I remember the quiet steps we made once,
you and I, following a bloody trail,
hoping not to spook the gut shot doe—
one of many things dead but still able to run.
I wore running shoes to your funeral, but
still couldn’t get away. I stood there staring
at the dark tear in the earth; my feet
had turned to dirt, and, for a moment,
we were both headed the same direction.
If eyes are windows, they open
on no more
than a great blackness.
Joan Colby
Pheasant
For Kay
The fat cock iridescent
As taffeta. Its scarlet eyepatch,
Purple throat, green skullcap
Brilliant copper breast fluted in black,
Small autistic amber eye
Posed against an imaginary snowbank,
Flimsy shrub dangling three torn leaves,
Corn stubble to the right and overall
A layered lowering sky.
The painting was complete. You were
Still alive.
Exercising the Thoroughbred in an October meadow,
A pheasant flushed beneath his hooves.
He reared straight up as if seized by the rapture,
Then came down sunfishing.
Fall mornings shotguns echoed.
Flapping awkwardly out of cover
Into the sheen of death, into the soft
Mouths of Labradors.
In yesterday’s snowstorm,
Ornate as the one in the painting,
A cock marched down our lane
With strict military measure. A lone soldier
Of fortune leaving its trinity signature. I haven’t
Forgotten you.
Woodland
Photosynthesis unleashes
an amorous greenery.
Harsh burls and knots
choke words that have arrived
like tinder on a clean fire.
Deciduous forest, second growth,
conflagration of years we regret.
Deadfalls, clearcuts, leaves
burnished with dismissal.
Jagged limbs groan
beneath ice. How love
circles the society
of the downfallen.
In the old tales, children
escape to the forest. The maiden
is lost. The wolves lurk.
The witch steams in her hut.
Fire on the Slope
The mountain was on fire,
red and gold, a pall of smoke
clearing suddenly as a stroke
victim’s apprehension, to invoke
the genius of hell seizing the canopy
pine by pine like damned souls.
We watched from below
waiting the order to evacuate.
The little mining town
built on a scheme of gold
too difficult to extract
in a brief season. The pass
closed most of the year.
Fire descended as if on ropes,
brilliant aerialists swinging
a trapeze of needles. Smoke
homesteaded the foothills.
I was twelve, excited by danger.
Smoke-jumpers, men with axes
setting backfires. Our house
open to conflagration.
I clutched the spaniel.
Days later, embers still bolted
like red animals, but most
of the mountainside was ash
reigned over by witch trees
lifting brimstone hands
to bless us.
Bezoar
Famous stone
Beloved by herbalists.
A universal antidote.
A thief accepted poison
To test its efficacy
And died in great distress.
Still its powers extolled
By alchemists and magicians
Pulsing with the lore of faith.
Under glass, on a shelf
The largest one he has extracted.
Formed in a horse’s cecum
In concentric mineral rings
The way a pearl surrounds an irritant.
The horse refused its hay
Stomped, groaned, lay down.
A difficult diagnosis: choke.
The enterolith
Large as a cannon ball,
Rare, extraordinary.
A visitor declares it
Disgusting. Freakish marble
Of the bowel.
The vet defends his prize.
The body’s curious device
Like everything: magical.
Susan Grimm
Crumble and Air
There was a farm, a memory of a farm, where we didn’t
grow anything. We nailed up boards, collected
stuff in coffee cans. Then earthquakes, the ground
breaking like pie crust. California fires. Thunder
barreling across the land like a locomotive’s wheels.
I who had been used to sweetness, knocked
catawampous, held on. I who had been used to—
not cream, which seems too rich, though Aunt H,
knocking on her nineties, savors it poured in her cup—
We had been skating on peanut brittle,
crickets in shoes scratching towards our death.
Like a pin in cork, like a tick sucking up dirt
(there’s a sharpness there), I held on.
A ferment sizzles about me, insidious, a yeasty
bubbling within. Always eager to run
up the stairs—shouldn’t I remember Kidnapped
and its destination of crumble and air?
