Ray Scanlon of Rehoboth
Lies and Consequences
Aylward’s mother warned him, “Every time you lie, your nose grows longer.”
He laughed at his mother’s naiveté.
“That’s just an old wives’ tale, a fairy tale for foolish women and stupid children.”
Eventually, Aylward’s nose grew so long, he tripped over it whenever he opened his mouth.
by Sue Ann Connaughton of Salem
A Good Man
I pick Joel up for our doubles match; he says Nora left in the night and took Andy. We forfeit and open a case of balls in the foyer, serving into the frames of Nora’s paintings. “Fault! Double Fault!” he shouts. We have a good, drunken laugh until Joel takes a knee, and I look up at the bare walls and nail heads, letting him wipe his tears on his wristband, as if we’re still young men only suffering from the heat.
by Erik Doughty of Boston
Children's Hour
My granddaughter, grave Alice, concentrates on holding the Chianti bottle steady while her father pulls the cork, and she cautiously sniffs the open bottle. Leaving the kitchen she peeks under the lid of the simmering shells to check their progress. In the yard her twin, laughing Allegra, does cartwheels on the trampoline. Her static-charged hair radiates straight out;
pine needles jump away as her finger nears.
by Ray Scanlon of Rehoboth
Portrait of the Artist as a Space Invader
I am a space invader here to inject color, mosaic in form, into the gray drab concrete of which you power up power down five days per week; I am here to make you look twice reset reset as you pass in the trolley staring down a faded bill that now reset reset projects a bright green ghost where the insurer’s head used to be; please press select please press select
by Kevin Balance of The Wood
Jack and the Russian
A woman wore tight clothes and Ace Bandages to hide all the extra skin that drooped from her body. She sat at a bar and attracted boys with a wet tongue and beached skin as she sipped their Jack and Cokes. Her ex, who had loved her before the lipo sucked her thin, looked on in horror. He gulped his White Russian and considered showing the boys their wedding photo. Back when she was fat and wore a smile as big as his.
by Dusty Buchinski of Pittsfield
Barely 15
Barely 15. Crawl sky-line-dope. Addicted white-aphrodisiac lust. Jump wire. Consume, control, create my nebulous machine-chocolate dream. Electric-ecstasy light explodes the virgin flesh. Raging metal lifts you to the sky. Empty chasm of granular gold dreams melt the sun. Dionysian winds carry you into the evolutionary-evocative-echoes. Search. Fulfill. Sea-secular-soul. Doomed to repeat my past. Love-lust-lost.
by Perry Nardone of Framingham
Signals
Small boats sit by Aveiro’s river mouth, bows scattered as compass points, small scoops on an interminably huge sea rising to the ever-imagined line of sight where the gallant Genovese fell off the known world. They are not deserted, though faintly cold for oarsmen who walk down this beach behind me, stomachs piqued and perched with wine, salted hands still warm with women, mouths rich with memory and signals.
by Tom Sheehan of Saugus
Basho Said
He said, "water’s sound." He said, "the sound of water." He said, "the water echoes." He said, "suddenly into it a lithe frog leaps." He technically said, "mizo no oto," but he has been paraphrased as saying simply, "kerplunk!"
She is the frog. She said nothing of the sort.
by Mike Miller of Stockbridge
