Poetry Winter 2015 fiction all issues
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Cover Peter Rawlings
J. H Yun
Yesenia
& other poems
Colby Hansen
Killing Jar #37
& other poems
Melissa Bond
Freud's Asparagus
& other poems
Jane Schulman
When Krupa Played Those Drums
& other poems
Susan F. Glassmeyer
First Moon of a Blue Moon Month
& other poems
Melissa Tyndall
Haptics
& other poems
Micah Chatterton
Medicine
& other poems
Emily Graf
Toolbox
& other poems
Kate Magill
LV Winter, 2015
& other poems
Michael Fleming
Meeting Mrs. Ping
& other poems
Richard Parisio
Brown Creeper
& other poems
Jennifer Leigh Stevenson
Circe in Business
& other poems
Laurel Eshelman
Tuckpointing
& other poems
Barry W. North
Molotov Cocktail of the Deep South
& other poems
Charles C. Childers
Privilege
& other poems
Ricky Ray
A Way to Work
& other poems
Cassandra Sanborn
Revelation
& other poems
Linda Sonia Miller
Full Circle
& other poems
J. Lee Strickland
Anna's Plague
& other poems
Erin Dorso
In the Kitchen
& other poems
Holly Lyn Walrath
Behind the Glass
& other poems
Jeff Lewis
Charles Ives, A Connecticut Yankee
& other poems
Karen Kraco
Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill
& other poems
Rafael Miguel Montes
Casket
& other poems
Jeff Lewis
Charles Ives, a Connecticut Yankee
Kazoo chorus
with flutes, fiddle & flageolets
piccolos, ocarinas & fifes;
or: “I heard something else—
there are many roads, you know
besides the Wabash.”
The Unanswered Question in a clear Connecticut sky,
a triple hammered to right,
Columbia the Gem of Mutual Life.
Read in two voice—
or a battle of the bands,
Giants vs. Cubs roughly
August, 1907 & in a half-spoken way
Polo Grounds played as
The Perennial Questions indistinctly as possible
of Existence, or gradually excited,
marginalia
erasures
scratches,
all but impossible to decipher The Camp Town Races
in Central Park in the Dark.
Tone roads taken and not taken
are to represent the silence of the druids in Concord.
Read in two voices
or tap dance in black face,
Mike jaunts Watchman, tell us of the night
out to CF. What the signs of promise are:
Johnny at bat Traveler, o’er yon Mt.’s height
hits over Mike’s head See that Glory-beaming star!
oboe on the mound
ball strike ball ball Watchman, aught of joy or hope?
strike Traveler, yes: it brings the day.
the classic 3 & 2 rhythmic Promised day of Israel
situation Dost thou see its beauteous ray?
Music not evolved but mutated
in a sudden paroxysm of Fourth of July!
All Hail the Power!
All Hail the Power!
Ives, must you hog all the keys?
Why it’s just like a town meeting—
every man for himself!
Little Richie Wagner,
Pussy Debussy—a Vermont December would do you in,
Mama’s boy Mozart,
Chopin the transvestite—
Jigs gallops reels
& for every man his own symphony
& the space to compose it in
for every man his own Unanswered Questions
& his own answers in music that sounds like life.
“Stop being such a goddamned sissy!
Stand up for fine, strong music like this
& use your ears like a man!”
Berlioz Wins a Bride
“If she for one moment could conceive all the poetry, all the infinity of a like love, she would fly to my arms though she were to die in my embrace.”
—Hector Berlioz
Berlioz, the beautiful hawkman
fell in love with the Muse in the guise of Miss Smithson, the Irish actress—
poor Miss Smithson,
poor poor Miss Smithson.
Berlioz pined for her unrequitedly.
Berlioz raved for her Romantically.
Berlioz purple prosed her drunkenly through the suburban fields of Paris,
Chopin was concerned for him.
Berlioz saw her embrace her leading man on the stage—
oh fickle Muse, oh fickle fickle Muse!
Oh migraine Muse!
Berlioz ran from the theater weeping to pen his revenge on this black lady.
High as a spiraling hawk on opiated hash
Berlioz led her to the dock of Art
where the ragamuffin orchestra judged her:
catcalled its dissonant abuse
Whore! Slut! Scarlet woman!
While Berlioz,
self righteous impresario of the Fantastique,
acting as both conductor and executioner,
dark hair wild,
hawk eyes mad
started the march to the noose
with a juggle on the tympani
and ended it with the sweet snap of her importunate neck!
But poor Miss Smithson not being Muse cold or Muse true
being flesh and blood did yield to Hector’s rude nebulosities of love
and did marry him
and there did die in his embrace,
or worse yet turned into an Irish shrew
with an Irish obsession for the booze,
and around and around they went
in an accelerando
each with a silver plated pistol
making a witches’ Sabbath of the marriage.
He threw her scapula to the rats
hungry for the gory in the music;
she threw his Tuba Mirum to a goat dressed up as the Pope
snarling, “There’s your patron!
and here’s your Muse!”
