Tuesday poem #243 : Lissa McLaughlin : Garden (New Jersey)

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden And there he put the man he had formed Eddie. And Joanie his woman. And kids Frankie and Angela.  And toll-collectors excited by quarter rolls.  And McMansions.  And everywhere mortgages leapt and municipalities rolled in shortfalls.  And lo the smog did foment and the kids had children. And in the Pine Barrens geese took bets.  And barges towed shit to Teaneck.  Then did the shore rejoice with casinos. And Frankie begat The Boss who begat Latifah.   

A few potatoes winked from the dirt.  The kids ran around like deer.  And those syringes in the tide? They chimed like merry bells.

Lissa McLaughlin is less interested in language—verbal or visual—than in what it does to us to discover it. Her short fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The North American Review, and in the Best American Short Story series. Burning Deck Press published four books of her prose poems, the last of which, Quit, appeared in 2015. From 1985-2005 she taught fiction writing at the university level, and continues to work as an itinerant editor of fiction, creative nonfiction, and writing for children. Since 1998 she has worked as a clinical expressive arts facilitator, initially with acute  psychiatric clients, then with children visiting family in Hospice and kids on the autism spectrum. She also volunteers as a tutor of ESL. She has seen language arise spontaneously in people who, pushed to the edge of experience, and with small assistance, make coherent worlds the rest of us can't comprehend.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #242 : Kate Siklosi : [ fig (iterative)

time holds the wake dearly.

syllables congeal

into smooth stamped clauses

to translate the weather of a face,

hand.

bite, nail.

the vagrant and executive

never change

but grammatical lines are traversed

like ions across a circuit maze

between the sun and lately

i fast on roses

to eat the me in meaning is

an

i n g

must you tie my hands

to your book

bury my river with your sands,

to come up for water.

for language is more difficult

than space

more fluid

than the body

yet transparent against

the ground of

Kate Siklosi lives, writes, and thinks in Toronto. She holds a PhD in English Literature but has defenestrated from the academic ivory tower in search of warmer climes. She is a writer by day and a poet by night. Her first chapbook – a collection of really neat letraset poems – is coming out with above/ground press this spring. She is the cofounding editor of Gap Riot Press and is currently working on a manuscript of experimental petro-poetry, Love Songs for Hibernia.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #241 : Ryan Eckes : chase scene

good luck in all your future endeavors, types the middle manager

chewing on a slim jim. back at home we’re rinsing off the isms. it’s

the wknd, and the middle class are out volunteering for the one

percent. we grow free w/out them, though they keep calling. feel

them push monday into sunday, friday into saturday. one percent

of one smidgen of a dead cockroach’s heart casts its vote, finally,

for the middle class. can freedom be a pigeon? if it kicks you the

right way. if it spits on your shoe and laughs in your face. if in your

neighbor’s face you look long enough to lose your mask, and you

feel it fly away, feel it shit on a boss—any boss—then yes.

Ryan Eckes is a poet who lives in South Philadelphia. His books include Valu-Plus and Old News (Furniture Press 2014, 2011). You can read some of his poems in Tripwire, The Brooklyn Rail, Slow Poetry in America Newsletter, Supplement, Public Pool, Whirlwind and on his blog. He is the recipient of a 2016 Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan

Tuesday poem #240 : Rebecca Salazar : A death preceded by three auguries

i.

In your last week, when they say you might stop eating, you eat

twenty seven watermelons whole. The brothers ogle:

pink juice parsing the lines of your face and depositing

carbuncles, sugar gems on your cracked lips and chin,

like the starched stars that web across summer fruit rinds.

ii.

The hospice halls heavy and cloying with jasmine and rose.

We are immersed. After lights-out, the sisters sneak

from the guest room, both drunk on perfume more viscous

than honey. Their shoes syrup-stick to the floor before

they reach your bed. They sway, sick with the brilliant scent.

iii.

Morning sickness wakes the mother, hot sleep wicking down

the hard sphere of her belly. A blue votive flame

draws her to eyes to the phone at her bedside, the number

unknown, cool voice calling for warmth just as you

signal sounds like her name in your tapering sleep.

Rebecca Salazar is the author of Guzzle (Anstruther), and an editor for The Fiddlehead and icehouse poetry. Her poetry appears in Prism, Minola Review, and Cosmonauts Avenue, and her non-fiction in The Puritan and Partisan Magazine. Originally from Sudbury, Ontario, she is currently a PhD candidate and Vanier scholar in New Brunswick.

the Tuesday poem is curated by rob mclennan