Poetry – Page 10 – THE CITY KEY

Three Poems by John Grey

FREETOWN

We struggle to negotiate
mid-morning traffic,
not just cars
but a half-naked drunk
stumbling across the road,
a horse-drawn cart,
and heedless children hauling goats.

At the red light.
homeless men heave forward,
a ragtag army of open palms
going car to car
until the light turns green.

Windows down,
we risk the beggars
but enjoy the scents of
plantains fried in palm oil,
the exotic aroma
of crain-crain and okra
stirred in a large pot.

Our travel is a series of glimpses:
an artisan carving lions and rhinos out of stone,
children munching on
butter-soaked cassava bread
as they shamble into school.

We pass out of the city,
skirt the ocean by road,
watch dazzling painted fishing boats
ride high on the waves.

This world comes no closer
nor does it keep its distance.
It appears here, there,
as if for benefit
of a foreign couple
in a rented car
for whom West Africa
is only slightly less myth now
than the moment we arrived.

FREETOWN

A young boy waves
from the side of the rough bumpy road.
It might be a welcome.
He could be warning us off.
Travel’s like peeling away
the baffling, the strange.
until what you’re left with
is nothing but ignorance.

PLANET CHILD

glow-in-the-dark-stars
stuck to the bedroom walls –

I stretched out my arm
to try to hold light –

the dark was ominous
the stars were well-intended
and they needed no prompting
to shine my way –

tacky yes
but almost beautiful –

I believed in them
as I did in the ones
who glued them into place –

intimate flashlights,
precious objects
of permanent fire –

a wall-paper galaxy
no universe
should be without –

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John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. He has recently published in New Plains Review, South Carolina Review, Gargoyle, and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in Louisiana Review, Cape Rock and Spoon River Poetry Review.

Please note: Poetry is compressed to fit smart phone screens. If you are reading this poem on a phone screen, please turn your screen sideways to make sure that you are seeing correct line breaks for this poem.

“Boston” by William Doreski

The Monument

The newest skyscraper offends with its defiant geometry inscribed in brutal planes and striations. The graveyard looks up and pleads. The last tourist drops on all fours and scrabbles in the dirt. He’s eating clods, spitting out the grass and swallowing the earth. It doesn’t matter who planted this garden of graves, or why the dead lie head to feet, feet to head. Only the glistening skin of the skyscraper can repel the relevant ghosts. Only its acute and unlikely angles can situate the suffering tourist in time and space. But he refuses to look up and enjoy the spectacle of a sneer of glass slicing the pure hard rind of the moon. Such gelatinous events occur almost every night, now that the President has re-elected. Maybe when the criminal charges toughen into bedrock, when the petroglyphs become more legible, everyone will learn to more convincingly blame everyone else. The graveyard sighs a modest but apocalyptic sigh as it ingests the tourist. When he awakens at home in the next century his hands will smell of dead heroes, and his feet will have petrified to agate. Someone will say, I told you so; but the skyscraper with its awkward stance will dominate still, its windows oozing spectrums the human eye can’t process or even detect.

The Current State of Matter

Expensive watches grimace
in a shop window so pricey
a security guard drools on it.

Fresh from the dimmest fusions,
I drift past with open pores.
Every neuron feels alit.

Every sentence seems too short
to describe the caffeine moment
when books I’ve read all my life

kick in with unearthly roar.
Sleek and seamless adolescents
sporting smartphones like rhinestones

chatter past in clots of flesh
a carnivore would tooth to rags.
Nothing edible for someone

of my persuasion, however.
Nothing but a stutter of goods—
expensive sunglasses, flimsy shoes,

jewelry pimpled with evening gloss.
I’ve walked so far my shoes fit
more firmly than ever, my hands

have swollen with tired blood.
Too many troubles converge
in this corridor of storefronts,

skyscrapers lilting overhead.
How much shine can I withstand
before my bones soup themselves

in whimpers of yellowish birth?
Those born digital recall
nothing of the egg. Their lives

elongate before them like shadows
thrust from the heart of the moon.
The books I’ve read all my life (Stanza Break)

need not apply. Competing
shadows of tall buildings duel
in the fiery dark, and sales clerks

hover over powerful goods
no one has the moral power
to either purchase or refuse.

