That record winter
bitch-punched me
across Manitoba
froze me to totem
spun me downward
in a wake of wails
Now expatriate
no more crocus promises
no birch, fir, hint of evergreen
no promise of fecundity
Here, beside an empty river
bank, all folklore renews
Time to decipher
graffiti, sweating highways
palms, malls, stone gardens
California
Lovely, (as the say of the plain)
In her own way
hospitable, impulsive, naked,
flinging orange blossoms
white as snowflakes
Often kind, and
oh, so very warm
“Defrosting” also forthcoming in the Autumn 2015 issue of Chiron Review.
Rowena Silver, a native of Winnipeg, Canada, now living in Riverside, California, is a founding editor of Epicenter Magazine, A literary publication. Her work has been widely published in such journals as: Bridges: A Jewish Feminist Journal, European Judaism, Writer’s Digest, Ariga, Standards: University of Colorado, Pudding House Publications, Guardian Unlimited, Heyday Books, The San Fernando Journal, and Dissident Editions.
“…where we came forth, and once more saw the stars” (Dante, 373).
Upon seeing the gleaming points of light,
My heart was refreshed, the remnants of the
Wearying journey left in the inferno’s night.
“Those who are blessed with life,” said my master,
“May see and appreciate the distant suns
Which permeate the beautiful night air
Of Earth; however, remember well – you will not
Be on Earth forever. We all will face judgment,
After we’ve become weak of body and thought.”
I reflected on this, recalling the jealousy
Of those living their death in that fetid place, who
Will never again see the stars, or feel the breeze.
“Come,” called the guide, “before I show you the other
Two sides of the afterlife, there is one
More task which must be fulfilled; I assure
You, it will not delay us for much time.”
Curiously, I followed him, for he
Had drifted, while we were speaking, to align
Next to a nearby copse of trees. Upon reaching
Him, I spied a faint figure, seemingly outlined
In small points of light; when it moved, its gleaming
Build shifted in such a way to give the
Appearance of moonlight off a body of
Water. It was mournfully kneeling by an
Imposingly gigantic tree which seemed
To be grasping at death. Its branches, all blackened,
expelled an aura of blight, and the trunk displayed
A similar state of sickliness, being
Riddled with an array of chips and holes – though, most
Decrepit were the roots on which the spectral thing
Was kneeling. Through them, to my amazement,
Lava and fire seemed to be bleeding;
The cracks in the charcoal leaked bits of the hell that
I thought I had forever left behind.
After a moment of silence, I inquire:
“What, dear mentor, Is that being that shines?
And the tree: it seems to have planted its
Roots in The Inferno itself.” “These mysteries,”
My guide responded, “Are secrets, which sit
On the shoulders of those of us who have
Been imbued with the knowledge of the domain
After death – but, as your guide, I will give
You all the wisdom which I have the ability
or right to bestow. Regarding the tree, you made
a correct assumption. It comes directly
From the seventh circle of hell. So, yes,
To confirm the cause of shock in your expression,
This tree is indeed a soul, though his name is less
Important than the deeds which were committed by
the wretched thing. After being tormented since his
youth through the cruelty of his brother, to die
Seemed preferable to him – in contrast to living, and
extending his bitter existence.” And, with
an ample amount of pity, a strand
Of the experience in the abyss was
Remembered by me: violence of any sort
Concludes in hell. On this bitter thought,
The spectral guide continued. “He was sent
To the layer reserved for those who
partake in harm to themselves. As the harpies rent
This boy’s body in the form of a plant,
His brother, for once, felt an intense guilt.
He saw his dead sibling, and in turn saw the rat
Which he had become. He dedicated his life
To remorse, every particle of his body
Focused on compensating for his brother’s strife –
His compunction was so great, the soul separated
Itself from the body, and became the
Stellar being you see before you: Not dead,
And not alive.” In my exceptional pity,
My heart felt as if would burst
For the tortured souls standing across from me.
Gravely, my master went on: “This spirit
Continued, in its spectral state, to do penance.
Even in hell, the young boy could hear it:
His brother’s sorrow, echoing through the
World of the dead like a fog horn
Sounding in a misty night. As eras
Passed, the boy found that he had (for the first
Time in his existence) a direction. He
Wished to once again see his brother on Earth.
