Bumble Jacket Miscellany: a miscellany for poetry and fiction 2:2 Read online



  Bumble Jacket Miscellany

  a miscellany for poetry and fiction

  Winter 2011

  Published by: Bumble Jacket Miscellany Publishing

  Copyright 2011 by Bumble Jacket Miscellany Publishing.

  VOLUME 2 NUMBER 2

  Bumble Jacket Miscellany

  a miscellany for poetry and fiction

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, in creative works contained herein is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission in writing from Bumble Jacket Miscellany, or as expressly permitted by law. The publisher apologizes in advance for any errors or omissions and if contacted will rectify these at the earliest opportunity.

  We accept electronic submissions only. For more information, please visit our website at: https://sites.google.com/site/bumblejacketmiscellany/home

  Edited by Meredith E. Torre

  Cover and Illustrations

  Meredith E. Torre

  Contents

  Poetry

  Michael Lee Johnson

  Leaves in December

  Fly Wings

  James G. Piatt

  Do Not Tell Me Lies

  Leaving

  Flowing

  Jerome Brooke

  My Lover

  Janine Surmick

  The Fire

  Little Red

  The Wheel

  Joseph Buehler

  Late Night

  The Gem Holder's Candy

  Andy Psomopoulos

  iron church/iron shirts

  the song remains the fame

  class-if-eyed

  Rodney Nelson

  Gone to the Animal

  The Village Part of a Time

  William Doreski

  At the Mournful Resort

  Wine for Breakfast?

  Currency Exchange

  America's Sex Life Has Tired

  Fresh from the One Great Holstein

  Meredith E. Torre

  From Whence I Came

  Gertrude Stein's Balloon

  Fiction

  Jennifer York

  Henry and Anne

  Joseph Buehler

  The Gingerbread Man

  M. E. Mitchell

  An a.m. Lament

  Leaves in December

  Michael Lee Johnson

  Leaves, a few stragglers in

  December, just before Christmas,

  some nailed down crabby

  to ground frost,

  some crackled by the bite

  of nasty wind tones.

  Some saved from the matchstick

  that failed to light.

  Some saved from the rake

  by a forgetful gardener.

  For these few freedom dancers

  left to struggle with the bitterness:

  wind dancers

  wind dancers

  move your frigid

  bodies shaking like icicles

  hovering but a jiffy in sky,

  kind of sympathetic to the seasons,

  reluctant to permanently go,

  rustic, not much time more to play.

  Fly Wings

  Michael Lee Johnson

  Black wings

  landing on unwanted

  space, like the devil

  in bad spots that itch

  fly swatter hammers,

  summer fly body parts splatter

  blood crucifixion red,

  blood stains splat against the kitchen wall.

  Blood crucifixion red

  Dead? Sacrifice?

  Or does Jesus call, resurrect all?

  Black wings.

  Do Not Tell Me Lies

  James G. Piatt

  Do not tell me lies about

  The green falling waves,

  That crash carelessly upon

  The burning sand,

  Or massive rising

  Clouds which cling to the

  Bottom of the sky

  In amazement;

  Do not huddle in the back of

  My dark earth bound brain, where

  Songs of yesterday still lie

  Silent, and dormant:

  Do not pull upon my

  Searching heart,

  Nor correct the rhymes

  That echo noisily

  Inside my eager soul, or in the

  Unfulfilled longing

  Within my being,

  Bring to me gaudy prisms

  Of beautiful vibrant

  Colors that will reflect

  Delightful images

  In my drifting senses;

  Give me a desire,

  A hunger for truth, and

  For all that

  Is delightful,

  Pleasing, and

  Alive!

  Leaving

  James G. Piatt

  Leaving painful thoughts

  Leaving hours of darkness

  Leaving them,

  Unloosening my

  Lover’s hand,

  Leaving our memories

  Dreads and fears

  In the beat of my heart;

  Leaving the lonely song,

  Death’s lonely song,

  Death’s dark lonely song:

  Subtle and sorrowful

  Yet strident the notes,

  To and fro they go

  Filling the hours

  Of darkness

  Waning and falling,

  Yet in the Fullness of the

  Orange and pink morning,

  The sun replete with joy

  Covers the gaping hole,

  The darkness of the earth:

  I leave her and leave

  My song with her then

  Gazing to the west with

  Silver beads upon my cheeks

  I communicate silently,

  With her fleeing, soul.

