You say: acquiescence is a way out.–Elka Vasileva,
translated from Bulgarian by
Katerina Syokova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger
The sky is
a faithful
wilderness garment
hung
above the rain-
haunted mansion
skull of
a world below
golden ladder
reaching down
wheel of dust
rising
blooming in the air
–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.
Looking to buy some happiness
maybe a dose of self-respect
she combs her fingers through the racks,
sale or otherwise,
knowing the possibility is there.
If only she could find it.
The one thing to guarantee bliss,
carry her weight
for the rest of the day.
Cold marble floors
industrial with purpose
polished three hours earlier
know the point of her pursuit.
Brushed cottons
loose linens
raw silks
hold comfort.
Here,
in this buffet of hope
she seeks out a smile,
a reflection in the chrome
she will at once recognize.
Intercoms and lost children
mists of new scents
the intoxicating knowledge
that anything is possible.
Smartly altered mirrors convince
and disguise last night’s restless sleep.
Here,
there is a chance of renewal.
Plastic overpowers and creates an armor
offering just a taste of worth.
-Lori A. May
Square Feet
Accents Publishing
Lori A. May writes across the genres, road-trips half the year, and drinks copious amounts of coffee. Her writing has appeared in publications such as The Atlantic, Writer’s Digest, Brevity, Midwestern Gothic, and The Writer. Her editorial roles have included working with Kaylie Jones Books (an imprint of Akashic Books), Creative Nonfiction, and other independent presses. She is also the founding editor of Poets’ Quarterly. Lori is a graduate of the Wilkes University MFA program, where she was awarded the Norris Church Mailer Fellowship. She teaches in the University of King’s College creative nonfiction MFA program and is a frequent guest speaker at writing conferences and residencies across North America. Visit her website at www.LoriAMay.com.
[…]
4.
first I dreamed up a girl
a stranger
she looked so familiar
I have embarked on my path, she said
and set out straight through the patchwork of bushes and grass
this isn’t a path, the others yelled out
in the woods you’ll find jackals, abysses, and vipers
follow the trodden path
the girl did not so much as turn around
this is my path I grasped the direction
she continued walking through goose-skinned blackberries
as if they were wire fences
it’s not that scary
she called out
here you’ll find poppies birds deer aspen
besides
anything could be your path
anything could be your path
in fact direction is a path
5.
then
I saw a pregnant woman
panting, surmounting the ninth month
31
the steepest hill in life
folded in a yoga position
sucking on a thumb
swimming in the sea that is her dark womb
is a little wrinkled old man with unseeing eyes
set above a little turtle of a neck
and a blossoming belly button
the soft spot on top of his mucous head is shining
pulsing
opened up, the gorgeous rose is
full of life
not much time left till
he loses the answers
his wisdom is the burden
to be forsaken at birth.
after that
he’ll cry out for the first time
[…]
-Kerana Angelova
translated from the Bulgarian
by Zoya Marincheva
Kerana Angelova was born in Brodilovo. She holds a degree in education and has worked as a teacher and journalist, among other roles. Kerana is the author of 11 books of poetry and prose. Her novel Elada Pinyo and the Time received multiple prestigious Bulgarian national literary awards. Her latest book of prose, One After Midnight, was published in 2013. She currently lives and writes in the Black Sea coastal town of Bourgas.
y’all take stamps here?
man eats salt not pepper
from a tiny paper packet
you’d get more business if you did
-Eric Scott Sutherland,
Pendulum
(Accents Publishing)
Paperweights, ashtrays, holiday ornaments,We rent this space, too. Dinners,
demonstrations, make-your-own
bauble. These are the things
that fire the furnace, that buy the pipes,
that stock the hot shop with color:
cobalt, cadmium, verdigris, purple—
which gets more expensive by the week—
in bars or ground to powder fine
as sugar, pink sand on a Bermuda beach.
This is no cheap proposal: equipment
to grind and polish; furnace, oven, kiln—each
calibrated to degree of heat or cooling.
Never mind the mortgage, glass bills, lights.
So the wine bottles flattened
into novelty trays; souvenir pendants
with the city seal, the work continues:
a hundred forty paperweights
for the leadership club, all green.
Stoke and gather, turn and shape
and breathe. Embrace
the familiar company of heat,
roar and flare of the ordinary
-Lynnell Edwards,
Kings of the Rock and Roll
Hot Shop (or, What Breaks)
(Accents Publishing)
Ringed like a tree or planet, I’ve begunI’m his roof, his walls, his musty cellar
Lined with untapped bottles of blue wine.
His beach, his seashell combers
Tuned to the minor tides of my placenta,
Wound in the single chamber of my whorl.
