December of 2009

Rita Stein
four poems





Dogsense


I'm just so tired of all the advice that people have been

Throwing round these days and days

People speak and a dog responds and that dog is the

One who might be making sense

The computer puts capitals in and makes my language

More formal than is my desire; it makes me more aware

That a dog can make more sense and be more simpatico


Can I feebly end this lament with a song that barks as well?





The Bridge


The first thing to notice is the brick

that is not the color we normally

assign to a brick.


The next thing to notice is the fountain

in which a tree has been planted.

The brick is next to the fountain

but far from the tree.


I am near the bridge, listening

too hard and looking too long.

I am in outline, not (even).


There really doesn’t have to be

irony and distance when we are looking


and bricks really can be the color

of bricks, (especially).


Everyone takes up with someone.

Think de Kooning and politicians.

Make your escape bigger (than)


an irrevocable change from table into orange.





Cyclone


The temperate weather

mid November

fools rush forward in glee

I bothered everyone

sober, unbelievably so


Soon a savage mania

turns into an absorbing

shopping spree for moisturizer-

all kinds, oil free, unscented, SPF


This, and sunglasses, tight jeans,

the Williamsburg Bridge

my romance brilliantly flourishing





M Train


My eyes observing

from the train

First a light fog

then a small lifting

for the sun

The gentleman who

catches my eye

sometimes

has big headphones

on today

I like that

weird gear

He looks like

a Martian

with a

doughnut head

The train

is always

held

at Myrtle

It makes

me sad

to know

that someday I

won’t be

on this

train

This is the

best

commute

I

ever had



--------
Rita Stein originally hails from Baltimore, Md. She currently lives in New York and is a middle school librarian in Bushwick. She has had some poems published in Stained Sheets, Blue Collar Review, Octopus Dreams and September Eleven: Maryland Voices-Reaction, Reflection, Resilience. Rita remains an active MFA resister in these troubled times.

november of 2009

Sasha Fletcher
four poems

and in the morning when i rise

I will build you a small house and I will fill it with many birds. I will take out all of my teeth and plant them in the ground. I will make them into gloves. I will make you a hat from them. It will always be smiling. You can sail it away on a river I will make of our floorboards. I will make breakfast. I will look out the window and it will strike me that there is always something about the movement of clouds that I don’t know if I will ever understand.

don't think twice it's alright i swear

I was downstairs and drinking a glass of water and I was thinking. She called down the stairs to ask what I was thinking about. I thought I heard a dull thud. I made my way upstairs, where she was standing over the bed, choking the life out of me. I was then stuffed under the bed, where it seemed quite a pile was growing. I asked if I had just seen her choking the life out of me. She said No. You saw me doing no such thing she said. I asked if she was hiding anything and she said no. What about under the bed. Do not she said Look under the bed. Not under any circumstances she said. I asked what was under the bed and she said there were buckets under the bed. I asked her what was in the buckets and she told me that they were full of tears. I asked her why they were full of tears and she just looked at me. What about behind the window I said. Behind the window and across the street there were four kids standing around with sheets on their heads. They were standing perfectly still. I could hear their feet moving. I could hear their sheets rustling. I could hear the wind move through them. I could hear their breathing. I could hear it carried up to me on the arms of the wind through the open window and she heard it too and the world seemed to stop for an instant. The world became a sharp intake of breath, and it marched forward. The kids marched forward. Our bones walked out of our mouths and joined them.

my mouth is full of trouble

I watched the clouds circle the moon in the sky and I listened as said sky filled with hands clapping. I stood there as the clouds drowned the moon. I once drowned in an ocean of tears. When I came back I could grow teeth like a shark does which is one after another and my supply was inexhaustible in that it never got tired. Using these endless teeth I carried on conversations with my betters. Because of this I was dragged off in several different directions by several wild horses at the same time. I was dragged to a far off land in war time. In this land every soldier wrote their life story on a piece of paper and swallowed it in their mouths. When they lost their lives their breath left their body and as it left it took the notes on the wind where they found their way home.

some things such as i've never seen before

There were kids in the yard holding a box. What do you have there I said to them. They said nothing. They said Go away. They said Go fuck yourself. They said Please leave us alone and they said it with their eyes. I reached over to grab the box from them but their arms and backs and heads wrapped around it. I went inside and climbed the stairs to the roof. I opened the door to the roof and dragged the bench to the end of the roof and I stood on the bench and looked down onto the alley and the kids had the box and I said to them Don't open that box and they looked up at me like Go away like Fuck you like Please please please leave us alone won't somebody just let us be and let us have what we want to have. When they opened the box little clouds came up on out of their mouths and their bodies crumpled up like paper and a magician walked out of the box and gathered up what he could while he could before the wind blew them away and he folded the ones he managed to keep into paper airplanes and he sent them on up into the sky where they sailed too close to the sun and caught on fire. He had folded one or two up in his pocket for safe keeping and then they caught on fire too and his suit caught on fire too and he caught on fire too and that is why you don’t take things that belong to somebody else isn't it now isn't it.

--------------------
Sasha Fletcher's novella WHEN ALL OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED MARCHING BANDS WILL FILL THE STREETS AND WE WILL NOT HEAR THEM BECAUSE WE WILL BE UPSTAIRS IN THE CLOUDS is due out from ml press in December of the year 2010. Sasha is an MFA candidate in poetry at Columbia University in the city of New York.

october of 2009

CAConrad
four poems from The Book of Frank


Frank grew crows for hands

it was a difficult childhood

at dinner during prayer
his crows flapped
excited in the name of the Lord
"FRANK! KEEP STILL!" Mother hollered
"did you wash your crows!?
did you wash your FILTHY STINKING CROWS!?"

when Father died
Frank was found
straddling him
his crows picking the seven
gold fillings


****


"would you sign
my book Mr. Poe?"
Frank asks the pile of bones
amidst shovels of dirt

"why certainly young
man" answers Frank in a
different voice


****


"I'm here for the show" the man said
looking under Frank's shirt for the door

"I'm no theater" Frank said

a line formed

must he admit them all?

many had umbrellas

a blind woman
waited with
her dog

"it's gonna be a great show" someone said
"but when's he gonna let us in?"

Frank's tears began to fall

someone ripped his doors open

they filled him for an hour


****


pig says to Frank
"this fence keeps you in your world"
Frank says to pig
"this fence keeps you in your world"
pig says to Frank
"this fence keeps you in your world"
Frank says to pig
"this fence keeps you in your world"
pig says to Frank
"this fence keeps you in your world"


-------------------------------------
CAConrad is the recipient of THE GIL OTT BOOK AWARD for The Book of Frank (Chax Press, 2009). He is also the author of Advanced Elvis Course (Soft Skull Press, 2009), (Soma)tic Midge (Faux Press, 2008), Deviant Propulsion (Soft Skull Press, 2006), and a forthcoming collaboration with poet Frank Sherlock titled THE CITY REAL & IMAGINED: Philadelphia Poems (Factory School Books, 2010). CAConrad is the son of white trash asphyxiation whose childhood included selling cut flowers along the highway for his mother and helping her shoplift. He invites you to visit him online at http://caconrad.blogspot.com/ and also with his friends at http://phillysound.blogspot.com/