3 Poems by Eric Paul Shaffer

 

 

 

 

What I Least Expect

 

 

In the morning, what I least expect is steak for breakfast

although I will take eggs, over easy, please, and some

chunked papaya.  What I expect less is the barn owl

 

swooping from the kiawe tree and landing on the green

painted planks of the picnic table, pale, heart-shaped face

 

gaping and amazed.  What I don't expect is the silence

spilling over the south field as the sun sets because

what I really do expect is the chittering of silverbills

 

and the slanting sparkle and spit of skylark song winding

through a blue too bright to spot him in.  I never expect

 

to see the Black Francolin though I daily hear his piercing

call preceded by that clear thin whistle.  Nor do I expect

to see the rim of Haleakalā after noon, but sometimes

 

that mad clarity remains all day till sunset pinks the slope.

And what I least expect, what I realize I never expect,

 

is whatever happens right in front of me as I walk uphill

on the fading two-track lane through knee-high grass

beyond the hibiscus bush and disappear over the crest.

 

 

 

 

Assault on Comet Tempel 1, or On Shooting Fire at Ice

 

 

Appalling as such missions are, I am no longer appalled.

Spending 333 million dollars to throw 333 pounds of pennies

            at a dirty snowball 88 million miles away is essential

                        to see what's the matter anywhere but here.

Well, that's no surprise.

The comet is old as Earth, an ort of ice and dirt left over

                                                after the age too many believe

                        creation was complete, and everybody knows

taking a potshot at the universe

                                    always advances human knowledge.

It's as simple as shooting stars in a barrel.

                                    But, hey, keep your chin up!

Over our heads is a lesson as fresh as yesterday's headlines.

Tonight, we've learned a great truth about how we discover

                                                what we want to know

about all the wonderful things in the universe: we hit them.

 

 

 

 

 Planets, Houses, and the Night Always Above Us

 

 

The celestial houses are ordered and mobile and steady in their progress

            through the night, and I love the dark sky for the perverse illusion

of permanence over the shallow pitch of roofs on Earth capping only woes.

            Thunder rumbles within, and a pale moon wanes over walls in need

of spackle and paint.  I have no counsel, and none would hear me if I did,

so I stand on the grass in a dark yard.  All I do is listen and stare at stars.

 

            In the quiet house behind me, my affections are deep, dull currents

I don’t understand any more than I understand the reason for the narrow,

golden zone where life flourishes around the sun and we just happen to be.

My luck is not mine, and the constellations in my heart change only slowly.

The orbits of my hours are regular if elliptical.

 

                                                                        My brain spins like Mercury,

flitting around the Sun, and my heart is Jupiter, ponderous, thick, cloudy,

rolling a red eye around, slowly regarding the universe.  Orbited by moons

of complexity and wonder, I gaze on glittering rings around a near neighbor,

                        marveling without coveting the beauty.  I’m a great gas giant

of latitudinal storms and unbreathable elements in winds blowing fast

            and fundamentally through the whirls my thoughts leave on my face.

 

I’m as bald as Mars, and I cartwheel through my orbit on hands and feet

like Uranus so the sun can kiss my axis, and my other pole directs attention

to darkness.  My words are as unexpected and blue and wobbly at the edge

of the universe as Neptune is.  My passions are as great as the pressure

on Venus, veiled not for fear but for the wisdom in concealing the heart

                                                            and keeping what we love close.

 

 

 

Eric Paul Shaffer is the author of five books of poetry, including Lāhaina Noon (2005), Living at the Monastery, Working in the Kitchen (2001), and Portable Planet (2000). His poems appear in Slate, American Scholar, North American Review, The Sun Magazine, and Threepenny Review; Australia's Going Down Swinging, Island, and Quadrant; Canada's CV2, Dalhousie Review, Event, and Fiddlehead; Éire's Poetry Ireland Review and Southword; England's Iota, Prole, and Stand Magazine; and New Zealand's Poetry NZ and Takahē.

 

 

 

 

 

Poem by Jim Davis

 

 

 

 

Cityscape with Cupcake Tops

 

 

Crenulated fleck from the horseknuckle leaf

found its way into my coffee. A world of orbits

 

& gravity faults. A little life suspended

in ivy flowers, hoverflies of the bakery. It pleases me

 

to think that I have survived razorblades

hidden in peanut butter & cheese. Pickled beef tongue

 

behind the deli glass, beside oxtail rounds, ceramic bowl

painted like an egg, of pig parts used for soup, here

 

is where I bought the coffee now swimming

with whatever ecosystem finds origin

 

on the leaf of a horseknuckle tree. I will discard

the tender lower halves. This afternoon

 

I’ll take the number of a set-dresser, costumed

as an Atom Bomb – I will not call, I’ll be busy

 

with the one doing handstands in the kitchen, she

of the purple underthings and sweet potato maki.

