Backyard Poem #10

“PEREGRINATION” ISSUE 3 HERMENEUTIC CHAOS LITERARY JOURNAL Hermeneutic Chaos is a non-profit literary journal founded in 2014 publishing the best contemporary poetry and prose. All rights reserved. The authors retain the ownership of their respective works published in this edition. Cover art: © André Kertész No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of its author(s) Contents Editorial Note POESY Three Poems Heather Fowler I Am Sorry I Love You Rachel J. Fenton Two Poems Simon Perchik Five poems Sheila Murphy Three poems Alessandra Bava Two poems Scherezade Siobhan cavestorm Aaron Wiegert Something is different Jon Simmons Sailor of the metolious Rhiannon Thorne Three poems Jennifer MacBain- Stephens Installation Vik Shirley Dialogue w/ an insomniac Jack Peachum Two Poems Mandy Pannett Contents PROSE Two Fictions Sally Stevens Liriope’s daughter Sara Cleto Two Fictions Jen Knox Two plays Rachel Bublitz Blue eyes Heather Bell Adams Sugar Amarie Fox Hangnails Alex Vigue Bullocks Alison Lock Two Fictions Melinda Giordano A Good night for Maali Elizabeth Brown Editorial Note We welcome you to the July 2014 edition of Hermeneutic Chaos, featuring some of the outstanding poetry and prose by writers both upcoming and established. We are confident that you will enjoy this new collection of literary artifacts, as much as their respective authors enjoyed composing them. The last few months have been tragic for the literary community. We lost Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mary Angelou, Walter Dean Myers, Frank Robinson, and many other writers who taught the world how to appreciate the value of art, how to make the stone faced words discover their malleability while interacting with human emotions, and how to employ it to create an impact on the dominant culture, and perhaps even teach it a thing or two. And most importantly, to fight for art, no matter what. This edition is a tribute to all of them. So sit down on your most comfortable cushion, grab a glass of wine, and begin reading. It will be a stellar journey, we promise you. Warmest Regards, Shinjini Bhattacharjee Editor Poetry HEATHER FOWLER ________________________________ Sonnet of Where One Always Walks Alone “…are all a wreath of love, bed of one wounded, / where, sleepless, I dream of your presence.” Lorca No one visits this house on the hill. The poplars Stretch as sentries up and down lanes. Bored morning yawns At the steps of a lone woman at the splayed door Left open the night before (since no one appears). This has gone on for centuries, for years. This house Beside the sea holds just one bed, one olive stone Of being. It is the house of solitude, where Multitudes have passed, paused, as audience of one. If the current inhabitant goes to town, dons Slitted smile for new lover to take her away, This dwelling will disappear, with all its markings, And quietly make ready to seal its next wound. The house of solitude views departures poorly, Si, preserves earth-sky-hour of apartness to thrive. 1 HEATHER FOWLER ______________________________ Sonnet of Inestimable Wealth “silver coins / sob away in pockets.” Lorca After you‘d gone, I wanted none I‘d done for love As reward. Long ruby hair, sold for wigs. Hands mute. Even the corsage pinned to your portrait—laid waste. It took the stars calling, look, see, to drag me up Into the nighttime sky so full of dark and them. Shining was a thing I would learn only later, Was already mine they said, with or without him. They poured me down into a fountain at the dawn, Told me bathe, bathe—the battle for your soul‘s not done. Once you have shivered nude in miasmas of tears, Once you have dried yourself in Seville‘s hot morning, The suitors will come in a line for a dance, beg. Everyone wants the girl who has given all for love, received none. She shines brighter than moons in silver coins. Pure gold. 2 HEATHER FOWLER _______________________________ Sonnet of Rivers and Leaves “Never let me lose what I have gained/ and adorn the branches of your river / with leaves of my estranged Autumn.” The leaves of my Autumn have filled the banks beyond The calls of what we measure as seasons, secure Beyond a shadow of a doubt in detritus. They do not worry that their faces will crack and break Nor that the walking lizard prefers the sweet grape, Nor that the orange trees refuse to claim their orphans. The leaves of my Autumn care not about disgrace, Clear that they come only to green, fall until gone. The branches of your river hold them without qualms Until there is a separation of living and non When your shore or the rush of your current Becomes the place in which they go to court decay, Like elderly men, in dotage, arrive at homes To stay where loved ones live, to love the more, to die. 3 RACHEL J. FENTON _____________________________________ I Am Sorry I Love You 4 5 6 7 SIMON PERCHIK _____________________________ Untitled You show up late as usual need more darkness though you wait the way each star smells from dirt and her eyelids –the mouth you return to is already weeds worn down by the silence that‘s lost its balance can‘t escape and won‘t let go –some nights further than others smaller and smaller. 