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FOUR WAY REVIEW

GIRLS NIGHT by Elisabet Velasquez

Monday, 11 November 2019 by Elisabet Velasquez


After I gave him my dented hands which in any case were still valuable
                                                                                      
in the way that ruins can be,
   
I leave him for myself.
 
 
I spin-drunk en la sala, a spiraling summer,
I talk to my homegirls in the language of tomorrow –
                  
girl, finally.                               I invite them to die with me
at the club.

I pick a man to wine into, until the dance is an interrogation. The last man was loving me wrong. My
hands crawl close enough to his face to feel his breath the moment right before he regrets me. You know
how ya’ll do, love a girl only when she is the brightest version of her pain. The way a shadow loves the
pavement only when the sun shines. Have you ever been the shadow? I mean have you splayed your body
so flat against a woman that you didn’t notice she was concrete? I dance for him the way worms dance in
honor of devouring a body.

My homegirls laugh until they are ghosts.

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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THE NIGHT BEFORE THE NIGHT THAT SYLVIA PLATH LAYS HER HEAD IN THE OVEN by Hannah Matheson

Monday, 11 November 2019 by Hannah Matheson

Sometimes what kills me is serene
as snowfall. Proliferating frozen,
soft inundation, the ceaseless
and so many ways of wanting

to die. I can’t sleep
for the 2 a.m. murmur
of the plows, making their rounds
for hours now, unseeing

metal sweeping and salting.
Rusted chrome in near collision,
compelled by the Sisyphean
labor of cold. To roam

the black in the absolute
zero before dawn;
                                                           imagine,

gathering and gathering and gathering the ice.

 

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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TWO POEMS by Katie Condon

Monday, 11 November 2019 by Katie Condon

I’m a Kick-Ass Woman


Ask anybody. This ass has never been kicked 
to the curb. I do the kicking. I’m a nasty-ass woman 
drinking chamomile tea at dusk. I know what I’ve got 
& it’s a throne for an ass. Grab it. Kiss it. Pop 
the pimple on that ass. See what happens when you
disagree with my ass. I’ve got a bad-ass ass. A kick-ass ass.
A good-pair-of-jeans-is-hard-to-find-type ass. Cue Flannery’s 
ass, as broad & innocent as a cabbage. I’m getting literary 
on your ass. Listen: you can’t have passion 
without ass. Or Parnassus. Make way for my poetic ass, 
as essential & enduring as your thesaurus
but sexier. I’d tattoo the Cantos on my ass 
if it would make it less boring. This Is Just to Say: A Carafe Is a Blind 
Ass, or: I’m no Modernist. I’m the future 
of The Poetics of Kick-Ass—the voice of a nation 
from the mouth of a woman with the keys 
to the van that fits all of your sweet asses. Climb in. 
We’re bound for the coast. Bet your ass 
we’ll be there before dawn. Sit back & watch 
my Walt-Whitman-dashboard-hula-girl shake his ass
all the way across the American desert 
we’ll make an oasis of by the time we’re through.

 

Poem From the Mouth of God

 

There is a reason 
I have yet to let anyone
see my face. I am a lonely man

& socially inept. I send angels 
into women’s rooms 
because I never mastered the art 

of non-offensive pick up lines
& even with a wingman 
only one woman’s ever said yes.

She is tired of me.
Who can blame her
when I spend my days 

at every window in the house
shuttering & unshuttering myself 
from the view I created

& grew afraid of. My son 
doesn’t visit anymore 
& you’re not surprised.

Me neither. After centuries, 
the first miracle I performed 
was this morning

when I raised myself
out of bed & lifted a razor 
to my horrible face.

What advice do I have left
except that you should make things
& keep them closer to you than ethers away.

Do not be like me.
This light is the only good 
I’ve offered you,

but even light, too often, dies
in a furious burst.

 

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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THREE POEMS by Dilruba Ahmed

Monday, 11 November 2019 by Dilruba Ahmed

THE CHILDREN
 

How each one is taken  
with care from car 

to school doorstep, each one 

hand-in-hand with an adult.  
How the mothers 

and fathers kiss 

their foreheads, first 
pushing aside their bangs 

or smoothing 

a stray wisp.  One 
parent straightens 

her daughter’s velvet 

headband; another wipes 
dried oatmeal 

from his son’s pink lips.  

How carefully 
each child is guided       

around the bumpers 

of cars. How some turn 
to wave goodbye 

one last time while others,   

drawn to friends 
by an invisible cord,

move together, first left

then right, with 
the synchronicity 

of fish.  How even the child 

with tears in his lashes
who cowers near a teacher 

knows that in a matter of hours, 

a loved one will return  
to him, to return him 

to the facts of home: 

butterfly net 
for trapping monarchs.

Foil blanket

from a space museum.
Four-leaf clover 

charms on a chain.