His will to do this was so great that he grew;
He forced himself upward until he had
Overtaken even The Lord of Hell; and then drew
Upon every last ounce of his strength, and
Reaching up with his roots, pulled himself
Through the ceiling of The Inferno, the third
Soul to ever return to Earth from Hell.
Upon breaking through, the stars once
More shone their light on the child who prevailed.”
However, all that the young boy cared for was
His brother, a glimmering spirit of remorse,
Who had waited upon his arrival for millennia.”
After hearing this story, I looked upon
The boy who resembled a dying tree
And the brother who resembled a fallen star
Reflected upon the world,
And let Virgil lead me onward.
David Schwitzgebel is a student at Riverside Polytechnic High School, in which he conspicuously spurns the book and poetry clubs because they are terribly dull. He spends his free time writing, reading, and sleeping (during which his subconscious mind considers what next to write/read).
Everything I Need to Know about Men I Learned at Band Camp
.
Sometimes, boys at Arrowbear Music Camp chose a girl they thought was prettiest during the two weeks everyone would be together, and she became the girl of the fortnight.
Sometimes band kids were kind of nerdy, but these eight boys belonged to a club called The Cynics and wore light blue sweatshirts with a capital C, an arrow cutting downward through it.
Sometimes–once–one of them chose me, and he was the best horn player I ever heard, except Dennis Brain, but he was famous; besides, he’d never met me and he was at least 40, ancient.
Sometimes Jack wore dark rimmed glasses like Buddy Holly and when he flipped his long hair out of his eyes, he seemed much older than the 15-year-old boys I knew—maturity, a plus.
Sometimes, he quoted Shakespeare, Kerouac, and Kafka as easily as my father quoted scripture and with a passion for the word I’d never heard from anyone else, including my dad.
Sometimes, he led me to imagine things I’d never thought about—like what it would be like to kiss his lips, and stuff involving tongues. It was hard to concentrate on notes or counting rests.
Sometimes I forgot the boy back home who had never even tried to kiss me though we spent hours parked in his father’s car, listening to KFWB channel 98, outside my house.
Sometimes, Jack caused me to do things that excited yet frightened me, like sneak out to Happy Gap alone, talking, holding hands, cuddling till midnight.
Once, when we tiptoed back from Happy Gap after curfew, he kissed me in front of the girl’s dorm. I thought it was true love.
Once warm honey ran through my body and my eyes closed, so I didn’t notice the spotlights that came on — caught in front of the whole, entire camp.
Sometimes, I still want to believe like that.
Marsha Schuh earned her MFA in Poetry at California State University, San Bernardino where, until last year, she taught English. Retirement as given her the chance to spend more time with her family and enjoy reading, writing, teaching, traveling, and most recently, long-arm quilting. In spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, she believes that life is good.
Marsha’s work has appeared in Pacific Review, Badlands, Sand Canyon Review, Shuf, Inlandia Journal, Carnival, Found Poetry Journal and other publications. She also co-authored a college textbook, Computer Networking, published by Prentice-Hall and finally figured out how to turn the appendix about converting decimal to binary into poetry. Marsha and her husband Dave live in Ontario, California.
What is it to be made of this custom:
when rivers braid umbilical cords
between lovers when one is
married and with kids? Child play,
go on eat dirt. It tastes like
dry pecan pie, it’ll scrape out
any voice you ever had. How
do we explain some mothers
run like wolves with a pack
of men behind their tail?
Child don’t worry they won’t
bite you, each wolf will
lick your ear wrap gold around
your wrist in hopes you’ll breathe
acceptance into their ear
after your father has left since
his braided cord is cut and
hummingbird whispers in
the wind are his only way to
say hello and goodbye. Child,
go on play mommy and see
how easy it is to entertain other
golden ringed pollen bees.
Orlinda Pacheco is an MFA Candidate at Cal State University, San Bernardino whose poetry embraces the tongue, plunges words with her lips into your sex, and meshes the sacred and profane. Her poetic moans grope at the reality of infertility and expand the walls of being female. Her work has appeared in the Pacific Review and Quake Song: New Voices of Southern California and forthcoming in Badlands Literary Journal. She currently resides in Apple Valley.