8 SIMON PERCHIK _____________________________ Untitled You piece one night into another as if these constellations would leave nothing to chance and the sky you play it safe with stay black waiting for air by not counting, though this time for flames that fit exactly lock on the way letters from home are saved in a metal box to complete the picture –all night under the kitchen table you shuffle cards and some mindless jigsaw game unfolds on the cold floor, trying to remember those stars all together their first morning and their last 9 though the Earth is covered with this breeze still taking away the only thing that matters. 10 SHEILA MURPHY ______________________________________ Noggin Root words line the caveat. A hearing claws the surface, pores over future obvious reclassified conveyor belt elan, until the snow drops gather, one cell turned into a whole collective sunlit craft, precursing foreloft, whose criteria seep through music dispatching hinges, one upon the next. 11 SHEILA MURPHY _________________________________ Stop Saying Journey Stasis is more like it. Maybe not wholesale maybe quieter surrender, estranged If on the papal mark. A year ago inflections faded referents, and fists broke homes with steel staccato prominence, as though a fraction tinged with gravel demanded lane change in the wake of trades exchanging one life for one vat of nomenclature deemed not guilty in this surreptitious line of code. 12 SHEILA MURPHY ___________________________________ Detour Not that you winter near philanthropy, the earth watch licensure abbreviating worsted fabric. Light squeals through scissors Crimped, chiseled, stipulating Loose work, higher blame, in hot pursuit of patient zero clasping intonation, as if rafters cave when facts invert the tables grading force field. Thistles brave a whispered call for threaded vases taller than the summer call tone dialed at once. 13 SHEILA MURPHY ____________________________ Reprimand Petrified retreat amounts to a summation claustrophobic as a slump line bridled fast and fatuous, to wit, the kindling raises splintered light to eye level tracked by number. Torsion blanches uppity blond traction, its portion still varietal as grasp trained fuel and froth condoned to be full sway in indulgence indivisible conforming versions of the notary. 14 SHEILA MURPHY _______________________________ Ex Post Mind equals fall back pose I need. Stern weather locates correspondence coursing through a moment's nuance broken and awake the full-toned orchestration jars the will along the coast, while light broth casts hypothesized fresh lines that very nearly touch. 15 ALESSANDRA BAVA _______________________________ Incubus “The box is only temporary” – Sylvia Plath Entwined in a narcoleptic sleep and flower stems, I dream an incubus in shape of queen bee surmounting me. ―You have neglected your bee-box. You‘ve not tended your bees. You‘ve casted honey to swine,‖ she buzzes in my ear. Remorse lies deep within me. All I wanted was to steal the amber secret from them. To feed my nib with their gold. To sweeten the edgy words of my poetry. To spy the dwellers of wax and shape my own syllables with their craft. They have left. I cannot own them, as they cannot own me. Their stings are my sole cohorts. I let their venom tinge my dream. The honeycomb swarms with new figment now. 16 ALESSANDRA BAVA ___________________________________ The Nest The nest that beats amid the ribs holds a blue egg about to crack; when poetry will be be born out of it, I‘ll put a leash around its polished beak and let its claws inscribe my heart . 17 ALESSANDRA BAVA _____________________________________ I Am Disintegration for Frida Kahlo Even the walls here have learnt my motto: ―Yo soy disintegración.‖ This is what I tell myself as I lean over my own body‘s debris and talk the language of life-in-death to the skeleton covered in strings of fireworks-- flaming rosary beads-- atop the canopy. I have learnt to disdain piety and sanctimony. Golgotha means waking up to the cross 18 of my umpteenth plaster corset, a new white canvas to fill with my dreams. I have painted the most beautiful son of woman on the latest one, a child I will never bear to full bloom. That‘s how you crucify me every morning with what I crave most your nails, dear Art, mi hermana.* *my sister 19 SCHEREZADE

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