Poetry Fall 2013 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Chris Joyner
Wrestlemania III
& other poems
Carey Russell
Visiting Hours
& other poems
Marc Pietrzykowski
Cabinet of Wonders
& other poems
Jonathan Travelstead
Prayer of the K-12
& other poems
Jennifer Lowers Warren
Our Daughter's Skin
& other poems
Jeff Burt
The Mapmaker's Legend
& other poems
Patricia Percival
Giving in to What If
& other poems
Toni Hanner
1960—Lanny
& other poems
Christopher Dulaney
Uncle
& other poems
Suzanne Burns
Window Shopping
& other poems
Katherine Smith
Mountain Lion
& other poems
Peter Kent
Surliness in the Green Mountains
& other poems
William Doreski
Gathering Sea Lavender
& other poems
Huso Liszt
Fresco, The Forlorn Virgin...
& other poems
Clifford Hill
How natural you are
& other poems
R. G. Evans
Dungeoness
& other poems
David Kann
Dead Reckoning
& other poems
Ricky Ray
The Music of As Is
& other poems
Tori Jane Quante
Creatio ex Materia
& other poems
G. L. Morrison
Baba Yaga
& other poems
Joe Freeman
In a Wood
& other poems
George Longenecker
Bear Lake
& other poems
Benjamin Dombroski
South of Paris
& other poems
Ryan Kerr
Pulp
& other poems
Josh Flaccavento
Glen Canyon Dam
& other poems
& other poems
Christine Stroud
Grandmother
& other poems
Abraham Moore
Inadvertent Landscape
& other poems
Chris Haug
Cow with Parasol
& other poems
Mariah Blankenship
Fiberglass Madonna
& other poems
Emily Hyland
The Hit
& other poems
Sam Pittman
Growth Memory
& other poems
Alex Linden
The Blues of In-Between
& other poems
Bobby Lynn Taylor
Lift
& other poems
D. Ellis Phelps
Five Poems
Alia Neaton
Cosmogony I
& other poems
Elisa Albo
Each Day More
& other poems
Noah B. Salamon
Sanctuary
& other poems
The Hit
When Daiquane is eighteen years old
and two months into his eleventh-grade year
he is hit by two chabóns who drive with intention.
They drive a Toyota Celica, green like the trees, which
do not line the block, the trees that smell like summers
Daiquane watches on TV. Even if there were trees
like along those downtown blocks with tulips at the roots, they would
just seem invisible against the place he calls home.
Trees seem everywhere in his dreams.
In a recurring cycle of sleep, when he still
lived with his mother and could still feel the heat
of angry words on her breath
when she pulled the sheets over him at night,
so soon as he would close his eyes, he would climb the pines—
besotted by limbs like ladder rungs—up
toward some other dimension.
It is a desert of death when they are through. They have
hit him once to knock him to the ground—
heavy teenage trunk uprooted—rims aglitter in the lamplight,
and then turned around—
right wheels upon the curb in the sharp swing
back towards the fallen, to cruise over
his skull and away,
into the night,
dicks hard
with the ache of adrenaline.
Gray Matter
I finish reading Bessie’s murder out loud
on the day I get assaulted at school.
There is a sudden hand-to-weave hair-fight
that descends upon the classroom
over an inadvertent brush-by
in the doorway over lip gloss
and then I try to talk one girl
off the ledge of this mania—
we are in a putrid corner of the hallway now—
my white arms out long
to lock her away from all of this
misdirected fury, and
her hands lunge into my chest
magnetize and stick
while a dewy, halcyonic mist
blurs action from cognition.
And it’s not the falling back as much as
the way the flesh of my breasts inverts
under the heels of her Dorito-licked hands
and the furnace-minded charge of
that anger,
which meets me
through the muscle-jolt
of a girl who lacks
plain agency:
that makes my feet lose the floor
and topple.
