W. F. Lantry
A Forward Spring
Nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize
It’s time to toss the almanac aside:
this early March, our cherry blossoms swell
four weeks too soon, crocus and paperwhites
already past their peak. We walk our wood
at seventy degrees, our springtime rites
pushed forward, or just lost. Birdsongs foretell
uncertain summer, and the warming air
brings clouds of insects swarming everywhere
along the riverbank, seeking damp shade.
Bare ruined trees define a broken arc
above the current. Once a maple stood
holding the bank intact, but now its bark
hangs like torn parchment, as bent limbs cascade
in unison towards the water’s crest.
Eternal signs diverge: a sparrow’s nest,
half finished, can’t be hidden by the shoots
of leafless sycamores, and this floodplain
is scarred with angled oaks that had withstood
a hundred thunderstorms and blizzards, rain
enough to change the river’s course, their roots
intact, their trunks broken halfway, each crown
still resting where the wind had blown it down.
And under one, the white bones of a deer
lie scattered: hooves, a broken leg, a spine.
Perhaps the herd, frightened, misunderstood
a new path for the old, followed a line
leading into a fence: the signs aren’t clear
or I can’t read the meanings they’ve implied.
Copyright © 2014 by W. F. Lantry.
Biography:
W. F. Lantry, a native of San Diego, received his Maîtrise from L’Université de Nice and PhD in Writing from University of Houston. His poetry collections are The Structure of Desire (Little Red Tree, 2012) winner of a 2013 Nautilus Award in Poetry, a chapbook, The Language of Birds (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and a forthcoming collection The Book of Maps. Recent honors include: National Hackney Literary Award in Poetry, CutBank Patricia Goedicke Prize, Crucible Editors' Poetry Prize, Lindberg Foundation International Poetry for Peace Prize (Israel), and in 2012 the Old Red Kimono LaNelle Daniel and Potomac Review Prizes. His work has appeared in Potomac Review, Asian Cha, Atlanta Review, Descant, Gulf Coast and Aesthetica. He currently works in Washington, DC. and is an associate fiction editor at JMWW.
Visit this author's homepage at http://www.wflantry.com
Richard Peabody
Flirting with Disaster
more exquisite
than you can imagine
glittery plumage
in the bar mirror
impossibly high heels
and red leather
so bloody intoxicating
claims to be bi
likes to keep her options open
an equal opportunity master
eggs benedict and gin
you slip quickly into
her sensual orbit
figured she’d be rowdy
disaster saw you coming
before you were born
you shiver when she
presses her thorax
inevitably close
whispering,
“Such a good boy.”
Copyright © 2014 by Richard Peabody.
Rules for Experimental Writing
Talk to the monsters under your bed
Visit a slaughterhouse
Drink kerosene
Eat Darvon and mothballs
Burn your math books
Handcuff a lover to the bed rail
Add bacon
Watch an autopsy
Tour the Holocaust Museum
Catch an anaconda in the Everglades
Have a C–section
Dig up a coffin
Oh wait,
these are the rules
for writing realism.
Copyright © 2014 by Richard Peabody.
Shiny Time Machines
Nothing but oldies on the jukebox.
Nancy Sinatra and her feisty boots.
A sanitized 50’s and 60’s corporate mimic
of American Graffiti and Happy Days.
Neon in red, pink, and blue.
The irritating buzzing that makes
little kids scream to drown it out.
High school kids into Limp Bizkit
don—t really get with the program.
Though it’s clear management has
made every effort to appeal to Boomers.
My root beer float so stuffed with vanilla
that gravity sinks it to the bottom
geysering the soft drink over the top
like a frosty Old Faithful.
Copyright © 2014 by Richard Peabody.
Season of the Witch
Nominated for the 2014 Pushcart Prize
When they told me the seasons were changing
I wondered what they would change into.
Would seasons actually trade places?
Would summer become winter?
Did the seasons have to maintain the same order every year?
Didn’t that get awfully boring?
What if Earth seasons could swap with Martian seasons?
Wouldn’t springtime on Mars be cool?
What if spring turned into a pretzel?
Or summer into a polar bear?
Maybe the seasons could change into people?
There was the Snow Queen after all.
And Persephone.
My grandparents liked Florida because they said it only had one season.
Florida chooses to be summer all year round.
Maybe I will change into autumn. Then my leaves could blanket the ground
and crackle as the wind blows them off down the street.
Copyright © 2014 by Richard Peabody.
Biography:
Richard Peabody is a founding editor of Gargoyle Magazine and runs the small press Paycock Press, established in 1976. His latest release (April, 2015) will be The Richard Peabody Reader from SFWP's imprint Alan Squire Publishing. The 400-page collection of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, edited by Lucinda Ebersole, with an introduction by Michael Dirda, will be launched at the 2014 Association of Writing Programs Conference in Minneapolis.
Also see a sample of his work on the following page: