[ back to main ] Contents [ Poetry ] Tea Ceremony Katie Mintz
The Bohemian of Slate Creek Dominic Bruno
Little Dancer Carolyn Brayko
Indpendant de Notre Volont Meghan Fitzpatrick
Existential Poetics Kenlyn McGrew
Steel Cold and Rusted Greg Sullivan
Black Death Annalisa Noble
<19% Anonymous
Four Scenes Jill Fitzgerald
I Question the Woman at Sacred Heart Mary Elder
Affluence of Drywall Isaac Melum
Stepping Out on Moon Dock Pat Ferguson
An Illusion Daisy Tran
Proof by Contradiction Aaron Brown
Wisdom of the Bees D.S. Butterworth
Nick Story #40 Dominic Bruno
Lucy Richardson (a true story) Rod Aminian
Shaved to the Knee Anne Pauw
Coloring the Universe Elizabeth Cooley
The Legend: Devin Hunt Erin Packard
Katie Mintz "Tea Ceremony" "As long as China tries to say there was no massacre in Tiananmen Square, no lives lost except for the lives of Chinese soldiers, then the matter will not be quiet." - George H.W. Bush I knew that equal parts tea leaves, equal
parts water didn't make for best taste my
leaves could have told me that traditional
values we hoped we could forget someday. But not that day. Scalded in our attempt,
the water was overpoured, leaves settled,
dreams washed away. Our brew was weak, not yet
strong enough to beat the metal kettles. I watched the agony of the leaves as they
steeped in boiling water, sunk to bottom.
Unfurling, color drained and stained the clay
saucers placed on the public square. Triumph lingered on the lips of our elders who
wanted it done their way, who in passing
though The Gate of Heavenly Peace still would
not let new leaves taste their own cup of tea. Tea Ceremony placed first in the Costello Poetry contest. [ back to top ] Dominic Bruno "The Bohemian of Slate Creek" The Bohemian of Slate Creek
must monitor cholesterol now.
The cure: garlic
pills in the morning.
cloves on canned tuna.
sweat under canyon sun. Sweat, when not "cleaning"
the tree cooler
or napping on the morning ride.
No license; too many accidents.
I drove; he drove crazy. Combat boots (in a logger world)
laced over pant hems.
Charcoal and smoke hair straggled
along flannel shoulders.
Transplanted hippie in pot too small. He presented me a watercolor;
unsold, unwanted.
A columned fasade in sunset tones.
On the paper's reverse,
an incomplete horizon of hip and breast. The question came
one afternoon, alone:
"Have you ever killed a man?"
I said no;
he told me how he would. And life went on.
Seasonal work and fall disappearance ”
sketching in Mexico.
drumming on Missoula streets.
cigars with Castro.
And summers, feasting on Uncle Sam. The Bohemian of Slate Creek placed second in the Costello Poetry contest. [ back to top ] Carolyn Brayko "Little Dancer" Your open arms invited me to dance.
I climbed upon your wrist and into palm,
Bowed to your thumb and halted in my stance.
Explosive whirls fade to quivers. Calm
Shows wobbly knees collapsing in your hand.
A blink of white flame flickers in my eyes,
In yours a flint I barely understand;
Yet here we stand, igniting in the skies.
I sigh, you swoop. I long to clutch the moon
To eager cheeks, you lift my tiny feet
So I may beam in kindling awe, and croon,
And fly to hopeful moons where heavens meet.
If only my heart's yearnings could be true;
Then you would keep me, as I danced for you! [ back to top ] Meghan Fitzpatrick "Indpendant de notre volont" sterility realizes energizes all the small details I forgot
hardly insignificant so wholly overwhelming
we glide past daily hourly so sadly overlooked
ridges weaves brownness of cardboard back of my notebook
holds the keys to life
or so we hope
imagine. static water droplets
silent and so perfectly randomly designed
I ask myself, Do I dare?
Disturbed by those microscopic particles that
drift and land
reseeding everywhere
I wonder
How does the world hold together?