This Possum Hour

You say you’re nocturnal like
a possum. Remember that Pound
called Eliot Possum, meaning
the creature that plays dead
rather than express emotion.

At two AM the avenue
plays dead. The sidewalks curl
like lips. The tame trees planted
to shade dog walkers and pimps
defy lamplight with gloomy leers.

I should to describe you sitting up
in bed reading the bible
with the faintest hissing sound
like sand singing in an ebb tide.
Downstairs chuckling over puns

while you become too serious
to tease to life with sex, I picture
the mall leafless, cushioned with snow,
but the June night embraces me
with an argument I won’t refute.

Maybe when the shops creak open
and the famous hairdresser arrives
with his little moustache tingling,
maybe when the sailboats cream
the basin in the first big hour

of daylight the summer will seem
summer enough to enhance us.
But at this possum hour the cries
of dreaming dogs remind me
that so much has gone up in smoke

or fog or mist or unraveled ghost
that the trees have no cause to sneer,
and the bible you’re reading
may or may not falsify
the reckless history of our souls.

Your Favorite Tree Looming

At dusk in the public gardens
small, medium, and large dogs
off-leash speed across the lawns,

ears flapping. Propped on a bench
with your favorite tree looming
we merge into a single mass.

Einstein predicted warps in space
and time as energy flows
around large gravitational fields.

What about smaller entities
like a pair of seventy-year-olds
crushed together by the pink

of a fading sky? The glamor
of this hustling city passes
at a distance, a creature flowing

in a skein of yellow silk,
its assorted bling clinking.
A footfall shaped like a series

of grotesque errors tracks us
to our bench, smiles upon us,
and clomps off, dragging one foot.

Surely nothing in the bible
explains the parsing of souls
through digital processing.

Yet faces lit by smartphones
look ennobled, if sculpted in lard,
their spiritual excess burned off.

How long do we have to recline
with our senses bubbling before
the light fails so completely

that whatever wants to devour us
can approach without a whisper?
We refuse to move. The last cloud

sheds its colors. Your tree thickens
to warp us into a shadow
so deep we’ll have to escape it

like clambering out of a well
with the entire world watching
to see how naked we’ve become.

The Street of Many Spices

On the Street of Many Spices
only one toilet functions.
All night I hear it crying

down the sewers, plaintive notes
crumpling in the slush. The dead
of this long street congregate

at every corner. Tatters
of cigarette paper stick
to their lips. Their lack of breath

reeks of the rooms they occupied
before coughing up what passes
in most religions for a soul.

The local religion, however,
describes that emanation
not as soul but toxic gas,

and warns that inhaling it condemns
the victim to uncertainties
like lost wallets, passports, and keys.

I stay in my room after dark
and drink the local vino
and watch the one TV station

with sitcoms in several languages,
none of which anyone around here
speaks or understands. The creak

of giant footfall prowls the street.
I keep the curtains drawn and hope
the glow of TV doesn’t tempt

whatever skulks out there
to clamber through my window
and push its ugly face to mine.

Maybe when dawn arrives I’ll run
to the grocery for orange juice and milk.
I’ll pretend that living on this street [stanza break]

is like living anywhere, the stink
of the one toilet stoking a blue
flame many stories tall, mocking

or maybe commemorating
the functions of the body
none of us love anymore.

william-doreski175

William Doreski recently retired after years of teaching at Keene State College in New Hampshire (USA). His most recent book of poetry is The Suburbs of Atlantis (2013). He has published three critical studies, including Robert Lowell’s Shifting Colors. His essays, poetry, fiction, and reviews have appeared in many journals.

