Issue 8: The Somnambulist’s Notebook

Issue 8: The Somnambulist’s Notebook (Apr-May 2016) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.

Sweet Insanity

by on May 2, 2016

I love the smell and strong taste
of purple orange and white tablets
this man in white pours in my cupped palm
it smells like home before the war visited
and tastes like the gravy served
to us refugees in our own country
it will bring you back to your senses
a blue apron lady reassures
i like it here, i like it here
i don’t want to go back there
you must return home
they chorus an anthem in my ears
your children miss you and
your stories and blah blah blah
i nod my head in a sluggish ‘no no no’
in the background it’s bobby mcferrin
doing his classic ‘don’t worry, be happy …’
but it’s only me hearing, listening
dancing, moving my body like not, to the
beats flying from his unseen drums
my slight tenor overshadowing his baritone
as my index finger takes charge
of his guitar in the empty air…
nothing makes sense to me after all
not even this blue uniform and
the silence it maps in my heart

 

—
Ehi’zogie Iyeomoan hides his emotions in words and in photographs. He is so in love with human shadows. He Tweets like a bird @fulanibuoy, and can be followed on Facebook at /ehizogieiyeomoan

Medieval saints could read hearts

by on Apr 29, 2016

like braille. This was never the case
for Mother Cabrini. As a child she put her fingers
to her chest whenever there was pain
and pressed into it,

as if the muscle needed a reminder
of the real.

Perhaps she was too weak to bear
the sacred. She thought of the chalice,
of the font, durable vessels of the holy
beside her own blue-white hands.

In a dream she broke open her chest
like communion bread and rubbed her fingers
into the bleeding muscle of her heart,
looking for messages.

In another, a man she’d never met
turned wine back into water, but it was only
a trick of the light.

There were a few miracles.
Each morning when she came into the chapel
dozens of stained glass Virgins
cast their color on the stones.

 

—
Originally from St. Albans, Vermont, Rebecca Valley currently attends The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA as a student of comparative literature and history. Her poems have appeared recently in These Fragile Lilacs Poetry Journal and Through the Gate, and are forthcoming from Clementine (Unbound). In her free time she enjoys flea markets, podcasts, and baking bread.

The body that gleams in the depths

by on Apr 28, 2016

Sometimes you can see straight to the murky bottom.
Once there were wishes thrown there, fitfully, flickeringly, wild
as an extra coin to spend on an extravagance like the future.
Once, a girl shut her eyes to the wind’s insistent I-told-you-so.
I don’t know if she found her way through the eye of the storm and into
some other side; I don’t know if her stubborn heart was as strong
uphill as it was down. But then sometimes I see a cloud in the shape
of a fin or a tail, and I remember her: how she used to sing without words
and touch the whorls in the wood, as if they were levers to a secret world.

 

—
Luisa A. Igloria is the winner of the 2015 Resurgence Prize (UK), the world’s first major award for ecopoetry, selected by former UK poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion, Alice Oswald, and Jo Shapcott. She is the author of Bright as Mirrors Left in the Grass (Kudzu House Press eChapbook selection for Spring 2015), Ode to the Heart Smaller than a Pencil Eraser (selected by Mark Doty for the 2014 May Swenson Prize, Utah State University Press), Night Willow (Phoenicia Publishing, Montreal, 2014), The Saints of Streets (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2013), Juan Luna’s Revolver (2009 Ernest Sandeen Prize, University of Notre Dame Press), and nine other books. She teaches on the faculty of the MFA Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University, which she directed from 2009-2015.

Pine

by on Apr 27, 2016

I worship trees to lose myself
in hours, shaded over
with violet blooms. Sometimes

I spend a million days unwinding
in the purple, engraving myself
in a circle on the wood. Sometimes

I press my ear to hear
the whispers in the bark:

if you listen close, folklore
dews the summer air
and dizzies you with gin.

Sometimes, I throw myself over green,
green grass and feel for roots, seeking
a history the dirt swept over.