How does it even begin to comprehend and understand
the uncountable things people dust vibrating strings love skin cells
constantly moving all all
in directions, s p ee d s I drown each day
some more times than others
pull my exhausted soul from the mire
away from the muddy reality
that I truly have no control
Does the world you think?
so existentially deceptive
oftentimes colliding like glass atoms
ADD slugs of people
we do so little it seems life feels too slow we say—going nowhere
Yet does it not amaze you that we live and spend the majority of our lives
Running
like chickens (without heads) [ back to top ] Kenlyn McGrew "Existential Poetics" This will be a bad poem. It will teach nothing,
give nothing,
and consist of nothing
save stolen time. It will hold no layers and have no depth,
no fodder for theses or
comfort for the lonely. It will be deluded by grandeur. It will mean precisely the same thing
or lack thereof
in every language it is translated to
and forgotten from. It will say nothing to Somebodies
and say it again to Nobodies
and again to you. It will in fact be nothing
but marks scratched across a page,
giving the vague feeling that
you've missed something. [ back to top ] Greg Sullivan "Steel Cold and Rusted" The sign doesn't say
this is just another rustbelt town
where you walk lonely on the gravel
between the railway tracks. Mikey at thirty seven still stakes
a claim at 43rd and Roosevelt
with a cocked hat and switchblade. All the denim and boot mill employees spew out of sad bars
with neon lights that still play St. Louis blues
and Tom Waits on juke boxes sadder than the bars themselves. Daily Jim Hill sits out back
on splintered white wood smoking and drinking
Southern Comfort staring at the trains leaving
wishing he was too. Fridays the farmers ride the main drag
as if from a dream
on tractors slower than breathing. The local bar near the mill
is the only church
attended. No, the sign doesn't tell you any of this
but chipped flowers and creaking smiles
reminisce of ghostly times. Jim Hill knows that's a lie, he was here.
Mikey, child of the town, drunk,
doesn't know and doesn't think
he believes in happiness. Tomorrow, Jim Hill will leave.
The trains will be there, why shouldn't they take
Mr. Hill along on their shoulders? Assuming Hill isn't drunk
in a ditch, hidden in overgrown grass and lulled by
the rackety clicks and rusted spins of those very same trains
empty of him. Mikey will die in a fight tomorrow, he will pick it
outside his territory,
and Jim Hill won't leave. The workers will move, like clouds, in clumps
from openings in factories together towards bars
where they leak out to dissipate and
go home unwelcomed to wives
and children asleep. Hill's train, a failed rescue,
arrives ontime
between the glass towers
filled with rigid, Swedish furniture
in a throbbing, cosmopolitan city. Through a glass frame
writers retain fully the town's face
and an ink born from obsession
sketches this steelcold portrait. [ back to top ] Annalisa Noble "The Black Death" Flat, corpsy light
Casts uneasy shadows across stone walls
and ebony floors. This is a room of death. Not quick deaths, or easy, or painless;
Women and children were not exceptions here. This chamber celebrates the atramentous plague
that slaughtered one in four,
centuries prior. A dank glow emits from
invisible candles
mounted in a macabre lamp Comprised of human skulls,
ribcages,
pelvises,
and spinal
attachments. Every bone in the body
present
and
accounted for. Taken apart
and
reassembled to form a
ghastly chandelier
which blooms in bone light. And floating in the highest recesses of this cavern
like ominous ropes of garland or
strings of popcorn trimming a holiday tree: Hollow skulls, each expertly spaced with a femur;
Psychotic beads forming sickly strands:
A shrine in awe of biology. You can smell the stink of death:
Crackled black blood in human chalices. In pale memory,
you can faintly hear the ghostly bell toll from above;
Human bones
were never meant to sound that way. [ back to top ] Anonymous "<19%" A second floor bathroom in the Administration building: once a storage room, now an oubliette for more personal rubbish. It's frequented by no one but occasional Political Science professors and lost students, built off a staircase that goes nowhere, unrenovated and forgotten. I should be in class, I should be learning, but somehow, somewhere along the line, this became more important. Standing in a stall scrawled with graffiti from girls who are probably now approaching menopause, with my hand down my throat, my fingers twitch against my uvula in a vain attempt to rid myself of the food that I was too weak to refuse. Tears sting my eyes as I choke. The door opens. I stifle a rising gag and attempt to clean myself up, or at least make it look like I was just taking this opportunity for a nice cathartic little cry. I walk out of the stall to wash my hands, eyes red and body shivering. The old nun who interrupted me looks over and says "honey, what's wrong? Are you OK? Did you just break up with someone?" What could I say but "yes, I did just break. up."? [ back to top ] Jill Fitzgerald "Four Scenes" The scene from the road My dear Mr. To whom it may concern—
(Who calls himself the giant of my generation)
This is my notice, you'll find my things in order
And this romance, by chance could fill
What X's generation is inspired by.