These are the days

I missed in my previous life. I’ll squeeze color

from overpass graffiti, all the rainbow pills I have

 

swallowed, emptied in a marsh within the clawed

porcelain tub weighing down a single-room apartment.

 

I’ve used the razorblades to carve a bar of soap into

many smaller soaps. In your 20s you are the victim

 

only if you suffer, she said, the only good reason to turn

your back to nature is to even out your tan, she said

 

as she stuck her finger into my cup, as we settled

our freckled faces into the shadow of the bakery

 

where a spectral patch of grass smells like French

vanilla, cinnamon swirl, small dewdrops of gasoline.

 

It’s pretty good, she said, wouldn’t you say?

Yes, I said, good, picking ivy flower petals for my cup.

 

 

 

Jim Davis is an MFA candidate at Northwestern University. His work has appeared in Wisconsin Review, Seneca Review, Adirondack Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Contemporary American Voices, among many others. Jim lives, writes, and paints in Chicago, where he reads for TriQuarterly and edits North Chicago Review

 

 

 

 

 

Poem by Sara Clancy

 

 

 

Against Jazz
 

That saxophone blows pure
provocation against the backbone of ordinary
air. I hear it as a subatomic clue, a node
of liquid temptation swimming up current
and straight into the crucible of my routine.

If I dip into hesitation like an avoidance
maneuver and loan out these bones of my pelvis,
I am sure to recover them in 5/4 time. Dirty,
duplicitous and porous as they ever were.

 

 

 

Sara Clancy is a Philadelphia transplant to the Desert Southwest. Her poems have appeared, or are forthcoming in The Madison Review, The Smoking Poet, Verse Wisconsin,  The Linnet's Wings, Burningword Literary Journal, Owen Wister Review, Pale Horse Review, VAYAVYA and Houseboat, where she was a featured poet. She lives out in the toolies with her husband, their dog and a 23 year old goldfish named Darryl.

 

 

 

 

 

2 poems by Martin Willitts Jr

 

 

 

 

Winter Solstice

 

 

The shortest day in the year, the one where darkness

walked towards school and the only light was snow,

and the land would wonder if the sun would return

so it turned its empty trees trying to open the night.

All the animals had been gorging food in preparation,

for these were the famine months. Everyone would forget

the sun and despair. The long hungry shadows were everywhere.

These were the days before refrigeration. When ice

in the river would be stored for summer on straw.

This is when it was important to have a root cellar,

or cold storage, and knew how to can. This is when bulbs

slept, dreaming of the future, while we asked about spring.

We would be assured it would be back. It was comforting.

This was before polar vortexes became common. This

was before we tried to shorten the life of the planet.

This was before we heard that it was opposite

on the other side of the world and it made no sense.

Now nothing makes any sense. Too many disbelieve.

The animals and plants and trees are confused.

What we are doing to the planet makes less sense.

 

 

 

 

Chittenango Falls

 

 

In the dark gravity of these falls

is a muteness of grief

in the air and leaves.

 

Light passes through its hands.

There are seasons we cannot imagine.

The firm signature of changes comes anyway.

I will not see every day, these changes.

Light is such a giver and taker.

This entire world is built on promises.

And what would happen if nature forgot

to keep those promises? It is quiet, now,

and a kingfisher is the stillness of grass.

All of love is gravity towards the heart.

It is blue and white wings of a kingfisher

rising from water beds of falls and light.

Shadows from leaves turns towards silence.

All weariness jumps out of our body.

Light from leaves is fire wanting love.

 

 

 

Martin Willitts Jr is the winner of the 2012 Big River Poetry Review’s William K. Hathaway Award ; co-winner of the 2013 Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest; winner of the 2013 “Trees” Poetry Contest; winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest. He has 7 full-length collections including national ecology winner for “Searching for What You Cannot See” (Hiraeth Press, 2013), “Before Anything, There Was Mystery” (Flutter Press, 2014), and “Irises, the Lightning Conductor For Van Gogh's Illness” (Aldrich Press). He has 28 chapbooks including national chapbook contest winning “William Blake, Not Blessed Angel But Restless Man” (Red Ochre Press, 2014), and "Swimming in the Ladle of Stars" (Kattywompus Press,2014).