The trouble is I want to be happy. The trouble
is I want to be good. (What kind of poem is that?)
In the parking lot of Heinen’s on my quest
for a Swedish turnip and a couple of pears, a man
shrieks from his car, “Why must I live in this world?”
(I’ve edited that a little.) There are statistics
older than me that could be presented, but
I don’t have their handle. Like a pin
hammered in cork, like a tick sucking up earth,
(there’s a sharpness there), I hold on.
“a great number of things close together and in motion”
Turning away from the mirror, I say to my soul, Think loud—
galvanize: reduce the past to eraser crumbs, a pink cloud.
the organs waver, the bones reach out like trees—no winged cloud.
The un-eye blinks—virtues falter, inflate, agitate
their vapor, marshmallow up a harp string cloud.
If somewhere a self without features considers, combs
its hair, hats up some ether, cool in a mink cloud?
Or dispersed in some vastness and spread shining like jam—the stars
trundle out—but gritty bits of self cling, cloud?
Or rind or fruit—let me out of the garden now the leaves
fall (this spiraling drain); yet the orchard returns, a succinct cloud?
I cannot let go of this hand, my own, and all it can touch—
soul, self thrust in this glove of skin until molecules blink, cloud.
Mare’s Nest
Spicy, wild conundrum I’ve become—I’d like to think. Spotted lily with a brave and graceful throat!
But that’s not the boat I’m in. My spine a ziggurat of ice.
Walking through the darkened house. But worse than a dream. Clumsy enough to tip. Heavy enough to fall. Foreground foots
tool. Background rug. Mantle and igneous still swallowed inside the crust.
Or driving down a street cum alley, Roman style. Narrowing. Cobbles and stones knackered together. There’s a terrible scraping sound.
Where is my horsepill of happiness? Misery sifts in like regular dust.
Which is why I say keep your lips mutinous. (In a trice takes a long, long time.)
Contributor Notes
Joann Smith: Joann Smith has had stories published or accepted in Chagrin River Review, New York Stories, Literal Latte, Best of Writers at Work, Alternate Bridges, Image: A Journal of Art and Religion, So To Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, The Roanoke Review, The Greensboro Review, and The Texas Journal of Women and the Law.
One of her stories was selected by the editors of Best American Short Stories 2000 as one of the one hundred notable stories of the year. Her novel When I Was Boudicca was published online in 2004 (before anyone was reading books online!). She has just completed a novel of contemporary fiction. She lives in the Bronx with her husband, daughter and Westie. She began thinking about “Tuesday Night at the Shop and Shoot” in 2001 after a shooting in a Wendy’s. She’s been toying with it since.
James B. DeMonte: An Ohio native, James De Monte has spent the last couple of years teaching creative writing and developmental English courses at Columbus State Community College, where he also helps to advise the literary magazine, Spring Street. Previously, he taught similar courses at Central State University, English in Sicily and Sardinia, and writing workshops for the Wick Poetry Center, in addition to a number of labor jobs. In 2009, he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from Kent State University and the NEOMFA program.
Jéanpaul Ferro: Jéanpaul Ferro is a novelist, short fiction author, and poet from Providence, Rhode Island. An 8-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Jéanpaul’s work has appeared on NPR, Contemporary American Voices, Columbia Review, Emerson Review, Connecticut Review, Portland Monthly, and others. He is the author of All The Good Promises (Plowman Press, 1994), Becoming X (BlazeVox Books, 2008), You Know Too Much About Flying Saucers (Thumbscrew Press, 2009), Hemispheres (Maverick Duck Press, 2009) (Goldfish Press, 2009), nominated for the 2010 Griffin Prize in Poetry; and nominated for both the 2012 Griffin Prize in Poetry and the 2012 Kingsley Tufts Prize in Poetry. He is represented by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. He currently lives along the south coast of southern Rhode Island.
