Jordyn Rourke

Topanga Canyon Rattlesnake

Come with me, silly artists.

Let’s pulse down the P.C.H.

Salty feet out the window,

we’re passenger seat DJs.

Crap radio goes static

through Topanga Canyon Roads.

Green Pathfinder wallows up—

swallows up—heated concrete

underneath six o’clock sun.

Soak in the balm-butter air,

sweet, dewy-thick and thinning.

Park. Climb climb climb, breathe climb sip—

spit, sweat–tarps off at the top.

Flash the valley, shimmy shake,

meet the guile rattlesnake.

Give us that honeyed-smile,

and your sap-venom secret.

Lethal molasses dripping

dreamy poison-lacquered goo.

We slip on by the coiled

beast—keep your secret, creature.

Creep through sandy ant hills,

shed your scales, we’ll shed our shirts,

and slither down the mountain

in sweet shameless reverie.

Inspired by her senior year mentor, Jordyn Rourke, a Boston native, adopted poetry as her favorite form of art expression, while studying English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Since graduating, Jordyn has relocated to Southern California, from where many of her poems are inspired. She divides her time between exploring the Pacific Coast, working towards becoming a teacher, and freelance writing.

JCM Eldred

Living in Heat

We kept rabbits as pets. From them I learned

how to live in our flat inland stretch

skirted by those rushing somewhere past burned

skin, past the heat so hell hot it can catch

and distill memories, those confessions framed

in shame for burning acts we failed to do.

Yes, rabbits housed in hutches. We named

them something adorable. As I grew,

they and their names have been forgotten,

which is unfair—because rabbits can recall

in their rapid breath and bedtime cotton

human routines and rituals and all

the indignities of creatures who fall

asleep confined, who wake to creep and crawl.

Holding the Quick Shiver

I cupped the rabbit’s head and cradled its tail

as always. That day, an Edenic snake—

just a quick shiver really—crossed our trail.

Poisonous? My father grabbed a metal stake

or perhaps a shovel. He brought it down fast,

decapitating the snake with one hit.

The rabbit scratched, drew blood until at last

my father gripped it by the scruff, raised it

by that fur on its neck until it stilled.

Then he rocked and stroked it with husbandry touch.

After that day when the snake was killed,

I walked gingerly between house and hutch,

pushing past the panic at that spot of dirt,

holding so tight that nothing could hurt.

Vigilance and Vigils

His porcelain angel, His china doll. He didn’t need a papal council to vote

his daughter into sainthood, to mark a feast day on which he could pray to heal all

bruised by his iniquities. He understood retribution. Because of his sowed wild oats,

his porcelain angel, his china doll

fell to earth, lived a scant two years with the stench of milking cows and goats,

with tractors that tip, rattlers that strike, coyotes that call, with lethal

chemicals that bleach and bleed, frayed electric that smokes into throats—

Appalling, all on the farm that stomps, mauls or kills. How could he foresee the most

deadly was that small pet door through which she could wriggle, crawl,

waddle to pool deck? He found her adrift on reflected sunlight, her spirit afloat.

His porcelain angel, His china doll.

A California native, JCM Eldred received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois and now teaches in the MFA program at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of two nonfiction books: Sentimental Attachments and Literate Zeal. Her latest book, of collection of poems entitled More Sonnets from the Portuguese, is forthcoming in Fall 2016.

Note: The poems “Living in Heat” and “Holding the Quick Shiver” are used by permission of Whitepoint Press LLC. They will be appearing in More Sonnets from the Portuguese this fall.

Michael Orlich

Communications Tower

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.