 


ANOTHER FORM OF SKIN


Hiding us all the times               
we prefer to stay hidden.
                                        
Piled by the door 
                                                                                 
rumpled, forgotten. 
Brought forward 
                          
in offering: burnt mittens, 
                                                                  
torn shoes, bloodied handkerchief.  
I have hung on a clothesline 

                                                     shirts so white that I 
                                                                                
felt surrounded by clouds 
or by the impossible words 
                                                                   
of God.  Sometimes the wind 
blows through me 
                                       
as though I do not exist, 
                                                                                             
as though all form 
could go formless without notice. 
                                                                              
Think, for example, of the way 
no one stands at the door 

                              offering a cabled sweater, saying 
here you might need this 
                                              
it’s cold out today no one
                                                                                             
except me, for example.  
And though 
                          
there is no one, now, 
                                                                              
inside the sweater 
here I am                        securing each button
                          
all the way to the top, 
                                                    
delicately lifting
             
imagined lint                                            from a sleeve.

 


IN THE HOURS JUST AFTER, IN THE HOURS BETWEEN

 

Caught between one world 
and the next, between the buzzing actual 
of air breathed, streets crossed, 

food chosen, prepared, 
consumed.  Of sleep slept 
but broken 

again and again into waking—

caught between the easy language     
of regret and viscous words of loss, 
words that, like timid creatures, 

have tunneled deep into caves
for the long winter, and may never 
emerge again, such is the lure 

of the darkness
and the mind & the mouth hollowed out.
Caught between laughing 

about what he would’ve said
about attending to his own death           
Easy now, easy, take it easy now now now

and absorbing the infinite chill
of seeing he could 
no longer say it—

we speak of him, still, in the present
tense. Caught between calling, first,
the one who’d prepare his body 

for the grave or the one who’d 
tend to his soul as he’d wished.
Morgue or mosque, we ask 

him, mosque or morgue we ask
ourselves.  Again and again, 
the sound of no voice,

just the specter of one nurse 
and then another
shuffling down the hall in scrubs, 

doctors in angel-white gowns 
and shoes, their hairnets 
like deflated haloes 

clinging to their heads.

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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G-D POEM by Joshua Sassoon Orol

Monday, 11 November 2019 by Joshua Sassoon Orol


Oh the g-d in you.
                                                    Thank you for what g-d you did today

g-d as gold            g-d as gone                    You believe there’s g-d out there somewhere 

among trash heaps that smell less these days                      because the plastics in them  
         no g-d old organics

you know it’s g-d because it smells as it rots                      most g-d things don’t last long

What kind of g-d don’t you believe in

My word is g-d                     He’s a g-d egg                                        No news is g-d news 

You don’t want to hear how g-d you are                        It’s not that anyone actually knows
                                                                                            
but you look g-d, Girl, really g-d

Take a look in the mirror
you see nothing at all
That’s gotta be g-d
            or at least the image of g-dliness 

                                                                                                   At least you’re in g-d hands 

You don’t want to be g-d
because if you’re g-d that means                                              g-d can have cracked nails
                                                                               
         with sky blue polish in the cuticles
g-d can have mistweezed eyebrows

g-d might be wearing dirty underwear                                  never as g-d as you hoped for
under a sundress that’s a bit too short                                                              no g-d at all

A g-d way to go                                                                                A chapped kiss g-dbye 

 

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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TWO POEMS by Carlina Duan

Sunday, 10 November 2019 by Carlina Duan

WHAT IF


my lips weren’t chapped. the candles: unburned.
what if they’d stayed like that all year: whole, slender
sticks, separate & shy. what if the ants didn’t
run in slow lines across the table, didn’t crush
to dark soot beneath a stray thumb. 
if I hadn’t touched the cake: unghost
the icing slipping through a fork. if I’d crammed
sugar into a plastic box instead. if I’d gone to bed 
on time, if I’d showered, if I’d combed
through each strand of my wet & blackest hair. 
would I have seen what I saw that night? 
across my phone screen, those grains of salt 
& rosemary rubbed into the roast chicken? 
your hands and her hands curled
across the knife? slash, slash. cut
me up. if I hadn’t known you or that year
we plucked apples from the branch, I 
would’ve laughed. chicken thigh 
on a blue plate in the kitchen I’d once 
loved you in. the candles lit. your hands
and her hands. flashing knife. and ants.
damn, those ants. scuttling beneath.
black as bolts. craving whatever: grease,
the hurry of lips over skin. 
a single, stupid crumb.  

 

DEAR SILVERFISH


respect me. you slim,
slimy insect I try to trap
first with a jar, but you
glint, real sly, then slide
beneath the ratty blue
rug. you slinky spasm.
you thousand-leg. 
make me squirm
‘til I grab the lavender
spray, lift the rug,
then spray a ferocious
cloud for minutes,
wetting your antennae
to the linoleum floor.
still, you live. 
body bigger than
a nickel, pointed
like a stick of lead,
stuck beneath my
glare. Just use
your clog, my sister
texts, yet something
about your whip-
thin body I cannot
strike. 

once, in a public park, I watched
the man I loved pare a fuji apple
with a knife. skins curled and fell,
lazy ribbons onto a lap. months 
later, I stood at the intersection
where green trees erupted 
& the park began, grief in me
whirring like a pest. o, old 
love. I cannot smush you 
with a shoe or douse
you in a clean scent. try to
violence you out yet still, 
you stay. a silverfish atop
my bathroom floor, shiny as
scrap metal. pulsing with
the dust, & stuck.

