NarrativeNortheast

TWO POEMS – Nick Stanovick

on July 29 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

AUBADE

Woke to the sounds of bells, or the sounds
of great sorrow, where summer was
a pinprick, and we drove the rim of a country,
sweetjuice in your laugh.

I had a name for all your angers–scarlet
lever, cardinaled fist,
O skittish kite, twirl there in rainfall’s
afterglow. Yes, the canopy

of your touch won’t salve, the nape
of your neck a cool river.
Canoe me. Foster me another chance.
The meadow’s arrival, my palms

touching the tops of flower, then stars hung
by tiny strings, and the moon,
first a fingernail, then, a halo
halved, gaining its clarity.

Below what we cannot reason, rectangles
multiply themselves into
homes, the daylight giving your shadow
density, though I cannot

dwell in the sleep of it. Forgive
my salt–the fineness
that wonders what to make of polar ends,
to be here and not, everything set to expire.

NOTE TO CANCER

Remember, in those waning days,
where the house filled with faces
and flowers and I took drives
through the mountains, haunted
by the brightness of summer,
just to get away from people
sharing with her half-life body
their final letters.

There was that book, remember,
little and red like our eyes,
and my father would pull over that small
chair, and sit next to her hospice bed,
and she would fight off the weight
of you enough to turn her naked
body towards him, childlike,
and in her chest, bells, chiming.

In my torment, I roam
the hours he spent next to her, with
that little red book of love poems,
his voice strangled by the
crescent of her mouth,
where acres of breath
dwindled to inches.

Remember hearing him?
Were you moved?

Nick Stanovick is a writer and educator living in Brooklyn. He is an alumnus of Temple University and Auburn University, an International Poetry Slam Champion, and the winner of the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Prize. His poems have appeared in Spillway, Vinyl, The Academy of American Poets, Ghost City Review, and Drunk In a Midnight Choir among others. He is currently an MFA candidate at Queens College in New York City.
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I Forget to Say “I Love You” Too Often – Lane Chasek

on July 28 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I regret never saying we
enough

I’ll bury my needle
as allegory or violent outburst
whichever comes first

that hot rock feeling
smoldering in chest and arm

the earth claims me
like ten new lovers

I regret every color but orange
every echo but the mud
from which I came and I return (this is no longer regret)

this is sleeping in cardboard
a grass-stained guitar
a carved-out life
a bottomless cup

I love orange
but regret white

I regret never saying we
until it was too late

Lane Chasek’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Daily Drunk, Hobart, North Dakota Quarterly, perhappened, South Dakota Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and various other journals. Lane is the author of the experimental biography Hugo Ball and the Fate of the Universe (Jokes Literary, 2020), as well as the poetry collections A Cat is not a Dog (The Alien Buddha, 2021) and Dad During Deer Season (the winnow, 2022). Lane’s first novel, She Calls Me Cinnamon, is forthcoming from Pski’s Porch.
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URBAN RHAPSODY: The Art of Mary Chang

on April 5 | in Art & Photography | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Photo Credit: Xiana Garcia

Mary Chang was born in Manhattan and raised in the Fort Greene section of Brooklyn, where she currently lives. She attended the School of Visual Arts and has worked with Master printers Sheila Marbain and Shelia Goloborotko.

There was a pause in her work as a painter from the mid-1970s to the late-1990s while she raised her family and focused on another passion of hers, the theater, studying in New York with acting coach/mentor, Anthony Abeson; acting coaches Ada Brown Mather and Carol Rosenfeld of HB Studios; Linklater coach Bobby Troka; and at The Barrow Group.

Her theater and film experience now includes La Mama Experimental Theater in New York as part of the technical crew on Fragments of a Greek Trilogy, directed by Andrei Serban (toured in Italy); an ensemble group of four American actors and four Swiss actors who developed and co-wrote the play Ter-Viewwhich toured in New York and Switzerland, directed by Walter Riedweg of the Werktheater of Basel Switzerland; the Immigrant’s Theater Project, directed by Marcy Arlin, where she co-wrote the play Immigration Office, an ensemble which performed throughout New York; Manhattan by Numbers shown at New Directors Film Festival (MoMA/Lincoln Center), the first American film by the director Amir Naderi; Dos Worlds, written and directed by Maya Milenovic Workman (2018-2019); and Shen Tak, a short film honoring her father, collaborating with filmmaker, composer, writer, and director Rane Parish. In April 2019, Mary directed her first staged reading of the play Paging Doctor Faustusat FiveMyles Gallery, Brooklyn.

