Cliffs in the garage, struggling to open an oil can. I’m sweating over my homework. Once more, Martha’s in her bedroom being terrified by “The Book Of Revelations.” Father is giving the grass a good old fashioned butch-cut. Scrub by scrub, ache by ache, a rough wire brush, a linoleum floor, are taking our mother … Continue reading
Category Archives: Poetry 2011
House Beautiful — Liz Drayer
This tray looks like one in my grandmother’s breakfront. We have so much stuff on the walls. Only forty dollars for hammered brass. Get it if you love it. The owner imports all his merchandise from Turkey. It looks good over the sofa. It could fall and hit the baby. How about over the piano. … Continue reading
Tom Mix — William B. Wright
Cruising at eighty miles per hour, two-door coup, blood shot eyes that pristine cowboy hat above a stiff collar, still flecked from a morning haircut. You’re getting old, Tom too old for that blonde sitting next to you— on top of you, with her head bobbing, bobbing, bobbing. Your hands shaking, blue veins showing through … Continue reading
At the Gym — James Valvis
Here where people come to get beautiful there’s no elegance. The forty-and-fat farts and hopes no one hears. The manicure model sweats like a trucker filling up in August. The fey-and-fabulous in the seventies headband averts his eyes from the wall-length mirror, frowns down at his shriveled ball bulge. Even the musclehead, lats like tucked … Continue reading
Riddle — James Valvis
The aloof, thin woman with the blonde hair glides onto her treadmill, taps panel buttons like a musician playing a harpsichord, and begins jogging with perfect posture, hands balled like diamonds, so you know she’s coasted since birth and will until death, while on the creaking treadmill next to her, a frumpy woman wipes ooze … Continue reading
Peculiar Smoke — Michael T. Young
The smell of clove cigarettes climbed the escalators carried in a basket of nostalgias bound to its claustrophobic weave as tight as our studio back in the summer of 1990 where I first tasted that peculiar smoke, three of us living in one room for the sake of art, love and adventure, the August heat … Continue reading
The Tree — Andrew Spencer
1. Holding the weight of this silent cathedral on my conscience, I peer into the basin of holy water. Wavering at the door, thoughts of purity and impurity. Afraid to sully the waters, afraid to go on without their sheen on my fingertips and forehead, the sign of the cross, cross my fingers and enter. … Continue reading
Dutchman’s Pipe — Ann Robinson
What scent, whiff drove this creature into the wrong hour? The fly circled the rim of the piped flower, wandered into the fluted portals. This heart-shaped flower resting on a vine, small trap of loveliness. The fly returned to my petalled civilization, drunk with pain, dying on my flagstone. In my garden, beauty is dangerous. … Continue reading
Without Turning On the Lights — Eric Paul Shaffer
For years, I’ve arrived late at my own door, and entered without turning on lights. It’s not I’m at ease with a house of shadows. I’m as frightened as anyone by the horrors night can conceal. Yet when I was a boy, my sight was so poor I learned the arrangement of rooms, the angles … Continue reading
Paul and Victoria — Eric Paul Shaffer
Paul and Victoria are the people people who think they know us think we are. To me, they say, “Paul, why don’t you and Victoria join us?” For drinks. For dinner. For long enough for a crowd to gather and you to fade from mind and memory as your names do when we frown to … Continue reading
Coe Review 