2.10 #20 Documentcorrected.Wps

1 Ginosko Literary Journal #20 Winter 2017-2018 www.GinoskoLiteraryJournal.com PO Box 246 Fairfax, CA 94978 Robert Paul Cesaretti, Editor Member CLMP Est. 2002 Writers retain all copyrights Cover Art “Canyon Water” by Noelle Phares www.noellephares.com 2 ginosko A Greek word meaning to perceive, understand, realize, come to know; knowledge that has an inception, a progress, an attainment. The recognition of truth from experience. γινώσκω 3 Dan Pope: What’s the worst part about being a writer? James Salter: Having to do it. Anyone will tell you that. Or having done it and failed. Dan Pope: The best part? James Salter: The greatness of that world and feeling a part of it. There is a reality in it that is greater than other realities even though it cannot replace them. When you read something wonderful there is no awkward afterwards or sense of having used something up. It’s still there, it is still waiting for you, the thrill doesn’t fade. 4 C O N T E N T S girl who floats 11 kevin richard white Lips Split 13 Woman Patiently Turning Her Lover Into a Good Man 14 I Can Grasp Your Sadness 15 llex paraguariensis 16 Socks and Underwear 17 Risa Pappas Foreign Matters 18 Low Fidelity 19 Evening Prayer 21 Michael Catherwood MARCEL 22 RB Ejue Refluence 24 Magdalena Randal Us 26 Amber Wilson Nameless 31 Laurence Sullivan Naked Pain 35 The Vivisector 36 Domestic Life 37 Pain—An Interlude: Playing Teakettle 39 When Winter Comes 41 The Time I Said Nothing 43 Crossing Guard 44 Katherine Fishburn Stay with Me 46 Z.Z. Boone 5 Simplification 56 Making Your Unknown Known 57 Little Dust 59 Mitchell Krockmalnik Grabois Sea Without Shore 60 E. G. Cunningham Mary’s First Breakdown 65 Alice and the Stink Bug 69 Lullaby 73 Rod Zink Croatan 75 Sean Jackson Gifts Half Taken 83 Not Lost 85 Kin Recognition 86 Down Time 88 Late Found Fall 89 Grip 91 John Zedolik The importance of tastes in ending fairy tales 93 Mileva Anastasiadou Jonah and The Second Law of Thermodynamics 97 Samuel Trotman The Great Divide 107 In My Second Coming 108 After I Was Raised 109 The Man Who Was Immaculate 110 Little Murders 111 My Old Man Never Shut Up 112 Mendacity 113 6 Unlike Our Jewish Brethren Who Have Revived a Ritual of Tending for Their Dead 114 He Pulls Off 115 Liz Dolan Extremis 116 Waiting 118 Bodies Dancing 120 The Wreck of a Marriage 121 The Hay Truck 122 Emily Strauss Glimpses 123 Portent 124 Not staying for supper with great-great Auntie in Cyprus 125 Tropical Insomnia 126 You rang, Sir? 127 Rose Mary Boehm What Doesn't Pass 128 Garth Gilchrist Heft and Aloft 130 Clouds in Formation 131 Speculations of His Last Moments 132 Brian Kirven The Captain’s Hat 134 James William Gardner Track 21 137 Track 23 138 Track 45 140 Track 47 142 Benjamin Schmitt THE TOOTHBRUSH 144 Ronnie Farrell Stranger Spots a Young Boy 148 Katelyn Thomas 7 Creep 149 Jeffrey Welker Healer 151 J.W. Burns Coming Around the Back Stretch 156 Chad W. Lutz Some Reality 163 Easter Morning, Reflections on a Young Man 165 Ed Burke Husband and Wife Team 170 Jamey Genna They Came like Flies to Honey 175 Ignatia is for grief 177 Messenger's Song 178 David Appelbaum PETITE COWBOY 179 John Tavares Spinifex 192 B. R. Dionysius DISCRETION 195 GRATIA INFUSA 196 MOST CERTAINLY TRUE 197 OUR INHERITANCE 198 THE BATTLE ONE 199 Patrick Theron Erickson Reunion 200 Smoky evenings 203 Keertika Lotni Trouble Man 204 Douglas Cole The Mango Tree 207 Dan Belanger 8 Selfies at Sunset 210 Jennie Cesario The Last Confession 213 Martha Bátiz living small 216 Halloween every day 217 We are animals 218 Mark Vogel The Particular Preference of Ghosts 219 Her Cat 220 Dead Letters 221 Video 222 Catherine Arra The Repairman 223 Forest Arthur Ormes At First There Was Only Night 232 Ken Massicotte Naked 234 The Birds of Phnom Penh 235 Empty Library 236 Rob Stadick Just Lost Children 237 Suddenly Night 238 Never Left 239 The Singing Sea at Florence, OR 240 The Freight Train at Night 241 Matthew James Friday ESTATE SALE 242 HAVE YOU THANKED GOD YET TODAY? 243 ELECTION 244 HEARING AID 245 Howard Winn 9 The Allard Reunion 246 “Death, be not proud.” 