Mercedes Lawry : Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in such journals as Poetry, Rhino, Nimrod, Poetry East, Seattle Review, and others. She’s also published fiction and humor as well as stories and poems for children. Among the honors she’s received are awards from the Seattle Arts Commission, Hugo House, and Artist Trust. She’s been a Jack Straw Writer, held a residency at Hedgebrook and is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her chapbook, “There are Crows in My Blood”, was published by Pudding House Press in 2007 and another chapbook, “Happy Darkness,” was released by Finishing Line Press in 2011. She lives in Seattle.
Barbara Brooks: Barbara Brooks, author of “The Catbird Sang” chapbook, is a member of Poet Fools. She has had work accepted in The Oklahoma Review, Blue Lake Review, Granny Smith Magazine, and Third Wednesday, online at Southern Women’s Review, Poetry Quarterly among others. She is a retired physical therapist and lives in Hillsborough, N.C.
William Greenway: Greenway’s tenth collection, Everywhere at Once, won the Poetry Book of the Year Award from the Ohio Library Association, as did my eighth collection Ascending Order. Both are from the University of Akron Press Poetry Series.
His publications include Poetry, American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Southern Poetry Review,
Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, and Shenandoah.
He has won the Helen and Laura Krout Memorial Poetry Award, the Larry Levis Editors’ Prize from Missouri Review, the Open Voice Poetry Award from The Writer's Voice, the State Street Press Chapbook Competition, an Ohio Arts Council Grant, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and been named Georgia Author of the Year. He is Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University.
Sean Forbes: Sean Frederick Forbes is an adjunct professor in English and creative writing at the University of Connecticut. His poems have appeared in Crab Orchard Review and Long River Review. He lives in Thompson, Connecticut.
David Oestreich: David Oestreich lives in Northwest Ohio with his wife and three children. His poems have appeared in such publications as Minnetonka Review, Eclectica, Hobble Creek Review, and Tar River Poetry.
Joan Colby:
Publications
Books: The Lonely Hearts Killers, Spoon River Poetry Press; The Atrocity Book, Lynx House Press; How The Sky Begins to Fall, Spoon River Poetry Press; The Boundary Waters, Damascus Road Press; Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve, Alembic Press; Dream Tree, Jump River Press; Beheading the Children, Ommation Press
Periodicals: Over 900 poems published in journals including Poetry, Atlanta Review, GSU Review, Portland Review, Rockhurst Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Karamu, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, Mid-American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, Kansas Quarterly, The Hollins Critic, Minnesota Review, Western Humanities Review, College English, Another Chicago Magazine and others.
Awards: Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature; Illinois Arts Council Literary Award, Stone County Award for Poetry, Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry. Finalist in the 2007 GSU Poetry Contest. Honorable mention in the 2008 and 2010 James Hearst Poetry Contest(North American Review), Finalist in 2009 Margie Editor’s Choice Contest, Finalist in 2009 Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize. Illinois Arts Council Literary Award 2007.
Colby has been editor of Illinois Racing News for over 25 years, a monthly publication for the Illinois Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Foundation, published by Midwest Outdoors LLC. She lives with her husband and assorted animals on a small horse farm in Northern Illinois. She has three grown children and six grandchildren.
Susan Grimm: Susan Grimm is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. In 2007, she received an M.F.A. in Poetry from the NEOMFA/Cleveland State University gateway. She is a former managing editor of The Gamut, Cleveland State University’s general interest magazine, and a founding editor of Ohio Writer, a service newsletter for writers. She has taught creative writing at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland State University. Also, for three years she was the editor for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
Her poems have appeared in West Branch, Poetry East, The Seneca Review, The Journal, and other publications. In 1996, she was awarded an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council. Her chapbook, Almost Home, was published by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 1997. In 1999, she was named Ohio Poet of the Year by the Ohio Poetry Day Association. Her book of poems, Lake Erie Blue, was published by BkMk Press in 2004.
She edited Ordering the Storm: How to Put Together a Book of Poems which was published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center in 2006. In 2010, she won the inaugural Copper Nickel Poetry Prize, and in 2011, she won the Hayden Carruth Poetry Prize. Her chapbook Roughed Up by the Sun’s Mothering Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in 2011.
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