Mary returned to painting in 1999, invited by friend and mentor Onnie Millar to be part of the exhibition “The Tree” at The Skylight Gallery in New York. Here she exhibited “Doors,” a series of three-hundred-year-old doors that had been scraped, pulling back layers of paint while leaving residue from the past, creating a conversation with the remaining layers of paint and markings from years gone by. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA), Robert Lehman Gallery at Urban Glass, as well as various galleries and cultural centers throughout the New York tri-state area, Massachusetts, and Brazil. She is also one of thirteen artists selected to create Goloborotko’s 20th Anniversary Edition Portfolio in 2009, as part of the permanent collection of the Pinacoteca de Sao Paulo Museu SP, Pinacoteca do Estado Museu de São Paulo de Arte Contemporânea.

Mary recently exhibited in “A New York State of Mind: Stories From The Unusual Suspects,” curated by Elise Tak at De Cacaofabriek in The Netherlands September 2018, introducing fourteen independent American artists from the United States and their unique stories.
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REMBRANT’S SEASCAPE – Mayank Chugh

on March 27 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

In a tin can
of breathing
sardines
she sat hunched

in the wake of light
just to slither
into the air
of rust

eating away
every molecule
of breath she
owned and body

she wished
she owned
to fit in
another ship

shelved
in the dark
with price labels
and towering hopes

of a land
that will set
her free where
she belongs

eventually.

Mayank Chugh is a biologist and diversity activist at Harvard Medical School, Boston, as well as a poet and an artist. On a journey to share his unpublished works with the world, he has been the selected poet at Through These Realities, a New England art installation project 2022 challenging the narratives of mass media that invalidates experiences of people of color, with forthcoming work in Spry Literary Journal. He has served as a reviewer for the Harvard Review in fiction. Mayank is currently working on a poetry collection, this poem being one of those.

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ESMERALDA – Michael Montlack

on February 24 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

As real as Santa or the Easter Bunny
whenever my mother muttered your name.
Your father’s late for dinner again!
Bet he’s with his girlfriend...Esmeralda.

She tossed salad in her Tupperware,
letting the dog eat whatever greens fell
to the linoleum. My sister offering to call
the station again—as if she wanted to
catch him. Not see if our mother was lying.

You sounded so exotic. Like Mexican cities
where The Price Is Right sent hysterical winners.
Foreign. Sexy. Naughty. I could picture you:
long wavy brown hair, a red strapless dress,
sleek as one of my mother’s Virginia Slims.

Did you ever meet Esmeralda? I asked.
What’s she like? It never dawned on me
to wonder if my mother was jealous.
To ask why she was so casual about it.
It never dawned on me to be afraid
my parents might divorce, that this had
to be a joke, that my pot-bellied father—
same oily work pants daily (pale, hairy
butt crack peeking out despite the belt)—
couldn’t possibly have a mistress.

When he trudged in, my sister and I checked
his collarless t-shirt for lipstick. Perfume
strong enough to out-stink the gasoline.
A long silky brown strand stuck somewhere
to his grime-streaked brow. Always nothing.

Dinner’s cold, Howie, my mother growled.
Maybe you already dined … with Esmeralda!

Rubbing his belly, he chuckled. I sure did!
But you know I always have room for seconds

Michael Montlack is author of two poetry collections, including Daddy (NYQ Books 2020), and editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press). His poems recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, december, The Offing, Cincinnati Review, and Poet Lore. His photographs have appeared in Phoebe, Northwest Review and Gertrude. He lives in NYC.
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FAST LOVE – Paul Genega

on February 16 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

In afternoon
summerlight

you undid
my belt

with your
teeth

and I
aswoon

thought me
trothed

Later
that night

you were one
of scores

lining
the park

wall
in the 70’s

(as I
snailed

past you
looked

else-
where)
:

figures
on a frieze

piano
etude

for one
hand

Paul Genega is the author of seven chapbooks and six full-length collections of poetry, most recently Sculling on the Lethe from Salmon Poetry in 2018 (www.salmonpoetry.com) and the chapbook Moordener Kill from Finishing Line Press in 2020 (finishinglinepress.com).