248 Donna Walker-Nixon Where 249 Toilets 250 Taurus 251 Sergio A Ortiz THE COMMON DENOMINATOR OF NOTHING 252 GETTING READY TO GO OUT 253 THE NATURE OF NEURONS 254 NOTES TO SELF ON GOALS 255 SLAVES OF MODIFICATION 256 Yvette A. Schnoeker-Shorb A Privileged Poet 257 I’m Fascinated by My Illness 258 Matthew Freeman Foster Kids Now and Then 259 Mara Cesaretti Coring the Moon 260 Selected Poems by Kenneth Frost , Some insights into seven poems Carolyn Gelland Interview with Judith Skillman 268 Carol Smallwood Eliot’s Waste Land and Modern Civilization 272 Mohammad Rokanuzzaman C O N T R I B U T O R S 10 girl who floats kevin richard white The girl who floats is trapped in bends. She’s contorted, askew, sipping beer and imagining the people in her life as figurines. She lives in a town that she can’t get away from. She sees the same wisteria grow in her apartment complex for twenty three years now. There’s texts and calls from a boy she liked for a while, but she puts her phone on airplane mode, automatic voicemail. One day, this boy summoned the courage to drive the hour to her place and knock on her door. He held a small bouquet of sunflowers, the water dripping fast from the stem onto his shoes, bought not more than ten minutes ago from a mom and pop florist. She peeks from her bedroom window, finger holding down the flimsy blinds, and he looks handsome. She chews her lip but can’t conjure up the same taste that she can for beer and silent judgment. She closes the blinds and he leaves the flowers on her outside table. Eventually, she takes the flowers and throws them along with the wisteria, packs them tightly in the fine wet dirt. She lays in bed later on, music playing on her phone at a low volume, TV on but muted, and she’s thinking about the boy that she ignored. She imagines a version of him that would be tougher, maybe more tattoos and a smell of grease and tobacco. She does what she has to do to make herself go. The music switches to advertisements. She doesn’t care. She can’t go anyway. She gets up and sips a beer, ignores the draft through the windows that she’s been meaning to repair. After a few days, she sits down at the kitchen table, fingering a mark that was made years ago. She grabs a Sharpie and fills it in. She has her phone in her hand. She drafts a text, taking a while because in her mind, she’s in a terrible bend. Contorted, hard to breathe, but relaxed. 11 As she texts with a quivering thumb, she has to stop and look out the window at the wisteria. She frowns and she puts the phone down and she thinks sees the boy somewhere in the bush. When she goes outside to look, it’s raining. It’s pelting her lightly and the water is getting caught in her mess of hair. Through a thin mist, she is able to see the makings of a town she can’t get away from and the figurines that drive in and out of it, weaving around and about in tune, and she feels sorry for them. She is floating brilliantly away from all of them and they’ll never catch up. She lets a big laugh go in the rain. She’s saving her last one for later tonight, when she decides to reach out to the boy. And why not, she says. He won’t be expecting it. 12 by Risa Pappas Lips Split On a Sunday the sort of sad who will have only dread for a bedfellow, the sky pregnant with snow, her lip splits and she licks the pain again and again, new teeth shooting up to keep open what nature and time work to suture. Some operating grace tends the universe. Some mechanics constructed itself in order to carry out orders. Potent light travels fast as light to light the color of blood. She, spiraling even in stillness. The front of her mind heavy with Other and Else and down her chin bitten blood remains in motion, the spectral radiating between each atom. 13 Woman Patiently Turning Her Lover Into a Good Man The Martyrdom of Water; Holy Holy Holy climbing down the deepest fissures to lie alone at the bottoms of the lowest places so not even the air has to occupy them, only the sound of its own dripping for company, crying against the sharp rock. A woman patiently turning her lover into a good man. I do not want to be water anymore, Lord. I do not wish to adjust my size and shape and abundance at the whim of another. I do not wish to conform to whatever vessel idle hands pour me into. I do not wish to live in the bottoms of bellies and drown under oils and bile, trying to glimpse the light from the window of one extant throat. The largesse of my soul Must no longer be bestowed this way Lord, muddy me with some new compound.

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