John J. Brugaletta
Snapshots
It’s after they die
that relatives send around their pictures,
the dead once more beautiful and smiling,
not depressed, not argumentative,
not rotting in a hole.
They probably have good motives, or used to—
the wish that we'll remember them
at their best,
but all it does is add to our discomfort
at losing such impossibly perfect people.
Maybe that’s why
we keep them in a drawer
for the rest of our lives.
Copyright © 2015 by John J. Brugaletta.
Opposing Hands
See how like a breath she brushes off
the skull of soil and sand. Look, it’s born
again now at these expert hands that love
this shell of life—enough to bear the heat
or knifing cold, the insects and the thugs.
See there the dome is missing a large part.
No trepanning, this. It gapes too wide.
The hand that opened this released a life
and not the aching that possessed his head—
a life of data now, imagined life.
Copyright © 2015 by John J. Brugaletta.
Biography:
John J. Brugaletta has published two book-length collections of poetry, The Tongue Angles, and With My Head Rising Out of the Water. His poems have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Image, Blue Unicorn, Relief, The Random House Treasury of Light Verse and other publications. He previously edited and published South Coast Poetry Journal through California State University, Fullerton's English Department. Retired from CSUF, he now lives on the far northern coast of California.
Heidi Hermanson
The Carrying Over
This is a ferry to another life,
beams stuck on high, gaze
unwavering towards the future.
What seems like a dilapidated wreck
of rotten planks is bejeweled inside,
encrusted with glory,
an open letter to the ocean.
There are no personal
trainers here, no leather-clad
slave drivers brandishing whips,
just softly-rounded women
who resemble your dear, blue-
haired grandmother long gone.
They wear fragrant white face powder
and clunky jewelry. They cluck
softly, smile knowingly,
and nod approvingly
at the inanest of your remarks.
It is not a matter of boarding
or not boarding. The pull is strong,
the rope the sail rides on, rippling.
The launch is now.
See how the ocean clears
a path before you! The lime and lapis
sea-foam dream sparkles as you ride
out the storm. You are safe
below.
There is no fear for time,
for the clocks have long since
been thrown overboard,
along with your checkbook,
spare glasses, and mortgage.
Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson.
Days Lost
In spite of the allergies
I tested negative for,
the heat, the humidity,
the mosquitos,
in spite of the lost ones,
the lost jewelery,
the lost poetry,
the children that were
in my arms one day and walking out the next—
In spite of muddy shoes
on my heart's just waxed-floor
(my garbage can heart, you walked away
like a grinning trash man with a pit-bull smile)
In spite of heart aches, body aches
that feel like jays screaming...
In spit of cold stares, my darling,
your face betrays the reluctant wonderment
of the world as you sashay
through August heat
with the ease of water-skiing—perfect,
a day with no obligations,
a gazelle in someone else's tomato patch,
a shummering white veil,
a white mosquito veil
over your small heart.
Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson.
First they walk on your feet—then they walk on your heart
my mother-in-law intones, but this one only makes my
heart softer and more tender—maybe in preparation
for her to walk on it.
Her ice blue eyes fix themselves intently on me
as if to memorize each wrinkle, each one a road map.
Her smile transcends all time.
The future is not promised,
but she is a seal and a testament to it,
a mile marker that flicks out
quick as a lit cigarette burning down to the very end
I hold my niece, think of her future,
She’s as tart as an unripe pear.
Her skin is as soft as the inside of my heart.
Her specialty: softening hearts.
Time races on. Each move, our hands, our eyes,
describes a burden,
the baggage we carry.
We drag it through the snow,
leaving makes on the ground, scars.
Copyright © 2015 by Heidi Hermanson.
Biography:
Heidi Hermanson has been published in Midwest Quarterly and Hiram Poetry Review. She organized the first Poets’ Chautauqua at the State Fair and there released her first chapbook, Midwest Hotel. Heidi has organized and directed four ekphrastic shows which she describes as a marriage between visual art and poetry. In 2010 she won the Omaha Public Library’s annual poetry contest and performed her winning work accompanied by Silver Roots, a New York-based violin and flute duo. She has read at the John R Milton Conference in Vermillion, SD, at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, at Tunes in the Town Square (which features poetry at the band’s break) in Ralston, Nebraska, on the Kerry Pedestrian Bridge over the Missouri, and at the Roebuck Pub in England. In her spare time she hopes to open a library of maps to towns that do not exist and learn the dialects of the seven-year cicada. She holds an MFA from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Changming Yuan
iHooyeau
supposing Darwin was right
it did take as long as one million years
before apes became what we are, gradually
and passively, with the help of our environment
however, with our own intelligence
and technology, we are going
to evolve into iHooyeaus suddenly and
actively, in a matter of just one generation
or two, a new species that will consume
lunar energy instead of sun-based foods
each living in a unique virtual
reality, where multiplication is achieved
sexlessly via logic rather than through
love, where each individual lifetime is
expended within a tiny chip
so, are you happy to be the last humans
or the earliest iHooyeaus?
Copyright © 2015 by Changming Yuan.
Banyan
Instead of reaching deep
Into the ground, you hung all your roots
On your twigs in the wild open, trying
To absorb both air and light directly
As well as darkness and cold
Ready to connect to soil and water
Growing from a single tree into a huge forest
That’s your most deeply-rooted secret
The secret about growth
Copyright © 2015 by Changming Yuan.
Biography:
Yuan Changming, an 8-time Pushcart nominee, is probably the world's most widely published poetry author who speaks Mandarin but writes in English. Tutoring and co-editing Poetry Pacific (with Allen Qing Yuan) in Vancouver, Canada, Yuan has poetry appearing in 989 literary publications in 31 countries, including Best Canadian Poetry, BestNewPoemsOnline, Cincinnati Review and Threepenny Review.