Poetry Summer 2015 fiction all issues
whitespacefiller
Cover Hannah Lansburgh
Jennifer Leigh Stevenson
For Your Own Good
& other poems
Marianne S. Johnson
Tortious
& other poems
Kate Magill
Nest Study #1
& other poems
Karen Kraco
Studio
& other poems
Matt Daly
Beneath Your Bark
& other poems
Paulette Guerin
Emergence
& other poems
Hank Hudepohl
Crossed Words
& other poems
Alma Eppchez
At the Back of the Road Atlas
& other poems
Jim Burrows
At the Megachurch
& other poems
Rachel Stolzman Gullo
Lioness
& other poems
Yana Lyandres
New York Transplant
& other poems
Heather Katzoff
Start
& other poems
Tom Yori
Cana
& other poems
Barth Landor
What Is Left
& other poems
Abigail F. Taylor
Never So Still
& other poems
George Longenecker
Polar Bears Drowning
& other poems
Ben Cromwell
Sometimes a Flock of Birds
& other poems
Robert Mammano
the way the ground shakes
& other poems
Janet Smith
Rocket Ship
& other poems
Gina Loring
Dementia
& other poems
J. Lee Strickland
Minoan Elegy
& other poems
Toni Hanner
Catching the Baby
& other poems
Robert Mammano
the way the ground shakes
or the holes in the walls
where you would be able to see the guts of the house
if the house had guts.
it makes good sense that our limitations are so
tight around our cute little necks
and our ambitions are knick-knacks
collected on end tables
sit for years and are eventually
thrown outdoors to get turned over
ashes to ashes junk to middens.
daylight from citrus oil
lampshimmer tomorrow,
the crunchy foot prints on the flash frozen grass
the architecture of the water structures that come
out of your sigh.
I’ll watch till there is nothing to see,
let my fingers linger in your hair—
shivering whispers sew the buttons on the morning
the intrigue has been woven and fastened like this
for as long as the deep sky went blue
and blue to true and just, just
out of reach, your skin, so soft just under—
how do our weak wonders rest
their troubled feet and great heavy heads?
the steady lonesomeness lovely
almost passing as longing.
the fever climbs about cloud cover high
and stolen away
a bit longer you must.
look at all them letters
all the damned things flitting about,
blustering and flummoxed
colliding and colluding!
just outside this window
on all the awnings
squatting and cosmic—
I want to talk about what holds me.
I want to talk about gravity,
the newspaper from two days ago
filled with rain stuffing the gutter.
we continue to be surprised by violins,
yell across the avenue
as if we were in a crowd.
we’re just pieces.
there is nothing but life
happening between us,
but the sky
the atmosphere
and beyond our weather,
the whole mess.
consciousness is such a delicate accident.
stars don’t cross .
two lines
expressed in tons
of wood, gold, and concrete
for twenty centuries.
“and by the way thanks for that”
half-assed over the shoulder disputes
lobbed like a split pomegranate in parting
we were in the kitchen cutting onions
and someone came in
we pretended we were at our wit’s ends
that strange region where men weep
a tangle of ropes
the path of least resistance is atrophy
sometimes decisions waiting to be made
make themselves
evaporate opportunities
and inaction knots an expiration
no
living past tense
all the moments of knowing
you wanted everything changed
line up like constellations
flickering moot way way up
and I trace these stubborn lines
‘look a seed
a bulb, a tuber’
back toward the last times I wasn’t myself
those nights
when who knows who circulated
through the little back alleys
and sloppy veins
crocheted byways
underground amateur astrology
root structures drunk moon shine
risky
I still find a stray hair
here or there
a polka dotted sock
when my underwear drawer is almost empty
and how many years since that smile glinted
you won’t remember
the handkerchief situation isn’t half as strange as it seems
because this contraption scratches
tilt your mouth
and what voice chooses
come clean for once
bones after the flesh has rotted away
a wolf big black bird with hunger
a feather a hair a plume of smoke
we’ll go on and on
wondering how 2 people in complete agreement
could argue so long
“I’m not lazy I just don’t see the point”
imagine if we picked any direction
and just went
but sometimes these directions loop
5 years in circles
there used to be formulas for these sorts of things
out of boredom
something pretty is molded
with my preachy voice
that clears out subway cars
mind the gaps
how many “well the names aren’t important”
until the names disappear and the places follow
leaving dull skeleton stories waltzing around
I’m 2 stepping this 3 step dance
“my first love was a boat”
independent thought like buoys suspended
rope worn round the wrists and ankles
like cheap juvenile jewelry
lately through this strange irrelevant term
seems all my thoughts fall about
neither here nor there
I’ve been thinking about people living in their heads
I like imagining them miniature
pulling down eyelid curtains a warm glow still behind
I wonder how they’d leave if they wanted to
I know it’s fancy but I’ll bet the ants still get in
maybe through chimney ears
and march their numbers along the skull’s walls
a few resolutions ago
Nothing is set
run around and around
New Year’s eve
we’ll drop our own ball.
I’ll try not to play the accordion.
My sweet, what?
I am almost out of space.
Oh what wonderful geese you have, ma’am
and what a sigh.
Even the mailman gets a raise
and here I am still jobless,
a big green apple.
She left last night
and they’re all praying for you
green peppers . . . green peppers.
Cross the ‘i’s and dot the ‘t’s
let them talk about despicable so-and-so’s
and we’ll throw in an orange wedge with our two cents.
Read it to me in your real voice.
Let us send messages on rays of light—
No, no, give me primitive construction any day
tic-tac fingers and swollen pulleys.
“Ain’t no rest for the wicked.”
a post-modern post-script:
Nothing is set
We moveable parts.
Run around
around
and I breathe deep.
Robert Mammano
was born and raised in New York City. He graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in English/Creative Writing from SUNY Geneseo in 2009. He has spent the last few years wandering around the United States, working odd jobs, and writing as the mood strikes. He currently resides in Portland, Oregon, where he is enjoying the natural wonders of the region every chance he gets.