Hitching up her skirts to the naked partita
doing a drunken bump and grind,
“Your inspiration, my music box!”
The two of them chopped up the instrument,
gutted the strings,
pulled out the keys like rotted teeth,
hacked off the gangrened pedals
then splintered the body
but the thing kept playing
and playing
its walpurgisnacht
its Totentanz
until she died in the variations.
Poor Miss Smithson,
poor poor Miss Smithson.
Let us imagine his Requiem is for her.
Musak
somewhere in the heartland of the nation, Kansas City say or maybe Omaha there is a secret underground installation in this concrete complex buried beneath the stockyards Musak is rendered from music take a song, any song with guts and balls the white smocked Musak technicians cut it open, sluice out the guts, extract the heroic, send the remnant to a few symposia on the meaning of “love” they pump the resulting comatose thing full of strings, attach a few angel wings, shoot it up with Hollow Man, then channel to an ad man composer or poet of hymns to sing to some king driven mad, centaur being flensed, flautist having donkey ears attached to his head or great weaver of Prometheans being turned into a spider
“I think that I shall never see a poem as beautiful as a tree” is how the power of Orpheus came out of the processing plant “pity this busy monster manunkind not” the liver of Prometheus after Musak processing “still falls the rain” the last string of the lyre used as a garrote “Oh, tannenbaum!” squeaks the tiny voice of Attis from inside the tree
lobotomized Eurydice genderless upbeat schlock Semele so you boogaloo down the aisle not noticing what demon you’re buying as you’re shopping 101 Strings Does the Dismemberment soothes you into missing the earthquake rising from the casket beneath Kobe
kill them kill all the songs
or at the dentist’s having a root canal done on your resistance to aliens by the angels humming Mysterious Mountain
kill all the songs!
or in the church where they put you to sleep with A Mighty Fortress so they can insert Le Sacre du Printemps up your Twentieth Century
kill all the songs!
or on the psych ward taking your pill of Amahl so you can still give your gifts to the Kings
kill all the songs! kill the poor things!
the hawks with one wing!
give them the lead gift
they’re not responsible
and did you know they have Spartacus arranged for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir? while Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony sings in its chains for Rogaine?
kill all the songs!
give them the lead gift in the twilight
kill the poor things!
kill all the songs!
Listening to Music
in the evening I drink wine and listen to music
To Copland
Appalachian Spring
“tis a gift to be simple” cranked up loud enough
so the rocks to hear it
Billy the Kid
bad and proud of it
broke and entered the Muses’ Bank
made off with the Genesis account
Shostakovich
the Tenth to keep Stalin dead
Vaughn Williams’ Antarctic Symphony
“to forgive wrongs darker than night or death
to suffer woes hope thinks infinite”
and sing it!
not like chains
but like spring!
like, it is not cold here!
it may be cold where you are
shivering in your poetry prisons
but it is not cold here!
it is not cold where I have raised
Prometheus from the bottom of Lake Nancy
I refuse to freeze
beneath a blanket of meekness
in front of a dead fireplace at some church
with the Id Monster chained in the basement
it is before in The Beginning here
when it was good
before Time with his scythe
created that weeping wound
covered by a big popple leaf
I will not repent my life
I will not forget my wife
that I father things
that I have spoken to all the kings
who harden their hearts when Orpheus sings
it is cold on the golf course
where you hide down in Florida!
in Harpers where the poem shivers on the page
pawing desperately through Emily Dickinson’s under things
searching for a body
trying to build a fire
in the frozen slush pile
after a while the dog in your manger
waiting for a fire builder
will get up
trot off through the woods
toward the source of this music
the real spring
Wagner
Wagner, Mr. Marvel, decided to become a composer
before he could play a single note
so you know he had gall,
balls
with a capital “B.”
It must have been playing that angel as a child that did it.
Wagner lived off “impressionable” women for a while
while his creditors plagued him like veritable Walkuries—
he owes them an inspirational debt.
Early on Wagner, like Napoleon, crowned himself
Official Musical Mutant and Composer of the Future.
It was all just in fun, of course
to play Superman,
steal other men’s wives
while the queer King of Bavaria
kept you in silks, blank checks
villas and Festspielhaus
so you could fiddle with the Mythos
the dead serious ostinati in the blood,
Schopenhauer’s “proto images of the world”
and not laugh when Berlioz quipped
“Yes, Richard, but in Paris we call that digestion, letting a little wind.”
But the polemics against the Jews
the Aryan hysterics,
the forever Flying Dutchman of your hate
were not “farting,” Richard.
As for the Siegfried
we were all spellbound
by the acid trip swastikas in its eyes
before Brunnhilde could destroy the place.
Jeff Lewis 
has a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts, painting, from the University of WI, Superior. I have had poems published in The Wisconsin Academy Review, San Jose Studies, Magical Blend, Kansas Quarterly, and other magazines. I am a five-time winner of the Lake Superior Writers Award for poetry. I am married, have two children and live in Northwestern Wisconsin.