Over a thirty-plus year career, his work has appeared in a wide range of literary magazines and journals, including Southwest Review, Poetry, Kansas Quarterly, Stillwater Review, North American Review, The Paterson Literary Review and Narrative Northeast, and has been honored with awards such as The Lucille Medwick Award (New York Quarterly), Charles Angoff Award (The Literary Review) and The “Discovery” / The Nation Prize. Nominated six times for a Pushcart Prize, he is also the recipient of an individual fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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Improvision – Urayoán Noel

on February 15 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

leaves
        light

green
     sway

wayward
        light

beards
      of time

moss
            music

the only
      possible
kind
        ness

in time’s
                      ravage of

blue

Urayoán Noel is the author of nine books, most recently the poetry collection Transversal (2021), which was named a New York Public Library Book of the Year and longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award. As a translator of Latin American poetry, he has been a finalist for the National Translation Award and the Best Translated Book Award. Noel teaches at New York University and at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas.

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ONCE YOU’VE SEEN A BIRD IN THE HOUSE – Erin Murphy

on February 2 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

you can never not see a bird in your house.
Every rustling paper, every curtain twisting

in a breeze, every shadow on a ceiling
is a frantic, fluttering bird. One winter we had

three in three weeks. I came home to find
our typically docile calico in the kitchen

feasting on a dead robin, her teeth bared,
face pasted with feathers. The house was sealed,

no obvious holes in the siding, windows,
or chimney, not like those buildings ripped open

by storms—giant dollhouses dripping
with insulation, beds and tables still in place,

paintings teetering over sofas. Don’t get me
wrong—I’d never welcome destruction.

But I like to glimpse the cross-section
of others’ lives. On the other side of the rowhouse

wall we share with neighbors, we don’t hear
voices, but sometimes there’s a low rumbling

that would barely register a 1.0 on the conversation
Richter scale. Most mornings we hear their shower

pulsing behind our bed. Less than a foot away
a naked man is working his hair into a lather—

just once, I’m sure, because no one
believed those shampoo instructions telling us

to rinse and repeat, did they? When I was a child
we always rented one Days Inn motel room

for our family of four, and my parents hung a sheet
between their bed and ours, a makeshift partition.

I think this is true and not something I saw on TV.
Or maybe I just want to believe they liked each other

once. There are a million years between is and was,
are and were. It’s no accident that houses have stories.

Ours has a foundation made of blocks. Sometimes
light squeezes through the cracks. Sometimes a bird.

Erin Murphy’s latest book of poems, Human Resources, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as The Normal School, Southern Poetry Review, Guesthouse, The Georgia Review, North American Review, and Women’s Studies Quarterly. Her awards include The Normal School Poetry Prize judged by Nick Flynn, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a Best of the Net award judged by Patricia Smith. She is editor of three anthologies from the University of Nebraska Press and SUNY Press and serves as Poetry Editor of The Summerset Review. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Penn State Altoona.
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TWO POEMS – Edytta Anna Wojnar

on January 25 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

THE THIRD ROCK

from somewhere up
looks like an abstract work of art—

splashes of blue pacific waters
& blurred lands smeared by cirrus.

when one stays there for a while
even the grass blades threaten.

mountains spew volcanic ash
soil trembles and traps

wheels spin upside down
with bodies still buckled in.

somewhere in midday light
a girl is raped & stabbed

a saffron flower in her hair—
a woman fights for her breath

a ventilator tube in her mouth.
meanwhile little fingers

count dots on ladybugs
sweet mango juice smears the chins

swans’ long necks bend
with tenderness towards each other

& lovers fall asleep easily
a new life forming

under the wisps of clouds

THE GOD PARTICLE

a loud thud disrupts
my morning meditation
on the higgs boson—

those yellow & green waves
that smashed in blackness & keep
the universe on the verge

i gasp when on a sunlit window
i notice a shadow—
an imprint of tiny feathers

v-shaped wings rising
above a round belly & small head
twisted at an angle

what an impact it must have been
that hurled its lifeless body
yards away from the sky’s reflection!

bluebirds bring a message
of hope but this one
mistook glass for air

my home for heaven

Edytta Anna Wojnar, born and raised in Poland, now lives with her husband in northern New Jersey, where she teaches at William Paterson University. She is the author of chapbooks: Stories Her Hands Tell (2013) and Here and There (2014) both published by Finishing Line Press. Her work has been published in The American Journal of Poetry, CALYX, Lumina, Narrative Northeast, and the Paterson Literary Review, among others.
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THROWING ROCKS AT THE STARS – Scott Hutchinson

on January 25 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

You’ve been light-year fast-balling your fire my way
for billions of years. And I’m out here in the mundane dark
throwing a hard chunk of Planet Earth right back at you.
Not trying to drive you off. Not defending myself.
Simply aiming at a dream, wishing for twinklings
of your ancient, expansive knowledge.

