It’s that time of year when we crave humidity. November’s poems are filled with love and summer; in some cases, both at once. Whether in Mexico, South Carolina, Virginia, or some bathroom, somewhere, this month’s work is largely about hanging on, to a season, a person, that night. It seems the Whitman influence is due– a reminder that poems (and love) can also be about loosening ourselves, and passing freely into the inevitable next.
Issue Title: from Walt Whitman’s “I Sing the Body Electric”
“Such-like I love–I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestly with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, and count.”
Contributing authors: William Brewer, Caty Gordon, Robert Gomara, Allison Malecha, Mauren Campbell, Yasmin Roberti, and Cynthia Blank
Calhoun Mansion
Charleston, SC
Don’t forget about the rope molding
and the cypress doors. Nor
the main hall, Tiffany chandelier,
Tiffany windows stealing sunlight.
The drawing room, sitting room, office.
Remember the elephant foot ottomans,
the cruel, cracked skin, blistered
toenails big as plates. Remember
the Greek revival sofa stuffed
with horse hair, which we know
is best left on the horse.
Try to hold on to the dining room,
the twenty-head table, full-spread
of sterling, indoor palmettos,
the bust of Robert E. Lee.
But most importantly the early
Degas, just below the portrait by Cassatt.
What about that tapestry?
Sixteenth century with real
gold thread—frayed, stretched,
torn— from North Korea. Wanted
by many, seen by few. The gold
still trying to glimmer.
And of course those stairs.
The boar, zebra, gazelle, ibex,
all watching with marbled eyes.
Remember early Kandinsky.
Muddy, clay-red and sad.
The petite Klimt.
We’ve seen a lot but don’t forget
the Rembrandt portrait
and the one buried beneath it.
The Dutch darkness that we
drooled at, went crazy over,
wished we could steal.
Please, please hold on to
the bedroom with the four post king
that belonged to Napoleon’s nephew,
that Prince Charles slept in
post-Hugo, where Kennedy snoozed
on a cot while in the Navy
(before the broken back and Camelot),
where we stood, staring from
the window. The street dead,
wet in low-country heat,
holding you and you saying
Never let me go.
William Brewer
Allegheny College
***
Lake Anna
meant late summer afternoons
that dripped into evenings,
a sun-soaked sweat expanding
each pore. We would gaze at
the dust rising over the marina
on the last lake in Virginia
ever filled by man, the glint
of freshwater settling
beneath the underbelly of the bridge,
and the steady stream of an ending season
escaping beneath each of our blinks.
That was our every wish,
leaving pennies on train tracks
and watching from the docks
as the 5 o’clock bullets chased
the crushed stone ballast beds.
And we’d squint our eyes,
imagining ourselves carried
into the last light of day on the backs
of each rail car that blustered by,
beyond the lake, the dust, the empty
bait shop, and the boats that littered
the shore that neither of us belonged to.
Caty Gordon
Virginia Tech
***
Overflow
You asked me to follow you
into the bathroom. We were reckless,
didn’t care that the linoleum was watching.
With ghost water breaking, our relationship
cried like a newborn. You were
breathing hard, clenching
my hand. We left
faucets licking the floors.
Seventy percent of what’s under our skin
is liquid. We are salted, living,
bodies of water.
I never asked about the trenches;
never had the heart to waterlog
your scars. When you stretched out a faded map,
that read like an eulogy, I kissed the creases.
Now you smile like a shipwreck;
ask if I think about you.
Your saliva still swims in my mouth;
all I taste are broken pipes.
So when your mascara runs, when
you finally look like the flood
I tried so hard to levee,
I will not helicopter help you to safety.
Like a scavenger, I’m waiting
for that moment. This
is the first time I’ve cried
in five years. This waterfall
wants to retreat to its birthplace,
wishes it never tasted open air.
When you told me the sky would fall,
I broke my body, drained
all the water. I know
not all ponds are calm enough
to breathe your reflection; I know
not all people love you back.
Robert Gomara
Florida State University
***
Wilting Weather
We turned our backs as two years of conversations
winding from trashy TV trivia truces
to solutions for your first heartache, my first hearbreak
as we two city girls wound towards Western suburbs.
Two years of dirty looks burning at us
through grannys’ Coke-bottle glasses at Lucia’s,
where we’d tip our chairs back in tear provoking
laughter, sending scraps of pain au chocolat
skittering across the pâtisserie floor.
We turned our backs as two years decayed into dust
until one of us turned around –
it was me, it had always been me –
and saw the grainy pile there,
what was too plain to see all along.
I shook it into the air like flakes in a snow globe,
hoping all the pieces would settle
back into their rightful places – serene again.
