FEATURED ARTIST: LIZZ HUERTA

Lizz Huerta, a Chula Vista native living in South Park, loves solitude, working on construction sites as the wrought iron maiden and sea-salty dark chocolate. Her work has appeared in ZZYZYVA and she blogs at http://lavagenius.blogspot.com She is working on her first novel.

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love poem to myself since no one else has bothered write one

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woman I love you best in the mornings coming
out of your vivid dreams, before the day has put
her claws in you and everything is still possibility.
woman I love you much, your thoughts mischievous
darting fish seeking to nip at whatever silly narrative
mediocre charlatans are trying to convince you of.
woman I love you alone while you are wearing holes

in the floor, delirious with words, fevers of deliberation
swinging you from one pole to the next, mouthing
the sounds you are shaping into songs and singing.
woman I love you dancing happy dances half naked
on the kitchen floor, tip-toed moves, black hair flying.
when doldrums come knocking, when the empty places
are humming their despair, know I forever love you best.

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the succubus explains

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emasculation is such a pretty thing,
this proboscis stellar and suckling,
the glazing over of those under.
survival is no cruel thing, love, each

organism abuses another to thrive, it
is arrogant to believe you are above
being used as a host as you use &
use, your thing flinging seed at the

willing anemone, your hunger akin to mine.
it was arrogant to assume what was taken
was not used for some good, you were too
at home in your skin of man anyway.

you are lessened in such small ways, consider
the space a gift, fill yourself with better things
than regret and weeping. go into the world
renewed, offer yourself willingly, be loved.

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green

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let us be giants together,
my chlorophyll king,
come roam the wide open,
let your tunic of leaves
fall where it may, feed me
sweet corn and spinach,
hang tin cans from trees,
be my jolly jolly.

thunder your ho ho ho
into my anemic mouth,
be steamy, smelling of things
pulled fresh out of the earth.
plant me some sprouts, be
a beast, let me carve my name
into your trunk, seed this,
sow it, never wither.

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the fish that swallowed Jonah

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maybe you were tired of being empty
and he was pretty, no? how he raged against his
lot of prophet wanting only to be ordinary.

those nights you rumbled with his cries were
something, no? fishes gathered at your belly
mouths gaping in imitation of his prayers.

there are things you’ll never know, no?
why some were chosen to walk out of the sea while
you became food, stayed limbless as a tongue.

then he who first denied you breath & womb
commanding you give up the game. horrifying, no?
to come to motherhood this way, to lose a son.

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FEATURED ARTIST: DENIZ PERIN

 

Deniz Perin is a poet and translator living in San Diego. Her work has been published in several literary journals, including Runes, The Atlanta Review, Sentence, and Pacific Review, as well as in the anthology, A Year in Ink, vol. II. She teaches in the English Department at the University of San Diego. 

 

 

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|  Severance  |

for Aysen

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They cut off my left breast

in a gray and soundproof room

with bars on the window of the door,

me, mother of a lost child,

to pry from my voice

my daughter’s hiding place

among craggy rocks

among tall white mountains

among fields of snow and sage

where sages sing of freedom and rivers and rock

 

they cut my breast with rusty knife

just above the heart

so I’d scream the place

my daughter ran to in the night, southward

somewhere in the mountains

where her big brown eyes

blink behind a pile of burning wood

and her fifteen-year-old hands harden overnight

beneath a sky of endless stars and endless   empty         space,

in the cold, gripping the butt of a rifle nearly her size

 

but what they didn’t know

is that I didn’t know,

that she never told me she was leaving,

that once, she blinked a sad goodbye

but I would never have believed it,

only fifteen, still a child

 

and what they also didn’t know

was with that loss

the throbbing light behind my breast was snuffed out

long before they came with rusty knife.

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|  Three Fragments on Love Behind Bars  |

for Nuhat

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1. (the poet)

 

Nazim Hikmet wrote love letters,

forgetting, in his cell,

his sapphire eyes,

red hair,

graying moustache.

 

He silently boarded

a ship to Russia, looked

one last time at minarets

glowing gray in foggy dawn

when south winds lifted

the waving hand of a friend.

 

 

 

            2. (the lover)

 

I wait outside a dark and filthy

operation room for Nuhat

to emerge in blue cap and blue robe,

looking, smelling salty like the sea. 

 

This what the officers did.

Squeezed and electrocuted

his testes.

 

I picture his lips pursing

white, knuckles pale against dark skin. 

                        Tongue swelled, white with

            sugar and water

            vitamin B

            a few grains of salt. 

 

 

 

            3. (love behind bars)

 

In dream

I stroke

hair soft,

frizzy as lamb.

 

I strain to see

my lover

behind a pane

of two-inch thick

bulletproof glass.

