Silence prolongs itsnothing to pass between
us but this
lingering in the doorway,
and then you offer
watermelon, cold,
brought up this afternoon
from the well, melon left
in the dark water too long
then given by you to me
with the dolmas left over
from yesterday’s meal.
–Jeremy Dae Paden,
Broken Tulips
Accents Publishing
Our adopted philodendronthe window sill, a survivor
thriving in August
heat, taking the direct sun
like a champ. I watch
each new leaf sprout
like a little waxy bullet.
Still, I water it daily,
like clockwork.
–Aimee Mackovic,
Bigger Than They Appear
(Accents Publishing)
I open the door to the drug denpromises to Mama
tattooed across my face.
I sing them their favorite lullabies,
forge their names on love letters
addressed to their children,
share one last ‘remember when’
and laugh until our stomachs hurt.
I hug and squeeze them as hard as I can,
then usher them all—dealers and users alike,
into the afterlife, with the courage
and conviction of a suicide bomber.
–Frank X Walker,
About Flight
(Accents Publishing)
Multidisciplinary artist and Danville, Kentucky native, Frank X Walker, is the former Poet Laureate of Kentucky, and Professor in the department of English and the African American and AfricanaStudies Program at the University of Kentucky. The founding editor of Pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture is a Cave Canem Fellow, co-founder of the Affrilachian Poets, and the author of seven collections of poetry including Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for best poetry collection. The Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry recipient is the originator of the word, Affrilachia, and wholly committed to deconstructing and forging a new definition of a pluralistic Appalachia.
The man–Olya Stoyanova,
translated from Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
Olya Stoyanova was born on September 14th, 1977 in Sofia. She holds a degree in journalism from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. She has worked as a journalist for the newspaper Dnevnik, and has served as the editor for several literary publications. Olya is the author of three poetry books, most recently Happiness Street (2013), as well as a novel, a travel guide and a short story collection. She has won prizes for her poetry, prose, journalism and playwriting. Olya is the mother of three children and lives in Sofia.
A Love Poem, Because Lovewas his name—he was no part
allegory, but tended bar in the town
of Jackson when not downing clear
whisky or beating his good friends
in a game of poker, though I guess
Love did have a lot in common
with love: he was inscrutable and pretty
particular as to where he spent his
time, despite the best girls loving
him, and only him, with his dark
hair so much like his mother’s—
and everyone knew how she’d fallen
and struck her brow on a rock,
her children seated around the table
inside and chicken ’n’ dumplings still
in the oven. Love carried her
with him, somewhere in the eyes
is what I’ve heard, and she’s what
made Love quiet, made him walk
down the middle of the street
at night, made him look up
at the crisp old stars, kiss
who he shouldn’t just to feel
a fist in the eye, and once, just
once, made him so drunk off
the hearts in his hand that he raised
when he should have folded.
For Love Barnett, shot and killed
on March 23, 1935 over a game of cards.
–Morgan Adams,
In Nonestica
Accents Publishing
Morgan Adams was born and raised in a bookstore in Lexington, Kentucky and wrote her own first “book” at the age of five. She graduated from Berea College and earned her M.F.A. in poetry from Indiana University. Her work often draws upon myth, folklore, and family history.
October 31, 2013
Every day the white-hot
burn of you.
Grief, intransigent
bastard you, ants marching
my counters, every day I kill
you, every day you march again.
I could get used to you,
the extravagant pain of you,
the slack jawed
dead at the end
of a needle, you.
But tonight, I’ll walk into you,
past Trick-or-Treaters,
with their open mouthed
bags of want, their hastily sewn
illusions. Past them,
and into you, always
into you.
–Patty Paine,
Grief & Other Animals
(Accents Publishing)
Patty Paine is the author of The Sounding Machine (Accents Publishing), Feral (Imaginary Friend Press), Elegy & Collapse (Finishing Line Press), and co-editor of Gathering the Tide: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry (Garnet Publishing & Ithaca Press) and The Donkey Lady and Other Tales from the Arabian Gulf (Berkshire). Her poems, reviews, and interviews have appeared in Blackbird, The Louisville Review, Gulf Stream, The Journal and other publications. She is the founding editor ofDiode Poetry Journal, and Diode Editions, and is an assistant professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University Qatar where she teaches writing and literature, and is interim director of Liberal Arts & Sciences.
she prepares a romantic dinner–Yordanka Beleva,
translated from the Bulgarian
by Katerina Stoykova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger:
Anthology of Contemporary Bulgarian Poetry
(Accents Publishing)
1.
n
wears
a hat
2.
n
wears
a wig
3.
n
wears
a
feathered
mask
with
ribbons
in
her hair
–Nettie Farris,
Communion
Accents Publishing
Nettie Farris teaches writing as an adjunct instructor, roams the grounds of Mount Saint Francis Nature Sanctuary with her dog, and hikes the Millennium Trail at Bernheim Forest. Her work has appeared in the anthologies The Dark Woods I Cross: An Anthology of Contemporary Louisville Women Poets and Bigger Than They Appear: Anthology of Very Short Poems. She lives in Floyds Knobs, Indiana with her husband and three sons.
I’m hungry, I told the frozen pizza,
and to the windstorm I said,
You’re from Chicago? My friend
moved there to avoid herself, which
I can understand, though mostly I’m
speeding towards myself
hoping only to avoid a collision.
I have felt like a furniture sale where
everything must go, you know, before
the arson, and also like the droopy flower
that ruined the whole arrangement
and made the bride cry. I’ve seen pigeons
staggering in shadows cast by pine trees,
and I’ve seen drunks ambulating
towards bathrooms in taverns pitch black
except for the lamps above pool tables.
I try to hang on as long as I can,
like the icicles hanging onto office awnings
above the heads of smokers. I’ve felt at times
like a balloon running out of helium, a car
running out of gas, a pizza box emptied of all
but the crusts. And now, early in my
forty-second February, I feel like
a snowman, as if tomorrow I’ll be nothing
but a carrot, a pipe, and ashes where two
charcoal eyes sat before somebody squirted them
with lighter fuel and struck a match.
–Tom C. Hunley,
Scotch Tape World
Accents Publishing
4. Crow’s Song
Shuffle and sigh
shuffle and sigh
all god’s children
born to die
rattle and moan
rattle and moan
all god’s children
dead and gone
5. Muse
Late February
and the crow has come
through yet another winter
one good eye
burnt wing
heart still whispering
but as snow again
breaks free
falls to earth
she lifts
from the birch branch
cries twice
vengefully—
I, I
—and wings off
across the stubblefield
vanishing finally
into a poem
about ice
–T. Crunk,
Biblia Pauperum
Accents Publishing
T. Crunk’s first collection of poetry, Living in the Resurrection, was chosen by James Dickey as the 1994 selection in the Yale Series of Younger Poets. He has since published a number of children’s books, as well as several additional collections of poetry and short fiction. He currently lives in Montgomery, Alabama.