“Jahrzehnt in Berlin” by Kara Cochran

The only thing I’d feared
in the west was the cold

der Graue Stadt swaddling us in winter, my chest shuddered
as I breathed my scarf hot, wiggling wool-socked toes in boots
cars slicking down ice-platted streets and buses
sighing their unending exhaust as the first flakes fell

the slow-moving water that waited below frozen facade
as my brother and his friend parted glass branches
with ungloved fingers, laughter echoed through darkened trees,
through my shouts of protest, sneakers to pond’s edge,
closer to the other side when the glazed surface cracked
and my heart stopped cold —
until my hand found a branch to pull them ashore.

II.

I thought I knew what fear was
until the train to Sachsenhausen

my teacher’s wrinkled finger across pursed lips, whispered
reden sie bitte nicht auf English, es ist unsicher.
I looked from face to blurred face, city stops full of dark
winter figures, to fields and rural platforms
blanketed in snow. Neonazi?…Neonazi? I wondered,
pulling my jacket collar close.

III.

It wasn’t until I was older that I understood
some walls are never gone

remnants of bright eighties cheapness, posters on posters
outside construction sites grown wild with weeds,
rusted Trabbis and 99 Luftballons and Goodbye, Lenin!
Nina Hagan’s lipsticked mouth dangling a cigarette.

I no longer fear the Deutschpunks with neon-spiked hair
all-black and combat boots, headphones blaring Rammstein
a decade of freedom from Stasi and wires beneath wallpaper
der Mauer that once constrained them sold in pieces
at souvenir shops, a generation shouting

we are here,
we are still here.

WKXXHZwl_400x400

Kara Cochran is a writer, editor, and instructor. She holds an MFA from Rosemont College and a BA in English Creative Writing and German Studies from Denison University. She teaches English Composition at Temple University, Widener University and Delaware County Community College. Kara is also the former Managing Editor of Rathalla Review, the Assistant Program Director at Philadelphia Stories Junior, and a Mighty Writers workshop teacher, volunteer, and mentor. Her poems and craft essays can be found in Schuylkill Valley Journal, flashfiction.net, and Fiction Southeast, and she tweets from @philawriter.

Five Poems by James Croal Jackson

FRANKLIN AVENUE IN 2015

Two years ago, we would drink tall beers
hidden in black, plastic bags ’til we passed
from laughter, fluttered to fill
our glasses with more.

There would have been more pages
to turn, but none of us spoke our
human language anymore.

Now, a browned frond slumps
between parked cars.

Two teenagers flirt
underneath a palm. Whispered leaves
are fragile– each movement
a link to the next
until it is not.

Their laughs reverberate
when they, too, part. Uncork
those swan bottles–
let them go, graceful
into night.

NOMADS

I know you want to leave, to take a bus
out of Columbus, to fight your battle
in Seattle, or Denver, or wherever
your heart may lead–

to be a nomad is to go
where the landscape dreams,
and to scrunch it all in your hand
like wisps of dandelion in the wind,

and in your palm its feathery white
is dissolution–

however far you go, know those you meet
will occupy the room in the tiny hostel
of your heart, sharing wisdom and laughter
despite however many days we spend apart.

TEETH, EGGS, AND THE CITY LIMITS (OR: TINDER)

our short harmony brushes my teeth
flosses the ridges bending eating
at me the yellowy plaque on white

the yolks in morning how inside
we are tender sunny side up I love
the way you look at me those

runny eyes gushing off the pan
onto black-and-white tile floor
grids the burgeoning cities

in our minds cars read
the streetlights’ caution
as go, go, go . .