  Flowing

  James G. Piatt

  Sounds of water fleeing

  Over smooth stones

  Created by eons of years

  In a mountain brook,

  Nature's symphony shaped

  By warm gentle winds

  Performing an aria through

  Huge gnarled pine trees,

  A ballet of Oak leaves

  Swaying gently,

  Green clad pixies dancing

  With tranquil delight!

  These are the things

  That flow in my

  Mind, sitting by

  A tranquil pond!

  My Lover

  Jerome Brooke

  My lover gave me a box of sweets

  Long years ago, before he sailed

  off to the wars, soldier of the Queen

  He kissed me then, and promised to return

  then sailed away in the iron ship

  I remember the box, I can see his smile

  I was young then, I have no more

  tears

  Late Night

  Joseph Buehler

  Late night

  restaurant:

  yellow florescence

  glares.

  She

  pours coffee

  carefully; a young

  man and his

  girl

  talk quietly

  in the back.

  An

  old man enters

  and

  looks around

  wonderingly.

  He sits

  at the counter

&nbs
p; and

  fingers a menu;

  people go by

  outside

  covered

  in night

  The Gem Holder’s Candy

  Joseph Buehler

  The gem holder’s candy isn’t pure.

  It stinks of hollowed out logs and snatches of

  pitch and claws full of Uncle Jack’s Impatient Rum.

  It was set afire long before you were even conceived

  in the hollow blue dawn glare of a false apocalypse,

  thrown overboard on that silent historic starlit night

  when the mighty ship slid down into cold depthless

  waters of grief and ignorance, arrogance and hope.

  Underneath it all, Uncle Horace struggled valiantly

  (you can’t take that away from him) with the covers

  that pinned him tightly to his bed, dead drunk and out

  of it all---sleeping his way down to watery death.

  Yet let’s remember to celebrate the flying colors of that

  auspicious day when the fleet came flooding in, marching

  bravely to the high pitched strains of the vigorous old

  European waltz---you remember it?---old something

  something striding through the cabbage swamps?---oh

  come on now, what was it again?---how did it go? Some-

  thing like “thump, thump, thump” to a progressively high

  note and then it trailed off at the end. You remember?

  “Thump, thump, thump,”---what a wonderful old tune that was.

  The Fire

  Janine Surmick

  I.

  Shattered glass littered the mulch,

  impaled the stem of an orange tulip,

  thrust from manicured earth.

  A drizzle slowly soaked

  the maple dresser by the window.

  The edges of a framed photograph—

  embracing sisters –

  curled and folded.

  In the air,

  something smelled heavy, thick.

  The gray sky,

  smolder of charcoal,

  singed memories, swirled

  with the occasional draft of wind.

  II.

  We climbed this tree for summers,

  old knobby oak.

  The branches extended up and out,

  but one branch grew parallel to the ground.

  Vines and fallen leaves entangled

  the lone, long arm.

  The twigs grew distorted fingers

  like Rodin’s hands,

  clenched, twisted, angry.

  I made up a story about the Hangman’s Tree

  and climbed the gallows one afternoon.

  I hung,

  suspended above the ground,

  my shoulders cracking as I swung like a gymnast.

  The branch crackled, splintered.

  I don’t remember screaming when I fell,

  six feet of branch in my thirteen year old fists,

  head colliding with rotting roots.

  III.

  Plastic peppers poked out of a bowl

  in the condo style kitchen.

  It was dark when we moved

  with plastic bags of underwear, shirts

  paid for by the Red Cross.

  The smoke from the melting plastic

  in our neighbor’s dryer followed us.

  I wondered where those children slept

  as I stubbed my toe on a stucco table.

  A plastic picture frame –

  family of models sitting at a table—

  smiled from the entertainment center.

  I looked at my little sister,

  brown eyes wide,

  arms folded in an x across her chest.

  I took her hand and we followed

  the smoke to our backyard tree

  and climbed the Hangman’s gallows

  until morning.

  Little Red

  Janine Surmick

  buttoned her crimson coat

  and opened her black umbrella.

  The slick pavement

  reflected gray skyscrapers

  off puddles in the street.

  In a hospital Downtown

  Grandma sputtered blood,

  awaited her weekly visit.

  Flashes of yellow and black,

  fragments of letters

  splashed against legs.