Sixty-six. That was the final tally of books I read for the “50 Book Challenge” this past February. Sponsored by the San Bernardino County Library, the reward for checking out and reading fifty books was a book bag. I didn’t need another book bag. But I thought that participating would be a way to catch up on some award-winning children’s and young people’s books, revisit old favorites, and explore new-to-me adult reads. It was a terrific adventure.
One of my selections goes hand-in-hand with National Poetry Month. Love That Dog: A Novel is penned by Newbery Medal Award winner Sharon Creech. Meant for readers ages 8-12, like most books for young people, to me, it is also a book for people well beyond age 12.
The inside front book cover reads, in part, “This is the story of Jack / who finds his voice / with the help of / paper / pencil / teacher / and / dog.”
Jack, the storyteller, is a student in room 105. Miss Stretchberry is his teacher. The class is exploring poetry: both writing and reading it. Here are a couple of excerpts:
“September 13
I don’t want to
Because boys
Don’t write poetry.
Girls do.
September 21
I tried.
Can’t do it.
Brain’s empty.”
A novel in poetic form, chronicling Jack’s struggles to overcome his “empty brain,” the story proceeds throughout the school year until the last entry dated June 6. His discoveries along the way, and eventual glee at his newfound form of expression, will invite you to laugh out loud, perhaps remind you of your own melee with poetry, and touch your heart.
Hand in hand with Jack’s poetic scuffle is the encouragement, and patient nurturing, Ms. Stretchberry offers her students. Indeed, Creech dedicates the book in part, “…to all the poets / and Mr.-and-Ms. Stretchberrys/who inspire students every day.”
An excellent read you will want to revisit again and again, Love That Dog, A Novel, was published in 2001 by Joanna Cotler Books, An Imprint of Harper Collins. Eight-eight pages.
On a hill nearby
stands an old, rugged tower
of steel pipe and rust—
sunk in parched ground
of tumble-dry scrub,
of sand-rock and dust-
swirled devils, pirouettes
of fleeting grace, amid
the howl and gust—
heavy, rigid and erect,
arms stretched in silhouettes
of dish and drum, zag and bolt.
The silent signals echo in the void,
and on the cross-
bar, almost unseen,
the sparrow sings.
Michael Orlich began writing poetry in 2011. Since then, he has hosted a small monthly poetry group in his home in Reche Canyon, in Colton. He has lived in the IE since 2008 and works at Loma Linda University as a preventive medicine physician and researcher in nutritional epidemiology.
Gary Keith graduated from Claremont Graduate University with an MFA in Painting. He continues to make art, mostly collages. Keith started writing poetry about five years ago. Both his visual and written work have an economy to them that allows him to completely grasp them and play with their form, rhythms and ideas and give no quarter to filler.
The Windmills of The San Gorgonio Pass Wind Farms in Palm Springs California
.
In celebration
giants stand
tall and proud
gathered together
in endless rows
atop jagged stone mountains
and on the dusty scrub-covered
valley floor
Slowly
steadily
they whirl their arms
in a rhythmic ritual
sinuous dance
overlapping hundreds of hands
to the hum
of the turbines’ chant
As wind transforms
and current invisibly flows
the tribal reverence for earth
Is finally heard
Lullaby Death Valley National Park
They come
in hordes
awed
by my angles
edges
salt flats
dunes
high canyon walls
They look beyond
the grey
to see the contrast
of my bright orange and aqua cliffs
and dark jagged peaks
against blue sky
and rolling billows of white
They don’t see
that like an oversized child
I only appear
to be old
and have millions of years
before me
when those edges
and peaks
will wear down
The crust
of earth
its moving plates
will rattle
crack
and fold my bones
Arid hot air
will blast me
with sand
Flash floods
dragging tons of debris
will scrape
my walls
and floor
But every day
in the late afternoon
when the sun shifts
before sunset
it offers me blankets
of dark purple shadow
whose softness unfolds
into crevices
and river carved bowls
as snugly
I welcome
its soft glow
of pink
and gold
till cradled
in the deepest of blues
safe
beneath
the nightlight of moon
I drift
into sleep
to the silent rhythmic tune
of blinking stars
Joan Kantor is a poet and educator. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and she recently took first prizeIn the Hackney Literary Awards. Her book SHADOW SOUNDS was a finalist for The Foreward Reviews Book of the Year Award and she has just had her second collection FADING INTO FOCUS, a memoir in verse, published. She has been a poetry consultant for The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival as well as a mentor and judge in its Fresh Voices poetry program for youth. Joan also does writing workshops with the elderly. Her work has been in several ekphrastic shows and she performs in Stringing Words Together, a music and poetry experience.