 

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|  Ode to a Kilim  |

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you were woven

by a woman from a village near Urfa

whose eyes were large and green

skin dust brown

hair black and covered

by a thin white cloth

wrapped around her head

underneath her chin.

A tattoo on her forehead:

upside-down crescent

beneath three vertical dots.

 

you are adorned

with diamond shapes overlapping

red and brown

blue black and golden.

 

while your first gold diamond

was woven

the woman’s oldest son

disappeared in a boxy white car

 

when she braided

the bottom edge

of your golden line

her youngest daughter

graduated from high school

now she can get married

your weaver mused

as she tied your knots

 

while the blue background

of your center

was created

her youngest son

changed his name

forayed into the mountains

donned an olive green uniform

evanesced

 

after she interlaced

your brown diamond

her husband brought home

a second wife

who cooked

as day by day

your weaver twined you

 

as your line of red diamonds grew

the village blazed

they fled west to the city

took almost nothing

but she took you

still unfinished so fragile

 

when your black diamond took shape

her youngest daughter

committed suicide

 

you were nearly finished

when her seventh grandchild was born

they named the girl Mehtab

like herself

eyes wide and green

Mehtab’s eyes

you are beautiful

 

because by woman’s tears

your wool has been cleansed.

 

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|  Blue  |

 

“It took an enormous effort on my part, a very great inner tension to reach the emptiness I wanted…

I knew that I had everything to lose. One weakness, one mistake, and everything would collapse.”

-Joan Miró, on his “Blue” series

 

 

The pen writes what it will.

It wills.

Wordless poems

lay hidden across a canvas.

So blue

we got lost in it.

Yet we couldn’t get near it.

 

We wondered,

did we want to touch

the painted red pen

or the small black dots—

could we scrawl hidden words

with our fingers across canvas,

unattainable like the vastness of blue?

 

In Paris, we were two.

Or one. Or two.

 

You fade into cloud-sky.

I paint over you

with invisible blue words

even I can’t read.

 

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|  Miro II: Abstract 1935  |

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We hung our dirty laundry on the cross

street. The man on the corner

was man or Messiah. His eyes—

turquoise or black, who remembers these things?—

looked away when you grabbed my arm.

In his fruit cart: cantaloupe, peaches, and plums.

Gray shone his hair, his moustache, his eyes.

 

I didn’t wonder yet if he was man or Messiah,

if his name was Muhammad.

I rubbed the heart-shaped blue of my arm,

looked away from the iris-eyed man

whose fruit stared me in the face.

 

            Soft press of your thumb.

            Swiftly moving clouds.

            Tire tracks on wet cross street.

            Hawkers, vendors, saints, sinners, prophets, doormen, drivers,

            look away, look away.

            Cross. Cross street. Cross.

 

And the man at the cross street

where we hung our red-blue rags:

would he grab a lover’s arm?

Was he Jesus, was he man,

was he Muhammad in a thin gray coat?

 

 

FEATURED ARTIST: MATTHEW H. DIAZ

“Everything is connected. For me poetry, and art in general, is about exposing these connections. The mere act of placing two seemingly dissimilar words together can create a new image with new sensations being revealed, and the great abundance of paths and possibilities made conscious.

Reading a line by Pablo Neruda, or listening to a Tom Waits lyric.  I find myself coming across some new thread they’ve unearthed, like brushing the dust off some essential and ancient relic. It’s up to the seeker, the artist, and the shaman to make themselves ready for this potential as they become evident. By documenting the manifestations they’ve witnessed, without judgment, they make known the subtle and the sublime in the process. So much of the job, for me as poet, is to document these occasions.”

Featured Artist - Matthew H. Diaz is our poetry editor, and an immensely talented poet in his own right.  In addition to his soulful verses and his enormous heart, he has been known to “walk like a legend.”

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|  NO WHERE TRAVELERS  |

 .

  

 

He asked how to get his boxes to Boston

              and his bags to San Anton

 

I told him some things

              are too heavy to travel,

                            and my home

              is a desert thunderstorm

 

The tall gray clouds,

              my hopes,

                            the lightning

              is my fleeting flesh,

                            here for only a moment,

              the thunder is my dreams,

                            louder than light

                                          when close by,

                            and the rain’s my worries,

                                          my exhaustion from struggling

                                                        with the glorious blue mountains

 

He said he thinks about too many things,

              like where do people go when their

                            desires are shattered by a random

                                                                      hammer,

                            and how do babies end up crying

                                          in empty arms

                                         

He said he doesn’t have a home,

              he moves with a sense of abandonment,

                            all his things in a bag,

              and he wishes to pack away

                            all the static and clutter

of his thoughts

                                                        and send them far away

 

I told him I just try to think about nothingness

              as a destination

 

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