1^ST & DELAWARE

wandered along the avenue to find Kurt
sitting at the mountain of a three-step staircase
don’t come up here he laughed
but the neighborhood spun faster
than the blue room I escaped
so I continued to High along the alleys
of wafting leaked gasoline and nectars
of dried roses this was not spring
but the cold allowed me briskly hack time
in a direction indicating forward
where I pleat the confines of the sidewalk’s
imaginary boundaries I drifted from
but felt motionless and free

OBSERVATIONS FROM THE WESTSIDE PAVILION BRIDGE

stationary at the couch by the window over the street the cars move unseen beneath me in lines in some complex order that means they don’t crash into each other the sound of engines is replaced with repetitive 4/4 pop music snare singer pleading for her lover to return but in Los Angeles who do you return to

II.

locks click from storefront doors a Chinese family appears from behind the off-white pillar the mother in loose pink flowy shirt and dress takes a photo in front of the window her daughter in a white-and-red striped shirt her husband in a blue-and-pink striped shirt so much pink so many binding stripes and the mother captures that lone moment the sky a tender backdrop

III.

a grandma walks a black stroller and makes a soft kind of train noise shh guh shh guh in syncopated beats as she travels in circles the rolling sound of the stroller-like luggage in an airport constant whir her mouth a muted hi-hat to some imaginary beat on her third pass-by the baby in pink stirs and she stops her mouth’s percussion and tends to the baby who is absolutely quiet but lifts her arm in the air silhouette to the window of the world cookies-and-cream loose leggings

IV.

a man in his fifties eats macha ice cream alone near Dillard’s walks in front of a blonde man in a cowboy hat water bottle in hand hair tying his shoelaces the ice cream man on the other side of the window underneath the Westside Center sign stares at his reflection he moves from the window bits of cone now lodged in his graying mustache

the green palms reflected on the speckled cream floor ripples in a pond that blew so gently outside a man with twenty hands and countless fingers dances and puppeteers

VI.

two Mexican women with glowing purses hanging on their right shoulder walk in near-unison one just a half-step ahead until the fast one stops to fix her shoe before walking into Nordstrom glass door squealing open at its most open it sounds like a bad brake on a car the other keeps walking

VII.

older man in a reddish shirt has a chocolate cone at 11:45pm and stands on the wide black stripe on the floor in front of the imposing silver pillar that splits in the middle like a buttcrack he stands licking staring forward at TVs that advertise movies now playing in the theaters of his daydreams

VIII.

half of the iPhone billboard outside would be indiscernible half white space stubs of fingers touching green fabric in a lazy V the space below it a half-globe of nothing the squeaking of shoes slowly silence the man in blue beneath as he does not even notice I watch as he tucks his manila folder under his left armpit

IX.

mountains are indiscernible from buildings in the distance curved with specks of white that hint at strange windows or a deepening mist that seem to want to envelop the rest of us and how do we know it won’t

a faraway pedestrian timidly crosses the intersection illegally she slows but proceeds and from my vantage point she crosses to the smell of the soy in the pad see ew that steams in front of me

XI.

the light which hangs above these walls of shades of gray is latticed in spiderweb I cannot tell if the gentle sway-shaking is imaginary or earthquake all these little triangles hovering jittering above me I wonder if this is how the universe actually moves or what it truly looks like

XII.

upside-down reflections of walking legs move as the inverse of walking and sway with a sexy air voluminous breeze parting moving away in a regal but ultimately aimless sashay

James Croal Jackson is a writer, musician, and occasional filmmaker whose work in film and TV in Los Angeles led to a rediscovery of his love of poetry. His poems have appeared in magazines including The Bitter Oleander, Lines+Stars, and Cosmonauts Avenue. He is the winner of the 2016 William Redding Memorial Poetry Prize via The Poetry Forum. He lives in Columbus, Ohio. Visit him at jimjakk.com.

“Fernando Walks the Hallways” by Allan Heller

Fernando walks the hallways
Starting from the east wing of the ground floor
Working his way to the top
Winding through the stairwells as he goes
His footfalls gentle on rubber-tipped treads
Then descending in the opposite direction
In a microcosm of the circadian cycle.

