In this issue, we feature
a review of Grace Cavalieri's What the Psychic Said reviewed by Robert L. Giron,
poetry by R. J. Keeler,
poetry by George Klawitter,
poetry by Maria Kranidis,
poetry by Nikhil Parekh,
poetry by Themo H. Peel, and
poetry by Katherine E. Young
Robert L. Giron
Grace Cavalieri's What the Psychic Said reviewed
What the Psychic Said
Grace Cavalieri (2020, GOSS183)
In What the Psychic Said by Grace Cavalieri we sense a longing for one’s loved one. How many of us have visited a psychic for advice or for a glimpse into the future? But in the absence of a psychic, we watch and listen to nature as it too speaks to us: “Just look at the ball of sun behind the tree/” (p. 9)— “I look everywhere for him, through fog on water—/” “He’s coming for me. My beloved. He’s coming for me.” (p. 15).
In the search for better understanding, we read along with Cavalieri and enter her world of metaphysical speech. One can’t really love an octopus in the human sense but in psychic terms anything is possible and so we swim the waters to bathe in the waters from which we came, always longing to gain an insight to our lives, as nature is often a better teacher.
Yet with “the living and the dead” (p. 42) our memories play games with us: once we “feel a / radiant warmth encircling” us, then “other days ... / ... It’s as if it never happened.” (p. 42). It’s here that Cavalieri tries to reconcile the past with the present and we the readers follow her lead as we too try to live in the present, not wanting to let go of the past, which shaped us to what we are now in the present.
In Eros Cavalieri ponders the philosophy / the essence of love:
All agreed Love is otherworldly, something
we call in and carry our whole lives.
Yet, is it the source of beauty and happiness?
Or just a sexual union that summons the need
to bring us back for more, using envy and jealousy
at its core? What is this thing called “Love?” (p. 59)
Through various scenarios, we are taken along a path of myth, reality, and hope, always searching for the answer as in What the Psychic Said “Don’t you realize that you came from labor?” (p. 65) leading us to an analysis of naval men jumping into a pool as we contemplate their futures—our very own futures: “what [person] will attract you and which one will leave you” (p. 92). It’s the circle of life—going in the pool of liquid future which becomes reality and then once we are dehydrated, we stop and ask: What did it all mean? Was it real?
For then, we like Cavalieri must find the answer in our pool of memories which may, depending upon the person, evaporate before us, begging us to ask: Did this all happen? to which we can only answer and if we forget possibly the psychic can bring it forth from our embedded pool of memories, be they fresh or solidified.
What the Psychic Said—a collection that will make you contemplate your very existence and one that will clarify that you yourself hold all the answers you need.
About Grace Cavalieri
Grace Cavalieri is Maryland’s tenth Poet Lauereate. She has authored 26 books and chapbooks of poetry and 20 short-form and full-length plays. She holds The Association of Writing Program’s George Garrett Award, the PEN-Fiction Award, the Allen Ginsberg Award, the Bordighera Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Award, the Annie Award, the Inaugural Folger Shakespeare Library Columbia Award, the National Award from the Commission on Working Women, and the CPB Silver Medal. Her latest book was Showboat (2019, Goss183). Her latest play Quilting the Sun was produced at the Theater for the New City, in New York City in 2019. She founded and produces The Poet and the Poem for public radio, now from the Library of Congress, celebrating 43 years on the air.
R. J. Keeler
And Pity Those Who Lost Their Grip
Were gravity the other way
perhaps the strangeness that we felt
would come to mean as little or less
than upside-downness does today.
Were gravity the other way
we’d admire roots instead of flowers,
hang for hours out from bowers,
watch the bees buzz ‘round and play.
Were gravity the other way
Rapunzel with her golden hair
would drop it up the farthest tower,
save her knight from a lonely stay.
And pity those who lost their grip
were gravity the other way.
Copyright © 2020 by R. J. Keeler.
About the Author
R. J. Keeler, born in St. Paul, grew up in jungles of Colombia. He holds a BS in Mathematics from NCSU, an MS in Computer Science from UNC-CH, an MBA from UCLA, and a Certificate in Poetry from UW. Honor man, U.S. Naval Submarine School, Submarine Service (SS) qualified. Vietnam Service Medal, Honorable Discharge, Whiting Foundation Experimental Grant. Member IEEE, AAAS, and the Academy of American Poets.
George Klawitter
22. Conundrum
Can I separate the man from priest?
Can I love the one without the other?
To pick among a pack of friends seems wrong,
to lionize a Peter over Paul.
It’s like isolating pet from beast—
or cherishing only half a brother
or liking two measures of a corny song,
isolating part aside from all.
When I remove your hands from consecration
or take your lips away from holy prayers,
I violate the mystery of you.