Thoughts dated, rolled, corked in a bottle
Glowing green and scratched by sand. Women can get away with anything
These days, so if I may be so bold,
Like Kerouac I'm keen upon the road.
Let it burn, let it burn
The genius germ. The scene from the house
I wished I would have built a fire
This evening, brings and brawls the cold outside.
When first I'd face the frost air, inhale that air
And watch it curl captive camped about my lips,
Then to swing the axe and create some splinters.
That should be enough to protect us from the cold dear. Because I would that I had created the warmth
That we now feel, floating up from the vented floor. The scene from the ship Great Uncle Barnacle's coffered boat
Is the perfect vessel for us two.
And someday we'll be sailing to the coldest poles,
North and South,
Wherever east and west don't lie.
Don't ask me when we are arriving,
For now, it's warmer in the tropics,
Let us bask till time is multiplied out of mind. Too much afraid to become snowmen and snowwomen
We sat and counted tides
Until we counted nothing
Float, lost in all this shuffling
So few ships can keep
their souls to sails these days. The scene from where I am One can't think of thinking things all day
Until impatient snow falls off the weary sides of slopes.
No use for thinking, more than mind can tell,
Or minds have told till theirs grow old.
Across the neck of some luteish metaphor in my heart,
A string has snapped and gone unrepaired from stress. Innumerable things, once done well.
But still remains, my bottled question,
Of what to do
When something less beats within my chest. [ back to top ] Mary Elder "I Question the Woman at Sacred Heart" What is in you that lets you,
unfilled, keep hearing—
these people in creased shoes come
to you with weights and fragments: There was an ocean, or a sticky car—
I myself was confused with my papers
the whole time my right arm was swollen
and I left my mother's shawl at home,
where the words stayed stuck together.
I left my rosary with a man. I have looked between your shoulders
for an iron bar. How do you meet
the ones who do not meet inside themselves?
The rain has gotten in. I think
your tea must taste like salt. What are these walkers looking for?
You to meet them at the wooden door,
or whatever burns away their stories
when you sleep; not fire, but what is warm—
is there room beneath your broken arm? [ back to top ] Isaac Melum "The Affluence of Drywall" The grey hair of my father
was lightly dusted by the chalky powder of
drywall. His trade, his life
resided in the halfinch thick soft grey walls
into which he put metallic black screws.
Sunday was my time to sit and watch
the melody of piercing clinks and clanks—
metal choirs singing in chorus
with the jingle of tool belts. The skeleton houses he filled held
dead flies on unfinished window sills
or shreds of sheet rock cleaned trim by a box knife.
My father's tools were stunning and unkind.
At any moment, the shimmer of his ax hammer
could break through the wall he had so carefully placed and loved; his
yellowblack gun hung on his hip like a hornet ready to sting the walls
with intent; to break the board only enough to make it strong. He said to me, "The walls at your home
are made of this dry rock.
Underneath us all, this is home," and with coarse hands he felt
the love in their touch, hand to wall.
I sat there spellbound and persuaded
I was the walls
or at least wanted to be. Rising to my feet, I let my hand slither and clean
down the dirt corpuscles lifted from the wall's paper hide.
In touching it, I felt its strong and brittle nature:
with the proper pressure it would support or with too much break. [ back to top ] Pat Ferguson "Stepping Out on Moon Dock" The Park Princess has seagulls swimming over head.
I think she has a secret lover. A French yodeler with dangling fingers.
He does magician tricks. Taps three cups and consumes a ball.
A master of sorts; the keys know his hands.
He doesn't have to, but he does. He drifts a fishhook smile
to the back left where the princess stands.
Wideeyed, her heels lift and eyelashes fall on crabapple cheeks.
She wobbles toe to heel.
Her hands softly bind together resting on her high ass.
Most say she's talented, she can sit on a bar stool and stand at the same time
Behind tents, away from eyes. they twist.
bounced words and raspberry popped kisses. Now she lies still, palms down, back straight, with the red baron,
her lover by name.
All sensation has leaked out. poured from her ears.
It has soaked and rotted the bed.
Warmth doesn't matter.
Her eyes are pearls set in stone. On the tile rooftop, he's there, with bony lips,
crying out his yodels to the projected moon on glass.
like the crow's coarse cough
He stumblestumbles through each rippling chord
without any toes. [ back to top ] Daisy Tran "An Illusion" Do you think this would fit?, she would say,
her fauxpas alligator sack bulging with eyeliner,
lipstick, and blush items of useless validity.