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Allan M. Heller is poet laureate of Hatboro, and his work has appeared in Mad Poets Review, Mobius, Writer’s Digest, Brevities, The Compass, and Plainsongs. He is also a published short story writer, author of five non-fiction books, and a collection of short stories,40 Frightful Flash Fictions.

“Silhouette” by Allan M. Heller

Silhouette

I glide through hordes of homeless who congregate in the dirty urban streets, surrounding their unwary prey like zombies who shuffle quietly, discreetly decreasing the radius from several yards to a few feet before attacking, and by then it’s too late for the pair of unsuspecting ladies with their fancy leather purses who don’t realize that they’re surrounded until they hear the dreaded mantra “spare change?” but fortunately they “plead the plastic” and incredibly, Romero’s extras seem to buy that fib about their quarry having nothing but credit cards and grudgingly disperse, but of course they’ll be back the next night, or even the next hour and will approach the same pair of pedestrians if the latter are foolish enough to stay in the area.

We call them “homeless,” but of course they’re not really homeless; their home is every big city and even a few small cities and towns, but most of them hang their hats, if they have hats, in Philadelphia or Detroit or Los Angeles or New York, so how can we say they’re homeless when a park bench can accommodate two or three sleepers, bundled close together, which is good for keeping them warm during the winter, especially if you don’t have blankets?

Some of them have eyes full of desperation or fear, some are angry, but the rest project resignation and apathy and although there are plenty of shelters, they don’t want to come in from the cold so to speak because they don’t trust their own kind and why should they? I don’t trust them, either, no matter who they are, and most of them are middle-aged black men, and a few women of different racial tones but never any children, I never see any children no matter what the statistics tell me, lies, damn lies and statistics.

I see a certain white guy from time to time who looks borderline normal, if I can use that term, although he is a bit scruffy, and if you see him enough you’ll pick up on the fact that he always wears the same clothes but oddly, and this is really odd, he doesn’t smell. He stations himself outside a small Korean grocery along Spring Street and mumbles the mantra at every third or fourth passerby who usually pretends not to hear him and every so often he ambles into the Korean grocery and swipes a bottle of soda the proprietors pretend not to notice because they figure that he’s part of the cost of doing business in the city, and they don’t want all of the homeless advocates, who themselves would never adopt a homeless individual, to get all bent out of shape. This guy never says anything to me, though; he knows that it would do no good.

I walk at a normal pace, past the undead mendicants, remembering all of the good things I’ve been blessed with, although my business is gone and Ruth went with it and a lot has changed for me but then again, a lot changes for everyone. My ninth-grade math teacher told the class on our first day of school that there were three constants in life: death, taxes (Wow! Big surprise there!) and change. But Mr. Eastman is long dead, and I don’t know where my fellow ninth grade math students are; they could be anywhere, but I have a good idea where I’m going – Get out of the way, you lousy panhandler! You know better than to ask me! – but I’m kind of reminded of a song from a Lerner and Loewe musical, “Paint Your Wagon:” Where are we going? I ain’t certain! When do we get there? I don’t know! All that I know is I am on my way!

I spot one of them lying on a sewer grate, a grate spewing ample steam, which I guess is why he chose it on this chilly February night, so I stop and give him a swift kick, not a hard one, and then I deliver a second booted assault and he gives me a dirty look, but one that says “Damn you,” rather than “Let’s fight!” so he hauls himself up, straightens his trench coat, and moves on. I’m tired and my feet hurt, so I settle down on the grate – my grate now – and go to sleep.

“Set your Mind at Ease” by Allan M. Heller

SET YOUR MIND AT EASE

Don’t worry about that group of young men on the corner.
They’re just kids, really.
Smoking and swearing are all part of the act.
If one of them spits, he’s probably just clearing his throat.
And those snide comments could describe a lot of people.
Not necessarily you.