You’ll always be a shaman. Veneration
is your trade so tolerate my stares
as you go on your business pew by pew.
Copyright © 2020 by George Klawitter. From The Priest. Published by permission.
39. You
Just because I celebrate the you
that’s you doesn’t really mean I sing
the priest in you. You are you. I know
the fusion’s tight—the mind, the eyes, the clothes—
you wing them all. You waltz them. You’re so true
to godliness we quiver. That’s the thing
that bothers me—the attitude. It’s so
you-you. Not me-me. Not these. Just those.
So I suppose we’re lucky that you’re sold
on God as gradually you’ll lose your you
and we won’t see you any more. Just God,
Who’s here among us, among the silver—gold.
Behold the transubstantiation’s true:
No you. No you? No! you! My god! My God!
Copyright © 2020 by George Klawitter. From The Priest. Published by permission.
About the Author
George Klawitter, retired professor of English (St. Edward’s University), has edited the poetry of Richard Barnfield and published The Enigmatic Narrator, a study of John Donne’s poetry. His poems have been printed in various journals. His book Let Orpheus Take Your Hand won the Gival Press Poetry Award in 2002. In 2020 he won the Gival Press Oscar Wilde Award.
Maria Kranidis
To the mother’s ghost visiting
I have given up feeling your loss in details,
And somewhat spared,
I wonder if you understand now —
How things have happened since you left.
The unfinished life you come to visit
Exhausted from your journey
You fade too quickly
I do not get to see your face
Breathing in the room.
I practiced patience for a lifetime
To sit and wait for your return,
And in a minute I knew that
No one dies alone.
Betrayed you could measure time
Transformed into nonexistence,
In this chaos of carrying on,
Belonging is not letting you go —
Almost saved by the thought of you,
Somehow born in myth memory
Your laugh like a shadow
Passes through the room and then vanishes
Into the vacuum you hold so close to you now.
Knowing my wholeness with you is still to come,
I surrender to your empty space
I overcome your loss
Without suffering
When you command the earth,
Feed on air,
And come and go like the wind.
Copyright © 2021 by Maria Kranidis.
Needlepoint
Silk eyes fixed in blue threat
a garden of holes and colors
arranged and touched by your fingertips
filling them with smoothness
the needle goes through me
as they look upward
entering their empty spaces
on the other side
underneath the knots their movements
no one will see beyond the frame
these women without longing
fixed in time
like your life
you give them sun
and green days
their sunshine is incomplete
in the crowded box
your life’s remnants in the dark attic
a woman’s turned face
holds an unfinished smile
red thread goes through her lips like blood
the smile has not come to its end
A face can hold a secret
of times spent unclear
under your hands
close to your chest
friend to dim light
when nights were your own
to create
perhaps this was your real home
the one on canvas
half finished for me to hold
tonight
where you no longer need to visit
left images
of women hopefully in love and
memories of a mother
whose face fades and is almost forgotten.
Copyright © 2021 by Maria Kranidis.
About the Author
Maria Kranidis teaches at Suffolk County Community College, New York. Her work has appeared in Cabaret, Long Island Quarterly, Cassandra, Confrontation, Poetry Magazine, Best Poem and Apollo’s Lyre.
Nikhil Parekh
A Child Smiles
Only in a world of freedom,
Can a child unfold and bloom.
Only with the Sun piercing right through the dark hut,
Can a child see the wonderful sights of this world.
Only in an ocean of unprejudiced love,
Can a child speak to its heart—s content.
Only through the eyes of soft empathy,
Can a child see its true reflection.
Only in surroundings of unadulterated society,
Can a child open its mind wholesomely and dream.
Only when applauded at its tiniest achievement,
Can a child come to know its hidden potential.
Only in lanes without propagation of caste,
Can a child recognize its own identity.
Only in the cradle of happiness,
Can a child fantasize and create.
Only in vicinity of the learned,
Can a child imbibe the essentials of life.
Only in the pages of medieval history,
Can a child understand its ancestors better.
Only in unpolluted waters of the Ganges,
Can a child splash its hands and wholeheartedly swim.
Only without discrimination of gender and status,
Can a child flourish to achieve its goal.
Only in the gentle hands of its mother,
Can a child shield its eyes and sob.
And Only in an atmosphere of complete equality,
Can a child stimulate his urge for learning, prosper and smile.
Copyright by Nikhil Parekh. All Rights Reserved.
About the Author
Nikhil Parekh is an Indian poet and author of 47 books, including Longest Book Written by a Mortal: Collected Poetry. Nikhil is a ten-time National Record holder for Poetry with Limca Book of Records India.