I hear some communal
gasp; someone whispers
“She pushed Ms. Emily”
and their eyes say
I am more sacrosanct
than the girl who is
bleeding from her skull-skin
in the other room
or the other in front of me
who they can already barely see
anymore. This truculent breast-push
is the apogee of violence in my life—
Bigger’s hands slide
onto Mary’s rum-beat
breasts, his hands
touch Bessie’s breasts,
resigned. Her hands slam
mine, so that
she is Bigger and
I am Mary and Bessie
and I am Bigger, too, and she
is Mary and Bessie
and she
and I
just tumble into a cycle
of perpetual subjugation
that stretches across
a span of score in which
we are all perpetrators
because of what we are born into
and trapped by the prophesy
that contains each iota
of our
inevitable lives.
I’d Had A Long Day
1.
In the basement, the Haitian kid and the Jamaican kid
finally had it out for their countries. As beef patties
flew around the cafeteria like saucers,
the Haitian kid and the Jamaican kid
fused and rolled into the hallway.
The half-dressed throngs from the locker rooms
and sweaty jerseys from the gym spilled forth
by way of intuition and chatter; they
salivated for the primacy of action. The whole building
turned in and over itself; children sluiced down the stairwells
towards inevitable circumstance.
By the time the school safety agents
rounded up and lollied down
like a troop of Shakespearian boobies, enough time had passed
for the wheels to have stopped. And when they
neared the Haitian kid and the Jamaican kid, motion
was already invisible.
In the epicenter was a mess of stress, and the agents
stiffened up at the sight. One child dialed 9-1-1 on his cell, but
reception was poor in the basement
and his voice too still for the responder.
When the EMT crew did descend upon the spot,
the gym teacher stood up from holding in the blood
somewhere along the curve where neck meets shoulder,
where the scissors still stuck in. His clothes
looked like sheets of symmetrical inkblots. He looked—
in his sweatpants—as if he had just emerged
from messily painting a house.
After lockdown, after the coroner
packed the Jamaican kid into a bag and stole
out of the school in a whisper, and after the news cameras
snuck glances through the windows into
our emergency faculty meeting,
I found myself glazed on the train platform at Utica.
2.
Two young brothers and their younger sister walk past me.
Their sneakers blink red each time their feet hit the
concrete, except
the sister’s, which blink pink and silver glitter. We are all
near the end of the platform and the air is dank. I’ve had a long day,
and I think that to myself while rubbing my eyes
with my fingers as the kids walk by.
The boys stop on either side of their sister. They
look like her bodyguards. They stand on the bumpy yellow strip,
which is too close to the platform edge. They are not
her bodyguards. She is little. I think
she is good at math. They eye each other and then
grab their sister, one brother at each of her arms. She is
squirming, but they hold strong, inching
closer to the rim. They start to hold her over.
Her feet are trying for the edge, pointing down and
straining back. I’ve had enough today. I
muster up the teacher voice. “Excuse me, gentlemen,”
I say. “Put her down. Right. Now.
Don’t think I won’t ride home with you
and tell your mother what just went on.”
They are back on the platform now, all feet
on concrete. I say, “Stand by the wall.” Their sister
slides towards me. The older of the brothers
pulls her back by the handle of her Dora knapsack.
“Young man!” My voice is shrill like my mother
when we climbed too high in the pine trees.
“Do not touch her again.”
“Whatchu gonna do bout it?”
I am red as that puddle near the gym now.
“Come here and stand with me,” I say to her. “My name is Emily.”
The younger brother is looking down at his shoes now.
The other one
goes on, “Miss Emily, see—we Bloods. My boy Pumpkin gonna
fuck you up. We gonna ride the train
and follow you home.”
He holds up a machine gun made of the air and
chouk-chouk-chouk-chouk-chouks me
with the fantastic spray of his imagination.
After the gunfire subsides, I look him in the eyes.
“I know what I’m gonna do with you,” I say.
I gently put my tote bag on the ground. “Fuck
off already lady,” he whines.
We are only a foot apart. He is small, around seven. I
lunge in, lift him hard under the armpits, and walk him
to the platform edge.
I can feel the grooves
of the yellow strip beneath my feet like
root-knolls on a trail. I can feel rushes of blood
surge into my elbows as his weight tests my arms,
outstretched.
