4 Poems by Andrea Werblin

  

  

Andrea Werblin is the author of Lullaby for One Fist (Wesleyan University Press), and has had poetry published in various print and online journals, including BOOG Reader, EOAGH: A Journal of the Arts, The Massachusetts Review, and Smartish Pace. She currently works as an Associate Creative Director in the Boston area.

'Oral, Oracular' by Andrea Werblin

   
  

I’d like to say the mind fortunes

everything, is chance & center

& control. But/and the lips

   (but laud the lips!)

paradisiacal, equatorial,

fabled warning & grin.

Unforgivably well-drawn lips,

lips that dinnae speak,

diaphanous and darling.

   (Embroiled, alarming.)

All lake water & reaching

white heron. Cloud-drift, fat

fat sky. And how touching

   (how disappearing…),

how there is nothing new

to say about them – except,

how about them? how do

they part, suck in whole

holy breaths, what do

they perform precisely,

what will they will you to say?

  

'Love in the Time of the Serial Dater' by Andrea Werblin

   

   

What you lack in true passion you make up for

with dwarfish, generic desire, as if that’s ok.

Though you – in a version, as a symbol

and exemplary of common history –

might drill brain. Might leave memory

to its cyclical, demented aviation:

will not fly, refuses to carry.

If exhilaration recedes, if forgiveness is

breakfast to the willful party's hollow heart,

maybe age is aborigine to wonder.

I wonder how it feels to you – moving about

in your little diorama, pleased in a way

and forgetful of corrosive need, regrettable acts –

never quite sure which weighs more,

anger or fear, or which accounts for the sparkle.

  

'Variables and Tantrums' by Andrea Werblin

    
   

Spring, and the anorexics are in bloom.

From clavicle to clavicle they kind of sing

unstrung hostile expressions day finds favor in.

Spring. And insomniacs turn heroically human,

undream their eyes, defibrillate.

Which you would know were you not

so busy watching yourself:

the bad light, the excellence passing.

Cowardice is seasonal. Therefore you propose

marriage to suspect images of yourself,

with all your vacancies watching.

Therefore you must decline.

 

'Poor Excuses' by Andrea Werblin

  
  

Because the clouds resemble fists splayed against a caterwauling

teenage sky &  fluky spring's a fluke of mud & construction,

a lie the mountains tell to each other and to fibs of rocky beach.

If I’m supposed to know, for example, why I'm here, an iceberg will

calve itself free of the mighty Arctic, leaking out secrets.

It should be that obvious, the way a body is

matinee to its own madness and fractured singing.

What if the body is a crater, not meaning to be

attracted to the rickety dark? Maybe it’s born greedy,

like a sea star. Maybe the body is maritime, an inlet

of devotion to chemical imbalance, & if only I can

dupe it into going steady, the two of us

shall never meet again, except as strangers.

Because trying to embrace life every single day

is boring, exhausting, pretty pointless if I’m honest,

I sometimes pretend a companion or two appears

in the fog, rolling in like newer reasons.

2 Poems by Cindy Hunter Morgan

   
Cindy Hunter Morgan's poems have appeared in West Branch, Tar River Poetry, Bateau, Sugar House Review, Weave, The Christian Science Monitor, A cappella Zoo, and elsewhere. Her chapbook manuscript, “The Sultan, The Skater, The Bicycle Maker,” has been a finalist in the Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition (Hudson Valley Writers Center) and the Hill-Stead Museum's Sunken Garden Poetry Prize. For ten years, she worked in the orchestra field, directing publicity for the Grand Rapids Symphony and, later, the Lansing Symphony Orchestra. She lives in East Lansing.

‘The Ringmaster’ by Cindy Hunter Morgan

  

  

He wanted a marching band

to follow the street sweeper,

a barrel organ in every bank lobby,

a shooting gallery at the public library,

a trained bear to deliver mail,

booths of sweets on every street corner.

He thought, with all of this, he might

come to crave silence,

to appreciate bird song and green tea,

pleasures which had always eluded him.

Excess was the only path to simplicity

he could imagine, though he searched

every day for what he expected

the entrance to tranquility might look like:

a narrow trail tiled with tarot cards,

lined with flickering candles,

leading to a glade in Sri Lanka

where elephants roll in wild grass,

and a boy from the tea factory

sits quietly, eating cotton candy

and listening to stars.