Themo H. Peel
Crow
I buried Mx* D with the homemade Peter Pan costume
Even then I knew—“boys don’t sew”
So, they were cut away and laid to rest beneath family and fear
And law and risk of life and limb until they were lost—
A rotting secret meant to fester and kill
But then that chorus of awful men began to till the soil
Martini lessons and one liners from Joan watered the earth
Kisses on the cheeky jibes made room for sunlight
And inside the shade of white picket fences they were cooled
There was nothing in the invitations but love
And maybe versions of Church lady lunches—
The prurient kind I’d seen hiding on the stairs
I wrestled the onset of their playful exuberance
While still reaching for the spotlight
And through the cracks in my sparkling veneer
A tiny tendril of green wound into the world
Their first bloom was pigtails in the comedy tutu
And, before long, Mx D yawned and stretched on stage
New again, they staggered, and we stumbled
But, Mx D—kudzu—would not be felled or tamed
Their lush foliage blooming in the strangest places
A photosynthetic powerhouse they took friendship and song
And spun coastal scrub into sumptuous hillsides
They decorated our home in lights and laughter
And created a world full with trees and beautiful air
Until, finally, I reached down and embraced them
Needle in hand and began to sew
(*Mx is the gender-neutral prefix instead of Mr or Ms. It is normally pronounced “Mix’ but here should be read as ‘Miss’).
Copyright © 2021 by Themo H. Peel.
Tie me up
“It starts with the eyes,” you say, locking mine.
Your hands reach for my neck, slowly, and
I gasp. The sharp intake of air sets mind racing,
microscopic detail my only anchor;
your wide nimble fingers, nails perfectly manicured,
strong blonde hairs jutting from each knuckle
rustling beneath constricted breath
like antennae signalling anticipation.
With parental intimacy you tug away the poorly made knot
unwinding my carelessness and expectation.
“You have to picture the knot you want”—
the soft swish of silk pulling through silk.
“Visualise the man you want to be,
the man you want people to see”—
the gentle rub of fabric sliding back and forth,
a sensual halo around my neck.
I watch you work in the mirror,
hands spell casting, weaving fabric in and out.
I hope you don’t see me blush, swooning at you,
shifu, lama, master commander.
You cantor and homily about artistry
and the splendour of artifice in a world loathsome of deviance.
“You’ve got to shape the knot.
You’re crafting a fantasy.”
Blood crescendos as your work abates,
hands firmly secured at my collar.
You place one finger above my jugular notch and press,
gently squeezing the sides of my binding.
A perfect dimple forms at the centre, and
the lingering scent of you—talc and saffron—
the finishing touch.
“This is a man,” you say,
your hands braced on my shoulders.
And you leave me there, bound, ready for work,
this perfect knot— a monument to tenderness.
Copyright © 2021 by Themo H. Peel.
About the Author
Themo H. Peel is a writer and illustrator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has published two young adult science fiction novels. These poems are part of a series of poems and essays called MEN about the influential men in his life. As an artist and tutor, he has a passion for inspiring diverse (ethnic minority, LGBTQ+, neurodiverse, disabled) young people to use art as a tool for self-actualisation. He holds a BA in Fine Arts from Yale University and an MSc in Creative Writing from Edinburgh University.
Katherine E. Young
If There Is a Hell
it resembles this street in shadow, this street
and this streetlamp, where you and I cling
so tightly our flesh bruises for weeks and
our mouths ache with the work of longing
it blinks cold, disapproving, like stars glimpsed
from hard ground as muscle grins into grit
it feels, like your fingers, for tears on my cheek
it tastes of tea brewed by your wife, shakes
like her hand as she pours a cup for me
it kisses like my husband scenting your
on my lips, hunches his shoulders as if he might care
it cries like my son at my step on the stair,
as he finds he’s stayed awake, after all
Copyright © 2021 by Katherine E. Young. Published by permission.
Previously published in Tampa Review.
Also included in the new collection of poetry titled Woman Drinking Absinthe (Alan Squire Publishing, 2021).
About the Author
Katherine E. Young is the author of Day of the Border Guards, 2014 Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize finalist, and two chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Subtropics, and many others. She is the translator of Look at Him by Anna Starobinets, Farewell, Aylis by Azerbaijani political prisoner Akram Aylisli, and two poetry collections by Inna Kabysh. Young’s translations of contemporary Russian-language poetry and prose have won international awards; several translations have been made into short films. Young was name a 2020 Arlington County (Virginia) Individual Artist Grant recipient and recently edited the collection Written in Arlington: Poems of Arlington, Virginia (Paycock Press, 2020), a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow, and a 2015 Hawthornden Fellow (Scotland). From 2016-2018, she served as the inaugural Poet Laureate for Arlington, Virginia. Visit: https://katherine-young-poet.com