I can feel the humid breeze from the tunnel
hit my wicked face as nearing headlights
expose the rusty tracks below us.
To Ms. Olds
When I am writing in my room
I leaf through a womb of yours
crawl into the purplish bruise
and hope my thoughts turn lucid,
that this femininity waxes meaningful,
that I am bleeding ovaries, that
I talk to my children in dreams
where I am running through ferns
to discover them inside me someday.
That I had sex, too, and practiced
speaking of this pastoral body.
I find some space of yours
in a splash of blood; your sister
peed on you—my sister’s head hit
the coffee table spinning
and I was soaked. It seemed like
pomegranates exploded into rain
and she was dripping. I laughed
at my father when he cried and sat
with my mother over her cottage cheese
and disorders, watched her slam a feeble
fist into the glass atop the kitchen table
because I wouldn’t use a fork
to eat my sushi. I am a part
of this Freudian demeanor—the long hair
down my spine like man-o-war tendrils
ready to shock or choke any toucher,
the glasses that keep me one wall
from my meeting Baudrillard—
this poetry is a matrix of movers
and your speaker is some
anthropomorphic women
trapped on the page like
the woman in the yellow
hedges of insomnia, crazed
she didn’t have the audacity to jump.
February 29th
It was early. I was standing
on the platform at 72nd street
waiting for the 1 train to arrive. I was
reading about meeting the things
that scare you. The book was
blue with a black trim
and the first page had a pleasurable texture
and was patterned in an interlocking chain
that made it look like wrapping paper
one might use
to wrap a bottle of scotch
for a grandfather
or journal for a
nascent father.
The train flew in
and a man standing
too close to the platform edge let himself
fall in front of it. He twisted
to lie back against
the face of the train for a moment
so he could hold a new perspective
and then tumbled under
as the train lurched into
the stillness of the emergency.
All women on the platform
started screaming. I
started screaming. I started screaming
from some place inside
that doesn’t even discern
the why of it. I felt
a shock of silver
shoot down
through my organs
as if my body set off a flash
and my memory
snapped a picture of the feeling
to store in the place that
registers the viscerals.
I kept looking around hoping
to see someone I knew to share
in the fear of it all
and when nobody registered
I hugged my book against
my breast so tightly that
my fingers were cold
when I released. I heard
the conductor’s voice
over the loud speaker indicate
there were delays on
the 1 train and that
the express train,
whose doors were open
across the platform,
would run local. I walked into
an almost empty car
and a woman with sunglasses on
and green hospital scrubs
hugged me into her arms
and rubbed my back. She
sat me down. She kept
repeating “It’s okay. Calm
down. It’s okay.” The train
was there as
a sitting room. His
body seemed
to collapse
into the moment of its death
as if it knew relief
was coming. There was
no fear in his posture, nor
steadfastness in his spine. He
fell like a limp fish. His coat
was olive and beige and
his blue jeans looked flaccid like water.
I did not look into the woman’s eyes
who consoled me. I did not ask
her name. I said “I need to go up
to the street,” and I walked
towards the stairs. I had been waiting
at the end of the platform
for the back of the train
so had to walk
the length of the suicide
in order to exit. People
were crowded around where
the man was under the train wheels
trying to peer into his life.
All of the people exited the train.
They wore blank expressions
through the doors and did not know
the reason for the abrupt end
to their journey. Nobody was
in control. Some new commuters
were walking onto the platform.
The express train left. I walked
onto the street and called Matt
right away. I was sobbing and hiccupping
among the suits. I told him
I loved him and then
walked the 12 blocks up to work.
Emily Hyland
lives and writes in Brooklyn, New York. Presently, she is a yoga instructor, but before this career shift, she was a high school English teacher in some of the city’s most high-needs schools; a lot of her recent poetry is inspired by that experience. She has published poems in the Brooklyn Review, The Awakenings Review, and Stretching Panties and is working to publish her collection of poetry about the reality of teaching in NYC.