the blues is when you know
you can’t hit half the notes
& the people around you
are gonna look at you
like your skin is purple
but you sing anyways & plenty loud
cause it feels so good
& it ain’t supposed to be pretty
—
Herb Kauderer is a retired Teamster who grew up to be an associate professor of English at Hilbert College. His most recent chapbook of poetry The Book of Answers is currently a nominee for the Elgin Award.
playing my guitar
an old song I remember
but my fingers don’t
—
Brian Robertson has been writing haiku throughout the years, years which have seen him spend time at a Buddhist Monastery or two, write Little Blues Book illustrated by R. Crumb and creating several albums of his original blues music and more.
It feels good to think,
to be thought of and to be
touched (well, sometimes.)
I think of my skin
as some weird mix of snack
food and lighting effects.
The radio station
describes imaginary places.
When one song stops,
the next song
just sort of explodes.
It feels good to listen.
It feels good to sing along.
—
Glen Armstrong edits a poetry journal called Cruel Garters and has three new chapbooks: Set List (Bitchin Kitsch), In Stone and The Most Awkward Silence of All (both Cruel Garters Press). His work has appeared in Conduit and Cloudbank.
i shall squeeze the globe
tuck it into my pocket
then
like a child
with coins and pebbles
stuffed in the left of his shorts
i shall rub africa against the americas
asia and antarctica and australia
with a rope picked in europe
i shall bind the stones and pebbles
into one whole lump
and when i am done
i shall pull it out
out of my pocket again
and zip it up, the lump
with a glowing holy kiss
—
Ehizogie Iyeomoan is a Nigerian boy who loves to write poems in lower case letters. His ‘beaded words’ have appeared in many literary journals, anthologies; both print and electronic. His debut poetry collection, Flames of the Forest was published in April 2015 and is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @fulanibuoy.
This is the Official Call for Submissions for Issue 5 of Gnarled Oak, which will start in October and be an unthemed issue.
Gnarled Oak accepts poetry, prose, videos and artwork. I don’t like to impose rules on what is and isn’t acceptable (other than the no hate speech, no pornography one), but as a general guideline, I tend to favor shorter works, which for our purposes means poems of less than 20 lines, prose less than 1000 words, and videos less than 7 minutes long. Regarding form and style, I’m open to almost anything. Check out previous issues to get a sense of things.
I’ll be reading for Issue 5 through September 25 and plan on starting the issue the week of October 5 October 12. Please visit the Submissions page for more in-depth guidelines. I look forward to seeing what comes this way, and I hope you’ll send something and help spread the word. Thank you.
SummaryIssue 4: A Parachute in the Wind (Jul-Aug 2015) is an unthemed issue featuring poetry, prose, videos, and artwork from writers and artists around the world.
Read online | Read the PDF (click to read online, right-click & save-as to download)
In the Beginning — Tony Press
common s[un]flower — Robin Turner
texas dandelion — Robin Turner
bindweed — Robin Turner
I confess — Caroline Skanne
Old Gods — Luis Neer
Security — Marie Craven
A Reverence for Rust — Debbie Strange
old broken gate — Brian Robertson
Fragments — JK Anowe
Graffiti — Miriam Sagan
Crooked Smiles — Arika Elizenberry
Bystander — Mary McCarthy
Dog Whistle Effect — Lauren Yates
Angel — Olivier Schopfer
searching — Kala Ramesh
twigs — Duncan Richardson
Elegy for Apologies I Will Never See — Lauren Yates
Wabash & Balbo — Todd Mercer
Walking in Chinatown on Sunday, You Do Get Lonely — Trish Saunders
Lime Light — Marilyn ‘Misky’ Braendeholm
Unmusically — Sheikha A.
Sanyi — Saddiq Dzukogi & Laura M. Kaminski
Lines on a Postcard — Joan Colby
deep dreaming — Marianne Paul
Night Court — Marie Craven
wilma suddenly — Angie Werren
red rover — Angie Werren
I Planted a Lemon Tree in My Mouth — Tonya Sauer
Sweet Tea — Roslyn Ross
Considering Luminescence / Consideraciones Sobre la Luz — Eduardo Yagüe
August is a weird time of year. There is a certain cognitive dissonance that comes from starting school and returning to the classroom in the midst of summer. Sure, it’s almost September and then you might start to feel autumn coming on farther north, but here in Texas it’s high summer and will be for quite some time. Maybe to native Texans it doesn’t seem weird, but I started my school years and went to high school in northern states and that idea that school starting equals autumn is pretty well locked in, never mind the fact that I’ve been here for twenty-seven years.