It’s National Poetry Month. My poetic soul celebrates as I honor the poet in me, and the poets, and poetic works that have nurtured my life. Like most of us I have been in conversation with poets whom I know only through their writings. At other times, I am sharing a repast or sipping a drink with a poet whose vitality is radiating the space around us.
One of the poets I am privileged to know is Deenaz Paymaster Coachbuilder. Deenaz is well known to most of us who are part of the Inlandia community, yet her many accomplishments and talents are sometimes hidden by her soft and nonintrusive demeanor. I met Deenaz in the summer of 2009 at the Inlandia Creative Writing Workshop led by Ruth Nolan, MA, MFA, at the Main Riverside Library. Our friendship solidified over the months, indeed years, that we participated in the workshops and has continued on. For us, the workshops were a way to connect with a community of writers and continually challenge ourselves.
Deenaz, a Riverside resident, is a published poet in the US and India. Her poems have appeared in Inlandia: A Literary Journey; Sun Runner; Sugar Mule Literary Magazine; Parsiana; The Elphinstonian; Slouching Toward Mt. Rubidoux Manor; 2011 Writing From Inlandia; The Riverside County Recorder; India Journal; and Crucible. As an artist, Deenaz exhibits her often mesmerizing works in oil. She is also an educator and environmental advocate. Deenaz received a doctorate in Theater, an MS in Communicative Disorders in the US, and an MA in Literature from Bombay University, India. A retired school principal, she is a consulting Speech Pathologist and university professor in “special education.” A Fulbright scholar, Deenaz is the recipient of several awards, including President Obama’s “Volunteer Service Award.”
Deenaz published her first book of poems, Imperfect Fragments in 2014. Having watched the work unfold, I wrote a review that is including in a final section of the book entitled “Words of Praise.” I am waiting to post my review at Amazon, whenever the book is available there. Until then, I am overdue posting it here to honor Deenaz and her work. Happy National Poetry Month.
Joan Koerper On Imperfect Fragments by Deenaz Paymaster Coachbuilder
Harvesting imperfect fragments arising from a full range of human experience, translated internally in a multitude of languages, sensations, and lingering emotions, Dr. Deenaz Coachbuilder transmutes swatches of vibrant phrases into a stunning outpouring of poetic expression. “Life is a pilgrimage. But where does the path lead?” she begins, extending an invitation to accompany her on this personal journey of questing and questioning. Deenaz’s poems illuminate a journey of compassion, grace and transformation as she contemplates and celebrates, time, love, faith, the human condition and the continuum of spirit.
In the end, however, it is the humility of her spiritual journey that is most telling, and the true stairway to the profundity of her poetry. Even in the days when she felt no affinity to any particular faith, her unfailing sense of connectedness to all forms of life, the Universe, and particularly her family, in other words, her spirituality, never wavered. Deenaz shares her acute awareness of class differences in poems such as “The Green Hedge,” her almost unbearable grief over the untimely and tragic death of her only brother, her struggle to confront her mortality as she battled cancer, and her joy at the birth of her grandson, Barjor. We feel her affinity with the desert rose rock, the dandelion, the Joshua Tree, her dissolution into, and oneness with, a monarch butterfly and other sentient beings in “Impermanence of Being.” We read her tribute to the labor of the earthworm in “Paradise Lost,” become hypnotized along with her by the sight of a tiger languishing in cooling waters, celebrate Ocotillo Lady in the deserts of California, and listen while “Cymbidium Orchid Speaks.” All of her poems are ultimately a spiritual “answering echo to one’s primordial being.”
Deenaz’s heartfelt, lyrical, sometimes painful reflections are augmented with visuals of her other talents in the arts: stunning photographs such as “Alki Sunset.” We run with the wild horses contemplating her painting of same and feel our own eyebrows lift to her painting “Startled Flight.” The array of family photos across time, generations, and place, solidify that strong sense of her cultural identity across borders as she wonders at growing things.