I don’t know why these primitive animals around me
fixate on coin, on fritzed-up connections
beyond the den, the pack. We really aren’t much bigger

or warmer than shared fur. My craving
is to pond-skip a piece of translucent quartz
up through your brilliant dance and beam,
your blessed curvature of time. If I’m lucky,
my hunger for turning things back to simplicity
with a mathematically perfect ripple might actually
become real. I aim for the resting of Andromeda.

But–a military/communications satellite
spins and glows across my path, halting
my inadequate arm. Meanwhile there’s an angry
barking from the family room of that dark and ugly
McMansion next door, making its way through
their three-car garage, someone tosses
glass toward its breaking point against the walls.

A forked pitch rises in my grip—I hold
river-smoothed rocks in my hands. All I desire:
to throw true and blot one of you out
for a brief quixotic moment, before
your sweet light bleeds back in. That’s the way
I see things. That’s my violent hope.
I don’t want to aim lower—but I might.

Scot Hutchinson’s previous work has appeared in Northeast Narrative, Naugatuck River Review, and The Southern Review. Poems are forthcoming in Appalachian Heritage, Blue Collar Review, Floyd County Moonshine, and Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. A new book of poetry, Moonshine Narratives, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing.
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TWO POEMS – Carla Carson

on January 25 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

If not restoring the cat’s order,

if not coffee for two,

who am I,

what do I desire?

Walking alone on the beach,

Claire wants to etymologize—

but she’s got mere seconds

to coin the languor

of minnows rising in swells

before people, cars, and umbrellas.

She doesn’t want to die yet.

How does one decide?

Claire would like to, but cannot

own a dog, nor any large contraption

that would save her from the sun.

O Claire,

a fish too, aims for food—

Swims to it!

For twenty-five years there had been clothes to find,
shoes to tie, homework—a ferris wheel
of cars bombing Claire’s mind,
alone in the shower or driving the car—

Mom. Mom. Mom.

“The time, it flits away,” said the elders,
blessing her children in stores—
And Claire did understand.

She was there, had fattened them
with her milk, was there for
the first steps, the fevers, the fractures,
contests and matches, her armadillo
wagon scouring the county
for the thousand details, her mind
inside the smudged lines of every
good matriarchal story she heard.
She was there,

secretly howling—O how is it done.
And savored some. Yet her body
she ignored. Had to—
And then she was ill, and stayed, ill.
Stayed upstairs, to heal.

Then one day, after the last child’s morning clatter,
the back door slammed. Under her quilt,
Claire’s blood began to itch.
She swallowed her life
as the sun cast its avenue
on the yellow floor—then slipped from bed,
and crawled, her palms like savants,
groping down the hall toward
a fizzing light. There, she clambered
up the sink cabinet, the way
of a spider, so to implore,
in the bifurcated mirror, her face.

Carla Carson is the author of the chapbook LOVE AND ORANGES, Finishing Line Press, 2015. Some of her poems have been published by Prelude, PANK, Adelaide Literary Magazine, The Mom Egg, Columbia Review, and more. She is a member of the faculty at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College where she teaches reading and writing poetry. As well, she is the secretary of the board of directors for Four Way Books, Tribeca, NY.
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HER BODY, MINE – Naomi Coquillon

on January 11 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

The funeral home was in an old farmhouse that had become an island within Northern Virginia’s ever-growing exurbs. When I saw it, I knew Mom would have loved it—that mattered to me somehow.

One of us was required to identify her body there, but I couldn’t bear to see her. I thought she might look as if she were asleep, but I knew whatever they did would make her look even less like herself—Mom never wore make-up. My fiancé offered to do. One of us was required to identify her body there. I don’t know why we didn’t have to do this at her home or at the morgue, but I suppose it was because she had laid all of her identification out for the police.

“She looked fine,” he said. “It was peaceful.” I tried to make this make me feel peaceful too. It didn’t.

The next day, my sister and I sat on the wraparound porch of the funeral home, waiting for Mom’s ashes. As we looked out into the sunshine, I blinked and saw Mom there in the space between us. Her stocky legs were crossed at the knee, her pointy knee cap sticking up from below her shorts. She had a smile on her face. “Isn’t this a beautiful view? What a sunny day!” she said. “I’m so glad I get to be here with you.” I knew then what it means to be haunted, a trick not of light but of memory.