Her forced smirk would stretch across her jaw
as she winked at me,
sliding tinted shadows of tubed mascara
into her colony of assorted personalities. I wonder sometimes if people look at her
and think of recycled cardboard
that probably was a birch before it died,
painted with glossy imitations
of what she would think skin really looked like. If they only knew what kind of birch she used to be,
how her dark and light grey limbs reached towards heaven.
I think sometimes that the world would like to be what it isn't;
it would like to think itself a swinger of birches,
when really, they don't mold and swing
like Robert Frost did on those winter afternoons.
They desecrate. [ back to top ] Aaron Brown "Proof by Contradiction" A mathematician who is not also a poet will never be a good mathematician.
Karl Weierstrass Assume that human happiness is a myth.
Try now to find a contradiction.
Let X be the set of long walks on warm evenings
and Y be the rain falling outside on a balcony
which is wrapped in the topology of Spring.
Let the seasons be four finite surfaces in nspace
and realize that my place in them is indeterminate at best. There exists a vector, V, which,
rooted somewhere in here and now
points toward the end of my life.
It is parallel to the vector of my car,
sunbound, facing into Seattle
from the other side of the mountains.
I'm staring out the window
at the countable infinity of stalks of wheat whipping by. During the Winter months, Y is the empty set,
and while a space of snow hides the evidence of winter,
turning it into a sea of local minimums and maximums,
the cardinality of X approaches zero.
So create a set, Z, full nights spent by a fire
and long talks with friends over parabolic glasses of wine.
Try to create a set for all seasons,
one that will never be empty. It can be said, without loss of generality,
that life's myriad problems collapse,
heavily at times, into two groups
P problems of efficient solutions;
trivial, yet taxing on the nerves
multiplying two integers or polishing reading glasses.
NP problems of horrifying and terrifying elegance.
The work not of hours, but of aeons.
The paradoxically difficult packing of a knapsack,
or the situation in the Middle East. So reduce life itself to another problem of the set NP.
Show that it boils down to Decidability
or finding the right Hamiltonian Circuit.
Express it so that no doubt is left
that the solution is hidden in a search space
of more possibilities than there are atoms in the universe.
More infeasible solutions than the union of the sets
of plague beds,
of stubbed toes,
of broken toy soldiers.
Hope that P equals NP. [ back to top ] Proof by Contradiction received an honorable mention in the Costello Poetry contest. D.S. Butterworth "Wisdom of the Bees" i. Any horizon is a passion,
says the oblivion of the open window.
The upper reaches of the room
teach a manner of motion not found
in poems—as if insects pressed
between pages might disclose the world.
The sugar maples have folded
under frost into a red duller than blood
while the laurel remains green as the dream
we dream. There are no flowers here
but the leaves of our books,
that describe so completely
what we do not know
about the honey of generation,
the salt of the earth. ii. The child's string
defies gravity
like Picasso's filament
slashing across the photographic plate.
The bee, stunned in the freezer,
draws a wintered orbit.
Maybe only a child's
fingers could tie that collar,
familiar of the imagination's tyranny:
a sideshow whip
lashing across the neighborhood. iii. Inside my mouth
a word,
a danger,
a blackberry's
unripe and spinning
electron edge,
sharp as a lip of tin.
Not wanting to end
things this way,
not about to
sting itself alive,
the way we do,
dying inside of time. iv. O for the wisdom of bees
that mistakes this room
for a flower as big as July,
a can of pop
for the fluted lily,
and spills from the teeth
of a giant
into the hour
to serve
the day blindly
as if she were eternity [ back to top ] Dominic Bruno "Nick Story #40" Each school day, under its shadow,
I eased into third gear, generally
oblivious to this dominant feature
at town's edge.
But Nick smoldered beneath
rebel titanium hair,
churning commonplace reality into
adventure.
I gladly joined his vortex
to infuse my existence with life,
to keep his life in existence. Beneath the trestle
we stood with essential gear:
one Hi8 video camera,
my mountain bike, a length of
thick rope, and the frayed remnants of
failed Boy Scout
knot knowledge. Ineffectively hiding,
ball cap straight and low, I shrunk
as grain trucks growled toward
the elevator, each
stern farmer
lifting a onefinger salute
paired with a head tilt
accusatory confusion and
disbelief. Thirty feet up,
Nick tread squared beams
supportive of iron horses
that still roamed our prairie.
He hitched the rope,
lowered toward waiting
bicycle and me.