But there was no protective glass shell around us, only the wind,
who snickered at me as it licked its fingers
and coaxed each melancholic piece
into an anonymous crevice in the night.
Allison Malecha
Columbia University
***
Riverside Drive
…we all want to die young…
Here in the South, in the city, nights are hot.
No hint of a breeze catches me guilty
and sneaking across orange-lit pavement
to my sister’s car.
I hold a single key,
and the excuse of filling up the tank
at the corner gas station,
where flies bounce under flickering white lights
and men with very few teeth sit on the curb to stare.
Riverside Drive will get me there—
indirectly,
but the night’s right for driving
alone on an empty and twisting road.
Wes is drunk again tonight,
laughing and running
through his neighbor’s yard
with a can of cheap beer in each hand,
two friends struggling to keep up
as they race to the lake.
I turn the key in the ignition,
and he is inevitably climbing a tree,
or wading into the water to catch a fish bare-handed.
Later, when I’ve finally made it to the gas station,
one of them will pull out a Ziploc bag
he’s paid forty dollars for,
a pretty glass pipe and a lighter.
They will blow smoke rings to the moon,
then lie back
and stare at it for an hour or two.
I have always Riverside this road during the day,
when trees filter green sunlight
and the gaps in their branches give me
a slice-by-slice view of the river, fifty feet below.
And now, there’s something terrifying about
the two yellow lines snaking in front of me,
and the deep darkness that hovers just above them.
I slam my foot on the accelerator
to send my headlights further and faster,
and I tear blind through every turn,
jerking the wheel to the left,
to the right.
Tonight Wes, we are looking at the same moon.
I will eventually forgive you
for everything that’s not your fault,
and you will never realize anything was wrong.
Tonight we are looking at the same moon,
but I’m insane
with hot humid wind in my eyes,
and no one to see for me.
Mauren Campbell
University of Virginia
***
Citizenship
You told me I wear my heart on my sleeve;
“Are you a US Citizen?”
The border patrol didn’t wake me up as I slept on the seats, and you slept underneath, on the Amtrak train that rambled across the top of our country. I kept reaching down to hold your hand so you knew I was thinking of you. I was always thinking of you.
First sleepy kiss on that train, you cradling me like a baby, I practically was a baby, 19 to your 23 years,
I always date those older men.
Our professors sat right behind us, they must have seen us
Falling in love on a border trip
Something was bound to go wrong
You insinuated once that we were doomed from the start but I
Couldn’t ask you outright if that’s what you meant,
but I’m pretty sure it was.
Sitting on those steps, those collegiate steps, so hard to exist here once I knew you
Existed here too
Remembering every little step we took together and your
Room overlooking the cold grass and the
Trampoline frame in your front yard that we would flip over and the
Way we could play with each other like we were ten years old
Wrestling in front of everyone cause it was fun as shit, wandering into the woods drunk and kissing under trees,
pine needles stuck to my hair and back as you pushed up against my body, warmth against
Warmth on April nights, as I wore your shirt and you skateboarded alongside my bike and I
Felt like we were in some sort of teen movie,
Good thing my older friends buy me drinks at the bar, as you’d reach behind yourself and grab me and spin me and kiss me and we were a couple from the start
Toothbrushes at each other’s place from the start hand in hand from the start head on shoulder
From the start in a van
In Mexico, a van in Mexico,
Sleeping next to each other on the floor of a church and giggling
Too loud.
everyone knew we were flirting like crazy, I kind of thought you were gay but then I caught on to the secret
And caught on to your glances and caught on to the
Way you would lean in with your hips when you’d talk to me or look kind of nervous
Or that time you grabbed me and hugged me underneath the clothesline and all I could think was
What the hell kind of a reality am I in right now
Your too-cool-for-school Seattle boy dreams and questions and so fucking
Intrigued by my depth
My depth
My depth that sucks in all the boys but spits them out exhausted tired and looking for someone
A little
Less intense.
I wish they didn’t call me intense
I’m just trying to be real
I’m just trying to be honest.
You told me, I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Yasmin Roberti
Vassar College
***
Fly Down to Mexico
immerse yourself
in the water
of your discontent
(read shakespeare
there is always something
new to unearth)
oil beneath the soggy ground
I wonder why we spring anew
in the autumn
when everything is changing
and you watch
the sun turn black
watch it melt like a candle
in a withering sky
the last vestige of salvation
in a religion full of rituals
there is only one
you can never
and always do forget
to keep
in your pocket
loose-change-love
and your tears
to fill in the holes
of an old violin
Cynthia Blank
New York University
The Last Romantics 