I have been privileged to read and watch Deenaz’s poems evolve over the last few years. Yet I am profoundly moved by this collection she has courageously assembled. Each time I read and reread the poems, I am taken to a different depth of thought and feeling than I traveled on the previous read. Deenaz’s fravashi, her guardian spirit, has given a gift to us all by not only being at her side, but by guiding Deenaz’s poetic hand to weave her imperfect fragments into a memorable work that the reader will want to return to, again and again. (c) 2013 MJ Koerper.
Bordering a walk between two buildings was a low wall where we sat in a ring of light to have the conversation we’d agreed to. To talk it out. Low wall beside a walk between two buildings, your shiny bicycle just there. In front of us while we had the conversation we’d agree to. People walked by, glanced at us in our conversation, dodged the bicycle—its fat tires. Under the light, we were prize fighters circling each other in the ring? We were dancing partners wheeling warily, listening for the end of the last reprise? These are tired metaphors not up to figuring what we felt or said. What anybody saw. Everybody saw the bicycle—its fat tires. That frame, those spokes and tires. These alone were witnesses to what went down that night beside the walkway in the ring of light.
Meditation on a Line from Martha Ronk’s “Quotidian”
Scape: An act of escaping. A thoughtless transgression.
A representation of a scenic view, as in landscape, seascape,
cityscape, etc. The shaft of a column.
–The New Shorter OED
Under a tangle of dark canopy, a scrappy understory,
in a surge of shrubs and stems and leaves, the air cools, and my skin grows expectant. It waits
to join my other senses drinking in the wilderness.
High in the trees a tht,tht,tht,tht,tht … dry and insistent
as the rasping whir of an electric fan slowing to a stop.
Down the path, two birds scissor across at knee-height,
swift and bright, snipping swatches of air.
A sycamore, whiter-of-trunk than the others in its grove—
their patchy, brown and khaki bark still clinging—seems
necessary, like the steeple that focuses a landscape.
And yet, I find that I’ve come over-fed to this
botanic garden wilderness—no hunger rising.
I’ve brought language with me like a lunch, like a camera
with its set of lenses: the tropes, the images and meters
of Wordsworth’s inscape. The calendar photos,
travel folders, and letters from the Sierra Club. I am
no Annie Dillard, unburdened pilgrim on her daily trek.
My shadow startles me when I break cover into sunlight
at my back. My legs have become pillars, grand in the
oblique morning sun. They support a shortened torso,
totem head. No expectancy, no more waiting under
verdant cover of old trees for wilderness to speak.
Only this striding forward in a gray and shrinking skin.
Of Petrarch and Cigarettes
My thoughts are fresh today,
missing that sexy idyll
of flip-flops and bare legs
caressed by summer’s sun.
Missing that sexy idyll
of Petrarch’s Laura
caressed by summer’s sun,
I smoked a fag, but still I think
of Petrarch’s Laura.
Too much already.
I smoked a fag, but still I think Petrarch. Is that sexy?
Too much already
about books and reading
Petrarch. Is that sexy?
Let’s talk now of smoking.
About books and reading
generally, not enough is said.
But let’s talk now of smoking
cigarettes, their glowing tips.
Generally, not enough is said
about the gift of cool white
cigarettes, their glowing tips.
(don’t even think of sex!)
About the gift of cool white
sheets, I’m fantasizing now,
not thinking, not! of sex.
My thoughts are fresh today.
Southern California poet Lucia Gallowayearned her MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her published collections are Venus and Other Losses (Plain View, 2010) and a chapbook, Playing Outside (Finishing Line, 2005). Poems appear widely in journals, including Comstock Review, Midwest Quarterly, Tar River, Centrifugal Eye, Innisfree, and Inlandia; in the anthologies Thirty Days (Tupelo, 2015) and Wide Awake: The Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond (Beyond Baroque, 2015). Her poem “Open to the Elements” was a top-prize winner in RhymeZone’s 2014-15 Poetry Contest. Galloway’s manuscript “The Garlic Peelers” won the QuillsEdge Press 2015 Chapbook Competition and was a Finalist in Tupelo’s 2015 Snowbound Competition. She co-hosts “Fourth Sundays,” a reading series at the Claremont Library.
Inlandia: A Literary Journey 