She was there especially at my grandparents’ summer cottage, which she had loved. I would turn the corner into the kitchen and have a vision of her bending over the dishes, then looking up and out over the sea as she loved to do. If she was not in the house, it was not because she had died, it was because she had gone down the path to the beach to put her feet in the sand and to give thanks to “Earth, sea, sun, and sky,” as she liked to do, or had walked into town to mail a postcard.

I should have done the identification. I knew her body almost as well as I know my own. I know her stretch marks, the soft shape of a belly that never recovered from holding twins. The smooth skin of her face, pale and unblemished. The tip of her narrow nose. Her thin lips that would break into a wide smile, bright and open. I can see her hands so clearly. Although she was never concerned with fashion, her fingernails were always long and elegant. She tended to them herself, softening the cuticles and filing and soaking them until they were beautiful and strong. I remember snuggling next to her and putting my arm around hers, pulling on her hands and examining them without asking, without question. When we arrived at the cemetery, I wanted to lay on the grave and put my head on her stone the way I used to put my head on her shoulder.

When my mother died, I felt as though something had been removed from my body, as if she were now a phantom limb, an extension of myself that felt present even when it was gone. Now, ten years later, she returns to me. When I look down at my body at forty and after bearing two children, I see my mother’s form.

Naomi Coquillon is a working mother (and occasional writer) living in Maryland. She works in the field of museum education; she is currently the Chief of Informal Learning at the Library of Congress. Her published writing to date is focused on my profession and includes articles in the Journal of Museum Education, Social Studies and the Young Learner, and Museum Magazine. An excerpt of her memoir that explores her biracial identity will be published in The Nasiona Magazine this year.
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BALD EAGLE – Morgan Bazilian

on December 3 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Never seen one out here before,

so close to the road,

flying off the mossy rocks–

angles and intent.

Morgan Bazilian is a poet and Professor of quantum mechanics.
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THE SIDEWIDER: To an Absent Friend – James Miller

on November 30 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

One evening I thought to save the azaleas along my back fence.
Unraveled livid green vines from their choked branches.

Next day I found a dime-wide blood-bloom on my left side, ridged
and itching. Soon I could wear no belt, no cloth or band round

my tender waist. The blustered flesh under my two fingers reminded me
of compromised plastic. Burnt out, hard and cynical as a coup. After,

I washed both hands with scalding soap, twice through. But the doctor
could not name the beetle, tick, or spider whose bite had marked me,

in defense of its interest. Pulling up trousers at the clinic, I felt
for my wallet, heavy in its pocket. Bent groaning to tie my laces.

Thought of years ago, before the azaleas, before my marriage, a mild June
abroad in Manchester. I stood too soon for a Saturday stop on the metro line.

Waited three minutes for the door to open. Counted each breath as coin,
in payment of private debt. My friend remained seated, holding a pair

of shrink-wrapped records— Lee Morgan, Roland Kirk. He turned
The Sidewinder front to back. Squinted to read through the liner notes,

slowly. So that he would not see me leave the train, alone.

James Miller won the Connecticut Poet Award in 2020. His poems have appeared in Cold Mountain Review, The Maine Review, Across the Margin, Lunch Ticket, Gravel, Juked, Meat for Tea, Main Street Rag, Plainsongs, The Atlanta Review, Sheila-Na-Gig, Rogue Agent, Sweet Tree Review, Thin Air, The Inflectionist Review and elsewhere.
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IN THE BENIGN INDIFFERENCE -Judith Skillman

on October 11 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

of the universe
some remnant of prayer shawl, Kippah, candle.
Vestment, nun’s habit, incense.

The moon can eclipse the sun, the moon’s red

and the red beads around grandmother’s neck
prefer superstition over His risen
body. Did He speak of revolt, defiance,
and passion? What’s a four-day old lamb good for

if not to slaughter and bloody the door frames?

The angel of death comes at midnight.
Camus’ stranger shoots the Arab once for death.
Four more times for no reason at all.

Judith Skillman is a dual citizen of US and Canada, and lives in Newcastle, Washington. Her work has appeared in Cimarron Review, Midwest Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, The Iowa Review, Threepenny Review, Zyzzyva, and other literary journals. She is the recipient of awards from Academy of American Poets and Artist Trust. Her recent collection is A Landscaped Garden for the Addict, Shanti Arts Press, 2021. Visit www.judithskillman.com
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