This year coming back to school brought me back to something I’d put out of my mind for the summer: the shredder, that big clunky wonderful machine that devours huge piles of paper and rapidly churns them into confetti. I kind of like shredding papers. I like feeding that beast, and standing there in all that white noise is sort of soothing.
Because I teach in a juvenile correctional facility, I shred a lot of old student work. Whatever the kids choose not to take with them when they leave goes down the shredder in the interest of protecting their privacy. So part of closing out my classroom in early June involves shredding all the unclaimed work: tests, quizzes, journals, worksheets, essays, and, yes, stories and poems. Some of them quite good. It makes me wish more of the kids I teach would recognize their own talents and value their voices at least enough to take their work with them out to the Free. But they don’t, and so I shred.
Last spring, whilst peacefully shredding away, I looked down to see that I was shredding the wrong pile. “Noooooooo!” I nearly yelled like Luke finding out Vader was his father, for I was shredding all of my brilliant Notes to Self that I’d written over the course of last school year. Things about what I want to do differently this year, ideas for lessons, activities and projects. You see, I was determined to reinvent things and rethink what I do in the classroom. It’s a useful exercise for teachers to do, I think, to throw out the old and try new ideas. And I was going to do that.
So, I started this August with a bit of trepidation. Not only is it too hot to be in school, but most of my ideas for this year are confetti, recycled months ago. So, I’m starting again by trying to re-reinvent things, and it’s exciting. It’s New 2.0. And I like that.
And speaking of things new and exciting, I hope you’ve found this issue of Gnarled Oak to be as exciting as I did. So thank you to all of you (or all y’all as we say in Texas) who submit (and resubmit) and read and share all this amazing work. You help me—and hopefully others—see the world in new, surprising, beautiful, sometimes heart-breaking and often wonderful ways. Even in August.
With gratitude and thanks,
James Brush, editor
August 2015
///
Gnarled Oak — Issue 4: A Parachute in the Wind: Read online | Read the PDF (right-click/save-as to download)
(Watch Eduardo Yagüe’s videos of “Considering Luminescence” and “Consideraciones Sobre la Luz” on Vimeo)
Editor’s note: the English text of the Laura M. Kaminski poem “Considering Luminescence” and her bio can be read at The Poetry Storehouse.
—
Eduardo Yagüe studied Dramatic Arts and Spanish Language and Literature. In Madrid, he worked as an actor in theater and film since 1995. Parallel, he has been writing poetry and stories since he was fifteen. In 2012, he changed direction in his artistic work research, which had been focused on acting and writing. He decided to investigate video poetry. He is interested in mixing genres, searching the limits of poetic and cinematographic language.
They gave me sweet tea when I was mad,
stirred slowly, steaming hot, handed over
with a clink of spoon on the edge of the
cup, as if to signal, the time had come,
when comfort would be offered, and a
moment of liquid grace, could be taken
down, into the depths of frozen self, as
if, that heat could melt the hardened ice
of fear, so long built up, layer upon layer,
over the years; a crevasse of such great
immensity, that a light dropped, would
disappear from sight, in an instant, long
before it ever reached the bottom, if
indeed, there was a point where it all
ended, and from where an echo would
resound, up, up, up through weeping
cliffs, to signify that there was an end,
and, that sometime, it would all dissolve
into itself, disappearing, deliquescing,
because now the demons had been
consumed and I could once more,
drink deep of tea and of sweetness.
—
Roslyn Ross was born in Adelaide, South Australia and has lived around Australia and the world. A journalist/editor by profession, she began writing creatively in her forties and has completed five novels and one work of non-fiction based on her four years in Angola during the civil war. She is currently writing a non-fiction book tracing her Greek great-grandfather, a biography of her mother, and a book on spirituality as well as a sixth novel.
I dreamed in yellow,
summer blooming behind my teeth
like a thatch of dandelions sprawled
in a pastured field.
I dreamed of sweetness,
a sugary sip, dip of tongue
like a hummingbird, fluttering
from bee balm to cat mint.
Instead, I grew dense, sour words,
too-green lemons still sucking
in their dimpled cheeks. Neither bird,
nor you, came for a taste.
—
Tonya Sauer is a geriatric nurse. This year, she has been selected to attend the Kenyon Review Writer’s Workshop. She lives and works in Elgin, Illinois with her husband and their four awesome cats.
I dare you to
remember the blue
grass our bare
feet that kid
cooler than we’d
ever be parked
in his trans
am still
waiting on
waiting on
the thunder
remember
those sec-
onds stolen
between
the street
lights and
time it’s time
to go it’s
time
to go home
I
dare
you
I
dare
you
send tommy
right over
—
Angie Werren lives (and writes) in a tiny house in Ohio. Sometimes she takes pictures of things in the yard.