His park, a veiny meadow
Plumped and watered for his ruminations,
A friendly climate, sun and rain combined
In one warm season underneath my heart.
Beyond my infinite dark sphere of flesh
And fluid, he can hear two voices talking:
His mother’s alto and his father’s tenor
Aligned in conversation.
Two distant voices, singing beyond the pillars
Of his archaic mediterranean,
Reminding him to dream
The emerald outness of a brave new world.
Sail, little craft, at your appointed hour,
Your head the prow, your lungs the sails
And engine, belly the sea-worthy hold,
And see me face to face:
No world, no palace, no Egyptian goddess
Starred over heaven’s poles,
Only your pale, impatient, opened mother
Reaching to touch you after the long wait.
Only one of two, beside your father,
Speaking a language soon to be your own.
And strangely, brightly clouding out behind us,
At last you’ll recognize
The greater earth you used to take me for,
Ocean of air and orbit of the skies.
-Emily R. Grosholz,
Childhood
(Accents Publishing)
Emily Grosholz grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and has taught philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University for thirty-five years, with sojourns in France, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Finland, Costa Rica, Russia, Greece, Spain and Italy. She and her husband Robert R. Edwards (medievalist, rugbyman, and soccer coach) raised four children in State College, Pennsylvania, surrounded by small farms and green hills on one side and the town and university on the other. She is an advisory editor for The Hudson Review,and this is her seventh book of poetry.
Childhood contains illustrations by Lucy Vines.
Lucy Vines was born in 1929 in Hartford, Connecticut. She was raised in New York City, then came to France during the McCarthy era and has lived in Paris ever since, in a milieu of writers and painters. She is married and has one child. The Morat Foundation in Freiburg, Germany, the École des Beaux-Arts in Nîmes, France, and the Maison de l’Amérique Latine in Paris have held retrospective shows devoted to her work. Her works are untitled.
we throw stones and throw–Stoyanka Grudova,
translated from Bulgarian by
Katerina Syokova-Klemer
The Season of Delicate Hunger (2013)
Stoyanka Grudova was born on August 29th, 1948. She holds a degree in Bulgarian philology from St. Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia. She has worked as a lab technician, teacher, dramaturg of puppet theater, journalist and editor of a literary magazine. Stoyanka is the author of five poetry collections, including two children’s poetry books. Her latest title, I the Fish, won the Hristo Fotev Annual Poetry Award in 2012. She lives and writes in Ruen, a small village outside of Bourgas.
You wake up in the morning and get out of bed. The carnival is in town. The signs are unmistakable. The calliope song. The smells. The excited voices.
Your husband is making breakfast. He is humming something to himself. You would rather have silence, but you will not say anything.
Your last year’s footprint is this year’s mudslide. The pawns are running an election to select the king. You receive your own radio transmission from the future. It is encrypted, you don’t know the cypher yet.
You go outside. The bright red sunset is the same as the last time. Perhaps it’s the same day. Perhaps it’s the same you. Possibly, it’s the same world.
-A. Molotkov,
Your Life as It Is
(Accents Publishing)
Born in Russia, A. Molotkov moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. Published or accepted by The Kenyon Review, Mad Hatters Review, 2River, Perihelion, Word Riot, Identity Theory, Pif, and many more, Molotkov is winner of New Millennium Writings and Koeppel fiction contests, and a poetry chapbook contest for his True Stories from the Future. He co-editsThe Inflectionist Review and serves on the Board of Directors of Oregon Poetry Association. Molotkov’s new translation of a Chekhov story was included by Knopf in their Everyman Series.
I’ve been in and out of storesThe customer is always.
With a credit to my account
I’m driving on an eight-lane highway,
faster than the speed limit,
semis like linebackers on either side.
You say: My joints hurt.
I say: None of the stations are coming in.
You say: I can’t swallow.
I say: Adjust the sun visor.
You say: I’m out of breath.
I say: look for a rest stop.
You say: I can’t feel my toes.
I say: Something’s trying to pass us.
We both can sense it
in the blind spot,
how it will overtake us.
-Brandel France de Bravo
Mother, Loose
(Accents Publishing)
Brandel France de Bravo is the author of Provenance, which won the 2008Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize in poetry and was a ForeWord Book of the Year finalist. Her poems, which have been nominated for thePushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and essays have appeared in various journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review,Gulf Coast, and Seneca Review. She is co-author of Trees Make the Best Mobiles: Simple Ways to Raise your Child in a Complex World and the editor of Mexican Poetry Today: 20/20 Voices. A graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College with a master’s in public health, she works for a consumer health organization in Washington, D.C.