This poem appeared in Sugar House Review (Volume 3, Spring/Summer 2011)

‘The Pawnbroker’ by Cindy Hunter Morgan

   

   

On Sunday, the pawnbroker

closes his shop and spends

the morning in the park

feeding ducks, trying to

redistribute the wealth

of this world in ragged

cubes of bread.  At noon,

he naps in a tent of spruce boughs,

his sleep addled with unfamiliar

rustlings and wild dreams filled

with peculiar transactions

with woodland creatures:

a squirrel begging to trade

the bones of his mother

for a handful of nuts,

a robin pleading to exchange

her nest for three worms.

Later, he walks through

the park, staring at everyone,

wondering what each person

has bartered for her life,

how much men have traded

for an afternoon of

chess and sunshine.

This poem appeared in Sugar House Review (Volume 3, Spring/Summer 2011)

3 Poems by Helen Vitoria

  
  

Helen Vitoria’s work can be found in many journals: elimae, PANK, MudLuscious Press, Foundling Review, Rougarou, FRIGG Magazine, Dark Sky Magazine and others. She is the author of three chapbooks and a full length poetry collection: Corn Exchange forthcoming from Scrambler Books. Her poems have been nominated for Best New Poets & the Pushcart Prize. She is the Founding Editor & Editor in Chief of THRUSH Poetry Journal & THRUSH Press. Find her here:

 http://helenvitoria-lexis.blogspot.com/

'Barbie cuts herself, again' by Helen Vitoria

  
  

While Barbie cleans up blood in the kitchen, after having nearly severed her index finger, I have the same iron taste in my mouth as when I watched his face as he lied to me. A hurried rush of Red on Black, streaming & violent, a stoned-dogma, a splayed bend at the knee to quickly clean a mess up: gauze-like, thin-bandaged, blood-soaked ephemera flung aside. I light a cigarette, watch her tend to the wound. I will not. I will not. I will not. Swallow this again. Barbie goes loose & shadowlike, falls hard on the kitchen floor, just like the first time.

[first published at killauthor.com]

'Preparing the Body' by Helen Vitoria

   
  
We will meet the body under the stairs and tell no one what we touch there

We will envision the mouth of the body moving in strange song

We will touch the body as if a delicate sand castle blown over

We will let the body be a shade tree, crawling with spiders

We will smear it with honey and wait for it to crack its legs open

We will allow the body to skim water, to come undone

We will teach it the definition of lost and dark wine

We will let it run in Central Park with lambs

We will reach its lungs in a rage of whispers

We will teach it prayer and how to work its way back into the world

We will welcome it onto a green windowsill filled with death

We will write it inscriptions while weeping under fireworks

We will watch the body be beaten into disgrace

We will teach the body bone silence and call it witchcraft

We will take its dignity and arrange it in snow

We will recognize the body in traffic lights and be reminded of carnivals

We will spread the body, use thumb and palm and say: here, be happy

[first published at EXCLUSIVE Magazine, exclusive4.weebly.com/poetry.html]

'Buddha' by Helen Vitoria

  
  

I meet him on the internet. Then I meet him in an artsy cafe in South Philadelphia. He brings his dog, Buddha, an Akita, who has been fed too much. Buddha loves this man. Buddha has secrets in his teeth. We sit next to a giant poster that reads: Once you go Black you never go back. He says he is a true modern day renaissance man. I do not know what that means and I do not think I care. He appeals to my creative side, tells me he’s a photographer, and pulls out his iPhone to show me his portfolio. I trace the outline of his cock through denim with my eyes. The photos are of mostly unattractive people smiling in faraway places. Places he says he’s been. Also, still life shots of large steel things, buildings, and sculptures, one of a well hung man peeing in a fountain. He wears diamond stud earrings and every sentence starts with I. He notices a tattoo on my wrist. He wants a portrait of Jimi Hendrix on his back, but has not found the right artist who will tattoo him perfectly. Says: I always wanted to photograph a woman with ink. I tell him I have 40 tattoos. Buddha licks gently at the sac that used to hold his balls.

[First published at darkskymagazine.com]