 

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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LIFT THE MORATORIUM ON ANGELS by Kristin Robertson

Sunday, 10 November 2019 by Kristin Robertson

in this poem one sec for Pearl Vision
and an optometrist who looks exactly
like an uncle who died two years ago.
He’s saying quick puff of air and hot air
balloon in the distance   look through
here    see it      see it now?   and now?
But this, this is the good part: He asks
out of the blue, out of thin, thin air—
Do you still read books? I’ve never
laid eyes on this man before. I just
moved here. Still like pond water. Like—
wait—lift the moratorium on deer too, 
one brief moment—still like the ears 
of the mother and her fawn behind 
the privacy fence. It’s only been two
years. Of course I read books. Still.
How much time has passed in his nebula 
of wings? I say yes. Yes, I read. And 
get this: He smiles. He smiles and nods 
and adjusts the lenses in the phoropter.  
Since my lease is one year, and I won’t 
ever return for my follow-up, I ask him 
if he’s happy, if where he is now is 
better. He chuckles but stays behind 
the machine: Tell me which one is less
blurry. A or B. A or B.   Here.     Or here.

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry, Uncategorized
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BLAKE GRIFFIN DUNKS OVER A CAR by Matthew Olzmann

Sunday, 10 November 2019 by Matthew Olzmann

with a full gospel choir crooning behind him,
with twenty thousand spectators surging to their feet, 
with an arena of flashbulbs flashing its approval, 
and I’m spellbound, thinking it’s all so spectacular, until 

the broadcast team weighs in, 
and Charles Barkley says, “That wasn’t the greatest dunk,” 
and Marv Albert says, “But the presentation was pretty fun,”  
and I’m made to revisit what I thought I saw 
as one question replaces all others—

Was it truly extraordinary? Or, by the paragon 
of unimpeachable aesthetic standards by which 
the annual NBA Slam Dunk Competition is adjudicated, 
was it actually pedestrian, mortal, a somewhat meh occurrence
made mythic only through gimmicks and frills?  

Like those little fish that eat bits of plastic 
in the Pacific because they believe bits of plastic 
look like microscopic food particles, 
I too can be charmed by any well-made illusion. 

Copperfield makes the Statue of Liberty disappear. 
Penn and Teller catch bullets between their knowing teeth. 

Smelling like a new vacuum cleaner, the conman in my heart 
successfully hawks all his useless trinkets 
to the hopeful stooge who stumbles through my brain. 
Snake oil and radium ore. The furcula of a partridge. 
The foot of a rabbit.  I want to believe 

in the marvelous, not because it feels authentic, 
but because the alternative 

is a world where no one dons a cape to leap over buildings. 
No one turns lead to kindness.
No one sings the kraken to sleep. 

In a kingdom that insists on repudiating all enchantments, 
I feel catastrophic and alone. I watch the trees get older. 
I watch the ice form on their branches. Last winter, 

I sat in an emergency room
after my wife collapsed at work. 
Her doctors asked questions but provided no answers.
They sent us home not knowing
why, or what, or if it would happen again.

You can look for an explanation, but sometimes 
there’s no wand to wave, no sorcery to make anything okay. 
There’s just doubt, and it rocks us toward 
whatever trick of light we’ll reach for next.

I will cling to any rationale offered. 
I might pray or go to a church where a priest 
tells a story about transubstantiation, 
hands me a chalice filled with possibility. 

And I know there’s no blood in there. 
I know the wine will taste like wine. Still—
I lift the cup.

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  • Published in Issue 16, Poetry
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THREE POEMS by Christine Gosnay

Sunday, 10 November 2019 by Christine Gosnay

Grand Teton

A limber pine wave gives way to woodsmoke.
I am deeply interrogated
and I am not understood. 

The sun hits the logs 
and plays with their legs and shoulders,
pushing away their modesty.

The man who boxes my firewood
has eyes three blue meters deep. 
His birthday has come with the snow in July.

There are forceful creatures here
and I will not surprise in the dusk.
I swing my broken locket for a bell. 

In the tent village, a woman is bending off her jeans
on the warm side of the canvas.
My hands rise like two consuls to my lips.

 

Spring in Aqaba

Something far away handles 
the instruments of my death.
But the wine is cold and dry, 

and upon my leg 
I make my hand into your own, 
leaning back to receive my arrogance. 

When this wild grip visits me
there is a vast silk sail
tied to the sky. 

 

Nacco Junction

The train that passes is three songs long. 
It’s pulling fruits and tractors
to sow a paradise with. 

Into the sun and the heat the dirt rises
and dresses the weeds
with its sweetness.

Everything I can remember here
is a shape that cuts itself into the light
behind it, turning lie into form. 

The tender mountains make a cup
around all this. The kindness
of limiting the eye’s greed.

I try to drag a line from my mind
into this blistered sweep
but it is tangled in the vernal pool

where memory 
stays plunged 
in its watchful surround. 

To my surprise what comes
is a bud so fragile
that blades clip its stem in the dark.  

 

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  • Published in Issue 16, Uncategorized
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