One bulky knot around
center crossbar completed our
hopeful
pendulum swing ride
invisible halfpipe contraption. Road clear—
left only barley and wheat
no imbecile sheep,
right only houses
in quiet calm.
We stood with the bike
and courage between us. Before Nick pedaled into harvest air
we pushed the unmounted bike,
a trial.
No flying resulted, just the
agonizing death twist of
a hanged bike. Like Wright brothers wrong again,
adventure would not arise today. [ back to top ] Rod Aminian "Lucy Richardson (A True Story)" When you were just four,
You made Julian feel at home.
At Heath House School
In Weybridge, Surrey. He had good reason to be troubled,
But you sat beside him those days,
While he drew pictures,
Sometimes of you. His father the musician wrote a song
From Julian's watercolor of you.
It was famous as all hell,
But you didn't know until many years later. You grew to be artful,
Cutting a career behind the camera,
And when not that, keeping up With chemo. But the cancer spread
From breast to bones,
And you died this past June.
(Exactly 38 years after your song,)
Before you could be famous. Single, childless.
Your siblings
Wept dearly. (Julian is engaged to a model now.
He couldn't make it to the funeral.
You probably wouldn't mind,
Having not seen him in decades.) And so when they buried you
In Weybridge, Surrey,
They sprinkled crystals on your grave.
For you were in the sky, with diamonds. "Lucy Richardson (A True Story)" received an honorable mention in the Costello Poetry contest. [ back to top ] Anne Pauw "Shaved to the Knee" My legs are burning, aching
Hoping someone will look at them There is no one in the house
To tell me how pretty I look. Except a priest. I smile,
Knowing it shouldn't be that way. Shaved To the Knee placed third in the Costello Poetry contest. [ back to top ] Beth Cooley "Coloring the Universe" Take the light
of two hundred thousand galaxies
across a celestial span
three billion light years wide
and pass it through the prism
of empiricism. You will not find
the Cosmic Spectrum Green
astronomers prophesied. The color of the universe is beige:
the color of file folders,
plastic dishpans and spatulas,
of sturdy schoolroom paper
stacked on the shelf
beside the blunt tipped scissors
and gray erasers. After recess the teacher gives
each child a small beige
sheet. Seagreen grass sprouts
along the bottom of the page. Pink
houses spring up at a slant
beside round red flowers
and brown dogs stiff as stumps.
People who have no necks
and wear boxes on their feet
smile and wave
with six fingers, or four. Momentarily overcome
with choices, the child
looks up at the flat blue
window, hums offkey,
then lifts her turquoise crayon
and makes the sky. [ back to top ] Erin Packard "The Legend: Devin Hunt" 2000 Mazda Miata: little dark green
twoseater, stickshift convertible. That summer, flaunting impracticality
I drove it everywhere.
But mostly to work,
and home again. Went to James' on my day off.
Friends since childhood, jokes fly freely.
But on this day, his best friend was there,
Devin Hunt. In junior high, Devin Hunt played the guitar
in a high school rock band.
The girls would break the dress code
in lowcut shirts and skirts too short
and reapply their drugstore makeup,
in case Devin Hunt ever glanced in their direction.
He never did. Dragging on a cigarette on the front steps,
long sleeves in the middle of August,
redrimmed eyes peered out
from beneath a cockeyed cap,
when I pulled up. Possesively, James
slid his arm along my back,
as he formally introduced me to
Devin Hunt. Legends followed Devin Hunt:
relentless, reckless, restless.
Kicked out of his parents' house,
teaches kids how to shoot up,
cauterizes burns of suicidal addicts,
calls the cops on a party gone awry. But Devin Hunt was distracted by my car.
Leaned in, the top was down,
Cigarette smoldered in his outstretched hand.
Apathetic face flushed with delight,
"Can I drive it?" Dangling the keys,
revving the engine,
asking me car questions
I halfunderstood. Seatbelts are too restricting
for him. Peeled out of the gravel driveway,
much too fast.
The speed was never unleashed by
such a lawabiding girl
as me. Racing to the next town
we pulled into the Burger King,
"Order what you want, it's on me."
Casually he explored all empty pockets, I slipped him a twenty. The engine growled all the way
to the Lookout:
a gravel turnout,
view across the valley to the mountains beyond. Our lips touching the same straw,
our hands brushing briefly when we
both reached for fries. His whispery deep voice,
need to lean a bit closer
to catch every word. The girls who hear my secret
will be jealous. The Legend: Devin Hunt received an honorable mention in the Costello Poetry contest. [ back to top ]
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