I dream that I’m a pine
rooted steady in the green,
my needled arms stretched
up to lilac sky.

How can I explain,
there is no world beyond the treetops.

 

—
Arielle Lipset studied creative writing at Franklin & Marshall College. She currently lives in Prague, where she teaches English as a foreign language. Her poetry was most recently published on Poets.org. Find more of her work at ariellelipset.com

Making Friends with the Bear

by on Apr 26, 2016

We sit together on these sunny winter mornings
listening to birdsong, watching sunset, moonrise,
counting stars. He is warm, his breath damp on my neck.

When the days grow he will start to wander,
further each day, and I will climb trees to find
tidy nests filled with pearl-shelled precious eggs.

I will sweep out the cave we shared,
leave handprints on the rock
and walk out into the Summerland.

 

—
Jo Waterworth lives in Glastonbury, UK, where she enjoys being a part-time mature student, sings with community choirs and writes poetry, sometimes. She has been published many times over the years, most recently and consistently in Hedgerow online magazine and by Poetry Space. She blogs at jowaterworth23.wordpress.com and jowaterworthwriter.wordpress.com

Joining the Lotus Eaters

by on Apr 25, 2016

(Watch Marie Craven’s video of “Joining the Lotus Eaters” on Vimeo)

 

Editor’s note: the text of the Laura M Kaminski poem “Joining the Lotus Eaters” and her bio can be read at The Poetry Storehouse.

—
Marie Craven is a media maker and musician from the Gold Coast, Australia. She has been engaged in online collaboration since 2007 and has contributed to works with artists in many different parts of the world. Website: pixieguts.com

The Somnambulist’s Notebook

by on Apr 22, 2016

is filled with lies. He plays with moonlight
as it pools on the bed, twists its fibers

into gold. His name is hidden in the caves
of earth, his fingers filled with mist and grain.

He has taken the queen’s daughter. With his
hand he has opened the door of a thousand lives.

Who has seen them dancing on the tongue
of darkness, swaying to the music of wolves

and frogs? Who has measured those automatic
steps? The sleepwalker sails, a particle through

a slit in the screen. His body stripes the wall
in two parallel lines, but when no one watches,

he streams, a wave rushing wrack and debris
to a black shore sharp with volcanic rock.

His dead eyes open, his tongue tastes the air.
His fingers scribble a code made of stones

and ash. What miracle has he found in the
borderlands but dust, broken houses and trees?

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (forthcoming) both from Flutter Press.

The Perigee Moon

by on Apr 20, 2016

The star fell
on my lap’s open book,

the one on diplomacy
and restraint of passion.

The fire started
burning words.

Smoke rose.
Ash breathed its way

into the night mist.
The perigee moon

condescended to pierce
fir tree shadows

that helped me pretend
all fires are equal.

 

—
Tricia Knoll is an Oregon eco-poet. Ocean’s Laughter, poems of a small Oregon town on the coast, is just out from Aldrich Press. Her chapbook Urban Wild investigates human and wildlife interactions in urban habitat. Website: triciaknoll.com

Ring-Around-Your-Dreams

by on Apr 19, 2016

We are voices in the wind, scratches
on your windowpane. We live
without light in the heavy leaves of June.

When you wake in the night and your
back aches, or the shrill phone shrieks
and the line goes dead, our faces loom

in long shadows on your bedroom wall.
We are green ice spreading slowly
in your stomach’s pit, the last bill you left

unpaid, the broken lock and the breech
in your brick wall. Together we have played
Ring-Around-Your-Dreams, and tumbled

into dirt. We have balanced you in our hard
and bony arms, sang to you of mice and dancers
dangling from ropes, feet just inches from the floor.

 

—
Steve Klepetar’s work has appeared widely, and several of his poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent collections include My Son Writes a Report on the Warsaw Ghetto and The Li Bo Poems (forthcoming) both from Flutter Press.