As a pedestrian, you have the right of way.
The signal flashes in your favor
And the borders of magic crosswalk protect you
Like the confines of a large pentagram drawn on the floor
Protect the sorcerer from the demon he summons.
The long line of cars knows that
As does the macho pinhead in the souped-up 1973 Chevy Nova
Revving his engine.
Just keep on walking.

Surely you’re not afraid of some little dog?
Okay, so he’s a medium dog, but he’s no Cerberus!
Most dogs won’t bite.
Besides, he doesn’t own the whole sidewalk.
Yea, though I walk through the valley…
Enough!
Straight ahead. March. Show no fear.
Set your mind at ease.

“The Sweet Land of Del Sur” by Spencer Shaak

THE SWEET LAND OF DEL SUR

They could make a song out of me
stretch my torso like whole notes
like Coronado’s sunset.

They could dot my eyes
like floating staccatos
or fighter planes hovering
over clay cliffs.

Turn my stiff lips
into sounds of slurs
in the sweet land of Del Sur
where tequila pours
more than rain.

Lovely lady by the sea
make a song out of me
drown my soul in your endless
rifts and crests.

Transform me into your unsung feature
your hidden notes
and cast my lines in your long-lost boat,
the boat beyond Coronado’s sunset
where fighter planes hover,
where tequila pours like rain
to forget past lovers.

Capture

Spencer Shaak is an MFA graduate in creative writing from Rosemont College in Rosemont, Pennsylvania.

Four Poems by Christopher Mulrooney

entertainments

a quiet row succinctly handled
at the siphon stand down the street
and for something awfully sweet
hot cross buns faintly warmed over
and these are the oases after all
amongst the desert dwellers’ cubbyhole

fortress

well the gangbanging requires a mighty big area
to work with beams and lath and plaster
by the carload brought in special
and to cover all the noise the loudest décor
you have ever seen erected in Christendom

stalwarts
sure clean the house
drive the devil out at door
then quiet as a mouse
watch him come back evermore
sevenfold the dirty louse

pray you mater
what rubbish you luggage
the roundabout gits
not an ounce of leverage
to move a stone a pebble
and the world lies there

Christopher Mulrooney is the author of toy balloons (Another New Calligraphy), alarm (Shirt Pocket Press), supergrooviness (Lost Angelene), and Buson orders leggings (Dink Press).

Editor’s Post – Voyager in the Eternal

The searching voyager wants perfect pastel etchings, for this city sits adorned with lavishly accented terrains, hanging antique robes decorated deliciously by human hands, created for the creation of this city by an act of God. A chorus of noise resonates from that perfectly pitched instrument, the human voice, and as the quiet is pierced, the surrounding, splendid dark, filled with dim, amber lights creates the semblance of an ascending dawn or a dreary dusk. The myriad cafes are open late and exude the aroma of something softly baking. Nighttime inhabitants of this ancient and almost secretive city walk in the dark like supernaturals in search of feasts while the voyager sinks secretly into the background, and, by doing so, escapes everyday imprisonments. A cyclone of humanity, without name, mind, or material surrounds her while the wind floats softly covering her with color, breath, and fragrance.

Ayesha F. Hamid is a poet and creative nonfiction writer published in Blue Bonnet Review, Philly Flash Inferno, Sheepshead Review, and Rathalla Review. Her full-length memoir The Borderland Between Worlds is available through Auctus Publishers at Barnes and Nobles and Amazon. Ayesha also has a full-length poetry collection called Waiting for Resurrection. She is a Poetry Editor at Ran Off With the Star Bassoon and an Assistant Poetry Editor for The Night Heron Barks. She is the Editor-in-Chief at The City Key.

Ayesha holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and A Bachelors of Science in Sociology from Chestnut Hill College, M.F.A. in Creative Writing and an M.A. in Publishing from Rosemont College. She also holds an M.A. in Sociology from Brooklyn College. Aside from writing, Ayesha also loves film, travel, and photography. You can find Ayesha on twitter @ahamidwriter

Ayesha is a lover of cities, big and small.