  Red meandered

  past the crowd by the Starbucks

  on the corner,

  past the Italian man selling sausages

  and lottery tickets.

  She pulled out her cell phone

  while she waited at the bus stop,

  the battery flashing low.

  Grandma could feel the Wolf

  surging inside her.

  Her heart monitor beeped

  while she waited and wheezed.

  She could almost taste

  the raisin bread

  Red brought every week.

  She closed her eyes:

  twenty years ago,

  hand over hand

  with her five year old granddaughter

  rolling and pounding the dough.

  The bus pulled up

  and Red crushed her cigarette,

  smoothed the plaid cloth

  wrapped around Grandma’s

  shared recipe.

  The bus hissed as it pulled away.

  She remembered the first time

  Grandma taught her how to bake:

  fingers thick with dough,

  the flour-speckled kitchen table.

  Red giggled as the yeast rose,

  opening the oven door.

  But that was years ago.

  Before lung cancer.

  Grandma clenched her wrinkled fist

  around the metal of the hospital bed.

  The machine beside her beeped.

  Red listened to her iPod,

  tapped her heeled boot

  as the bus came to a stop.

  Grandma closed her eyes,

  slid into a dream,

  as Red’s warm palm

  wrapped her swollen knuckles.

  She heard a whisper,

  Grandma look at me with your big eyes.

  Grandma dreamt of twenty years ago,

  a kitchen, the sweet smell of bread

  filling her house.

  The Wheel

  Janine Surmick

  In a tarot deck, the Wheel of Fortune predicts a change, representing the life cycle. In Greek mythology, the three Fates, sisters, determine a person’s birth and death.

  The loom wheezes as it revolves.

  My sisters stopped talking years ago.

  The golden thread is thick and slices

  my pale fingers each time I raise the shears.

  I have bled for every life

  I’ve been compelled to take.

  My fingers and the shears are heavy.

  As my sisters wrap the thread,

  the massive wheel clicks.

  I see a man draped in purple,

  at a yoga class, like a lotus, praying.

  I don’t want to kill him;

  I don’t want the thread of his life

  to cut into my eternal own.

  I try to pause, to freeze the ongoing

  motion, the constant clockwise spin

  of the Wheel of Fortune.

  My body is connected to it.

  It hurts to not follow;

  my hand is heavy,

  a magnet compelled to its poles.

  My scissors snap the thread.

  The image of a man suspends

  Midair before he slides out of the lotus

  and tumbles off the wheel.

  Drops of my blood

  follow him down

  and the Wheel revolves,

  heavily clicks,

  and another life is given,

  forever bound to me,

  alth
ough I can never take my own.

  iron church/iron shirts

  by Andy Psomopoulos

  caress of steel screems diemond rush

  apocalyphtica jewels air second crush

  spit-shine savior o-neil brush

  snapper master dapper bush

  ruddy sleeving wilson show

  little drummer boy time flow

  portable faith stavretti glow

  immortal cross horizon snow

  know Sabbath blemish angel whirled

  no strap-shoe comfort clearing girled

  burnside cleaving bloodmade kyrled

  sum funky orthodox coltrane swirled

  arctic epic seldom writ

  directed trumpet wraith

  godless angels just a bit

  erased blackbored faith

  camphor bastards leeking shine

  panning diamonds in a brine

  sublime black-ajax lasting wine

  st. george penny my machine

  black blue white arresting marks

  black box radiation sharks

  hellenic loving windsor-arks

  jerusalem-steel-british-barks

  iron church

  iron shirts

  black on black believing

  density-fein-concieving

  iron lurch

  iron birch

  crew oak super milk

  roaring rodent Luna silk

  calling golden tensor angles

  split cry fashionista wrangles

  super-scry-a total tearing bangles

  bloody loving cosmic mangles

  the song remains the fame

  by Andy Psomopoulos

  all I say is cupid

  (dirty goddess!)

  my milk strays black and artful

  medea flanks a magic ingrane..

  a horse-drawn-desserts-promise

  celling soles-devil-lived strata; of

  sirus angel-maker prize

  can you dig it?

  in disguise?

  star star atlantis:

  it’s the warriors….

  the warriors killed sirus

  broken soldiers

  the crows ruby liver

  hard deep supernova

  black yardbirds clanging

  little flames

  corroded cracks

  wall wailing fames

  morocan buxom greyded splendour